The Sanatorium(102)
Have we got it wrong? What if this isn’t connected with the killings at all?
It’s then she notices that Lucas’s flashlight has stopped moving.
It’s stationary, fixed on something up ahead.
“The tunnel,” he whispers, “it widens, up here.”
Walking forward a few steps, she sweeps her flashlight from side to side.
He’s right: the tunnel opens before contracting again farther down. She’s about to go on when the flashlight catches something: a glimmer of metal a few feet from the ground.
Moving closer, she focuses the beam of the flashlight, an inner alarm starting to sound. The scene in front pulls clear of the darkness: the metal the flashlight has picked out is part of a trolley. It’s strewn with rubber sheeting, roughly pulled back. A length of rope is attached to the sides; two at the top, two at the bottom.
Elin holds herself completely still, assessing. Near the bottom of the trolley are several canvas bags, towels scattered beside them, several bottles of water. To the left is a small table littered with metal instruments: tongs, scissors, knife.
Blood stains the surface of them, dark, shiny.
She clamps a hand over her mouth. This is where it happened. This is where Laure was mutilated before her death. Adele too.
Elin stares, image after image filling her head. Her palms are sweaty, slick around the flashlight.
“This is where . . .” Lucas doesn’t finish his sentence. He looks appalled.
“Yes.” Her voice wavers. “The perfect location. Enough room, privacy. Easy access to the . . .” She breaks off, noticing something—a different, stronger smell.
The fetid mustiness of the past few yards of the tunnel has been replaced with something else—the smell of decay. Something meaty, metallic.
Elin steps forward, her breathing shallower now.
It must just be the blood from the instruments, the blood Margot’s tried to clean; but without any ventilation, it’s lingered, caught in the cracks.
She’s about to turn back to Lucas when she notices it—tucked into the curve of the tunnel wall at its widest part.
Elin freezes, a sudden, sharp wave of nausea rocking her stomach.
Impossible.
83
Elin clamps a hand over her mouth, bile already rising and filling her throat, her mouth.
Margot.
She’s hoisted onto a strange pulley system, fixed to a wooden rack.
The grotesque rubber mask is half hanging off her face so her profile is clear, features livid from where the blood has pooled, settled.
One eye is closed, the other open: vacant, lifeless.
Elin is trembling as she stares, trying to get a handle on what’s in front of her.
Has she killed herself? Committed suicide because she knew we were onto her?
But as her eyes track downward, Elin can see that her torso is being pulled taut by a complex system of ropes attached at her wrists and ankles. The rope around her ankles is connected to some kind of crank, a turning wheel.
There’s no way she could have done this to herself.
Elin’s gaze moves left, to Margot’s head. A metal clamp is fastened to her forehead, blood trickling down her face where it has punctured the skin. The surface of the clamp has metal hooks on it, fixed to a length of rope. This, in turn, is affixed to another turning wheel.
The blood flutters in Elin’s ears as her eyes move to Margot’s neck. There are marks on her skin where it’s stretched and torn.
If the metal clamp puncturing her head didn’t kill her first, then the force from this medieval-style rack had been enough to detach her head from the spinal cord.
Instant death.
Pictures spool through her head, a ticker tape: Margot as she’d seen her yesterday, and now this. This barbarity.
Elin knows with absolute certainty that this will be the one she’ll remember, the one that will stick in her head for the rest of her life.
Taking a deep breath, she waits for the familiar panic. But it doesn’t come: her head feels sharp, clear, cutting through to what’s in front of her, but the thought that comes next almost makes her wish otherwise.
“Margot was working with someone else.” Elin turns toward Lucas. “All this time, she’s been working with somebody else.”
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There’s no reply.
Elin turns in a circle, glances warily around her.
“Lucas?” she repeats, her words echoing out in the darkness of the tunnel.
Still no answer.
A prickle of fear: she turns again, slowly this time, moving the flashlight in a circle.
Flashes: The metal trolley. Discarded equipment. The streaked concrete of the walls.
But no Lucas.
Where could he be?
He was right behind her only a few moments ago. Her mind turns over the possibilities: perhaps he saw or heard something, went deeper into the tunnel?
Walking forward, she scans the space in front of her, mouth dry.
No sign of him.
She starts to go back the other way when she hears a distant thud. Her brain scrambles; instantly deciphers the noise.
The hatch.
He’s gone. Back the way they came.
A sudden, devastating flash of comprehension; there’s only one reason he’d run at this moment.