The Sanatorium(107)

Finally, she reaches the main pool. Lucas is slumped across one of the loungers on the far right-hand side. He tries to turn his head toward her, but the movement is puppetlike, jerky. His eyes roll back in his skull, revealing slivers of reddish-white.

Am I too late?

Picking up the pace, she skirts the side of the pool until she reaches him.

“It’s okay, he’s coming around.” Cecile is standing over him, bent at the waist, trying to prop him upright. There’s something of the nurse in her demeanor, fussing, maternal, but Elin isn’t fooled.

“You can stop the act, Cecile.” Her voice is slow, calm, the simplicity of her words projecting a confidence she doesn’t feel. “I know it’s you. You were the one working with Margot. Not Lucas.”

Cecile contemplates her, frown lines picking at her forehead.

She returns Elin’s deliberate tones, but they’re laced with condescension, as if she’s talking to a child. “No. I found him here like this. I’m trying to help.”

Elin knows instantly that Cecile’s chosen the wrong reaction: faced with an accusation, she should be wild, incredulous. Defensive. Not this: this measured superiority.

It gives her away.

A noise comes from Lucas: a liquid, throaty sound.

She studies him. He’s shifted position so she can see the left side of his face. Above his eyebrow, his forehead is sticky with blood, a clotted mass around his temple. His skin is pale, damp from either sweat or snow. Elin clears her throat. Her mouth feels dry, empty of saliva.

She needs to play for time.

“I know it’s you. You gave it away. You were clever, until the last few moments.”

Cecile’s expression is inscrutable. “Gave it away?” she repeats.

“Yes. What you said back then, in Lucas’s office. ‘From now on, I’m going to do what I want. To hell with anyone who stands in my way.’ That expression . . . I realized I’d read it somewhere before. A blog, protesting about the hotel being built. Someone described Lucas using those very words. The same comment on Twitter too.” Elin hesitates. “You were trolling your own brother, because this is what it’s about, isn’t it? Him.”

The words roll across the space between them, but they don’t seem to find Cecile: she seems buffered, unreachable.

“An expression?” Her face curls up: a mimic of disbelief. “You’re accusing me because of a turn of phrase?”

“It’s not only that.” Elin straightens up to her full height. “I smelled chlorine on the mask in Lucas’s study. I kept noticing it in places it shouldn’t be . . . when I found Laure in the lift and when I was attacked in the stairwell leading from the penthouse, but it didn’t register, not until today. You swim every day, don’t you?”

Cecile looks at her, silent, the wind pulling her hair about her face. Still, no emotion.

“That’s how I guessed you’d bring him here, to the pool. Either the indoor pool, or this one. It’s your comfort zone, isn’t it? The one place you feel at home.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Cecile’s voice is empty. “What you’re saying, it’s supposition. Nothing more.”

“It’s not. This isn’t just about the hotel, the sanatorium’s past. It’s personal, between you and Lucas. He’s done something, something you can’t forgive. Something that’s made you seek revenge.”

“No, I—”

Elin continues, sensing a weakness. “This, what’s happened, everyone you’ve killed, you’ve been clever, making it about the sanatorium, as though it were all about the past, but it’s not.” She fixes her eyes on Lucas. “It’s about him, isn’t it? He started this.”

Cecile takes a step back. It’s now the fa?ade slips: she falters, before recovering. “No, look, I—”

Moving forward, Elin’s boots are buried deep in the snow. “What did he do, Cecile? Tell me what he did.”

Cecile’s face crumples, her features collapsing as if someone had crushed them underfoot. A strange, bitter noise escapes from deep inside her throat.

“It’s not about what he did. It’s what he didn’t do. None of this started with Lucas.” Her face twitches. “It started with Daniel. Daniel Lemaitre. He raped me.” She gestures to Lucas, hand jerking out erratically. “He knew, and did nothing about it.”





88





There’s a heavy silence. A silence Elin hasn’t experienced since she’s been here. She can feel the wind dropping, the snow, for the first time, falling straight to the ground.

“Nothing to say?” Cecile’s gaze flickers to Lucas. Beside her, the water shimmers, steam coiling into the air.

He looks at her beneath heavy lids, unresponsive.

“Come on, you were there that night, Lucas, weren’t you? After Daniel’s birthday party, in Sion. His eighteenth. You drove us back, a group of us, to Daniel’s place. We stayed over, everyone crashed in the living room.”

Cecile’s tone is still lacking in emotion, a void where feeling should be.

Elin knows that this type of emotion is always dangerous. Unlike a fiery, passionate rage, a cold, bitter anger like this can’t burn itself out. It’s gone past that point and hardened into something solid. Unbreakable.