The Sanatorium(21)

A few inches in, he can see more of the bracelet, more of the fabric.

Pinching his fingers around the top of the bracelet, Jeremie yanks hard. He jerks backward, the material and bracelet coming with him, together with something else.

Jeremie stares, frozen.

Bile fills the back of his throat. Dropping the knife and the bracelet, he gags, vomiting over and over into the snow.





17





Isaac,” Elin starts, her words puncturing the strange silence. “If this is some weird joke . . .” He’d done things like this as a child. Nothing was off-limits. Anything to get a reaction.

“It’s not.” Isaac’s eyes lock on to hers. “When I woke up, she was gone.” His face is pale, purple shadows under his eyes.

“Maybe she’s gone for a swim, or to the gym?” Elin suggests. “The hotel’s enormous. There must be loads of places she could be.”

“I’ve checked. No one’s seen her. Taking off like this, it’s not like her.” He sits down. “I found this, too, near our door.” Pulling something from his pocket, he places it on the table in front of her.

A necklace.

The fine loops of the chain spill over the table; a liquid, sinuous gold. Elin stares, her eyes finding the small gold L in the center. “That could have just fallen off.”

“Look at it,” Isaac urges. “The chain’s broken. Something’s happened.”

“Like what?” A familiar surge of frustration: she’s forgotten this. The relentless attention seeking, the endless pivots from one drama to another.

“I don’t know, but she’d have felt it break. Stopped to pick it up if she could. Coralie gave it to her. It’s special.” He hesitates. “Like Sam’s necklace is to you.”

Elin’s hand comes up on autopilot, clamps around the chain. Her mother had the necklace made a few years after Sam died: his lucky crabbing hook, cast in silver.

“So what are you trying to say?”

“It’s like she left in such a hurry, she didn’t have time to pick it up, or couldn’t . . .”

“Maybe.”

A waiter appears next to Isaac. “Coffee?”

Isaac gives a brusque nod. “Black, please.”

“Perhaps she went for a walk?” Will says, still chewing. “The weather’s better.”

“Maybe, but why wouldn’t she leave a note? Something’s wrong. I know it. She wouldn’t just go off without telling me.”

His anxiety is contagious. Elin can’t help but feel panicked, even though what he’s saying is surely an overreaction. Why assume she’s missing? She hasn’t been gone long. There are many possible explanations for where she might be.

Then she pictures the scene she’d glimpsed last night. Laure, on the phone outside, the violent, angry expression on her face.

“When did you last see her?”

“Last night. We were in bed, reading. Turned off the light about eleven.”

“You didn’t hear anything in the night? No disturbances?”

Will looks at her, surprise marking his features. He’s never seen her like this, Elin thinks. In work mode. It surprises her, too: a year out of the force yet it’s still there—a reflex, throwing out questions, gathering information.

“Nothing,” Isaac replies.

The waiter returns with a jug of coffee, places it on the table in front of them. Steam swirls in a ragged line to the ceiling.

“Look,” Elin says, “at work we see stuff like this all the time. People panic because someone’s gone off, they worry because it’s out of character, but usually there’s an explanation, some kind of emergency, a friend needing help . . .”

“Without leaving a note? Without calling?” Isaac scoffs, a sharpness to his tone. “Come on, you’d only just arrived. We had plans for today. The spa . . .”

Again, Elin thinks about Laure pacing outside on the phone, glowing cigarette tip dancing wildly against the night. “So you’ve got no idea where she could be?”

Isaac’s face darkens. “No.” He pours coffee into his cup. The steaming liquid sloshes over the sides, pooling on the table.

“Has her phone gone, any of her stuff?” If this was a missing persons case, Elin thinks, this is the first thing she’d ascertain. Was this spontaneous or planned?

“Nothing. Not her phone, her bag.” Isaac picks up a napkin, rubs it over the liquid. “Elin, her clothes are there, her toiletries . . . she hasn’t taken anything. You’d hardly leave everything if you’d planned to take off, would you?”

“Look,” she says, treading carefully, “sometimes people do take off. Leave their stuff behind. It’s not unheard of.” She hesitates, unsure of how to phrase it right. “Isaac, did anything happen last night?”

“No.”

Something in his inflection makes her tense. He’s keeping something from me.

“Isaac, please. You’ve got to be honest.”

The last corner of the napkin turns sodden; a pale, murky brown.

Isaac nods. “Last night, Laure was upset. Edgy. I assumed she was stressed, about seeing you again, but now I think it was something else.” He frowns. “She was off, preoccupied. I was getting ready for dinner, and she came out of the shower, announced she wasn’t coming. Said something had come up. I got angry, said whatever it was, she should put it off, because we’d agreed to meet you.”