The Sanatorium(34)

This is the view she wanted to see, the perspective she’s needed, but the more she looks, the more confused she becomes.

One question keeps beating out inside her head: If Laure did take off of her own accord, where could she go from here?

The hotel is isolated, its own entity. There’s nowhere nearby that Laure could plausibly be. Nowhere she can keep safe, stay warm.

She can’t have gone up, surely, Elin thinks, glancing toward the forest. Isaac had told her there were no huts up there, no shelter. Beyond the trees there’s only high mountain, the glacier. Looking up, she can see both are shrouded in a thick mist. It’s swirling, tendrils crawling like fingers over the rock.

The sight makes her flesh creep. She turns away.

There’s a definite possibility Laure’s gone down, either to the town or to the valley, to Sierre, but that’s more than twelve miles away.

So how?

Walking was almost impossible in these conditions, and she can’t have got a taxi; she had no phone, no purse, no bag.

Elin knows that the only way she’ll get answers is by finding out why Laure felt she’d had to go. What motive she had for leaving.

Personal, professional, there have to be clues, she’s sure of it.

She needs to know more—find out what makes Laure tick. Pulling out her phone, she starts flicking through various social media accounts. Though she’s registered on most of them, Elin’s never posted anything. She’s always felt too self-conscious, foisting her random thoughts on the world.

Most of Laure’s accounts are set to private, bar one: Instagram.

Elin clicks into Laure’s feed. She’s not sure what she’ll find, but it’s unlikely to be the real Laure. One of the first things she learned in the police was the extent to which people curate their lives: CVs, diaries. Conversations with friends. E-mails.

The most easily manipulated? Social media. The extrovert colleague, having a meal with her “squad,” could in fact be eating alone, reading a book. The artsy shot of the prizewinning book? Discarded after the first page.

Yet the fact that it doesn’t tell you everything is in itself revealing. The curation, the person they’re pretending to be, can say a lot: an insight into someone’s desires, their insecurities.

Elin starts scrolling. Laure’s grid reminds her of Will’s: considered, filtered to look subtly overexposed. Landscapes. Architecture. Interspersed are shots of her with Isaac, friends. A cocktail bar. Book club in a trendy apartment. Mocking poses for the camera.

She glances at Laure’s self-deprecating comments. Trying not to try too hard.

There are no mundane day-to-day shots. No “motivational” quotes, older family members reluctantly posing for the camera. Nothing about the images reveals a softer side, any vulnerabilities. She wants to be seen as serious, creative, in control.

This is revealing: the complete lack of flaws, of being able to show herself as anything other than living a perfect life, indicates an insecurity. Laure wasn’t quite confident enough that people would like the real her, so she’s having to posture.

All in all, someone trying very hard.

But still, no sign of any instability, anything seriously awry. To find that, Elin will have to look somewhere real. Somewhere Laure wouldn’t be so aware of, somewhere her friends wouldn’t be able to see, to judge.

Her office.

As Elin starts to walk back down the path toward the hotel, her gaze is once again dragged to the immense white expanse stretching out below her.

A thought strikes her:

What if Laure wanted to get lost in this? What if all this is planned?

She can almost understand it, she thinks, wanting to step out into this nothingness.

A perfect, endless oblivion.

Then an image of the blood spatter on the rug appears in her mind.

Tiny, rusty dots. A constellation.





27





Her captor has moved her off the floor.

Adele’s now lying flat, on a bed of some kind. It’s a softer surface, more forgiving.

Blinking, she opens her eyes, but the shapes and colors around her are out of focus. It takes a few minutes for the scene in front of her to resolve.

A wall: bumpy, striated, the surface slick with moisture.

Adele tries to analyze this, work out where she might be, but she’s distracted: her face is burning. With a lurch, she remembers: the mask. Panic bubbles up inside her, sweat building between her flesh and the thick layer of rubber.

Frantic, she tries to reach up, claw it off, but her hands won’t move.

What’s happened?

Adele tips her head forward to try to get a better look, but the movement makes her dizzy, as if her brain is on catch-up, three steps behind her skull.

She tries again, twisting her torso to the right, but as her head follows, the C-shape of tubing attached to the mask blocks her vision; a grotesque black curve.

Adele tries craning her neck, angling her head far enough to the right so she can see past the tube.

It works: she gets a glimpse of her right hand. It’s fastened at the wrist to the bed. A table sits a few feet away. It’s made of metal, similar to one used for camping—foldable, portable.

In the center is a small metal tray. Surgical instruments are lined up on the surface in a neat row—scalpels, a knife, a fine pair of scissors.