The Sanatorium(50)

Elin can see everything now: the minutiae, the detail. Just as it was designed, she thinks, repulsed. This glass is meant for prying eyes.

Each finger is attached to the bottom of the box with a fine nail. Surrounding each one is a thin copper bracelet.

Three fingers. Three bracelets.

She tips her head. She can just about make out something engraved on the inside of the first bracelet. Numbers?

Moving closer to the glass, she can see that she’s right: there is a row of five tiny numbers. 87499. Her gaze flickers to the next bracelet: the same thing again. 87534.

As Elin takes a photograph, her brain is trying to process what she’s seeing: someone’s amputated Adele’s fingers, then fixed them to this box with the bracelets around them.

It means that this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was planned. Premeditated. Every element—the restraint, amputation, the sandbag, this . . .

All carefully thought out, part of a narrative. Because that’s what it is, she thinks, nausea sweeping over her: a story. They’re trying to communicate something. Which, in turn, implies an organized crime. An organized killer.

This is someone intelligent, savvy about how the police work. Which probably means there’ll be little evidence to go on. Someone harder to find.

Elin feels the prickle of sweat under her arms. I’m out of my depth. This isn’t her country and half of what she’s doing now isn’t her area of expertise.

When she looks back to the box, her own inadequacy taunts her, flashes of her past mistakes looming large.

She feels her chest tighten, her vision blur, and when she blinks, she realizes the contents of the box have changed. The fingers are swelling; becoming bigger, bloodier. The blood is no longer dry; it’s seeping from the tips of the fingers, leaching through the edges of the box onto the snow.

Blood.

So much blood it’s carving channels in the snow, already reaching the tip of her boot . . .

Staring in horror, Elin stumbles backward. She’s struggling to get her breath.

She wrenches her gaze from the box, and pulls her inhaler from her pocket, takes two, three puffs.

“Is everything all right?”

Elin looks up. Lucas Caron is standing above her, his face expressionless. The wind is tugging at his jacket, creasing the fabric into thin folds.

“Fine.” She pushes her inhaler back into her pocket, takes several deep breaths until she feels her breathing settle.

“I’ve got some of the things you asked for.” Lucas passes her a small cardboard box. “The gloves and bags. The rest of the equipment is coming. One of the staff is making sure everything is sterile.”

“Thank you.” Elin takes out a pair of gloves and a bag. She reaches for her tote, puts the rest inside.

Casting a sidelong glance at the box, she can see that the blood, the oversized fingers, they’re gone. It’s as it was the first time she looked at it.

But the terror remains, a terror unique to a situation like this.

What’s happened here, it isn’t logical, rational, something that can be explained. Elin knows it has its roots in something dark, something so dark it feels almost tangible, a presence in itself.





40





Elin tugs off her plastic gloves as she walks into the spa changing rooms. She vigorously rubs her hands together. They’re cold, her fingertips red, but not freezing.

It’s the one benefit of all her running, the hours spent pounding the coast road, the Dartmoor hills in bitter conditions—her body’s strong, accustomed to being out of its comfort zone.

She looks at her watch. It’s 4:30 p.m. Over five hours since they found Adele’s body. It’s now pitch black outside, the conditions deteriorating further—snow whirling madly, as if being turned in a centrifuge, fat white flakes illuminated by the lights against the dark sky above.

Every now and then, the wind picks up snow from the ground, sending it in a terrifying dance before dumping it somewhere else. If this had been in the UK, the CSIs would have been wild. Elin pictures her colleague Tim’s pinched face and furrowed brow, the expletive-laden muttering under his breath.

She can’t do much more—she’s taken hundreds of photographs, noted down the bracelets’ numbers, and methodically collected any possible evidence, which was few and far between. Her initial instinct was right: whoever did this was organized.

There’s next to nothing in the makeshift evidence bags; some hairs, several empty sugar sachets, a few cigarette butts. A pair of blue bikini bottoms, snarled into a knot, half buried in the snow. She’s collected them all, but she isn’t hopeful.

As she starts to gather up her things, Elin feels her phone vibrate in her pocket. When she pulls it out, she doesn’t recognize the number—it looks foreign. “Hello . . .”

“Good afternoon, may I speak with Elin Warner?” A man’s voice, the English heavily accented. Not a French lilt, but German. Clipped, guttural.

“Speaking.”

“This is Inspecteur Ueli Berndt, from the Police Judiciaire, Valais.” He clears his throat. “I understand you wanted to speak to someone about assisting with the ongoing situation at Le Sommet.”

Elin hesitates, momentarily taken aback at his directness, the formality of his tone. “That’s right. Would you like me to take you through the details of the scene?”