The Sanatorium(70)

Leave it alone. Don’t go near it.

Her eyes trace the small peaks of snow by the window.

A memory rises up: Laure’s letters.

The letters Laure sent her, arriving every week after Sam died. Letters reaching out—full of sympathy at first, then fun. Anecdotes about school, boys, her mother, Coralie. Trying to draw Elin out, reconnect.

Letters that Elin chose to ignore because she was jealous, couldn’t cope with the fact that Laure hadn’t been dealt the same shitty hand as she had.

She blinks, eyes smarting. She has to meet her, doesn’t she? Give her the benefit of the doubt.

This time, she has to listen.





55





It’s 8:48 a.m. Elin rereads the name etched on the glass plate on the wall. Suite Plaine Morte. It has to be this room—from the hotel website, she knows it’s the only penthouse in the hotel.

But as she looks through the glass door, it’s clear that the suite itself isn’t on the other side of it. Instead, there’s another small corridor leading to a set of lift doors on the far left-hand side. Laure was right: the suite has its own access corridor as well as its own lift.

As she puts her hand up to the door, her phone pulses in her side pocket. Relieved she’s put it on vibrate mode, Elin pulls it out, scans the screen.

Laure?

No: a different number. Berndt.

RIPOL search shows we do have intelligence on Laure Strehl—reference canton of Vaud. Seeking permission to share detail with you ASAP.

Intelligence? What did that mean? Elin wonders if she should call him back. She looks down at the screen again. It’s 8:50. She doesn’t have time. It’ll have to wait.

Putting the phone back in her pocket, she slips through the door.

She’s beginning to feel nervous; she’s walking too fast. Despite her thin sweater, she can feel the prickle of sweat between her shoulder blades.

The corridor space is unnerving, one of the few in the hotel that doesn’t feature glass. Instead, the walls are a cream-colored marble, pinkish veins dancing across the surface.

Despite the privacy the marble gives, it makes the space feel compact. Suffocating.

Halfway to the lift, she notices something: small, square pictures lining the walls.

They’re sketches, framed in black—a messy tangle of loose, inked lines. It takes a moment for her eyes to resolve the confusion of shapes, but when they finally do, Elin steps back.

People, she thinks, a hand coming up to her mouth.

Parts of people: face, leg, knee.

The effect is brutal. They look like images of amputation. Dismemberment.

As she walks past them, the silence is excruciating; she’s aware of every sound she’s making.

Every breath. Every footstep.

How will I justify my presence if I run into someone? What should I say? Then there’s the CCTV. What if someone sees me going up? Cecile, or Lucas?

A vast mirror makes up the end wall. Elin can’t avoid seeing herself approach—limp hair, jeans hanging baggy over her legs. Sam’s necklace hugs the base of her throat, echoing the line of her sweater. The scar above her upper lip catches the overhead light, drawing a faint, silvery line from her mouth to her nose.

A few steps on. She’s nearly at the lift that must go directly up to the suite.

From the corner of her eye, she notices a movement in the mirror—a flicker of shadow.

Elin freezes, convinced she can see a silhouette, but when she looks back, it’s gone. She knows it’s only a reflection—a distortion of the overhead lights, reverberating glimpses of her own movement, but it doesn’t stop the cold jag of fear in her chest.

Am I mad doing this alone? Taking the risk?

Walking the final few steps to the lift, she takes a deep breath, reprimands herself: Don’t lose it now. I’m about to get answers.



* * *



? ? ?

A few moments later, Elin steps out of the lift into the entrance of the penthouse. Her eyes graze the larger space beyond: living area, fireplace, huge glass windows.

She checks her watch. It’s 8:52 a.m. Eight minutes early.

Is Laure here already?

Elin glances around. She can’t see anyone, but she can’t rule out that Laure might already be lying in wait, making sure that Elin hasn’t brought anyone with her.

Walking farther in, she stops. She’s not sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t this scale. The views. Glass wraps the entire space, revealing exactly how much snow had fallen—the landscape now a perfect, pristine white, every landmark smothered.

After putting her bag down by the sofa, Elin moves around, getting her bearings. The living and dining area of the suite is open plan, but divided into areas. On her far right, a small kitchen, and opposite, another seating area. A corridor leads off to the right, which she’s guessing is where the bedrooms are.

The main living space, where she’s standing, houses a fireplace and three vast architectural sofas set around a coffee table.

A dining room is positioned slightly lower, down several steps. A large oak table is the centerpiece, a huge artwork dominating the right-hand wall. It’s one of those strange, dismembered images again—vivid blues through to black segments of limb.

Everything’s simple, almost abrupt in its starkness, with none of the usual ostentation found in suites like these. There’s no blingy ornamentation: kitschy fabrics, gold-plating, huge vases filled with flowers. Instead, the lines are clean, the colors muted, tasteful.