The Sanatorium(71)

The luxury is in the finish, the detail—the marble walls, statement leather chair, various expensive-looking pieces of furniture, the vast white sheepskin covering the floor.

Elin stops, pulling herself up sharply. Don’t get distracted.

Laure could be here, in one of the other rooms. Keeping her voice low, she calls out, “Laure?”

She stands perfectly still, but there’s no return call: only silence, her own voice echoing back in her head.

Elin walks toward the corridor on her right, every sense on high alert for movement or sound. The first room she enters is a library-cum-games room; the second, opposite, is a snug den. Terraces wrap each space.

She swiftly surveys each room, but there’s no sign anyone’s here. Everything is neat, untouched.

Despite that, as she walks toward what must be the bedrooms, her top is now damp from sweat, the fabric chafing uncomfortably against the flesh of her back.

She could still be here somewhere. Hiding.

Elin cautiously makes her way into the first bedroom. The master, she thinks, taking in the large bed jutting out from the wall, the private pool on the terrace, the hot tub.

No one’s there.

Scanning the other three bedrooms and finding them empty, she walks back to the living space, a knotted, pulsing tension in her limbs. All she wants is to get this over with.

She peers down at her watch again: 8:57. Three minutes left.

It’s then she hears a noise: a scuffed, scraping sound, like something’s being shoved, shifted somehow.

Elin turns around, her own breath loud in her ears. In the windows she glimpses her reflection and something else.

A silhouette?

Just like in the pool’s changing room, she has the unmistakable sense that someone’s watching her, eyes crawling over her.

With a mounting sense of panic, she scans the room again.

Nothing.

Another look at her watch: two minutes. Time is dragging, painfully slowly.

Finally, a sound.

Something more familiar: the metallic whirr of the lift, quickly swallowed by the shuffle of the doors as they part. Feeling her breathing rate increase, she clamps her elbows to her ribs: an automatic, defensive gesture.

Keep calm. Deep breaths. Don’t panic.

The lift doors are fully open now, but no one steps out.

It’s empty.

All she can hear is the dull, mechanical hum of the lift as it settles into position.

Elin falters, her eyes pulling downward. Something there, on the floor.

She feels her legs soften, then buckle.





56





It’s Laure. She’s dead.

The words roll about inside her head, a realization that’s being batted back and forth, back and forth, her mind not wanting to take it in, absorb it.

The lift is making noises, horrible noises. The doors, sensing her presence, are repeatedly opening and closing, almost in time with the pulse beating in her head.

A mechanical horror, reflecting the scene in front of her.

It’s as if the lift itself has inflicted the damage, the doors as incisors, chewing her up, spitting her back out.

Laure’s slumped in the left-hand corner of the lift, head tilted sideways, to the right, at an unnatural angle, dark hair spilling over her face.

She’s wearing a mask.

The same black rubber mask Adele wore. It’s concealing her face, her features, but Elin can tell it’s her. The hair, the lean frame. The same pumps she was wearing the other day. Blood is soaking her gray T-shirt, concentrated around the neck.

Elin’s gaze tracks downward.

Just below the mask, there’s a deep incision in Laure’s neck. It looks like it’s been cut from behind; her head pulled back, the knife drawn across it from left to right.

Her throat slit, like an animal.

Elin steps forward to examine it. The wound is deeper on the left, trailing off toward the right. It starts below the ear, running obliquely downward, straight across the midline of the neck.

Someone right-handed.

Most likely, the carotid artery and the jugular vein had been cut. The loss of blood would have been huge. Fatal, but enough time for Laure to realize what was going on, to feel the blood, her life, pumping out of her.

Elin swallows hard, feels bile rising up the back of her throat.

How could someone do something like this?

Despite the obvious trauma, with a trembling hand Elin brings her fingers to the other side of Laure’s neck, feels for a pulse.

There isn’t one: her skin is cool. She’s been dead a little while, but not long. There’s no stiffening, no signs of rigor.

Her head starts to spin as she absorbs the implication: whoever killed her can’t be far away, can they?

Breathe, she tells herself. Breathe.

Elin forces herself to turn, focus on the wooden chair beside the lift. Detail: the hollowed curve of the backrest, the looping pattern of the wood grain. Tracking it with her eyes, she gulps in air, breathing through the adrenaline, waiting for the swimming of her head to subside.

As her breathing returns to normal, she looks back. Every cell in her body is willing this not to be real, for this to be some twisted projection of her imagination. But it’s not: Laure’s body, the inhuman brutality, they’re real.

Elin knows that this time, she can’t let fear get the better of her. She needs to look properly, get the crucial first impressions.