The Sanatorium(98)

Her theory is right—how they’ve been killed, the signature . . . the killer is trying to communicate something.

This.

Margot’s reenacting what happened in these images. Every little detail, from the method of killing to the masks, the bracelets . . .

Turning to Isaac, she’s about to say something when she notices he’s still looking intently at the first photograph.

“What is it?”

“Look at this. Something’s written on the back.” He passes it to her.

He’s right: something’s written in pencil, in an old-fashioned, looping script you don’t see anymore. Sanatorium du Plumachit, 1927.

“This was taken here, in the hotel. All of that . . .” Her mouth is dry. “It was done here.”

An idea strikes—she goes through the photographs again until she finds the one of the grave. Bringing it closer, she examines the background. Though there’s no snow on the ground as there is now, she recognizes the mass of fir trees rising steadily upward, the glimpse of high mountain above.

“This was taken near the sanatorium, wasn’t it? These women, they were buried near here.”

“Looks like it. Unmarked graves.”

Elin finds the first photograph, turns it over, her gaze moving lower this time.

Below the name of the sanatorium is a list of five sets of numbers, each set containing five numbers in a row. Her mind makes the leap:

Five women. Five sets of numbers.

The numbers are in the same format as the numbers on the bracelets. She runs her finger over the number at the top: 87534. A slow burn of recognition: the same number she’d found in the medical file on Laure’s memory stick, on one of the bracelets by Adele’s body . . . it’s a match.

One of these women is Margot’s relative.

Elin catches Isaac’s eye. “It matches with the medical files. The numbers on the back of the photograph, they’re patient numbers.”

“So the numbers on the bracelets each refer to a patient?”

“Yes. I’m pretty certain, looking at this, that one of these women was a relative of Margot’s.”

“But these files refer to this German clinic, a psychiatric facility. How did they end up here?”

“I don’t know. We need someone to translate them, but my guess is they weren’t transferred here for mental health reasons.” The more she looks, the more sinister she finds the images.

Several details bother her: the way the masked men behind the women are lined up, in a row. There’s a power imbalance implicit in their posture, position—the women lying vulnerable, masked surgeons standing over them, in control.

A threat.

Then the grave—the fact there was no headstone, no sign of any ceremony. Was it done secretly?

Elin pushes back her hair. “This is what all this has been about, Isaac. Revenge. Somehow Margot’s got hold of the contents of these files, the photographs, and now she’s getting payback.”

His expression changes; features tensing. “If you’re right”—he points at the masked figures—“and she is working from these photographs, there are five people in this one, Elin.” He holds it up. “If you include Daniel, she’s killed three so far, so that means—”

“There are two people left,” Elin finishes.

There’s a pause. “But the one thing I don’t understand,” he starts, “is why she targeted them. Adele and Laure, Daniel . . . What happened in these pictures, it was years ago. It’s horrific, traumatic, but there must be something that’s happened more recently for her to target them now.”

“I agree, but it’s impossible to say, not until we know more.”

“So what next?” Isaac trains his eyes on the envelope in her hand. “We’ve got this information, but it doesn’t tell us where Margot is, what she’s planning.”

“You’re right,” she concedes, and it’s then she notices something, on the very edge of the envelope. A small dark flake.

Margot’s nail varnish.

A sudden, sharp tug at her subconscious. An image: flakes of nail varnish on the desk. Margot reaching to sweep them away, and with it a bag tumbling, its contents spilling across the floor.

The thought that up until now had been shapeless, elusive, resolves into something. Something her conscious mind hadn’t picked up on at the time, but her subconscious clearly had.

Fear spikes the base of her stomach. “We need to find the Carons. I think I know where Margot might be, Isaac. I think she’s been in the hotel all along.”





80





The archive room?” Lucas says dismissively, sliding his coffee cup along his desk. “There’s nothing there.”

Elin can feel the tension emanating from him: tight shoulders, jutting jaw.

He’s not bothered by my waking him, it’s that he doesn’t like that I’ve gone against what he advised. That I’m still investigating.

“Are you sure? There’re no other doors? No other way out of the room?”

“No.” Lucas’s voice is curt. Flipping down the lid of his laptop, he meets her gaze, a challenge in his eyes. “What makes you so sure she’s been in there?”

“A hunch.” Elin kicks herself.