The house at phantom par.., p.16
The House at Phantom Park, page 16
‘All right. I must be mad as a box of frogs, but all right. Come over about three. I’ll get the cash when I take a break at lunchtime. I’m still at St Philomena’s.’
‘You’re a star, Lil, after the way I treated you. You would have been well within your rights to tell me to piss off.’
‘You don’t know how close I came, Tim, believe me.’
Lilian dropped her phone back in her pocket. When she looked out of the French windows again, there was no sign of Martin Slater and the two forensic investigators had disappeared inside their tent. She had the strangest feeling that she had witnessed more than three people talking to each other but rather a kind of mystery play, with some obscure religious significance. One minute they had all been there, the next minute they had all vanished. Dry leaves were scuttling across the grass.
She walked along the corridor to the reception room. As she approached the heavy oak door she felt her heart beating a little faster, and she realised that she was frightened of what might be waiting for her on the other side of it. The hospital was almost completely silent this morning, except for the intermittent rattling of a window frame somewhere upstairs – and then, as she was about to push the door open, she could hear again the snip, snip, snip of Martin Slater’s shears.
My God, she thought, had he run back from the garden?
The door to the reception room swung back with a long, complaining squeak, as if a rat were trapped underneath it. Lilian stepped into the middle of the room, along with all the other Lilians in the mirrors on either side.
There was nobody else there – only her and her reflections. None of the green screaming men. Yet when she stopped to listen and look around her, she thought she could hear not only the window rattling and the snipping of Martin Slater’s shears, but music. It was so faint that she couldn’t be sure if it was coming from some car parked in the road outside the hospital grounds, or if she could hear it at all. It came and went. But when she could hear it, she thought it sounded Middle Eastern – that wavering music they played on dombura lutes, with the distinctive bipping of tabla drums.
‘Where are you hiding?’ she said out loud. ‘Come along, I’ve seen you, I’ve heard you screaming. Where are you?’
There was no response. Only the snipping of Martin Slater’s shears and the window rattling. The music had stopped, or else it was so far away now that she could no longer hear it.
‘You might think you can scare me into giving up this project!’ she called out, even louder. ‘Well, I’m afraid you’ve got another think coming! Whoever you are, I’m not giving up and I’m not giving in, so you’d better get used to the idea!’
She circled around the reception room, stopping now and again to listen, and to drum her fingertips on the backs of abandoned chairs, like an impatient teacher.
She was thinking: maybe, if those green screaming men are real people, or the holographic images of real people, they’re hiding in some cubbyhole or some secret passageway, and they can hear me.
Maybe they’ll realise at last that I don’t believe in ghosts and that they can’t frighten me away.
But what if they are ghosts? a sly voice asked, in the back of her head. Why do you think the MoD abandoned this hospital, but gave no explanation for it? If they really are ghosts, what are you going to do then?
At that moment, she heard a clattering sound from the direction of the kitchens. She hurried out of the reception room, along the corridor to the hallway, and then through the archway with its marble cherubs. Inside the kitchen she found what she had found before, only this time it wasn’t cutlery that was scattered across the floor, it was cooking utensils such as a cheese grater and a whisk and spatulas of different sizes.
Again, the kitchen was empty, and so was the scullery, but Lilian went back and kicked at all the utensils.
‘Where are you?’ she screamed. ‘I know you’re hiding somewhere! Why don’t you have the nerve to come out and face me, instead of playing these stupid childish games?’
She kicked at the utensils again, and then she stood beside the kitchen table, with both hands pressing down on it as if she were trying to push it right down through the floor, her nostrils flaring with anger and frustration.
She was still breathing hard when she heard a postman’s knock at the front door.
‘I’ll find you!’ she said loudly and unsteadily. ‘You mark my words, I’ll find you! And when I find you, you’ll wish you’d never been conceived, let alone born!’
With that, she left the kitchen and went to answer the front door.
*
It was DI Routledge and DS Woods, accompanied by three uniformed officers and a police dog handler with a panting Belgian Malinois. The dog’s ears were erect, as if he had already sensed that there was something suspicious inside the hospital.
‘Good morning to you, Ms Chesterfield,’ said DI Routledge. ‘We’ve been given the go-ahead to undertake another sniffer dog search of the premises.’
‘So that poor Quest wasn’t poisoned?’
‘No, ma’am. He was given a thorough veterinary autopsy at Lambeth Road, but they couldn’t find any trace of toxins in his system – none whatsoever. They don’t yet know the cause of death for certain. Some kind of stroke, that’s what they reckon. I’d asked them as a matter of high priority to check if he’d been poisoned, and they assured me that he hadn’t been, no.’
‘All right, then. You’d better come in.’
DI Routledge hesitated. ‘I’m afraid that before we start searching I’ve got some rather bad news for you. Both your surveyors passed away yesterday – Alex Fowler and Charlene Thorndyke. I thought I ought to tell you in person.’
‘I know already. Moses Akinyemi came by yesterday and told me. It’s tragic. He also told me about Dr Wells and the nurse who was taking care of Charlene – how they suddenly started to suffer the same kind of pain.’
‘We’ve no explanation for that. But it makes it all the more critical that we search these premises without delay. I have no idea what we’re looking for, to tell you the truth. It’s a mystery. But I’m hoping that we’ll know what it is when we find it. If we find it.’
Lilian saw the bald-headed forensic investigator walking across the forecourt towards his van, and suddenly thought about the bones. She looked around for Martin Slater, but he was no longer here, trimming the wisteria, although the twigs and purple blossoms that he had cut off were still strewn on the ground.
‘Our gardener – Martin Slater – the one you wanted to talk to about the skeleton. He was here a few minutes ago. I expect he’s round the back somewhere. I’ll see if I can find him for you.’
‘That would be helpful. We can have a bit of a chat with him when we’ve completed our search indoors.’
Lilian stepped back and opened the front door wider so that the police team could come inside. They all entered the hallway, except for the dog handler. He was tugging at his dog’s lead and saying, ‘Come on, Orion, for Christ’s sake. What’s the matter with you?’
He tugged and he tugged but the dog refused to move, his ears still pricked up and his legs as rigid as pokers. His handler tried to drag him towards the porch, but his paws simply slid in the shingle. His eyes were bulging as if he were terrified.
DI Routledge went back to the front door and said, ‘Let’s be having you, Barnett! We don’t have all day!’
‘It’s Orion, guv! He won’t fucking budge!’
‘What’s wrong with him? Tell him if he doesn’t shift his arse he won’t be getting any Bonios!’
‘He’s never acted up like this before! Don’t know what’s wrong with him!’
The dog handler tugged at Orion’s lead again, and whistled, and shouted, ‘Move, you disobedient mutt!’
But after nearly five more minutes of shouting and cajoling, the dog handler gave up and flung Orion’s lead on to the ground.
‘It’s no use, guv. Something’s giving him the willies. I can’t think what. He’s easily the most macho dog we’ve got. He’s obedient, like, good as gold, but if I tell him to go after some offender, he’ll be off like a fucking mad beast.’
‘So what’s scaring him here?’
‘Don’t ask me. But he’s got a hell of a nose on him, I’ll tell you that. If there’s a geezer in a room who’s all keyed up to do something violent, Orion can actually smell it before he does it, and he’ll go all snarly and bristly. So what’s putting the shits up him here – well, God only knows.’
DI Routledge thought for a few moments, and then he turned back to DS Woods. ‘We’ll have to rethink this, Andy. There’s obviously something about this building that sniffer dogs really don’t like. It could be the same something that did for Quest. But there’s no point in us searching it without a dog. Ms Chesterfield here and her colleagues have been through it top to bottom and they’ve found nothing.’
‘What have you got in mind, guv? Your thermal imaging?’
DI Routledge nodded. ‘At least an infrared camera won’t drop dead, or refuse to come inside. And if there’s any secret passages or hidey-holes, it’ll find them. A thermal imaging survey isn’t going to be cheap, a building this size, but under the circumstances I think I can get approval for it.’
Lilian said, ‘None of this is going to come out, is it? You’re not going to tell the press what you’re doing here?’
‘Normally, yes, we do brief the media on what we’re up to,’ said DI Routledge.
‘But if what you’re doing here gets into the news, that could badly affect this whole development. It might have to be abandoned, or postponed at the very least. It could cost Downland a fortune.’
DI Routledge closed his eyes for a moment as if he were searching inside himself for the restraint to reply to her politely.
Eventually he said, ‘Ms Chesterfield, something may have occurred here that has directly or indirectly led to a number of people losing their lives. Right now, my most important consideration is to find out what it was and who was responsible. If your employers happen to lose some of their investment, then I’m afraid that I don’t give a monkey’s.’
‘I don’t expect you to,’ Lilian replied. ‘And I don’t want you to believe that I don’t care about those people who have died, because I do, deeply.’
Lilian was about to explain that if Philomena Park had to be abandoned, it was likely that she would lose her job and her whole life would fall apart, but then she thought how self-serving and hysterical that would sound, and so she stopped herself.
‘I’ll go and see if I can find Martin Slater,’ she told DI Routledge.
‘Okay, I’ll wait. But don’t be too long. I want to get back to Reigate and arrange for a thermal imaging survey.’
Lilian hurried around the side of the hospital building. There was no sign of Martin Slater by the tennis courts, and no sign of him in the gardens either. She went down the grassy slope to see if he had gone back to talk to the forensic investigators, but she was only halfway down before she could see that they were packing up and that Martin Slater wasn’t with them.
She turned around, climbed up the slope, and made her way back through the drawing room. She found DI Routledge standing by the open door of his car, waiting for her with obvious impatience. By now she was out of breath.
‘I’m sorry, he’s gone again. I asked him to leave me his phone number but he hasn’t.’
‘All right. We’re still waiting to find out whose remains they were. But if you can make sure that you ask him for his number the next time you see him, or find out some way that we can contact him. He probably doesn’t have anything useful to tell us, but we have to cover all the bases. Oh – and can you let me have a plan of this hospital so that I can forward it to the thermal imaging engineers?’
As if to reply on Lilian’s behalf, a crow on top of one of the hospital chimneys let out a harsh caw! caw! and two other crows joined in.
19
After the police had left, Lilian went back to the drawing room and looked out of the French windows to see if Martin Slater had reappeared, but the garden was deserted. The wind was rising and more dead leaves were tumbling across the grass.
She went through to the kitchen and bent down to pick up the spatulas and whisks and cheese grater that had been scattered across the floor. She didn’t really know why she was bothering to collect them all up, but she was still feeling shocked and off balance from hearing that Alex and Charlie had died, and she needed to focus on a task that was completely mundane.
She dropped the last spatula into the drawer and then she returned the drawing room and sat down by the fireplace. She was shivering, even though the room wasn’t cold.
As unsettled as she was, she still felt that she couldn’t simply walk away from St Philomena’s and never come back. Even before Frank Willard had summoned up those terrifying green men, she had been frightened enough by the screaming and the bloodstained bed and the strange faces that she and David had seen looking out of the windows. Alex and Charlie’s deaths had left her feeling even more chilled. But the destructive effect it might have on her career was only part of the reason she was convinced she had to stay.
She still suspected that it could be local activists who had created all these scary occurrences in an effort to put a stop to Downland’s development. If it was, then she couldn’t let them win and go unpunished – especially if they had been responsible for what had happened to Alex and Charlie, either directly or indirectly.
It would still take much more to convince her that the hospital could be haunted by ghosts or supernatural beings of some kind. If it really was haunted, though, how could she leave these spirits here, endlessly screaming in pain? It would be like seeing a dog lying badly injured in the road and simply driving away.
She heard a door slam somewhere upstairs, and so she stood up and went out into the hallway.
‘Hallo?’ she called out, and stood there listening. There was no answer, but the draught that was softly whistling under the doors made it sound as if the hospital itself were breathing.
She was still standing there when there was a loud rat-a-tat! knock at the front door, and she jumped. She hoped that it wasn’t Tim, because she hadn’t yet been to the bank to draw out the cash he wanted. When she went to open it, though, she found Moses standing in the porch, together with a short grey-haired man in rimless spectacles.
‘I found him,’ said Moses, with a smile. ‘This is my old friend Artyom Gorokhov. As it turns out, he was not living too far away. I reckoned there could only be one Artyom Gorokhov in England and so I looked him up on Google, and there he was. He and his wife run a gift shop in Coulsdon.’
Artyom smiled too, revealing a mouthful of broken teeth, as if he had been trying to chew lumps of concrete.
‘Ochen’ priyatno poznakomit’sya, madam,’ he said, tugging off a tight brown leather glove and holding out his hand. ‘I am most pleased to meet you.’
Moses said, ‘I described to Artyom what Frank and his friend told us about the “dah-dahs”. He believes he knows what they were referring to.’
‘Why don’t you come inside?’ said Lilian. ‘The police were here only twenty minutes ago.’
‘Did they bring another sniffer dog?’ Moses asked her, as they went through to the drawing room.
‘They did, yes, and they were all ready to search the building again, but would you believe that the dog refused to do it? Absolutely point-blank refused. His handler couldn’t even drag him into the porch.’
‘Really? I cannot say that I blame the poor beast. I was telling Artyom about the screaming that we heard yesterday when Frank called up those Army friends of his. Well, I say “friends”, but who knows what they were. “Scary” is not the word! I would not be so vulgar as to tell you what they nearly made all of us do.’
Lilian said, ‘I saw them, as well as hearing them, but I have no idea what it was that I actually saw. I still think they could have been some sort of optical illusion – some sort of trick. Listen – I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything to drink, but if you like we could go along to the pub for a coffee. I have to go to the bank anyway.’
Artyom circled around the drawing room, sniffing, as if he were a sniffer dog himself.
‘This place has such an eerie feeling,’ he said. ‘In Russian in an unfamiliar house we call this zhutkoye chuvstvo. My parents once had a dacha that felt similar to this – very creepy. They found out that years before, in this dacha, a young boy had stabbed his parents to death in their bed, and then thrown his baby sister into the pechka, the stove.’
Moses was looking out of the French windows, not only at the garden but at his own transparent reflection, as if a ghost of himself were standing outside looking in.
‘It was so strange that both Alex and Charlie knew who I was, even though they had never met me before, and Charlie called me by that nickname I was given in Camp Bastion – Mingus.’
He turned around. ‘The last time I saw Alex, I could have sworn for a few seconds that he even looked like Corporal Simons. Even his legs appeared to be missing. But I expect that was just a delusion. What I saw in Afghanistan, it affected me more than I realised until I returned home and tried to carry on living a normal life. You cannot live a normal life, after you have witnessed things like that, and it is no use pretending that you can.’
‘Yes. I agree with you completely about the psychological effects of combat,’ said Artyom. ‘But those figures in white robes that your veteran claims to have seen in Musa Qaleh – I seriously have to question if they were hallucinations, caused by stress. It could have been that they were something more.’
Lilian was interested in his accent. He was clearly Russian, yet he had the drawn-out vowels of the English upper class. He pronounced ‘yes’ as ‘ears’.
‘You mean these “dah-dahs”?’ she asked him.
‘That’s right. And the reason I question if they were nothing more than hallucinations is that Moses’ description of those figures exactly matches the ancient drawings I have seen of the Da Dard Rohonah. In Afghani mythology they are called “Spirits of Pain”. The white robes, the red eyes that shine like hot coals, and the black hair that sticks up like a brush.’
