Ripper (44 page)

The Mountie approached the boiler.

Though steam pressure still clanked the pipes like Marley's chains, the fire in the firebox was burning low, the peekaboo door closed to cage the dying orange glow. The floor around the boiler was littered with broken tiles, debris that fell from the steam room above when Melburn cracked the wall to expose the vertical hollow. The pieces had tumbled down the five-inch-square vent, bouncing off the boiler's top to collect on the ground. The main steampipe ran sideways for three feet, then right-angled up to a ceiling duct where octopus arms reached for the upper floors. The thin secondary pipe that steamed the Turkish bath ran vertically up from the boiler's top to the hollow niche. The flat top of the boiler was eight feet off the floor.

"Hand me the spit," Chandler said, "and watch the other side." Melburn switched the four-foot rod for Zinc's candle, then disappeared behind the firebox.

Raising the spit above his head, the cop swept it across the boiler's top. When the rod clinked against the vertical pipe, he withdrew it, cleared the obstruction, and swept the other half. Before the swing was finished, something fell to the floor.

"My side," Zinc said. "Bring the light around."

Both men crouched as the candle glow pooled on the floor.

What the wavering light revealed was a bloody tape measure.

Was the clue coincidence? Or Devlin playing games with them? Walking around the bath moments before his throat was slit he'd said, "No way in or out except the wooden door. The structure's self-contained in the middle of the room. Anyone outside can see the space between its top and the ceiling. You steamed yesterday. See a trapdoor in the floor?
If we had a tape measure, bet we'd find the walls no more than eight inches thick.
The bath's a sealed box with a door, a steampipe, and a drain. How the fuck you think I'd use it as a trap?"

The tongue of the tape measure was transparent and smeared with blood. One edge of the plastic strip was honed as sharp as a razor. Drawing the tape from its container uncoiled a spring inside, which retracted the tongue at lightning speed on release. Except for clear plastic replacing the usual metal blade, the device was a common carpenter's tool.

Zinc was thinking aloud.

"Like the other deathtraps, the razor tape was in place when we arrived. It was hidden, blade withdrawn, in the hollow niche behind the grouted tiles." He fingered a looped wire affixed to the tip of the tape. "Held in place by something like a transparent cotter pin, this wire protruded into the bath through a small break in the grouting at throat height. The pin was too small to notice in a mist-filled room.

"Devlin stoked the boiler and turned on the steam, sweating until we returned from the beach. Towel around his waist, he joined us in the Hall, as we responded to the snakepit commotion upstairs. He didn't return to the bath until we all came down, giving his killer time to set the locked room trap.

"While we were distracted, someone entered the bath. Using the wire to pull the tape through the break in the grouting, he or she stretched the blade across to the opposite wall. There the killer hooked the wire to the thermometer, before retreating from the bath and Billiards Room.

"Devlin thought the bath was safe because he didn't know his partner was after him. Unaware the tape was" stretched across the room, he entered the bath and missed the trap in the cloud of steam. The blade was drawn from wall to wall at neck height, so his throat engaged it as he walked in. His forward motion unhooked the wire from the thermometer, freeing the spring to withdraw the tape at eye-blink speed. The recoiling blade slit Devlin's throat from ear to ear, the motion similar to a razor slash, so it flicked a bloody cast-off pattern onto the wall. The force of the withdrawal pulled the tape through the grouting, plugging the hole with blood scraped from the blade. A small shelf was glued to the back of one of the tiles. The tape measure balanced precariously on it, with only the wire pinned or hooked
inside
the bath to keep it from falling. Complete withdrawal of the blade caused it to lose balance and tumble down the hollow, landing on the boiler in the cellar. Us cracking the tiles to reveal the niche destroyed both the chink in the grouting and the shelf behind. The evidence lies broken on the floor around the boiler."

"Risky," Melburn said. "It might have been one of us. Then Devlin would know his partner had it in for him."

Chandler shook his head. "Devlin and someone else set this madhouse up. They planned to use the razor tape during the
next
steam, not this one which was to put us off guard. That's why Devlin was so cocky taunting me. He thought the bath was benign this time around. Unknown to him, his partner had moved the timetable ahead. Only Devlin lacked an alibi for Quirk, so X knew suspicion would fall on him, and he'd be told to enter the steam room first. We wouldn't take a chance on it being another trap. Devlin entered, laughing at us, and got caught by the boomerang."

"So the Y he scrawled was an X in double cross?"

"Probably."

They made their way from the boiler to the cellar stairs, guttering candles guiding them across the dusty floor. "Strange," Melburn said. "The dust's brushed clean of tracks."

Left to right across their path the floor was void of prints, the bristles of a broom having whisked back and forth. Right led to the makeshift morgue; left led where? They followed the sweep marks to the dumbwaiter shaft.

The lift was in the cellar so they cranked themselves up, noting the dusty box was swept clean too. Halfway up, they stopped at the Scullery hall, where Chandler went to raise the door he and Quirk had used, before turning 180 degrees to try the
back
panel instead.

The dumbwaiter secretly opened into the Billiards Room.

"Who?" Melburn said.

5:50
P.M.

The five survivors huddled in Chandler's room: Melburn, Franklen, Hunt, Katt, and him. The women had locked themselves in while the men carried Yates to the cellar, admitting them to the sanctuary hours ago. The way Zinc saw it, his room was safe. If the crossbow was meant to kill him first, that plan only thwarted when he switched seats with Quirk, why hadn't the killers finished him off while he slept? The answer had to be his room wasn't rigged with traps, for if it was, with all this traffic, they'd be tripped by now. For safety, the group would stay locked in here until they were rescued.

Elvira lay on one of the beds, grieving and racked with guilt. Drifting in and out of sleep, she mumbled, "All my fault."

Katt sat on the floor holding Elvira's hand. Chewing her lip, she curled a strand of hair around her finger.

Ballerina grace replaced by grim determination, Alex crouched beside the door with a knife in each fist. From the glare in her eyes she'd have no compunction stabbing their tormentor in the back.

Melburn sat on the bed right of the jamb. Like a bayonet affixed to a lance, he'd tied a butcher knife to the end of the spit. Aimed at gut-level should the killer burst in, he drummed his fingers nervously on the steel.

Zinc sat beneath the window opposite the door, the prod of the cocked crossbow resting on his knees, the goat's-foot lever beside him on the floor. One hand gripped the trigger handle as the other held the bolt above the stock. Less than a second would arm the bow and hurl the quarrel at any intruder at 200 miles an hour.

Tick . . .

        Tock . . .

Tick . . .

        Tock . . .

Minutes passed.

The storm outside was a blizzard of blinding snow: white snow, gray snow, black snow, as the day wore on. It was now dark beyond the windows, the sole light within two flickering candle flames. Outside this room, outside this house, deathtraps lurked. Every floorboard or patch of ground might hide a killing device. Every wall could mask the killer staring through a peephole. Wind whining under the eaves was the castle's breath. Creaking joists and timbers were its arthritic limbs. Listen hard enough and you could hear the house laugh, crazy cackles proving it was sentient and alive.

Elvira stirred, rubbed her eyes, and sat up on the bed.

"I have to use the toilet," she said.

Guillotine

Vancouver
     5:56
P.M.

The Mad Dog hit the hammer as they left Ravenscourt, the siren a lone wolf in the wilderness. Craven sat beside him in the passenger's seat, with DeClercq, Chan, and George behind them in back. Granville Street was a whiteout that ceased to exist. Snow fell like an endless curtain crumpling to the ground, slushing the windshield so they couldn't see, while turning the tarmac into a skating rink. Some with summer tires, few with chains, ghostly cars slid sideways down the road, jumping the curb and bumping each other like a kiddies' carnival ride. The Mounties code-three'd to the airport at ten miles an hour.

By penlight, DeClercq read
The Guillotine.

Until I met Angus, I was a hollow man. Cored by Dianic witches. Witches like my mother . . .

Shunned socially, and physically frail, Samson Coy had retreated into a fantasy world. There he imagined himself the strongest man on Earth, a slave chosen to champion the cause of his king. Though single-handedly attacked by hundreds of men, he defeated them and saved his master's life. In gratitude, the king granted him liberty; but he refused, a willing slave who preferred to serve. Often there were banquets where each master led his slave into the dining hall by a chain around his neck. Unlike the others, Coy was joined to his king by a thin gold thread he could easily snap with a toss of his leonine head. His naked physique drew murmured aahs from the crowd.

It's the slave who makes his owner king,
noted DeClercq
,
for he's the strongman who maintains the kingdom for his master. Coy desires subjugation to another, and at the same time yearns for supremacy. The king's his alter ego. A role tailor-made for Angus Craig III.

Coy met Craig at Havelock Ellis School. He considered Angus closer to Nietzsche's Superman than anyone he knew. Handsome, virile, and good at sports, Craig's supremacy was evidenced by the fact he always called 'the shots in his group. Soon Craig was master of the slave in Coy's fantasy, and Coy longed to make the illusion real.

What drew them together was Coy's machines, the Rube Goldberg contraptions he designed when bored in class. Craig suggested they invent the perfect killing device, inviting Coy to Ravenscourt that Thanksgiving. There Coy wowed him with a trap he called "The Hogger," and Craig reciprocated by masturbating him in the pool house. "Tighten your sphincter muscles as you're about to come. That delays ejaculation so we can start again. But if you really want to blast, try a hit of this." Whereupon he cracked an ampule of "popper" under Coy's nose, bent him over the changing bench, and taught him who was master.

Back at school, Coy joined the Dungeons and Dragons game, to the utter amazement of those in Craig's clique.

Samson was the perfect foil for Craig's addiction to "kicks." He rationalized every act in Nietzschean terms. "You're above common laws, just as you're above the common run of mankind." As a team they stole the cricket trophy at school, which they buried in the garden by the front door. "Blow me," Craig said after, and Coy got down on his knees. Servicing his master, Samson came in his pants.

Christmas Day at Ravenscourt, Craig popped the panel to Lucifer's library. "Granddad's will stipulates this house and our island home must be kept as they are. If my father disobeys, he is disinherited and I become heir. That suits him because he performs exorcisms in here, but no one's been to Deadman's Island since 1957. A caretaker guards it with a pack of dogs."

That night while Craig's parents slept upstairs, the boys performed a ritual from one of the
grimoires,
conjuring vanguard demons from Hell. Skull—the master demon— possessed Craig. Crossbones—the slave demon—possessed Coy. When they returned to school in January, the Doppelgangers were fed into the Dungeons and Dragons game.

And so began
The Guillotine.

Like Watson to Holmes and Boswell to Johnson, Coy assumed the role of Craig's biographer, recording his rise to the status of "Master Criminal of All Time." The ensuing months saw Skull & Crossbones's crimes increase in seriousness, success at one level encouraging the next. Craig's thrill was in the clever planning of each offense, and voyeuristic kicks from the mayhem produced. While plotting, he brimmed with excited animation, drawing his chair close to conspire in breathless whispers. Committing the act, however, he was calm and cool, while Coy tingled in anticipation of "serving the Superman."
At last I'm loved,
he wrote in
The Guillotine.

One day Craig discovered the keys to his car fit vehicles of the same make. That night Skull & Crossbones launched their "runaway spree." Stealing a car, they'd leap from it while rolling downhill, abandoning the vehicle to crash dramatically. Then they'd drive by to see if anyone was hurt, Craig grinning at the damage while the cops scratched their heads. Mouth in Craig's lap, Coy enjoyed head of a different kind.

Soon they were torching cars parked on deserted streets, dousing them with gasoline and speeding away. Once they ignited a Buick in which lovers were having sex, forcing the naked couple to crawl out screaming from third-degree burns. Craig blew a geyser before Coy could unzip his fly.

Then came Britain.

While Samson studied engineering and philosophy, Craig purchased explosives on the black market. Setting bombs Coy built off around London, the pair would mill through the gawking crowd, countering comments about the IRA with Islamic terrorist theories of their own. Craig reveled in knowing the truth while no one else did.

The peak was Mitre Square.

Standing in Ripper's Corner under a shrouded moon, Skull conjured Jack the Ripper through occult possession. On his knees with Craig's cock down his throat, shivering with ecstasy from sucking it in the open, Crossbones heard the Ripper speak through Skull's lips. "Only the Ritual will make you Beast. Execute it properly and all the power of Hell will be in your control."