The Damnation Game (51 page)

The vagaries of the city planning department had taken a further toll on the building’s chances of restoration. As Halifax had described, the land to either side of the hotel had been cleared for some projected redevelopment. None had been undertaken, however. The hotel stood in splendid isolation, mazed about with feed roads to and from the Ml, no more than three hundred yards from one of the busiest stretches of concrete and tarmac in the south of England. Thousands of drivers glanced its way every day, but its shabby grandeur was by now so familiar they probably scarcely registered its existence. Clever, Marty thought, to hide in such plain sight.

He parked the car as close to the hotel as he could, then slipped in through a hole in the corrugated iron fencing around the plot, and picked his way across the wasteland. The instructions on the fence—“No Trespassing” and “No Dumping”—had been conspicuously ignored. Black plastic bags, bulging with rubbish, were piled in heaps among the rubble and the old bonfires. Many of the bags had been torn open by children or dogs. Domestic and manufacturing trash spilled out: hundreds of scraps of cloth—sweatshop offcuts—were scattered underfoot; rotting food, the ubiquitous tin can, cushions, lampshades and car engines—all abandoned on a bed of rubble dust and gray grass.

Some of the dogs—wild, Marty guessed—looked up from their scavenging as he advanced, their pale flanks dirty, their eyes yellow in the twilight. He thought of Bella and her gleaming family: these curs hardly seemed of the same species. When he looked their way they hung their heads and watched him indirectly, like inept spies.

He went up to the main entrance of the hotel: the word ORPHEUS was still clearly carved above the door; there were mock-Doric columns to either side of the steps, and fancy tile-work on the threshold. But the door itself had boards nailed across it, and notices warned of swift prosecution if anyone trespassed. There seemed little chance of that. The second-, third- and fourth-story windows were boarded up with the same thoroughness as the door; those on the first floor had been bricked up entirely. There was a door at the back of the building that was not boarded up, but it was bolted from the inside. This was probably where Halifax had entered the building: but Whitehead must have given him access. Without breaking and entering, there was no way in.

It was only on his second orbit of the hotel that he gave some serious consideration to the fire escape. It zigzagged up the east side of the building, an impressive piece of wrought-iron work that was now rusting badly. Further mutilation had been done to it by some enterprising salvage firm, that, seeing profit in the scrap metal, had started to cut the escape away from the wall, only to give up on the job when it had reached the second floor. This left the bottom flight missing, the escape’s truncated tail hanging ten or eleven feet from the ground. Marty studied the problem. The fire-exit doors on most of the stories had been nailed up; but one, on the fourth story, showed signs of tampering. Was this how the old man had gained entrance? He would have needed help, presumably: Luther, perhaps.

Marty scanned the wall beneath the fire escape. It was graffiti-strewn, but smooth. There was no chance of a handhold or foothold to get him up the first few feet and onto the steps themselves. He turned to the wasteland, looking for inspiration, and a few minutes’ search in the deepening dusk revealed a pile of discarded furniture, among it a table, three-legged, but serviceable. He hauled it back to the fire escape and then wedged a collection of refuse bags beneath it in lieu of its missing limb. It made an unsteady perch when he climbed up onto it, and even then his fingers missed the bottom of the escape. He was obliged to jump for a handhold, and on the fourth attempt he achieved one, leaving him swinging at arm’s length from the bottom step. A drizzle of rust scales hit his face and hair. The escape creaked. He mustered his will and hauled himself up a vital few inches, then struck out with his left hand for a hold on a higher stair. His shoulder joints complained, but he pulled on upward, hand over hand, until he could lift his leg high enough to hoist his whole body onto the steps.

The first stage achieved, he stood on the escape and caught his breath, then started up. The structure was by no means stable; the salvage crew had obviously been at work loosening it from the wall. Every step he took, a grating squeal seemed to presage its capitulation.

“Hold on,” he whispered to it, mounting the steps with as light a tread as he could. His efforts were rewarded on the fourth story. As he guessed, the door had been opened quite recently, and with no small sense of relief he stepped from the dubious safety of the fire escape and into the hotel itself.

It still stank of the conflagration that had defeated it: the bitter smell of burned wood and charred carpeting. Below him he could see—by the meager light through the open fire door—the gutted floors. The walls were scorched, the paint on the banisters diseased with blisters. But just a few steps up from here the fire’s progress had been arrested.

Marty started up the stairs to the fifth story. A long corridor presented itself to him, with rooms to right and left. He wandered down the passageway taking a perfunctory look into each of the suites as he passed. The numbered doors let onto empty spaces: all the furniture and fittings that were salvageable had been removed years ago.

Perhaps because of its isolated position, and the difficulty of entering, the building had not been squatted or vandalized. The rooms were almost absurdly clean, their deep-pile beige carpets—too bothersome to remove, apparently—springy as cliff turf beneath his feet. He checked every suite on the fifth floor before retracing his path to the stairs and going up another flight. The scene was the same here, although the suites-which had perhaps once commanded a salable view—were larger and fewer on this floor, the carpets, if anything, lusher. It was bizarre, ascending from the charred depths of the hotel to this pristine, breathless place. People had perhaps died in the blindfold corridors below, asphyxiated or baked to death in their dressing gowns. But up here no trace of the tragedy had intruded.

There was one floor left to investigate. As he climbed the final flight of stairs the illumination suddenly strengthened until it was almost as bright as day. The source was highway light, finding its way through the skylights and ineptly sealed windows. He explored the labyrinthine system of rooms as quickly as possible, pausing only to glance out of the window. Far below, he could see the car parked beyond the fence; the dogs engaged in a mass rape. In the second suite he suddenly caught sight of somebody watching him across the vast reception room only to realize that the haggard face was his own, reflected in a wall-sized mirror.

The door of the third suite, on this final floor, was locked, the first locked suite Marty had encountered. Proof positive, if any were needed, that it had an occupant.

Jubilant, Marty rapped on the door. “Hello? Mr. Whitehead?” There was no answering movement from within. He rapped again, harder, casing the door as he did so to see if a break-in was plausible, but it looked too solid to be easily shouldered down. If necessary, he’d have to go back to the car and get some tools.

“It’s Strauss, Mr. Whitehead. It’s Marty Strauss. I know you’re in there. Answer me.” He listened. When there was no reply, he beat on the door a third time, this time with fist instead of knuckles. And suddenly the reply came, shockingly close. The old man was standing just the other side of the door; had been all along probably.

“Go to Hell,” the voice said. It was a little slurred, but unmistakably that of Whitehead.

“I have to speak to you,” Marty replied. “Let me in.”

“How the fuck did you find me?” Whitehead demanded. “You bastard.”

“I made some inquiries, that’s all. If I can find you, anybody can.”

“Not if you keep your wretched mouth shut. You want money, is that it? Come here for money, have you?”

“No.”

“You can have it. I’ll get it to you, however much you want.”

“I don’t want money.”

“Then you’re a damn fool,” Whitehead said, and he laughed to himself; a witless, ragged titter. The man was drunk.

“Mamoulian’s on to you,” Marty said. “He knows you’re alive.”

The laughing stopped.

“How?”

“Carys.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“Yes. She’s safe.”

“Well … I underestimated you.” He paused; there was a soft sound, as if he was leaning against the door. After a while he spoke again. He sounded exhausted.

“What did you come for, if not for money? She’s got some expensive habits, you know.”

“No thanks to you.”

“I’m sure you’ll find it as convenient as I did, given time. She’ll bend over backward for a fix.”

“You’re filth, you know that?”

“But you came to warn me anyway.” The old man leaped on the paradox with lightning speed, quick as ever to open a hole in a man’s flank. “Poor Marty …” the slurred voice trailed away, smothered by mock pity. Then, razor-sharp: “How did you find me?”

“The strawberries.”

What sounded like muffled choking came from within the suite, but it was Whitehead laughing again, this time at himself. It took several moments for him to regain his composure. “Strawberries …” he murmured. “My! You must be persuasive. Did you break his arms?”

“No. He volunteered the information. He didn’t want to see you curl up and die.”

“I’m not going to die!” the old man -snapped. “Mamoulian’s the one who’ll die. You’ll see. He’s running out of time. All I have to do is wait. Here’s as good a place as any. I’m very comfortable. Except for Carys. I miss her. Why don’t you send her to me, Marty? Now that would be most welcome.”

“You’ll never see her again.”

Whitehead sighed. “Oh, yes,” he said, “she’ll be back when she’s tired of you. When she needs someone who really appreciates her stony heart. You’ll see. Well … thank you for calling. Goodnight, Marty.”

“Wait.”

“I said goodnight.”

“… I’ve got questions …” Marty began.

“Questions, questions …” the voice was already receding. Marty pressed closer to the door to offer his final sliver of bait. “We found out who the European is; what he is!” But there was no reply. He’d lost Whitehead’s attention. It was fruitless anyway, he knew. There was no wisdom to be got here; just a drunken old man replaying his old power games. Somewhere deep inside the penthouse suite a door closed. All contact between the two men was summarily severed.

Marty descended the two flights of stairs back to the open fire door, and left the building by the route he’d entered. After the smell of dead fire inside, even the highway-tainted air smelled light and new.

He stood for several minutes on the escape and watched the traffic passing along the highway, his attention pleasantly diverted by the spectacle of lane-hopping commuters. Below, two dogs fought among the refuse, bored with rape. None of them cared, drivers or dogs, about the fall of potentates: why should he? Whitehead, like the hotel, was a lost cause. He’d done his best to salvage the old man and failed. Now he and Carys would slip away into a new life, and let Whitehead make whatever arrangements for cessation he chose. Let him slit his wrists in a stupor of remorse, or choke on vomit in his sleep: Marty was past caring.

He climbed down the escape and scrambled onto the table, then crossed the wasteland to the car, glancing back only once to see if Whitehead was watching. Needless to say, the upper windows were blank.

Chapter 68

W
hen they got to Caliban Street the girl was still so high on her delayed fix it was difficult to communicate through her chemically elated senses. The European left the evangelists to do the cleaning up and burning he’d instructed Breer to do, and escorted Carys to the room on the top floor. There he set about persuading her to find her father, and quickly. At first the drug in her just smiled at him. His frustration began to curdle into anger. When she started to laugh at his threats—that slow, rootless laughter that was so like the pilgrim’s laugh, as if she knew some joke about him that she wasn’t telling—his control snapped and he unleashed a nightmare of such unrestrained viciousness upon her its crudity disgusted him almost as much as it terrorized her. She watched in disbelief as the same tide of muck that he’d conjured in the bathroom dribbled and then gushed from her own body. “Take it away,” she told him, but he only increased the pitch of the illusion, until her lap squirmed with monstrosities. Abruptly, her drug bubble burst. A gleam of insanity crept into her eyes as she cowered in the corner of the room, while the things came from her every orifice, struggling to work their way out, then clinging to her with whatever limbs his invention had supplied. She was within a hairbreadth of madness, but he’d gone too far to withdraw the assault now, repelled though he was by its depravity.

“Find the pilgrim,” he told her, “and all this vanishes.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she pleaded, “whatever you want.”

He stood and watched while she obeyed his demands, flinging herself into that same fugue state she’d achieved when pursuing Toy. It took her longer to find the pilgrim, however, so long that the European began to suspect she’d canceled all link with her body, and left it to his devices rather than reenter it. But she finally returned. She had found him at a hotel no less than half an hour’s drive from Caliban Street. Mamoulian was not surprised. It was not in the nature of foxes to travel far from their natural habitat; Whitehead had simply gone to ground.

Wrung out by the journey and the fear that had propelled her, Carys was half-carried down the stairs by Chad and Tom and out to the waiting car. The European made one farewell circuit of the house, to see that any sign of his presence there had been removed. The girl in the cellar, and Breer’s detritus, could not be cleared at such short notice, but that was a nicety. Let those who came after construe what they liked from the atrocity photographs on the wall and the bottles of perfume so lovingly arranged. All that mattered was that evidence of his, the European’s, existence here—or indeed anywhere—be thoroughly effaced. Soon he would be rumor again; gossip among the haunted people.