The Faceless (27 page)

They’d checked the chapel and the Home Farm before coming here. The chapel had seemed alone and desolate in its field of tall, waving grass; Martyn hadn’t seen the stubby brown headstones filling the field until they reached its door. He’d made out the inscriptions on two or three: name, dates of birth and death. Nothing else; no rank or decorations.

The chapel had been empty, pews and altar long since stripped out, a bent sapling writhing from a crack in the concrete floor, seeking the light from the glassless windows.

There was little left to search at the Home Farm: farmhouse, dairy, bakery and mill were all burned out, the roofs fallen in. The greenhouse was a naked, rotted framework, the silo a hollow, rusted shell. Only D and E Blocks remained; those, and Warbeck.

The doors to D Block opened; the air blowing out was cold and rank.

I’d have been in one of these if I’d been around back then. Signed up, taken the King’s Shilling. Get shot to shit or blown to bits, gassed, drowned in a shell-hole, that or ended up somewhere like this. If I were lucky I’d get out one day, with a missing arm or a permanent twitch or a fucked-up face. If not I’d be here, or staring at the wall in E Block.

But this was the worst, for him. How much could you strip away from someone, before they fell apart? Not much, in his case – a fucking
job
. He’d been going even then, after months of fruitless searching. And then Eva–

No. He wouldn’t think on that.

But if you took away their fucking
face
? No job, though you’d be fed at least; you’d not starve. But what wife would stick with you in that state? He would have lost everything he’d lost already, if that’d been him, but not even the faint glimmer of hope of getting it back – and without even a
face
, the one thing above all else that told you who you were.

They filed past a dust-covered desk, then down the corridors. The wooden doors hanging open; each little room beyond a well to collect the wept-out misery. If you still had eyes to weep with.

“You OK?” Anna whispered.

“I’m f–”

They were near the end of the corridor when the crash sounded. Anna cried out, clutched at his arm; Martyn pushed her behind him as he turned. Bloody near soiled himself as well, not that he’d ever admit to it. Stakowski’s pistol was already in his hands, so fast Martyn couldn’t believe it had ever been in the holster; Renwick and the other detectives drew theirs. Skelton’s men were already aiming their rifles and sub-machine guns down the empty corridor.

Empty, yes, but clouds of dust swirled in it. And something else was different; the corridor was darker. It took Martyn a moment to realise what; the doors to the rooms had all slammed closed and shut out the light from the windows. All together.

“Jesus,” said Wayland. Laughter rippled through the group; a whistle in the dark. Wayland grinned, flushing.

“We’re not alone,” said Allen. God, he was an annoying bugger. Reckoned he was on TV all the time, even when there weren’t a camera in sight–

A slow, soft creaking, and a door swung slowly open, then another. And then they were all opening, sending fresh swirls of dust across the littered floor.

The corridor brightened. Martyn wished it hadn’t; the light coming in through the windows seemed too bright, like a floodlight outside the block, and it cast shadows across the corridor floor, stretching out of each doorway. They looked like people. Sort of. But very long and thin, too long and thin to be alive.

Pale fingers groped around the edges of the doors. There was no sound, no sound at all. Martyn couldn’t even hear his own breathing now. But puffs and coils of dust rose up off the floor to roll into the corridor as the rooms’ occupants came out into view. Not much better than silhouettes at first, but then his eyes began to adjust and he could see the ragged, dirty remnants of khaki uniforms and white patient’s smocks they wore. Those, and the dully glinting masks that covered all their faces. And the worn and withered flesh they unmercifully failed to hide.

Stakowski stepped past him, shouting, but there was nothing, no sound, as he swept the pistol back and forth over the gaunt, silent ranks.

The masks wholly covered their faces. Or where their faces should have been. Because this had been the home of the worst ones – not men with broken faces but men with no faces at all, men who’d never again eat a meal not poured down their throats by a tube. Dust swirled from another door as an old-fashioned wheelchair rolled out into the corridor. Something was huddled in it. No legs hung down over the edge of the seat. In place of a left arm a sort of flattened paddle beat weakly at the air. A right hand lacking all but its thumb and forefinger clutched the doorframe and levered the chairbound thing out into the light.

Its head jerked round; it stared straight at him. The face the mask depicted was stolid, unexceptional. He might have been a decent-looking lad; no movie star, but he’d have had his share of girls back when Nan was a toddler. But not now, and never again. The pincer-like right hand rose towards the mask.

Simultaneously, in the same dead silence, the other masked figures raised their slow hands. The one closest to Martyn, in full uniform, had a mask that reached down from his scarred forehead to his chin. His face was thin and gentle-looking, or would have been had it been real.

The thing in the wheelchair began lifting its mask away; Martyn glimpsed a wet, lipless hole that might once have been a part of a mouth, gaping and wetly sucking at the dank, dusty air.

The uniformed man lifted his mask too. Martyn caught the dimmest impression of a black gaping hole beneath it, a nothingness that should’ve been a face, and he drew breath to cry out, even if it would never be heard.

The corridor dimmed again suddenly; the doors didn’t close, but it was as if the floodlights beyond the window had gone out, plunging the corridor into darkness. Stakowski crouching, gun aimed. Torches flashed into the dark and seemed to fade out within inches, illuminating nothing, and then the sound returned.

“–your hands in the air, do not move, or I will have no alternative but to open fire–” Stakowski stopped as the dull natural light they’d had before returned, and the corridor was lit again. Dimly still, but not the near-dark of seconds earlier. The doors to the rooms stood open; the dust settled and stayed undisturbed. But beside one door near the corridor’s end, empty, cobwebs trailing from its arms and handles, sat an old, moth-eaten wheelchair.

“Jesus,” Crosbie said. The big Asian copper – Ashraf – held his pistol out ahead of him, muttering what sounded like a prayer.

“Did anyone else see that?” Anna’s voice shook. Martyn put an arm round her. “Did you?” she asked.

“Aye, sis. Saw it.”

“Did you?” She looked at Renwick.

“Let’s all stay calm, Ms Mason. Everybody.”

“Oh god.” Anna was shaking. Martyn held her up. Vera put a hand out to her, then let it drop. “Oh god.”

“OK,” Skelton said. “Bishop, Desai, Larson, you stay here, cover us. Rest of you, with me. We’re checking the cells.”

A
LL THE ROOMS
were empty, of course. No sign of hidden trap-doors or ceiling hatches could be found. Stakowski holstered his pistol, wiped a thin sheen of sweat from his forehead. “Nothing, ma’am.”

“I told you,” said Allen. “We’re not dealing with a flesh and blood enemy.”

Skelton glanced at him, then back to Renwick. “What next, ma’am?”

“We carry on,” Renwick said. “We search this building, the same as the rest. Keep your eyes open, and remember why we’re here. You’re all serving police officers. I expect you to handle a damn sight more than a few party tricks.”

“Party tricks?”

Renwick didn’t look at Allen. “Party tricks, Mr Cowell.”

“Chief Inspector, if I’ve ever encountered a genuine supernatural phenomenon–”

“Party tricks,” Renwick stared him down. “Someone is here, and someone’s playing silly buggers. Whatever that was, we have a job to do. So let’s do it.”

Cowell opened his mouth to speak; Vera caught his arm, murmured in his ear. She got it, even if he didn’t. Renwick didn’t believe the ‘party tricks’ crap any more than Martyn, but she was doing what she had to, to stop a panic in the ranks. That’s what Cowell didn’t get. There were people who needed their help.

She was right, they had a job to do. Martyn understood that; so did he. He was here to find Eva, and if the coppers all ran away they’d drag him off with them, and he wouldn’t get to do it.

Thin fingers squeezed his arm. He turned. Anna. He managed a smile. She managed one back. She was white; the lines at her mouth and corners of her eyes showed stark against her skin.

“Come on,” he said.

They searched the rest of D Block, and all they found was what they’d come to expect: the Black Sun painted on the day room floor, and in its centre–

“Aw Christ,” Wayland said.

“Bastards,” said Ashraf.

Stakowski turned to Renwick. “Ma’am–”

She raised a hand for quiet, not looking at him, not looking at anyone. Stakowski fell silent.

The pink romper suit lay at the centre of the Black Sun. Empty, of course. Renwick stood over it, looking down, not speaking, not moving, for nearly a minute. Then she crouched to inspect it more closely, reached a gloved hand out to touch it. Martyn found himself stepping backwards. This felt too close, too personal.

“She’s looking for blood,” Anna whispered.

Martyn looked back at Renwick. If she’d heard Anna she didn’t react. At last, she stood up and let out a long breath.

“Roseanne Trevor?” asked Stakowski.

“No name tag. But she had a pink romper on when she went missing.”

“Fuckers,” Crosbie said. Even Skelton had his jaw clenched, so tight Martyn could see the muscles jumping in his cheek.

“Take it easy, folks,” said McAdams. “Alastair. Deep breaths, mate. Mind on the job.” But it still took him two attempts to get his pistol back in its holster.

Renwick stared down at the suit, not speaking; Stakowski coughed. He stepped in close, dropped his voice to a whisper. “Ma’am? What now?”

“What now?” Renwick looked up, took a deep breath. “Bag and tag the evidence, Sergeant. Then we finish up and move on. They’re either in E Block or the Warbeck building. So we search those: every room, every corner, every inch.” Her voice was quiet, clipped and level. “And we find these bastards.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

E B
LOCK STOOD
black against the bleached, washed-out sky. Its doors were battered and dented; old damage, from the night St. John Dace had died. Her great-grandfather’s face, the eyes staring into that terrible distance. Fighting to smile on Nan’s wedding day.
He let them out, then locked the doors
.

She’d tried a few drugs at university. Nothing serious, dabbling. A joke she’d heard:
there’s a time and place for everything – it’s called college
. She’d smoked weed – who hadn’t? – sampled psilocybin, speed and, once, LSD. Lying on a couch in a friend’s rented house, she’d seen a tree outside the window, backlit by pre-dawn light. Just for a second, the branches had shivered and
changed
, morphed into four cartoon warthogs peering in through the window. Only for a second, and then it was a tree again, but she’d lain there for almost an hour gazing at it, rapt, waiting for it to shift again. Since D Block, this felt more and more like a less benign version of that experience. At any moment the naked rowan trees threatened to shift into the mangled shapes from the D Block corridor.

We know it. We all know it. Whatever’s waiting isn’t human, or even alive. Bullets will be worse than useless. We can’t harm them, but they can harm us. And yet we go. Like sheep to the slaughter, out of duty, obligation or simple herd instinct
.

Like the Kempforth Pals, again, or Nan’s father at Passchendaele. Anna’s hand slipped into her jacket pocket, found Nan’s cross. It gave her comfort, just for now, it couldn’t hurt. And there was Mary. If any threat to Mary came from here and it took Anna’s life to end it, so be it. The calm with which she accepted that surprised her. And she walked on.

Just for a second, the bedraggled lawns around the building were populated with thin, dark figures, some shuffling, some gazing, motionless, into some unfathomable distance. For an instant, heads turned towards her. But she blinked, and the grounds were empty.

Most of the ground floor was the canteen, vast and empty. Anna couldn’t see any sign of life. A faint clatter from upstairs. Stakowski put a hand on his gun.

“Frank,” Renwick whispered. “Let’s check upstairs.”

Skelton and Renwick led the way; the rest of the group followed, the civilians within the protective ring of Skelton’s men.

Upstairs: two floors of dusty, peeling corridors, empty and lightless; doors that gaped open into bare, narrow rooms. Wayland and Crosbie went into one, moving out along opposing walls. Wayland covered the wall opposite him, plus the ceiling; Crosbie covered the other wall and the floor.

The same exercise was played out in the other rooms, one by one. They were the same, at first glance, as in the other blocks. But then you started noticing things. The restraints hanging from the rusted bedframes. Dark stains on this wall; scratches scored by jagged fingernails on that one. On another wall, words cut out of newsprint: IN HERE THE BLACK SUN SHINES. Below it, a collage of yellowed drawings: jagged black-and-white pencil sketches of screaming faces, jumbled splashes of mud-brown, blood-red, flame-orange, poison-gas-green, battlefield-mist-yellow in wax crayon. Again the feeling something was about to shift: that the chaos of the drawings would shape itself into whatever the artist had been trying to depict. Or the grey air inside that wretched room would form itself into a human shape.

No. She wouldn’t see.

But it was too late. As she passed another room, the shadows on the wall above the bed thickened and clotted, solidified and sagged forwards, pouring off the wall onto the bed and floor. The blackness drained out of them to leave the white of a stained, grubby hospital smock and skin denied the light for decades. The man sat on the bed, face prematurely aged, black hair streaked with grey, vast eyes fixed on some distant vanishing point a million miles beyond the wall. Only for a moment, the time it took Anna to take a single step, before he darkened again into shadow and his substance drifted away, dispersing in the light.