Ash (68 page)

She pushed away the bedclothes and walked across to the large plate-glass window overlooking the city. She needed to see the signs of normality, the lighted windows, the night-time traffic, shadows of people walking the pavements – the testimony of life itself.

Kate was familiar with unaccountable manifestations and sensory illusions, but this sensing in her own mind was different, somehow more solid, a feeling she could almost touch. And it was because of David’s psychic gift, although he always scoffed and denied it. Yet lately – for the past few years, in fact – his repudiation of it had faltered, become less certain, as if he were finally beginning to admit to this sixth faculty, although he referred to it as a strong ‘intuition’ rather than a psychic capability.

She thought – she sensed – that his own mind was sending out signals of distress, even if he would not acknowledge it himself. There was something awful inside Comraich Castle and, frustratingly, there was nothing she could do to help him. Kate cursed herself for deciding to have an early night after the last two lengthy dinner dates she’d had; perhaps in deep unconsciousness, the subconscious had been reached, setting her dreaming of such diverse amalgams as fire and water.

Perhaps there was just one small thing she could do. Even if it would probably have little influence. She hoped her friend Gloria Standwell would not be annoyed for being disturbed at home at this time of night.

Kate reached for the phone on the bedside cabinet.

Haelstrom paused in the doorway for five seconds only. First he stared at David Ash, then the body of Lord Edgar Shawcroft-Draker; he ignored Byrone’s corpse altogether.

As Haelstrom bellowed, Ash had no time to recover before the dark figure was pounding towards him, huge arms stretched forward to grab the startled investigator. Ash was caught in a crushing grip and both men went flying across the room so fast and with such force that they crashed through the long French windows out onto the battlements, where the wind sweeping up from the sea tugged at their clothes and hair.

They fell, such was their impetus, and Ash took the brief moment of reprieve to roll away from the other man, whose beefy hand clasped wildly, trying to catch hold of the investigator again. But Ash was quickly on his feet while the heavy-set Haelstrom struggled to his knees, still bellowing, still scrabbling at windblown air.

The light from the full moon was bright and lit up the lengthy crenellated battlements, bathing the walkway in its clear silver glow. The wind whipped at Ash’s hair and in the distance he could see the silvery-white foam of rushing waves. It gave him a sense of how high up the flagstone walkway was and a chilled shiver skipped through him as he remembered the McKinnon family’s fate. For some reason Haelstrom appeared to be harbouring similarly murderous intentions.

He waited no longer. Haelstrom’s cumbersome body was still bent over and winded and his massive head offered a target too good to ignore. The investigator aimed a booted foot directly at it, kicking with all his might.

Haelstrom roared in pain and went staggering into the wall, fortunate not to fall through one of the open crenels. He remained hunched. Kicking was not Ash’s preferred way of fighting (in fact, he would not choose to fight at all), but he’d had no choice. Haelstrom was capable of crushing him like a bug and both opponents knew it.

If he could daze the big man sufficiently, Ash reasoned, he might just get the chance to escape. He pitched himself at Haelstrom once more and caught him on his fleshy thigh with his left boot. Haelstrom howled, but the pain seemed to spur him on rather than discourage him. He stood erect, despite the injury to his leg, and swiped his arm backwards at the investigator. The back of his big, chunky fist caught Ash on the temple, knocking him back across the walkway. He remained on his feet though, and met Haelstrom’s limping run towards him.

The two men collided midway across the flagstones, and because Haelstrom was both taller and much heavier, Ash took the worst of it. He grunted as Haelstrom sent him spinning backwards to come up flat against the wall opposite the battlements. Left breathless, he did his best to dodge Haelstrom’s next drive at him, but the big man’s fist smashed down hard into the angle between neck and collarbone. It felt like being hit with a sledgehammer and Ash tried to ignore the shocking pain by dodging round the older man and bunching his fist, punching hard into the other man’s kidneys. It was a good blow, a telling blow, and Haelstrom arched backwards, giving Ash another opportunity to strike.

He drove his fist into Haelstrom’s massive head, striking a cheekbone and almost breaking his own knuckles. He winced and stepped back to regroup, sucking at his bruised knuckles and tasting blood – his own blood – while Haelstrom staggered, still on his feet.

The big man, his features curled into a sneer, held out his massive arms, curved like a Sumo wrestler’s, legs apart, feet firmly planted, as if ready to force his opponent out of the
dohyō.
There was no doubt in Ash’s mind that the boundary of the hypothetical circle extended over the edge of the battlements and he took up a crouched defensive position. He considered making a run for it, but his left leg, raked the previous day by a wildcat’s claws, was now throbbing painfully; besides, Haelstrom’s bulk took up almost the whole width of the walkway.

His opponent began to close in. Soon, he would make his rush. Ash feinted one way and then the other, but his opponent was ready each time. On the third attempt, the investigator tried a different tack: he deliberately ran at Haelstrom, head lowered to smash directly into the surprised man’s stomach. Haelstrom staggered back a few feet, but that was it. All Ash had done was put himself in reach.

Ash suddenly felt his feet leave the ground as Haelstrom crushed the breath from him and lifted the helpless investigator towards the outer wall. He thought his spine might break at any moment and he wheezed as he tried to draw in more air. It was hopeless: the other man was too powerful and his grip was like steel, clamping his arms tight to his sides. He felt a sudden jarring as his back and his head hit the wall. Haelstrom abruptly changed position and grasped Ash’s lapels, drawing him towards the edge, and Ash suddenly found his head and shoulders were hanging over empty space, the wind rushing up to meet him from the base of the cliff six hundred feet below.

Oddly, he was struck by how clearly he could hear the waves dash themselves against the rocky shoreline; it was as though all his senses had become more acute, sharpened, and every detail of Haelstrom’s queerly featured face, twisted in a snarl above him, stood out.

Was this what it was like for everyone who died violently? Was everything suddenly rendered in high definition and perfect surround sound? He could even see the pores in his opponent’s face in the strong moonlight, the hairs inside the man’s small crooked nose, the bubbles of spittle on his lips.

Then Ash felt his body being tilted further over the foaming abyss, tipping beyond the point of no return.

He prepared himself to die.

As Kevin Babbage and Rachael Krantz descended the stone stairway to the dungeons, the smell and the floating dust assailed their nostrils. The security chief was beginning began to regret his decision to accompany the senior nurse on the expedition. Although there’d always been a stench of excrement, urine and general body odour coming from the cells, it had never reeked as badly as this. Beside him, Krantz reached out to touch the wall to steady herself, for the light was bad here and the steps were worn from centuries of use. Her hand came away wet with slime and she brushed her fingers against her white uniform.

As a precaution, the security chief had ordered the containment area guard, Grunwald, to keep the heavy self-closing safety door behind them open just in case there was trouble and Babbage and the nurse needed to get out fast. As he had put his weight against the iron door and wrinkled his nose as the foul air came up at him, the sentinel’s relief that he hadn’t been made to go with them had been all too clear.

Not generally a nervous individual, Babbage couldn’t help but be aware something was very wrong about Comraich Castle lately, and it wasn’t just the maggots and the flies. No, there was a definite oppression hovering over the place, far worse than ever before. Even the ceiling and wall lights were low, as if the generators weren’t working properly. And it was
cold
, so bloody cold that several people were wearing topcoats even in the operations room. He could see the vapour from his mouth each time he breathed out.

When they reached the bottom step, Babbage undid the two buttons of his jacket in case he needed his gun in a hurry. He turned to face the long dingy corridor. It was difficult to see things clearly down here, even though the ceiling lights were just about working. He was going to have those generators checked out again.

He felt Nurse Krantz at his side.

‘Look,’ she said, pointing a finger at the end of the corridor.

Squinting, Babbage peered into the shadows, seeing only rubble and dirt caused by the old elevator’s crash.

‘I can’t . . .’ he began, then stopped when he saw a shape, a woman wearing an inmates’ smock. She was holding something clutched to her chest.

‘It’s her,’ prompted the senior nurse. ‘Her. The madwoman. The cell locks must have failed again.’ The red-haired nurse clucked her tongue in annoyance. She started forward, but Babbage held her back.

‘Just hang on a minute.’ The security chief went to the nearest cell door and gave it a shove with his hand. The door was locked and he peeked through the wired glass observation panel. It was even darker in there, but he could see the figure of a man lying in a foetal position on his cot.

Meanwhile, Krantz had tried the door opposite and found it shut tight. She, too, looked through the letter-box viewing window. The room looked empty, but as her eyesight adapted to the semi-darkness she realized there was someone sitting curled up in one corner of the cell. It was a man, for he wore thin, pyjama-style trousers. His forehead was lowered to his bent knees, hands and lower arms tucked into his lap. She gave the wired window a sharp tap with her fingernail and when the inmate looked up to see her, his wide eyes were crazed. He sent a shiver through Krantz and she was
used
to handling the crazies.

She gave a start when a hand touched her shoulder.

‘This one, too?’ asked Babbage.

‘What . . . ?’

‘The door,’ he replied tensely. ‘Is it locked?’

‘Oh. Yes. Yes, there’s an old man in there, curled up in a corner. He can’t get out.’

‘Nor the other one.’ The security chief turned his head to seek out the figure that Krantz had spotted a minute ago. She was still standing there, staring at them, black orbs floating around her.

‘How the fuck did she get out if all the other cell doors are locked?’ Babbage wished he’d brought his flashlight with him: this permanent gloom was giving him the creeps. In fact, the whole fucking castle had been giving him the creeps for weeks now.

‘Okay,’ he said quietly to Krantz, only partially hiding his nervousness. ‘Let’s put her back before she starts getting excited.’ He walked on ahead and Krantz hurried after him, pushing at doors along the way, making sure they were also locked.

Babbage came to a halt unexpectedly and the nurse almost bumped into him.

‘Look. That thing she’s holding,’ he said edgily. ‘What is it?’ He had a nasty feeling about what the madwoman clutched to her flat chest so tightly.

‘It’s just a box.’ Krantz’s voice was brusque: she’d been dealing with the idiocies of patients like this for more years than she cared to remember. ‘She probably picked it up from the rubble.’

When the nurse started walking towards the crazy woman, Babbage noticed it was not really a box at all. It was covered in dust, but there was something odd about it. He could just see dusty wires on its top and a small nub.

He looked into the wild eyes that stared up balefully into his own. Baleful because the size of her head, which was too big to be supported by her skinny neck, meant that her jaw rested on her chest and her black, slanted eyes, pupils dilated from the darkness she constantly lived in, couldn’t possibly look anything other than baleful.

And Babbage said in a kind of low moan, ‘Oh no, oh no . . .’

For that small nub on the top of the object that appeared to be a simple box was suddenly glowing red.

Experience told him instantly that what she held in her thin, clawed hands was a time bomb.
A time bomb? So that’s what that creepy little bastard Cedric Twigg had been
—

Rachael Krantz, who was marching forward to deal with this mentally disordered crackpot, was stopped in her tracks by Babbage’s moans.

She looked over her shoulder to see the horror on his face, then back at the old loon holding the box. A box with a red light on it. A red light that flicked on and off three times as she watched, then—

The deafening explosion vaporized Hitler’s daughter instantly, then seared the skin off Senior Nurse Rachael Krantz’s bones, and threw the burning shreds of Security Chief Kevin Babbage down to the far end of the corridor in a rich boiling cauldron of flame and flesh before diverting up the stairs to consume the guard and then roaring its way onwards.

Soon after that explosion, which had literally shaken the castle to its foundations, there came the booming of many more.

The desolate hunched figure that had once been a colonel and tyrant roamed the round room in the tall tower, wearing the traditional robes of his people because they would not let him bring his military uniform with him (nor any of his mistresses!), venting his fury at empty air, kicking chairs and breaking furniture, smashing fine ornamental vases on the carpeted wooden floor.

Once they called him a monster, those infidels of the Western media – but
never
to his face,
never
in his presence. Politicians, diplomats, interviewers, those in opposition – especially
those
cowardly scum – not even royalty, had ever called him a monster to his face.