Potkin and Stubbs Read online

  ‘No,’ said Nedly. ‘He didn’t.’ He was staring at one of the pictures that was hanging on the wall. Grey splotches of damp had sprouted in the corners of the frame and the glass was smudged and dusty. It was a group photograph of the staff sitting in rigid formation on the lawn area in front of the asylum. The lawn was clipped short and smooth like a bowling green and rambling roses grew on either side of the steps. All the staff were wearing white uniforms.

  Lil moved closer to him.

  Nedly’s face had grown pale, his skin so thin he was almost translucent.

  ‘He did it. That’s the man who murdered me.’

  Nedly pointed at the photograph, past the neat line-up of doctors. Lil wiped away the dust and then shone the torch at the smeared glass. There, standing on the steps behind the staff, was another man. He was not part of the official group but he was looking into the camera anyway. ‘Him.’

  He was pointing at a man with deep-set colourless eyes and a hairless brow, a man wearing the blue tunic of an inmate. His hands were held patiently together, and there was a thin covering of wispy hair on his head.

  There was something familiar about him; Lil had seen his picture before: on a mug shot in Abe’s Lucan Road Mob file, and on the back of a book. His face might also have been stuck on the map at the Mingo, but the thick black cross marking him out as ‘deceased’ would have disguised him. ‘Cornelius Gallows!’ she exclaimed. ‘Abe, Nedly says that he’s the man who killed him!’

  Abe shook his head at the photograph. ‘Gallows is long dead.’ His gaze pointlessly searched the empty space by the wall. ‘He died in the fire along with Leonard Owl and more than twenty other inmates.’

  ‘Gallows was alive when I saw him just a year ago,’ Nedly insisted. ‘He was alive when he killed me, and so was Owl. He can’t have died in that fire.’

  ‘Did they ever find Gallows’ body?’ Lil asked Abe.

  ‘He was burnt to a crisp. Maybe beyond recognition,’ he admitted.

  Lil yanked open the drawer of patient files A–G and flicked through from the back. She pulled out a thick cardboard wallet and thumbed through the papers inside.

  ‘Here,’ she said eventually. ‘This is the last dated report in the file.’

  PSYCHIATRIC REPORT BY

  DR HANS CARVEL, RORSCHACH

  ASYLYUM, PELIGAN CITY

  on the case of CORNELIUS GALLOWS

  The patient has been diagnosed as a psychopath with extreme narcissistic tendencies. Cornelius is generally quiet and distant but has been subject to sudden rages. In group sessions he has voiced paranoid delusions about myself and Dr Lankin stealing his research ideas. Undoubtedly he has a brilliant mind but absolutely no morals, no ethics, no compassion.

  His record shows few disturbances since his committal and no disciplinary procedures have been initiated. However, Dr Lankin has asked me to record that Cornelius is beginning to exhibit a concerning degree of influence over a fellow patient, Leonard Owl. Leonard is impressionable and eager to please and has been regularly observed to be watching Cornelius attentively as if seeking approval.

  ‘You know what I think?’ said Lil. ‘I think they were in league together. Maybe the reason we can’t find a link is that you weren’t on Owl’s list, you were on Gallows’, along with the rest of the Lucan Road Mob. They betrayed him, you put him away and Carvel kept him locked up.’

  Abe nodded.

  ‘So maybe Owl is doing this out of loyalty. Or because he thinks that’s what Gallows would have wanted.’

  Abe rubbed at the stubble on his chin. ‘I could buy that. He was a fairly messed-up boy; I don’t expect being a ghost has made him any saner.’

  ‘Now, where exactly do you fit into all this?’ Lil pondered, looking at Nedly.

  ‘Come on,’ he said miserably. ‘There’s a room we haven’t been to yet.’

  Lil and Abe followed the ghost of Ned Stubbs as he walked slowly down the corridor, as if he was re-enacting his part in a macabre play. When he reached the door that said ‘Treatment Room’ he put out his hand and it swung open before him.

  In the centre of the room was an upright wooden contraption that looked like an electric chair, with a beaten metal head-cap and wires along the arm rests. Sitting on the chair was a horrible woollen toy.

  ‘Wool!’ breathed Lil.

  ‘It was here,’ said Nedly. ‘This is where I died.’

  They entered the room in silence. The atmosphere was oppressively sad. Lil walked over to the chair and picked up the toy that rested there.

  ‘That’s what I was looking for,’ murmured Nedly.

  ‘Did you find him?’ asked Lil.

  Nedly nodded slowly.

  Wool, Babyface’s knitted humpty, was the most sinister toy Lil had ever seen. It had no mouth or nose, only round, staring white felt eyes, one of which had become partly unstuck and hung down like a wink. A tuft of black woollen hair sprouted from the apex of its head. It had thin knitted arms and legs, which were joined to the egg-shaped body like chipolatas on strings. At the end of each limb someone had sewn a little silver bell.

  Lil picked it up by one leg, using the tip of her finger and thumb, and held it at arm’s length to examine it with her torch. Wool twirled like an aerial acrobat, a topsy-turvy pirouette, and as it spun the little bells tinkled. The sound travelled away from them to a very dark place in between the eaves and the scorched rafters.

  Then they heard it. A small voice, muffled at first but growing louder. Someone was crying; it was a whimpering, sobbing noise that filled the empty corridors.

  ‘No!’ Nedly gasped in a voice too quiet for anyone to hear.

  Lil snapped her head round to look at him. ‘Nedly?’

  He was staring at the door with a look of pure dread. ‘Someone’s coming,’ he said.

  ‘We shouldn’t have come here …’ began Lil.

  ‘It’s too late,’ whispered Nedly.

  Then the sound of crying stopped and the laughing began.

  Chapter 22

  ‘Men Have Called Me Mad’

  Cornelius Gallows stepped into the doorway carrying an old brown metal oil lamp in one hand and a revolver in the other. His face carried more lines than his mug shot and his eyes had sunken even further back in their sockets. He was wearing a dirty lab coat and a black rubber gas mask worn high over his head like an insect-faced hat; around it his fine hair was standing on end as though someone had rubbed a balloon over it.

  ‘Detective Mandrel, we meet again!’

  Abe narrowed his eyes. ‘Cornelius Gallows. So you’re not dead after all.’

  ‘No, I’m very much alive, as you can see. While the fire raged in the east wing, I calmly strolled into one of the consultant’s offices and took his I.D. and certification; I merely ensured that the doctor in question was in the path of the blaze and was, therefore, incinerated beyond recognition. Then I just had to put on this precious lab coat and walk right out of here. The emergency services actually helped me to safety; they assumed that I was one of the doctors!’ Gallows laughed, the lantern up-lighting his face to ghoulish effect.

  ‘But you’re not a doctor, are you, Cornelius – you’re a patient.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Two pinpricks of blush appeared on Gallows’ sallow cheeks.

  ‘You were struck off years ago, when you published that wacko book.’ Abe sidled towards him. ‘And I should have known you’d be here – in the madhouse where you belong.’

  Gallows pointed the revolver at him threateningly. ‘It suits me perfectly: no disturbance – until now of course – just peace and quiet for my work. It even has its own graveyard.’ He gave a withering laugh. ‘I know you’re trying to goad me, detective, trying to make me lose my temper like the judge did at the trial. You won’t catch me out this time. Not that it matters; as far as anyone knows, I’m dead, so you can’t convict me. Officially I don’t exist.’

  ‘We know you’re not dead. We’ll tell on you,’ said Lil.

  Gallows shifte
d his gaze to Lil. ‘Ah, you’re assuming that you will be getting out of here alive. On the contrary, little girl – you will both be quite dead by morning.’

  ‘No!’ said Lil.

  ‘Yes!’ said Gallows, his pale eyes burning with a cold flame. ‘Everyone who gets in my way comes to a sticky end, mark my words. No one even noticed when I was bumping off those small-time hoodlums, my former henchmen who sang like canaries at the trial. No one batted an eye – except that interfering news pamphlet and you, Mandrel, always poking that sticky beak of yours where it doesn’t belong.’ He spat out the words. ‘You blundering oaf. Even when you finally managed to capture Ramon, who isn’t even particularly smart, the turncoat split on me and got away scot-free. But I’ll make him pay.

  ‘You all deserve to die. I’ve been patient, oh yes! Revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. For nine years I worked here in the darkness, until my experimental procedure was complete, until I, Dr C. Gallows PhD, finally held the secret of life after death. Until I was ready to create the ultimate criminal.’

  ‘That explains all the rabbits. Gallows must have been experimenting on them all this time,’ Lil mumured under her breath. ‘They were ghosts too – that’s why I couldn’t see them.’ She looked at Nedly but he had retreated into a corner, as far away from Gallows as he could get.

  Gallows’ flimsy hair swayed in the unnatural draughts that swirled around him, the whites of his eyes shone in the gloom and his lips trembled excitedly.

  ‘One year ago, with my research complete, I put my theory into practice: I weaponised Leonard Owl.’

  ‘You killed him, you mean,’ said Lil.

  ‘I turned him into an instrument of fear.’ Gallows waved the gun at her dismissively. Every day for the last year we have practised until sad little Leonard Owl was ready to become Mr Glimmer: a disembodied spirit that cannot be seen, stopped or caught. I made him who he is today.’

  ‘You murdered him.’

  ‘Owl knew what he was doing. He sacrificed himself in the name of science.’

  ‘He just wanted Gallows to like him,’ said Nedly miserably. He wasn’t looking at the evil genius any more but a point near the window where a cobweb of ice crystals was forming on the glass.

  Out of the corner of her eye Lil saw Abe’s torchlight flicker and wondered if Owl was there too, listening in.

  ‘You’re just using him,’ she said to Gallows.

  ‘Of course I am. Why else would I have spent ten years of my life with a quivering idiot who can’t stop lighting matches?’

  ‘He thought he was your friend.’

  ‘I don’t need friends. Leonard is useful to me. Well, he was. Now, I’ve realised that if you want to scare someone to death, you have to find someone really scary. Leonard’s just a troubled boy; he never really enjoyed frightening people. But I’ve got a new line coming out – I’ve found myself the perfect source to recruit my subjects from –’ Gallows held a finger to his own mouth to stop the words – ‘but that’s a secret. I’m not going to fall for that old trick of revealing my master plan and then risk you escaping from the elaborate death I have planned for you to thwart me at the final hour.

  ‘My reign of terror is almost ready to begin, but first I just have one last loose end to tie up and it will give my new accomplice a chance to flex his muscles, so to speak. Mr Grip, I call him – he hasn’t been out much so he’s eager to get his hands dirty.’ He laughed maniacally. ‘Oh yes! I will give Peligan City the fright of its life!’

  The flame of Gallows’ gas lamp guttered.

  ‘Mr Glimmer can still have his fun. Tonight there will be a second fire at Rorschach Asylum, and tomorrow the papers will report that a scruffy ex-police detective and a big-eared child perished in it … and no one will know why!’

  There was no more time for subtlety. ‘You don’t have to do what he says,’ Lil yelled at the window. ‘Don’t listen to him!’

  ‘Ah, but he does,’ said Gallows, picking up the knitted humpty and shaking it.

  ‘It’s Wool,’ cried Nedly. ‘It’s controlling him.’

  The little bells tinkled and a look of dread crossed Nedly’s face.

  ‘He has to do exactly what I say, when I say it. Leonard was smitten when he found that filthy toy.’ He pointed at Wool. ‘So I thought that as a special treat I’d bind his spirit to it. That’s the key, you see. It’s my remote control.’

  Lil backed away from the window as Nedly stepped into what she calculated to be Owl’s path, to shield herself and Abe. She could see his shoulders trembling in the moonlight.

  ‘But why did you have to kill Nedly, I mean Ned Stubbs?’ she asked Gallows.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ned Stubbs,’ Lil repeated with dry contempt.

  Gallows rubbed his hairless chin with mock thoughtfulness. ‘Was he another orderly?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘A patient?’

  ‘No, he was an eleven-year-old orphan!’

  ‘Was that his name?’ He gave Lil an icy stare. ‘I’d quite forgotten about him. He got in the way. Tried to mess up my experiment with his last-minute heroics. If he hadn’t been trying to free Owl, then he wouldn’t have got electrocuted. The correct timing of the experiment was essential. In fact, he could have ruined everything.’ Gallows eyed Lil scornfully. ‘Children shouldn’t poke around where they don’t belong. There are very clear signs on the gate that say “No Entry” and “Trespassers will be Prosecuted” and “Danger”.’

  Lil’s hands formed into fists. She could feel herself shaking with anger.

  ‘It wasn’t all fun and games for me either, little girl,’ Gallows continued. ‘I had to bury them both, digging the graves myself. Well, I dug a grave and put them both in it. It was abominably hard work, I can tell you.’ He pondered. ‘If I’d thought it through I would have got Leonard to dig it before I killed him. Oh well, hindsight’s a wonderful thing.’

  Gallows looked up with an expression of disgust. ‘Is that you snivelling, Mr Glimmer? Stop it immediately; you’re embarrassing us both,’ he hissed in the general direction of the cold spot beside the window. ‘If you can’t act like a proper henchman, I’ll have to dispose of you.’ Gallows viciously kicked Wool across the floor with a sweep of his foot. Wool bounced off the skirting board, and then lay still, face down, one arm outstretched as if reaching for something.

  Gallows cleared his throat and continued, ‘Now, where was I? One final act and my revenge will be complete; Ramon LeTeef must pay for his betrayal, and he will. Once Mr Grip gets hold of him – he’ll be begging me to kill him!’

  Abe snorted. ‘Good luck with finding him, Cornelius. LeTeef vanished straight after the trial and no one has set eyes on him since. Or didn’t you know that?’

  Gallows narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Deadly,’ Abe replied.

  Gallows sighed. ‘No. I mean, are you seriously telling me that you don’t know where he is?’

  ‘No one does.’

  Gallows allowed himself a self-satisfied smile. ‘I do. I have always known. Surely it doesn’t take a genius to work it out?’ He looked at Lil; she stared blankly back at him. ‘No? Oh, well, maybe it does.’

  Abe was losing patience. He took a step towards Gallows. ‘Look, I have no problem with LeTeef getting iced. But why don’t you just save yourself a lot of bother and tell me where he is, and I’ll put him away for you.’

  Lil was furious. ‘Abe! Aren’t you going to say, “You won’t get away with it!”?’

  Abe shrugged. ‘If he can find Ramon LeTeef and make him pay, I’ll be happy to see justice done at long last.’

  ‘But he killed Nedly.’

  Abe clenched his jaw. He nodded to himself, ashamed. ‘You’re right, kid. I’m sorry, I forgot. You won’t get away with it!’ he yelled at Gallows.

  Gallows shook his head derisively.

  Abe’s eyes were on the revolver that was hanging heavy in Gallows’ limp fingers. ‘You’re waving that gun aro
und all right,’ he said. ‘But you don’t have the first clue about how to use it.’

  Gallows placed the gun in the large pocket of his lab coat. ‘I won’t need it.’

  ‘Is that right? Ha! You haven’t caught us yet,’ said Abe. ‘And I won’t go down without a fight.’

  ‘Yes, detective, you will,’ said Gallows, and he lowered his gas mask as the room filled up with a cloud of yellow mist.

  Chapter 23

  Death Trap

  Blackness gave way to a blurry blue light and the room warped as it came into focus. The storm raged outside; rain was beating down on the crumbling walls of the asylum and the wind howled through the broken chimneys.

  Lil shook her head to clear it and a dizzying headache awoke. Her arms and legs were numb, her shoulders were sore and her ears were filled with the sawing sound of heavy breathing. ‘Abe!’ she hissed. ‘Abe, wake up!’

  The breathing sound stopped, snorted and then continued.

  ‘Nedly?’ Lil whispered. ‘Can you hear me?’ Then louder, ‘Nedly?’ There was no answer. They were alone.

  She and Abe were bound fast together, sitting back to back on old hospital chairs, their hands and feet tied with nylon rope.

  ‘Abe!’ Lil knocked the back of her head against his.

  ‘What the …!’ He awoke with a gasp and immediately began thrashing about trying to free himself.

  ‘Abe! Stop wriggling. There’s no point; the ropes are too tight.’

  He went still. ‘Where are we?’

  Lil could just make out a blue square shape that looked like a window with bars.

  ‘It’s some kind of cell, I suppose. I think he released a sort of sleeping gas and then when we were out cold, he tied us up.’ There was a sickly sweet smell on the air like medicated icing sugar. A flash of lightning bleached the room white and in that split second Lil saw something that turned her blood cold.

  A cat’s cradle of red string criss-crossed the room, from the floor to the ceiling. At the centre of it, the threads tied to his pink, thin arms, was Wool, with the tiny bells in its hands, its eyes white and empty. Lil and Abe were ensnared below, like a couple of flies in a spider’s web.