‘And then what did you do?’ asked Kirby, wondering what an ant shitting would sound like.
Simmons paused. ‘I was scared. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no coward, but this place gives me the creeps. I stood there for a moment, rooted to the spot. Then I thought, Pull yourself together, Leroy, ain’t nothing but a phone. So I goes in. Wish to God I hadn’t.’
‘What made you go upstairs – is that where the ringing was coming from?’
‘Uh-uh. It stopped when I got inside,’ he said. ‘Then I heard a buzz, like when someone leaves you a voicemail. I dunno, maybe whoever it belonged to is deaf and needs the volume up high.’ He stopped, crossing himself again. ‘And then I seen her, lying there.’
‘Did you recognise the woman?’ asked Kirby.
Simmons looked genuinely shocked at this. ‘Course not. Why would I?’
‘Did you touch anything?’
‘You gotta be joking. I legged it, called you lot.’
‘Have you seen anyone hanging around the perimeter recently, near the front gate, perhaps, when you arrive and leave?’
‘No. No one.’ He squeezed Carpworld into an even tighter roll.
‘How about young kids, or vandals – any trouble with them trying to get in?’
Simmons shook his head again.
‘So you’ve never seen anyone on the site who shouldn’t be there?’
‘No, I ain’t. No one came or went last night. I checked the cameras while I was waiting for you lot to show up. We’ve only got the two, one at the main gate and one on Daylesford Road.’
‘The Daylesford Road entrance is still used?’ Kirby remembered it as a small, gated affair, rusted and overgrown the last time he’d passed it.
‘Uh, yes. It’s the one Mr Sweet uses.’
Kirby looked up from his Moleskine. ‘Who’s Mr Sweet?’
‘You mean you don’t know? He lives here, down near the river.’ He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. ‘In the Old Lodge. Been there ever since the place shut.’
Kirby glanced at Anderson, who had now straightened himself up, phone at the ready.
‘That was over twenty years ago,’ said Kirby. ‘Surely there can’t be any staff left after all this time?’
‘Oh, he ain’t staff,’ said Simmons, looking from one detective to the other. ‘He was a patient.’
CHAPTER 3
It was the snow, its muffled silence creeping into his dreams, that had caused Raymond to wake with a start. He lay in bed, his heart pounding, trying to figure out what was different. Then he realised there were no sirens, no birds, no exhausts backfiring; even the aircraft making their early flyovers were a dim rumble. The light seeping into the room also had a different quality to it, so propping himself up on his elbow he peered out of the window and could hardly believe his eyes. He’d seen a few flakes fall last night, but never in a million years did he think it would snow this heavily. A feeling of relief swept over him – the timing couldn’t be better – and he sank back on to his pillow, a smile on his face.
Raymond had lived in the grounds of Blackwater Asylum for nearly twenty-three years, and before that had lived in the hospital itself as a patient. He’d been admitted shortly after his mother died in a house fire when he was seventeen, and when Blackwater closed some twenty-seven years later, Raymond had never left. Officially he had, like everyone else, except he kept coming back: again and again. He’d found it impossible to stay away and had eventually set up home in the old caretaker’s lodge, on a small corner of the site, down by the river. No one knew he was there to begin with; or if they did, they didn’t care. He never bothered anyone and kept himself to himself, generally avoiding any kind of confrontation. And then they had come, a whole succession of them. ‘They’ were developers, and he hated every single one. Naturally, they all wanted shot of him, but it wasn’t that easy. The truth was that Blackwater wasn’t just his home, it was his entire world; to leave Blackwater would be tantamount to destroying himself. He’d lost count of the various schemes he’d seen fall through over the years. The pattern had repeated itself so many times that he had genuinely come to believe that Blackwater had a life of its own. It had a way of sucking you in and, if it didn’t like you, spitting you out. It would take more than a sharp-suited property developer with pound signs in his eyes to destroy it. Or, that’s what he’d thought until Patrick Calder had come along.
At first he’d seemed like the rest of them, and Raymond didn’t pay him too much attention, but after a few months it became clear that Patrick Calder was different. When the realisation hit him that Calder wasn’t going to make the same mistakes as those who’d gone before him, Raymond became convinced – for the first time in more than two decades – that it really might be the end. On the brink of giving up hope, he took the advice of his friend, Mrs Muir, at the Lavender B&B, where he was supposed to have lived when Blackwater closed, and sought legal help. To his amazement it turned out that he had squatter’s rights – he’d lived there for over twenty years, after all – and, as a result, the small pocket of land on which the Old Lodge stood was now legally his. He still found it hard to believe that he’d won, that he’d actually beaten a man like Patrick Calder. Calder had been furious, making it very clear that should Raymond be found wandering the grounds outside his designated boundary, the consequences would be severe. It was a small price to pay, and the reality was that Raymond did what he liked; he just had to be careful he didn’t get caught.
After a few minutes, he heaved himself out of bed and began looking for a match to light the gas stove so that he could make some tea, and pondered his situation. His home was safe, that was guaranteed; but other elements of his existence at Blackwater were now under threat. Not only were the contractors due to start work that very day, which presented certain logistical problems, but also in recent months someone else had been poking around Blackwater – someone he’d dubbed the Creeper. The snow would scupper the contractors for a few days, he was sure, but not the Creeper. The Creeper was a law unto itself.
He grabbed a mug off the draining board and reached up for the tea caddy, his fingers brushing the urn that was nestled between it and the sugar jar, and smiled. He popped a teabag into the mug and returned the caddy to the shelf. ‘I wish you were here,’ he murmured.
Climbing back into bed, he pulled the duvet up to his chin – it was ruddy freezing – and waited for the kettle to boil. Over the years, Raymond had developed a strong sixth sense: trespassers, unwanted visitors, urban explorers, vandals, whatever you wanted to call them – he always knew when they were here. Over the past few months, however, someone else had been visiting regularly, and he’d seen them again last night. After the first couple of sightings he’d assumed that it was just another trespasser or vandal, or even one of the explorers, but as the months had gone by, doubt began to set in. Those visitors rarely, if ever, came alone, and for the most part they didn’t know their way around; they also didn’t come on a weekly basis. Whoever this was, they did all those things; or rather whatever this was, because Raymond had recently come to the conclusion that the Creeper was a ghost. It was the only logical conclusion, and once he’d embraced the idea he felt vaguely comforted by it.