Before she could ask, he had grabbed the wireless mouse. A click and he enlarged one of the camera windows. On the screen she saw Malcolm Fletcher pressed up against his cage door, his fingers threaded past the chain link and gripping the padlock.
Marie didn’t have to tell Brandon what to do. He had already turned back to the keyboard.
Fletcher felt the padlock spring free. He threaded it out of its clasp and it dropped against the floor. He took the knife out of his mouth.
‘Help me.’
The dry croak came from the sickly woman dressed in dirty jeans and a dark cotton T-shirt. The remaining fingers of her right hand gripped the chain link.
‘Help me,’ she croaked again. ‘Please.’
‘I’ll have you out of there momentarily,’ Fletcher whispered. He was standing outside his cage. ‘I need to secure the area — ’
The sprinklers turned on, water raining down on him, on everything.
Not water.
Gasoline.
82
Fletcher’s eyes clamped shut. His mouth clamped shut and he heard the woman’s low scream as he turned and ran blindly through the spraying downpour of gasoline, heading towards the open door leading into the concrete hall.
The gasoline was no longer raining down on him. He stopped, gagging and gasping for air. Gasoline slid down his face and hair. He whisked it away. Some sort of gritty substance covered his fingers. He opened his eyes. They burned and everything in his field of vision was blurry — the bare bulbs hanging from the corridor’s ceiling, the doorway leading back into the operating theatre. Some of the people trapped in there were screaming, some were rattling the chain links.
Pop and hiss as a bright blue flame ignited on one of the pipes and clouds of flame exploded through the room in a series of white flashes and sparks. A loud rumble followed, and then a thick sheet of steel dropped from the top of the doorway and crashed against the floor, sealing off the room.
Screams erupted from behind the door and another scream erupted behind him. Fletcher turned, coughing on the gasoline fumes rising from his skin and clothing, the piercing, agonizing howls of the trapped victims trailing him as he staggered down the hall. He wiped at his face again. His vision had cleared slightly but his eyes continued to burn and tear. He brought the hand closer to his face and saw tiny rough particles the colour of dark chocolate covering his skin. Not sand. Sand wouldn’t be added to gasoline.
Fletcher heard the electric crackle of the cattle prod followed by another scream.
‘Stop fighting me, you little shit,’ Borgia hissed.
Marie had turned away from the computer screen, about to run, when Brandon clutched the meat of her arm and pulled her back.
‘ Let me go, ’ she screamed. ‘ I’ve got to warn Alexander. ’
Brandon was on his feet. ‘You’re not even dressed.’ He held on to her as he reached inside her handbag and came back with the 9-mm. ‘I’ll get Alexander. Go to the car.’
The hallway ended, turned to Fletcher’s left. Through his watery vision he could make out another doorway and, past it, another room containing the same dog kennels. Borgia was dragging a blond-haired man out of an open cage. Borgia clutched the back of the man’s hair and the man — a teenager — was fighting back.
Borgia hit the teenager with the cattle prod, tucking his Glock inside his pocket to keep his hands free.
Fletcher moved inside the room. Borgia, too focused on the teenager, didn’t see him until it was too late.
Fletcher didn’t use the knife; he landed a solid blow against the small man’s ear. Borgia dropped the cattle prod as he staggered. A kick and Fletcher sent him flying across the floor.
Borgia turned on to his side and reached inside his pocket for the Glock. Fletcher kicked the man in the face. The blow knocked him to the floor. Fletcher raised his foot and brought all of his weight down on Borgia’s neck and snapped it and Borgia lay still.
Fletcher grabbed the Glock and ejected the magazine clip. It contained eight hollow-tipped rounds. The teenager was curled up against the floor, whimpering, his shaking arms covering his head. Like Borgia, he wore mismatched clothing. No shoes, just woollen socks. There were no pipes hanging from the ceiling.
Fletcher moved to the teenager. ‘I’m going to bring you out of here,’ he whispered. ‘Take my hand. Stay behind me and stay quiet.’
Marie didn’t get dressed and she didn’t head to the car. She was sitting in Brandon’s chair, staring in disbelief at the computer screen. Malcolm Fletcher had escaped from his cage and now Alexander lay dead and the monster was talking to Jimmy Weeks.
Brandon. Marie jumped to her feet and reached for her handbag, almost knocking the laptop off the table. Brandon was heading down there to help Alexander and she had to warn him. She grabbed her cell and dialled his number, hoping to God he had it with him.
The phone rang. She looked back at the laptop and saw the monster hunched near the doorway leading into the hall. The phone rang a second time and she looked at another computer window, this one showing the hall. Brandon was creeping across the floor, heading towards Fletcher. She realized her mistake and hung up.
It was too late. Brandon’s phone was ringing. She couldn’t hear it but she saw Brandon reach inside his pocket to shut it off. Fletcher had heard the ringing and she watched in horror as the monster turned the corner and shot Brandon dead. Brandon was dead. She screamed but couldn’t tear her eyes away from the computer screen. The monster picked up Brandon’s gun and removed Brandon’s phone and car keys. Brandon was dead, Alexander was dead, and the monster was creeping down the hall with Jimmy Weeks. If she stayed here she would die. The drums of explosives packed inside the basement would blow this building to smithereens. She couldn’t stop it; the timer had started as soon as Brandon typed the keys to start the fire to incinerate the bodies. Brandon had told her she had fifteen minutes.
Marie didn’t have time to finish dressing. She quickly slid into her coat and grabbed the computer, the wires coming undone as she fled the room. Brandon was dead and oh dear God did it hurt, but if she could beat the monster to the garage she could release the videos stored on Brandon’s computer and then the whole world would know.
83
As Fletcher crept up the stairwell of dimming light, listening for sounds and watching for shadows, his mind kept replaying the odd white flashes and sparks he’d seen before the fire had started. The answer drifted away, came back: a thermite reaction. The sand-like particles covering his hands, his hair and clothing, were either iron oxide or copper oxide.
When he saw the heavy steel door crashing down and sealing off the room, he knew: the basement chamber had been turned into a crematorium. Gasoline alone couldn’t turn human bones into dry fragments: it could reach a maximum temperature of only 560?°F. Destroying human bones required a temperature of between 1,400?°F and 1,800?°F. Gasoline mixed with a metal powder and a metal oxide, like the one covering his clothing and skin, created extremely high temperatures upwards of 2,500?°F. Such a temperature would also melt most of the medical equipment.
At the moment it was contained — had to be, in order to effectively destroy evidence. Someone intelligent and clever enough to create a home-made crematorium would know that large bones like the femur and thick, dense joints supporting the hip wouldn’t burn away. All the bones needed to be pulverized into ash or they would be discovered. Someone this intelligent would have installed the proper mechanism to ensure no evidence of what had
