Free Slade House by David Mitchell Page A

car, radio for backup and warrants and return in a couple of hours, but in this mad bugger’s scenario, where I may—
may
—have just shagged a thirty-one-year-old killer-slash-abductress-slash-whatever-the-fuck-she-is, I’d rather get Rita Bishop safely away first and call in a Code 10 to Slade House after. If I’m wrong and Trevor Doolan de-bollocks me then so be it. “Mrs. Bishop. Do you know where the key is?”
    She’s still a softly sobbing mess on the floor.
    I notice the sound of the shower’s stopped.
    “Mrs. Bishop—help me help you—
please.
”
    The woman lifts her head and fires hate-rays at me: “As if you’ll just unlock this door after nine years. As
if
.”
    For Chrissakes. “If I am who I say I am, you’ll be out of Slade House in two minutes and I swear on all that’s holy, Mrs. Bishop, I’ll have armed officers in here within thirty minutes and ‘the Monster’ in custody, and in the morning CID and Scotland Yard
and
Forensics on Nathan’s trail, so will you
please
just
tell me
where the key is? Right now I’m your only chance of seeing your son again.”
    Something in my voice persuades Rita Bishop to give me a chance. She sits up. “The key’s on the hook. Right behind you. It amuses the Monster that I can see it.”
    I turn round: a long, thin, shiny key. I take it, and fumble, and drop the thing. It hits the floorboard with a pure note. I pick it up and find the steel plate in the cage door and push the key into the keyhole. It’s well oiled and the door swings open and Rita Bishop staggers to her feet and backs off and sways forwards and stares like she can’t believe it. “Come on, Mrs. Bishop,” I whisper, “out you come. We’re leaving.”
    The prisoner takes uncertain steps to the cage door, where she grips my hand and steps out. “I, I…” Her breathing’s all raspy.
    “Easy does it,” I tell her. “It’s okay. Do you know if…if ‘she,’ ‘they,’ if they’ve got weapons?”
    Rita Bishop can’t answer. She’s gripping my dressing gown, quivering. “Promise me,
promise me,
I’m not dreaming you.”
    “I promise. Let’s go.”
    Her fingers dig into my wrist. “And you’re not dreaming me?”
    I stay patient; if I’d been locked up for nine years, I’d be off my rocker too. “I guarantee it. Now let’s get out of here.”
    She releases me. “Look at this, Detective.”
    “Mrs. Bishop, we need to leave.”
    Ignoring me, she holds up a lighter.
    Her thumb flicks and a thin flame…
    · · ·
    …grows longer, paler and still as a freeze-frame. It’s not a lighter anymore, it’s a candle, on a chunky metal base with writing all over it, Arabic or Hebrew or Foreign. The cage has gone. All the furniture’s gone. Rita Bishop’s gone. The candle’s the only source of light. The shrunken attic’s black as inside a coffin deep inside a blocked-up cave. I’m kneeling, I’m paralyzed, and I don’t know what’s happening. I try to move but no joy. Not even a finger. Not even my tongue. My body’s the cage now, and I’m the one locked in. The only things working are my eyes and my brain. Work it out, then. Nerve gas? A stroke? I’ve been Mickey Finned? God only knows. Clues, then, Detective Inspector? There’re three faces in the dark. Straight ahead, across the candle, there’s me in a dead man’s dressing gown. A mirror, obviously. On my left there’s Chloe, in a hooded padded robe thing. On my right there’s…a male Chloe. Chloe’s twin, I’m guessing—this blond guy, dressed in a robe thing like Chloe’s, handsome in a sort of gay model Hitler Youth way. Neither of them is moving. A few inches from the candle flame there’s a brownish moth, just frozen in the air, frozen in time. I’m not dreaming. That’s about all I’m sure of. So is this the story of how Gordon Edmonds lost his mind?
    Time passes. I don’t know how much. The candle hisses and its white flame sways this way and that. The moth flaps around, in and out of the