Читать книгу The Fire Witness - Ларс Кеплер - Страница 10

Elisabet stands still, listening as she looks out into the corridor. At first she can’t hear anything, then there it is again. A slight whisper, so faint that it’s barely audible. ‘It’s your turn to close your eyes,’ a voice whispers.

Elisabet stands perfectly still, staring off into the darkness. She blinks several times, but can’t see anyone there.

She has time to think that it must be one of the girls talking in her sleep when she hears a strange noise. Like someone dropping an overripe peach on the floor. And then another one. Heavy and wet. A table leg scrapes as it moves, then another two peaches fall to the floor.

Elisabet catches a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye. A shadow slipping past. She turns around, and sees that the door to the dining room is slowly swinging closed.

‘Wait,’ she says, even though she tells herself it was just the wind again.

She hurries over and grabs the handle, but meets a peculiar resistance. There’s a brief tug-of-war before the door simply glides open.

Elisabet walks into the dining room, very warily, trying to scan the room with her eyes. The scratched table stands out in the darkness. She moves slowly towards the stove, sees her own movement reflected in its closed brass doors.

The flue is still radiating heat.

Suddenly there’s a crackling, knocking sound behind the stove doors. She takes a step back and bumps into a chair.

It’s only a piece of firewood falling against the inside of the doors. The room is completely empty.

She takes a deep breath and walks out of the dining room, closing the door behind her. She starts to head back towards the corridor where her overnight room is, but stops again and listens.

She can’t hear anything from the girls’ rooms. There’s an acrid smell in the air, metallic, almost. She looks for movement in the dark corridor, but everything is still. Even so, she is drawn in that direction, towards the row of unlocked doors. Some of them seem to be ajar, while others are closed.

On the right-hand side of the corridor are the bathrooms, and then an alcove containing the locked door to the isolation room where Miranda is sleeping.

The peephole in the door glints gently.

Elisabet stops and holds her breath. A high voice is whispering something in one of the rooms, but falls abruptly silent when Elisabet starts to move again.

‘Quiet, now,’ she says.

Her heart starts to beat harder when she hears a series of rapid thuds. It’s hard to localise them, but it sounds like Miranda is lying in bed kicking the wall with her bare feet. Elisabet is about to go and check on her through the peephole in the door when she sees that there’s someone standing in the alcove. There’s someone there.

She lets out a gasp and starts to back away, with a dream-like sense of wading through water.

She realises at once how dangerous the situation is, but fear makes her slow.

Only when the floor of the corridor creaks does the impulse to run for her life finally manifest itself.

The figure in the darkness suddenly moves very quickly.

She turns and starts to run, hearing footsteps behind her. She slips on the rag-rug, and knocks her shoulder against the wall, but keeps moving.

A soft voice is telling her to stop, but she doesn’t, she runs, almost throwing herself along the corridor.

Doors fly open then bounce back.

In panic she rushes past the registration room, using the walls for support. The poster of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child falls to the floor. She reaches the front door, fumbles, and manages to open it, shoves the door open and runs out into the cool night air, but slips on the porch steps. One of her legs folds beneath her as she lands awkwardly on her hip. The stabbing pain from her ankle makes her yell out loud. She slumps to the ground, then hears heavy steps in the porch, and starts to crawl away. She loses her indoor shoes as she struggles to her feet with a whimper.