Graham Masterton - The Doorkeepers

She was beginning to feel hungry but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to eat. She took off her coat and hung it in the wardrobe. Then she lay down on the brown and white bedcover and tried to rest. She told herself to stop panicking. She had a well worked-out plan to entice Frank Mordant to return to the “real” London with her, and if she managed to pull it off, Frank Mordant would be arrested and charged, Julia would have the justice she deserved, and Josh would be able to take her back to Mill Valley, where they could forget all about Hooded Men and dogs and drummers and Doorkeepers. Early this afternoon, she had felt like giving up, and going back to the “real” London as soon as the world had turned around. But now she felt determined to finish what she had started. Her grandfather had once put his arm around her and told her that a hunter never returns home empty-handed. “No matter if it takes all winter, you never return to your family without carrying your kill over your shoulder. That is why the hunter hunts. That is why the family waits.”

She was still thinking of her grandfather and his gentle, finely wrinkled face when she fell asleep, and the world turned even further.

She was woken up by the phone jangling. It was light, but she didn’t have any idea what the time was. The phone was a white Regency-style affair with a gold revolving dial. She picked it up and said, “Yes? Who is it?”

“Miss Andersen! It’s Frank Mordant. I didn’t wake you, did I? Do you know what time it is? Ten past nine!”

“What? I must have overslept.”

“Well, not to worry. I know what it’s like, coming through the doors. Knocks you for six, bit like jet lag. The thing is, though, I might need you to start work with me a little earlier than I expected. Like, today.”

“Today ? ”

“I hope that’s not inconvenient. The problem is, Sandra phoned in this morning and said that she wasn’t coming back. Sandra, that’s my secretary. You know what these young girls are like. Boyfriend trouble, more than likely. But she’s really left me in the lurch. I was wondering if you could come in A.S.A.P. and help me out. I’m absolutely snowed under.”

“I don’t know, Mr Mordant. It’s kind of sudden.”

“Yes, quite. I do appreciate that. But it’s pretty straightforward work and I’m sure you can cope. Especially since the flat’s free now, and you can move in any time you like.”

“You mean that Sandra’s moved out completely?”

“Upped sticks. Didn’t even leave me a forwarding address. Inconsiderate, or what? But if you come in now, we’ll have time to take a look at it.”

Nancy sat up. She hadn’t expected to have the opportunity to put her plan into action so quickly; but now that the moment had come, she felt a sudden rush of adrenalin. “Listen, give me an hour,” she said.

“Chop-chop, then. I’m having lunch with a chap from the Coal Board at twelve thirty, and I’d like to get things weaving before then. Take a taxi; Wheatstone’s will pay for it.”

Nancy dressed in her suit and the cream silk blouse that she had brought in her overnight case. She knew that she could chicken out now, if she wanted to. All she had to do was wait for three and a half hours and she could go back through the door and forget that Frank Mordant and the Hooded Men had ever existed. But that would mean that Julia’s murder would go unpunished and that she would never be able to stop Josh from coming back here and trying to make sure that Frank Mordant got what was coming to him.

She had seen for herself how vengeful the Hooded Men were: they wouldn’t let Josh escape a second time. Not only that, if she went back to the “real” London now, who could tell how many more vulnerable young girls like Julia would be killed and mutilated? To say that Sandra’s sudden disappearance was deeply suspicious was the understatement of the century.

She hailed a cab on the corner of Munster Road. It was one of those strange hazy mornings when everything seems out of focus. The taxi driver never stopped talking, all the way to the Great West Road. He thought that all the colored people ought to go back to where they came from, and that Parliament ought to bring back beheading. “Stick their heads on a spike, that’s what I say. Make an example of them.”

They were delayed for almost twenty minutes at the Chiswick Flyover. A private autogiro had crashed on to one of the carriageways. As Nancy’s taxi crept past it, she saw the pilot still trapped in the wreckage. It was almost impossible to tell where the man ended and the machine began.

“Never get me up in one of them things,” remarked the taxi driver.

Frank Mordant was on the telephone when she arrived at the office but he beckoned her in.

“No, Malcolm,” he was saying. “It’s absolutely out of the question. Well, tell him that’s the lowest I’ll go. Ninepence a unit? Who does he think I am? Father Bloody Christmas?”

He cradled the phone and leaned back in his chair. “Well, then,” he said. “You managed to get here all right.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“As I say, the work’s pretty humdrum. Pretty run-of-the-mill. Typing, filing, all the usual. Have you ever used a manual typewriter? Good exercise for the fingers, I can tell you.”

“I’m sure I’ll pick it up.”

“Jolly good.” He looked at his wristwatch and said, “We’ve just got time for me to show you the flat. If you like it, you can move in today. If you don’t – well, don’t feel embarrassed to tell me. I can always help you find diggings somewhere else.”

He ushered her downstairs, and out into the car park, opening the door of his Armstrong-Siddeley for her. “By the way,” he said, as they drove out of the factory gates, “I made one or two enquiries about Julia for you.”

“That’s kind of you.”

“I talked to her landlady, in case she’d been back to pick up any more of her stuff, but no joy there, I’m afraid.”

You liar, thought Nancy, picturing Mrs Marmion’s body hanging over her bathtub. She must have been discovered and buried by now.

“I talked to some of her chums in the office. One of them said that Julia was always keen on going to Scotland, so we might have a lead there.”

“I see,” said Nancy. “Scotland’s a pretty big place, though, isn’t it?”

“You never know. If she took the train from King’s Cross, somebody in the ticket office might remember her.”

“Kind of a long shot.”

“I suppose so. But I got back to an old pal of mine at Scotland Yard yesterday afternoon, to find out if he had any ideas.”

They reached the Sir Oswald Mosley pub and Frank Mordant parked outside. “It’s like I tell all the girls … it’s a little noisy here, but it’s cheap, and it’s close to the office.”

“All the girls?”

“They come and they go. Little boats bobbing past on the river of life, if you don’t mind me being poetic.”

He opened the front door and led her up the steep flight of stairs. “It’s very private … I put down a nice thick underlay so that you couldn’t hear too much noise from the pub underneath. In fact I think you could scream your head off in here and nobody would hear you.”

He led the way past the kitchenette and into the living room. “It’s a great place,” said Nancy. But she wasn’t telling the truth, either. The second she walked into the room, she could feel a wave of desperation, and pain, and cruelty. People had been killed in this room, and monstrously killed. This was more than a crow-feather aura. This was an atmosphere of sheer terror that she could almost smell.

With a salesman’s grin, Frank Mordant opened the bedroom door. Strangely, there was nothing there, no bad karma at all. Everything evil that had happened in this flat had happened in the living room.