‘It’s unlocked,’ Brodie said, trying the handle.
‘Could be a trap,’ Breck said quietly.
‘Almost certainly is.’ Brodie pushed the door open. ‘But we’re going in anyway.’
The interior was dark, what little light filtered through cracks in the boarded windows revealing a space that had once been a funeral parlour’s reception room. It smelled of decay and damp.
They moved through carefully, each of them taking out a small torch, the beams cutting through the darkness. The main preparation room led to a corridor, which opened into what had been the funeral home’s reception area. Old furniture remained – chairs for waiting families, a desk where arrangements would have been discussed, faded photographs on the walls showing the business in its heyday.
‘Nothing,’ Breck said quietly. ‘The place is empty.’
But Brodie had noticed something – a door at the far end of the reception area, newer than the others, the frame recently repaired. He moved towards it, Breck following.
The door opened on to a back extension, a structure that had been added later, probably in the seventies or eighties. Inside was another corridor, darker than the main building because the windows here weren’t just boarded – they’d been painted black on the inside, blocking out even the smallest sliver of light.
At the end of this corridor was another door. This one was heavy, reinforced, the kind you’d use for cold storage or to contain sound.
Brodie tried the handle. It opened.
Beyond was darkness so complete that his torch seemed almost useless against it, the beam swallowed by shadows. But he could make out stairs descending, stone steps worn smooth by decades of feet carrying bodies down to the basement preparation rooms.
‘Liam,’ Breck whispered, his voice tight. ‘We should call for backup. Wait for armed response.’
‘No time.’ Brodie started down the stairs, his torch beam sweeping back and forth. ‘If Lucy’s down here, if we wait, she’s dead.’
The basement was exactly what Brodie had expected and worse. It was cold, damp, the smell of chemicals and decay mixing with the mustiness of long abandonment. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, a constant rhythmic sound that set his nerves on edge. The ceiling was low, the walls old stone that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Old equipment still lined the walls – embalming tables, cabinets that would have held chemicals and instruments, a porcelain sink stained with decades of rust and God knew what else.
This had been the original preparation room, the place where Thomas Mitchell had taught a generation of funeral directors the art of embalming, of making the dead presentable for their final goodbyes. Stainless steel tables still stood silent, their surfaces dulled by time. Cabinets hung open, their contents long since removed or rotted away, their torchlights bouncing off glass and stainless steel.
But there were other doors leading off from this central room, darker passages that led into the unknown.
Brodie chose the first doorway, Breck close behind him. His torch beam swept across the space, and his heart nearly stopped.
At the far end of the room was a stainless steel table. And on that table was something – a shape covered partially by shadow, but unmistakably human.
‘Lucy,’ Brodie breathed, moving forward.
The room was pitch-black except for their torches, the beams pathetically inadequate for the space. Brodie could make out the table, could see the figure lying on it, but couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead, couldn’t see?—
Light flooded the room, bright and sudden, and the door behind them slammed shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Brodie spun, blinking against the sudden illumination of the surgical lamp above the table. Standing by the door was David Duffy, his face pale and frightened. In front of them, holding a scalpel to the throat of the woman on the table – Lucy, Brodie could see her clearly now, gagged and bound – was The Embalmer.
Dr Ronald Holmes.
Sherlock.
The killer who’d haunted them for seven years.
‘Welcome, gentlemen,’ Sherlock said, his voice calm andpleasant as if he were greeting guests at a dinner party. ‘I’ve been expecting you, though I thought you might take a bit longer to find us. You’re improving, DCI Brodie. Well done.’
‘You knew we would come here. We’d figure out this was where you did your training to become a funeral director, all those years ago.’
‘I’m impressed.’
Lucy’s eyes were wide above the gag, her body tense on the table. Her hands were bound behind her back, her ankles tied together. She was alive, conscious, terrified. The scalpel at her throat gleamed under the surgical light, pressed just firmly enough to dimple the skin without breaking it.
Yet.
