Sakellarakis held up his hands. 'It is the law.'
Layard's room was small, white, clean and pungently antiseptic. He lay full length on a trolley, covered head to toe by a sheet. The bed he'd used had been made up again, and the window closed to keep out flies. Darcy carefully laid back the sheet to show Layard's face — and drew back at once, wincing. Sandra, too. Layard's face wasn't in repose.
'Is the spasm,' Sakellarakis informed, nodding. 'The muscles, a contraction. The mortician is putting this one right. Then Layard, he is doing the correct sleeping.'
Harry hadn't drawn back. Instead he stood over Layard, looking down at him. The esper was grey, clay-cold, frozen in rigor mortis. But his face was fixed in something rather more than that. His jaws were open in a scream and his upper lip at the left had lifted up and away from the teeth, leaving them visible and shining. His entire face seemed pulled to the left in a sort of rictus, as if he screamed his denial of something unbelievable, unbearable.
His eyes were closed, but in the eyelids under the brows Harry saw twin slits in the membranous skin. They were fine but dark and plainly visible against the overall pallor. 'He's been… cut?' Harry glanced at the Greek doctor.
The spasm,' the other nodded. "The eyes come open. It can happen. I make the small cuts in the muscles… no problem.'
Harry licked his lips, frowned, peered intently at the large blue lump showing on Layard's forehead and continuing into his hair. The shiny skin was broken in the centre, a small abrasion where flesh white as fishbelly showed through. Harry looked at the lump, reached out a hand as if to touch it, then turned away. And: 'That look on his face,' he said, under his breath. 'No muscular spasm that, but sheer terror!'
Darcy Clarke, for his part, had taken one look at Layard and drawn back first one pace, then another. But he hadn't stopped drawing back and was now out in the corridor. His face was drawn, eyes staring into the room at the figure on the trolley. Sandra joined him; Harry, too.
'Darcy, what is it?' Sandra's voice was hushed.
Darcy only shook his head. 'I don't know,' he gulped. 'But whatever it is, it's not right!' It was his talent working, looking out for him.
Papastamos put back the sheet over Layard's face; he and Sakellarakis came out of the room into the corridor. 'Not the spasm, you say?' The doctor looked at Harry and cocked his head on one side. 'You are knowing about these things?'
'I know some things about the dead, yes,' Harry nodded.
'Harry's… an expert,' Darcy had himself under control now.
'Ah!' said Sakellarakis. 'A doctor!'
'Listen,' Harry took him by the arm, spoke earnestly to him. 'The autopsy must be tonight. And then he must be burned!'
'Burned? You are meaning cremated?'
'Yes, cremated. Reduced to ashes. Tomorrow at the latest.'
'My God!' Manolis Papastamos burst out. 'And Ken Layard was your friend? Such friends I don't need! I thought you were the cold one but… you are not merely cold, you are as dead as he is!'
Cold sweat was beading Harry's forehead now and he was beginning to look sick. 'But that's just the point,' he said. 'I don't think he is dead!'
'You don't — ?' Dr Sakellarakis's jaw fell open. 'But I know this thing for sure! The gentleman, he is certain dead!'
'Undead!' Harry was swaying now.
Sandra's eyes flew wide. So this was really it. But Harry had been caught off guard; he was shocked, saying too much. 'It's… an English expression!' she quickly cut in. 'Undead: not dead but merely departed. Old friends simply… pass on. That's what he meant. Ken's not dead but in the hands of God.'
Or the devil! Harry thought. But he was steadier now and glad that she'd come to his rescue.
Darcy's mind was also working overtime. 'It's Layard's religion,' he said, 'which requires that he's burned — cremated — within a day of his dying. Harry only wants to be sure it will be the way he would want it.'
'Ah!' Manolis Papastamos still wasn't sure, but he thought that at least he was beginning to understand. Then I have to apologize. I am sorry, Harry.'
'That's OK,' said Harry. 'Can we see Trevor Jordan now?'
'We'll go right now,' Papastamos nodded. "The asylum is in the Old Town, inside the old Crusader walls. It's off Pythagoras Street. The nuns run it.'
They used the taxi again and reached their destination in a little over twenty minutes. By now the sun was setting and a cool breeze off the sea brought relief from the heat of the day. During the journey Darcy asked Papastamos: 'Incidentally, can you fix us up with somewhere to stay? A decent hotel?'
'Better than that,' said the other. 'The tourist season is just starting; many of the villas are still empty; I found you a place as soon as I knew you were coming. After you have seen poor Trevor, then I take you there.'
At the asylum they had to wait until a Sister of Rhodos could be spared from her duties to take them to Jordan's cell. He was strait jacketed, seated in a deep, high-sided leather chair with his feet inches off the ground. In this position he could do himself no harm, but in any case he seemed asleep. With Papastamos to translate, the Sister explained that they were administering a mild sedative at regular intervals. It wasn't that Jordan was violent, more that he seemed desperately afraid of something.
'Tell her she can leave us with him,' Harry told the Greek. 'We won't stay long, and we know the way out.' And when Papastamos had complied and the Sister left: 'And you, too, Manolis, if you please.'
'Eh?'
Darcy laid a hand on his arm. 'Be a good fellow, Manolis, and wait for us outside,' he told him. 'Believe me, we know what we're doing.'
The other shrugged, however sourly, and left.
Darcy and Harry looked at Sandra. 'Do you feel up to it?' Darcy said.
She was nervous, but: 'It should be easy,' she answered at last. 'We're two of a kind. I've had plenty of practice with Trevor and know the way in.' But it was as if she spoke more to convince herself than anyone else. And as she took up a position behind Jordan, with her hands on the back of his chair, so the last rays of the sun began to fade in the tiny, high, recessed stained-glass windows of the cell.
Sandra closed her eyes and the silence grew. Jordan sat locked in his chair; his chest rising and falling, his eyelids fluttering as he dreamed or thought whatever thoughts they were that troubled him; his left hand fluttering a little, too, where it was strapped down by his thigh. Harry and Darcy stood watching, aware now of the gathering dusk, the fading light…
And without warning Sandra was in!
She looked, saw, gave a strangled little cry and stumbled back away from Jordan's chair until she crashed into the wall. Jordan's eyes snapped open. They were terrified! His head swivelled left and right and he saw the two espers standing before him — and just for a moment, he knew them!
'Darcy! Harry!' he croaked.
And as simply and suddenly as that Harry knew who had come to him in his dreams at Bonnyrig to beg his help!
But in the next moment Jordan's white face began to twitch and shake in dreadful spasms of effort and agony. He tried to say something butwas denied the chance. The shuddering stopped, his fevered eyes closed and his head lolled, and he slumped down again. But even as he returned to his monstrous dreams, so he managed one last word:
'Ha-Ha-Haarrryr
They rushed to Sandra where she stood half-fainting against the wall. And when she stopped gasping for air and was able to hold them off:
'What was it?' Harry asked her. 'Did you see?'
'I saw,' she nodded, swallowing rapidly. 'He's not mad, Harry, just trapped.'
Trapped?'
'In his own mind, yes. Like some innocent, cringing, terrified victim locked in a dungeon.'