The Hunt and the Kill

by Holly Watt

  ‘She’s right, Garrick.’ Zac dropped the cynicism for once. ‘I’m pretty sure that Adsero know that I am talking to Ca— And if they do … ’

  ‘But—’

  ‘She’s dug into too many things.’ Zac’s eyes bored into Casey’s. ‘Couldn’t keep her sodding nose out. And I’ve spent enough time with her now to know that she won’t stop either.’

  ‘No,’ said Casey. ‘I won’t. I’m going to get to the bottom of all this, Garrick. And you can either help me, or … ’

  The words hung in the air, thunder in the distance.

  ‘But … ’ Garrick turned towards the mountain, as if he might find comfort there.

  Casey and Zac waited.

  ‘Come on,’ Casey was impatient, ‘We don’t have time—’

  She stopped talking at a small gesture from Zac.

  ‘It’s time to end all this,’ Zac spoke straight to Garrick. ‘Now.’

  Garrick’s eyes were still on the green skirts of the mountain, as if he might wish himself there, far away from this beach.

  ‘Elias threatened me.’ As he started to speak, Garrick’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘When he came out to San Francisco. He said he would destroy me if I didn’t shut down the whole Corax operation immediately.’

  ‘How did he say it? In those exact words?’

  ‘He came to my house in Pacific Heights,’ said Garrick quietly. ‘The house that he had bought me. That’s how he started it all off. By pointing out that he had given me everything. Everything.’

  ‘He hadn’t given you everything,’ said Casey. ‘You’d have been fine on your own, Garrick. You already had your own businesses before you met him.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Garrick. ‘Maybe not. But he listed it all, bit by bit. Drewsteignton. The job at Adsero. Even renting my mother’s house in Sussex for her. Everything.’

  ‘That was his choice,’ said Casey. ‘And by renting her house, he kept her dependent on him.’

  ‘That’s sort of what I said.’ Garrick kicked at the sand. ‘I said I’d pay him back, move out of the Pacific Heights house. Return it all, somehow. But that’s when he got really angry. He said if I didn’t do what he wanted, it would be my mother who suffered.’

  Garrick stared at Casey, half-pleading.

  ‘Jeanie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he mean by that?’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘How did you know he was serious? He might have just been trying to scare you.’

  ‘I knew that he meant it. His face … I knew it. I decided we had to shut down Pergamex. I didn’t know what Elias might do, but he scared me. And Adsero had more than enough to take down Pergamex anyway. They’re a multinational, for God’s sake. They can do whatever they want, just using lawyers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Zac went mad when I told him we were shutting down Pergamex,’ said Garrick. ‘He was furious. Said that we were doing crucial work, and that we couldn’t stop just like that. He said we were going to carry on, and I was being crazy. And he said I couldn’t stop him anyway, that he would just take the formula somewhere else. It wasn’t like I could have fought that, given that I had stolen it in the first place. Elias had gone up to Vancouver for the day, but when he got back to San Francisco, I told him I couldn’t control Zac, and I didn’t know what to do … ’

  Garrick stopped, remembering.

  ‘What did Bailey do then?’ asked Casey.

  ‘He just shrugged,’ said Garrick. ‘We’d met in a hotel lobby, for God’s sake, with people all around us. He was staying in the most expensive hotel in San Fran, of course. He just stood up and said he had a meeting in ten minutes.’

  ‘I remember you calling me afterwards,’ said Zac. ‘Saying he seemed fine with it all.’

  ‘But then my phone went at 4 a.m. the next morning,’ said Garrick. ‘My mother, and she was screaming. Completely hysterical. It was Frank, her boyfriend. He’d gone out for a walk that morning. They had two little dogs. Pomeranians. Stupid things, but she loved them, and Frank had taken them out … ’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Frank was … Frank was dead.’

  51

  ‘What happened to him?’ Casey asked urgently.

  ‘He had a heart attack,’ Garrick faltered. ‘Out walking in the woods next to their house. He’d had a heart attack and died.’

  A shape on the floor.

  ‘A heart attack?’ Casey could hear her voice had roughened. ‘Your mother’s boyfriend died of a heart attack?’

  ‘That’s what the doctors said,’ Garrick said miserably. ‘Afterwards. After the post-mortem, and all that. They said he’d had a huge heart attack out on the walk, and that there had been no way of saving him.’

  ‘A heart attack … ’ Casey put the heels of her palms to her eyes, ramming them into the sockets.

  My love, beloved.

  ‘My mother was screaming down the phone to me,’ said Garrick. ‘No words, just this awful wailing. A policewoman took the phone, and said if there was any way I could get home, it would be for the best. Now, please.’

  ‘You flew back to England?’

  ‘I got the first flight,’ Garrick said. ‘But before I headed to the airport, I went to the hotel where Elias was staying. That stupid, swanky boutique hotel. It wasn’t even dawn yet, but I got reception to ring his room. Made them. And when he answered, I shouted: “Did you do this? Did you? Did you?”’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Garrick. ‘He just sat there in silence, and then just as I was putting the phone down, he said – very quietly, so I almost didn’t hear it – “Worse things can happen, Garrick.” And then the phone went dead.’

  Casey was watching Garrick’s mouth move, forcing herself to concentrate.

  ‘What did you think he meant by that?’

  ‘He was threatening my mother,’ Garrick spoke confidently, for once. ‘And me. I know exactly what he meant.’

  ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘Tell them what?’ Garrick said bleakly. ‘How?’

  The tide was rushing in now, the waves splashing higher.

  ‘Could they cause someone to have a heart attack like that?’ Casey asked Zac. ‘Could someone make a murder look like a normal heart attack?’

  ‘Bailey runs a pharmaceutical company,’ Zac shrugged, ‘He was a NatSci at Cambridge, too. An excellent one. I’m sure there are all sorts of ways he could have done it, with that background, and with access to Adsero’s stock of chemicals. It could be something as simple as injecting someone with a massive dose of insulin; it would be incredibly hard to trace it because your blood sugar levels go haywire after you die anyway. I imagine there are all sorts of other things, their anaesthetics … ’

  ‘Bailey certainly didn’t do it himself,’ said Casey. ‘He was safely in San Francisco. But he has people around him.’

  She thought briefly of the man who had scared off Noah Hart in the taxi rank outside Milton Keynes station, the man who chased her through Hampstead Heath.

  ‘No,’ agreed Zac. ‘It wasn’t Bailey himself.’

  ‘Frank was cremated,’ Garrick looked gaunt. ‘I never said anything to my mother. She was in such a state, anyway. And I didn’t want her to be even more upset.’

  Casey wondered if Bailey could have given the order to kill Jeanie. Ordered the death of a woman he must have loved once. Garrick hadn’t risked it, though. Garrick, who knew Bailey well.

  ‘And then you got a payout from Bailey?’ Casey heard the accusation in her voice.

  ‘Yes,’ Garrick wilted. ‘I did.’

  ‘He had to really,’ put in Zac. ‘We had investors. We couldn’t just shut the whole thing down overnight. People would have asked questions.’

  People like Noah Hart, thought Casey.

  ‘Elias bought the rights to Corax through a British Virgin Islands company,’ said Garrick. ‘We did it formally. The investors got enough to keep the
m quiet.’

  ‘How convenient.’ Casey was glacial.

  Zac met her eyes evenly. ‘I believed he would kill Jeanie. And probably Garrick. And me too, critically. There was a carrot, but there was a bloody big stick too.’ He shrugged. ‘Not everyone spends their whole life looking for a hill to die on.’

  ‘I don’t … ’ She turned away from him.

  ‘So.’ Garrick sat down on the sand again. ‘What on earth do we do now?’

  ‘We need to prove it,’ said Casey firmly. ‘Everything is circumstantial at the moment. When we go for Elias Bailey, we’re going to have to be sure.’

  ‘You can’t prove he is doing anything catastrophically wrong with saepio,’ Zac began. ‘Abigail, down in Devon, she may have just driven off the road, and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Then there is Ernest Brennan. Still nothing to suggest that incident was anything other than a bike accident.’ He raised his eyebrows at Casey.

  ‘One of my colleagues is monitoring that in London,’ said Casey. ‘There were no witnesses, nothing.’

  ‘Then there’s the ex-Marine.’ The casualness of Zac’s words felt like a blow.

  ‘Ed,’ she said. ‘There’s Ed.’

  ‘Sure. And finally, there’s Frank. Both Ed and Frank died of heart attacks, which may be a coincidence.’

  ‘Was Frank healthy?’ Casey turned to Garrick, unable to bear Zac’s nonchalance.

  ‘Yes,’ Garrick nodded confidently. ‘My mother does Pilates, everything like that, and she got him into it too. She and Frank walked the dogs together, went jogging, all sorts of stuff. Frank must have been in his sixties, but he was fit.’

  ‘How do we prove anything?’ Casey fretted.

  ‘Could you ring up Bailey?’ Zac asked Garrick. ‘Or just confront him? With a wire, or a camera.’

  ‘Bailey is too careful,’ Casey said. She thought of Hessa facing down the Adsero chief executive in that hotel room in Wrocław, the force of his rage. ‘And he probably doesn’t trust Garrick.’

  She sensed Garrick flinch, but he stayed silent. It was true.

  Loelia? Casey wondered. Then rejected the idea. She wasn’t sure of Loelia’s loyalties either, even though she had spoken freely, and handed over the photographs. Loelia hadn’t even seen Bailey for years, and any reunion would be too freighted with emotion. She couldn’t imagine Loelia getting Bailey to drop his mask.

  ‘Where is Bailey at the moment?’ asked Zac.

  ‘His jet is still in Frankfurt,’ said Casey.

  ‘There’s a factory near there,’ Garrick agreed. ‘He quite often spends time in Germany. He likes it there.’

  ‘Well,’ said Zac. ‘Garrick, could you get us into the Llandudno house? To see the files he keeps there?’

  Garrick hesitated, and Casey could see the tension across his shoulders.

  ‘Could you?’ she pushed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I know the staff there, of course. I spent enough time there that they would recognise me.’

  ‘Right,’ said Casey briskly. ‘Well, we’ll try that.’

  ‘They might check,’ Garrick said doubtfully. ‘They might ring him up.’

  ‘How did you leave it with him?’ said Casey. ‘The last time you saw him.’

  ‘I told him he was a bastard.’ There was a glint in Garrick’s eye. ‘I told him never to come near me or my mother ever again.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Casey cheerfully. ‘He probably didn’t spell all that out to his Cape Town staff.’

  52

  ‘Mabel!’ Garrick threw his hands wide, too wide for sobriety. ‘How the devil are you?’

  The housekeeper regarded him solemnly. ‘Good morning, Mr Garrick.’

  ‘Would you believe it?’ Garrick swayed artistically. ‘We’ve been bloody mugged! All our things stolen!’

  ‘Mugged!’ chirruped Casey behind him. ‘Bloody mugged.’

  Casey wore a short black dress, and was carrying a pair of six-inch heels in one hand, and a big sequined bag in the other. The bag glittered in the light of the dawn. Barefoot, she teetered awkwardly on the gravel, cackling as she clutched at Garrick’s arm. Last night, she had plastered on her make-up and then forced herself to sleep in it for a few hours. Before leaving the hotel room, she had backcombed her hair wildly and pinned it into place with a couple of diamante clips. Now Casey giggled again, a high-pitched sound ebbing away to drunken sniggers.

  Mabel’s eyes swept over her, the disapproval not quite hidden.

  Garrick wore dark trousers, the suit jacket abandoned. His shirt buttons were undone, and his fuchsia-pink tie loosened. There was a smudge of Casey’s scarlet lipstick on his collar, and she had chucked a shot of vodka over his blue shirt. The stench of stale spirits was a smear on the bright blue morning, clashing with Casey’s perfume and the choke of cigarette smoke.

  ‘Mr Elias is not here,’ Mabel said uncertainly.

  The housekeeper was standing at the side gate, her body tilted back towards the main house. This was not a house people walked up to, thought Casey: this side gate was barely ever used. Mabel was used to people driving up to the house, and the big electric gates deciding who entered, and who didn’t.

  Security cameras – several of them – peered down blandly. A few yards from the gates a guardhouse squatted.

  ‘I know, Mabel,’ Garrick said cheerily, too loud. ‘Dad’s in wretched Germany. But I need to call a driver, the police, everything. The bloody bastards pulled a gun on me, can you believe it? A gun! They stole my car, my cell, Carrie’s handbag. This country, dude … Still, at least we’re OK. Lucky, hey?’

  As he spoke, they were bustling through the gate past the housekeeper.

  ‘We were at a party in Llandudno,’ Casey tossed over her shoulder, as she reeled past a marble fountain topped by a pouting cupid. ‘It was such fun! Such great people! And then we thought we would drive up to the lookout, and there … Bloody bastards.’

  ‘We had to walk,’ Garrick spoke as if surprised by the notion. ‘All the way here. Took fucking ages!’

  ‘These shoes!’ Casey trilled. ‘Agony, I tell you … ’

  Delphine had driven them from Camps Bay to the seaside village of Llandudno, just south of Cape Town’s central business district. Racing past the Twelve Apostles, severe in the dawn, then parking the car by the beach.

  ‘I’ll wait here,’ said Delphine, and Casey nodded, tense.

  They walked up through Llandudno to the long driveway that led to Bailey’s house. The house stood alone, in the hills just outside the little town. The sun had risen as they walked, the fynbos – low scrubby bushes, small scrappy shrubs – rolling away on either side of the track. Far below the house, the sea glittered white and blue in the new day.

  ‘I’ve got no idea how they managed to get permission to build this place,’ Garrick had muttered.

  As they got nearer to the house, Casey had felt the fear surge again, and turned away so Garrick couldn’t see her face.

  It feels as if I have lost my nerve.

  It can happen.

  Stage fright, on a raked stage.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Garrick said, almost as if he had read her thoughts. ‘I’ve known Mabel for ages. It’ll be fine. And his bodyguards only stay up at the house when he’s in the country.’

  And they walked on.

  ‘Mr Garrick … ’ The housekeeper tried again.

  But they ignored her, strolling up the white steps to the huge entrance hall.

  ‘What a gorgeous place,’ slurred Casey, crossing the lobby. ‘You were right, G. It is absolutely stunning.’

  The house was built along sleek lines and geometric angles, almost every room opening out towards the sea. A wide spiral staircase curled up from the entrance hall towards the first floor, with a gallery running right the way around the enormous room. Beyond the huge windows, Casey could see a vast infinity pool twinkling in the sunlight.

  ‘I need a sodding coffee,’ shouted Garrick. ‘Mabel, can you
get me one?’

  ‘Breakfast!’ gloated Casey. ‘Yes! Oh, I’m starving!’

  Mabel hesitated.

  ‘I suppose I had better call Dad! Tell him about the car.’ Garrick clapped his hand over his mouth. Then he peered vacantly at his watch. ‘Better leave it an hour or so. He’d be well and truly pissed off if I called him right now.’

  ‘I can’t wait to meet your father,’ Casey squeaked, the smallest emphasis on the last word. ‘It’s such a shame he’s not here!’

  ‘And you’re wearing just the right outfit to meet him.’ Garrick grabbed her waist. Then he turned, abruptly peremptory. ‘Where’s that coffee, Mabel?’

  ‘Or maybe just one more glass of champagne?’ tittered Casey.

  ‘And that,’ Garrick bowed deeply, ‘is why I love you.’

  Mabel gave the smallest sigh, and walked off towards the kitchen. As the double doors swung closed behind her, Casey’s eyes met Garrick’s. Upstairs, Casey indicated with her chin. Now.

  ‘I’ll show you my old bedroom,’ Garrick shouted loudly, and they ran up the spiral staircase.

  ‘This way.’ Garrick turned right as they reached the gallery. There was another staircase ahead, this one narrow, climbing up towards a long window. They sprinted up it, as quietly as they could.

  Bailey’s office was just as Garrick had described. Beyond the wide balcony, Casey could see Llandudno’s beach and the enormous granite boulders that divided the earth from the ocean here.

  The sea looked stormy now, gusts of wind sending the buddleias in the garden dipping and swaying. Close to land, the water was a chilly turquoise, a rim of white marking the breakers. Further out, the water darkened to indigo. It was a beautiful but oddly bleak view.

  For a moment, Casey felt a surge of euphoria. They were in. And then she halted, taking in the enormity of the task. The cream walls were almost completely covered by shelves and shelves of files. Hundreds of them, all a serviceable grey.

  ‘Where do we start?’ asked Garrick.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Casey felt blank.

  Lurching forward, she began reading the labels on the back of the files. The tags were written in a neat black script, unremarkable. Odd names jumped out at her: Pittsburgh. Frankfurt. Valladolid. Epping. Were those all Adsero factories? Garrick was staring round the room, looking equally bewildered, and Casey felt the frustration boil up.