by Katie Penryn
Chapter 33
I took the elevator as far as it would go, through the six floors of the hospital wards and the two floors of the nurses’ school. From there I had to climb a flight of service stairs up to the roof. I opened the door in the cube covering the stairs and stepped out onto a flat roof. A giant ventilator stood at the each corner of the roof.
I had to get my bearings, so I walked across to the parapet facing me. A heavy cylindrical rail of large circumference ran all the way round the roof. Three heavy duty winches were attached to the rail. I half guessed their purpose: to hold a building maintenance unit. To look over the side I would have to lean out over the rail. I held onto to it for safety and looked over. A gondola or cradle swayed on its six cables a few floors below me telling me I was right.
Red and orange streaks ran across the sky out to sea as the sun sank slowly down to the horizon. This was the side of the building where Jonny’s room was. I wondered if the window cleaner had been working here all week and if so, had he seen anything out of the ordinary last Thursday? He would have had an excellent vantage point.
A shout rang out behind me. “So, you’ve worked it out then?”
I knew the voice, but couldn’t place it. I spun round. Before I had time to reason or bargain with him, Jonny’s murderer rushed me, dived for my knees grabbing hold of them and heaved me over the side.
I landed with a bone shaking thud on the floor of the cradle, hitting my head a wallop on the safety rail in passing. I lay there winded for a couple of minutes. When my vision steadied and my stomach slowed its churnings, I looked up to see him working on the winches.
All of a sudden the cables at one end sagged. The cradle shook as the tension was released. I scrambled up to the other end on my hands and knees and hooked my arm round the safety rail as the platform pitched from side to side. No sooner had I tightened my grip than the middle cables went slack and with a terrifying lurch the cradle tipped from horizontal to vertical.
I hung there holding on with every ounce of energy I could summon while the cradle swung to and fro. I was too shaken to call out. I could barely breathe so great was my terror. Heights have never been my thing. I didn’t dare look down. The pendulum effect of the cradle’s motion made me nauseous. After what seemed like forever the cradle came to rest still pointing vertically downwards to the ground five floors below me.
I steadied myself by breathing deeply and attempted to swing my legs upwards onto the railing to take the weight off my arms. It took several tries before I was sitting on the safety railing and I was able to transfer my grip to the cable. My phone fell out of my pocket during the maneuver and plunged down five floors.
I remembered my telekinetic power and thought of pulling my phone up to me, but I couldn’t see it when I sneaked a look below me. I needed line of sight for my power to work. Every time I looked down my stomach turned over, and I risked falling off my perch.
I shouted for help, but I was far above the heads of the few people who walked past below, and the double-glazed windows were closed against the summer heat with the AC system going full blast.
All I could do was hope someone would see me hanging there, or that Felix would arrive before my strength gave out.
Why, oh why, hadn’t I put two and two together before?
Chapter 34
Felix
I found a space about fifty yards from the entrance to the car park and pulled in. As I stepped out of the car a jolt of pain shot through my guts. Call it intuition; call it telepathy or even magic. Penzi was in trouble. I slammed the car door forgetting to lock it in my haste to get to her in time. In time to prevent I didn’t know what, but the presentiment lay heavy in my belly.
I sprinted through the car park and in through the front doors of the hospital to find an angry melee of medical staff and visitors clustered round the elevators in the reception area. Apparently, they had stopped working and no one knew why. I couldn’t wait for the maintenance crew to arrive. I looked about for the stairs and found them set right at the back of the area. I took the steps three at a time through eight floors to find the elevator doors wedged open with fire extinguishers on the top floor.
A deliberate act. Penzi was in danger.
I found the stairway to the roof behind a door marked Service, raced upwards and spilled out onto the roof.
Penzi was nowhere in sight. Calling out to her I quickly scouted behind all the auxiliary structures. Nothing. A rail ran around inside the parapet making it difficult for anyone to look over safely. Had she fallen? I hurried over to the side and looked down. Nothing. I moved on to the next side, hearing a faint shout from below as I drew closer. It sounded like Penzi. I held onto the rail to look over. My stomach lurched when I saw her several floors below me, hanging onto the cables at the end of a maintenance cradle that swung to and fro vertically, its other cables hanging loose. I counted the windows. She was outside the fifth floor.
“Penzi, up here!” I called out at the top of my voice.
The face she turned up towards me was bleached of all color and as rigid as if cut in marble, white marble, but when she saw me the ghost of a smile lit her face for a second.
“I knew you’d come, but these last two cables are creaking. I don’t think they’ll take this weight for much longer.”
“Did you fall or were you pushed, boss?”
“For heaven’s sake, what do you think?” she asked back.
“Did you see who it was?”
“Just get me out of here, Felix.”
She might have been frightened, but she still had plenty of spirit. I drew back to check the winches. I decided to try the one controlling the cables still attached to the cradle, but when I pressed the button nothing happened. I tried again, still nothing.
“It’s been sabotaged. Hold on while I think of something.”
“You’d better hurry up.”
I took out my phone and called Dubois. I explained the situation as briefly as I could and asked him to send a helicopter to rescue Penzi. He promised he was onto it. As I rang off the cables gave an almighty creak and a groan and they slipped a foot or two. The brake had stopped working properly. The cradle could plummet to the ground long before the helicopter arrived all the way from Bordeaux.
Only one thing for it.
I leaned over and called out to Penzi. “Boss, I’ve an idea but you’ve got to cast the forget spell now.”
“How can I concentrate on something like that when I’m swinging hundreds of feet above the ground?”
“That’s my Penzi, stay feisty, but do what I say NOW!”
I crossed my fingers. She shut her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths and cast the spell.
“Done,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“Never you mind. All you have to do it sit up straight and look over to your right. Next time I call your name I want you to let go of the cable and trust me.”
“Are you mad? I’ll fall.”
“No, you won’t.”
I pulled back from the edge, drew myself up and inflated my lungs to pump my blood full of oxygen. And I shifted to Felix the Leopard. As fast as my four legs could carry me I raced down to the seventh floor, through the ward and out onto the balcony facing the sea.
Penzi now hung two floors below me and as I watched, the cables gave another few inches. There was no time to lose. I had to risk it.
I climbed up onto the wall of the balcony and found my balance.
I cried out, “Now Penzi. Let go.”
With all my big cat muscle power I launched myself off into space in a diagonal direction. Like a heat-seeking missile I flew towards Penzi. I snagged the back of her denim jacket in my powerful fangs as I flew through the cables. I had just enough momentum to clear the wall of the balcony on the third floor and land on my front paws. My back legs crunched forwards saving Penzi from hitting the concrete. We’d made it. A loud shriek of metal sounded off behind us and the cradle plunged to the gro
und.
It took Penzi a few minutes to recover. Meanwhile I shifted back to man mode and leaned against the balcony wall watching her. She shook her head.
“What was that? That was crazy. You could have killed both of us.”
“But I didn’t,” I said holding out my hand to help her to her feet.
She shook so much I had to hold her against me to steady her down before we could move back into the hospital.
When she stopped shivering, I reminded her to click her fingers to end the forget spell, and I took out my phone to call off the helicopter.
“What happened?” asked Dubois.
I told him I had managed to rescue Penzi without explaining how.
“How did she get there? On the maintenance cradle, I mean?” he asked.
“Someone pushed her over the edge.”
“Punaise. Who did that?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to ask her yet. I’ll call you.”
And I rang off. Penzi needed me and a cup of hot sweet tea with a dash of Laphroaig, the next best thing to magic.
I took her arm and guided her through the French doors into the foyer of the Ward 3 and out onto the stairs.
“I don’t think I can manage the stairs,” she said. “My legs are wobbly.”
“Not a problem. I’ll carry you.”
I scooped her up into my arms. “You feel cold, boss.”
“I’m freezing. I was scared to death and the wind coming in off the sea was icy.”
With a mug of hot tea in her hands and a plate of her favorite éclairs on the table, it was time to find out what had happened. Only one person could have done this to Penzi — Jonny Sauvage’s murderer.
“So, tell me, Penzi. We can’t leave it any longer. We need to get Dubois involved. Who was it?”
Chapter 35
I knew Felix would be surprised at my answer. I put my cup down in its saucer in case Felix knocked the table and made me spill my tea.
“Someone we’d cleared,” I said. “We didn’t check his alibi properly. Yes, he was working for the council all Thursday, but we didn’t check where. I bet he was cleaning the windows here at the hospital.”
Felix reared back and his foot shot out and kicked the table leg. Tea spilled across the table, but neither of us made any effort to wipe it up.
“Not Kiki?” he gasped at last.
He rubbed his forehead as he processed the idea of Kiki killing Jonny.
“Felix, he knew how to work the equipment. And don’t you remember how dirty the windows were in Jonny’s hospital room the first time we visited him. When we went back into the room to check it out after the mayor ordered the ward sister to let us in, the windows were sparkling clean.”
“We have to call Dubois. Tell him Kiki tried to kill you,” he said taking his phone out.
“And what do we tell him? There were no witnesses up there on the roof. Just me and Kiki. Any fingerprints on the winch mechanism will be explained away because that’s his job.”
“We have to tell Dubois even if there’s no proof. He can call Kiki in for questioning. It is a case of attempted murder after all.”
It was always possible that Dubois could shake the truth out of Kiki, but I doubted it.
“By all means, call Dubois and tell him, but we have to get the proof. And what’s stumped me all the time I was swinging about on that darned cradle is his motive. Why would Kiki smother Jonny when Jonny had just paid him ten thousand dollars? It doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“And how did he commit the murder? I’m missing something here, boss.”
“It’s obvious once you know it’s Kiki, and that he’s a window cleaner. He must have lined the cradle up with the window of Jonny’s room, climbed in, smothered Jonny and climbed back out again.”
“It explains everything. He probably locked the door from the inside and unlocked it again when he left. Anyone trying it would go away and come back thinking it was locked for privacy by one of the nurses.”
“And he would have used the controls to winch the cradle up a floor out of sight.”
“But we’re back to why? Why would he do it?”
We turned our attention to mopping up the spilt tea while we thought it over. Felix went to fetch us both a fresh cup.
When he came back with the tea, he said, “We have to search his house.”
“Let’s do it now. The sooner the better. Before Kiki has a chance to hide anything.”
We left the tea because it was too hot to drink, but Felix insisted I suck two sugar lumps on the way to the car. He wouldn’t let me drive saying I was in no fit state with all the wobbling and shaking.
*
When we reached Kiki and Marie’s house Felix drove past the entrance to the drive slowly twice while I tried to see if either of the vans was there. The second time he slowed right down to a crawl and I sat on the window to get a better view. One van was there. Dubois gave us the answer to the whereabouts of the other. He called as Felix was parking the car at the side of the road a few yards from the gate.
“We’ve caught Renard,” he said. “Picked his van up at the supermarket. We’re taking him in for questioning now. Do you want to come and watch?”
“Not this time, thank you, Xavier. We’re on an important mission. I’ll get back to you later.”
“Dubois?” Felix asked.
I nodded. “They’ve got Kiki in custody. So that must be Marie’s van.”
“We’ll have to use magic in the circumstances,” Felix said. “We can’t just knock on the door. Marie’s not going to let you in to search their house.”
“Freeze or invisible?” I asked.
“Let’s play it safe. Last time you used the freeze spell it didn’t last long enough and we haven’t fixed that problem yet. And if we use the invisible spell on its own Marie might bump into us.”
Felix parked the car at the side of the road a few yards down from the gate. As soon as we were both standing on the verge, I cast the invisible spell so Marie wouldn’t see us walking up their drive.
As we made our way to the front door, I couldn’t help feeling sad about Marie’s love for her garden and all the hard work she had put into it. I hoped she hadn’t been complicit in her husband’s act of murder. We peered through the windows at the front. Marie was sitting on the sofa watching TV with her feet up and a cup of coffee at her elbow.
Felix nudged me and jerked his head to the side. “We’ll have to go in through the back.”
As I turned to follow him, Marie pulled out her phone to answer a call. I hung back to watch. She broke into a smile as she took the call. It had to be Kiki. As she listened, her smile slid away and her eyes widened in alarm. She shut the phone down, jammed it back in her pocket and hurried out of the room. Seconds later she came rushing out through the front door, jumped into her van and drove off.
“What’s keeping you?” asked Felix coming back round the corner of the house to find me.
“I think Marie’s received a call from Kiki telling her he’s been taken in for questioning.”
“She’ll be out of the way for some time if she’s gone to the gendarmerie. Let’s go in through the front.”
I cast the unlock spell. We were in without a clue what we were looking for. I took the kitchen while Felix began with the sitting room. The smell of baking greeted me as I opened the kitchen door. Four rhubarb tarts sat on the oven shelves, the edges beginning to brown. Marie had left in such a hurry she’d forgotten all about them. I turned the oven off hoping she would think she’d done it herself. I couldn’t find anything suspicious, only more evidence of Marie’s good housekeeping and gardening skills: upturned glass jars draining by the sink, a bowl of chopped fruit and packets of French jam-making sugar on the kitchen counter.
I met Felix in the hallway.
“Anything?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Only bank statements and they didn’t tell me anything we didn’t know, the only item of inte
rest being Jonny’s transfer of ten thousand dollars in Euros. You take the dining room, boss. I’ll search the utility rooms and broom cupboards.”
Again nothing and so we moved on upstairs. Felix searched the guest rooms and bathroom while I tackled the main bedroom. Marie was as tidy in the bedroom as she was in the kitchen. It took no time at all to search as everything was so neatly arranged in the drawers. The last place to check was an antique armoire, one of those monster cherry wood edifices so much part of French country life. It wasn’t until I opened the drawer at the bottom of the armoire that I found anything of interest: Kiki’s scrapbook, the one Marie had mentioned. It smelled of old glue and bulged with newspaper clippings, photos and old programs. I called Felix to have a look.
“Could be useful,” he said taking off the knicker elastic holding it closed.
He leafed through it in a cursory manner, taking care not to tear the much thumbed pages.
“We’ll take it with us and have a proper look when we get back home.”
I was hunting for a plastic bag to put it in when my phone rang. Dubois.
“Penzi, you might want to get down here. Marie Renard has just come in with the wildest of stories. She’s not making much sense, but she insists Jonny’s death is all her fault.”
“Right, we’re on our way.”
Felix laid the precious scrap book package on the back seat and we set off for the gendarmerie with me driving this time.
“How can Jonny Sauvage’s death possibly be Marie’s fault?” I asked Felix. “There’s no way she could have used the window cleaning cradle to access his room, is there?”
“We know she had the time to get to the hospital and back, boss.”
“But what could have been her motive? She’s not a member of the band. And Kiki had been paid ten thousand dollars, anyway.”
“Maybe she’s hoping to take the blame to save Kiki. They love each other very much, you know. I don’t see her as a murderess, but I’ve been fooled before. We’ll have to wait and see what she’s saying.”
