Beautiful Death

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘Right behind you,’ he said, as Jack and Angela ran at full pelt toward the clearing.

  Behind him the first of the dogs barked.

  * * *

  The ignition was on and already Kate could hear the telltale hiss of the odourless gas that would kill her. There was suddenly so much she wished she could say to those she loved.

  The Fiat was such a small car. She had no doubt that the dying would happen quickly. She knew how carbon monoxide worked, had read about it several times in pathology reports. And she was trapped by the tube that was blowing it straight into her face.

  Outside the man in the balaclava watched her. She had no idea what his expression was, but somehow she didn’t think he was smiling. Her death was not his idea. He was just doing a job. She supposed he was making sure everything was working according to the script and that he’d probably hang around a bit longer to ensure she was finished. She began to think about the stages of her pitiful death.

  The first thing that would occur — in fact it was already occurring, she realised — was a muffling sensation. Her mind felt as though it was thickening. She was pretty sure now that she wouldn’t have been able to hold a pen to write a farewell note even if her arms had been free to start scribbling.

  A headache would ensue. Deep, dull, confusing. She would slip into unconsciousness. Minutes were all she had left. Kate reminded herself of a case where a man had gassed himself in a Barina. He was dead within ten minutes, according to pathology. She’d already been inhaling the fumes from her exhaust for two, possibly three minutes.

  There was no point in pulling at the handcuffs. She’d already tried that and was not going to waste the last few minutes of her conscious life in futile struggle. A calm came over her at the same time as a dull throb began in her head. This was it. It was happening.

  She leaned her head against the window. It suddenly felt awfully hard to hold it up straight and she gazed out at her killer. He stared back, unwavering. Perhaps he’d done this before. Surely no one with a heart could watch this without flinching?

  She hated him. She hoped he met a grisly end. She wouldn’t let him be the last person she saw. Kate told herself to find the strength — it was so hard now — to turn her head away. Or at least close her eyes. Before she could rally the energy to do either she noticed the man’s head snap away from watching her to look towards the other side of the clearing.

  Something’s disturbed him was Kate’s last clear thought, but then the pain in her head intensified and her world began to darken.

  Without realising she was doing so, Kate closed her eyes.

  And let go.

  Jack saw him.

  ‘There!’ he yelled and redoubled his efforts. The two dogs thundered past him and the lights of the ambulance and another police car lit the clearing.

  ‘Get him!’ he roared, surprised that his voice sounded so guttural as to be almost primitive. He wanted to run with them but he slid to a halt, heart breaking as he saw Kate slumped in the driver’s seat of her neat little car. He’d not seen it before, only heard her talking about it to one of the other members of the team. She was proud of it. Her first brand new car, he recalled her saying. He prayed it wasn’t her coffin as he yanked open the door.

  She fell out sideways and he caught her, reaching to switch off the ignition.

  ‘Kate! Kate!’ he repeated several times, slapping at her face. ‘Please, Kate … please.’

  He could feel her soft hair against his cheek, the warmth of her body against his neck. He craned his head, looking for the ambulance.

  ‘Oxygen!’ he screamed at the paramedics spilling out of the vehicle.

  Within seconds he had been pushed aside and an oxygen mask had been placed over Kate’s face and a different sort of gas — the life-giving kind — was being pumped into her lungs. She was lying on her side, her hands still cuffed. Jack could hear a paramedic urging Kate to breathe. He knew it was still too early to tell if she would live.

  He sat in the leaf litter of the clearing, holding his head, feeling helpless, hopeless, useless — for an eternity, it seemed. In reality, it was only a few moments before he jumped up slightly out of control. ‘Make her live!’ he roared, and knew he had to get away from the pathetic sight of her unconscious body — her possibly dead body — and take it out on someone. Someone had to pay for all this death and despair.

  Jack strode to the other car and wrenched open the door hard enough to make its hinges protest. He took the keys out of the ignition. This was to be the vehicle that took Kate’s killer — attempted killer, he admonished himself — away, he supposed, but he would ensure he remained on foot until they could hunt him down.

  He snatched up a jumper he found on the car seat. That would help the sniffers. He took one last look at the paramedics working on Kate. One returned his gaze and looked doubtful. Jack felt a rare surge of violence pass through him and he began to run in the direction of where he’d seen DI Karim disappearing in a melee of dogs and trackers.

  He soon caught up with them, paused in a smaller clearing, calculating which track to follow. ‘Here, this belongs to him,’ he said to one of the trackers.

  ‘Good,’ the man said and whistled. ‘Robbie!’

  Obediently one of the bloodhounds trotted up and sniffed the woolly pile in the man’s hands.

  ‘Find him, Robbie,’ the handler urged. ‘Go, boy.’

  ‘Everyone else wait!’ Jack ordered. ‘Watch this one. He’s got the scent.’

  Robbie, his seriously ugly nose to the ground, turned in circles several times, then moved first to one tree and then another.

  ‘It seems the perp doesn’t know what to do. He’s panicking, by the looks of this.’

  ‘Has Robbie picked him up?’ Jack felt frantic.

  ‘Watch him. He needs to get the strongest scent and the one that keeps going. His ears stir up the ground and his drooling mouth pulls in the smell as well. Don’t be fooled by that hang-dog expression. He can follow a scent for weeks, long after you’d think it’s gone cold.’

  In any other situation Jack would have found this information interesting, but now all he could do was fret over Kate. He forced himself to be rational and gasped with relief and gratitude when Robbie barked insistently near a gap between two trees.

  ‘Ah, he has it!’ the handler said. ‘Now we go.’

  Jack was near the front of the group of excited dogs and anxious, angry men that set off once more into the forest, when his phone rang.

  He answered but kept moving. ‘Sarah!’

  ‘Sir! What’s happening?’

  ‘I’m at a place called High Beech at Epping Forest. It’s where we’ve found Kate but we’re in pursuit of the man who brought her here. He’s on foot, we’re heading …’ Jack had to think about it, looking all around to get his bearings. ‘Heading south. I need more squad cars, more people, surrounding the area. Get them in from Juliet Charlie.’

  ‘Yes, sir. What about Kate —?’

  ‘Not now, Sarah. Get onto this and get some more bodies to help. I’ll call you back shortly.’

  Within moments the baying of the hounds intensified and Jack realised they were closing in on their quarry.

  It was actually Angela who brought him down. Youth and impetuousness on her side, she leaped down an incline of four metres. No small jump, Jack thought, hugely impressed, as she crashed onto the shoulders of the felon.

  Jack was on him in moments as well. The man struggled and Jack relished the chance to restrain him forcibly, particularly enjoying driving his knee hard into the man’s apparently dislocated shoulder. Did Jack care? Not in the least. He hoped the injury never healed.

  He began, over the man’s screams, to read him his rights.

  ‘Get up you cowardly bastard,’ he said, when it was done, hauling the now whimpering man to his feet. ‘No stretcher available, DI Karim?’ Before the young detective could answer, Jack went on, ‘Sorry mate, no paramedics around, you’ll have to walk ba
ck up the hill. Don’t worry, I’ll help.’ He spoke angrily, dragging the man now, despite his yells of pain.

  Angela looked a little unsure, but a glance at DCI Hawksworth’s grim face must have confirmed to her she should keep her mouth shut about the duty of care to be shown criminals and suspects at this point.

  ‘Is she dead?’ the man asked. He’d found some composure, hopping between Jack and Angela, perhaps his pain becoming bearable as he got used to it. Jack jolted him for good measure.

  ‘You’d want to hope not. I’d enjoy sending you down for murder.’

  ‘I think you arrived too late, mate,’ the man goaded him, ignoring the threat. ‘She’d already gone under. Bad sign with exhaust fumes.’

  Jack ground his teeth, refusing to respond, but he ensured he didn’t make the journey back to High Beech easy for his captive. Back in the clearing, the ambulance had gone and with it Kate, replaced by a couple of squad cars from nearby Leyton Police Station. It had begun to rain.

  A senior officer introduced himself and wasted no time. He knew what Jack wanted to know. ‘She’s alive, but don’t get your hopes up, sir. The ambulance crew weren’t leaping out of their skin but they said to tell you that there’s a hyperbaric chamber at Highgate Hospital and that will speed up clearing her body of carbon monoxide. They’re rushing her over there now.’

  Jack let out the breath he’d been holding. ‘She’s alive and DI Carter’s a fighter. She’ll pull through.’

  ‘I hope so, sir. Is this him?’

  Jack jagged the man’s arm, pushing him forward. ‘I don’t even know his name yet and I don’t care. Can you take him?’

  ‘We’d be delighted to show him the comforts of Leyton nick.’

  ‘Thanks. And please thank all your team and the POLSA unit for me. I’m going to the hospital.’

  ‘One of our cars can take you.’

  He shook his head. ‘DC Karim and I can get there. Okay, Angela?’

  She straightened with obvious pleasure. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Jack turned back to the man they’d hunted down. ‘Enjoy the hospitality of Her Majesty, mate. I’ll see you in court.’

  ‘Fuck you, pretty boy. I hope she’s dead. Another pig off the streets.’

  ‘Get him out of my sight,’ Jack said quickly, shocked at the violence simmering once more below his professional façade. ‘Let’s go, Angela.’

  29.

  ‘Do you want me to have it turned off?’ Angela asked. ‘Although she’s going to be all right, sir, I’m sure she’ll pull through.’

  ‘That clinic,’ Jack replied, nodding at the television, which had since cut to an ad for face moisturiser, ‘is is where we now believe the deaths of all the surgeon’s victims occurred.’

  Angela blinked. ‘I know, sir. But obviously much of its work is above board.’

  ‘All of it, I imagine,’ he corrected. ‘Just one rogue man working outside the knowledge of its directors and most of his colleagues, I suspect.’ He ran a hand through his hair shakily. ‘Lily was taken there.’

  Angela looked lost for words.

  He noticed. ‘I’m sorry, Angela.’ She shook her head as if to reassure him that there was no need for apology. ‘But looking at this show all bright and bubbly … it just makes me feel ill to know what was truly going on behind closed doors at Elysium.’

  Angela glanced at the screen as it returned to the show. Stoney was standing next to Chan. ‘I’m here with everyone’s favourite cosmetic surgeon, Professor James Chan and —’

  ‘Now if you’d told me he was the killer, I could believe you,’ she commented. ‘Does he know how to smile?’

  Jack nodded. ‘That was my mistake too. You see, we all do it. We make judgements about people on how they look, or how they carry themselves. You’ve got him down for a tosser, right?’ She nodded. ‘He’s a good man. He’s a brilliant man, too, and what he’s doing on this show is beyond me. I’m half inclined to believe he agreed to it just to have stopped Charles Maartens being the front for the clinic.’

  He watched her rub her arm absently. ‘I haven’t even asked you about your shoulder. That was a pretty heroic leap you made.’

  She laughed. ‘The lengths I’ll go to in order to impress my boss. I’m just glad I was in flat heels!’

  ‘Consider me impressed. How bad is it?’

  ‘I’ve had worse, sir. Nothing that a bag of frozen peas won’t solve when I get home.’

  Jack nodded, grateful for her stoicism. He dug out his phone and dialled Geoff. ‘Hi,’ he said when it was answered. ‘Any news?’

  ‘He got away.’

  Jack bit his lip. ‘I’m still waiting to hear about Kate … did Sarah tell you everything?’

  ‘Yes, all that she knew, but we’ve all been waiting for this call.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m as lost for information as I was two hours ago when I called in. Did you see him?’

  ‘I saw a man dressed in a black tracksuit and beanie running away from me. I can’t confirm it was Maartens.’ Geoff sounded gutted. ‘Anyway, local police have woken Maartens at his girlfriend’s place and he’s apparently furious.’

  ‘I’ll bet he is. What have we got?’

  ‘Nothing at the moment. The girlfriend says he’s been there all night. Neighbours confirm his car has been parked outside her apartment all evening.’

  ‘Damn!’

  ‘Yeah, we need Kate to wake up and point her finger at him. Until then I can’t make a move. You’ve heard about Katz and the interpreter?’

  ‘Yes, Sarah told me. Our man’s obviously been cleaning up his mess. I’ve told Sarah to get Claudia and her child into protective custody. He might include his prostitute in the clean-up.’

  ‘We’re getting a warrant to search his house, her house and —’

  ‘Wait, Geoff. You said he was at the clinic all day, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How many cars does he own?’

  ‘I don’t know. He says his car’s a blue BMW 7-series sedan — the one parked in Battersea.’

  ‘Well we need to go back to our witnesses to ask them what time they first recall seeing it parked there today. Logic suggests that if he’s as innocent as he claims, then he drove his car to the clinic from his place in Hadley Wood this morning and after leaving work around 4 p.m. drove it back to his girlfriend’s apartment. Leaving at that time from Hertford the earliest he could get back into central London — Battersea no less — would be 6 p.m.’

  Jack could almost hear Geoff thinking this through.

  ‘You’re absolutely right. I’ll get onto this. Someone’s lying.’

  ‘And Geoff — he had to have help. Whatever alibi his lover is giving him is irrelevant. Somewhere in that clinic are some rotten apples. There’s no way that anyone could perform surgery of that complexity without help. He’d need an anaesthetist, for starters. Remember, he’s got two patients — the donor and the recipient — both under anaesthetic and then all the palaver associated with keeping the recipient in care until they can be ferried off to recuperate at leisure. Who knows where Lily’s face is now, or who enjoys it,’ Jack concluded sombrely.

  ‘You have to stop that, Jack. It won’t do you any good.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Focus on Kate, now. Let’s get her out of the woods.’

  ‘No pun intended?’

  Geoff gave a mirthless laugh. ‘On this rare occasion … no pun intended.’

  Jack strolled to the opposite end of the room from Angela so she couldn’t overhear him. ‘You like her?’ he asked Geoff.

  ‘I do. Is that a problem?’

  ‘No, why would it be?’

  He could picture Geoff‘s awkward expression. ‘Oh, you know, the way she feels about you, I suppose. Have you got that all resolved?’

  ‘I don’t need to resolve anything. Kate’s had some issues but I think we’ve sorted that and I think you’ll also find it has a lot to do with her own love life being a bit rocky. She needs someone to be r
eally good to her, to love her.’

  He heard Geoff sigh. ‘I think she rather always hoped that would be you.’

  It was Jack’s turn to feel awkward. ‘Yes, maybe she did.’ He wanted to be honest with Geoff. ‘But I don’t feel that way about Kate. I never have.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never. Her timing’s always been off.’ Jack didn’t want to remember the time Kate had declared her feelings for him, especially as it prompted still hurtful memories of Operation Danube.

  ‘You going to be okay for tomorrow?’ It was as if Geoff could read his thoughts.

  ‘Only if Kate pulls through. I can’t think beyond —’

  ‘I know. Neither of us should.’ There was nothing more to say and Jack was glad Geoff sensed it. ‘Okay, call me. I really want to be there with you but we’re all waiting to pounce here once the warrants are granted.’

  ‘Stay on it. What about Sharpe?’

  ‘He knows everything.’

  ‘That’s bad.’

  ‘Not as bad as if he had to find it out the hard way.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Sighs a lot, doesn’t he?’

  Jack’s expression turned rueful. ‘I give him good cause.’

  ‘He’s only interested in Kate right now … and pinning down Maartens. So long as she’s okay and Maartens is behind bars I don’t think he’ll be wanting anyone’s arse hung out to dry.’ In the distance, Jack saw a doctor being pointed to where Jack was waiting. ‘Mate, I’ve got to go, looks like news.’

  ‘Call me back,’ Geoff said urgently. ‘Make it good news.’

  Jack nodded and rang off. He fidgeted anxiously as the doctor approached, and was surprised to see how young he was.

  ‘DCI Hawksworth?’ Jack nodded. ‘I’m Dr Josh Wright.’ The personable young man spoke with a distinct Australian accent. ‘You can relax a bit mate, it looks as though DI Carter is likely to come through this.’

  Jack felt his heart flip as relief flooded his system. He leaned back against the doorway, feeling suddenly light-headed. ‘She’ll be fine, no damage?’