Lethal Profit

by Alex Blackmore

  Inside her head, calm logic fought with emotional panic. How the hell had this happened? Suddenly, panic won. The surge of adrenaline the anxiety sent through her body seemed to give Eva the energy she needed and, as the masked man turned towards her, she suddenly pushed against the floor with all her might, used her hands to make a grab for the trees on the inside of the hedge and then shunted herself backwards into the foliage. On the first push she was inside the trees and then, with a second, suddenly the top half of her torso was through and she hit the pavement on her back the other side. As she tried frantically to pull the rest of her body through, she heard a shout and she could feel hands trying to catch at her shifting limbs inside the hedge.

  For several seconds Eva fought the man on the other side of the hedge but he was stronger and she couldn’t free her numb leg from his grip. Gradually, inevitably, she was hauled back into the space behind the hedge. Eva stopped fighting and closed her eyes as she was dragged along the rough ground, until she felt a presence over her. When she opened them she was face to face with a pair of piercing black eyes looking directly into hers. The man above her had pulled her through and was crouching over her, positioning her arms so each of his knees was painfully trapping her hands. For several seconds there was stillness as the man continued to stare. Eva felt the blood begin to drain from her body. What was he going to do?

  Slowly he positioned one hand with the thumb and fingers either side of her throat and began to tighten his grip. Eva felt herself choking and opened her eyes wide with fear. The man stopped instantly; Eva was sure that she saw him smile. She started to struggle and the man hit her hard around the face. Eva felt dizzy; she smelled menthol. The man leaned back and then removed one of his legs from her right hand and crouched at her left side, securing her left hand. Immediately, she raised her fist but his colleague who had returned grabbed both her wrists and fastened them with more tape in front of her, before pushing her back to the floor and holding her there. As the black-eyed man began to walk out of the clearing, out of the corner of her eye Eva saw the other man reach for the syringe.

  Again, Eva tried to move, but she was pinned down by just one of his huge hands. The man holding her pushed her further against the cold ground as he positioned himself above her and began to aim the needle. She realised that the target was not an arm or leg but the left side of her chest, right above her heart.

  TWENTY-TWO

  INSPECTOR LEGRAND SAT AT HIS desk behind a pile of old notebooks that he had found himself unable to throw away. There was no telling when the notes from old cases would come in useful. He was staring down at the autopsy report from Dr Shume, which was side by side with a report he had arranged to have faxed over from St Thomas’s Hospital in London. Inspector Legrand had a photographic memory, the kind that remembered words – headlines – and once he had written down the conditions Dr Shume had identified down in the morgue he realised he had seen them before, and fairly recently. The inspector had Googled the two words together and a whole page of results had appeared concerning the death of a British journalist on the Eurostar only days before. From there it had been a fairly easy step to obtaining the autopsy report.

  According to the report, the man had presented with exactly the same causes of death, right down to the shocked expression on his jowled face. The hospital had had access to his medical records and had been able to confirm that a recent medical only two months before he died showed he had none of the symptoms of either disease. Insane as it was, there did seem to be some basis for Dr Shume’s suggestion that someone had manufactured the diseases in all three victims. But why? Legrand had called the hospital to ask for confirmation of a red welt anywhere on the journalist’s body and an hour later the call had come back with an apology for missing it from the report: his right thigh.

  Legrand had spent the rest of the day searching but he could not find anything to connect the three men, one a British journalist in Paris only for the day, one an estate kid and the third a worker in the post room at the British Embassy, also British. Then there was the girl seen running from the scene of the Englishman’s Paris flat – another Brit according to a neighbour, dark-haired, average height. They had found a set of fingerprints in the flat but been unable to identify them as the girl obviously had no previous form. If indeed they were hers.

  Legrand was now at something of a dead end. Which was a very bad place to be when there was a serial killer on the loose in Paris. Although something told him the killer would not be in Paris that much longer. The only connection he had between everyone involved in this case was that all but one were British. He considered calling his ex-wife Irene – he had helped her out with a young British man she wanted followed in Paris not that long ago so she owed him a favour. However, after some thought he realised this was not something he could do remotely and not something he wanted to involve MI6 in. He would have to go himself to London – and below the radar.

  Eva opened her eyes. Everything around her seemed to be moving in slow motion. Above her the man with the syringe seemed paused. Her eyes slipped up towards the blue sky. Such a bright, azure colour it made her heart sing. She found such peace in nature – if there was a god she had always felt the natural world was where she would find evidence of him or her. She took one last look at the strip of blue above her, closed her eyes once again and inhaled the rich scent of the wet leaves and the woody surroundings of the little clearing in the park. As she began to exhale, time sped up once again.

  She opened her eyes. The syringe was jammed.

  She saw the flicker of panic in the eyes of the man above her. She looked past him to the medical box just out of reach where the second syringe lay. He couldn’t reach it without releasing her.

  He threw the first useless syringe to one side, stood up and grabbed the front of Eva’s jacket, dragging her towards where the medical box lay. As she stumbled after him, one of her ankles came loose from the masking tape.

  She pushed herself to her feet and then she tripped him with her numb leg, swinging it into his path. The man fell face down onto the floor next to the medical box. Eva threw herself across his back, reached across him with her bound hands and pulled the second syringe free from the felt fabric lining. She stabbed it into the back of his neck and drove the plunger home.

  For several seconds neither moved. Then, as she felt the man below her try to turn over, Eva pushed herself to her feet and limped away, backing up against the hedge behind her.

  Slowly, the man on the floor pushed himself to his knees. He looked at her and then back at the empty syringe and then he felt the point on the back of his neck where she had injected him. He seemed as if he might make a grab for her and then suddenly his eyes widened and his body jerked forward. He took a large gulp of air but struggled to do so; then he tried to take another.

  Eva took two paces backwards, watching in horrified fascination.

  The man was still trying to suck air into his chest but he couldn’t. Eva could hear a soft rattling coming from him each time he tried.

  Suddenly, he began choking. He pulled off the balaclava to reveal a painfully young face. His hands were at his chest above his heart; he stared at her, eyes wide, his mouth working as he tried desperately to breathe. Then he collapsed to the floor, first to his hands and knees and then onto his back.

  Eva felt as if she should help this man, but she couldn’t move. She was acutely aware that had the first syringe not jammed that would have been her.

  The man on the floor began groaning. He was twisting his body unnaturally, flailing on the floor, his hands clutching and clawing at his chest and throat, a look of sheer terror on his face. Then suddenly he stopped moving. His body remained rigid, arms clasped at his throat. Eva watched the gradual rise and fall of his chest as the movement became less until it stopped completely. He lay there, eyes wide, utterly still.

  Eva blinked and looked around her.

  She stood for several seconds and then her brain roared
into action. Move.

  With adrenaline still surging in her veins, and aware that at any minute the other men could return, Eva pulled her wrists apart and tore the tape binding them. She ripped the masking tape from her face as she stumbled slightly. She felt like a newborn deer, her balance was shot and the adrenaline in her system made her head spin.

  She forced her breathing to slow and tried to empty her mind of all the panicky thoughts so she could think straight and then began working some feeling back into her numb leg.

  When she could walk properly again, Eva took a few steps across the small space, back to the opening into the park itself. Her heart was beating like a drum in her ears. Slowly, she looked around the side of the hedge.

  Leon seemed to be out cold, lying only a few feet away on his back, hands and feet unbound. Kneeling beside him was a man who looked just like the others she had seen earlier in the park. Eva’s eyes widened in surprise. An unlikely knight in shining armour. Next to him lay one of the men in balaclavas, a bright red gash across his neck where his head covering had been lifted and his throat cut. There was no sign of the third masked man.

  Looking at the scene Eva couldn’t work out what was going on. Was the hooded man helping Leon? She glanced around the rest of the park but it was completely empty. Not a witness in sight. Her attention was drawn back to Leon as he apparently began to come around. He did not look surprised to see the man leaning over him. They exchanged a few words and then the man stood up. He walked over to the dead body, removed the balaclava, checked the pockets and then rolled the corpse at speed into a huge pile of raked leaves, covering it completely. Then he quickly walked off in the other direction as Leon sat on the ground, rubbing his head.

  Eva pulled herself back behind the hedge and shut her eyes. She took a deep breath and when her eyes opened again her gaze fell on the still-full jammed syringe. She picked it up, broke the needle off, tore the felt from the inside of the medical case and wrapped it around the vial before shoving it into her bag as she retrieved it from the floor. Then she ran around the side of the hedge towards Leon. He looked up immediately.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, coming to kneel as she reached his side.

  ‘I don’t know. I was out cold.’

  They stared at each other for several seconds and Eva debated whether or not to ask him about the ‘good Samaritan’, seeing as he apparently wasn’t going to mention it. She looked up at the sky; the sun was setting. There was no time.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He struggled to stand up but his legs gave way. He tried again and this time managed to pull himself upright. Eva half-dragged him over to the bench and forced him to sit whilst she sat next to him with her ear to his chest, listening for the sound of the death rattle.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ exclaimed Leon and she heard his heartbeat start to rise, but he didn’t push her head away.

  His chest sounded clear.

  ‘Back there,’ she said sitting up and indicating the hedge behind which the dead man lay. ‘They tried to inject me with something but the needle jammed. There was a second syringe and I stabbed a man with it. He died…’

  She hesitated.

  ‘He died in such an awful way…’ The man’s face flashed into her mind. All of a sudden it was Jackson’s face. She shook her head and banished the image.

  ‘How did he die?’ There was an urgency to Leon’s tone.

  Eva ignored him and pulled her phone out of her bag, feeling the felt wrapped around the syringe brush her hand as she did so. ‘We have an hour and forty minutes to make the train.’

  ‘We’re still going?’

  ‘Of course. We don’t have any other option now, not after… that.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘You never give up, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  The station was a five-minute walk away so they left the car and set out on foot. Eva checked constantly for the USB stick in the pocket on the front of the right thigh of her jeans. Throughout all the drama that had unfolded since she had first put the stick in there, it had remained wedged tightly against her leg.

  Once at the Gare du Nord train station, Eva left Leon sitting at a café under some escalators and went to pick up their tickets, grateful that she’d chosen not to leave her passport at the hotel. Leon kept his in the glove box of his car, which struck her as odd. But there was so much she and Leon needed to straighten out at that moment that it was just another thing to add to a list they didn’t have time to go through. She bought them both strong coffees and picked up medical supplies, cleaning wipes and a hairbrush from a pharmacy inside the station. They found the public toilets on the lower ground floor and spent another five minutes making themselves look presentable before climbing the escalators up to the Eurostar departure lounge.

  Their train was leaving in twenty minutes and after being rushed through the ticket barriers and English and French customs, they were funnelled straight onto the waiting train, which left the station no more than five minutes after they had boarded it.

  At 5am, two buses arrived at an area twelve miles west of London and began to spew out people. The figures were clad in waterproof galoshes and raincoats, layered underneath with thick jumpers to keep out the cold of the dark November morning. The sun was not yet up and the figures huddled around the buses, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee being handed out to them from Thermos flasks. There was an air of grim determination as they stamped their feet on the frozen ground and wrapped gloved fingers around the steaming coffee to keep them warm. Five minutes after they had arrived they began distributing backpacks amongst themselves. The backpacks were the shape of a large cylinder with a hose hanging from the bottom. Each contained a barrel full of algaecide.

  Silence was called and instructions were given by the group’s leaders – don’t touch the algae and try to keep your mouth and nose covered just in case. Several members of the group – a small Asian woman with long dark hair and a tall lanky teen among them – said they had not thought to bring face coverings. For a second the group leader hesitated and then he said, ‘Not to worry, I’m sure this stuff isn’t harmful to humans.’ Then the teams set off to their allocated areas.

  Within an hour they had made good progress and several Environment Agency tankers had arrived to pump algaecide into the reservoirs in the area. Everything seemed to be under control. The team leader noticed with satisfaction that much of the algae was already dead.

  TWENTY-THREE

  AS LEGRAND STEPPED THROUGH THE Eurostar exit at St Pancras International, he was happy to see his old friend Tom Chard waiting for him, leaning up against the glass wall of an expensive-looking supermarket.

  ‘Tom,’ he smiled.

  ‘Legrand. Your message sounded urgent. Someone stolen your bicycle and onions?’

  Legrand laughed at the obligatory xenophobic joke.

  ‘The bicycle and onions are safe. Along with the beret.’

  The two men started walking towards the station exit.

  ‘It’s good to see you. How many years has it been?’

  ‘I’d say five at least.’

  ‘Long time.’

  ‘Indeed, my friend. Now what is it you’re here for? I take it it has nothing to do with these algae.’

  ‘I’m here mostly on a hunch, Tom. We had this odd case in Paris this week, a man found dead in his flat, and a kid on an estate, both apparently died of natural causes, but the pathologist has this mad theory that it’s murder.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘There are needle marks that could indicate they were injected with something he thinks may have triggered the onset of the conditions that killed them.’

  ‘What were the conditions?’

  Legrand hesitated. ‘Well, I’m not so good with these medical terms but basically I think it’s where the muscles give way and the lungs become filled with scar tissue.’

  ‘That sounds pretty nasty.’

  Chard led Le
grand out through the station exit and indicated his unmarked police car sitting in one of the taxi bays. He opened the automatic locking system and the two men climbed inside. As Chard pulled out of the station towards a flow of traffic Legrand continued.

  ‘I didn’t believe the doctor at first of course – it all sounds a bit fantastic – but then there was another man who turned up dead with the same symptoms. On the Eurostar.’

  ‘Terry Dowler – that’s my case.’

  ‘The journalist, yes. It turns out that he had a strange puncture mark too.’

  Chard was silent.

  ‘So I’m over here to take a closer look at Dowler’s body, try and trace the family of one of the victims to speak to them on an unofficial basis and see if I can’t find a common link.’

  Chard nodded, reached over to the glove-box and pulled out a box of cigarettes and a lighter. He rolled down his window, lit a cigarette, threw the box back in the glove compartment and slammed it shut.

  ‘Unfortunately, I think I may have to throw a spanner in that works,’ he said, exhaling out of the window.

  Legrand was surprised. And alert. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, we’ve had another case; another man apparently victim of exactly the same conditions Dowler died of. Time-frame is the same, end result the same, even the look on their faces when they died is exactly the same.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘No needle marks.’

  Legrand frowned. ‘Are you sure the conditions weren’t naturally occurring?’

  ‘One hundred per cent. The man had a horrendously expensive medical not more than six months ago and there was no sign of either disease. Apparently it would be impossible for the conditions to advance as far as death in that time.’