By the time Lizardman stopped the car and opened the door, I was trembling. He took the blindfold off first, for which I was grateful, and then he cut the ties that bound my wrists before dragging me out of the back seat. It was dusk, that time of day when the sky was more violet than blue, not yet dark, with a few stars making an early foray into the sunless sky. Expansive lawns, black in the twilight, stretched as far as I could see. Standing a few yards from the edge of the driveway was a deer with antlers, so still he looked like a statue. He watched us for a few seconds and then bounded away, vanishing among the trees that bordered the lawns. I wished I could follow him.
Lizardman tugged at my leather bag, which hung from my shoulder. “Show me the notes,” he said.
“I want to see Anita first. That’s the deal. No Anita, no notes.” I shivered in the cold evening air. Without a word, he pushed me towards a huge house that stood at the end of the driveway. More than a house, I realized, it was a mansion, a Victorian version of a French chateau, with tall windows that formed symmetrical patterns on both sides of a massive double door under a limestone pediment. Ornate brick chimneystacks rose high above a mansard roof, and a conical turret stood to one side like something out of a fairy tale. Focusing on the building helped reduce the fear. My trembling subsided. I needed a clear head to have any chance of rescuing Anita.
We walked up a short flight of limestone steps to the front door, which he opened to reveal a grand hallway, furnished with Persian rugs and antique tables. A graceful archway led to a dining room, where I glimpsed a table, a long slab of gleaming walnut, set with flowers and candlesticks. We walked the length of the vast entry hall, past a wide staircase, to a door set in the back wall. He opened it and pushed me forward on to a small landing. Poorly lit, narrow wooden steps led downwards. We clattered down two flights, passing a landing that led to more doors. I kept gathering the details, going over them in my head in case I needed to take this route back in a hurry.
The stairs ended in a claustrophia-inducing corridor with green-painted walls and a low ceiling lined with bulky metal pipes. We passed through a fire door only to find that the corridor continued. It must run the length of the house, I thought, providing access for water pipes and heating ducts. At the end of the long corridor was a metal door. Heaving it open, Lizardman shoved me forward into a small, gloomy cellar.
Anita sat, tied to a chair, her head lolling forward. Her aura was dense and moving fast. I stumbled towards her, knelt next to her and put my hand on her cheek. “Anita? It’s me, Kate.”
With relief, I saw her eyes open, grow large when she realized I was there.
“Kate,” she whispered. “Thank God.”
She was wearing the same grey wool pants and black jacket that she’d been wearing on the day she’d been kidnapped. Her hair was pulled back in an untidy ponytail. Keeping my fingers against her cheek, I surveyed the room. With stone walls, and a flagstone floor, it had probably been used as a storage cellar sometime in the mansion’s past. Apart from Anita’s chair, it was furnished with three other chairs grouped around a small square table, which held a tray of dirty plates and a roll of duct tape. A single window, high up and out of reach, was opaque with grime.
Lizardman pulled me away from Anita and pointed to a chair facing her. Before I realized what he was doing, he zip-tied my wrists to the arms of the chair. “What are you doing?” I demanded. “I’m here to give you the notes. You have to let Anita go now.”
Silently, he wound ties around my ankles, pulling them tight. I couldn’t move my legs. He stood, and picked up my leather bag. From it he withdrew the envelope, took out the papers and flipped through them. I held my breath, but he just nodded, slid them back in the envelope and put it on the table.
“You’ve got what you want, so let us go,” I said again.
“All in good time.” He settled into a chair, sticking his booted feet out in front of him, arms folded, eyes closed. He didn’t appear to be planning on going anywhere anytime soon.
“Are you all right?” I whispered to Anita. She nodded, even though she looked terrible, tired with dark circles under her eyes, her shoulders slumped.
“No talking or I’ll use the duct tape,” Lizardman said, without opening his eyes.
I looked around the cellar, which felt more like a prison cell with no possible avenue of escape. Iron rings fastened to the walls looked like something out of a medieval dungeon. It was cold, even colder than outside. A good condition for storing meat or wine, perhaps, but very uncomfortable for humans.
There was a smell that I recognized, although I couldn’t place it immediately. I’d first noticed it when we got out of the car. A melange of vegetation and wet earth, it wasn’t unpleasant. Then I realized it was the Thames. That meant we must still be close to the river, but where exactly?
I wriggled my wrists against their bonds, but the plastic ties held tight.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked Lizardman.
He opened one eye. “My boss,” he said.
35
I exchanged looks with Anita. When she shook her head, I guessed she hadn’t met the boss yet.
“This wasn’t the deal,” I said. “You said to bring the notes and I did.”
“Shut up,” he said. “You talk again and I’ll tape your yappy mouth.”
“You shouldn’t have come,” Anita whispered to me. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have led you to the notes.”
This time Lizardman moved, sitting up to aim a kick at her shin. “I said no talking.”
“Touch me again and you’ll be sorry,” she said.
He laughed. I don’t know how long we sat there. It seemed to be an eon before we heard noises at the door. For the briefest of seconds, I allowed myself to hope it was the police.
The man who entered was dressed in tight jeans and a black leather jacket over a black T-shirt. He looked very different from the last time I’d seen him, in his suit and tie, in the lobby at the hospital.
“Audley?” Anita sounded as shocked as I felt. “What are you doing here?”
It was Audley Macintyre, the drug rep. At once, all the pieces fell into place, or some of them did anyway.
He smirked, his white teeth glowing in the gloom. “I couldn’t pass up the chance to see this for myself,” he said. “Can’t let Phil here have all the fun.” He nodded towards Lizardman, who’d jumped to his feet and was standing at attention.
Macintyre came to stand in front of me. “Hello Kate,” he said, bending briefly to touch my cheek. “Or should I call you something different? Sophie, wasn’t it? With the poor sick son that you just had to talk to Dr. Reid about?”
Anita looked at me in confusion, while he picked up the envelope, slid the papers out and began to read them. I wasn’t ready for the blow when it came. His hand connected with my jaw and jolted my head sideways.
Anita screamed at him. “Stop it!”
He threw the papers on to the floor. “Really, Kate? You thought you could fool me? These may be some of Anita’s notes, but you know full well that they’re not the ones I want. Where are they?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, my cheek smarting. “You said you wanted the notes and that’s what I brought.”
Macintyre turned a chair round and straddled it, resting his elbows across the back. “We have all night. You can tell me now or you can tell me later. But you will tell me where those notes are.”
“And if I do, then what? Will you let us go?”
He cocked his head to one side. “Good question. I don’t know yet. I might let you go, or I might kill you.”
“Did you kill Dr. Reid?” Anita asked, her eyes still wide in shock.
“Reid? Yes, although I didn’t want to. He was stubborn, the old fool. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut, but no. Why do some people have to stir up trouble?”
Anita struggled against the ties around her wrists, almost tipping her chair over. “You bastard. You cowardly bastard. H
ow could you?”
“Kill? It’s easy. And it just gets easier the more you do it. I’d have no trouble killing either of you. I want you to know that.”
He tapped his fingers along the back of the chair. “You know, I’ve never understood soldiers who spend a lifetime regretting a death they were forced to inflict. Or a murderer who suffers remorse while languishing in a prison cell. Killing is part of the natural order of things. And in my personal experience, people who are murdered have usually done something to deserve it.”
He leaned over and picked up a page from the floor. “Interesting, but useless. So, one more time. You tell me where the real notes are, and I’ll let you go. Maybe. That’s just a chance you’ll have to take.”
There was no way he was going to free us. He’d just confessed to killing Dr. Reid. All I could do was play for time, and hope that the police would arrive soon. I’d turned on GPS tracking on my mobile. Parry had my number. I was sure he’d be able to find us.
“The notes are in Anita’s desk drawer,” I said.
“No, they’re not. We looked there already.”
He looked from me to Anita and back. “No? Nothing?”
Nodding to Lizardman, he cradled his chin in his hands. “Well, I like to watch.”
Lizardman approached Anita with a knife. The blade was long and wide, narrowing to a razor-thin point, which he held against one corner of Anita’s mouth.
“One little slice and those beautiful lips will never be the same,” Macintyre said. “You’ll look like the Joker in Batman. Except that you’re brown, of course.”
My arms and legs felt terribly cold, as though all my blood had rushed to some deep part of me to hide from this monster.
“Leave her alone. We don’t know anything. Someone must have moved the notes from Anita’s drawer.”
The grimy window was black now. The only light in the room was from a dim bulb hung above the table, populating the corners of the cellar with murky shadows. I shuddered, a deep muscular contraction running from my toes to the top of my head. I wasn’t scared of the dark, but I was terrified of Macintyre.
“So, here we are,” he said. “A little cooperation would go a long way.”
I glanced at Anita. She was still staring at Macintyre in horror.
“Why did you kill Dr. Reid?” she asked. “Because he was about to expose you?”
“Yes.” He nodded at Lizardman, who pressed the knifepoint against Anita’s upper lip. A single drop of crimson blood appeared. It rolled slowly over her lips and down her chin.
“Leave her alone,” I pleaded.
Macintyre grinned at me. “Ah, Kate, you’re adorable when you want something.”
I pressed myself against the back of my chair, trying to put more space between us. He repelled me.
“Let’s play a game,” he said. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. You start. Tell me what you think you know.”
I clamped my lips together. I didn’t even want to breathe the same air as him.
“Go ahead, Phil,” he said. Lizardman moved the knifepoint to the corner of Anita’s mouth.
“Okay, okay. I’ll tell you.”
“Good,” he said. “Phil, stand down. Let’s hear what the little lady has to say.”
“Don’t tell him anything,” Anita said. “He’s going to kill us anyway.”
I was thinking fast. If I talked, maybe they’d leave Anita alone. Maybe Parry would have worked out how to track my phone. Maybe Owens and Walsh were about to burst through the door.
“Someone used Dr. Reid’s login and password to change the data on the electronic patient records,” I said. “Was that you?”
“No. But you’re on the right track.”
“Dr. Schwartz then.”
“Keep going.”
“Schwartz was trying to hide something,” I said, trying to work out what it was.
“He was falsifying data on the side effects of LitImmune,” Anita said. “Which is a drug developed by your company.”
“And what makes you think that?” Macintyre was smiling.
“The edits that Schwartz made were on records of patients who’d had kidney transplants.”
“Good, good.” Macintyre sounded like a teacher coaching a student. “And where do you come into the picture, do you think?”
“There were differences between the electronic patient records and my notes. Anyone who saw the two of them side by side could easily identify the false entries.”
“Hence my need to secure the notes,” Macintyre said, looking at me.
“I think Reid was worried that maybe Anita was the one making the edits,” I said. “He’d set up a meeting with her to discuss it. But that meeting never happened.”
Macintyre clapped his hands together slowly. ”Bravo.”
“How did you do it?” Anita asked. “How did you manage to get an IV hooked up to Dr. Reid?”
“I told him I had a problem I needed to discuss in private,” he said. “Once I had him in an examination room, I gave him Rophynol in a cup of coffee to knock him out long enough to get the meds going. His brain might have been robust but physically, he was weak.”
Anita closed her eyes. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“Don’t stop, ladies. I’m enjoying your little narrative.”
He looked from Anita to me and back again. “Come on,” he said. “You must know more.”
When neither of us spoke, he nodded again at Lizardman. With an expression of deep satisfaction, Lizardman stroked the point of knife across Anita’s lips before jabbing it into the corner of her mouth. She whimpered as blood streamed from the cut.
“Stop it, for God’s sake,” I said. “Stop it.”
Macintyre raised an eyebrow at me.
“We thought that Eric Hill was involved in some way,” I said. “That he—”
“Eric.” Macintyre interrupted. “What a loser. He actually believes he’s helping doctors save lives and all that crap. It’ll be a pleasure to shut him up once and for all.”
“Why?” asked Anita. “Why do you need to shut him up?”
“Because Reid talked to him. Eric’s too stupid to have realized that LitImmune was the problem, but he’ll connect the dots at some point. So he has to go.”
I gazed at Macintyre, trying to understand. “You’re working for someone else, aren’t you? Someone at LBP? Maybe the researcher who was responsible for LitImmune’s initial tests?”
“A researcher? God, no.”
“The CEO of LB Pharmaceuticals?” I threw out the suggestion, hoping for a response, even an involuntary one like a nervous tic, a twitch of an eye. But Macintyre was far too professional to give anything away.
“You can’t really believe I’m going to tell you who I work for,” he said, standing up and pushing the chair to one side. The screech of wood on the flagstone floor was deafening in the dreary confines of the cellar.
“I don’t really understand one thing,” I said, still aiming to draw more information from him. “There must be other hospitals using LitImmune and other doctors who’ve noted side effects. What good would it do to silence Anita?”
“The drug is still in trial. A double blind trial, as luck would have it, which makes things easier for me. There are other hospitals testing it, and other doctors willing to compromise their medical ethics to reap the financial reward of cooperating with me. And, sadly, there have been a couple of tragic accidents involving doctors who insisted on sticking to their moral principles.”
I wanted to ask what the hell a double blind trial was, but my voice was stuck in my throat.
“You’ve killed other people?” Anita asked. “Not just Dr. Reid?”
He shrugged. “All in a day’s work,” he said. “You are the annoying fly in the ointment. By keeping notes separate from the official records, you’ve made my life rather more difficult. But I’m about to solve the problem, because Kate is going to tell me where the notes are.”
He walked to
wards me, his black clad figure melding with the dark shadows. “Where did you put the notes, sweet Kate?” He bent down, putting his face close to mine. His eyes were like dirty ice, translucent, almost colorless. If eyes are windows into the soul, his gave away nothing; maybe there was no soul to be seen. I turned my face away from his. I really didn’t want to die in this horrible cellar.
“Don’t tell him,” Anita said. I’d almost forgotten she was there. Lizardman too. Macintyre took up all the space. He absorbed the weak light, sucked all the oxygen from the air. It was like being locked up in a tomb with him.
“Other people know about the notes,” I said. “Even if you kill us, they will find you.”
Macintyre laughed. “I don’t think so. These other people, whoever they are, won’t know who I am or where I am. I have resources beyond your wildest imaginings.”
“They won’t give up.” I felt the need to keep talking. It was better than listening to his creepy voice. And there was still a chance the police were on their way. I glanced at my leather bag, thinking of my phone. Macintyre noticed. He picked up the bag, shook it upside down.
“You’re looking for this?” he asked. He held my phone up so I could see the screen. ”No signal, dear heart. We’re in a basement with twenty-four inch stone walls.”
“You won’t get away with it,” Anita said quietly.
“You say that in hope, not in fact.” He turned to look at Anita. It was as though a glaring light pointed at me had been turned off. “You’re the type who thinks that evil will always be punished, that good will be rewarded. But life isn’t like that. Not at all. Murderers and rapists stroll the pavements of our fair city next to mobsters, swindlers and thieves. The good people, as you think of them, walk the streets deaf and blind, unaware that the man next to them on the bus is a terrorist, or the barista serving them coffee is a pedophile.”
I was finding it hard to breathe, scared beyond reason. The man was a psychopath.
Macintyre straightened up. “I’ve had enough of this. It’s time, ladies. Tell me where the notes are.”
The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries Page 47
