Mitchell, D. M.

by crime The King of Terrors (a psychological thriller combining mystery

  ‘Don’t you dare turn your back on me, Evelyn! Or is it Evelyn? You see, I’m confused, because I’ve had people check up on Evelyn Carter and the strange thing is it appears you are not the person you say you are.’

  ‘That’s absurd!’ she said, a flicker of alarm in her voice. ‘Let me go at once, do you hear me?’

  ‘You’re a fraudster, Evelyn – ah, there I go again, calling you Evelyn, when we both know the real Evelyn Carter is long-dead and gone. What’s your game, to marry and fleece a desperately love-sick and lonely old millionaire grieving for his beloved wife? To escape being the simple shop girl that you were when he found you? You think I would freely hand over part of my inheritance to a cheap freeloader?’

  ‘That’s a horrid thing to say!’ she countered. ‘I love your father like I have never loved anyone else. I care for him with all my heart, with my very being.’

  David Lambert-Chide’s face became a twisted mask of loathing. ‘If you love him, as you say, then you’ll walk away from here and never see him again.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ she said.

  ‘No? Would you rather it was me that broke the news to him that his sweet little angel is a thieving whore? Or shall I simply call in the police? You have a choice. Think yourself lucky I don’t hand you straight over. As it is I’m giving you a head start before I get the law down here.’

  She blinked hard, her breath coming in sharp little gasps, her chest heaving. She bit at her lower lip as she went over what he’d said. ‘We can be very happy, your father and I. I have waited so long, so long, to find a person like him, to love so truly, so honestly. I truly love him. It is no sham. I didn’t know who he was when I met him. I fell in love with the man, not his money.’ She yanked her arm free, rubbing the point of contact, but made no attempt to move away. ‘Don’t do this to him. It will hurt him badly. It could destroy him.’

  ‘Every cloud and all that…’ he returned with a poisonous grin.

  ‘That’s an awful thing to say, David.’

  ‘I want you out of here tonight. You do not speak to him, do you understand? If you do not do as I tell you I shall call in the police and inform the old man without a moment’s hesitation.’ He smoothed down his jacket, picked at a speck of cotton clinging to the dark material of his sleeve. ‘Goodbye, Evelyn, or whatever your real name is. I don’t want to see you ever again. Consider your mirror well and truly cracked.’

  David Lambert-Chide remembered it all as plain as if it happened only hours ago; remembered how he turned his back on the young woman, heard his footsteps echoing down the long hall, and he firmly believed their paths might never cross, except perhaps in court. She’d only taken a few things, the most valuable being the Cartier brooch. She could have taken more – his father had been very generous with his cash – but she didn’t, and he supposed she attached some foolish sentimental importance to it. He’d secretly taken a number of other, far more valuable items from the house, some of his mother’s fine jewels and a couple of his father’s prized Rossetti’s, telling the police and his distraught father that they had been taken by Evelyn and possible accomplices. It served two purposes, he thought; to turn his father even more against the wretched woman, and to sell on privately to fund his own interests. Beyond that he never gave the woman called Evelyn Carter a second thought. The missing valuables didn’t have the desired effect on his father, however; the old fool pined for the woman like a lovesick teenager in the strangulating throes of first love. The last name on his lips, as he lay paralyzed down one side by the heart attack that was to finish him, was not his son’s or that of his former wife, but Evelyn. He hated her all the more for that.

  As he peered now into that beautiful young face with its taught, unblemished skin, he still found it hard to believe all those years had intervened. Here she was, as young as if time had all along been standing still, in sharp contrast to his aged and desiccated self. As he gazed upon her now it was as if he had been transported back to 1939. He could almost smell the tang of newly-mown grass as the grounds were being prepared for the marquee; could almost see his father ordering people around, supervising the many staff that buzzed all over the place like flies around jam; almost feel his father’s renewed vitality, his lust for life that the presence of the young woman had brought to him.

  ‘I took her for a cheap opportunist, Gareth,’ he said. ‘Men in our position attract them like a cloud of pretty little butterflies; butterflies with stings in their tails. She was a shop girl working in a London store when father happened upon her. He fell for her, and then he was led like a meek little donkey on a halter by his foolish emotions. It had always been a failing of his. I thought I’d seen the back of her for good.’

  Erica seemed to be shrugging off the effects of the drug. Gareth noticed her head was steadier, her eyes better able to focus. ‘You can’t believe Erica and Evelyn are the same woman, surely?’ said Gareth incredulously. ‘That’s nonsense.’ But he still had hold of the photo album, and the likeness of Erica to Evelyn was uncanny.

  Lambert-Chide gently stroked Erica’s hair with a bony index finger and she flinched as if touched by a firebrand. ‘But we met again, didn’t we? Thirty-odd years later. Purely by accident. I was attending some tiresome function or other and, to my complete astonishment, who did I see dressed as a simple maid sweeping a hotel carpet? You didn’t recognize me at first, did you? But I knew you. Of course, I thought the resemblance to Evelyn truly remarkable, but could not possibly think you were the one and the same person. That, as you say, Gareth, is nonsense. Yet there was fear in her eyes when she looked at me, the same fear as I beheld standing by the window that day back in 1939. Yes, Erica – or Evelyn Carter or Beth Heaney, whichever you prefer as you have had so many over the years – it was the fear in your eyes that gave you away. Here before me was a woman who should have been approaching the age of sixty, but instead looking as fresh and as young as she did back in 1939. A woman who did not age, at least not in the conventional sense.

  ‘She did not waste time – she tried to make a bolt for it, to disappear again that very night. But I’d already arranged to have her – how shall I put this? – to have her escorted to a safe place.’

  Erica’s hand went to her mouth and she wiped away the moisture there, squeezing her eyes closed as if to force away the dregs of the drug. ‘You’re a contemptible man, David,’ she said.

  ‘Really? That’s not very sporting or grateful of you, especially after all I have given you.’ He let him arm swing lazily to point out Gareth.

  Tremain came over, a little concerned about Lambert-Chide allowing himself to get too close to the woman and Gareth. He waved him away. ‘She is as harmless as a little kitten, Randall,’ he assured.

  ‘It was rape,’ she said. She sounded as if she’d been drinking and Gareth could see how desperate she was to gain control of her body.

  ‘That’s not quite right, is it? I mean, artificial insemination isn’t technically rape, is it, Randall?’ The man gave a loose shrug in response.

  ‘You see, Gareth, Evelyn – you don’t mind me calling you Evelyn, do you? - Evelyn became central to Project Gilgamesh. Are you familiar with Gilgamesh, Gareth?’ He admitted he wasn’t which appeared to please Lambert-Chide. ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest-surviving pieces of literature, from Mesopotamia. It is a poem, and tells the tale of the friendship between Gilgamesh and a wild man created by the gods named Enkidu. Gilgamesh is distraught at Enkidu’s death, which prompts him to carry out a long and perilous search for the secret of immortality. Just as we sought it. As we seek it. My company’s Project Gilgamesh was necessarily a secret, and Evelyn was central to it. In fact she was, in essence, the project itself – with her we aimed to find the answer to life without end, to extend human longevity, to end death from old age and disease.’

  ‘Kept prisoner, treated little better than a lump of meat, stuck with needles, cut open, raped, for two years,’ said Erica. ‘All in the name of compan
y profit. And the plan remains exactly the same. Personally, I’d rather die,’ she said, her throat dry and painful.

  ‘That isn’t an option, I’m afraid, Evelyn. We need you very much alive. Gene technology and understanding has moved on in leaps and bounds since the 1970’s, and personally I don’t have much time left to me. I need results fast. I’m determined to find the key that turns off aging and reverses it very soon, even if it means I have to take you apart piece by beautiful piece until I do.’

  Lambert-Chide moved over to Gareth, who had been stunned into silence by all that he’d been hearing. He did not want to believe any of it, but that was becoming impossible with every minute that passed.

  ‘But of course,’ he continued, ‘I can afford to do that now, can’t I, because I have a back-up. I have your son.’ He saw Gareth open his mouth to speak, then close it again, the words left unsaid. ‘You are first and foremost a little miracle, do you know that, Gareth? But of course not! How could you? How innocent you have been all this time, believing one thing yet the truth being another.’

  ‘The drug is wearing off,’ warned Tremain, standing close to Erica. ‘We need to get her back to her cell.’

  ‘Cell?’ echoed Gareth.

  Tremain removed the gun from his jacket as a silent warning, and Gareth sat back, helpless.

  ‘She has lived a long time,’ said Lambert-Chide. ‘You cannot comprehend how long. But in all that time she has never been able to have children. Perhaps an unfortunate side-effect of not aging. Perhaps the key makes you infertile. Our experiments using a range of select donors over a two year period eventually proved successful. She became pregnant, not with one child but with twins! Twice the insurance should anything happen to her. Three times the possibility that the project would succeed in its aims.’

  ‘And when they were born you would have used them like lab animals,’ said Erica. She rubbed her eyes, as if she were clearing them of sleep. ‘You are little more than an animal yourself, David. It’s not enough that you’ve had money and power all your life.’

  Lambert-Chide ignored her feeble protest. ‘But Project Gilgamesh was all but put on hold when Evelyn was helped get away by someone we thought we trusted. A rising young star in the industry, or so I thought. But you cannot trust anyone, can you, Gareth?’ He bent down on his haunches to stare at Erica’s face. ‘Your savior, Doctor Stephanie Jacobs, destroyed all tissue samples, all notes, as many records as she could lay her hands on, and then she took you from me. You and my miracle babies. And for over thirty years I’ve been searching for you. You are clever, Evelyn, I will grant you that; managing to stay low for so long, obviously a well-practiced art of yours. In the end, though, it was simply a mother’s love that brought you to the surface again, winkled you out of hiding.

  ‘The way I picture it in my imagination, you’d always kept a discreet and distant watchful eye on Gareth as he was growing up. I’ll bet you were never very far away from him. If only we’d known that you left your baby in Cardiff station; that would have made our work a lot easier! What happened? Was Doradus getting close to capturing you? That’s it, isn’t it? You were on the run and they were hot on your heels. Only he didn’t know about the baby, did he? I mean, it wasn’t possible for someone like you to have a baby. So it was very noble of you, Evelyn, to abandon your baby rather than have him taken by Doradus; how painful a choice it must have been, to decide whether you kept him and so watch him suffer the same fate as you if you’re captured; or to let someone else have him instead, to know he will hate you for the deed you did but he will at least live in relative safety for a while, till he too realizes who he is. Because he must, you know. You could only postpone the inevitable. But what of the other twin? What happened to it?’

  ‘She,’ said Erica. ‘It was not an it.’

  ‘A girl? What happened, did she die at birth? She can’t have lasted long, I think. I am of the mind you only had Gareth at the time you left him in Cardiff. It is unlikely you would abandon one child and risk the other being caught with you. And even less likely you dropped them off like so many parcels in different places. No, the twin died, of that I am certain.’ Erica remained tight-lipped and silent. Lambert-Chide looked to Gareth. ‘Yes, Gareth, you see, you really did have a sister, albeit briefly, it appears. Died in childbirth, I suspect, or soon afterwards. Which made Gareth all the more special to you, eh? Precious, you might say.

  ‘He may belong to another, but you were irresistibly drawn to him, weren’t you, Evelyn? The son you never even heard speak; the boy you didn’t see cut his first teeth, or had the joy of seeing him take his first steps. You could not keep away. You had the world to choose from but all along you were here, almost under our very noses. All through Gareth’s life, a distant, ghostly presence he never knew existed, a shadow in the distance, watching him. You even dared to attend an exhibition of his in London a matter of months ago, treating yourself to two of his prints. But recently you were also afraid Doradus was getting close to discovering the truth about who he was and so you sought to warn him, to protect him. You sourced false documents, something you have been doing for decades. Of course, you had to pretend to be his sister, for now, because the truth would have been too much all at once. Yet we both know it was always more than that, wasn’t it? More than simply trying to warn him. You may be immortal, Evelyn, but you cannot escape the timeless bonds between a mother and her child. You had to get even closer. You just had to meet him, didn’t you? Oh, you had a valid excuse, but in reality you were brought into the open by an inescapable physiological urge.

  ‘The brooch was the link,’ he said, turning to look at Gareth. ‘The only piece she took with her when she left Gattenby House. Why, I thought? Why this one thing? I bargained on the fact that she could never let that brooch leave her; it was the last emotional connection with my father. It had nothing to do with cost and everything to do with one lover giving another a special gift. I’m impressed; to have kept a candle burning for him for so long she really must have been telling the truth about her feelings for him. So I knew that if I found the brooch I would find Evelyn. So it proved to be. That I would also discover the whereabouts of one of the missing twins into the bargain was my great fortune! I knew from the moment I saw you, Gareth, that you were Evelyn’s child. She is in your very eyes. It is such a shame we don’t have the girl, too. We would have had the full set.’ Lambert-Chide rose to his feet, his weight taken by the cane.

  ‘You get some kind of perverted pleasure out of all this, don’t you?’ said Gareth. ‘It’s all a big game with no rules.’

  ‘Oh, it’s no game, Gareth. Far from it. Have you any idea how old she really is? How many years you, sharing her genes, have the potential to live? Gareth, look at her. We know from the confessions she gave back in the 1970’s that she is more than four hundred years old! What you see here is proof that some people are born without the trigger that causes ageing. They cheat death. They cheat the King of Terrors. And you too, Gareth; you, as her son, have this potential to be immortal.’

  Unexpectedly Evelyn was up and out of the chair. She grabbed Lambert-Chide around the neck from behind. Gareth could see now that she’d been largely feigning the effects of the drug, for she seemed to move pretty fast and decisively. Tremain swung the gun around towards Erica. There was no slurring of the voice when she next spoke.

  ‘Drop that, Tremain, or I’ll wring his neck like a piece of rope!’

  Tremain, his nostrils flaring, glowered at her. ‘I told you it was a big mistake!’ he said to Lambert-Chide. ‘She needed to be put under again.’

  ‘Cut it, Tremain,’ snarled Erica, her arm squeezing tighter around Lambert-Chide’s neck as if it were some kind of slender python. ‘Drop it, now!’

  He hesitated, and instead of doing as he was told he brought the gun to rest against Gareth’s temple. ‘Let him go,’ said Tremain. ‘I’ll kill him.’

  ‘Go ahead. It doesn’t matter to me.’

  ‘Tremain,’ gaspe
d Lambert-Chide, ‘don’t…’

  He ignored the old man. Pushed the gun harder, forcing Gareth’s head to one side. Gareth closed his eyes, expecting the worst.

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ said Erica. ‘Muller told me you’d fall for it, because you’re so focused on what you want to see you’re blind to everything else. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.’ She shook her head, putting her lips close to Lambert-Chide’s ear. ‘You stupid old fool, don’t you understand? I’m not Evelyn, this man isn’t my son, and I’m certainly not four hundred years old. Sorry to disappoint you all. You’ve been conned and I want out of here!’

  * * * *

  39

  Dream Worlds

  She dragged Lambert-Chide backwards, towards the door through which Tremain had first brought her.

  ‘You can’t get out,’ said Tremain. ‘Let him go.’

  ‘Throw me the gun,’ she said.

  ‘Take a leap…’ returned Tremain.

  She crushed Lambert-Chide’s neck tighter and he croaked in pain. ‘Throw me the gun, you merciless bastard!’

  Tremain saw the fear in Lambert-Chide’s eyes, sighed resignedly and held the gun between index finger and thumb, holding it out at arm’s length, then bending and sliding it across the floor. Erica had to release Lambert-Chide long enough to bend and retrieve the weapon at her feet, but as she did so the door behind her flew open and two men threw themselves into the room, barging into Erica’s unprotected back. She fell to the floor. One of the men brought his gun crashing down on her head, once, twice, a third time. He fell on top of her, flattening her to the ground, blood seeping through her tousled hair. The other man went to Lambert-Chide’s aid, supporting him. Lambert-Chide pushed him away, clutching his sore throat. He sent a foot into the woman’s unprotected side and she gave a pitiful yelp of pain.