by Mark McKay
He sat up and tried to assess the damage. His ribs on the right side were painful and they hurt with each breath he took. They must be broken. If there was any internal damage, he didn’t know about it yet. And he’d stopped coughing blood. He staggered to his feet. He felt dizzy, but made it to the door. He’d been right about the darkness, it was night now and the only light was coming from a full moon outside. He could see the outline of the sliding door from here but not much else. He checked his pockets. Harry hadn’t bothered to search him once he had the gun, so he still had his phone and he still had his digital recorder. They were both intact. He pulled out the recorder and checked it. He hit play, and Conrad’s voice came through loud and clear. Got you, you son of a bitch, he thought. But where was Harry?
He wasn’t far away. Nick nearly tripped over him as he made his way towards the office. He was lying on his back, quite dead. How the hell had this happened? Nick got to the office and switched on some lights. Then he made his way back to Harry. Now he could see a pool of coagulated blood behind the big man’s head and there was more blood on his shirt, which had been ripped. As the front of Harry’s head was still intact, Nick surmised that he hadn’t been shot and that someone had hit him from behind with something heavy and then finished him off by stabbing him in the solar plexus, with a bloody big knife. Someone who knew what they were doing. They’d probably gone straight up into the heart from there.
He looked at his watch, it was 9.30pm. He’d been unconscious for at least five hours. It was odd that Conrad hadn’t come looking, or had he also been disposed of by whoever had killed Harry? Feeling distinctly fragile, Nick walked unsteadily back to the car. He couldn’t breathe normally because it hurt too much, so he concentrated on taking shallower, quicker breaths. And he ached all over. God only knew what his face must look like.
He managed to lower himself into the driver’s seat and start the VW. He’d reclaimed his gun from where Harry had left it on the top of a filing cabinet in the office and as he drove back to D-Block it was a reassuring presence on the passenger seat. When he walked into reception there was a different woman on the desk. The sight of him caused her to sit bolt upright in dismay.
‘Are you alright, sir?’ She stood up to get a better look. ‘What happened?’
‘I fell over. I think I broke a few ribs in the process. Is there someone who could take a look?’
She was a large West Indian lady, and she obviously wasn’t buying it. She put her hands on her hips and stared at him in frank disbelief. ‘Next you’ll tell me you walked into a door. What happened to your face?’
‘It was a nasty fall.’
She told him to take a seat and then made a phone call. ‘A doctor is coming.’
‘I just need to speak to someone in room 11. I’ll be right back.’ He started to move towards the stairs.
‘Room 11 is empty. The gentleman left about three hours ago.’
‘Mr Steadman?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘He said he was being transferred to another clinic, so they could fit a prosthetic arm. Someone came to collect him in a chauffeur’s uniform.’
‘Christ,’ said Nick. She fixed him with a look of rebuke, which he could only attribute to his taking the lord’s name in vain. Then a young woman with a white coat and stethoscope came down the stairs.
‘Jesus wept,’ she said. ‘Look at you.’
The receptionist raised her eyes to heaven and went back to her desk. She muttered something about the ungodly and then turned her attention to the pages of ‘Hello’ magazine.
The dark-haired young doctor took Nick into a consulting room close by and looked him over. She bathed his face and applied iodine to a cut or two, which made him wince. Then she gently prodded his ribs, which made him swear.
‘Careful,’ said the doctor. ‘She’ll hear you.’ His shirt was off and she applied the stethoscope to his back. Then she told him he had two broken ribs and that they would heal naturally in about three weeks. As for the blood he’d been coughing up, that was probably a pulmonary contusion.
‘A bruised lung, in other words. Quite a fall you took. What happened, again?’ She waited for an answer, but didn’t get one. She sighed. ‘If you cough up any more blood, go straight to a doctor.’ She was done. ‘No charge,’ she said.
He had no option other than to drive back to the cottage. It was going to take at least three hours, so it would be past midnight when he got in. He went back to the car and settled in for a long trip. Once again he’d lost Conrad and now this whole thing was getting out of control. Someone would find Harry and make the connection with the bruised and bloodied man who had stumbled in to D-Block. In the meantime, Conrad was having a prosthetic arm fitted, but Nick doubted that it was being done at the Stone Park Clinic in London. He’d check of course. And now there was another player in the game. Why would that person kill Harry and leave Nick unharmed? That simply made no sense. Nick wasn’t about to have Harry’s death attributed to him, either. The only way he could make sure that didn’t happen was to contact the police and tell them his side of the story. First thing tomorrow.
When he woke the next morning he was stiff and aching. He got up slowly and went into the bathroom, where he examined his face in the bathroom mirror. His upper lip was swollen and one cheek was a fetching shade of blue tinged with yellow. The iodine the doctor had applied to the cuts around his eyes did nothing to enhance his looks, either. He took a shower, as hot as he could stand it. Then, feeling somewhat revived, he got ready to face the day.
After breakfast, he tried DCI Russell. The number went straight through to the Penzance CID switchboard so he told them why he was calling. After a minute on hold, they put him through.
‘This is DCI Russell. You said you had some information about the murder of Julian Frost?’
Nick told Russell who he was and the detective said he’d been aware that Maria Frost had called in a private investigator. His tone of voice suggested a distinct lack of admiration for that profession. But he put his prejudice aside long enough to listen to what Nick had to tell him.
‘You’re telling me there’s a dead man in a warehouse in Norfolk, who this Conrad Steadman told to kill you?’
‘That’s right. And I have a recording of Mr Steadman telling him to do just that. I can email the file to you.’
‘Yes, do that, please. You’d better give me the address of the clinic. I’ll ask the Norfolk police to take a look. I’ll listen to your recording and if there is a body I’ll want to speak to you again. In person.’
Nick gave him the clinic’s address. He wrote down Russell’s email address and they concluded the call. He downloaded the mp3 file from his recorder and emailed it as promised and then he thought he’d find out if Conrad had shown up at the Stone Park Clinic in London. According to the receptionist, whose voice he recognised from his visit, Mr Steadman was no longer a patient.
He checked the rest of his email. There was nothing much of interest, except a message from Marielle in Germany. First one for a while. He opened it to find unexpected news. This beautiful woman, whom he’d got close to on his first assignment for the CDS, was getting married. She was obviously concerned about his feelings because she made a point of saying that she hoped he wouldn’t be upset. She had met someone on one of her trips to Berlin and it had turned into a whirlwind romance. They had both fallen totally and unexpectedly in love and would be tying the knot in a few months. His name was Christian. She hoped Nick would come to the wedding.
He wasn’t shocked, just saddened. It was his own fault, of course. He’d done very little to maintain their relationship, which had become a long distance affair. The emails and phone calls had dwindled over time until it became a case of out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps it was for the best. His women weren’t blessed with a long life expectancy, something about being in his company could be hazardous to their health. But he k
new he was just making excuses for his disappointment. He almost felt sorry for himself. He’d had the shit beaten out of him one day, only to be dumped the next. He laughed, and his ribs hurt. As long as they don’t come in threes, he thought.
He didn’t do a lot that day. He went for a long walk in the woods behind the cottage, just to stop himself seizing up. He did a lot of thinking about recent events. Something was bugging him and it wouldn’t come to mind. It wasn’t till that evening that he realised what it was. Conrad had said he’d failed to dispose of Nick on two occasions, which had prompted Harry’s remark of ‘third time lucky’. But Conrad had already tried three times. Once in Regent’s Park, once at the Ascension retreat centre and once on the way to Nauta. It could only mean that either Conrad’s memory had gone with his arm or he hadn’t been the shooter in Regent’s Park. So if that was true, who the hell was it? Another mystery to unravel, along with Harry’s fate. Until he did unravel it he would need to be more vigilant than ever.
The day ended with a phone call from DCI Russell. The Norfolk Police had found Harry. Russell would be coming up to London first thing in the morning and wanted Nick to meet him at the Notting Hill Gate Police Station in Ladbroke Grove, at 2pm.
‘Did you listen to my recording?’ asked Nick.
‘Yes, we can discuss that tomorrow. Nearest tube is Holland Park. Think you can make it?’
‘I’ll be there.’
Nick double-checked the security before retiring for the night. He set the alarms and locked his bedroom door and put the gun under the pillow. The things he couldn’t explain about this case were starting to unsettle him. He was still inventing scenarios to explain them, unsuccessfully, when he drifted off into a restless sleep several hours later.
They were expecting him when he showed up at Notting Hill Gate Police Station the following day. He was shown into an interview room by a uniformed constable and told someone would be along soon. A few minutes later, a plain-clothes man arrived.
‘Mr Severance, I’m DCI Russell.’
He was in his fifties, tall and heavily-built. The hair was grey and rather unkempt, but that scruffy first impression wasn’t reflected in his choice of suit. It was a razor-sharp Italian-style number that had been tailored to disguise those few extra pounds around the waist. He had what Nick thought of as a pragmatic and rather intolerant look about him. It was often labelled as professional cynicism and he’d seen it in plenty of long-term coppers. They called it realism. Russell sat down.
‘I looked you up,’ he said. ‘You were a DCI with the City of London Police.’
‘That’s right. I had to take early retirement.’
‘Yes, the file doesn’t give any reason for that.’
Must have been amended when they exonerated me, thought Nick. ‘Personal reasons.’
Russell didn’t press it. ‘You look like a victim of domestic violence,’ he said. ‘Harry’s work?’
Nick nodded. ‘Yes. Have you found out any more about him?’
‘What’s to stop me from taking the view that it was you who bashed him over the head and killed him? You don’t seem to have any idea who else it might have been.’
‘And then I was overcome with remorse and called you to confess, is that it? I was unconscious at the time, and even if I wasn’t it’s still very difficult to hit a twenty-stone bodybuilder on the back of the head with a heavy object when he’s just broken two of your ribs and he can see you coming. Even if I had killed him, it would have been in self-defence. You heard the recording.’
Russell smiled. ‘Yes, I heard the recording. And in answer to your question, we have found out about Harry. Full name, Harry Chambers. Forty-two years old with a criminal record that’s almost as old as he was. Part of a South London crime family, who make most of their money these days selling cocaine. Given what you told me about Peru it seems to fit, don’t you think?’
‘They must be Conrad’s buyers. Keep an eye on them and sooner or later you’ll find Conrad. But there’s another aspect to this, which is why Julian was murdered. He didn’t know about the cocaine. He was killed to make sure Hackett’s patent would be approved. As was Ray Curtis. If you can track down Conrad, then you’ll have your murderer.’
Russell seemed to be on board with this line of thought. ‘I talked to Captain Ibanez in Iquitos yesterday. He confirmed that Conrad Steadman is wanted for the murder of Emilio Ramos. So I’m satisfied that you’re not just making this all up. And Steadman worked for Hackett Pharmaceuticals?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I think we should start there. In fact, I’ve taken the liberty of making an appointment to meet their CEO. I’d like you to come with me.’
They took an unmarked car, driven by a uniformed constable. It felt strange to Nick to be working with policemen, again. About eighteen months had passed since he’d unofficially resigned from the service, but it seemed like much longer. It came as something of a surprise to him to realise that in all that time he hadn’t really missed it that much.
Their appointment was for 5pm. Hackett Pharmaceuticals’ office was located in a Science Park in Cambridge, almost two hours away. During the journey Russell told Nick that neither Penzance CID nor the London police had made any progress regarding the murders. Hackett was the first decent lead they’d got. Nick reciprocated by telling Russell almost everything that had happened since he’d visited Maria Frost in Cornwall. The mention of hallucinogens and deadly snakes certainly had Russell intrigued if not a little incredulous, and by the time they arrived he was fully up to speed.
The Hackett building was an unfussy modern steel and glass affair. As they drove up they could see casually dressed people on the second floor going about their business. There were office plants at the windows. One group was visible in a corner meeting room, clustered around a whiteboard. The receptionist took them up in the lift to the third floor, which was less busy. It seemed to be devoted to boardrooms and executive offices. They were shown into one such office, where two men waited for them. They both wore expensive suits and looked every inch the picture of senior management. Nick looked at them and then at Russell and thought that in a best-dressed competition the DCI would still be the sartorial front-runner. With a haircut, he’d fit right in here.
The office had a huge executive desk with a glass top and a few low coffee tables and leather sofas. The two men got up from one of these and introduced themselves.
‘I’m Edward Torres, CEO,’ said the first one. He was a tall and slim figure, somewhere near forty years of age. He had a tanned complexion and a full head of flowing jet-black hair, which was gelled and swept back from his forehead. The eyes were dark and intelligent, set deep in a well-defined face. The only flaw, depending on your aesthetic leanings, was a slightly hooked nose. The effect was charismatic with a touch of the predator, like an eagle. If the name didn’t say Spain, the accent did. His spoken English had the same cadence as Isabella’s in Iquitos.
The second man was the Human Resources director, an Englishman named Roger Hamilton. He was younger than Torres, with brown hair and a pale, chubby face. Nick and DCI Russell introduced themselves and everyone sat down. The private investigator and the policeman sat together on one leather sofa and the two execs took up a position opposite them on the other. They eyed each other across the mahogany coffee table in between. Torres took a good look at Nick’s bruised face.
‘You had an accident?’
‘Careless, that’s all.’
‘I see. My secretary said you had some questions about one of our employees. A Mr Conrad Steadman. How can I help?’
Russell took the lead. ‘We think Mr Steadman is an account manager. Mr Severance met him in Peru and more recently at a private clinic in Norfolk. Where he was admitted through your private medical scheme. We have a few questions to ask him. Do you know where we might find him?’
Hamilton replied. ‘I’m afraid we’re a bit confused about all this. We have n
obody of that name working for us.’
‘That’s odd,’ said Nick. ‘He turned up at a retreat centre in Iquitos. The manager there told us that he worked for you. He was flown out of Peru on a private jet registered in your company’s name. The Stone Park Clinic also had him registered as an employee of Hackett Pharmaceuticals. Did we imagine all this?’
Hamilton could only shake his head and look apologetic. Torres intervened.
‘In Iquitos? You must mean the Ascension Institute. Yes, we have a business relationship with them. But no one called Steadman represents us.’
‘So who does represent you in Iquitos?’
‘As far as I know, nobody from here has visited them for a year or more, now. There is no need.’
‘And the clinic?’ enquired Russell.
‘If someone called Steadman used the clinic under our name, then he did it fraudulently,’ said Hamilton. ‘I’ll look into it.’
‘Tell us about your patent,’ said Nick. ‘The one you applied for based on the active ingredient you isolated from “el semental de la Amazonia”. How’s that coming along? Is there anything that might stop you getting it approved?’
A quick flash of anger crossed Torres’s face. ‘What’s this got to do with this man Steadman?’ He got no answer. ‘Very well, our patent is due to be approved in three weeks. It will be a breakthrough for us and we’ll start phase 1 trials straight away. What is the connection here?’
‘The connection is that two of your competitors were murdered. Researchers, who could have published material that might invalidate your patent. Do you have any comment to make on that?’
