Blood and Roses (A Beatrix Rose Thriller Book 3)

by Dawson, Mark

  “My ears are popping,” Isabella said with a wide smile.

  “Mine too.”

  “Have you done this before?”

  “No,” she said. “I never have.”

  Isabella held onto Beatrix’s hand the whole way and squeezed tighter as they waited to shuffle out onto the observation deck. They moved to the edge, gripping onto the guard rails that stretched up and then curved back over them.

  The view was astonishing from a quarter mile up. The island of Manhattan, set like a jewel amid its nest of blackly glittering waters, stared up at them: the needling skyscrapers, all lit up, the roads that looked like ravines, the traffic so small and pointless, the wide green swatch of Central Park. Over there was the Hudson, more like the flash of a sword blade than a noble river. From here, they could see that the city was not the infinite succession of canyons that they might have supposed, and to which their feet and legs bore witness, but that it had limits, fading away into the curtains of darkness that were the waters that bordered it on all sides before the renewed glitter of Union City, Newark and Queens.

  It seemed right, somehow, that the first time she saw this view was with Isabella.

  She felt her daughter’s hand as it slipped into her palm again. She was dizzy with pain and fatigue, and closed her fingers around it, squeezing tight.

  She looked across at her.

  “Are you alright?” she asked her daughter.

  Isabella squeezed her hand in response. “You know I love you, Mummy?”

  Beatrix’s heart felt thick and heavy, and she felt an ache in the pit of her stomach.

  She remembered feeling like that, before, years ago.

  A lifetime ago.

  She had discounted the possibility that she would ever feel that way again.

  “I love you too, Bella.”

  Low clouds darted and scudded across the sky, seemingly close enough to touch.

  “Have you had a good day?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I . . . I . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “Mummy,” she began again, hesitantly.

  “Yes?”

  “I know you’re ill.”

  Beatrix stopped, unsure of how she should answer. She had never mentioned her sickness to Isabella. That didn’t mean that it was something that she could easily hide. She supposed that the girl would have had to have her eyes closed not to notice that something was wrong with her mother. She had been exhausted this afternoon and unable to keep the flickers of pain from her face. Isabella’s life had been awful, and Beatrix hadn’t wanted to burden her with the grim certainty that it hadn’t yet plumbed its full depths. She could see now that she needn’t have worried. She had known, anyway.

  “I have cancer,” she said. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Is it very bad?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Very bad.”

  “Will you . . . ?”

  “Yes,” she said with a catch in her voice. “I don’t have very much time left.”

  The girl looked out over the marvellous tapestry laid out before them. Her eyes started to fill and she blinked furiously, trying to stop the tears, but they came anyway.

  Beatrix felt her own eyes filling. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  She gulped for air. “But we only . . . it was only last year.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “No.”

  Isabella breathed quickly, mastering the emotion, her lip still quivering.

  It wasn’t fair. When she had been diagnosed in Hong Kong, she hadn’t cared. In a perverse way, she had welcomed it. She thought that she had nothing to live for, and it was an exit for her, a way out. That was the reason that she had done almost nothing at all to fight it. She had been chasing oblivion, and this was just another, albeit more permanent, kind. It just seemed easier to close her eyes, spread her arms wide and embrace it.

  But things were different now.

  “I’m sorry,” Beatrix said again.

  Isabella raised her chin, her wet eyes shining in the lights from the streets below. “The ones who did what they did. To Daddy. And to you.”

  “There’s only one of them left, Bella.”

  “And you’ll get him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

  Chapter Ten

  The New York Ballet Company had its headquarters in the Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side. It was a sleek and smart area of town, with a host of high-end eateries and bars serving the patrons who flocked to enjoy the arts each evening. Beatrix slid out of the traffic and parked the Impala at the side of the road, next to the long flight of steps that led up to the wide square, the illuminated fountain and the main buildings that were set around it.

  She turned off the engine and turned to Isabella.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  “Yes,” her daughter replied. She was trying to hide her nerves.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Beatrix said, her hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  “I can do it.”

  “I know you can, Bella. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got the picture?”

  She held up one of the two smartphones they had just bought. She scrubbed a finger against the screen and brought up the picture of the pretty young girl, eighteen or nineteen years old, that they had downloaded from the ballet company’s website. “There.”

  “That’s good.”

  “And you know where to wait?”

  “The stage door. I know.”

  “Call me when you know where she’s going. Alright?”

  Beatrix would have preferred to do it herself, of course, but she was in so much pain now that she wasn’t sure that she would be able to walk at a normal pace for long. And there was the possibility that Control had warned his children what she looked like. This was important and if their presence was revealed, the game would be up.

  Isabella had to do it. It was her, or not at all.

  “Okay,” the girl said. She opened the door and the cold air washed inside.

  “You’ll do great,” Beatrix said.

  Isabella closed the door. Beatrix watched as she looked left and right, crossed the sidewalk and then climbed the steps. She was absorbed into the crowd before she had gained the second flight.

  Beatrix started the car and pulled back out into the flow of traffic again.

  Isabella walked into the wide square that lay between the buildings that made up this cultural quarter of New York. It was scrupulously clean and tidy, and she couldn’t help but make the comparison with the main square in Marrakech, that seething, confused and throbbing mass of humanity that cooked under the burning desert sun. This space, with its scrubbed-clean flagstones, its pristine signage and its raised beds with ordered planting, was sterile and antiseptic. Isabella knew which she preferred.

  She hurried across the square to the entrance of the building that she wanted. There was an alleyway that led around to the rear, and she made her way quickly down it. The stage door was at the end of the corridor. It had been left open, but a sign tacked to it advised that access was for company members only. A bored member of the staff sat in a booth, checking credentials against a list on a computer screen.

  Isabella walked by the door. The alleyway opened out onto a road, and there was a bench on the broad sidewalk next to a bus stop. She turned and leaned against it. It offered a clear view into the alleyway all the way to the stage door. She closed her coat around her and settled there to wait.

  The company’s rehearsals finished thirty minutes later, and the men and women started to filter out of the stage door. The dancers were the easiest to distinguish: the men were tall and lithe, the women slender and delicate. Isabella waited and watched. Some of
the dancers came and waited by her bus stop, climbed aboard the waiting buses and disappeared away to do whatever it was they had planned for the rest of the afternoon.

  Cassidy Fields, Control’s daughter, was one of the last to emerge. Isabella recognised her at once. She was tall and thin, with glossy hair that reached down to her shoulder blades and skin that was so clear and fresh that it almost shimmered with health. She was wearing a leather jacket and a beanie on her head. Isabella was certain that it was her, but she still took the iPhone from her pocket and scrolled through the pictures to be sure.

  Yes, it was her. There was no question about it.

  The girl was with two others, both of the same build and both likewise shining with health and happiness. They came over to the bus stop and waited. Isabella shuffled across the seat so that she was a little closer to them. They were talking about one of the choreographers, a man who, so they said, had a reputation for lechery.

  A bus drew up, its hydraulic brakes sighing as it slowed and stopped.

  The door rattled as it slid open.

  Cassidy said goodbye to the other girls. The pair climbed aboard, paid their fare and moved down into the bus. She waved as the bus drew away, her friends returning the farewell.

  Cassidy set off to the north.

  Isabella followed. She stayed twenty feet back, just like her mother had taught her. Close enough that it would be difficult to lose the target, but not so close that she would give herself away.

  They walked for ten minutes until Cassidy reached the entrance to the subway station at 66th St/Lincoln Center Station. She turned off the sidewalk and went into the subway.

  Isabella followed.

  Cassidy ambled down to the platform, and as a train drew alongside, stepped into the empty carriage. She sat and Isabella did the same at the opposite end of the carriage. A newspaper had been discarded on the seat next to her, and she picked it up and pretended to read, watching Cassidy over the top of the paper.

  72nd Street.

  79th Street.

  86th Street.

  91st Street.

  She showed no sign of getting off.

  181st Street.

  191st Street.

  Dyckman Street.

  The further to the north they travelled, the more alone and vulnerable Isabella felt.

  207th Street.

  215th Street.

  She took out the cellphone and rubbed her finger along its metallic edge. She had to fight the urge to get off the train, give up, call her mother to come and pick her up.

  Marble Hill.

  231st Street.

  238th Street.

  The train drew to a stop at Van Cortlandt Park. Cassidy, who had been distracted by her book, looked up and, with alarm that switched into self-conscious amusement, got to her feet and hurried out of the carriage. Isabella did the same, exiting onto the platform just as the doors had started to close. The train exhaled and then rattled away into the dark maw of the tunnel.

  Isabella had no idea where she was. The station was suburban, a terminus on the line and an entrance to the commuter belt that encircled the outskirts of the city. It was quieter than the others that they had passed through on their journey north. She looked around: there were advertising hoardings on the pillars that supported the roof; a busker playing a penny whistle, with a cap laid out before his crossed legs; a blind man with a cane, tapping out an uncertain route to the stairs.

  Cassidy pressed her earbuds into her ears and dipped her head to the rhythm of whatever it was she was listening to as she climbed the stairs to street level. She pressed her electronic ticket to the sensor, stepped through the gates and exited onto the dark street outside.

  Isabella did the same.

  Chapter Eleven

  Beatrix followed Isabella’s directions, heading north, driving quickly, but carefully. She pulled up to the kerb, parked and killed the lights. She had never been to the Van Cortlandt Park area before, and she felt uncomfortable. The area was etched into the hill that descended from the Jerome Park Reservoir and offered a terraced niche of narrow, winding streets. It was tranquil, with plenty of trees and tended gardens, and neo-Tudor and neo-Georgian houses cheek by jowl with large brick apartment buildings.

  She looked anxiously up and down the street. She couldn’t see Isabella for a moment, but then suddenly she saw a flash of motion in the wing mirror as her daughter jogged across the sidewalk, opened the door and slid inside.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “How was it?”

  “It was alright.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “She went into that building,” she said, pointing across the street to a three-storey brownstone that had been turned into apartments.

  “Do you know which one?”

  “I watched. The light in the second one came on after she went inside. It was off before.”

  “Good girl,” Beatrix said.

  “Did I do okay?”

  “You did better than okay.”

  “What now?”

  Beatrix reached over, opened the glove box and took out the Beretta. She shoved it into the pocket of her leather jacket.

  “Mummy?”

  “We need her for what we need to do,” she said. “Will you wait here for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you see anyone going into the building, call me.”

  “I will.”

  She crossed the sidewalk and walked the thirty yards to the brownstone. She felt as if she had been hollowed out, all her strength sucked away, and she took two morphine tablets from her pocket and swallowed them dry. She didn’t think they would serve much use when her body was screaming at her to rest, but maybe it would be better than nothing.

  She waited at the foot of the steps into the building, out of sight, until she was as confident as she could be that she was not being watched, and then struggled up the steps to the door. She took the small flathead screwdriver that she had purchased while Isabella was tracking the girl and slid the point into the door jamb just below the handle. She gave it a quick, firm yank towards her, and the bolt splintered through the wooden box and the door swung open.

  She entered a lobby. There was a door to the apartment on the ground floor and a wide staircase that climbed to the first and second floors. She started up the stairs, her hand in her pocket resting loosely around the handle of the handgun.

  She reached the first floor. There was a door with the number 2 on it. The landing was dark, and a strip of golden light shone out of the narrow gap between the bottom of the door and the floor.

  Her telephone vibrated. She put it to her ear.

  “Bella?” she whispered.

  “Someone’s coming in.”

  Beatrix looked quickly to the left and right. There were no other doors on the landing and nowhere to hide.

  She heard a muffled exclamation of surprise from below as whoever was entering noticed that the lock had been broken.

  Beatrix followed the landing around and climbed halfway up the next flight of stairs. She would be invisible to anyone coming up as long as they went no farther than the door to flat two. If they were headed for the second upper floor, there would be nowhere for her to hide.

  She heard the footsteps as someone climbed up to the first floor.

  She took out the handgun.

  The footsteps reached the half landing and kept coming.

  She held the gun straight, aiming down to the half landing.

  She heard a knock on the door.

  She breathed out.

  The door opened.

  “Hey, Joel,” came a woman’s voice.

  “You’ve got a problem, Cassy,” Joel answered. “Front door’s been forced.”

 
; “It was alright when I came in.”

  “When was that?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago.”

  “You think someone was locked out?”

  “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “Then someone’s broken in.”

  There was a pause. “You think I should call the cops? What should I do?”

  Beatrix stood, a little too quickly, and put out an arm against the banister to ward off the dizziness.

  Not now.

  She breathed in and out, gathering her strength, and then descended. She turned on the half landing and kept going down. Cassidy Fields was in the doorway of her apartment. A tall bearded man, handsome and muscular, was facing Cassidy. That was Joel.

  “Inside,” Beatrix said in a flat and emotionless voice.

  “Who . . .” Cassidy began. She lost her words as Beatrix waved the gun at her.

  Panic filled her face.

  Joel turned.

  “Inside.”

  “She’s got a gun,” Cassidy said.

  Beatrix reached the landing and flicked the gun towards the door. Cassidy backed up. Beatrix extended her arm, jabbing the gun at Joel’s face, and he side-stepped inside, too. Beatrix followed, shutting the door behind her.

  She looked around quickly. She was in a small hallway. Doors led off it. One of them was open, and she saw the end of a bed.

  “In there,” she said, pointing to the bedroom.

  “What is this?”

  “Into the bedroom. Now.”

  They both did as they were told, backing inside, their hands held up before them. Beatrix followed.

  “Take off your belt,” she said to Joel.

  “Take off my . . . ?”

  “Take off your belt,” she said, her voice still calm, yet laced with threat. She turned to Cassidy and pointed to a canvas sack with a long strap that had been dumped on the bed. “Give me the strap from that bag.”