I try to pin him to the floor and it’s almost successful before he roars with rage and pain and head-butts me. This almost knocks me off his chest, but not quite. I feel my eyes roll up into my head for a second, then I grab his larynx in a grip that’s intended to remove it from his neck and just go crazy, punching him as hard as I can in the face, again and again, breaking his nose, his front teeth and his jaw.
But he’s a strong, tough bastard. He spits blood into my face and catches me on the side of the head with a hammer punch that almost knocks me off his torso and onto the floor. He tries it again, but I block it and bring an elbow down hard into the centre of his throat, which stalls his progress for a couple of seconds so that I can whack him hard on his broken jaw.
He’s struggling like mad, but I get a sense that he’s not firing on all cylinders. Then I see why and my heart sinks. It’s the knife that he threw at Sakura. It’s sticking out of the back of his leg. She must have pulled it out of her shoulder and dug it in when he and Raleigh were bickering a moment ago.
I grab the flat handle of the knife and screw it around in his leg until he screams in agony. The pain must be excruciating, and that’s what I want. I want him to pass out from it so I can sort out everything else that’s going on in this madhouse. After about thirty seconds of this incessant torture, he flops backwards and is almost senseless. For good measure, I apply pressure to both his carotid arteries until I get a choke-out and leave him on the floor, unconscious, kicking him in the balls for good measure when I’ve got up. He’s fucked now, so I can leave him alone for a while without worrying about him too much.
I take a quick look to where Sakura is lying and there’s blood everywhere. It’s pouring out of the wound in her shoulder and soaking her clothing. The knife must have severed an artery. I reckon she’s got about ten minutes and then she’s dead.
She’s still breathing, but it’s ragged and shallow. This has got be done fast. I rip her blouse away from her shoulder so I can get a good look at the knife wound. It’s just less than an inch wide. No good.
Anjukka is standing against the wall, hyperventilating. I grab her arm and drag her across the room to where Sakura is lying.
‘Are you OK, babe? You’re going to have to help me now or she’s going to die. Understand?’
She nods her head. ‘What can I do?’
‘Wait there and hold her hand. I’ll be back in a second.’
I pull open the drawers in the medical cabinet I noticed earlier, unwrap a fresh scalpel blade and slide it onto a metal handle. I grab a big pair of scissors and head back to Anjukka is sitting, stroking Sakura’s forehead.
‘Your dress is fucked anyway. Do you mind if I cut some material off it? I’ll buy you a new one next week.’
She rolls her eyes and lets me cut a few strips off it with the scissors. This is not the most hygienic way of doing things, but it’s all I have at the moment. I use the scalpel to cut into the knife wound, increasing its length to around four inches. Predictably, Sakura screams and jerks violently while I’m doing this, but not too badly as she’s so weak. The pain must be pretty awful. I just wish she’d faint.
‘Can you hold her down? Lean with your knees pressing down on her if you can. She mustn’t move now.’
Anjukka turns her head quickly away when she sees what I’m doing. I press the material from her dress into a ball and push it into the wound. Sakura screams again and thrashes her head from side to side. Hopefully this will stop the bleeding until we can get proper medical help.
‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s OK. The knife severed an artery.’ I place my mouth close to Anjukka’s ear and whisper. ‘When she took it out to stab Fisher she started bleeding to death. I think I may have stopped it, but I can’t be sure yet. You have to take over here now. You have to press down here as hard as you can.’
‘OK. As long as I don’t have to look at what I’m doing.’
The dress material is already getting soaked with blood. Sakura has calmed down a little and is mumbling to herself. Anjukka manages to push the material from her dress into the wound, while looking the other way. I can’t say I blame her.
I count to ten and then test for a pulse in Sakura’s wrist on the side of her shoulder wound. Nothing there. Good. That means we’ve blocked the artery.
‘That’s fantastic, Anjukka. Keep that pressure on. Don’t let her move. Keep kneeling on her chest to keep her immobile. I’m going to call an ambulance.’
Fisher is still out and I don’t think he’ll be coming round for some time. I run into Raleigh’s office and call an ambulance from his landline. I tell them that I’ve got a woman with a serious knife wound who’s bleeding to death and that they need to get here yesterday.
When that’s sorted, I make a visit to Raleigh’s little kitchen and wash the blood off my hands and off my face. I take a tea towel from the draining board and sling it over my shoulder. When I return to the office, I empty the contents of Anjukka’s holdall onto the floor, then start work on Raleigh’s safe.
It’s a combination lock which is a real pain. I try to calm myself down so that all my attention is on the safe. I’ve only got one option here and that’s lock manipulation, which involves using the lock against itself to get it open. Just like in the movies, this involves careful listening, working out the number of wheels and discovering the contact points.
After three or four minutes of listening to frustratingly quiet drive pin clicks, I have all the possible combinations in my head. The third one I try works and the door swings open. I can’t imagine how stressful this would be if you did it for a living.
There’s a little foreign currency in here, but not that much, and most of it is GBP. I make a quick assessment of what’s in each bundle of notes and remove about seventy thousand, placing the money in neat piles at the bottom of the holdall. That should cover my fee and medical bills with a big bonus for each of my reluctant associates.
I move the remaining money around so everything looks right, close the door, give the combination dial a good hard spin and wipe my prints off with the tea towel. I don’t think anyone will notice what’s gone missing. Raleigh isn’t interested in anything anymore and Fisher probably had no idea exactly how much was in there in the first place. Besides, he’s going to be too busy with hospital, court and prison to worry about anything else.
As I refill Anjukka’s bag with as many of its original contents as will fit, I get my mobile out of my pocket and call DS Bream. She’d better be on duty. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to involve the police, but once an ambulance crew see what’s in that room, they’re unlikely to keep it to themselves.
I can hear Sakura moaning from the other room. Well, at least she’s still alive. I go to see how she is and it doesn’t look good. Her breathing is shallower than when I left and her complexion is almost translucent. I crouch down across from Anjukka and take Sakura’s hand in mine.
‘You’re going to be alright. Just hang in there.’
She attempts a smile. ‘Stop talking in clichés,’ she whispers.
I can hear sirens in the distance.
26
A MAN OF MANY SUSPICIOUS TALENTS
‘What the fuck happened here?’
From her demeanour, I can tell immediately that Olivia Bream is basically on my side and doesn’t perceive me as the chief perpetrator of any crimes. Well, not much, anyway. This is good. I’d like to gently remove myself from the whole thing and disappear into the night, but I can’t really see that happening and certainly don’t want to have to go to court. I’m going to have to handle this very delicately.
I sit opposite her on one of the Natuzzi sofas, in exactly the same place as when I sat here opposite Raleigh and Fisher a couple of hundred years ago. Anjukka is with us, but she sits on an upright chair near Raleigh’s desk with a blanket over her shoulders, draped there by a kind ambulance person. She’s staring blankly into space, but is otherwise doing fairly well, all thin
gs considered. I try to stop my eyes from glancing at her holdall, and hope she doesn’t go rummaging around in it looking for something.
‘It’s an interesting scenario, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘I can imagine this cropping up in some police training programme in years to come. It’d be an advanced course, obviously.’
DS Bream smiles at me. ‘Have you looked at yourself in a mirror? You look like absolute shit.’
‘Thank you. You, on the other hand, look very lovely.’
She laughs then blushes. ‘When you called me, I thought you were going to ask me out to dinner. I didn’t expect to be facing hell on earth in Holland Park.’
It’s nice hearing that husky voice again. I’d forgotten about how desirable she was, but it’s all coming back now. ‘It had crossed my mind, but then I remembered you saying that you were overdue for promotion and wanted something big and spectacular.’ It hurts to speak, I notice.
‘Well, you certainly got me that. I had to call in quite a few favours to be put in charge of this, but I managed to convince my boss that all of this was an extension of Viola Raleigh’s missing persons case.’
‘Some extension.’
‘Quite. Who was the other woman? The dead one, I mean.’
‘That was Rosabel Raleigh. She was Viola’s mother. She committed suicide about ten years ago or thereabouts. She shot herself. Somehow it was never reported and no one noticed she’d gone. She obviously didn’t make much of a mark on the world. I think Raleigh was pretty adept at covering things up and getting people to help him. He even managed to get a portrait of her painted after she’d died. That’s her over there.’
Olivia looks up at Rosabel who stares back coldly. ‘Yes. Yes, I can see it. What a strange thing to do.’
‘You’re telling me.’ I remember my promise to Anjukka and remind myself to sort out a sitting with Louisa Gavreau.
‘Why did she shoot herself? Do you know?’
‘I can’t be sure, but I think it may have been because her husband was carrying on with her daughter.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
I explain about how I’d been duped by Raleigh. How the job of tracking down Viola Raleigh was really the job of tracking down Eleanor Wallis with a view to silencing her forever about Viola’s death in the hotel.
I tell her how I’d visited Miss Wallis in her home with Mrs Bianchi and discovered what was going on. How we got her to a place of safety and then how I came here to confront Raleigh about his duplicity. I don’t mention the presence of Fisher’s boys and the likely fate of one of them.
‘So they tortured you and tried to find out where you’d hidden her.’
‘Correct. They also threatened sexual violence against Miss York here if I didn’t tell them where Miss Wallis was hidden.’
Olivia looks over at Anjukka for confirmation of this. Anjukka nods. I’m glad it’s a woman dealing with this. I look at Anjukka’s holdall. I can’t help myself.
‘So how did the gun come into it?’
‘That was brought here by Mrs Bianchi. She was the woman who reported Viola missing a few weeks back. You know – the woman you wouldn’t tell me about. My suspicion is that she took Miss Wallis to Viola Raleigh’s flat, for which she had a key. I think that’s where the gun came from. It was one of Raleigh’s. He recognised it. I think Viola must have pinched it. I think if she hadn’t turned up with it, myself and Miss York there would both be dead now.’
‘So Mr Raleigh was shot with his own gun.’
‘I don’t think it was looked after very well. I don’t think Viola bothered. That might have been the reason it went off. If that isn’t poetic justice I don’t know what is.’
‘Do you have the address for Viola Raleigh’s flat? I’ll have to talk to Miss Wallis.’
‘No. Only Mrs Bianchi knows that.’
She sighs. I know there’s a problem here and it’s Sakura being in possession of an illegal firearm and using it to threaten people, even if those people had me and Anjukka tied to chairs and were beating the crap out of me with a view to locating Eleanor Wallis and probably killing her. I’m mentally willing Olivia to overlook this. She’s going to have to overlook quite a bit.
‘So anyway, I told Mrs Bianchi how to control the room while she untied me. I then took the gun, which incidentally still had the safety on. It was while I was freeing Miss York there that I temporarily handed the gun back to Mrs Bianchi.
‘Mrs Bianchi isn’t well. She not only has some weird form of agoraphobia which also manifests itself in unfamiliar places, she also had to be in the same room as her friend Viola Raleigh.’
Olivia smiles wryly. ‘Friend?’
‘Well, you know. She knew that Viola was dead, but she didn’t know about the embalming. Anyway, she was getting sick, Fisher goaded her and for a moment she lost her concentration. Fisher threw the knife at her, hit her in the shoulder and he managed to get hold of the gun. It was while Fisher was threatening me with the gun that Mrs Bianchi pulled the knife out of her shoulder and shoved it in Fisher’s leg.
‘Something happened then and I’m not sure what. In retrospect, I think I heard Fisher scream. Either the pain caused Fisher to pull the trigger, or the gun went off on its own. As I said, it wasn’t in very good nick, so the latter is a strong possibility. Whatever, Fisher shot his boss through the head. The end.’
‘Why is Fisher in there lying on the floor looking like he’s picked a fight with The Terminator?’
‘I had no choice. I think he was stunned for a second when he realised what he’d done. He’s a big guy, ex-soldier, and I was fucked by that time. I had to give him everything I had to incapacitate him. He kept fighting back.’
‘How inconsiderate of him.’
‘I was already injured and it was getting worse. I know he looks bad, but it was all necessary. Anything less and I wouldn’t be talking to you now and Miss York wouldn’t be sitting over there. You may not have even known about any of this. We’d have all vanished off the face of the earth and no one would have been any the wiser.’
She rubs her eyes and allows herself a tired laugh. ‘God Almighty, I don’t know how I’m going to write this up. What a shambles. I saw Mrs Bianchi as they were taking her into the ambulance. She’s lost a lot of blood. You’ll have to prepare yourself for the worst with her, I’m afraid. The paramedic said she’d already be dead if someone hadn’t cut her open, sorted out that knife wound and stopped the arterial bleeding. He was very impressed with that. Was that you?’
‘I’m too modest to answer that.’
‘A man of many suspicious talents.’
‘She’s not stupid. I think she knew what would happen when she pulled the knife out. She did it to stop me being shot.’
We look at each other for a moment. I can’t tell what she’s thinking. I have to press home my advantage.
‘When I asked you the other night why you’d joined the police, you said it was because you wanted to do the right thing, and to stop people doing the wrong thing.’
She clasps her hands behind her neck, stretches, stands up and slips her leather jacket over her shoulders as if it’s cold in here. ‘Both of you need to get yourselves sorted out.’ She looks at Anjukka. ‘Have you got somewhere you can stay? I don’t think you should be on your own tonight. Have you got relatives in London?’
Anjukka shakes her head. ‘My parents live in Melrose.’
‘She can stay with me. I’ve got a spare bedroom. She’ll feel safe.’
‘You both need to get yourselves checked out by a doctor. Particularly you, Mr Beckett. You look like death warmed up. Do it as soon as you can. I’ll type up a couple of statements for you both tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to churn all of this around in my mind. You can come in when you feel able. You can read both statements and if you feel happy with them as they are, you can sign them.’
I look at my watch. I can’t believe it’s only seven-forty. It was less than ten hours ago I was in a cab heading for Ewell to see Ab
igail Gastrell.
‘OK. Thanks, Olivia. What’s going to happen to the women?’
‘The ones in there, you mean? They’ll be buried, I suppose. We’ll have to contact next of kin, if there is anyone. Someone will have to take care of the funeral expenses. There’ll be quite a lot of paperwork to sort out on those two, particularly the mother. Like you said, why did no one notice she’d gone?’
‘I’ll pay for the funeral expenses for the two of them. Let me know when you’ve finished with the bodies.’ I didn’t know either of them, but what the hell. The irony is that I’ll be paying with Raleigh’s money. I just hope I don’t have to pay for Sakura’s as well. I don’t know who’ll be paying for Raleigh’s funeral. A fuckin’ pauper’s burial would be too good for him. Maybe someone could dump his body in a skip somewhere. ‘What would have happened if Raleigh had turned himself in after Viola had died?’
‘He’d have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Maximum sentence would have been life. And of course there was preventing a lawful burial for both the mother and the daughter and God knows what else. We can only guess at what might have happened. It would depend on the court and how good his lawyers were and how good the prosecution was. He’d be ruined when it all came out, that’s for sure. In a way, I wish he was still alive. I’m sure that all of this is the tip of the iceberg. I’d love to have got him in court.’
Two of the ambulance crew walk past with Fisher on a stretcher. He’s not looking good, but should consider himself lucky that he’s still alive.
‘I should put a police guard on him if I were you,’ I say. ‘He’s in a lot of shit and I wouldn’t put it past him to try and get away once he’s recovered.’
‘Once he’s recovered? In that case, we’ll put a guard on him in about a month.’
Kiss Me When I'm Dead Page 37
