The Lazarus Hotel

by Jo Bannister

  Chapter Thirty

  He believed it utterly, conviction growing with every chip he added to the mosaic. He couldn’t be sure if the three-woman jury was equally convinced. Throughout the telling their eyes had turned like flowers following the sun, from his face to Tessa’s and back; but though she had plainly lied it was a far cry from there to murder. He needed her to admit it.

  She shrugged the quilt closer under her chin. In the ashy light of dawn her face was grey, bright hair and bright eyes leached of colour. Will waited for her response but the seconds passed and his hopes with them. He was going to have to finish it alone, trudge every last step with her silence dragging at him like lead. He drew a disappointed breath to do it; but she spoke first.

  Her voice was colourless too, denatured, stripped of the vigour that had braced it through so many crises. But if Will was right they were crises of her own making: it was easy to be brave and witty and strong in adversity, thought Sheelagh, when you knew the only danger in the whole bloody building came from you!

  Tessa’s eyes rested half-focused on the quilt peaked over her knees. Softly, wearily, she said, ‘I never wanted any of this. I never wanted to hurt Cathy – I was fond of her once. But she’d have bled me dry and then sold the husk. She had no sense of honour left. All that mattered was getting what she wanted. She’d have ruined my life. I had to stop her.’

  In the soul-deep silence that followed they could clearly hear the thunder of feet, the crash of wood on wood down the corridor where the wrecking crew had yet to realize they were engaged on a fool’s errand.

  Finally Miriam said gently, ‘Is Will right? Did you drive Cathy’s car into the river?’

  After another long pause Tessa looked up, her gaze defeated. She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was he right about the rest?’

  ‘Most of it.’

  Will had seen people in this situation before. They lied and lied, staked their reputation and their liberty on a fiction that grew thinner and less plausible the more it was explored, and when it finally tore and flew apart they reacted with horror, anger and even grief, as if the invention was something tangible which had been stolen from them, like a purse.

  But their second reaction was relief, as if the invention had been crushing them. As if they’d saddled themselves with a burden they couldn’t hope to carry but didn’t know how to lay down. They were grateful to be rid of it. When there was no more need for caution they wanted to talk about what they’d done.

  Now she’d started talking Tessa wanted to tell it all. To explain things which showed her in a bad light, to have a little sympathy for the trials she’d endured. ‘It happened faster than I expected. I barely got out before the car left the dock. Then there was that great splash, and a moment after that Richard – well, someone, I only found out who in the next day’s papers – came sprinting past. If he hadn’t been fully occupied he’d have seen me.’

  She looked at Will then and her jaw lifted with a trace of the old arrogance. ‘You were wrong about that. I didn’t think he’d die. I thought he’d save her. I thought I’d have the police round as soon as she woke up. Oh, you were wrong about that too. I didn’t hit her – it was ether.

  ‘I went home. There didn’t seem much point running so I waited. John, my husband, was at work so I passed the time writing to him – an explanation, an apology. When the police still hadn’t come I put the radio on.

  ‘The first report gave no names, just said a woman was believed drowned and a man trying to save her was rescued after a car went into the Thames, and the police didn’t suspect a crime. That was the first intimation I had that I might get away with it. I waited another hour, listened to all the bulletins, and the story didn’t change and the police didn’t come. So I burnt my letter and went to bed.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Nothing happened next,’ she said, still possessed by the wonder of it. ‘No one came anywhere near me. Cathy must have been as secretive about me as I’d been about her. When the inquest recorded it as suicide I thought it was over and tried to put it out of my mind. Cathy was the author of her own downfall. I genuinely didn’t feel like a murderer. After fifteen months it no longer seemed real. I saw no reason not to come here when I was asked. I wouldn’t have joined in a group confessional, of course, but nobody asked me to. I was here to research an article. The thing with Cathy wasn’t – relevant.’ Her gaze switched to Miriam. ‘How did you know?‘

  ‘What I knew came from Joe,’ said the psychologist. Her voice was quiet and controlled. Perhaps it wasn’t the first time she’d heard a killer’s confession; or perhaps the whole thrust of her training was to ready her for anything she heard, however terrible. ‘He talked to Cathy not long before her death. She told him almost everything – all the disappointment, all the slights. But not that she was planning to blackmail you, so he’d no reason to think she was murdered. He wanted you here because you gave her drugs that ruined her life and then left her in the wreckage alone.’

  ‘The mesambuterol wasn’t my idea!’ Tessa said indignantly. ‘Really. She picked some up on the circuit, liked the results and asked me to get her a supply. I suppose that was her first shot at blackmail. She said if I wouldn’t help she’d have to ask around, but if she was caught it could come out about her and me.’ She sniffed sourly. ‘She must have put it more subtly than that because I didn’t get the subtext, and in the event she didn’t have to spell it out. I thought it was the safest way if she was determined to have it. She promised I’d never be compromised, but it was the steroids talking. From then on she made a lot of promises she’d no intention of keeping.’

  Will had kept quiet while she got used to talking. But it was too late for her to clam up now so he risked prompting her. ‘You must have been as puzzled as anyone when this weekend took the turn it did. But you were the last to spend much time with Cathy. You knew about the rest of us. When you realized who we were you knew her ghost was up and walking. That’s why you had to talk to Miriam.’

  Tessa made an ambivalent gesture of acceptance – with her head: her arms were under the duvet. ‘I needed to know how much damage had to be contained. I could cope with people knowing about Cathy and me – John would have been hurt but he wouldn’t have left me and my partners wouldn’t have cared. I could field the drugs issue because this long after, nothing could be proved. But if someone was aware it might not have been suicide, then I was in trouble.’

  ‘Did you try to kill me, Tessa?’ asked Miriam. Her tone was still calm, non-accusatory, but the psychologist knew now exactly who she was talking to: a woman who, to protect herself, had killed two people and tried to kill more. Miriam had known Joe Lockhead for a few months; they had been friends; with all his faults the world was a poorer place without him. When there was nothing more pressing she would grieve. But for the moment it was imperative that she stay on top of what was still, in the absence of anyone equally qualified and without a sore head, her job.

  ‘No,’ Tessa said immediately – too quickly for it to be true. ‘I tried to buy a little time. To think, to work it out. I thought you knew!’

  Miriam shook her head sadly. ‘Never suspected. Even when Will guessed I thought he’d got it wrong.’

  ‘I wish I had got it wrong,’ Will said grimly. ‘But Joe’s dead and his murderer tried to kill you too, to buy her safety with your silence. By the time she’d talked to you she knew nothing less would do. What you didn’t know you could get at, and you weren’t prepared to cover up for her. So she collected a blunt instrument from the kitchen, came back – your door wasn’t locked, she’d taken all the keys earlier – and when your back was turned she hit you as hard as she knew how.’

  His gaze came back to Tessa. Even now she had too much pride to avoid it. ‘You thought you’d done enough, but she was still alive when Joe found her. His confession must have knocked you sideways. Whatever Miriam knew about you, he did too. Now you needed them both dead.

  ‘Miria
m shouldn’t have been a problem. But Mrs Venables knew better than to leave her alone with any one of us. She only left the room when we were all in here.

  ‘The neatest solution was to blame everything on Joe. You fused the lights, steered him away on some, pretext and shot insulin into him. When he was found you diagnosed diabetic coma and gave him some more. None of us knew enough to stop you.’

  In the shadows Mrs Venables bowed her head. She’d known, but not in time.

  The end was in prospect. Will laboured on. ‘That delivered him into your hands, but to make him a credible scapegoat you needed him physically out of the way. Sick in bed he couldn’t be blamed for any more attacks, and by now you were aware that mass murder might be your only option. You no longer knew who knew what. We were putting together facts and deductions and intuitions so quickly you’d be in danger if any of us left here alive.

  ‘You took whatever chances presented themselves. With better luck that smear of butter would have disposed of two of us and always looked like an accident. If we hadn’t worked it out, by Monday you’d have been the terrified sole survivor of a massacre by a madman. The police would have accepted your account for lack of any other.’

  He was done at last. He thought he’d covered everything, but it wasn’t an achievement to take much pleasure in. He looked drained. ‘Have I left anything out?’

  Tessa regarded him almost without blinking. At length she said with quiet venom, ‘I wish that stupid bloody boy had left you where he found you.’

  Will gave a grim chuckle. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?’

  Her eyes narrowed at him. ‘Don’t you dare judge me! I didn’t start any of this. I was defending myself – from a blackmailer, from her crazy father, from a nosy sod who couldn’t leave well enough alone. Everything that’s happened was Cathy’s doing, even the things that happened after she was dead.’

  ‘She was sick!’ cried Will. ‘Partly from the stress of her career, but mostly because what should have been her salvation – getting friendly with a doctor – turned out to be anything but. If she’d fallen for a steel-rigger, or a road-sweeper, or God help her if she’d stayed with a solicitor, she’d be alive now. This harpy you talk about – she wasn’t like that until she knew you.’

  ‘No? Or was it just that she never found anything you were useful for? What are you useful for, apart from digging up things that should have been left buried? I wouldn’t mind so much,’ Tessa added, her voice rising querulously, ‘if I thought you did it for Cathy, because you loved her. That I could understand. But you set out to destroy me for no better reason than to see if you could. Mere cleverness. Never mind that lives were in danger, you had to show what you could do. You want to know why Joe’s dead? Because of you. If you’d been just a shade less clever, maybe we could have got through this without anyone getting hurt.’

  He recoiled as if she’d spat in his face. It wasn’t true; but it was what he was afraid of and so he believed her. His lips parted on a little pant of grief. ‘No.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tessa savagely. ‘You hadn’t the guts to keep Cathy when you had her, or the sense to let go when she was gone, or the decency to put the needs of others ahead of your pride. People have paid for your arrogance in pain and in death, and my one consolation is that you’re going to feel that, in here’ – under the quilt she thumped her heart – ‘to the day you die.

  ‘So maybe there’s one last thing you should understand.’ She produced it from under the quilt, held it up between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand.

  He couldn’t make it out. It looked like a cork. Stung by the contempt in her voice he leaned closer. It was a cork, the stopper from the neck of a small bottle. One end was darkly stained and there was a deep cut incised into it. ‘What—?’

  Perhaps if he hadn’t been so tired, if he hadn’t thought it was over, he wouldn’t have made the mistake of leaning still closer in the effort to identify it. The stain on the cork was of no consequence. The incision was significant, and in another moment he’d have realized why. He’d have remembered what a cork was good for when you had something sharp in your pocket.

  But the main function of the cork in Tessa’s left hand was as a decoy, to draw him in closer – and stop him wondering what she had in her right hand.

  As he leaned over her the tawny woman rose from the folds of the quilt like a snake uncoiling from a basket. In weary bewilderment Will had put himself within striking range, and as she surged to her feet Tessa stabbed fiercely upward, driving her scalpel into his throat.

  Blood fountained. Sheelagh gasped. Locked together, the strong woman and the small man pitched over and rolled across the carpet. Will’s eyes flared whitely and a sound of some kind, unrecognizable but for the note of horror, bubbled from his throat.

  It was too late for Tessa to buy her freedom with his death as she had once hoped to. If she could have continued undetected perhaps she would have killed them all and passed it off as the work of a madman, but she couldn’t do that now. So her only motive was personal satisfaction. Not getting away with it. Just doing it.

  There was no reason to suppose that when she’d finished with Will she would turn her attention to someone else. So when Sheelagh leapt on the back of a woman bigger than herself, a woman armed with a lethal weapon, a woman who had already killed twice, it was because of what she was doing to Will not what she might do next.

  But Tessa had nothing left to lose. As soon as she felt the younger woman’s arms she twisted snake-like inside them, rolling her own body on top and freeing her right hand. Sheelagh saw her face from a range of inches and was appalled by the hatred there. Tessa had convinced herself that others were to blame for her situation, that she was their victim, that all her actions were justifiable. She stabbed the blade at Sheelagh’s eye.

  On a good day Sheelagh looked and even behaved like a respectable woman, the proprietor of a thriving business, a woman with a stake in society. But it was only skin-deep: underneath she was an alley cat. She wasn’t afraid of being hurt, only of being beaten. She couldn’t get away from the blade so she did the next best thing: combined a last-ditch defence with a dirty counterattack.

  She thrust her left hand in front of her eye. The blade punched deep into her palm and Sheelagh yelled, as much in rage as pain, and struck out with her own weaponry – a right hand armed with talons filed to a point under a scuffed coat of blood-red lacquer. It was no time for scruples: she too went for the eyes.

  She had the satisfaction of feeling her nails rake the torn skin of Tessa’s cheek and hearing her screech. Then Tessa snatched back the scalpel – blood leaping from the younger woman’s palm – and scythed at the exposed artery inside Sheelagh’s right wrist.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Abandoning their battering-ram the men headed back to the conference room. They peered cautiously round the corner, still wary of the madman who had tried to push Tessa down the lift shaft. When they realized how silly this was they looked away in embarrassment and moved up a gear.

  Before they reached the door they heard screaming: a prolonged, high-pitched, soul-piercing scream that momentarily froze the marrow in their bones.

  Larry recovered first. He hissed, ‘Jesus Christ’ – it may have been a prayer rather than a curse – and hurled himself at the door. It barely shifted, baulked by the sofa wedged behind it.

  Richard hammered. ‘Let us in! What’s happening?’ His voice cracked and soared but no one answered. Even after the scream grew thin and died no one came.

  ‘We have to move it,’ Tariq said tersely. He wasn’t underestimating the task, only knew it must be done. They set their shoulders to it and pushed with every ounce of their strength; with their feet sliding from under them, the veins standing out on their temples, their jaws clenched and their eyes staring; with the bunched muscles trembling in their shoulders and braced thighs. And it wasn’t enough. So they delved beyond strength into the very substance of their bodies and used
that, knowing that if the door didn’t give soon somebody’s heart would.

  The door eased. Just a fraction; then a little more. Encouraged to a final bruising effort they attacked it like draught-horses with a mired wagon to move, and as the aperture inched wider Larry snaked through and tugged at the sofa from the inside.

  They came in on carnage. Will was on the floor, blood pouring from a wound in his throat. Sheelagh was in a chair, blood pooling in her upturned palm. Mrs Venables was on her knees, both hands clasped to her face, blood oozing between the fingers. Miriam, staring, mouth agape, had half-risen from her mattress before shock froze her there.

  Tessa stood silhouetted by the window, her hands behind her, one over her shoulder and one up her back as if trying to scratch an unreachable itch. Larry stared round him wildly, dumbstruck. Richard said again, still in the same odd, high voice, ‘What happened?‘

  Tessa made no answer. She seemed to bow to him; but instead of straightening she continued to lean forward until it turned into a slow-motion fall and she pitched to the floor at his feet. A single tremor shook her body, then she lay still. The back of her jacket was soaked with blood and the handles of the long-bladed kitchen scissors protruded from it.

  Mrs Venables lowered her hands. The blood on her face was in the shape of her fingers: it was not her blood. She said, almost calmly, ‘I had to do it. She was killing them.’ Then she began to weep.

  Sheelagh’s injury was bloody but not dangerous: the blade never reached her wrist. She wrapped her hand in a towel and nursed it in her lap like an ailing child.

  Tessa needed no help either. Her life shuddered out while Richard stared down at her.

  But Will was an emergency. His windpipe intact, he was breathing and still conscious; but eyes great with shock and the bright blood pumping foreshadowed imminent collapse. He was bleeding a river: too much and far too fast. No one could bleed like that for long. He was trying to lever himself up on his arms as if sitting up would make a difference.