'Stay still,' hissed a hoarse voice. 'And listen.'
Chris's cheek stung. He could feel blood trickling down to his jaw. He kept still.
'I'm gonna tell you this once,' whispered the voice in a good imitation of Marlon Brando. 'You're not gonna ask any more questions. You're gonna get on the next plane home. You're gonna forget all about Lenka. Got that?'
'Yes,' Chris said, through clenched teeth.
'You sure, now?'
'I'm sure.'
'OK. I'll be watching you.' Then the knife lifted from Chris's skin and he felt a blow to his ribs that doubled him up. He gasped for breath and turned to see a figure running off. He looked around him. He caught the eye of a woman who had watched the whole thing open mouthed from the other side of the street. She ducked and hurried off in the opposite direction. There were no other witnesses.
Chris picked himself up off the pavement and felt his cheek, which was bleeding quite badly. He set off at a jog to the entrance of the hotel.
The concierge was shocked to see him, and swiftly found a first-aid pack. He offered to call the police, but Chris said that since he wasn't badly hurt and nothing was taken there was no point. So he took the first-aid kit up to his room, breathing heavily and shaking.
He headed straight for the bathroom, holding his handkerchief to his cheek.
He looked into the mirror and froze. There, written on the glass in blood, were the words I killed Lenka.
He staggered back into the bedroom and slammed the bathroom door. He slumped down on the bed and put his face in his hands. He was shaking all over now. Who was this guy? Where was he? Was he still in the room?
He leapt to his feet and checked the room, behind the curtains, in the wardrobe, and in the bathroom behind the shower curtain. There was no one there, of course. He sat down on the bed and tried to get a grip of himself. After five minutes, when the worst of the shaking had stopped, he called the hotel manager.
The manager came, followed swiftly by two uniformed policemen. They were big men, who seemed even bigger with all the hardware they carried around their waists. Their toughness was both intimidating and comforting. They took notes. Their interest perked up considerably when they heard that Lenka was a murder victim and then subsided when they heard that the crime had taken place in the Czech Republic, which Chris had to spell.
They asked him whether the man who had attacked Lenka was the same one who had attacked him that evening.
Chris thought hard before answering. The clothes, although similar, were different. The moustache could have been the same. He couldn't remember seeing long curly hair in Prague. But the run was familiar. He had seen both men run away and they were the same man.
The policemen were not convinced that this counted as positive identification but they wrote it down anyway. Then their radio crackled, calling them to a shooting somewhere or other, and they were gone.
The manager fussed over Chris. He said he had no idea how anyone could possibly have got past the front desk and into his room. Chris suspected it was easy. The manager gave him a new room, and Chris requested that the hotel be particularly careful not to divulge his new room number to anyone. The manager made lots of assurances and then left him alone.
Chris had a bath and went to bed. He couldn't sleep. The warning was as clear as could be. Someone wanted Chris to stop asking questions. If he didn't, he would be killed. And whoever had made the threat seemed perfectly capable of carrying it out. So what should Chris do?
The obvious answer was give up and go home. Chris resolved to cancel his ticket to Vermont and fly back to London the next day.
Having made that decision, he hoped that his brain, relieved, would shut down in sleep. But it didn't. A voice somewhere, deep down inside, protested. It called him a coward. Spineless. It whispered Lenka's name. Chris tried not to listen, but the voice wouldn't leave him alone. It pointed out that if someone wanted to stop Chris that badly, then Chris must be on the verge of discovering something important. Something about Lenka's murder. If he persisted, he would find out who had killed Lenka and perhaps do something about it.
But why should he? He wasn't a hero. It wasn't his job to solve crimes. Lenka was dead; there was nothing he could do to bring her back to life.
He knew what his grandfather would do. He would risk his life to find out what had happened to Lenka, just as he had risked his life so many times fifty years before.
But his grandfather was a bloody-minded bigot. A pain in the arse.
What about his father, the voice asked. That quiet man of steady principles also wouldn't quit. It had taken courage to defect when he had. And it had taken courage to stick with his ideals amongst his more conservative compatriots in Halifax. And what of his mother? The woman who had battled through so much hardship to give him and his sister every advantage she could. She would never give up and fly home.
He had left these people behind when he had gone to university, and then into investment banking. He had intended to become someone else, someone better, more successful, wealthier, and yes, more English. But it hadn't quite worked out like that. He had come close: he had proved to himself at least that he was a good trader, he could earn good money, he could turn a blind eye to the everyday deceptions of people like Ian Darwent or Herbie Exler. But then he had been spurned by the system, unjustly ejected on to the scrap heap of burned-out, toxic traders, ignored, left to rot.
He saw that he had a choice. He could remain in the world of Bloomfield Weiss and George Calhoun, or he could do what his parents, his grandfather and Lenka would do in his place.
If he was going to live with himself, however short that life would be, there was only one choice. He made it and swiftly fell asleep.
12
He awoke afraid. He still knew he had made the right decision, but he was scared of the consequences. Chris prided himself on his ability to assess risk. And he knew he was right to be scared.
But he had some leeway. He was safe until whoever was after him realized that he had decided not to be deterred. The longer whoever it was thought that he might have given up, the more grace he had.
He ate breakfast in the safety of his room, and packed. He caught a cab outside the hotel, and it crawled across town towards the Lincoln Tunnel. Then, as the cab drove through a light changing from green to red, Chris asked the driver to turn north. He looked over his shoulder. The streets were crowded with cars going in every direction. If someone was following, he might have lost him. Or he might not. He directed the cab left and right, along a few cross streets, before barrelling up Tenth Avenue towards the Upper West Side. It was impossible to tell whether he was being followed. The Indian driver thought he was crazy, but didn't care.
Dr Marcia Horwath's office was in a five-storey building in a quiet cross street. Chris leapt out of the cab, overpaid the driver and, quickly scanning the empty street, rushed into the building. It was ten minutes to nine and Dr Horwath was waiting for him.
She was in her fifties with short grey hair and an air of authority. Her office was an office, not a consulting room. No leather couch, no potted plants. Filing cabinets, charts on the walls, a computer, an expensive but businesslike desk. It looked more like the place of work of a management consultant than a psychologist.
She didn't have much time, and she let him know it. 'How can I help you, Mr, er . . .?'
'Szczypiorski. I would like to talk to you about Bloomfield Weiss.'
'I see. Bloomfield Weiss used to be a client of mine. Even though our relationship terminated many years ago, my duty of confidentiality still stands.'
'I understand,' said Chris. 'So perhaps I'll talk and then you can decide how much you can tell me.'
'Go ahead.'
'I was recruited by Bloomfield Weiss as a graduate trainee ten years ago. As part of the recruitment process I was given some psychometric tests. I never found out the results, and quite frankly I forgot all about them. But my understanding is that Bloomfield W
eiss used these tests to screen for particularly aggressive individuals.'
'That's true.'
'And you were one of the psychologists that they used to conduct the tests?'
'That's true also.'
'What did you think of their approach?'
At last, Dr Horwath smiled, and some of the caginess left her. 'At first I was intrigued. There has always seemed to me to be some hypocrisy in the way companies claim they are looking for all the noble virtues in their employees. One of the strengths of psychometric testing is that it doesn't necessarily show that people are good or bad. You don't pass or fail. Different people have different strengths and weaknesses that mean they are more or less suitable for different roles. Bloomfield Weiss realized that many of the successful people in their organization had traits that were often looked upon negatively by recruiters.'
'Such as?'
'If you worked there, I'm sure you saw them. Aggression. The desire to win at any cost. The ability to lie and deceive. The ability to manipulate other people. A certain recklessness. Even a propensity to violence.'
'Violence?'
'Many traders are violent people, wouldn't you say?'
'Some,' said Chris.
'Civilized society sublimates the tendency towards violence in a number of ways. The most obvious is playing sport, or watching it. But trading the financial markets seems to be another way. Come on, don't tell me you haven't seen the macho language, the posturing, the desire to dominate on the trading floor?'
'I suppose I have,' Chris admitted.
'Well, that was what we were looking for.'
'So what went wrong?'
'I'm afraid I can't say.'
Dr Horwath looked at Chris neutrally. He could read nothing from her expression.
'My understanding is that one of the psychologists responsible for the testing, yourself, raised some concerns about some of the trainees you tested. You were afraid they might turn out to be dangerous. Your warnings were ignored and the candidates were recruited anyway. One of these, Steve Matzley, was subsequently convicted of rape. I'm concerned whether there were any others that troubled you.'
'There may have been,' said Dr Horwath. 'But I couldn't possibly discuss them with you if there were. And I'm not sure what your interest in this is. You don't still work for Bloomfield Weiss do you?'
'No, I left two years ago. But I witnessed the death of one of the trainees on my programme, Alex Lubron. He fell off a boat and was drowned. Did you hear about it?'
'Yes, I did,' said Dr Horwath. Weren't the circumstances suspicious?'
Chris had to be cautious here. Dr Horwath owed no duty of confidentiality to him, so he had to be careful not to say anything that could be used against him, or Duncan, or any of them later.
'I thought the circumstances were straightforward at the time,' he said. 'But now I'm not so sure. One of the other trainees on the boat, Lenka Němečková, was murdered in Prague a couple of weeks ago.' Dr Horwath's eyebrows shot up at this. 'I believe there may be some connection with what happened on that boat.'
'What kind of connection?'
Chris sighed. 'I don't know.'
'So what do you want from me?'
'If I give you the names of the people on the boat, can you tell me whether you were worried about any of them?'
'The short answer, Mr, er,. . . is no. For reasons I have already explained.'
Chris went on regardless. 'There were seven of us. Myself, Lenka, Alex, Duncan Gemmel, Ian Darwent, Eric Astle and one other woman whom you wouldn't know.' Chris listed these names slowly, watching Dr Horwath's face very closely as he did so. Nothing. Not a blink of an eyelid. 'Do any of those names ring a bell?'
'All of those people told me or my associates personal details in the strictest confidence. As did you, yourself. While I didn't approve of Bloomfield Weiss's approach to this programme, I do have to respect that confidentiality.'
'But Dr Horwath. A friend of mine has been killed already. I myself was attacked by a man with a knife last night.' Chris touched the cut on his face. 'Please. At least tell me if nothing showed up in the tests of any of us.'
Dr Horwath looked up at the ceiling for a long moment, and then returned her gaze very deliberately to Chris. She said nothing.
'You can't tell me that, can you?'
Still nothing.
Chris leaned forward, eager to pin her down. 'There was something wrong with one of them. Which one? You didn't have to look the names up in a file. One of them means something to you, doesn't it? One of them you remember, ten years later.'
Dr Horwath looked at her watch. 'I do appreciate the seriousness of your enquiry. But I cannot help you. I absolutely cannot. Now, I have an appointment at nine.'
Chris realized that was as much as he was going to get. But he had got something, he was sure of it.
'Thank you, Dr Horwath. If you do change your mind, here's my card. And,' he paused. What he wanted to say was melodramatic, but it needed to be said. 'If, sometime in the next few weeks, you learn that something has happened to me, please remember this conversation and pass it on.'
Dr Horwath's eyes flashed at him. He knew he sounded paranoid, but he hoped that she would be able to tell he wasn't crazy. 'I'll do that,' she said.
Chris left the room and, as he was putting on his coat outside her office, he saw Dr Horwath looking through a drawer of her filing cabinet.
The rented four-wheel drive ground up the hill, the tyres somehow gripping to the compacted snow under the wheels. Chris knew he wasn't being followed. All he had to do was look behind him down the ravine to the highway two miles behind and several hundred feet below him. He had taken a cab to Newark Airport, hung around International Departures, and then taken the monorail to the terminal for Burlington. So far, no one knew where he was.
There was snow in Vermont. The valley would have looked pretty on a sunny day, but the skies were leaden, the dark clouds hugged the mountainside only a couple of hundred feet above him, and Chris was pushing the four-wheel drive well beyond the limits of a normal car. So far, no skids. Which was fortunate, because there was a hundred-foot drop to his left.
What kept him going were the clear tracks of another vehicle along the road in front of him. Someone else had been along here since it had last snowed. If they had made it, so could he.
About four miles from the highway, he rounded a bend and came to a high meadow. The trees were cleared for about half a mile up a gentle slope to a white-painted house. Near it was a big red barn. Smoke trickled out of a chimney. A four-wheel drive similar to his own stood outside. Relieved that he had arrived intact, Chris parked his vehicle next to it, and got out. After the warmth of the car the cold engulfed him, making him catch his breath. He glanced up at the sky. He was no expert, but it looked to him like snow.
He approached the front door. It opened when he was still a couple of steps away. A tall woman with long greying hair eyed him suspiciously.
'Hi,' he said. 'Can I come in? It's freezing out here.'
'What do you want?'
'To see Marcus.'
The woman hesitated. Finally, her sympathy overcame her suspicion, and she let him in. She led him through to a warm living room and asked him to take a seat. He did so, on a strange-looking squat wooden chair that was surprisingly comfortable. The woman sat on the floor near a stove. The room was adorned with wild Indian-style fabrics. There were other pieces of furniture in a similar style to the chair Chris was sitting on, and at least a dozen pots of various sizes and shapes, all decorated in primitive browns and greens. And no TV.
'One of Marcus's?' Chris asked, tapping the chair.
The woman nodded. She had a smooth face, serene. Despite her grey hair, she didn't seem to be much older than Chris.
'Is he here?'
'He's out back. He'll be here in a moment.'
Chris heard a metallic click, and looked up. A tall man wearing a long coat was standing in the doorway. In his hands was a rifle
. The rifle was pointing straight at Chris.
Chris slowly rose to his feet, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. He knew it would be difficult to talk to Marcus. The barrel of the gun didn't make it any easier.
'There's no need for that,' Chris said gently.
'I think there is,' Marcus growled. He sounded like Alex. He looked like him, too, only much taller. He had the same thin face and dark eyebrows. The stubble on his cheeks reminded Chris of Alex on a Sunday evening. But of course Marcus looked older, more than ten years older, and he lacked Alex's sense of humour. At least while he was holding a gun.
'Marcus, please,' the woman said.
'Be quiet, Angie. I don't trust this guy.'
'Put the gun down,' she said.
'No. I'm keeping hold of the gun. Now, what's your name?'
'Chris. Chris Szczypiorski.'
'I thought so. Didn't I tell you I didn't want to talk to you?'
'Yes, you did. But I want to talk to you. And I'm here now.'
'Well, just turn around and go right out the way you came in.'
Chris took a deep breath. 'Please, Marcus. I've travelled a long way to see you. Give me ten minutes.'
Marcus thought this over. His eyebrows knitted together in a frown. 'Since you're here,' he said. 'Talk.'
Chris returned to his chair, and Marcus sat opposite him. Angie watched carefully from her position on the floor. The gun rested on Marcus's knees, pointing at Chris.
'Tell me what happened on the boat.'
'Right.' Chris found it impossible to take his eyes off the rifle, and very difficult to get his thoughts in order. But having come this far, there was no point in prevaricating. He told Marcus about the evening on the boat in some detail. Marcus's intense brown eyes hung on every word. When he had finished, Chris fell silent.
'And that's it?' Marcus asked.
'That's it.'
'You haven't left anything out?'
Chris shook his head.
'If that's what happened, why didn't you tell the police?'
The Predator Page 22
