To Love and to Perish

by steve higgs

  Vince came a step closer. I’d seen him punch people; he was good at it.

  Maybe Tarquin sensed the danger Vince presented. Or maybe it was that Tamara let out a little groan and Tarquin knew he had to start dealing with us. Whatever the catalyst, he threw me to the ground, and yanked out a taser.

  I call it a taser, but I’ve never actually seen one before. They are things on TV shows shot in America, or places that are not the UK anyway. But whatever it was, he pointed it at Vince and let it rip.

  The things it shot out moved too fast for me to see. The effect on Vince, however, that was right in front of my eyes.

  He twitched in place, looking like every muscle in his body had been activated simultaneously. Even though I was still bouncing across the ground and tearing my palms on the rough tarmac, my worry was more focused on Vince than it was on me.

  A second elapsed, by which time I was just coming to rest on the ground and thinking about getting to my feet. By then the tasering was done, and Vince folded like a deck of cards. He was fit and muscular and strong, but he was also in his late fifties and I had to question what a shock like that might do to his heart.

  Tarquin grabbed my hair again as if to remind me that I needed to worry more about myself. His anger, if anything, had been magnified by Vince’s interference and he was being even more rough with me than before.

  ‘Who was that?’ Tarquin demanded.

  ‘Vince Slater. He’s a private investigator. I expect the police are coming right now.’

  Tarquin paused. ‘I don’t hear any sirens. Do you hear any sirens?’ he asked. When I didn’t answer, he said, ‘Then they will be too late. Did you wonder what he was on about?’ Tarquin rumbled into my ear; his mouth right next to my head. ‘I have made a very profitable business out of taking over other businesses. I move in, I impress them and make myself utterly invaluable.’ He was half dragging me across the carpark as I fought to get my feet under my body so I could support my own weight.

  ‘They always want me to stay so they offer me what I tell them I want: a small number of shares in the business. What they don’t realise is once you are a shareholder it becomes a game of musical chairs. Do you know how a game of musical chairs ends, Mrs Philips?’

  I did. ‘Only one person is left.’

  He laughed at me. ‘That’s right. Well done. You are the first person to ever answer that question correctly.’

  ‘How many times have you done this?’ I couldn’t help myself; even terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought, I was still full of questions.

  Tarquin laughed again. We had arrived at Tamara’s barely conscious form. He grabbed her ankle and started dragging the pair of us back toward the rear wall of Orion Print. She moaned softly, an involuntary noise that told me she wasn’t dead, but she also wasn’t really conscious and certainly wasn’t going to be of any help.

  ‘This will be my seventh successful take over. I never own the businesses for long. I arrange for the shareholders to meet with untimely, but tragic accidents. Once there is no one left to oppose me, I appoint myself as CEO – that was what John was supposed to convince Derek to do. I got bored waiting for Derek to die, which by the way is a demonstration of my genius if ever there was one.’

  Uncertain what he was telling me, and trying to buy another few seconds for someone to discover us, I asked, ‘What is?’

  Tarquin sniggered. ‘The poison in his brandy. It’s a delicate blend of cadmium, vanadium, and nickel. It plays utter havoc with the body. As the toxin levels build up, the victim’s skin breaks out in a terrible rash and the soft tissue of the joints swell in a painful manner. Blindness follows and then either madness and death, or just death depending on the health and strength of the subject. Honestly, I’m stunned Derek lasted as long as he did. Hence pushing John to force Derek to stand down and appoint me.’

  ‘You’re a monster,’ I whimpered.

  He chuckled. ‘I think you mean a homicidal entrepreneur. It’s the future for all business. Besides, when I found out about John … well, who wouldn’t want to blackmail someone with a secret that disgusting. I even considered not killing him. Can you believe that?’

  ‘How generous,’ I murmured.

  ‘One less death, you know – but he decided to get clever and look into me. I found files on the work computer; that was sloppy of him. If he’d done it all at home, I might never have known. Fixing his brakes was a doddle. Just the right amount of turns and the brake fluid slowly drains until … BOOM! No brakes!’ Tarquin laughed as if he had just told a joke. ‘Soon, the poison will kill Derek and I will be able to buy the shares from the widow or whoever is left holding them. That takes me to the final stage where I run this firm the way it ought to have been. Once the share price is high enough, I’ll sell the whole thing. It’s a victimless crime.’

  ‘Victimless? You’re insane!’ I blurted.

  Tarquin laughed at me. ‘You can hardly count Derek and John as victims. They did this to themselves.’

  ‘And Tamara?’ I reminded him about his fiancée.

  I got a shrug in reply. ‘Casualty of war.’

  We were nearing an Aston Martin when Tarquin let go of Tamara’s foot. He did so in order to get to his keys. ‘Sweet Tamara is going in the river, Mrs Philips. I’ll hold her under just to be sure, but I expect she’ll be found downstream in a day or so. I’m afraid you will not be given the same treatment. I’m going to have to make you disappear.’

  That was enough of a threat to make me call for help. ‘Buster! Felicity needs Adventure Dog! Adventure Dog to the rescue!’

  Tarquin clamped a hand over my mouth and twisted me so he could look at my face.

  ‘What the devil are you on about, woman?’

  We were three yards from the back gate to the Orion Print premises but we could have been half a mile away and we would still have been able to hear Buster’s skull collide with the wooden gate.

  His thoughts filled my head. ‘I’m coming, Felicity!’

  The gate bucked again. It looked old and frayed at the bottom, the lower foot or so rotting slowly from continual exposure to moisture.

  ‘What the heck is that?’ Tarquin demanded to know. ‘Is it a dog?’

  He unlocked his car and opened the boot. I thought he was going to shove me in but instead he threw me to the ground and grabbed something from inside.

  Buster’s next strike broke two panels and on the next one he broke through.

  Even in the dim light of the car park, I could see the blood on his fur.

  Unperturbed by whatever pain he felt, Buster barked, ‘Dun dun, DAH!’

  He took a half second to assess what he could see now he was back out in the carpark, then he put his head down to charge.

  Tarquin was faster.

  What he’d taken from the boot of his car was a blanket. Buster ran headlong into it, tangling instantly, and the man I so badly wanted my dog to bite wrapped him up like a gift on Christmas Eve.

  I screamed my horror, finally finding my voice. The high-pitched and desperate cry for help might have been heard by hundreds of people or none at all. I couldn’t tell, but whether anyone was coming to my aid or not, they couldn’t possibly get here in time because Tarquin had just pulled a wicked looking knife from his pocket.

  The shiny metal flashed in the moonlight as he bore it high above his head.

  I screamed again, and then I heard the voice.

  ‘Hey! Hey, human! I might hate that dog but he’s my dog and no one gets to beat on him but me.’

  Amber was on top of the gate. Tarquin hadn’t seen her but when she landed on his face with all twenty claws extended, he sure felt her.

  He made a sound like an operatic soprano being put through a woodchipper as she tore at the flesh around his eyes, lips, and nose.

  For a second or two, all I could do was watch in fascinated horror. Tarquin screamed in pain and shock and let go of the blanket.

  Without a person to keep him trapped in it
s folds, Buster burst free and bit the first thing he saw. It just happened to be Tarquin’s groin. When Buster then shook his whole body, like a crocodile trying to tear a piece of flesh from a wildebeest, Tarquin’s screams not only increased in volume, but went up at least two octaves.

  I doubted I could achieve the note he managed to reach.

  Galvanised into action – because this was the best chance I was going to get – I clambered to my feet.

  Amber was still on his face, gouging, clawing, and biting for all she was worth and once again my heart stopped beating as I saw the knife swing upwards. It was going to gut my cat if it hit her body.

  As if watching in slow motion, I saw Tarquin’s arm scythe upward. At the last second, Amber pushed off and I had to watch Tarquin stab himself in the face.

  My breath caught in my chest as his hand fell away and the knife stayed there. He was trying to look at it even though it had gone into the soft tissue between his nose and his left eye.

  I swear my heart didn’t bother to beat as he wobbled in place.

  When he toppled backward, there was a part of me that wanted to cheer, but a bigger part that needed to cry.

  Tarquin laid still. Or he would have if Buster hadn’t still been worrying the man’s groin.

  ‘Buster,’ I hissed. ‘Buster, stop it.’

  Buster paused long enough to glance at me.

  ‘He’s dead, Buster. That’s enough.’

  Buster spat out what he had in his mouth and licked his nose. ‘Yeah. That’s right, stupid human,’ he growled at Tarquin’s inert form. ‘You mess with the bulldog and you get me horny!’

  I felt it necessary to say, ‘Um, I’m not sure you have that saying quite right.’

  Buster looked at me. ‘Huh? Which bit?’

  Amber said, ‘This is the part where I get a mackerel, I believe.’ She was sitting behind Buster, calmly licking a paw.

  I rushed to her, sweeping her up and into my arms so I could hug her to my body. ‘Oh, Amber. Amber you were marvellous. You saved me.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Now where is my mackerel?’

  Buster asked, ‘I still get my steak, right? I found the cat.’

  Amber turned her head to squint at the dog. ‘I beg your pardon. You didn’t find me, you flea-bitten mutt. I picked up your awful dog smell the second you arrived. I came to you. Anyway, what is that awful stench?’

  ‘That’s me,’ I admitted. There were tears rolling down my cheeks, I was so relieved just to be alive, but my pets were here with me and they were both unharmed too.

  Remembering Vince, and feeling bad that I had genuinely forgotten he was here, I found that he was sitting up and watching me.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think it’s fairly normal for a person to talk to their pets. But pretending they are having a conversation with you is a little weird.’

  Champagne

  Tamara had regained consciousness but took one look at Tarquin with a knife sticking out of his face and promptly screamed until she fainted again. The paramedics were going to have fun with that one.

  The police arrived shortly afterward. Vince called them but they were already en route. Local citizens had called to report screaming coming from our general area.

  Vince and I were sitting on the open boot lip of Tarquin’s car. I had Amber on my lap and Buster snoring loudly in the empty space behind us. It was nicer than sitting on the ground and the police made it clear they wanted us to hang around. We kind of guessed that anyway.

  As luck would have it, one of the first to arrive was Detective Sergeant Mike Atwell, who at this point I considered to be a friendly face.

  DS Atwell had news for us. ‘I found myself to be curious about how Mr Bleakwith came to be so ill and then recover so quickly. That was your doing, Mrs Philips,’ he praised me. ‘All that excitement at the hospital this afternoon, well it wasn’t for nothing.’ He turned to looked at Tarquin’s body lying just a few yards away. ‘Of course, you were right anyway. There really was someone trying to kill Mr Bleakwith. It just wasn’t his wife.’

  I really didn’t feel there was a need to remind me how much of a fool I’d made of myself.

  ‘It turned out Mr Bleakwith’s brandy had been poisoned. It was a very subtle concoction. It was guess work … and a little intuition,’ he allowed himself a small pat on the back, ‘that led me to find it. I figured it had to be something he was coming into regular contact with. A short discussion of what he had ingested, imbibed, or absorbed on a regular basis but not since going into hospital reduced the list to just a few items. My guess, for that is all it can be since our suspect cannot answer any questions or give a confession, is that Mr Tremaine dosed the brandy whenever he visited.’

  I nodded my head. In all the dazed confusion, it hadn’t occurred to me to tell anyone about the poisoned brandy. Now I didn’t need to. They would take a statement from me later, and I would tell them everything Tarquin confessed to then.

  Two crime scene chaps arrived, tutting and sighing as they circled the body.

  DS Atwell turned to observe them. ‘What do you think, Steven?’

  One of the pair, a man in his mid-forties and difficult to distinguish from his colleague except that he wore glasses, said, ‘Looks like a cat scratched his face off.’

  Amber said, ‘Meowlr.’

  Steven raised his eyebrows and snorted a laugh when he spotted the cat in my arms. ‘I guess I was right then. Hey, Simon, when was the last time we had a death by cat attack?’

  The crime scene man’s partner smiled. ‘You know. I think that might be a first.’

  They were both joking and smiling – it seemed terribly out of place standing over a man who had recently died, but I held my tongue because I could only imagine what death and horror people in their line of work saw.

  When DS Atwell excused himself - he needed to coordinate and stuff, Vince took out his phone, shot me a smile, and called The Wild Oak.

  ‘Yes, good evening. Yes, I hope you can be of assistance. You probably heard the police sirens going by a moment ago. Yes, there has been a minor incident in the carpark by the river. It’s all over now though. That’s why I’m calling actually.’ He kept pausing to listen to the person at the other end of the line. ‘Yes, can you send a bottle of your best champagne and two glasses down to me. Please tell whoever is delivering it that I have a handsome tip for their trouble. You’ll bring it yourself? Even better.’ He fumbled in his jacket to retrieve his wallet and came up empty.

  Frowning, he mouthed, ‘Excuse me,’ and darted across the carpark.

  Stroking Amber’s fur, I watched him reach a car. It wasn’t the car he’d been driving this morning though; it was a black BMW.

  My mouth fell open.

  He jogged back to me, reciting the number from his credit card. He paid for the champagne right there and then.

  I had to admit it, it was a smooth move.

  When he ended the call, I asked. ‘Did you find one of your tyres slashed today?’

  He gave me a confused look. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Nevermind,’ I muttered. ‘You were following me though, weren’t you?’

  He shrugged apologetically. ‘I thought you might get into trouble.’

  Among all the other things Mindy and I had done today, we had stuck a knife in an innocent person’s tyre.

  While we waited for the waiter to arrive, Vince explained what he had been doing since breakfast this morning. ‘When we overheard that man last night – we know it was Tarquin now – I felt sure there was something happening that was far more sinister than a man falling off his balcony. When we got arrested because the other senior partner died, it left me with no doubt. I took what I knew and the little bit of evidence I had, and I started to dig. I had to look at all the employees and dug into their pasts.’

  I interrupted him. ‘I thought the police took the data drive when they arrested you.’

  ‘They did,’ he agreed.

  Across the carpark in the cu
t through between the line of buildings, a young man holding a very obvious bottle of champagne and two glasses was being held at bay by a young police officer.

  Vince jumped to his feet. ‘Won’t be a moment.’

  He returned seconds later with the champagne and glasses in hand and I had to wonder, as he shot the cork into the night sky and poured the sparkling liquid, if we were the first people to drink champagne in the middle of a crime scene.

  Under different circumstances, I might have toasted to the future, but having figured something out, I said, ‘You stole the paperwork from my handbag last night, didn’t you?’

  Vince made an irritated face that told me I was on the money.

  ‘That’s how you figured it out, wasn’t it?’ I accused him. ‘You left me fumbling and took the evidence I found so you could figure this out for yourself.’

  Vince sucked in some air between his teeth. ‘The clues on those sheets of paper … they were pretty obscure, babe. You were never going to be able to work it out from that. I only got there because I have years of experience in this business and a heap of contacts and resources I can turn to for help.’

  I let him fill my champagne glass, then asked, ‘Don’t you think that is a little presumptuous?’

  He held his glass up for me to clink mine against. ‘The important thing, babe, is that we solved the case and stopped the bad guy.’

  I poured my drink over his head.

  The End

  Except it isn’t. It’s the end of this small chapter but wait until you read what happens next! Check the next page to get a look.

  Author’s Notes

  Yet again, as I finish this book, it is early in the morning and I probably ought to be asleep. Why did I stay up to finish it when I could just write the words tomorrow? Well, there are a couple of reasons.

  The first is all to do with story flow and how I find myself immersed in it. Each morning when I start writing, it takes me a while to get going – I have to find the flow of the story. That is more true at the start of a book, when I am trying to find my way into the story. The way I write … making it up as I go along, it is very immersive. I honestly have no idea who is going to do what when I sit in front of my laptop. Toward the end, when I am in the last quarter of the book, that is less true. By then, the decisions have been made and the villain identified. By then, I am focused on the end and have a head rush to finish.