I KILL

by Lex Lander

  ‘Go on.’ Lizzy urged. I was squandering our lead, and she at least grasped that. Behind, yellow headlights stabbed in the night. ‘They’re coming, they’re coming!’

  I turned left, up the pista forestal, thinking to make for Lucien’s house. By pursuing me there, de Bruin would throw away the anonymity he had so far preserved. Then I had second thoughts, which proved I was still capable of thought. I couldn’t inflict this gang of thugs on my friends. So when the fork came up I continued on, down the narrow, snaking road into La Massana. Had my cerebral quotient been firing on all cells, I might have made for the local slammer, overcoming my natural aversion to crying on the shoulders of the police. But when the option did finally occur to me, the police station was receding in the rear view mirror.

  The main street of La Massana runs along the side of the town, more like a by-pass, enabling us to blast through at some grossly illegal speed. At the junction where the N3 bears away to the right I carried straight on, taking the Ents road. No specific destination in view, no ultimate sanctuary. Just keeping the car on the road was challenge enough.

  The adrenaline rushing about my bloodstream had so far kept me from complete collapse. Now, as we left La Massana behind, crossing the bridge over the River Valira, all I had to do was hang on to the wheel. Yet torpor was again stealing over me, attaching weights to my eyelids, and turning my limbs to lead and my brain to mush.

  Driving conditions couldn’t have been better: dry road, clear night, traffic negligible. The Aston stuck to the crumbling asphalt like a leech, the fat tyres never once losing traction. Ahead of us the xenon headlight beams cut a fleeing crescent through the darkness, now lighting up the occasional villa or cottage, now swinging across a snow marker post or crash barrier on some precarious bend. In the mirror, on bend-free stretches, the lights of another car twinkled.

  ‘They’re after us,’ Lizzy piped, bouncing in her seat. She was as lively as I was enervated.

  ‘Don’t … worry.’ Speaking was a real effort. ‘Never … catch … up.’

  Never, that is, if I could only stay awake.

  Now lights were coming at us from ahead, closing fast, flashing imperatively. I cursed, dazzled but couldn’t find the dip switch stalk. The lights ripped past and left me blinded and fighting a wheel that had acquired a will of its own, tugging at my hands as we mounted the verge. I heaved the wheel over, too far – we swerved across the road, struck the opposite verge, which by happy chance kicked us squarely back into line.

  And throughout it all not a peep from Lizzy. She was a spunky kid all right.

  Now she reported, ‘They’re gaining!’ She sounded more thrilled than scared.

  That near-smash had cost us ground. It wouldn’t have mattered if I wasn’t drugged out of my mind. The Aston had oomph and to spare. But I was fast sliding into a warm, welcoming emptiness, my decline now gilded by hallucination. The climbing road was no longer firm but slipping and sliding, in perpetual motion, a fast flowing river with frothing rapids and rocks that lay treacherously just below the surface. A river that was pushing us back into the embrace of our pursuers. Go faster, go faster, urged an inner voice. My foot obediently squashed the accelerator to the floor. We took a bend at an impossible speed. Now even Lizzy was unable to suppress a squawk of alarm.

  Faster still flowed the current, faster still I drove, the ascent steepening, the rapids becoming a cataract. On and up, in magical defiance of gravity, to the very top, cresting it … Lights burst upon us. Tyres yelped, a horn blared in alarm. I braked harshly, provoking a rear wheel skid, corrected, over-corrected. We hit the nearside verge at an angle, mounted it on two wheels, flattened a line of fence posts. Out into the blackness beyond, engine racing as the Aston became airborne, revs going off the scale, lights washing the great empty bowl of the night sky.

  Lizzy screamed, just once. Then came other noises: a crunching and rending apart of metal and a splintering of glass. Then … nothing.

  Twenty-Five

  Awakening.

  A darkened room. Bare, impersonal walls. The whirr of an electric motor. Not night: a bird was singing lustily outside an open window. A draught of air licked at me, cool and sweet, prickling every follicle of my scalp, calming my pattering pulse.

  Elsewhere, heat and cold overlapped. From the neck down I was afire. Sweaty, yet shivering. Trembling, yet still.

  Was this death?

  The doctor was French, in his thirties and fast losing his sandy hair. He was also brutally efficient without the zombie professionalism of so many of his brethren. His last name was Henry, his first name never mentioned. Typical of his race in that respect.

  ‘You are feeling better today. I can see it in your face.’

  I conceded that much.

  ‘Eating too, at last.’ He glanced towards the cleared plates on the breakfast tray. ‘I am encouraged.’ He studied the graph clipped at the foot of the bed.

  Earlier, I too had studied the graph and been none the wiser.

  Three days had passed since my return to full sensibility. My faculties, mental and physical, were now on the trail back towards normal. Though still weak I was at least capable of putting two and two together. And even of occasionally making four.

  Dr Henry parked his behind on the edge of my bed. His examination of pulse, temperature, blood pressure, visual and aural reflexes was swift yet far from cursory.

  ‘Good, good, good,’ he said, examination over.

  ‘That’s a relief. You can take the rest of the day off.’

  Ironic English-style wit is usually wasted on French-style mentality. Dr Henry was no exception.

  ‘No, no, I couldn’t possibly. You are not my only patient, Mr Warner.’

  ‘Now I’m disillusioned.’ I threw in a grin to show I wasn’t serious. ‘Which brings me to a question, or, rather, a number of questions, if you can spare me five minutes of your time.’

  ‘Questions are a form of therapy,’ he said pompously.

  That, I thought, rather depended on the answers.

  ‘For starters, where am I?’

  ‘Toulouse.’ Surprise number one. ‘Centre Hospitaliet de Purpan.’ He said it with pride, as if it were his own creation.

  ‘What happened to the young lady who was with me when the accident happened?’

  He blinked worriedly. ‘What young lady? For that matter, what accident?’

  As likely as not he had been off-duty when I was admitted.

  ‘My car ran off the road. A girl was with me at the time: her name is Elizabeth Power. Australian-American, sixteen years old. I’m her guardian.’

  ‘I see.’ He tapped his teeth with a fingernail. ‘Go on.’

  I elbowed myself up into a sitting position. ‘What do you mean – “go on”?’ My voice shot up. ‘I crashed my car, and I want to know what happened to my passenger.’

  ‘Be calm, monsieur,’ he said, making soothing motions. ‘I will try and explain. We know of no accident, nor of any car or companion. You were found at your house in Andorra by your, er … neighbour, Doctor Bos.’ I stopped breathing. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘You were in a coma, unconscious, on your bed.’

  ‘Coma? On my own bed?’ I was yammering. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Compassion lightened Henry’s austere features.

  ‘You must not let it trouble you. Everything will become clear in due course. You need rest, a lot of rest. An intravenous overdose of cocaine has a traumatic effect on the mind …’

  I grabbed a handful of crisp white lapel. ‘Cocaine? What are you raving about? What cocaine?’

  The bedside manner stayed unruffled.

  ‘You don’t remember. This also is perfectly normal.’ He smiled reassurance, patted my shoulder. ‘In such circumstances a slight memory loss is nothing to worry about.’

  Loss of memory? Was it really that? I pressed my temples to stimulate rational thought. When at length I spoke again I was icy calm.

  ‘I don’t know much ab
out cocaine, doctor, but would I be right in thinking it induces a feeling of exhilaration? Gives you energy?’ He frowned at me. ‘I mean, it doesn’t make you feel sleepy, does it?’

  ‘No. But you yourself must be aware of its effects.’

  ‘Never mind that.’

  My last memory, before I drove the Aston through a fence, was of drowsiness, of torpor. The opposite effect to that of coke.

  ‘How long have I been here?’ I said, changing tack.

  Henry got off the bed and consulted the chart. ‘Not quite a month.’

  ‘A month!’ Shocked, I looked at my wrist, to confirm the date from my watch. It was watchless. ‘That’s impossible. What’s the date?’

  When he told me, I still didn’t believe him.

  ‘Mr Warner,’ he went on, ‘you have been in a coma for most of that period. You are very fortunate indeed not to be dead. The dose you took would have killed most men your age, I can assure you.’ His mouth tightened primly. ‘It is likely that the police will wish to interview you. Not so much about the drug taking itself as about your …’ Here the primness gave way to out-and-out distaste, ‘sources of supply.’

  The police! Such visitors I could do without.

  ‘Also Doctor Bos arrived in Toulouse last night. I took the liberty of telephoning him when you emerged from your coma. You have him to thank for your life, also for this private ward.’

  I had wondered about that.

  ‘I’ll pay my own bills. Is Lucien – Doctor Bos – going to visit me?’

  ‘He has expressed a wish to do so. You permit?’

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘Very well, monsieur.’ His natural respect for a fee-paying patient had been restored. ‘I am to contact him at his hotel. Meanwhile, I suggest you try and sleep.’

  ‘You can’t be serious. From what you tell me I’ve been asleep for a whole fucking month.’

  The obscenity served only further to lower his opinion of me. Not just a junkie, but a foul-mouthed junkie.

  ‘For that, if I may say so, Mr Warner, you have only yourself to blame.’

  On which self-righteous note I was left to the joys of my private ward, to absorb Henry’s revelations and to ponder the fate of Lizzy. This mental exercise kept me busy (but left me little wiser) until Lucien’s familiar head popped around the door in the early afternoon. My pleasure at seeing him was intense, my handshake reflected it. For once though, he crushed my fingers rather than I his, such was my enfeebled condition.

  ‘Where’s Lizzy?’ I shot at him while he was fetching a visitor’s chair – a moulded plastic job, the kind they run off by the million for hospitals and doctors’ waiting rooms. He sat, crossing his legs with exaggerated care.

  ‘I was hoping,’ he said, his tone guarded, ‘that you were going to tell me.’

  I groaned unreservedly at this confirmation of my fears.

  ‘They say you arranged for me to be brought here. How so?’

  ‘Your condition was very grave, my friend. The level of treatment you required was beyond the resources of the hospitals in Andorra. Toulouse is my home town. I believe I may have mentioned this.’ He had but it was the sort of forgettable detail that never takes root. ‘The Chief Administrator of this hospital is a friend of my brother. So – voila!’

  ‘No complaints, Lucien. I’m alive and that’s recommendation enough. But I don’t understand what happened.’ I leaned towards him and caught hold of his wrist. ‘Tell me, before I go cuckoo.’

  The pale sunlight streaming through the narrow window was not kind to him. It suddenly struck me that Lucien Bos was an old man. Like the poplar trees outside my window, their leaves tumbling more or less continuously with the coming of fall, he was visibly in decline. Crumbling slowly.

  ‘Aren’t you well?’ I asked him, conscious of how much I owed him.

  ‘It is nothing. A little trouble with the heart …’ He shrugged. ‘Age comes like the night. It is inescapable.’

  I was saddened. My own troubles faded into insignificance.

  ‘You know how grateful I am for all you’ve done.’

  His smile contradicted the melancholy in his eyes.

  ‘I know.’ He found a new position, exchanging legs crossed for legs outstretched. ‘You ask what happened, but in truth there is little to tell. It was on the Sunday evening. Knowing Elizabeth was due to leave for Paris on Monday, Madeleine and I came to wish her bon voyage …’

  He told a lengthy, laborious tale which I managed not to interrupt. He and Madeleine had found my house locked but not shuttered. Perhaps, they had debated, Lizzy had left a day early; perhaps I had driven her to the airport here in Toulouse. Odd she hadn’t come to wish them goodbye. To assure themselves the house really was empty they had walked round to the kitchen door, which proved to be unlocked. They entered, and I owed my survival to their trespass. Their unease led them upstairs, ultimately into my bedroom. There I reposed, breathing but only just, in close proximity to a quantity of uncut cocaine. Also to hand were a hypodermic of the disposable variety, a length of cord for swelling the veins, and a sterilization kit (I was a responsible junkie).

  I was rushed to the little hospital in Andorra-la-Vella for emergency resuscitation. When I failed to respond, I was transferred to Toulouse early on Monday morning.

  To lie in a coma for a month while Lizzy … While Lizzy what?

  ‘No sign at all of Lizzy in the house?’ I went through the motions of asking.

  ‘No. Some of her clothing appeared to be missing.’

  ‘Lucien,’ I said, and fixed him with a gaze he couldn’t avoid. ‘I want you to know that I have never in my life injected myself with drugs. A few months ago I was dabbling a bit, you know the kind of thing. Grass, a couple of lines of coke now and again, but I quit when I got back from Morocco.’ He hadn’t looked away, which was a good sign. ‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘I must. Because if I do not …’ Here a wry grin pulled his face out of shape, ‘it will mean I am a poorer judge of character than I thought I was. And I am much too vain to admit this.’

  I sighed explosively and sank back into my pillow. I felt I had just crossed an Arnhem of a bridge.

  ‘Something has been puzzling me though,’ he said. ‘Your car was found on the road to Ents, badly damaged. How do you explain this?’

  That was confirmation that I wasn’t completely off the wall.

  ‘It’s a long story, if you’re sure you want to hear it.’ When he nodded, I went on, ‘It really starts in Tangier. You remember how Lizzy’s mother was abducted there?’

  ‘Certainly.’ He produced a pack of cigars, then remembered where he was and put them away with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Une affaire très bizarre.’

  ‘But no less true for that. You may also remember my mentioning a certain sleazeball, name of de Bruin …’

  Four days after Lucien’s visit I took my first tottering steps, using a nurse as a willing prop. The extent of my debility shocked me.

  Not for long. A daily two-hour stint in the superbly-equipped gymnasium, and within a week I was as fit as ever. During this period I had ample opportunity for introspection. For assembling and reassembling the mosaic of events prior to my discovery by Lucien. I had to assume Lizzy had emerged unscathed from the accident. According to Lucien the police had found no traces of blood. The car had landed on all fours and been brought to a halt by a low stone wall. So much for the crash, of which I remembered only a lot of noise.

  Entering the realm of pure speculation, de Bruin had arrived on the scene, removed Lizzy and me back to the house where, while still unconscious, I had been injected with a potentially fatal dose of cocaine. It would be surmised, as Lucien had surmised until I enlightened him otherwise, that I had overdosed myself. An occupational hazard with junkies, hardly rates a post mortem. As for Lizzy’s disappearance, that would be shrugged off. With me gone, who would organise a search on her behalf? Señora Sist? Lucien and Madeleine? They might be concerned, even worried, but I
couldn’t see them going beyond making a statement to the police.

  As with Clair, so with Lizzy. Carried off by the same Dutch scum, for God knows what slimy purpose.

  And I had let him do it. I had much to answer for.

  The bad dreams of old returned that night. Just like before, only now Lizzy was there alongside the Pavan girl. Both of them accusing. Contemptuous. Screaming hate.

  I woke up in total darkness, slippery with sweat from head to toe, the virus of a new guilt poisoning my system. Only this time I had the means to purge it. And the intent.

  My only other visitors during my convalescence were more concerned with my misdeeds than my health. Two French detectives – Lieutenant and Brigadier, the latter rank equivalent to Sergeant in the UK – civil yet persistent, borrowed the Administrator’s office to interview me. The immunity afforded by my British passport and Andorran domicile carried little weight. When in France, French laws rule, and Andorra is in any case also subject to French legislation.

  Unlike Lucien the cops did not unquestioningly accept my version of what had taken place, even though it was essentially factual. All that concerned them was the source of my drugs. They even proposed an amnesty.

  ‘Tell us where you buy the stuff, monsieur, and we will not press charges.’

  A classic quid pro quo. If only I could. They didn’t call me a liar. Just composed their faces into tableaux of bored disbelief. Regarding my inability to reveal my sources as misplaced loyalty, not ignorance.

  At a superficial level I was co-operative. The only major detail I withheld was de Bruin’s identity, referring to him, as I had to Lucien, as ‘a Dutchman called Hendriks’. I also altered his description so as to make him unrecognizable. Not because of any desire to obstruct the processes of law and order, even less because of any high-flown concepts of honour among thieves. In protecting Rik de Bruin I was serving my own interests. He had taken too much from me to be left to the slow-grinding wheels of justice. There had still remained room for doubt over his involvement in the abduction of Clair. In the case of Lizzy, no doubt at all. From now on, where Rik de Bruin was concerned I was now the law.