He nodded. “I’ll do that tomorrow. For now, I want to get home to change. I’m planning on going to Scott’s campaign speech at the Wentworth hotel in the morning. It’s the last one before the election.”
“Haven’t you had enough of political speeches?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said standing up and hefting his backpack over his shoulder. “I feel that this could be my last chance to talk to him. If his party wins and he becomes Prime Minister, I’ll never get near him. At least tomorrow I can see him up close. If that’s the best I can do, then it’s better than nothing.”
“I really think you should talk to DCI Clarke before you do anything else,” I said. “We need to get that alert lifted, or you could be arrested at any moment.”
Half an hour later, we were at the police station, waiting for Clarke. He’d gone off duty but was on his way back in. It was nearly midnight and the waiting room felt like something out of a Grimm tale, full of strange characters: a youth covered in tattoos, an old man with a bandage over one eye, and a woman with wild ebony hair, a very short red dress and very high spike heels. When Clarke arrived, he bypassed them all, beckoning us to follow him. Soon we were seated in a gray room at a gray laminate table, drinking tea from mugs with the Chelsea football club logo on them.
I’d seen Clarke in full DCI mode once before, when he was interviewing me after my friend’s murder. Tonight, he was back in force, focused, serious, taking rapid notes on his tablet. He gave no sign that we’d known each other for a year. It was impressive and a little scary.
When he’d interrogated Chris for a while he leaned back in his chair. “Here’s the situation. We have the man who set off the bomb in Portsmouth. We don’t yet know who called in the hoax message about the bomb in central London, but I have no evidence that it was you, Mr. Melrose. The twenty-pound note that was turned in for analysis does indicate you or a previous owner of that note had been handling chemicals that can be used to make explosives.”
Chris hunched forward across the desk. “I told you, it was a lab experiment for my thesis. I can show you round the lab and give you a copy of my report if you like.”
Clarke nodded. “I understand. The net is that, for now, I have no reason to hold you. I appreciate that you came in of your own volition. You are free to go. But my advice is that you stay away from Scott. Don’t give anyone any reason to doubt you.”
Five minutes later, we were standing on the doorstep of the police station, looking out at the pouring rain.
“Thanks for coming here with me,” Chris said. “It’s good to have it all sorted out.”
“I’m sorry I suspected you.” I turned up the collar on my coat, contemplating a dash to the tube station. “I hope we can still be friends.”
“Of course. And you’ll tell Anita that I’m not a crazy bomb builder, won’t you?”
His cheeks reddened when he said her name. I was right. He definitely had a crush on her.
“I’m going to make a dash for the tube station,” he said. He looked at his watch. “Or maybe not. The trains will have stopped running by now.”
“Darn. We can’t even share a taxi. I’m going back to the hospital to wait for Anita. I assume you’re heading back to Shepherd’s Bush?”
“I was, but I think I’ll find somewhere to hang out closer to the Wentworth, as it’s already so late.” He shifted his backpack.
I stared at him. “You can’t go to the speech. You heard what Clarke said about staying away from Scott. You should just keep a low profile for a few days.”
“I’m going, Kate. I hope you won’t feel compelled to let DCI Clarke know that. Good grief.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“Then come with me. You can keep an eye on me and if you think I’m behaving suspiciously, you can call your detective to let him know.”
I was cold and tired. The lack of sleep was already weighing on me, but I’d deal with it. If Anita was going to work all night, the least I could do was stay awake as well.
“All right. Let’s go back to the hospital. We can stay warm in the cafeteria until it’s time to go to the speech.”
39
By the time we reached the hospital cafeteria, I was starving. I’d eaten almost nothing since the previous morning. After we’d ordered, I texted Anita to let her know where I was. She responded with a quick okay. Once I had a cup of tea and a large plate of sausage, eggs and toast in front of me, everything seemed a little less grim. But I was still worried about Chris’s plan to go to the hotel after Clarke had told him not to get too close to Scott.
“What do you really hope to get out of being there?” I asked him. “Scott’s giving an important speech. He’s going to be surrounded by VIPs and bodyguards. I don’t think there’s any chance he’ll talk to you.”
About as much chance as flying pigs, I thought. Chris drank his tea, gazing somewhere over my shoulder.
“It’ll work out. I’m sure of it. My grandmother always told me I can achieve anything I want, as long as I work hard and occasionally attempt the impossible. Maybe reconnecting with my father is impossible. But I won’t know until I try.”
“I just don’t want you to be disappointed,” I said, making a mental note to call my own father as soon as we got home. I loved him so much and had done nothing to show it recently.
We ate slowly, ordered more tea, and managed to drag out the meal for a couple of hours. Finally, Chris looked at his watch. “We should go over. They’ll start letting people in very soon and I want to be near the front.”
A frisson ran down my spine when I remembered the man who’d forced his way to the front of the crowd in the Oxford car park in order to throw a projectile at Scott. I picked up my bag and, before putting my gloves on, I sent another text to Anita, telling her I was going out for a couple of hours. I sent the same message to PC Wilson. Anita answered. Wilson didn’t, but I assumed Anita would let him know when she saw him. Outside, the rain had stopped but the wind had picked up, whining through the telephone wires, pushing scraps of paper along the street.
The Wentworth Hotel was a six-story limestone building fronted by a grand entry with a portico and two sets of double doors. Lights shone from all the large, multi-paned downstairs windows, and doormen in bottle-green uniforms stood under a Union flag that cracked in the wind. We walked through the marble-floored lobby towards the ballroom, passing through a security checkpoint where we surrendered our bags to uniformed staff and an x-ray machine.
Inside the ballroom, a hundred or more people stood in groups, drinking tea and talking. On a stage at one end, a podium waited under a massive banner with Scott’s name on it. The one that I’d worked on was puny in comparison. I looked at my watch. It was just before eight, still more than an hour until Scott was due to speak.
Chris told me he was going to find the men’s room. “Wait right here,” he said. “If you move, I’ll never find you again.”
Alone, I looked around the room, wondering what drove supporters to get up at the crack of dawn to listen to a political speech. I wandered towards the front to save a couple of seats, sat down and waited for Chris. After ten minutes, when he hadn’t returned, I started to worry. What was he up to? I stood up, pushing my way back through the growing crowd towards one of the two sets of double doors.
Eliza Chapman walked in through the other door. In the mass of business suits, polished shoes and well-groomed hair, she stood out in her frumpy beige clothes and hair in need of a comb. Remembering her frantic voicemails threatening to take matters into her own hands if the newspaper didn’t publish her story, I watched her shove her way forward through the crowd, making for the front row. As soon as I found Chris, I’d call Detective Parry to warn him that she was here.
After passing through the lobby, I found the toilets near the escalators. Even in my anxious state, I couldn’t bring myself to go into the men’s room, so I waited for someone to come along so I could ask them to check on Chris.<
br />
Scott’s supporters continued to pour in through the front doors, standing in increasingly long lines to pass through the security checkpoint. On the far side of the lobby, a man in the hotel’s green uniform caught my eye. I thought I recognized him. He disappeared through a door marked Employees Only and it was only as the door closed that I realized the man was Audley Macintyre.
Two men in black suits, each with a telltale earpiece, stood at the doors to the ballroom. They had to be secret service so I hurried towards them.
“There’s a man here who plans to kill Simon Scott,” I said to them. “I can point him out to you.”
The men exchanged glances. One of them spoke into a microphone on his lapel. Thank God they were taking me seriously.
“Please come with me, miss.”
I followed him, with my heart pounding. Just seeing Macintyre again had taken my breath away. I glanced back towards the toilets. Still no sign of Chris. The security men had sandwiched me between them, uncomfortably close, with our elbows touching as though they thought I might run away. We advanced in formation along the side of the lobby towards a uniformed police officer, who was talking with a security guard.
“This young lady says there’s someone in the hotel who plans to kill Scott,” one of my escorts told them. “I’ll leave her with you.”
Without waiting for an answer from the policeman, he and his mate strode off.
“Come this way, please, ma’am,” the officer said.
“I’m not going anywhere. You have to listen. There’s a man here who kidnapped my friend and me, but we escaped. He’ll kill Scott. If you don’t believe me, phone DI Parry. I have his number right here.”
It sounded ridiculous, even to me. The officer regarded me with an expression of pity.
“Let’s move to a quieter place,” he said. “And we’ll make that call, all right?”
While we walked, I pulled my mobile from my purse and pressed Parry’s number. After three rings, the line clicked over to voicemail. So much for his promise of 24/7 accessibility.
“Damn,” I said. “He’s not answering.”
The officer nodded as though he’d expected it.
“Listen,” I said to him. “Do you have instructions to look for a suspect called Audley Macintyre?”
The officer’s face was blank. “Audley who?”
There was nothing else to be done. “I’m sorry. I must have made a mistake.”
I turned and walked away, praying he wouldn’t come after me to arrest me for wasting police time or just for being crazy in a public place. When I glanced back, he was talking to the security guard again, both of them laughing.
I angled back towards the door where I’d last seen Macintyre.
“Kate!”
Chris hurried towards me, pushing his way through the crowd. “Where were you? We should go find some seats.”
“Where’ve you been?” I asked, although it was obvious he’d been sprucing himself up. He had on a clean shirt, and loafers replaced his hiking boots. “I need your help,” I rushed on. “Macintyre is here. We have to find him and stop him doing whatever it is he plans to do.”
Chris’s eyes widened in shock. Grabbing his arm, I hurried towards the Employees Only door. It opened to a corridor with beige walls and a tan lino floor, a stark contrast to the marble and gilt of the ballroom. At the far end was a door with a small glass window in it.
“Come on,” I urged Chris, who’d stopped in the doorway.
“We’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “Just tell the police.”
“I tried that.”
Moving ahead of him, I jogged along the corridor. When I reached the door, I paused for a second, worried that that I might have been mistaken. But I was sure that the man I’d seen was Macintyre; there was something about the way he held his shoulders. The window in the door revealed a large commercial kitchen where a dozen people in white coats and checked blue pants worked at stainless steel work surfaces, peeling, paring and chopping. Large pots boiled on a massive stove, steam curling above them. I opened the door, and sidled in, expecting to be stopped, but no one even looked up.
I was glad when Chris slipped in beside me. “Now what?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. Macintyre’s wearing a hotel uniform. Green trousers, waistcoat, long sleeved tan shirt. Medium height, dark hair, cold eyes.”
No one seemed to take much notice of us as we skirted the main work area. Staying close to the wall, we came to a corner. Peering around it, I saw what seemed to be a staging area for plates of food. Macintyre was there, putting items on a tray, a pot of coffee and a plate of tiny pastries that reminded me of my favorite pasticcheria in Florence.
“That’s him,” I said to Chris, who craned his head around the corner to look. “I don’t know what he’s up to.”
Macintyre picked up the tray and headed for a swinging door at the far end of the serving area. Chris and I dashed after him. Over the bang of metal pans and clink of dishes, someone called to us, but we kept going, easing through the swinging door into the corridor beyond. It led to a bank of three service lifts. The indicator above the middle one was moving upwards, and stopped on the sixth floor, which I guessed was at the top of the building.
I pressed the call button, jamming my finger against it several times. It seemed to take forever for a lift to arrive.
“What are we going to do?” Chris asked while we waited. I noticed that his backpack was missing. Why would he leave it somewhere? I didn’t have time to pursue that line of thought, however, as our lift arrived and transported us quickly to floor six.
The doors opened to a wide corridor with light blue wallpaper, deep blue carpets, tasteful wall lights and gleaming double doors with plaques indicating suite numbers. It was easy to see which one was Scott’s. The door was guarded by two men in black suits, just like the jokers down near the ballroom. Even from ten yards away, I saw the bulge of holsters under their jackets. They reminded me of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in the Men in Black movies.
“Stop right there,” Jones ordered. Smith was talking into his mouthpiece. At any moment, I feared, a posse of gunmen would appear.
We stopped. The lift doors slid closed behind us. “Did a man go in with a tray of coffee?” I asked them.
“You need to leave this floor immediately,” Jones said, just as the door to the suite opened. Macintyre walked out, his hands empty.
He didn’t even glance at the bodyguards, but walked straight towards me. It only took a few seconds for him to cover the ten yards to the lift, where he pressed the call button.
“You have to stop this man,” I shouted at the guards. They didn’t move, not even a muscle twitch.
The lift pinged open behind me. Macintyre was close to me, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his body. “Anita next and then it’s your turn, if you survive this little episode,” he said softly.
“You have to stop him,” I yelled again.
“That’s it.” Jones pulled out a gun and pointed it at me. I’d been through a lot, but I’d never had a gun aimed at me before. It was terrifying. All I could see was the sleek iron-gray barrel and the round hole that threatened death. “Put your hands up in the air.”
Beside me, Chris put his hands up. When I hesitated, the guard wiggled the gun. I complied. Behind me, Macintyre whispered “Sayonara.” He stepped into the lift.
I remained frozen, feeling like an insect caught in amber for all eternity. Macintyre was going after Anita, and I was stuck on the wrong side of a gun. I almost cried with frustration.
Seconds passed, feeling like minutes. Smith was still talking into his microphone, possibly calling for reinforcements. Maybe a SWAT team was about to descend from the ceiling. And Macintyre was getting away.
“Listen,” I tried again. “That man, the waiter who just left. He’s an assassin. You have to stop him.”
Jones told me to shut up, with another twitch of his gun to make his poin
t. I did, trying to work out what Macintyre could have done in the suite. Obviously, he hadn’t pulled a gun or a knife on anyone. He’d gone in and walked back out. There was no shouting, no alarms, nothing to indicate that he’d done anything more than deliver coffee. The coffee. I’d take a bet it was poisoned.
“Macintyre is trying to poison them,” I said to Chris. “We have to do something.”
Chris looked at me, his lips pressed together so hard they were white. I felt sorry for dragging him into this. I was still trying to work out what to do when the door to the suite opened and a man in a navy suit came out.
“Five minutes before we go downstairs,” he said to the bodyguards. Then he noticed Chris and me. “Who are they?”
Chris moved. He crossed the hallway to the door so fast that the guards didn’t have time to stop him. Pushing the man in the navy suit to one side, he dashed inside. Smith and Jones pursued him, followed by the man in the suit, leaving me alone. I heard a gunshot.
Shaking from head to toe, I ran to the open door. Peeking in, I saw a room full of men in suits and ties. Jones had his gun pointed at Chris and was yelling, “Stand down, now.”
Ignoring him, Chris ran at Scott and knocked a cup from his hand. I was terrified that the bodyguard would shoot, but Chris was so close to his father that it would have been too dangerous. Instead, Smith leapt at Chris, pulling him to the ground, mashing his face into the carpet.
Kevin Lewis was standing just a couple of feet away, a look of horror on his face. Suddenly, his legs buckled. As he sank to the floor, his legs and arms jerked and yellow foam spewed from his mouth. Everyone started shouting at the same time.
There was nothing I could do there. I turned back into the corridor and ran towards the fire exit. Another gunshot in the suite behind me made my pulse race. What if they had shot Chris? Clattering down the staircase, my rapid breath echoing against the concrete walls, I tried to make sense of what I’d seen. Kevin Lewis had drunk some or all of his coffee. Had Scott? Was he back there, writhing, like Lewis, in pain?
The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries Page 51