It had gone very quiet next door. My guesses at what had happened left me numb with despair. I imagined that Lizardman was in there. Perhaps he’d already killed Grace and Anita. If so, I was next.
Macintyre’s phone beeped. When he looked up at me, he was smiling. “We’re done here, Kate. The money is in my account and all I need to do is get out of this building.”
“There’s nowhere to go. It’s a dead end. Haha, get it?” I waved a hand around the morgue, feeling slightly hysterical. “The police will be here any minute now.”
“Yes, I think they will, but you, dear heart, are my ticket out. You’re my hostage, and they can’t harm me when I have a knife at your throat. Now stand up.”
He didn’t wait for me to obey, but dragged me to my feet. Now I felt pain where he’d stabbed me, cold and sharp. My blood-soaked jeans stuck to the wound and dragged on my skin.
Bending my arm behind my back, he shoved me forwards across the morgue to a steel door secured with another keypad. Punching in numbers, he eased open the door, which led outside to a small parking area. “This is where the hearses are loaded,” he said. “So very appropriate.”
The door closed behind us as he lifted an arm to summon a car waiting on the road. When the vehicle swung into the car park, I saw that it was the black Audi, with Lizardman at the wheel. So who had been in the autopsy room with Grace and Anita? I had to get back there to find out what had happened.
With my free hand, I dug into my coat pocket, held firmly on to the scarab paperweight and pulled backwards, planting my heels on the asphalt. For a second, Macintyre was just in front of me, the back of his head in reach. I slammed the heavy glass into his skull. He wavered, releasing my arm to clutch at the wound, which began pouring blood. Almost at once his collar was soaked with it. I took two steps back, bumped into the closed door behind me and raised the paperweight for another blow. Macintyre was fast though. He turned towards me, swinging the scalpel. It caught my arm, cleaving a red gash across my wrist. An astonishing quantity of blood bubbled out. I watched it swell and drip, forming a dark puddle on the ground.
I felt dizzy. I had to stay on my feet. If I fainted, they’d drag me into that car and I’d be dead in no time. Macintyre’s expression sent my pulse racing. He looked smug, as though he knew he’d won. In desperation, I threw the paperweight at his head. It struck him on the forehead before crashing to the ground, splintering into a thousand golden shards.
Blood dripped down Macintyre’s head into his eyes, crimson smearing his face. But still, like the villain in a horror movie, he stayed on his feet and swung his scalpel in my direction, slicing through my coat and slashing my upper arm. I pressed on the new wound, trying to stop the pain and the bleeding. My vision blurred.
Lizardman revved the Audi. It sounded like a hungry animal, crouching just a few feet away from where I stood. Where were the damn police?
Macintyre grabbed my injured arm, which burned and throbbed with pain. “You’re coming with us,” he said. “Move.”
I felt sure I was going to pass out. Macintyre didn’t look much better though. He was moving slowly, with blood still dripping from his head wound. Out on the road, in the distance, sirens sounded.
“Get in the car,” Lizardman yelled. “Leave her.”
I allowed myself to hope, for a second, that Macintyre would make a run for the car and leave me behind. Instead, he stopped, pulling me to a halt.
“Goodbye, Kate,” he said, raising the scalpel towards my neck. The sudden and real fear of dying was like a jolt of electricity. I no longer felt any pain. The dizziness subsided. Drawing on some primal survival instinct, I jammed my fist into his throat. He coughed and gagged, giving me time to grab his hand and force it backwards, putting precious inches between the scalpel and my skin. He shifted on his feet, regained his balance, and thrust the blade back towards my neck.
The sirens grew louder, almost deafening, pulsating in sync with the thump of blood in my temples. Lizardman leaned on the horn, yelling at Macintyre to move. With one last look at me, Macintyre ran towards the car and wrested the passenger door open. At that moment, two police cars screamed into the parking area, blocking the exit.
Officers jumped out of both vehicles, rushing to surround the Audi. Two of them ran towards me.
“You have to find Anita and Grace,” I said. “In the autopsy room.”
The ground started to heave below me, rolling and pitching like a rough sea. I sank into the depths.
41
I woke up in a hospital bed with Anita and Detective Clarke sitting beside me.
“God, Kate. You gave me a scare.” Anita said, looking haggard under the bright lights. I took in the beeping monitors, the faint smell of antiseptic. An IV ran into the back of my hand. My left arm was bandaged from shoulder to elbow and my right wrist was wrapped in gauze and tape. A white blanket covered my aching thigh.
“Glad to see you’re doing all right,” Clarke said.
Slowly it started to come back. I’d been in the morgue with Macintyre. He’d stabbed me with that scalpel. Anita and Grace had been yelling in the autopsy room.
“What happened?” I asked Anita. “How did you get out? Where’s Macintyre?”
“In answer to the last question, Macintyre’s in custody, with a monstrous headache, thanks to you,” Clarke said. “We’ve got his accomplice, Phil Simmons, as well.”
“Is Grace all right?” I tried to sit up.
“She’s fine.” Anita patted my hand soothingly. “Don’t worry. In fact, she’s coming to see you in a few minutes.”
The woozy feeling I’d had when I first woke up began to dissipate. I looked more closely at Anita. The bruise on her cheek was turning purple and yellow and she still looked tired, with dark circles under her eyes. But I felt my dry lips crack into a wide smile.
“What’s making you so happy all of a sudden?” she asked.
“Your aura’s gone.”
Clarke looked at Anita, who was running her hand over her hair. “It doesn’t feel any different,” she said.
“You’ll have to take my word for it. What happened to you and Grace once I left the autopsy room?”
She and Clarke exchanged glances before Anita answered. “Dr. Marks showed up. I think Macintyre had paged him. He came armed with a surgical knife, but we overpowered him.”
“Dr. Marks?” I asked.
“He worked with Dr. Schwartz on those three renal transplant patients. Remember Pauline said he’d called in sick at the same time as Schwartz did?”
“From what I can ascertain,” Clarke said, “Anita went on the offensive. Marks commented in his statement that she was like a wild woman, screaming and throwing herself at him.” He grinned. “I wish I could have seen it.”
“I was mad,” Anita agreed. “I’d had more than enough of these reps and doctors using drugs and scalpels to do harm. Fortunately, I’d already freed Grace so we took him on together. Believe me, Marks is a wimp. Nothing like Macintyre or Lizardman. It wasn’t much of a challenge.”
“And Dr. Schwartz?” I looked at Clarke.
He sighed. “We’re working on it. Our good doctor appears to have left the country.”
I glanced around the hospital room, which was mostly taken up by my bed and a couple of visitor chairs. A small window showed just a square of gray sky, almost the same color as the walls. My mind continued to clear. I remembered being at the Wentworth Hotel. I sat up suddenly on my pillows, feeling the drag of the IV in the back of my hand. The monitor began to beep faster. “What happened to Chris? Is Simon Scott all right?”
A nurse bustled in, ignoring Kate and Clarke. She fussed with my IV drip and checked the monitor. “You should be resting,” she told me.
“She’s fine,” Anita said.
“Really?” demanded the nurse, swinging around to look at her. Anita wasn’t wearing her white coat, so maybe the nurse didn’t realize she was a doctor at the hospital. They eyed each other for a few seconds bef
ore the nurse turned and left.
“Chris is safe and so is Scott. But Kevin Lewis died,” said Clarke.
“Dammit.” I leaned back, feeling the weight of failure like a hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Anita said. “You saved Scott. With some help from Chris, apparently?” She looked at Clarke.
“It appears that Chris rushed Scott and knocked the coffee cup from his hand,” he said. “He hadn’t even taken a sip. Unfortunately, Lewis had already drunk half of his. Enough to be fatal. He died within minutes.”
“No one shot Chris?” I asked. “I heard several gunshots.”
“They were warning shots. Because there were so many people in the room, the security guards played it safe and fired at the ceiling to scare him, not kill him. When Lewis fell unconscious, Scott took charge and ordered the guards to stop shooting. They handcuffed Chris and pushed him around a bit, but he was safe.” He shook his head. “He took quite a risk, the idiot.”
“I think he was very brave,” Anita said, a faint flush of pink washing her cheeks.
“I need to see Scott,” I said. “To make sure his aura has gone.”
Clarke grinned. “That shouldn’t be a problem. He’s already asked to see you, to thank you in person for saving his life.”
“And I’m thanking you for saving mine.” Anita squeezed my good arm. “And apologizing for doubting you.”
“That’s okay.” I flicked a glance at Clarke. “Some people doubt even when they’ve seen hard evidence. Maybe they’ll come round eventually.”
“I’ll take your wild theories more seriously from now on,” Clarke said, which I counted as a sign of progress. “Oh, and talking of wild theories, we charged your binoculars man, David Lowe, yesterday. There’s no link between him and Macintyre. His bomb attack was, as you initially suspected, an attempt to avenge the death of his wife on the operating table, for which he held Scott responsible. Sad, really. He’ll be tried for the murder of Scott’s driver.”
Clarke stood up, walked to the window and back, reminding me of a caged animal. I’d always thought he must hate the part of his job where he had to sit at a desk. He harbored so much pent-up energy.
“There’s a lot I still don’t understand,” I said. “Lowe and Macintyre were targeting Scott for different reasons. Lowe’s motives, I can understand. But how would Macintyre have known that Scott was aware of the LitImmune side effect issues?”
“Dr. Marks is being very helpful.” Clarke had reached the window again. He turned and leaned on the sill. “We’ve only had him in custody for a couple of hours but, from what we’ve put together so far, it seems that Dr. Reid told Schwartz that he knew about the altered records. It’s not clear whether he accused Schwartz of being involved or just shared his concerns with him. They were apparently very close friends at one point. Anyway, it seems that Dr. Reid knew Scott.”
“Scott did his residency under Dr. Reid,” Anita interrupted. “Dr. Reid mentioned it months ago, but I never made any connection between the two of them until now.”
I recalled Anita commenting that a doctor in her department had supervised Scott’s residency. I wish I’d remembered that earlier, although it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Clarke nodded. “We believe that Reid told Scott of his concerns. And that is probably why Scott had a meeting set up with the Managing Director of Litton Bernhoff. We can check all that with Scott himself, of course.”
I closed my eyes for a few seconds, waiting for a wave of vertigo to subside. Hundreds of questions filled my head, but my mouth didn’t seem to be working very well. “What about PC Wilson?” I asked finally.
“Macintyre injected him with a sedative, stabbed him and left him in a janitor’s closet,” said Anita.
My stomach lurched, remembering how young he was. “Is he dead?”
“No,” she replied. “One of the cleaners found him and, of course, he was in the right place to get immediate medical attention. He’ll be all right.”
Clarke set off on another perambulation around the cramped room. My thoughts skittered around like kittens chasing sunbeams. I realized I was furious with Clarke, although he wasn’t, to be fair, the right person to yell at.
“The police should have been on site much faster than they were,” I said, sitting upright. When the monitor began to ping loudly, Anita gently pushed my shoulders back against the pillows. “Stay calm or Nurse Ratched will be back.”
“Parry did everything as fast as he could,” said Clarke. “He got a team up to the Pediatric Unit pretty quickly, but it took a while to work out how to access the morgue.” His tone of voice was even, but his eyes flashed with anger. “It took longer than it should have.”
He ran his hand over his fair, closely cut hair. “Seems like you did okay without us, though.”
Knowing that my very low expectations of Detective Parry were justified didn’t make me feel any better. Macintyre had nearly escaped. He and Dr. Marks had come much closer to killing Anita, Grace and myself than they should have. I supposed I should just be grateful that the police had arrived in time to prevent Macintyre from killing me.
There was something else I wanted to know, but it was hard to concentrate until an image of a disheveled woman in a beige cardigan passed through my brain.
“Eliza!” I said. “You got my call? Did you arrest her at the hotel?”
“Well, we didn’t arrest her at the hotel. You saw all the mayhem upstairs, but missed the excitement on the ground floor. A backpack was left unattended in the men’s room. It was reported to security, who called Bomb Disposal. They cleared the building, and destroyed the bag. It wasn’t a bomb, just someone’s dirty clothes. Everyone was evacuated, and the crowds dispersed once they heard that Scott wouldn’t be giving his speech after all.”
That had to be Chris’s backpack. What had he been thinking?
“However.” Clarke picked at a loose thread in the white blanket on the bed. “She was the one who phoned in the Central London bomb threat. I only heard hours after the fact that it was a woman who’d made the hoax call. Based on what you’d told me, I thought it was worth bringing her in for questioning. She confessed immediately. I think she actually wanted to be caught.”
“What will happen to her?” I asked.
“She’s been charged with a crime under Section 127 of the 2003 Communications Act,” he said.
Smiling, I looked at Anita, who gave an exaggerated shrug, which Clarke noticed. “Oh, sorry, well that means she’ll probably get six months or less, or maybe appeal for community service.”
“Why did she do it?” I wondered out loud.
“There are all sorts of motivations for making a bomb threat,” said Clarke. “The desire for attention, however negative, or wanting to scare people. Some people do it to tie up police resources or disrupt a community.” He rotated his shoulders, as if the weight of human folly was resting on them.
“There was a kid in Massachussets who called in a bomb threat, just so he wouldn’t have to sit an exam that day,” said Anita.
“There’s no end to the craziness,” Clarke said, getting to his feet. “I’ll let you rest. We’ll need to talk in a day or two, to go over your statements.”
“Of course. I want to make sure Macintyre is put away for a very long time.”
Anita and I watched Clarke go. The room felt empty without him.
“I talked with the emergency room doctors,” Anita said, when the sounds of his footsteps had faded. ”You’ll have three pretty little scars as mementos, but no lasting damage.” She picked up a cup of water from the table next to the bed and held the drinking straw to my lips.
“I was terrified for you, Kate. When Dr. Marks turned up, I realized they intended to kill all three of us. Marks was no match for two very angry women, but you had to deal with Macintyre, that psycho. Thank God he’s behind bars now. Clarke says there’s absolutely no chance of him being granted bail.”
She put
the cup down, leaned over and gave me a hug, careful not to disturb the IV drip. When she sat up again, her eyes were wet with tears.
“Oh, and Josh is worried sick about you. He’s on his way back from Bristol and he should be here very soon.”
I closed my eyes, thinking about Josh. I was still mad with him for emailing Helena.
“Look at me,” Anita said. “What’s going on? You looked pained when I told you Josh was on his way. I thought you’d be happy. God knows I would be if some tall, hunky boyfriend was rushing to my bedside.”
I told her all about Helena, the postcard, and the emails. “I didn’t read them,” I hurried to clarify. “I just saw how many there were.”
“You love Josh, right?”
I nodded, finding it impossible to speak for a moment because of the lump in my throat.
“And we know that he is madly in love with you. So, my advice is to forget about it. He’s a sensitive fellow, not the type to ignore a message from someone he cared about once. But did he rush off to Munich? No. Has he been calling me every five minutes to make sure you’re all right? Yes. Let it go, Kate. In the overall scheme of the universe, an email is a tiny, irrelevant atom. Don’t make it into something it’s not.”
“All right.” I agreed, mostly to stop her talking. I was feeling dizzy.
Grace poked her head around the door. “Is this the right room?” She came in, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with one arm bandaged from wrist to elbow. There was no sign of her aura.
After she and Anita had hugged each other, she plunked a paper bag down on the bed.
“Chocolate,” she said. “Better than any drugs they can give you.”
She sat down on the chair that Clarke had vacated, looking at me with an expression of deep concern. I assured her that I was fine.
“How about you?” I asked. “What on earth happened when Macintyre turned up at the morgue?”
The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries Page 53