Mitchell, D. M.

by crime The King of Terrors (a psychological thriller combining mystery

  The lack of feeling was the frightening thing, like she was on automatic. Gareth had no doubt in his mind that she was going to make real her threat. ‘Jesus, Caroline! What are you doing? You can’t kill a man in cold blood!’

  ‘No? Watch me.’

  ‘Don’t do this,’ said Erica, holding out a pleading hand. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted you to do this. If you do you’ll only bring yourself down to their sick level.’

  Caroline’s head flashed up, and Gareth thought he detected the tiniest glint of a tear in her eye; or perhaps he wanted it to be there. Her hand was undoubtedly trembling. ‘This man murdered my mother!’ she revealed.

  Erica’s voice was calm. ‘Don’t do it, Caroline. Please, don’t let there be any more killing.’

  ‘You remember her, Tremain? Remember the woman you murdered? She was my mother,’ said Caroline. ‘Stephanie Jacobs. Doctor Stephanie Jacobs. Sound familiar?’

  There was a moment’s silence as Tremain absorbed the words. ‘Yeah, I knew her. She was killed in a car accident. Hit a lamppost. Died outright.’

  ‘Hit a lamp post,’ she echoed. ‘Whilst running away from your goons. And it wasn’t outright, was it, Tremain? You helped it along, as she sat there unconscious and helpless. She might have been saved, but you couldn’t allow that to happen, could you? You killed her to keep her quiet and now I’m here to settle the score.’

  ‘Caroline,’ said Erica, taking a step closer to the distraught woman, ‘Your mother was a good woman. She was the only one who showed me any kindness. She gave her life rescuing me. Don’t soil her name, her memory, by killing Tremain, no matter how much you think he deserves it. I beg you, Caroline.’

  Gareth had had enough. He threw his hands up in despair. ‘Cut the fucking charade, will you? Caroline, she’s admitted she’s a fraud, so don’t listen to her. For all we know she’s still in cahoots with them.’ Then he realised it might sound like an excuse for Caroline to pull the trigger. ‘Just leave the man be. Let’s get out of here and we’ll settle things later.’

  Lambert-Chide, who had remained silent throughout the exchanges, now chose to speak up. ‘Well done, Tremain, you buffoon! How the hell did she get through security checks?’

  ‘She checked out!’ he retorted. ‘Her cover was good...’

  ‘Now’s the time to beg for your life, Tremain,’ said Caroline, her composure returned.

  ‘Never!’ he said.

  She cracked him over the back of the head with the butt of the pistol and he fell forward, grasping the point of contact. He groaned.

  ‘You can’t!’ protested Gareth.

  ‘I can!’ she returned,’ her teeth gritted. ‘He took my mother from me. He deserves to die...’

  ‘Caroline...’ pleaded Erica.

  ‘Do it, why don’t you?’ said Lambert-Chide. ‘The man’s an inexcusable imbecile.’

  ‘You’re next!’ said Caroline, swinging the gun onto the old man. Only a flicker at the corner of his lip gave away any concern he had for his safety. She brought it back to point at Tremain’s back. Her trigger finger appeared to stiffen. Then, with a loud exhalation, she lifted the gun so that it pointed at the ceiling. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘let’s go. You!’ she addressed Lambert-Chide, ‘You are coming with us. Tremain stays here.’ They filed out of the room, Caroline taking one last look at Tremain who sat on the floor rubbing his bruised head. ‘Consider yourself lucky,’ she said.

  ‘You won’t be so lucky when I catch up with you,’ he growled. ‘I’m going to find you, all of you, and one by one...’

  Her expression was frosty. ‘Try it. I warn you, Tremain, if I ever see you again I will kill you. No more chances.’ She closed the door on his vehement protestations. ‘Have a taste of your own medicine,’ she said. ‘Right, there’s a car waiting for us out back. If anyone tries to stop us don’t hesitate to use that thing,’ she told Erica. ‘Move it, you old goat,’ she ordered Lambert-Chide.

  The rear of the house was in almost total darkness. It had once been one of the many tradesmen’s entrances, tucked discreetly away so that the owners couldn’t see the comings and goings of the merchants. Caroline made them pause at the ivy-wreathed door whilst she checked everything was clear. A large black Bentley had been dutifully parked not far away from the door. Its gleaming paintwork reflected the stars in the crisp night sky, looking as if a piece of the universe had been laid at their feet.

  ‘You and Erica in the rear,’ Caroline directed Gareth. ‘You get the pleasure of my company, David. I’ll drive and all I ask from you is that you’re a good boy at the gates.’

  ‘We can still work this out,’ Lambert-Chide persisted, lowering himself into the passenger seat. We can come to an arrangement.’

  She ignored him, or never heard him as she went through the plans in her mind. ‘Keep low, both of you. The windows are fairly well blacked out but we don’t want the guys on the gate suspecting anything.’ She started the engine. ‘Nice motor,’ she observed. ‘How many lives did this cost?’ Lambert-Chide chose to ignore her, his restless eyes looking for a way out, windows on a mind that was feverishly calculating, searching for a way out.

  They drove down the gravelled driveway, Gareth looking back and half-expecting a shrill cry of alarm, lights to suddenly blaze around the house. But it remained quiet, the house in almost complete darkness except for one or two windows which offered a tiny warm glow against the night. They reached the twin iron gates. A bright halogen light came on as soon as they approached and someone stepped up to them out of the darkness. Erica let the passenger-side window scroll down, just enough for the security guard to see Lambert-Chide’s face. No words were exchanged. The man stepped aside and the gates swung silently open. Caroline sighed in relief as the window rolled back up again.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Gareth asked as the car sped away down country lanes, leaving Gattenby House far behind.

  ‘Somewhere safe,’ said Caroline.

  Gareth snorted. ‘I seem to remember you saying something similar, just before you handed me over to Tremain.’

  ‘Necessity,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, so you say.’

  She checked the mirrors. Nothing on their tail. ‘I discovered Erica here had been taken by Tremain before I could get to her,’ she said, ‘so I needed to switch my plan around. I’d been trailing Muller for some time whilst tracking you and Erica down, wondering what he was up to. I figured he was planning to double-cross Tremain, so thought I’d use his deviousness to my advantage. I informed Tremain here about Muller’s intended double-cross, and then arranged that I’d hold you and Muller for him. Till I handed you over he didn’t really know what I was up to. I knew Tremain would have checks run on me, but I’d already thought about all that and put a suitably false trail in place. I knew he’d be so glad to get his hands on Muller and deliver you over to Lambert-Chide into the bargain that he’d forgive any slight discrepancies in my ID. Having delivered on my end of the bargain that was it; I was allowed access into their inner sanctum. The rest is history. Two birds, one stone and all that.’

  ‘Wait a minute – are you saying you used me as bait?’ exploded Gareth. ‘You fucking used me as bait just to get inside Gattenby House?’

  She frowned. ‘So? What of it?’

  ‘What if you hadn’t managed to get us both back out?’

  The frown deepened. ‘I did, didn’t I? So what’s your problem?’

  Words failed him. He struggled to comprehend all that was happening. He turned to Erica. ‘OK, level with me, what is the truth? Who are you? Were you in on it with Muller or what?’

  She looked at him briefly, her eyes tired and faintly sorrowful. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry? Is that it?’

  ‘Time to cut the crap, Gareth and face facts,’ burst Caroline. ‘People have put their arses on the line for you. Both of you. There has to be a bloody good reason to do that, don’t you think? Work it out for yourself. Maybe you’d better leave it at that and we�
�ll explain later. We’re not in the clear just yet, so right now can I just concentrate on getting out of here otherwise it will all be a moot point.’

  ‘But...’ he began.

  She reached into her jacket pocket and tossed something over her shoulder at him. He caught it before it hit him in the face. ‘Here, have some gum and get your mouth working around something else. I need to concentrate.’

  * * * *

  43

  This Side of Alive

  She drove the Bentley deeper into the woods, the track narrowing the further in they went, even the suspension on the luxury car failing to dampen the effects of the ruts and potholes. Trees loomed out of the dark like spectral sentinels, their colour washed out in the harsh beam of the halogen headlights. They’d been driving at speed for a good forty-five minutes, but Caroline had been careful not to draw attention to the car should any on-duty patrol car lie lurking unseen and waiting to catch early morning drink-drivers. Her detour into the woodland had been unexpected and sudden.

  ‘Where does this lead?’ Gareth asked, but he didn’t get a reply.

  Eventually she brought the car to a halt, the way ahead so narrow and choked with bushes that the car would not have got much further. ‘Everyone out,’ she said, ‘and down here,’ she aimed a flashlight ahead of them and they began to file down the overgrown track, Caroline in the lead, Lambert-Chide struggling to keep up behind her, Erica urging him on. Gareth brought up the rear. ‘It leads to a disused quarry,’ she explained, and as if to add weight to her words the track passed down a narrow alley formed of high, rough-hewn rock on either side. It eventually opened out onto a clearing, littered with the odd-tree, dense patches of shadowy scrub and long-abandoned blocks of stone. A sheer cliff rose about thirty feet ahead of them and formed a rough semi-circle topped with a dark ruff of trees. Above these the sky appeared a bleak shade of dark grey.

  Caroline moved swiftly over to a large green mound, deep in shadow, and hauled away a thin covering of branches to reveal a green canvas tarpaulin. She yanked it away. To Gareth’s astonishment the headlights of a 4X4 came into view. She went to the car’s door and swung it open, urging them inside.

  ‘Everyone except you,’ she said to Lambert-Chide. ‘You stay here. I don’t need you as insurance now.’

  ‘We can’t just leave him here,’ Gareth protested.

  ‘Well I’m not about to take him with us,’ she returned.

  ‘Look at him; he’s an old man, for Christ’s sake. We’re in the middle of nowhere and it’s dark. He’s over ninety!’

  She shook her head. ‘Will you get it into your thick skull that this man, no matter how old he is, would have cut you both up into tiny little pieces and all for the sake of a few measly billion. He’s not your average pensioner, Gareth. He’s a cold-hearted brute, a murderer. He stays here, which is not what I’d really like to do to him; I could do far worse. Unless you’d prefer we drop him off at the Ritz on the way?’

  ‘Don’t trust her, Gareth,’ Lambert-Chide said, a little breathlessly after their trek through the woods. ‘She works for Doradus. Go with her and you’ll both end up dead. I can offer you something else, Gareth, something much more profitable.’

  It was at this point that Erica stepped up to the old man, the gun still in her hand. ‘Ignore him, Gareth. His words are poison. All you offer, David, is misery and death. You don’t care about anything except for the pursuit of something you will never have.’ Her eyes narrowed, her jaw steeled. ‘I have thought about this moment for decades, every day since I escaped your research facility. Thinking about you standing in front of me, helpless, and me with a gun. You treated me like a lab rat, David; nothing more than an animal to experiment upon. An animal to be used, to be hunted down, to be experimented upon or exterminated. I could so easily kill you for what you did to me. For what you would have done to Gareth. But I’m better than that. And long after you’re dead and gone I shall still be here, to spit on your memory. You’ll never have what we have, David. For all your money and your influence it can only end in dust for you.’

  ‘You may have fooled my father, but you never fooled me, Evelyn.’

  ‘She’s a fraud – she admitted as much,’ said Gareth. ‘She and Muller were in on it together.’

  Lambert-Chide shook his head. ‘No, she’s the real thing, Gareth. I knew all along it was a desperate ploy, to play for time, to set doubts running. To try anything possible to protect you. As soon as I saw her I knew who she was - the same bitch who tried to snare my father.’

  Her anger was clear to see, but she fought to hold it in check. ‘I loved your father, David, I truly did. Do you know how rare it is to love someone so deeply, so completely, to trust them with your very life? I guess you never have and never will. You only love yourself. As you’ll also never know what it’s like to spend many, many lonely years on the run, in hiding, taking on different names, identities, unable to commit to relationships because you know they have to end sooner rather than later, so afraid of committing to anything or anyone for fear that the truth will eventually come out about what a freak of nature you are; or to watch those you love grow old and die whilst you stay forever young. How often I’ve thought about taking my own life, to end the misery and the horror. But cowardice and my beliefs prevent me from doing so. This is not a gift – it is a curse of the highest order. You cannot know what it is you want, what it is you wish for, how it crushes the soul to be wandering like a damned spirit forever and ever. But with your father it was different; I did commit, and I would have told him who I was, eventually, and I would have been glad to have shared his love, if only for a short time. Just a short time in this ceaseless, empty life of mine. But you took it away from me. You don’t deserve to live, David, because it is people like you that are the cancer in this world, not I.’ She turned away from him, heading for the car. ‘Leave him here, Gareth,’ she said dully.

  ‘It can’t be true...’ said Gareth. ‘It just can’t.’

  David Lambert-Chide grabbed him by the arm. ‘Don’t listen to them, Gareth. Yes, it is all true. And I can make you a very rich man. You’re special...’

  But the flashing of lights through the gaps in the trees at the edge of the clearing disturbed them. It was followed by the harsh sounds of feet blundering through the undergrowth.

  ‘This looks like trouble,’ said Caroline. ‘How on earth did they manage to find us? I was damn certain we weren’t being followed.’

  Lambert-Chide laughed sardonically. ‘All my cars have tracking devices on them as a precaution. You never know when one will go walkabout.’

  ‘Inside, Gareth, now,’ she said. ‘No time for gawping at the pretty little lights.’

  ‘You really are pushing it!’ he returned.

  ‘I’m all a tremble.’ She got inside the cab and hit the ignition.

  ‘Over here! Over here!’ yelled Lambert-Chide, waving his arms energetically.

  At that moment a number of loud bangs rang out, and Gareth heard the sound of bees. Then he realised they were bullets whipping close by his head. He instinctively ducked down. More shots crackled from out of the dark undergrowth, the strident sounds echoing slightly in the curve of the natural amphitheatre, and he flinched when Caroline let loose a few rounds from behind him.

  ‘What are you hanging around for? Get inside, Gareth!’ she hollered.

  ‘Gareth! Do as she says!’ Erica pleaded.

  He estimated there were around three or four people out there in the bushes at the edge of the clearing, judging from the bright gun flashes. A fresh round swept the spot where he crouched and he felt that if he raised his head he’d have it blown away. Lambert-Chide was still shouting, wafting his arms like crazy. Then unexpectedly the old man staggered backwards, as if someone had pushed him in the chest with the flat of their hand. He glanced over at Gareth, a look of utter astonishment in his eyes that turned quickly to terror as his hand came away from his chest where the bullet had hit home, his fingers covered
in blood. He tottered uncertainly, shaking his head defiantly before giving a rattling, rushing gasp as he collapsed.

  Gareth bound over to him at a stoop. ‘He’s been hit!’ he called to no one in particular. He crouched down before Lambert-Chide. The old man’s eyes had rolled into the top of his head, almost completely white. His bony hand clutched at Gareth’s sleeve like a man tumbling down a cliff grasps at the earth to prevent the fall. He gasped out a final, gurgling breath and went completely limp, his hand slipping away.

  Randall Tremain ran out into the clearing a little way, taking shelter behind one of the huge boulders, two men at his back. Thankfully the CCTV in the cell where he’d been locked away was scheduled to be checked every hour. He hadn’t had to wait long, but it had been long enough to stoke up one hell of a fury.

  He pumped out a couple of shots, looking with some satisfaction at the indistinct, crumpled heap that was Lambert-Chide, laid on the ground some fifty yards away, lit partially by the headlights from the car that Caroline had gunned into action. His had been the shot that had brought Lambert-Chide down. In the confusion it would be claimed to be a sad and unfortunate accident, but Tremain had made sure to take very careful aim. He knew what the old tycoon had in store for him, after all these years of loyalty and confidence. In the end he thought he’d get in first. Consider yourself well and truly retired, you old devil, he thought bleakly.

  He’d already been working on a story to cover the old man’s death, that Lambert-Chide was being kidnapped, possibly to be held for ransom, that security had given chase, the kidnappers had fired upon them unexpectedly. That’s when Lambert-Chide had been accidentally hit. On which note he was mindful of his nest egg up front. And what a fucking auction that’s going to be! He had both Russian and Chinese contacts that were falling over themselves to get their hands on these two. But first he had another score to settle – that bastard woman Caroline Cody had managed to outflank him somehow and that hurt like crazy. He was going to make sure she paid for it. He signalled for his men to take up positions on either side of him.