The Danger Next Door (Anne Lambert Mysteries)

by Kris Langman

  Anne leaned her head against the door and whimpered. No, no, no. She froze there, unable to move. She was rapidly losing her nerve. The temptation to throw open the door and run out of the clinic in full view of Mrs. Reed and the inconvenient Miss Stewart was irresistible. Her hand grasped the doorknob and turned it.

  “Mrs. Reed would you mail another invoice to Mr. Perry. His payment is late again. Hello Miss Stewart. Come right in.”

  Anne jerked her hand off the doorknob as if it was red hot. The doctor was back. She looked around in panic, but the choice of hiding places hadn’t changed. She threw herself under the table and pulled the boxes of files in front of her. She crouched down until she was curled into a ball on the floor. A small dust cloud floated up and into her nose. She pinched her nostrils together, and bit her lip for good measure. Then she listened.

  “No, I’ve never eaten there,” Miss Stewart said. “I hear it’s nice.”

  The doctor’s answer was too low to be heard. They must have gone into his office, Anne thought. Thank god she had closed that desk drawer. She listened desperately for the sound of a door closing, but it didn’t come. The doctor’s desk faced the door of his office. The open door. There was no way she could get by.

  4:50 p.m. The square of sky framed by the window of the filing room was nearly black. A sliver of light from the hall showed under the door. Anne yawned and stretched out her legs, bumping against a filing cabinet. She couldn’t remember the moment which had just passed and realized that she must have fallen asleep. Something had woken her. She raised her head and peeked over the boxes in front of her. No one was in the room with her. She heard a door shut.

  “Don’t worry doctor. I’ll lock up. I’m so happy you had a good time at lunch. It’s about time you had a young lady in your life. You have a good evening.”

  Dr. Davidson was going home already. Anne wasn’t surprised. He had never struck her as a person who would keep long hours. Blackmail was undoubtedly more profitable than hard work.

  The sound of clinking dishes came through the wall. Mrs. Reed doing the final wash up of the day. A few minutes of silence followed during which Anne couldn’t tell what the occupants of the clinic were doing. She was reasonably sure that the doctor had left. Mrs. Reed was no longer chatting to him anyway, and the receptionist struck her as one of those people who couldn’t help talking if there was someone around to hear her.

  A door closed, followed by the sound of a bolt turning in its lock. The clinic’s outer door had been shut and locked. Anne crawled out from her hiding place and dusted herself off. She double checked the cabinet drawers to make sure she had locked them all, then crept to the door and eased it open. The hallway was dark. Thank god. The escapade was almost over. A sense of frustration welled up inside her. All this effort, not to mention her shattered nerves, and not much to show for it. Well, you can’t do anything about that now, Anne told herself firmly as she went into Dr. Davidson’s office and returned the keys to their drawer.

  She felt her way down the hall and across the reception area. It was so dark that it was difficult to see. She paused in front of the outer door. She was no expert, but there didn’t appear to be any alarm system. No small boxes with blinking lights on the wall near the door. Of course, there might be an alarm box on the other side of the door. Anne racked her brain, but couldn’t remember whether there was one or not. She’d have to chance it. She grasped the door handle and turned. It caught on something, and for one panicked moment the thought flashed through her mind that she was locked inside the clinic. But a second turn to the handle released the bolt. Anne slumped in relief. She pulled the door open a crack. No one was in the hall. She could hear voices, but they sounded hollow and far away. Most likely people in the lift, going down to the lobby and home for the day. She pulled the door open farther. What was that smell? It reminded her of anti-freeze, or ice cubes. Shit!

  Anne tried to dodge around him but he was blocking the doorway. He grabbed her arm up near the shoulder and pushed her back into the clinic. The overhead lights were switched on and Anne blinked from the glare. He dragged her with him as he strode to Mrs. Reed’s desk and picked up the phone.

  “Hello, Robert. This is Dr. Davidson from the psychiatric clinic on the second floor. I’ve had a break-in. Please call the police. Thank you.”

  Anne tried to twist away from him but he tightened his grasp until he was just short of leaving a bruise.

  “Well,” he said. “This is unexpected.” He stared at her with an expression Anne couldn’t quite understand. It was the face of someone who’d just had a stroke of luck. “I suppose I should ask the obvious question – what are you doing here?”

  Ok, Anne thought. This was where she came up with a brilliant reason for her presence. So brilliant that he was completely taken in, let her go, cancelled the call to the police, and left her free to trot off home and indulge in a much needed bowl of macaroni and cheese.

  Sigh. She stared woodenly at the floor and didn’t answer him.

  Running footsteps sounded in the hall and then a chunky white guy in a blazer that strained against his pot belly burst into the room. Anne didn’t recognize him. The guy who’d been at the guard desk in the lobby when she entered the building had been an older black guy.

  “You (gasp) ok (gasp) doctor?” The guard had obviously run up the stairs and just as obviously was not accustomed to such activity.

  “I’m fine,” snapped Dr. Davidson. “Did you call the police?”

  “Yes sir. I called the Bishopsgate station as it’s the closest. They said someone will be here in about ten minutes. I hope that’s ok. I didn’t call 999 as a break-in didn’t seem like an emergency.” He stopped and looked at Anne, his expression relaxing. Finding that the perpetrator was a small woman who was shaking from head to toe seemed to justify his assessment of the situation as a non-emergency.

  The doctor nodded. “Thank you Robert. Go down and wait for the police.”

  “Right.” Robert trundled out, the floor groaning at each step.

  Anne missed him already. She was alone with the doctor again, and an insistent bubble of fear for her safety was growing. She told herself not to be stupid – he wouldn’t do anything with the police on the way. His personality also worked in her favor. She’d be in more danger if he was hot-tempered and easy to incite. A person like that might forget possible consequences in the heat of the moment and strike out. But even her limited contact with the doctor had shown her he wasn’t like that. Calculated self-interest governed his actions, and violence was not in his best interest right now.

  He was still gripping her arm, even though there was no longer any real need. She was hardly going to run away at this point. It would make her look even more guilty in the eyes of the police. Anne came to the unsettling conclusion that he was still holding her because he enjoyed it. She tried to convince herself that it was just that he enjoyed causing pain – which was probably true. Her subconscious, however, had detected a sexual subtext to his behavior and it was dutifully bringing this to her attention. Anne shuddered.

  Dr. Davidson smiled, his thin lips not quite parting. “What are you going to tell the police?”

  “What?” asked Anne in surprise.

  “You obviously snuck in here in order to snoop around, but you can hardly tell the police that. I was just curious as to what excuse you’d come up with.”

  “I don’t know.” Anne shrugged hopelessly. “I can’t think of anything plausible.”

  Dr. Davidson chuckled, his transparent eyes gleaming with amusement – or lust. Anne didn’t want to know which.

  “Let go already,” she spat, twisting and squirming in frustration.

  He let her struggle for a few moments, then seemed to tire of the game. He marched her over to a chair and pushed her into it, then sat down in a chair farther away from the door, as if daring her to make a run for it.

  They sat there silently, the doctor watching Anne and Anne watching the door. When
the two uniformed police officers arrived she jumped up as if standing to attention. The doctor stood more leisurely.

  “Thank you for coming officers,” he said calmly. “I found this young lady in the clinic – the locked clinic – after I and my staff had left for the day. I caught her when I returned to pick up some papers I had forgotten.”

  The officers looked at Anne without interest. It was obvious that they didn’t consider her much of a threat to public safety. The older man spoke up.

  “Do you want to press charges sir?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  The officer looked surprised at this, but shrugged and proceeded to read Anne her rights.

  Chapter Nine

  It had been a long night. Anne yawned and flexed her left arm, which had gone numb. She’d fallen asleep sitting up, her arm squashed against the bars of the cell. Her cellmate was still snoring gently, the purple spandex of her miniskirt twisted around her hefty thighs.

  Anne tried to guess what time it was. The noise coming from the front of the police station had increased considerably in the last half hour. It must be close to normal business hours, maybe 8:00 a.m. Her stomach growled loudly. She wondered if they would feed her. They hadn’t bothered last night, just chucked her in here and left.

  Heels clacked on the dirty tile floor, coming toward her cell. Anne leaned toward the noise, wondering if she had a visitor. The person who came into view was Inspector Beckett, her blue suit and gray bob remaining immobile as she walked, as if both were cut from the same unbendable fabric. DC Singh was not with her this time.

  “Good Morning, Miss Lambert. I hope you slept well.”

  Anne decided this was ironic and didn’t respond.

  “I have an interview room waiting. Would you come with me please.” She unlocked the cell door and held it open.

  Anne stood up stiffly and waited in the passage while the Inspector re-locked the cell. Her cellmate snorted as the metal door clanged, but didn’t wake. Inspector Beckett led the way up the chewing-gum speckled hallway to the front of the station. Business was slow this time of day. A uniformed officer, engrossed in coffee and paperwork, hunched over a wooden counter which took up half the room. He didn’t glance up as Inspector Beckett deposited the cell keys in front of him.

  She motioned Anne to follow her. They wandered through a maze of narrow hallways and cubicles, finally stopping at a small room which had a clipboard hanging from its door. The Inspector checked her watch, wrote the time on the clipboard, then waved Anne into the room, closing the door behind them. A scarred wooden table and two metal chairs were the only things inside.

  “Please sit down.”

  Anne pulled out a chair, a metallic scrape echoing off the walls. She sat down warily and watched as the Inspector flipped through a file she had brought with her.

  “First, let me say that this is an off-the-record interview, an informal chat if you will. I’m not taping it.” The Inspector leaned toward Anne, her gray bob swinging forward in one over-hairsprayed mass, her hazel eyes intent. She seemed to be waiting for Anne to respond. Anne nodded cautiously to show she understood. The Inspector relaxed back into her chair.

  “Let’s start with the good news. Dr. John Davidson has decided not to press charges against you. This means, of course, that we have no reason to hold you. You are free to go, but it would be to your benefit to wait and hear me out. There are some things we need to discuss.” She paused again and Anne nodded.

  “An Inspector Northam called me yesterday. He told me about your little adventure in Kent. Attempted drowning, of all things. That makes two attempts on your life in less than a month.”

  Her expression was disapproving. Anne got the feeling that in the Inspector’s opinion respectable people were not the targets of attempted murder. Certainly not repeated attempts, anyway. Anne decided to ignore the implied criticism. The Inspector’s last remark had caught her attention.

  “Two attempts. So that car which hit me – you have proof that it wasn’t an accident?”

  “Proof? No, I wouldn’t go that far,” the Inspector admitted. “What we have are several witness statements which all agree that the car didn’t slow or attempt to swerve before it hit you. Nothing hid you from the view of the driver. You were right in the middle of the street. But it’s not so much the details of the accident itself as the owner of the car which I find interesting. It’s quite a coincidence that the owner, Daniel Soames, should have a brother who drowned only a week before your accident. And then you turn out to be the neighbor of this brother’s psychiatrist. And now we find you poking around the psychiatrist’s office.” She stopped and looked at Anne pointedly.

  Anne dropped her eyes to the table in front of her. “Carl sucks!” was scratched into the wood next to a rather artistically drawn pig with a curly tail. She traced the pig with her finger. They sat in silence, the minutes ticking away uncomfortably. Finally, to break the tension more than anything else, Anne reached into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a crumpled scrap of paper. She pushed this across the table.

  The Inspector opened it and read it aloud.

  “J.S. harping on incident again. The boy had it coming, not J’s fault, etc, etc. Tired of this obsession, no matter how useful.”

  She frowned at Anne. “Where did you get this?”

  “From the file on James Soames, in Dr. Davidson’s office.”

  The Inspector’s frown deepened to two grooves extending halfway up her forehead. “So this is what you were looking for when you broke in there.”

  “I didn’t break in,” Anne said defensively. “I just slipped in at lunch time – the clinic was open for business – and hid in the filing room.”

  “You’re splitting hairs and you know it.”

  “Maybe,” admitted Anne, “but I was desperate.”

  “The attempts on your life. Yes, I can see how you’d feel that way. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t come talk to me sooner. You knew I was already investigating Daniel Soames.”

  “That’s the problem. You’re investigating Daniel Soames for his brother’s murder. Okay, fine. But that doesn’t help me.” Anne tapped the note with a finger. “J.S. is James Soames. Dr. Davidson’s patient. I think the boy referred to in this note was a Wyndham Preparatory student who was strangled at the school about fifteen years ago. Strangled by James Soames. Dr. Davidson was the school’s guidance counselor at the time. He spent a lot of time counseling James, and I think James confessed to the killing, probably during one of their sessions. I think the doctor has been blackmailing James ever since. Now, Daniel Soames may have killed his brother. I don’t know and I don’t care. Daniel has a petty little grudge against me because I wouldn’t help him retrieve his car after the police impounded it, but that’s all. I don’t think Daniel has it in for me. But someone else does – two attempts on my life, after all. And I’m beginning to suspect that person is Dr. Davidson.”

  The Inspector had remained silent throughout this speech, watching Anne carefully and fingering a gold chain which hung down over her jacket. When Anne finished she read the note again and then stared off into space for several minutes, her face expressionless.

  Finally she returned her attention to Anne. “I take it you didn’t deduce all of that from this note,” she said, the sarcasm unmistakable.

  “No, of course not. I heard about the boy who was killed from a teacher at Wyndham Preparatory. The teacher’s first name is Kenneth. I don’t remember his surname.”

  Anne watched as the Inspector took a small notebook out of her jacket pocket and made a note in it. Anne found this oddly comforting, probably because someone was taking her suspicions seriously.

  “Is there anything else?” asked Inspector Beckett.

  Anne looked at her doubtfully, but realized that she may as well finish what she’d started. “There was another note, handwritten, which was left in my mailbox. I don’t have it anymore. I gave it to Dr. Davidson.”

  The
Inspector’s eyebrows went up at this.

  “I know, I know,” said Anne. “It was a stupid thing to do. But I didn’t suspect him of anything at that point. I felt sorry for him. The note seemed to indicate that someone had a grudge against him. I felt obligated to let him know about it.”

  “Can you remember what the note said?”

  “Sure. It was only a few lines, plus I have a good memory.” Anne quoted:

  “I just wanted you to know who you’re living next door to. He’s hurt a lot of people. He got to me years ago. At school. Wyndham Prep. Ask him about Wyndham Prep.”

  “Hmm,” said the Inspector noncommittally. “Write it down please. Word for word.” She pushed her notebook and pen across the table. “You realize that your suspicions of the doctor are pretty flimsy. You have no solid evidence of any wrong doing.”

  “I know that. That’s why I haven’t talked to the police.”

  “Well, I’ll try to keep an open mind, but there’s nothing I can do without something more solid. We’ve already talked to the doctor in his role as James Soames’ psychiatrist. It would be difficult to bring him in for another chat as things stand. I have the feeling he’s the type who would be quick to claim police harassment. Daniel Soames is another matter. He’s still our main suspect for the two attempts on your life. The car which hit you was owned by him, and someone tried to drown you while you were a guest at his parent’s home. Plus Inspector Northam mentioned the shoe prints they’ve collected which matched a pair of Soames’ shoes. This is the kind of evidence the courts like – simple and physical. And in the other matter of James Soames’ death, the evidence there also points to Daniel Soames. Daniel is the second son in a very wealthy family. He inherited when his brother died. There’s no physical evidence to link him to James’ death, but there is certainly a motive.”

  The Inspector paused to fish a business card out of her pocket. “Here’s my card. Call me if anything else happens. Hopefully it won’t. Daniel Soames knows we’re watching him, and I’ll make some discreet inquiries about Dr. Davidson. I can’t promise anything, though. If I were you, I’d keep an eye out when crossing the street.”