by Kris Langman
“The doctor might not have killed anyone, but he’ll still get jail time,” said Anne, with more confidence than she felt. Inspector Beckett had called her that morning to tell her that Dr. Davidson was out on bail. The police were concentrating on building a case against Daniel Soames. They had charged him with two counts of attempted murder – the hit and run in London, and the attack at Leeds Castle. Anne wasn’t sure about the hit and run. Daniel might have been acting on his own initiative there. But she was certain that Dr. Davidson had been behind the attempt to drown her at the castle. Daniel himself had told her that the doctor had procured the drug they’d knocked her out with. She’d mentioned that in her statement to the police, but she had the uneasy feeling that they didn’t believe her. Or if they did, they didn’t feel they had enough evidence to pursue a case against the doctor.
“Well, I hope so,” said Nick. “They need to throw him in the clink, throw the book at him, hang him by his thumbs.” He laughed, snorting Pepsi out his nose. “Hang him by his thumbs. I’d pay good money to see that. And I’d bring along some rotten tomatoes to throw at him too.”
Lindsey frowned at him. “There’s no need to be callous or crude. Several years in jail will be sufficient for John, I mean for Dr. Davidson. As for the other man, that Daniel Soames, I can’t help feeling that he was the true instigator of all the violent acts. Maybe not his brother’s murder, but certainly he was the one who tried to run Anne down, and to drown her. I hope he gets a very lengthy sentence.”
Nick nodded in agreement, as he always did at any remark of Lindsey’s, but Anne noticed that his right hand was still making little throwing motions.
Anne finished her sandwich and leaned back against the bench. Daniel Soames was in jail, and so was his mother. She might have to testify at their trials, but otherwise she could safely forget about them.
As for Dr. Davidson, she wasn’t happy that he was out on bail, but on the plus side she hadn’t seen any sign of him. She’d overheard Mrs. Watson gossiping about him with the porter in the lobby of her apartment building. Apparently the doctor was four months behind on his rent and the building’s owner was starting eviction proceedings. She wondered if he’d left town – or even left the country. She was as eager to see justice done as the next person, but the idea that the doctor had eluded the law and was now halfway across the world was extremely appealing. As long as he was as far away from her as possible she could forgo revenge.
She might spend the next few months looking over her shoulder, wondering if he was somewhere back there, but gradually the feeling would fade. Life would return to normal.
A gentle breeze was blowing, and the spring sunshine was encouraging a few purple and white crocuses to poke out of the dark soil surrounding the bowling green. Anne closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of contentment. Maybe life wasn’t quite normal yet, but it was definitely headed in the right direction.
Post Hoc Publishing
Boston, MA
www.posthocpub.com
Other books by Kris Langman
The Danger Down Under
The Gostynin Shul
Logic to the Rescue
Castles and Chemistry
The Danger Down Under
Chapter One
“Ten quid says he has to be rescued by a lifeguard.”
Anne laughed, choking on her Pepsi. “Give him a break, Lindsey. Nick’s doing the best he can. He’s just not used to such big waves. And besides, they don’t call them quid here. It’s dollars. Australian dollars.”
Lindsey shrugged, smoothing sunscreen onto her neck. She was a classic English rose, with skin pale as milk, golden hair, and large blue eyes. She was wearing a white one-piece swimsuit which reflected the sunlight and gave her an angelic look. Half the males on the beach were staring at her and the other half were pretending not to. “Crazy Aussies,” she said. “They should call a quid a quid. Australia was founded by the Brits, after all.”
“Maybe they’re trying to hide that embarrassing fact,” said Anne, who’d been watching the men on the beach watching Lindsey with a mixture of amusement and resignation. She was well aware that she faded into the woodwork whenever she was next to Lindsey, but she didn’t really mind. She found the amount of attention Lindsey attracted rather overwhelming. She was happy enough with her own assets: long dark hair and a whip-thin runner’s frame honed during her years on the track team at UCLA. In contrast to Lindsey’s Hollywood glamour, her beach attire consisted of an old Led Zeppelin t-shirt and frayed denim shorts.
“Stop glopping on the sunscreen and watch him,” said Anne. “The poor guy’s been waving at you for ten minutes now.”
Lindsey raised her head and scanned the jade green waves crashing onto Bondi beach. A young man with spiky blond hair was sitting on his surfboard thirty yards out from shore. His baggy shorts, printed with huge red pineapples, looked in danger of falling off his scrawny frame. He noticed Lindsey looking in his direction and windmilled his thin arms so enthusiastically that he toppled off his surfboard.
Lindsey sighed and resumed her painstaking search for un-lotioned skin. “Twenty quid says he knocks himself out with his own surfboard and then gets rescued by a lifeguard.”
Anne waved at the surfer, who cheerfully saluted her and climbed back onto his board, ready to resume his losing battle with the waves rolling in from the Tasman Sea. Anne lay back on her towel, squirmed into a comfortable position in the sand and covered her face with the Sydney Morning Herald.
“Can I have a section of the paper?” asked Lindsey. “I’ve finished my magazine.”
“Sure,” said Anne, peeling off the top pages and handing them over. “See if there’s anything interesting going on in town. I wouldn’t mind going to a play or a concert tonight.”
Lindsey sniffed. “The pickings will be pretty slim compared to London.”
Anne and Lindsey worked together in the London office of the Franklin Group, a small investment bank which also created financial software as a side line. Anne was a computer programmer in the software division, Lindsey was a receptionist, and Nick, surfer extraordinaire, was a junior programmer. Lindsey and Nick were British, and Anne was an American, though Nick had dubbed her an honorary Brit.
Anne had recently been sent to the company’s office in Australia on a three-month assignment. It had been Lindsey’s idea to use her vacation time to visit Anne in Sydney. When Nick heard about the trip he had basically invited himself along. Anne didn’t mind. She got along well with both Lindsey and Nick, and it was nice to see a couple of familiar faces. She had put Lindsey in the guest room of her company apartment, and Nick was bunking on the couch in the living room.
“A jumper. Poor bastard. What a way to go,” said Lindsey, holding the newspaper by the edges to avoid getting her fingers blackened by the newsprint.
“What?” said Anne sleepily, her voice muffled under the Herald. Yawning, she uncovered her face and stretched. The sun, the smell of freshly baked pretzels from a nearby vendor, and the light breeze off the ocean had nearly lulled her into a nap.
“It’s on the front page,” said Lindsey. “Some guy jumped off a building in downtown Sydney last night.” Suddenly she gasped, poking Anne in the shoulder with her finger. “The Macquarie Building. Isn’t that where your office is?”
Anne took the folded front page Lindsey was pushing at her. She squinted at it in the bright sunshine. There was a blurry headshot of a young man, followed by a full-column story. An accountant named Rob Musgrove, employee of The Franklin Group, had jumped to his death from the roof of the Macquarie Building. The police estimated that he had jumped at approximately two o’clock in the morning, but his body had not been found until several hours later by garbage collectors. A suicide note had been found on his home computer, but the contents had not been made public.
Anne sat up, feeling nauseous. She had met him. Her first day at the Sydney office had been a blur of introductions, but she had a vague memory of meeting Rob in
the break room. He had been pleasant and unremarkable. An average, thirty-something guy. He certainly hadn’t seemed suicidal.
“Did you know him?” asked Lindsey, leaning over to take another look at the photograph.
Anne shook her head. “No, not really. He introduced himself while I was eating lunch and we talked for maybe thirty seconds. About coffee, I think. I asked him if there was a Starbucks near the office, and he said there was one about two blocks away.”
“That’s it?” asked Lindsey, sounding disappointed.
“Yeah, that’s it. Sorry. If you want juicy details I can’t provide them.”
“Don’t make me sound so bloodthirsty,” said Lindsey. “I was just curious. You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty creepy. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who committed suicide.” She nodded toward the water. “Nick’s managed to survive the briny deep.”
Anne looked up. Nick was headed toward them, dragging his surfboard along the sand with one hand and trying to pull up his baggy shorts with the other.
“Hey, dudettes. What’s up?” said Nick, dropping his board and throwing himself down onto the sand next to Lindsey. “There’s some knarly waves out there, man.”
Lindsey arched an eyebrow at him. “Knarly? Really? Do people still use that word?”
Nick shrugged goodnaturedly. “Sure. Us hardcore surfer types do.”
Lindsey brushed this off with an impatient wave of her hand. “Get your mind off surfing for once, silly boy. Listen, when you went to that pub last night with some of the blokes from the Sydney office, was Rob Musgrove there?”
“Who?” asked Nick, absentmindedly scooping sand into a pile.
Lindsey rolled her eyes. “Oh for goodness sake, junior. Stop building sandcastles. What are you, five?”
Nick grinned at her and dug a little moat around his pile of sand. “So, who’s this Rob guy? Some Aussie jerk who asked you for a date? Guy’s got a lot of nerve. You’ve only been here two days.”
Lindsey thrust the Sydney Morning Herald at him and pointed an imperious finger at the blurry photo on the front page. “This guy,” she said. “Do you remember him?”
Nick squinted at the photo. “Oh, sure,” he said. “The echidna dude.”
Lindsey stared at him, then turned to Anne.
Anne laughed. “Okay, I’ll bite,” she said. “What’s an echidna?”
“Not really sure,” said Nick, decorating his sandcastle with bits of kelp. “Some kind of animal, I think. The dude was all upset about it, crying in his beer about how their habit is disappearing.”
“Habit?” asked Lindsey. “What on earth?”
“I think he means habitat,” said Anne.
“Right,” said Nick. “Habitat. Place where these little whatchamacallit’s live. This Rob guy was really into saving the dolphins and the rainforest and all that. He was going on and on about how he belongs to this eco group which is trying to save the echidnas. Which is cool, I guess. Though I wouldn’t know an echidna if I sat on one.”
Lindsey sighed with the impatience which was her normal mode of interaction with Nick. Though at twenty-five she was only two years older than he was she tended to treat him like a particularly slow child. She turned back to Anne. “Why would a person who felt he was on some kind of mission to save the environment commit suicide? It sounds like he had a purpose in life, and people with a purpose are generally pretty upbeat in my experience.”
“Whoa,” said Nick, looking up from his sandcastle. “The dude committed suicide?”
“Yes,” said Anne. “That’s why his picture is in the paper. He jumped off the Macquarie Building last night.”
“Macquarie . . .” said Nick, a somber expression clouding his usually cheerful face. “Isn’t that where you work?”
Anne nodded. “The Franklin Group offices are on the sixth floor. I wonder why he chose that particular building,” she added thoughtfully. “I mean, just because he worked there doesn’t mean he’d have access to the roof. It’s a forty-story skyscraper. I’m sure all the doors to the roof are carefully locked and alarmed.”
Lindsey frowned. “Maybe he was making some kind of statement. Let me see the paper again, junior.” When Nick handed it over she carefully re-read the article, muttering to herself. “Yes, here it is,” she said, flicking the newspaper with her index finger. “There’s a mention of it down in the last paragraph. It says that a cardboard placard was found near the body. The police are refusing to confirm rumors that it was some type of protest sign.”
The Danger Down Under will be available from Amazon in 2012