Obsession

by Susan Lewis

  ‘Very likely the same as you are, sir. That it was Fitzpatrick who had called him to the phone in order to get him out of the way.’

  ‘And then what?’ Radcliffe seethed. ‘Are you seriously asking me to believe that Luke Fitzpatrick walked up to Corrie Browne and Annalise Kapsakis in the middle of Nice airport and offered them a ride into Cannes and they, after all that has happened, said yes please Luke, thank you very much Luke?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then what, sir?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘No, nobody fucking knows do they?’ Radcliffe cried, burying his face in his hands. ‘I just don’t believe it. I take it you’ve informed the French police?’

  ‘Colin’s doing that now, sir. But all this is only surmise, sir. It could be that …’

  She jumped as Radcliffe’s chair crashed back against the wall as he leapt to his feet and stormed through to the CID office, shouting at Archer to get him on the next flight to Nice.

  ‘Which one of you fucking morons speaks French?’ he roared.

  Everyone looked blank.

  ‘Jesus God!’ he seethed. ‘Then find someone who fucking well does …’

  ‘Don’t you think we might be jumping the gun, sir,’ Archer interrupted. ‘I mean they still might turn up. They could have just stopped off to do some shopping …’

  ‘He’s got them, Archer! You know it, I know it and any minute now the whole fucking world is going to know it. So every one of you better start saying your prayers that those two girls don’t turn up on the shores of the Mediterranean in the same state as those prostitutes turned up on the Thames, ’cos if they do …’

  He didn’t finish his sentence because he couldn’t. But everyone present knew that whatever happened to Corrie and Annalise now he, Radcliffe, was going to be every bit as responsible as Luke Fitzpatrick. He had bungled this case, he had bungled it so badly that two young women were very likely going to lose their lives because of it.

  When Annalise and Corrie had first got into the taxi at Nice airport Corrie’s excitement had been so intense she was on the point of erupting. She could hardly believe that in less than an hour she would be with Cristos. That after the nightmare of the past five days she was at last going to be able to tell him she loved him. A powerful longing had surged through her then as she thought of the way he would kiss her once she’d said it, of his arms encircling her as he pulled her to him, and the tell-tale hardness of his body as it pressed against hers. Would they make love straight away, she’d wondered. Please God they would for once she saw him she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold out for long.

  Now, an hour and a half after leaving the airport as they weaved through the sun-dazzled French countryside with its dramatic hilltop views of Provençal villages and tantalizing glimpses of the Mediterranean, she was uneasily searching the road signs for any mention of Cannes. So far there had been none.

  She didn’t know the geography of the Riveria too well, but she did know that Cannes was west of Nice. So why was it that the sea was to their right? She’d already asked the taxi driver that once, but he hadn’t understood what she was saying.

  She cast her mind nervously back over their arrival at Nice airport. When they’d reached the arrivals lounge it was to find it teeming with press – most every international flight that day was bringing in stars for the festival.

  Corrie had scanned the impenetrable mass of faces, then groaned in dismay as she heard someone shout, ‘Hey! It’s Corrie Browne! Bennati’s woman!’

  There was a sudden scuffle as all eyes and lenses were directed to Corrie and Annalise, then a British journalist threw himself through the mayhem onto the bar which separated the arriving passengers from the unruly throng. ‘Corrie! Corrie!’ he yelled. ‘Are you here to see Bennati?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Corrie muttered, as the flash bulbs started to pop. ‘How on earth are we going to find him in this chaos?’

  Her voice was virtually drowned in an airport announcement. Since it was delivered in French neither Corrie nor Annalise understood it.

  ‘Did she say Bennati?’ Corrie asked, staggering against Annalise as someone jostled past them. ‘I swear she said Bennati.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Annalise answered. ‘I couldn’t hear.’

  Corrie peered into the sea of faces again, great splodges of white in front of her eyes from the plethora of flash bulbs still exploding all around her. ‘Where is he?’ she murmured impatiently.

  ‘Look, over there,’ Annalise cried, grabbing Corrie’s arm. ‘There’s a card with your name on it.’

  They pushed their way towards the man with the card to find that he spoke no English. However, he gestured for them to go down the steps to their left and elbowing his way through the crowd he kept alongside them until they were out into the lower body of the airport terminal. Using an elaborate form of sign language he explained that the taxi was outside, and in answer to the question did Mr Bennati send him, ‘Oui, oui, Monsieur Bennati.’ Then he growled furiously at the journalists who were trying to separate him from Corrie and Annalise, and taking them by their arms he led them outside.

  ‘Oui, d’accord,’ he smiled happily when Corrie told him the name of Cristos’s hotel. ‘Monsieur m’a dit. Le Majestic, à Cannes.’

  They should have been there long before now, Corrie was thinking to herself, so what in heaven’s name was this taxi-driver up to?

  What Bernard Lebrec was doing was following the instructions of the man who had approached him at the airport with five thousand francs and a card with Corrie’s name written on it. The man, with shoulder-length black hair, a greying moustache and dark glasses, had introduced himself as Monsieur Bennati and his instructions had been concise; he, Bernard, was to let them think they were going to the hotel in Cannes, but in fact he was to take them into the countryside where he was to double back on himself to the address he was being handed now. He was to take his time over the journey in order to give the man time to get to the destination first. Monsieur Bennati had then explained that he’d bought a villa for his wife and he wanted it to be a surprise.

  Deciding that Monsieur Bennati had now had more than sufficient time to get himself from Nice to Cap Ferrat, Bernard Lebrec started to head along the Cap himself, until he reached the address he had been given. As he brought his taxi to a stop in front of a set of vast black iron gates Corrie immediately leaned forward in her seat, saying,

  ‘Non, non. We want L’Hotel Majestic, in Cannes.’

  Bernard’s reply was in French. The only words Corrie could understand were Monsieur and surprise.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ she asked, turning nervously to Annalise.

  Annalise shook her head, clearly as unsettled as Corrie was.

  In the rearview mirror Corrie could see the delight in the driver’s face as the gates started to slide open and they made their way up a steep slope through a short avenue of overhanging olive trees. She looked up ahead, able to see the shuttered windows of the white, palatial villa set against the sapphire blue sky and surrounded by majestically soaring palms. They emerged from the sunlight dappled shadows to the foot of a wide oval lawn where small weeping trees bowed over marble statues and fountains. The drive circled around the lawn, and as they veered off to the right, arcing round to the front steps of the villa Corrie became very still.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ she murmured to Annalise.

  ‘Didn’t the driver say something about a surprise?’ Annalise answered. But Corrie could sense that Annalise was as tense as she was.

  ‘Voilà. On est arrivé!’ the driver declared, pulling the car to a halt at the villa’s front steps. ‘Mesdames, Monsieur vous att …’ His voice faltered as he realized that the man standing at the top of the steps wasn’t the man who had approached him at the airport.

  Corrie looked up and when she saw who was standing there it was as though her heart was being ripped apart by shock and disbelief. ‘Drive on,’ she
screamed to the driver. ‘Drive on!’

  With profound astonishment, yet automatic reaction, Bernard kicked down the accelerator and roared off around the lawn. Annalise was clinging to Corrie. Corrie, her eyes wild with fright, was sitting on the edge of her seat staring straight ahead and asking herself how this could be happening.

  ‘Oh no!’ she cried suddenly. ‘No! No! No!’ The gates were firmly shut – there was no way out.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she gasped, spinning round to look out of the back window as the car stopped. ‘Please! Do something! You have to get us away from him!’

  Annalise suddenly screamed and buried her head in Corrie’s lap. Corrie swung round to see Luke opening the passenger door of the car. Then it was as if the entire world suddenly decelerated into a nightmare of horrific and vivid slow-motion, as ribbons of blood plastered themselves to the windscreen and a fibrous grey substance coated a viscous fountain over Annalise’s hair and Corrie’s hands.

  As the reverberations of the explosion ebbed into the afternoon stillness Corrie’s eyes were transfixed by the gun in Luke’s hand. He had just blown out the taxi-driver’s brains.

  Cristos was waiting at the airport with the Sûreté when the next flight came in from London, bringing DI Radcliffe, DC Archer and Phillip Denby. The first moments the two police inspectors came face to face threatened to erupt into pandemonium as both started to shout and neither understood the other. In the end Cristos barked them to silence, and provided the interpretation.

  ‘I don’t fucking believe it!’ Radcliffe snapped, when Cristos had finished. ‘The man’s not a fucking magician, he can’t just make two grown women vanish into thin air. I take it you’ve checked your hotel again …’

  ‘Of course I have,’ Cristos snapped back.

  ‘So how the hell did he get them out of the airport?’

  ‘What does it matter how he got them out, the fact is he did,’ Phillip interjected. ‘So what are we doing about finding them?’

  Radcliffe eyed him nastily. ‘How he got them out of the airport matters,’ he said. Then turning back to Cristos. ‘Ask this frog here what enquiries they’ve started making.’

  ‘I can answer that for you,’ Cristos said. ‘They’re pulling in all taxi-drivers and hire-car clerks. The crew who flew in on the Air France flight have been detained here at the airport. The Sûreté are right now alerting all TV and radio stations, they’ve already spoken to the press that are here, and they’ve wired back to London for photographs.

  ‘Do the flight crew speak English?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Good. Then I’ll question them myself. Now, I suggest you return to your hotel in case they do turn up there – take Mr Denby with you, and I’ll get to work here. Though how the hell I’m going to make frog-plod understand me, God alone knows.’

  As Radcliffe made to turn away Cristos caught his arm and pulled him to one side. ‘Why the hell did you let her come?’ he asked tightly.

  ‘What?’ Radcliffe hissed incredulously. ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘You’re damned right I’m asking you. I called your office and told someone there to stop her. I was gonna come over there myself tomorrow … I didn’t want her out of police protection.’

  ‘Then why the fuck didn’t you stop her yourself? You knew she was coming …’

  ‘She didn’t speak to me, she spoke to my assistant. I got right on the phone the minute I knew to tell you to stop her.’

  Radcliffe was about to deliver a boiling response when Phillip stepped between them. ‘I don’t see any point in going over this now,’ he said. Let’s concentrate on what really matters, shall we?’

  Both Cristos and Radcliffe glared at him. Phillip smiled awkwardly, then to Cristos he said, ‘I’d like to know what our chances are of finding them. Would you mind interpreting that to the French Inspector …’

  ‘He doesn’t have to,’ Radcliffe interrupted, with blatant hostility, ‘I can answer it for you. Our chances at this moment in time are piss poor. France is a big place, Italy is just round the corner. They could be anywhere. What we’ve got to do is find a lead, like how they got out of this fucking airport. Without it we’re up shit creek.’

  The second floor veranda, jutting in an expansive semicircle from the back of the villa, was a forest of bougainvillaea, cacti and geraniums. Trailing lobelias coiled a formless route across the white trellis which clung to the exterior walls of the house and a symmetrical array of miniature palms stood like sentries around the sweep of the waist high stone wall. The view out over the sapphire-blue sea, where rich men’s yachts glittered in the sunlight, was stupendous and unlimited.

  Corrie was seated on a white wooden bench just in front of the sliding glass doors which separated the veranda from the garishly ornate lounge inside. Next to her was a massive wrought iron table to which her feet were tied, but her hands, her mouth and her eyes were unencumbered. Annalise was lying on a hammock chair, her lovely blonde hair tumbling over the edge and her emaciated limbs exposed mercilessly to the sun’s searing rays. She was attached to the chair by a rope coiled around her neck.

  They had seen almost nothing of Luke since the afternoon before when he’d led them from the taxi back to the house. In those few minutes he had walked silently behind them, only snorting when Annalise had stumbled against Corrie and Corrie had supported her in through the door. He had then gestured for them to go up the stairs, where he had left them in a bedroom, locking the door behind him.

  Annalise was so traumatized by the killing of the taxi-driver that she could barely hold herself up, so Corrie had taken her to the shower and sponged the blood and gore from her body, her own still quaking with shock.

  At odd intervals throughout the night Luke had returned to the door – Corrie had heard the key grating in the lock, but he didn’t come in. Once or twice he yelled out to her that it was all her fault, that she could have helped him, but she’d run away.

  ‘But you’ll never run away again,’ he cried. ‘You’re going to save me now, Corrie. You’re going to be with me forever.’

  Then, just before dawn she had heard him downstairs shouting. Neither she nor Annalise could make out what he was saying, but the agony in his voice was as terrifying as the mocking Irish tones.

  He had finally come into the room an hour or so ago now, and made them strip to their underwear. That was when he had put the noose around Annalise’s neck. He had looked at Corrie then and somewhere deep in the confusion in his eyes Corrie had sensed a desperation that, despite her fear, had wrenched at her heart.

  ‘Luke,’ she said, taking a step towards him, but almost instantly her arms came up to defend herself as he swung the gun towards her.

  ‘Keep away,’ he snarled, and turning to Annalise he pushed her to the floor, keeping hold of the rope like it was a leash. ‘You be coming along too now,’ he growled at Corrie.

  Appalled, Corrie had watched, unable to do anything to stop him as he proceeded to make Annalise crawl on all fours out to the veranda where he had pushed her face into a bowl and made her drink like a dog.

  ‘This,’ he hissed back over his shoulder to Corrie, ‘is what the bastard did to Siobhan.’

  Now, as a gentle breeze rustled the palm fronds, Corrie looked over at Annalise. At that moment the sliding doors opened and Luke walked out onto the veranda.

  Corrie looked up at him. His eyes reflected all the torment inside him, but as he gazed down at her she could see that he was unreachable. It was as though he had lost all sense of where, or even who, he was. He lowered his eyes to the gun and started to turn it over in his hand.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ Corrie asked quietly.

  He looked up in surprise, then smiled. ‘Paranoid wealthy Americans. They all keep guns,’ he sneered.

  Long minutes ticked by, the air so still there might have been no world beyond that terrace.

  ‘Do you intend to use it on us?’ Corrie eventually asked.

  Annalise whi
mpered and turned her face into the back of the chair. From Luke there was no response at all.

  As the silence moved through an indeterminable time the sun grew hotter and the strain so acute Corrie could feel herself becoming consumed by it. Suddenly she couldn’t stand any more. ‘What are you waiting for?’ she yelled. ‘Why don’t you just put us out of our misery?’

  ‘Corrie, don’t!’ Annalise sobbed.

  Unruffled by the outburst, Luke sighed and shook his head. ‘I don’t want to kill you,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t want to do it.’ Suddenly his head came up and his grin was obscene. ‘Will you be getting hungry now?’ he asked.

  Annalise turned her frightened eyes to Corrie.

  ‘The police know that you killed the prostitutes,’ Corrie said, ignoring his question.

  Luke blinked and looked out at the horizon.

  Corrie closed her eyes as she thought of the bitter ironies. Of how the prostitutes themselves had chosen TW to support their cause. Of how Luke had interviewed Radcliffe the day Bobby McIver was arrested. Her head came up.

  ‘Who’s Bobby McIver?’ she asked.

  Luke reached out for one of the palms and ran a finger along the spiky leaves. ‘My only friend,’ he answered.

  The heat, the tension, his constantly changing voice was making Corrie’s head spin.

  ‘He’d do anything for me,’ Luke continued. ‘All the other kids tormented and teased him. I was kind to him. He was devoted to me.’

  ‘So devoted that he agreed to take the blame for what you’ve done?’

  ‘He’ll die before he tells them anything. I know he will.’

  ‘But how can you let him …?’

  ‘Does it matter? Does anything matter now?’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been setting things in order,’ he said. ‘I have to make sure that Siobhan is taken care of after I’m gone, you see.’

  ‘Oh God help us,’ Annalise moaned, covering her face with her hands.

  ‘Who is Siobhan?’ Corrie asked.

  Luke blinked, then seemed frozen in a moment of confusion as he looked at Annalise. ‘Why to be sure she’s lying right there,’ he answered.