Deadly Pretty Strangers: US Edition

by Max Thorn

  “Yes. But I’m going to call them myself and give a statement, if anyone’s interested.”

  “Of course.” At her computer she typed a prescription. Handing me the form from the printer she said, “Painkillers for the knife wound for today and tomorrow. Same as before, keep it dry for a day. Keep it clean too. If the pain gets worse or it starts to look infected, come back right away. Otherwise drop by in five days and we’ll take those stitches out. I’ll call you if the swabs have anything bizarre on them.”

  Leaving the clinic, I called DS Cattermole on my cell phone. I was going to have to tell him that I’d been involving myself in his investigation. I knew that the police were going to be less than delighted with my contribution. But there was no avoiding it now. It was time to face the music and get a little help.

  SIXTEEN

  “I was shot at yesterday and this morning someone stabbed me and may have tried to poison me.”

  “And still you live?”

  I was a little taken aback by Cattermole’s attitude. Maybe he’d become convinced I was guilty of something. Or perhaps he just thought everyone was guilty of something.

  “I think it’s connected with Aleksy Naumowicz.”

  A pause. And then, “You’d better come in and tell us what you’ve been doing to make yourself so unpopular. Do you know where we are on Victoria Embankment?”

  “New Scotland Yard?”

  “Yes. I’m free at one o’clock this afternoon.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  * * *

  New Scotland Yard had recently moved from its decades old home in Victoria, back to its earlier 1960s location on the Victoria Embankment in Westminster, overlooking the river Thames. It also happened to be at the geographical center of power, between the Ministry of Defence headquarters and the Parliamentary offices. I’d thought the police headquarters was just an administrative center, but it turned out they had detectives and investigative work going on there too.

  Four uniformed officers stopped me outside the entrance to the building’s sleek, curved-glass reception lobby. They radioed a message, received confirmation of my appointment and waved me through the entrance where Cattermole had arrived.

  I gave him the knife in a plastic bag.

  He guided me monosyllabically through the metal detector arch and then through the sliding gates to the glass-fronted elevators. We ascended through the elegant open plan offices and got out on a floor with a panoramic view of the Thames and the opposite embankment.

  Turning away from the view, Cattermole led me through a corridor to an austere square room, the air acrid with new plaster and paint. Short, wide windows at the top of one wall let in natural light. A plain table with four chairs was positioned at the corner of the room, opposite a camera mounted at ceiling height.

  Cattermole settled heavily into the chair opposite the corner. I sat facing the camera. He asked me what had been going on. Then he told me he was going to record the statement rather than write it all down, because it was quicker and easier for everyone. He pressed a button on a wall-mounted panel and started recording.

  “Mrs Naumowicz asked me to get involved. She wanted me to add some impetus to the investigation into her son’s death. I told her that the police would find her son’s killer and it wasn’t my line of work. She insisted I do something, so I went to the zoo to see the spider.”

  “Why did you think that would help Mrs Naumowicz?”

  “The spider was the only unusual thing that I saw with her son’s dead body. I didn’t have any clear idea about what I could achieve. So I went to look at the only piece of accessible evidence that I knew of.”

  “Why did you think the spider would be at the zoo?”

  “I couldn’t imagine what else you might do with it.”

  Cattermole seemed to think about this for several seconds but decided not to explore it. “Then what?”

  I told him how I’d found the box that had held the spider in Patryk’s apartment. He asked me for the date and time of my visit. I gave Cattermole the details and then told him about the box catalogue number, the manufacturer, the spider supplier and how HomEvo was a client of both. I reminded him about our conversation before I went to HomEvo.

  He said he didn’t remember it.

  I told him about Laura Wainwright, her call about the courier and her email and then my conversation with her a week later when she was at the beachside bar in the Caribbean. I described my lack of progress with Laura’s colleagues and how I’d decided to visit one of the company founders.

  His face had become hot and red. “What made you go to see the professor?”

  “Because it looked as though no one else would talk to me at HomEvo.”

  I imagined that what he really wanted to say was; why didn’t you tell us about any of this? And I guessed that he didn’t ask, because I’d repeat for the recording the fact that he wasn’t interested in my ideas about the spider and box before.

  “Is this the battlefield narcotics professor, Ray Pendle?”

  “Yes. You know him?”

  “I know of him. What did you talk about?”

  “I asked him if he knew why his old company would send a lethal spider to an all-night café in central London in the middle of the night.”

  “And?”

  “He had no idea. He retired twenty years ago.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He talked to me about muscle systems and while he was talking I found two devices hidden in my coat and rucksack. I think they might have been listening or tracking devices.”

  He thought for a few moments before asking, “Where are these devices now?”

  “I left them in the professor’s garden.”

  “Address?”

  “It’s the flying saucer building on the coast road north out of Whitby. I don’t remember the postal address.”

  “Continue.”

  I told him about the journalist who’d been killed and how the professor thought it might be wise for me to leave my car there. And then I explained how the bugs and Laura’s pay-off made me think the professor might be right. I described the chase across the moors.

  Cattermole asked lots of questions about times, descriptions, places, names and the location of the bullet-smashed contents of my rucksack.

  We took a break and he asked me about the attack that morning. We recorded a statement to cover that event. We’d just finished when the door opened partway.

  Detective Chief Inspector Larry Pink put his graying head round. I recognized his hangdog look from the online video appeals for witnesses soon after Aleksy’s death.

  “Everything alright?” he asked.

  Cattermole switched the camera off and twisted round to address his boss. “Er…a couple of things guv.” He turned back to me saying, “Wait here.”

  They left the room. I guessed that Cattermole was giving his boss an update and trying to find some way of explaining how the box that had contained the spider had escaped from the chain of evidence. Minutes later they returned briskly. Cattermole leaned against the wall, under the camera.

  Tall and rangy, Pink stood over me, leaning heavily on the table. “You know what we do here Mr Fox?” he asked, glancing irritably at his watch.

  “Investigate serious crimes.”

  “We solve serious crimes and bring criminals to justice. One hundred and twenty murders annually in this great city of ours. Do you know how many we solve?”

  “No.”

  “Virtually all of them. Some sooner than others. Do you know what we don’t like, when we’re trying to take dangerous criminals off the streets?”

  “People interfering?”

  “People who’ve watched too much television, fancying themselves as amateur detectives. People who don’t know what they’re doing, poking their faces into delicate situations and disrupting our investigations. People like you.”

  “I’m sorry. I just thought I’d look at something that you didn’t seem
to be pursuing.”

  Cattermole shifted uneasily against the wall.

  Pink looked around at him, and then grim-faced turned to me. “So what do you think’s happened at Hom…whatever it’s called, now that you’ve been calling everyone there asking them about a missing spider?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Records deleted perhaps? Paperwork destroyed? People silenced, paid off, sent away? Evidence removed and destroyed?”

  “But you weren’t even looking there.”

  “Perhaps we weren’t. But if we wanted to go there later, the situation has been thoroughly compromised because of you. Hasn’t it?”

  I could feel a hot, guilty, glow and imagined that my face had become redder than Cattermole’s.

  “When we go to investigate, we go prepared. We get warrants. We search premises properly. We take experts with us. We collect records. We interview people. We use dozens of years of experience and proven, systematic methods to identify evidence, preserve it, find motives, determine opportunity and bring people to court. What do you do? Tell them whatever they want to know and then give them a nice long interval for contemplation and cover up before we arrive.”

  “Look, I’ve had a gang of people trying to kill me repeatedly for two days. Do you really think I need you to tell me that I made a mistake?”

  He was silent while he considered this and then he said with a slightly milder tone, “Tell me where this missing box is now.”

  “It’s at my apartment.”

  Cattermole took his weight off the wall and stood up straight. “Sorry guv. Just to clarify. There was a bit of confusion there. The people from the zoo were supposed to bring their own container. We didn’t realize that they’d picked up the box too.” His voice tailed off ruefully.

  Pink jabbed a finger at me while looking at Cattermole, “Go round to his place now and get the box. Take a couple of uniforms with you. I’ll arrange a specialist to meet you at the other address to collect the syringe needle and the cash with the poison on it or whatever it is.”

  “What about the briefing later guv? For the business last night.”

  “You’re off that now. I want you to sort out this other mess. Get in touch with North Yorks and find out if anything’s happened with this armed gang.” Cattermole flushed again.

  Pink turned to me. “Alright Mister Fox, you probably don’t need me to say this but I’m going to tell you anyway. Don’t involve yourself any further in this business. Leave it to the professionals before you get killed and end up adding to our workload. This man,” he gestured a thumb at Cattermole, “has got enough on his plate. He doesn’t need your case adding to his unpaid overtime.”

  We left the building through a rear entrance and got into a plain, dark-gray sedan, driven by a uniformed officer. A second officer sat in the front passenger seat. Cattermole and I sat in the rear in sullen silence. Driving rapidly through the lunchtime traffic, we were at my apartment in five minutes.

  In single file we trooped up the four flights of stairs to my door. I stopped at the entrance, key in hand. I didn’t need it.

  The gloss-white door showed fresh unpainted wood in a vertical split from top to bottom, through the two door locks. The door was open less than an inch, moving gently back and forth on the through-draft.

  Cattermole, standing beside me, pushed the door open wide with the corner of his notebook. He turned to the uniformed officers and told them to wait there on the landing.

  I stepped gingerly inside, the police detective behind me.

  In the living room the bookcases had been torn from the walls. Books were scattered everywhere along with stuffing from the sofa and chairs. All of the upholstery had been ripped open. Fragments of pottery and glass were underfoot wherever I stepped. Papers and clothes from every flat surface were now on the floor. My music amplifier, radio and CD player were all smashed open. Dining chair legs had been snapped off and used as clubs to shatter lights and mirrors. The ceiling main light had been pulled out and parts of the ceiling pulled down, hanging in triangular sheets at face height. Motes of wood mold, plaster and household dust hung mustily in the late afternoon sunlight.

  Cattermole surveyed the scene from the middle of the room, glass and plaster crunching under his heavy leather brogues. “This is messier than usual, right?”

  I didn’t answer him. I could only feel anger at the spitefulness in the destruction around me.

  He followed me from room to room. “I don’t suppose by some miracle the box is still here?”

  I went through to my office room. Same mess. Carpet torn from the floor and heaped up at the corner. No box. I’d left it in plain view on my desk. I glanced at the floor and felt a slight sense of relief when I saw that they’d missed the screwed down plank over my underfloor hiding place. I couldn’t check the contents of the hidden box with Cattermole there, but from above it looked undisturbed.

  Everywhere else it was bad news. My computer was still there, unbroken. I switched it on. Last activity showed the entire contents of the hard drive had been copied onto removable media.

  “I wouldn’t use that anymore if I were you. Probably has spyware on it. Anything you want to tell me about? Did you keep a diary of your little adventure on here?”

  “No. Just work. They’ll soon get bored reading my company research.”

  When we returned to the front door, one of the uniformed officers showed me a number on his phone. “This firm will fit a temporary door for you.”

  I called the security firm he recommended.

  Cattermole instructed one of the officers to wait while a forensics team arrived. “See what the neighbors heard while you’re waiting.”

  Three of us left for Christmas’s apartment.

  At Christmas’s front door Cattermole was politeness personified. “Good afternoon Miss Pendle. Mister Fox tells me that he’s been staying with you and that you defended him from a knife attack this morning.”

  “Correct on both counts. Please come in.” She squeezed my hand murmuring, “Make a drink for yourself and the officers.”

  Cattermole took a statement from Christmas in her study.

  The uniformed officer stayed with me making small talk while I made coffee for the four of us. No sugar in Cattermole’s.

  I heard Christmas saying that she’d already delivered half the banknotes to a laboratory for analysis, warning them that it might be VX. She made a copy of the lab’s printed work order using her phone and gave the original to Cattermole.

  The front door buzzer sounded from the street. Two men in white protective overalls came up and collected the plastic box with the needle and remaining banknotes. They spoke briefly with Cattermole and left.

  After removing my cash discreetly, along with my clean clothes, I gave my bullet-holed rucksack and its smashed electronic contents to the detective.

  Soon after, the policemen drove me back to my apartment where a forensics team was busy covering surfaces with fingerprint powder and taking pictures of shoe prints on the wooden and tiled floors. I gave them a list of what I thought was missing, which included all of my watches and cufflinks, a camera and the spider box.

  I surveyed the devastation while the temporary front door was being installed. My bed mattress was ripped open. Most of the glassware and crockery in the kitchen was smashed. The washing machine was on its front, broken open at the back and the machine’s frame bent out of shape. Strangely, the burglars had turned off the water and disconnected the hose in order to get the appliance away from the wall. I guessed that they didn’t want the neighbors below to come upstairs and disturb their smash and search by complaining about water running into their apartment.

  Eventually the investigators left. I checked the hiding place under the floorboards. The police case notes that had indirectly come via Dave Slaughter, plus my emergency cash and other essentials were still there. I screwed the plank down again.

  There was a knock at the plain sheet of unpainted low-grade
timber serving as my front door.

  It was Christmas. “Oh my!” She surveyed the scene of devastation and hugged me.

  I winced from the stab wound.

  She hugged me again more tenderly. “I think you should stay at mine.”

  I kissed her cheek in thanks. I couldn’t face the clear-up just yet. Her kindness made the anger dissipate.

  “And good news,” she beamed, “I’ve got you a meeting with Ariadne for tomorrow.”

  Larry Pink’s words were fresh in my mind. But I decided that a talk with Ariadne didn’t have to be about the murder.

  * * *

  We ate dinner and drank wine in Christmas’s apartment.

  I asked, “Are you putting me on the sofa tonight?”

  “I think we’re past that now. And besides, if you’re going to be assassinated, you might as well spend your last nights on Earth with a beautiful heiress. Your words, not mine.” She kissed me.

  Food, alcohol and the warmth of her affection, made things seem not so bad at all.

  Later, while Christmas was in the bathroom, I thought about the day’s events. Larry Pink’s warning to leave it to the professionals before you get killed bothered me. It seemed possible that this near-mythical woman, part spider, part evolutionary breakthrough, was the key to this mystery. And she was HomEvo’s most precious asset, perhaps of global historical significance. A turning point for humanity. I didn’t want to pass up the chance to meet her. But I knew I was ignoring the chief inspector’s instruction.

  And I thought that perhaps I should’ve told the police about Raymond Pendle’s genetic experiments. The professor had said, do you want the burden of knowing it? Perhaps he’d known that I’d be in this situation. He’d told me to wait for him to die before revealing anything. I would’ve been breaking his confidence if I’d spoken to the police about it. And the distress for him that would inevitably come from any new investigation would also hurt Christmas. Apart from the affection I felt for her, I owed her my life twice over. She’d stopped the knife and she’d also stopped me from handling what was probably a lethal poison that kills on contact.