Patrick leant forward and kissed Rachel. He was sure his own version of the ‘kiss of life’ would bring the colour back to her cheeks. But although Rachel responded in kind, neither her heart nor her mind was fully engaged in pleasing Patrick. She had plans to make and wheels to put in motion if Clarence Dickens was to leave them and their businesses in peace.
Then there was Henri and Helen’s future to consider… everyone had said that he’d had such a lucky escape after being knocked down. Whereas Rachel had thought it just bad luck… the next time she knew she’d have to be more meticulous in her planning if she was ever going to rid herself of the Gallic albatross that hung like a lead weight around her future life with Patrick.
Maybe, she should have taken more notice of her mother, who had always from a young age, tried to drum into her the old adage that if you wanted a job doing well, then you should always do it yourself.
Rachel’s latest murderous plan though could not have been simpler. Get Dickens and his entourage to dine privately at the restaurant, lace their food with strychnine, watch them die and then dispose of their bodies so that not a single trace of any of them ever existed.
The execution… for that was what Rachel had in mind… of the plan though was fraught with difficulties and potential pitfalls… all of which revolved around how they would dispose of the bodies without anyone finding out what had happened to the man or his associates. But the ace up their sleeve… the one overriding fact that would ensure their success, was the knowledge that no one, not even his mother, would go crying to the police about Clarence Dickens’s disappearance.
“They’re here!” Patrick announced breathlessly as he rushed into the kitchen from the back alleyway.
He’d suggested to Dickens’s driver that he park the large black Range Rover at the rear of the restaurant, so as not to draw attention to his boss’s arrival.
“The less people that know about this the better… I’m sure you’ll agree that Mr Dickens’s anonymity is of paramount importance.” Of course the driver had agreed, mainly because he was unsure what the words anonymity and paramount meant, but he was used to his boss entering and leaving premises by the rear doors, so he took the safest option and merely concurred with Patrick’s suggestion.
“They’re slightly early but that’s not a problem. Claude and Philippe finished all the food and went ten minutes ago. I locked the door behind them, pulled the blinds down and stuck the notice in the window about being closed for the foreseeable future due to Henri’s accident.” Rachel took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly to clear her head.
“And you’re sure we should do this, are you?” Patrick asked nervously, as the first bead of sweat ran down his temple.
“It’s too late now for second thoughts or doubts… I’ve already laced every bit of food with the strychnine you bought from your dubious pharmacist…” Rachel laboured the point and the fact that Patrick had been the sole supplier of the fatal ingredient. “… and for Christ’s sakes Patrick, pull yourself together. Remember we’re supposed to be trying to sell the fat bastard the restaurant, not kill him.” The last two words tumbled from her lips, just as the imposing figure of Clarence Dickens walked in through the rear door of the kitchen.
“Kill who?” He asked in a way that only a homicidal maniac could.
“My husband, Mr Dickens.” Rachel answered confidently with a smile. “I was just saying to Patrick I could kill the selfish bastard… here we are trying to impress you to invest in our business and he goes and gets himself run over!” Clarence Dickens looked serious for another minute before the jowls in his face creased wide and he burst out into a fit of laughter.
“Selfish bastard indeed Mrs…”
“Rachel, please call me Rachel, Mr Dickens.”
“And its Clarence… I only make those I want to scare or who owe me money call me Mr Dickens.” He turned with surprising agility for someone of his size and faced Patrick. “Isn’t that so Patrick?”
“It is Mr Dickens… but I’m ever hopeful that I’ll be able to change that situation someday very soon.” Patrick wiped the sweat from his forehead and replied in such a servile way that made even Rachel squirm.
“What’s wrong? You know I hate having nervous people around me… it puts me right off my food and gives me chronic indigestion.”
“Nervous? Not likely. There was a problem at the hotel, which delayed me a little, and I’ve only just this moment jumped out of the shower.” Patrick hoped that his quickly crafted lie would allay Dickens’s apprehension.
“…And I hate problems even more, especially when they involved my money and my property.”
Rachel had laid two tables for the special evening. One for Dickens and the other for his entourage of driver and two bodyguards. The only person they weren’t expecting was the blonde, long-legged bimbo that pushed her way into the kitchen ahead of the other three men.
“Oh Rachel… may I introduce Miss Adele Dubois. Adele this is Rachel, our gorgeous host for the evening. I trust Rachel my unannounced guest will cause you no trouble.”
“None at all Mr Dick… sorry Clarence.” Patrick winced at the oversight. He wasn’t convinced that Rachel hadn’t called the man Dick on purpose but she’d done it with such a gracious smile and aplomb that whatever the reason, it had been instantly overlooked. Others he remembered, hadn’t been so lucky and some of them had been beaten to death for saying much less whilst never intending to cause any offence to the big man.
“Right if you would all like to come through to the restaurant.” Rachel showed the way, leaving Patrick to bring up the rear. “I’ve arranged two tables Clarence… one for yourself and Miss Dubois, and the other for your three associates.” Rachel escorted the party through to where the champagne was waiting.
“My associates, as you like to call them Rachel, won’t be eating… or drinking. I don’t pay my staff to enjoy themselves, they only have one function and that is my protection. So if you don’t mind, they’ll wait in the kitchen with you until we’re finished.”
The news took Rachel by total surprise… the plan wouldn’t be a plan if it was only half completed. They all had to die or none of them.
“I fully understand your desire for privacy Clarence, especially with someone as beautiful as Miss Dubois for company… but I think it would be a shame not to fully test the menu and engage the views of as many different palates as possible. Obviously, they won’t all be as sophisticated or as well developed as yours… nevertheless they might be a more faithful representation of the views of … how can I put this? … ”
“Ah Rachel, where were you when I was younger?” Clarence said with a sigh that did little to appease Miss Dubois’s mounting pique. “Of course you’re right… but they can sit in the kitchen and eat… mind you there’s to be no alcohol.”
“No alcohol…understood. Right, well the good news is that means there is more for you and Miss Dubois.”
The first sign that the poison was starting to take effect manifested just after the appetizers and drinks and culminated in a bout of spasmodic fits, right about the time that they’d finished their main course.
In the kitchen, Rachel had agreed to keep watch, as the three burly men collapsed onto the tiled floor… their bodies contorted in the tortuous pain of imminent death. Whilst in the restaurant Patrick had decided that it would be only fitting if he was to watch over the demise of Clarence and his paid escort for the night.
Once the unfortunate diners had been sent into the dark, nether world of deadly repose, Rachel had calmly gone round each one, removed whatever weaponry they had brought along to ensure the safety of Mr Dickens and then promptly finished each one off in turn, with an overdose of the poison, which she’d administered neat and directly into their mouths.
Patrick had taken more pleasure than he thought might be possible in prising open Dickens’s mouth to pour the deadly assassin onto his tongue. Like his granny used to do when he was a boy, he held the man’s bu
lbous nose tight shut and waited as Clarence’s body struggled to retain its slender grip on life.
“Yes, you fat bastard… you’ve been set up.” Patrick taunted the dying man. “But rest assured, I’ll take good care of your businesses.” In one final spasm of defiance, as he started his own danse macabre, Dickens’s hand shot out and grabbed Patrick’s throat and as the poison took its final toll on the large man, his fingers went into a tight spasm around the soft tissue of Patrick’s larynx.
With his own tenuous grasp on life fading fast, relieve came in the guise of Henri’s favourite wooden rolling pin, which Rachel smashed into Dickens’s face with all the force she could muster. In spite of his huge size, Clarence Dickens’s body jumped under the weight of the blow and the muscles in his hand relaxed their deathly grip on Patrick’s windpipe.
“When you’ve quite finished messing about with him Patrick, we ought to get the place cleared up.” Rachel said tersely with a coldness that made Clarence Dickens seem like Mother Teresa.
“I almost feel sorry for this poor cow… she probably thought she’d hit the mother-load getting Dickens in the sack and now look at her.” Rachel added without showing an ounce of emotion, as she stared down at the blonde girl whose eyes had almost popped free from their sockets.
“You’re all heart Rachel… do you know that… all fucking heart.” Patrick rubbed his throat and felt the bruising around his Adam’s apple begin to tighten and throb.
“Good job one of us was alert otherwise, you might have been down there with Dickens and then I’d have been left high and dry.” Patrick watched with a renewed wariness as Rachel searched each of the corpses in turn, removing any items of value but especially Dickens’s solid gold Rolex watch. Strangely he couldn’t help but wonder what she would have done if he had been killed, what exactly did she mean by ‘high and dry’?
“Now let’s get this lot into the Range Rover and get them out to farm. I trust there were no problems with the helicopter?”
“None… everything is ready. Everyone at the hotel thinks I’ve taken the crate up to Plymouth for a service.”
“Good, and what about Helen? What did you tell her?” Rachel asked with as little concern as she could muster.
“Since Henri arrived, I not sure she’d noticed if I never went back.” Patrick replied with more than a hint of jealousy. “Anyway, I spun her the same yarn about the helicopter and told her I’d be back tomorrow. What about Henri?”
“He’ll be too busy drooling over Helen to worry about anything else and anyway after his little accident he’s hardly in a position to come looking for me.”
It had been a struggle to lift Dickens and his three associates into the rear of the Range Rover. Their dead weight had taken both of them by surprise and had prompted Rachel to callously suggest that it might be easier to simply cut the corpses up and move them in pieces rather than as one huge lump. Whether it had been the thought of such primordial butchery or the possibility of being swamped in damning amounts of gore and blood or the fact that Rachel could have suggested it in the first place… whatever the reason, Patrick had summoned every last ounce of his strength and with the help of two metal sheets that had acted as a makeshift ramp, he’d manipulated, pulled and finally pushed the bodies into the back of Dickens’s Range Rover.
“Now do you think you can manage to dump the car as planned?” Rachel asked trying her hardest to limit her sarcasm to the minimum amount required. “I’ll clear up here and ensure that nothing is left out of place for when Claude and Philippe arrive tomorrow… it’ll be best if I tell them that my mystery guests never turned up and I went to bed early… the rest will be up to you.”
The old Tregowan Estate, together with its deserted farm and two hundred fifty acres of prime pasture and twenty-five acres of mixed deciduous woodland had been purchased by Patrick anonymously and all traces of the deal had been hidden from Clarence Dickens’s book keeper by an expertly crafted piece of creative accounting. Whilst the farmhouse and surrounding buildings had been left to fall into a further state of rack and ruin, the estate’s lands had been leased out to an adjacent farm with the rent being deposited each month into an offshore account in the name of Mr F. Gerald. The only exception had been the two acre plot, which lay a few kilometres, to the south of the old farmhouse and which was where Patrick had built their new mansion.
The storage container, which had been constructed to Rachel’s precise instructions and dimensions, had been delivered to the farm the previous week. The manager of the fabrication company had thought it odd when he’d spoken to Rachel that she should want a custom designed container and especially one that had holes cut into its floor but had resisted the temptation to ask any questions when she’d offered to pay the whole amount upfront, in cash and without the need for an invoice.
Two hours after Clarence Dickens’s face had been finally rearranged by Rachel’s violent blow, the Range Rover, fully loaded with its precious cargo, was driven by Patrick into the deserted farmyard and straight inside the waiting, steel mausoleum.
With the headlights switched off and the tomb plunged into an eerie blackness, Patrick took a moment to recover his senses and ready himself for the next phase of Rachel’s macabre plan.
Taking a deep breath to purge all the negative thoughts from his head, his body unwittingly got more than it had bargained for… It might have only been a couple of hours, but there was already the stench of death in the air, which in the close confines of the warm vehicle wafted over his nasal membranes, like a high tide over the beach.
Revolted by what they’d done and what had to be done, he searched in vain for an alternative but realised almost immediately there was none… the only way out was to crawl over their victims and stare into their condemning eyes. Like a diver about to swim underwater, he held his jacket sleeve to his nose and took a deep breath then launched himself over the seat and made his bid for freedom. Suddenly a more disabling feeling of dread swept over him, as his mind played the trick of fooling him into think that the steel doors of the container were going to be shut and locked before he could escape. His fate was preordained… like the victim in some Edgar Allan Poe novel, he would be entombed with the dead and buried alive.
The ensuing mad scramble across bodies and out through the Range Rover’s tailgate ended only when Patrick fell ungainly from the rear of the car onto the dirt and mud of the farmyard’s cobblestones. The cold night air wafted over his face and revived his flagging spirits and after taking a moment to compose himself and gain a reassurance that he was in fact not going mad, he bolted and locked the pair of heavy steel doors. With one final check of his pockets and his person and sure that every last detail of Clarence Dickens’s visit was securely locked inside his steel coffin, Patrick walked calmly over to the helicopter and started its powerful engine.
The rest of Rachel’s plan had been as fiendishly straightforward as the initial killings. Once filled with its moribund cargo, the container was to be slung underneath the helicopter, flown out across the Atlantic and then deposited unceremoniously into the vast ocean.
Rachel had left Patrick to find exactly the right location for the burial at sea. Ideally, somewhere in the vast depths of the mid Atlantic would have been the preferred choice, but time and the range of the helicopter had limited Patrick’s options. What they needed was an appropriately deep and isolated trench, well within the range of the helicopter’s fuel capacity, where the depth made hobby diving an impossibility and commercial fishing was banned under international law…
“… And we really could do without some Spanish trawler thinking that they’d hit the mother of all Herring shoals, only to find that they’d actually dragged Clarence Dickens back to the surface.” Rachel had told Patrick in no uncertain terms when she’d explained his part in the grand scheme.
The task, which at first had seemed quite daunting, had in fact been surprisingly straightforward to achieve, as the waters were extremely well charted and th
e European Fishing Regulations gave protected status to any number of special areas around the coast, and what the law didn’t protect, God had made impossible to reach by anything other than a deep water submersible. All Patrick had to do was select the right spot and program the location into his on board satellite navigation system… the rest was simply a matter of flying.
Once he’d committed the souls of the victims to their eternal watery grave, Patrick merely flew back to the hotel and stayed there for the night, as if nothing untoward had happened. As far as the staff were concerned, he’d just got back prematurely from Plymouth…. as for anyone else who might have an interest in Clarence Dickens’s whereabouts, the success of Rachel’s plan revolved around the madman’s sense of survival.
Their fervent hope was that Dickens didn’t trust anyone sufficiently to discuss his possible purchase of the restaurant or respect them enough to leave details of his movements. Business, he’d once told Patrick worked best on a need to know basis… and usually he was the only person who needed to know his business but that still hadn’t stopped Patrick from getting the jitters the morning after the fatal gastronomic degustation.
“Just stick to the plan Patrick and we’ll be fine. If anyone calls you and asks about Dickens… remember the script and don’t deviate… then call me.”
“But what if anyone comes to the hotel or the restaurant asking about him?”
“They won’t, trust me but if they do… we’ll handle it.” She’d lovingly stroked his face as she tried to reassure him but couldn’t get the nagging doubt out of her head that maybe she was putting too much faith in the wrong man. From nowhere she suddenly had the weird thought that after everything that had happened to her, Tom would have had more backbone than Patrick and certainly more guts to play for such high stakes.
Stranger at the Wedding Page 29