The Society

by Karen Guyler

  “I don’t remember names, more of an accent guy myself. Daughter’s a budding actress, what I haven’t spent on accent coaches. The man who comes in is a shoe-in for a Royal.”

  Eva’s mind flicked through a list of Every Drop staff. No one spoke like that. “Where does the paper trail go for this? The extra cost?”

  “To the bloke who’s been in the news, wittering on about how your water is saving everyone. Should at least mention us.” Mills complained. “Wetherington, like the toffee, that’s him. Without us adding the compound, you’ve got nothing. It’s not him who comes though.”

  “What does he look like, the man who does?”

  “Nothing stands out about him, brown hair, eyes, average height, weight, bit of a beard going on. Insists on being here when we do the dip, brings the compound with him every time. Bit anal like that.”

  Those four words told her exactly who. Charles, hurting her again. How was he involved in this? What were he and Stuart doing?

  Eva sighed. In the scheme of things, what she wanted didn’t matter. Doing the right thing was more important. “I want you to pause the next shipment until I personally give you the go ahead.”

  Mills looked at his clipboard as though his sheet of paper could tell him what to say. “That’s irregular. Your lot’s been on and on about speeding it all up. We’ve been paying double overtime to get it done to your timetable. And we can’t just store it here, you know.”

  “I understand that, but we can’t proceed with any new installations while people are falling sick, you must see that.”

  “We’re not a charity, space is money.” He took his hard hat off and ran his hand over thinning hair.

  “I don’t want to be heavy-handed here, Mr Mills, but I must insist you pause the shipment, pause all shipments until the sickness passes. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with your pipes, but we must make sure, mustn’t we? I’ll be telling the media you’ve been very helpful on this.”

  He gave a curt nod. “Wetherington won’t like this. Been banging on about time is of the essence.” He did a lousy impression of Stuart.

  Eva shrugged. “He doesn’t have to.”

  47

  Eva followed Professor Louie Steinman from the lecture hall. He walked slowly, less swinging his ancient briefcase with each step, than gripping it tightly so gravity didn’t pull it from his grasp. No strength in those hands with which to strangle her. No resilience in his leg muscles to chase her. She was safe, even if the well-lit campus was only dotted with a few students and people taking shortcuts through the grounds.

  She slipped inside the access-controlled building he entered before the door closed after him. His back to her, he seemed focussed on which lift would carry him up to the next floor. When the doors pinged open, she was already in the stairwell.

  His puffing and sighing led her along a corridor where he rattled a key in a lock and a door squeaked open. Professor Louie Steinman, the name plaque confirmed. They could have moved him to the ground floor.

  A glance inside the office to confirm he was alone and Eva went in after him. The room smelt old, stacks of journals, folders, yellowed papers everywhere.

  “Interesting lecture.” She announced herself.

  He looked up at her from where he was stacking papers into his briefcase. She had to hide her shudder. The man who’d tried to kill her was all too clearly visible beneath the professor’s crumpled features.

  “What’s yours then, your learned prejudice?” his voice was surprisingly strong, his vibrant address hadn’t been just the product of a good sound system. His clipped English accent was very different to the broad London his relative spoke.

  “I’ve never really thought about it.” Though that people shouldn’t kill other people probably topped the whole of her belief systems. “I should imagine I have many.”

  “A little more of an enlightened view than the normal denial,” he peered at her. She held his gaze while he checked out her healing grazes, bruises and dressing on her forehead. “You’re not a current student.”

  “What makes you ask that, because I’m mature?”

  “What makes you ask that, a learned prejudice?”

  “How do you know Charles Buchanan?”

  He snapped his briefcase closed “I’m late, you’ll have to excuse me.”

  She followed him out of the messy office, which he locked and checked twice. “I can walk with you. You had dinner with Charles during the symposium in July, it’s odd that he attends every year, it’s not his area of expertise.”

  “Academic colleagues collaborate all the time, it’s not geographically or subject specific, there are tangential intersections across all fields.”

  “Let me.” Eva held the door to the lift lobby open.

  An ancient ring tone warbled from his inside jacket pocket. He fumbled out a phone and listened. “Come up.” He returned it to his pocket, “another student, no rest for the conscientious.”

  He dawdled back to his office, Eva with him.

  “I’m Charles’ wife. He’s gone missing, I’m trying to find him.”

  “You should have said. Charles and I have been colleagues for a lot of years.” He gestured for her to precede him inside. “He interned with me in the States during his PhD. For an engineer, he has some interesting ideas on the psyche.” He did? Eva was beginning to wonder if he was a twin and had switched places with the one she’d never met. “You’re American?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Your accent is misleading.”

  “Or a learned prejudice.” The professor looked at the doorway and Eva recognised the back of his head. How had she not noticed it earlier when she’d been following him? His thin halo of white hair, he’d been in the last photo she’d seen of the charm school, talking to Charles.

  Footsteps from the corridor stopped outside his office. Eva followed the Professor’s gaze and looked right at the man she never wanted to see again. His face was a mass of angry weals swollen against spider-leg stitches, his expression as stunned as hers probably was.

  “Is this her?” the Professor asked.

  The killer nodded, took a step inside.

  Eva’s insides somersaulted.

  She held up a finger, mimicking Mr Mills’ secretary, as though that would stop him tearing her apart. “You look worse than me, I probably should apologise for all that,” she waved her finger in an oval at his face, “but really, what the hell were you doing? Did you not think we’d be watching you?”

  “You’re The Society?” Professor Steinman asked. Did she imagine a hoped-for querulous tremor to his voice now? “You said you’re Charles Buchanan’s wife.”

  “I can’t be both? Charles is two people, isn’t he.” Her bluffing grabbed at a breadcrumb trail made whole. The Professor’s look confirmed it, him too. And why so worried? Unless. . .trying to reason it out was like trying to knit spaghetti. Instead, Eva took her gamble in both hands, ignoring that she was on a crumbling precipice. “Why do you think I’m so busy looking for Buchanan? You let him get away, your attempt at a gas explosion was pitiful.” Eva sighed. “You see, Professor, I do have a prejudice but it’s hard learned, it’s why I don’t work with amateurs.”

  “Brett, deal with her.”

  Eva took her second gamble of the last minute. “You want to go again?” She looked at the killer. “I’ll repay the favour better this time, I’m prepared today.”

  She could maybe get through the door ahead of him. But he’d be on her before she got halfway down the corridor, and she was completely empty-handed. The papers on the desk were useless as a weapon. The Professor had no handy paperweights or letter openers, not so much as a stained tea mug.

  “Open the window, Dad.” Steinman’s son looked at her from the open doorway. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Eva could feel hysteria bubbling up inside her. He had no idea unless it was all the swear words.

  “I’m sure you don’t but go ahead, we can p
lay guessing games.”

  “We’re only one floor up, me throwing you out there isn’t likely to kill you, but it’s enough for what’s that lovely euphemism? Life-changing injuries, but that’ll only be a problem until I pay you a visit in your hospital bed. I’ll even let you choose - heart attack like Tony Banks? Suffocation like Nancy Seymour? Bomb like Hunter Malone?”

  “Finished?” Eva raised her eyebrows at him. “Like I said, amateurs. Here’s another learned maxim for you, Professor. If you want something done, do it yourself.” Steeling her knee, she whipped around the desk, swept up the office chair. It was surprisingly heavy, but somehow she hefted it high enough that the act of letting it go crashed it through the window.

  Steinman’s son roared and charged after her, but she grabbed his father, spun him in between them. “Stop or he follows.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I’m The Society, you really think I’m here to be nice? We don’t take kindly to what you’ve done.”

  He stopped. “It wasn’t our idea.”

  Eva’s mind raced faster than her heartbeat, trying to put the pieces together so they made sense. “Then why do it?”

  “To obfuscate clearly,” the Professor’s breathing was faster, shallower, but still he struggled against her.

  “Who instructed you?”

  “Brett, stop poncing about and deal with her.”

  Eva pinched his neck hard, shutting him up as he became lightheaded. She shuffled him round to keep him her barrier between her and Steinman Junior, backing right up to the gaping window. The professor’s legs became weaker, he sagged. She released her hold on his neck and reached behind her, pincer-grabbing one of the shards of glass left in the frame. But it had stayed there for a reason. It resisted. The Professor straightened, pushed against her. Eva pinched his neck again, harder.

  “I have your father’s life in my hands, literally. I’m pressing on his carotid artery, just enough to make him lightheaded at the moment. But I’m not a doctor,” her hands were cramping, his weight on her too heavy. She loosened her grip. “I don’t know how much pressure is too much, will cause a stroke, brain damage, how long he can stand for me to do this. How far do you want to push it?”

  Eva felt the wall of the office against her right shoulder. The gaping blackness of the car park below pulled at her. Freezing air flooded the hothouse room. It was a standoff until she grew too tired to hold the professor up, until she misjudged it, until he retaliated or until the son charged her.

  Lose, lose.

  48

  Eva stared at the killer as though her gaze could hold him there. He looked from her to his father, to the desk, still nothing there to use as a weapon, to her. He took a half-step inside the office.

  “I’m warning you.” she growled.

  The blip made her start. Outside, it was a car being unlocked.

  “Help,” she screamed, “Call an ambulance, Professor Steinman’s having a heart attack. He needs help. His son Brett Steinman is in here with me.”

  The man looking up at her from beside his unlocked car was already on the phone, directing his colleague to the first floor.

  “You might think you can disappear,” Eva told Steinman Junior. “But we’re after you. You need to be made a lesson of. Who instructed you?”

  She squeezed harder at the Professor’s neck. He sagged against her and his legs gave way.

  “Who instructed you?” She glared at Steinman Junior but he stayed silent, ready to pounce, just looking for his chance.

  She lost her battle holding the Professor vertical and she landed on the floor with him. She tensed against another onslaught from his son but he’d vanished.

  The Professor looked harmless, an old man collapsed. ‘Deal with her.’ She’d done what she had to.

  She had never been so glad to see anyone as she was the guy who charged into the office on his phone summoning campus security and first aiders.

  The shaking hit her as the man who’d made the 999 call rounded the office door and a security guard made the room too crowded.

  Eva manoeuvred her way out even as the siren of incoming help tore in through the broken window. She tucked her hair in the neck of her fleece, kept her head down as she limped away from the campus. Her heart hammered at every bush and parked car, every corner and doorway, every likely place for ambush until she found a cab. The cabbie who took her back to St George’s Grove definitely wasn’t Steinman but still Eva’s heart thundered a warning at her the whole journey that she wasn’t safe.

  Her adrenaline-fuelled strength left her as she stumbled out of the airlock and slumped onto the bottom step of the stairs, not entirely sure she shouldn’t be running for the ladies.

  “Eva, come on up.” Gordon’s voice filled the corridor. They still worked long hours there.

  He buzzed her into his office and pushed a whisky across his desk before she sat down. “You look like you need it.” He let her sip at it. “Tell.”

  It fell out of her, a dam bursting, everything that had happened since she’d met Eric, the things she’d done that would haunt her. She left out her deal with CJ, embarrassed that she’d agreed to something that could burn her.

  “That’s quite something. So next step, you need to contact The Society to tell them what you’ve found?” Gordon asked.

  Eva opened her mouth, closed it again. She didn’t know how, hadn’t thought to ask CJ.

  “Let me get someone on it. We’ve been looking at this group for a while, you appear to have an in, it’ll help us get past their firewall at least.”

  “But it’s not just them after Charles, someone else instructed Steinman, told them to pretend to be The Society.”

  “I’ll get a team after him, we’ll get eyes on his life, question the father. Leave it to us, Eva. You’ve done enough.”

  The whisky was unknotting her, soothing her. “I just need to know they’ve cancelled the contract on Charles, he’s all Lily has to keep her safe right now.”

  “Addison Clarke’s pilot has confirmed Charles paid a sweetener to change their flight plan from Chennai to Marrakech, two passengers, one man, one child. Extra to not report the change until he arrived back in the UK.”

  “Marrakech? But Charles hates the heat.”

  In a heart-breaking second, she realised her terrible new truth. Morocco was what, four, six hours away. He hadn’t contacted her, no email, no questions about how to reach her, call for her to join them.

  A sharp panic punched Eva in the stomach. How could she possibly find them if he didn’t want her to?

  49

  Hypnotic in its exotic rhythm, the early morning call to prayer broke into Charles’ on off dozing. Like an aural flame, it touched the nearest mosques, and the azans rebounded around the city in a compelling round robin.

  Leave? Stay? His steps to Lily continued the battle that had raged in him all night. The semantics, the likelihoods, the possibilities. His logic had deserted him, leaving his head a tormented, messy jumble of shattered dreams.

  Still asleep, her breathing was easy and calm. Where should they go? The chess piece, rather the information inside it, was it the shield, the protection he needed it to be? Was his threat enough? Jed’s office would protect him regardless of what he did. Charles needed his information to do the same for him.

  It should never have come to this. After everything Charles had risked for him, Jed should have trusted him, all of them who’d put him where he was. Jed the Judas paying Charles his pieces of silver carefully packed in the leather holdall, the culmination of years of expensive, no questions asked, here want another grant, research. And now he might not live to see his brilliance pay off?

  He found himself in the courtyard, slumped onto the tiled edge of the pool. He had asked for the wrong payment. For all those years, he’d got it completely backwards. Would it have mattered if he’d sacrificed the acknowledgement of his academic prowess? If the world believed he was just another scientist? His empty future
told him no.

  Nancy, with her gone, all that he’d imagined had been snatched away, lost forever, no chance to turn the clock back and put things right as he’d planned. No happy ever after. Charles sobbed for it all.

  When he fell quiet, he stayed there, sitting on the cold tiled floor, against the raised side of the pool, letting the gentle shush of the circulating water soothe.

  There he was off-grid, as safe as possible, especially while Jed believed him to be in London. His gaze strayed to the closed door. Terry had probably thought that. Ironic really, his distrust of the modern world and all its tracking—no online poker for him—hadn’t killed him. He must have bought his demise instead with the turn of the wrong card, mahjong tile, the faltering stride of a horse.

  Tendrils of something rotten reached for him, Terry’s reminder that he was still there. Charles needed to get rid of the body. The body, they’d hardly been brothers to each other for a long time, but it still felt wrong calling him that.

  He stumbled to the kitchen and drank two glasses of water in quick succession to relieve his cried-out headache. He tipped away the half of the third glass he couldn’t face. The clear stream splashed into the sink, droplets bouncing up from the hard surface onto his skin. His index finger circled the drops. Water, the elixir of life, unless you were able to manipulate molecules, unless you were a god.

  Would he? He could, he should. Round and round, his finger burst the fragile shapes on his hand, pressed hard against his bones.

  The idea was wild. But perfect. And why else would he have found his way there at this time? Charles would take a last lesson from Terry – if Air Force One was on its way to Africa or Europe, anywhere on this hemisphere that was reasonable for Maxwell and Sara Peyton to travel to, that was Charles’ winning coin toss. If it was going elsewhere, so be it. His money train would go far in Marrakech, and it would only help Lily to learn Arabic. It didn’t even need to be a zero-sum game, revenge not lost, only postponed.