Christmas held the yellow-capped auto-injector in her hand. “We only have one,” she explained in a quavering voice. “I’ve left the spare in the car. I have a chance, if I can get help here quickly. I’m going to inject you.” She took the end-cap off laboriously, her hands shaking.
I lifted my arm. “I do it,” I grunted.
She said, “No!” and tried to stop me but her movement was too slow, her arms tired and quivering.
I grasped the injector and pushed it hard against her thigh, holding it there while my arm trembled and my remaining strength drained out over ten crucial seconds.
“Babies,” I slurred. A short breath, “Gives them a chance.”
They would not know me, but they’d be a part of me. Christmas and me. Something of me would be with her always. My eyes were heavy and I looked around for the last time. I looked at Christmas’s face, still bruised but beautiful, as she lay slumped against the sofa, her head resting against the seat cushion. Her image was the last thing I would see.
I stopped breathing, my diaphragm paralyzed by the venom. My final thoughts would be of the person I loved more than anything. More in fact than my own life. It was comforting. The way it should be for any dying person. Even while I watched, a little color came back to her face.
But while I said goodbye in my mind, several gaudy spots of light in my peripheral vision, to the right of Christmas’s face, were spoiling this perfect portrait. Stuck between the cushion and the sofa armrest, the brightly colored end-caps of three auto-injectors, yellow, red and green, glowed in my darkening sight. They’d slipped out of my pocket and fallen into the gap when I’d sat there briefly the day before.
I stared at the colored dots as my vision blurred. I had no breath to make words. A small eight-year-old voice said, Don’t give up Zavvy.
I murmured quietly with a mouthful of air, “Cushion. Yellow.” As blackness dragged me down, I wished I’d told her, “I love you,” and not just because it was easier to say.
FORTY-ONE
I could see brightness, but I didn’t bother opening my eyes. They ached fiercely and it seemed easier to keep them closed.
I just asked whoever was nearby, “Is Christmas alright?” The words came out quietly.
I heard the rustle of clothing and three short footsteps, “I’m here.” It was Christmas’s voice.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
I could feel her cheek against mine. I opened my eyes. The ceiling and her hair were a blur. “Am I alright?”
She said softly, “You’re alive my darling.”
Her hand held mine tenderly and she brushed my cheek with her other hand.
I looked around, blinking until I could focus properly. I was lying in a hospital bed in a large bright room. I looked at Christmas’s glowing face.
She kissed me.
I squeezed her hand. “Am I going to live?”
She said quietly, “If you don’t get total organ failure you’ll live. The second issue might be serum sickness. They put a lot of anti-venom in you. How do you feel?”
“My legs feel like they’re set in concrete.” I tried to sit up. “I’ve got no energy.”
And at that moment, the Babyhead dream came back to me in a rush. Paralysis, the quicksand, the screen with the graph, the whale, and Babyhead’s insistence that I find Sophie Miller’s accomplice. You’re the one most likely to end up in the hospital. It’s like he knew. I’d promised to look for the second person. I needed to see Aleksy’s case-file notes again.
“Gillian McCormack gave me twenty-four hours to call Mrs Naumowicz. How long have I got before I’m assassinated by the security services?”
“I’m sure that won’t happen. They’ll probably just put you in prison. You’ve been out for four hours. I’ve already called her. You’ve got another twenty-four hours.”
“Then we need to get moving. Are you ok? How come you’re not in a bed?”
“I’m recovered, more or less.”
“I’m glad, but how come?”
“Darren hit you with more venom. And it was in you for a lot longer before I managed to give you your first anti-venom shot. Plus, I have a small degree of natural immunity. Enough to reduce the impact.”
“You found the anti-venom in my sofa?”
“You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t. You did a brave and stupid thing giving me the antidote.”
“Easy choice. You’re twenty lives, I’m one.”
“I’m fearful for them. Everything they’ve been through. Tranquillizer. Venom.”
“We’ll have to check on their progress. How recovered are you really?”
“A little shaky, but no worse than if I was recovering from a bad cold.”
“Can you drive?”
“Yes.”
“I need to get back to my apartment. And I need your help.” I removed the tape that secured a saline drip tube to my hand and pulled the needle out slowly.
“I don’t think that’s wise, given your condition.”
“It’s not wise but it’s necessary. My condition won’t matter if we don’t get the whole story.”
“From Darren?”
“No. From Sophie’s other accomplice.” I sat on the bed and put my feet on the floor. In the bedside closet I found my clothes—sports shirt, sweatpants and socks. No shoes. I got dressed painfully. “What about Darren? Did he get away?”
“Arrested at Paddington Station. He was being held for attempted murder. But something odd has happened.”
“Tell me on the way.”
I leaned on Christmas as we shuffled slowly out of the room and down the ward to the nurses’ station. I told the senior nurse I was discharging myself.
She said it wasn’t a good idea.
I told her I understood, but I was going, despite the advice. She asked me questions to see if I could understand our conversation. After deciding that I didn’t seem mentally incapacitated, she got me to sign a self-discharge form.
“You can come back, and you should come back,” she said.
“Thanks for everything. I’ll be back if I don’t feel better.”
Christmas and I moved with small steps out into the hospital corridor, “Tell me about the odd thing with Darren.”
“They arrested him. Then they let him go.”
Downstairs at the hospital entrance we found a taxi rank and soon a black cab dropped us at my apartment.
FORTY-TWO
I looked around for Darren as we approached the main door of the apartment block.
“Do you have a weapon with you?”
“Yes, but I had to give up the compact one because I’d shot Darren with it.”
“If you see him again, do me a favor and just shoot him in the face.”
“I’ll do my best. Cattermole is going to call and explain why they’ve let him go.”
We worked our way up the main stairway and into my apartment. Christmas picked up envelopes from the floor inside the front door and put them in my hand.
I read the postmark. “Poland. Mrs Naumowicz.” I opened it quickly and glanced at the check inside.
“That other one has my dad’s writing on it.”
I opened the envelope from the professor. It contained a check for six thousand pounds, with a note saying, To cover the cost of collecting your car and your other expenses. “Your dad is outbidding Mrs Naumowicz.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t mean it that way. What else is so important here then?”
“Help me to my study.”
We struggled through the room doorways and I slumped heavily into my desk chair.
“That rug,” I pointed at my underfloor hiding place, “move it aside.” I handed Christmas a screwdriver from the jar of pens on my desk. My hands wouldn’t grip the driver tightly enough to undo the screws myself. I showed her the brown plugs set into the knotholes in the plank.
After prizing them out, she removed the screws holding the plank down and put the
contents of the hidden box on my desk.
I pulled the thick sheaf of illicitly copied police files from the padded envelope, fanning the pile out on the desk.
“What’re these documents?”
“Copies of the police files on Aleksy’s death.”
“How did you get them?”
“The pizza delivery boy brought them,” I said enigmatically. Christmas decided to leave it at that.
Leafing through the pile, I pulled out the two energy usage charts from the utility company, one for gas and one for electricity, showing the consumption on a vertical scale against a horizontal timescale.
Christmas pulled up a chair next to me. “What are you looking for exactly?”
“Well, I had a dream that made me think that Sophie wasn’t acting alone, but right now I’m not so sure. Look, here’s where the vacuum cleaner goes on.”
I pointed to the black line showing the electricity usage jump upward to a steady plateau which carried on for about ninety minutes with some short breaks.
“And here’s the gas coming on, probably because they’re using the hot water. Patryk left his hot water boiler on all the time. He couldn’t be bothered to change the timer when the clocks went back or forward for British Summer Time. Sophie cleaned Aleksy carefully, removing any trace of her own cells and their incriminating DNA, using water to flush them away and harsh bleach to destroy anything remaining. She’d been thorough, according to the report on his body. Mouth, genitals, fingernails, ears, and his skin all over had been bleached, scrubbed and rinsed clean with water. So the hot water temperature runs down a bit while Sophie cleans Aleksy. After a few minutes, the thermostat kicks in and the gas boiler fires up to heat the water.”
“What does that prove?”
“Not much. The boiler comes on at two o’clock, middle of the night. Sophie’s probably got the shower running for five or ten minutes before that. The hot water boiler probably stays on for several minutes after she finishes, while it heats the temperature in the hot water tank back up to the thermostat setting. So she starts showering him at around five minutes to two and finishes an hour later at around three o’clock. But she starts vacuuming at five minutes past two. So she’s vacuuming the apartment and cleaning Aleksy at the same time. That seems unlikely.”
“Unless she was flushing water over him. You know, left it running to make a more certain job of removing any trace.”
“That’s a possibility, I suppose.” I pointed to another jump in the gas usage. “The hot water comes on again at ten minutes past three, probably when she’s filling the mop bucket or washing up glasses in the kitchen. And the electricity shows the washing machine starting here,” I pointed to the spike in the graph line, “at twenty minutes past three. She put the bed-linen in with bleach on the hottest wash-program. My dream convinced me there was an answer here, but I’m not seeing it.”
“Should I take you back to the hospital then?”
“Maybe.”
I put the two sheets of paper together. It looked like my first interpretation was the right one. Dave Slaughter was wrong about blondie. An ordinary girl might’ve needed some help, but not this one. I slotted the graphs back into the fanned-out pile of paper.
As I put them in, they pushed out another graph from a utility company. Not energy usage, but water. The water meter had the same telemetry reporting as the gas and electricity, sending the water company minute by minute usage in a wireless signal from the flow meter. The water company had been insistent about installing these meters only a year back. Almost every property owner in the street had agreed to have them installed on the promise of lower water charges.
The water company had given the police a forty-eight hour chart. The second day showed a flatline of zero. The police hadn’t flushed the toilet or even taken water for a cup of tea while they’d been in Patryk’s apartment.
The day before showed a small volume flow at about thirty minutes before midnight, possibly from the toilet being flushed after Sophie and Aleksy had arrived after their Chinese meal. The taps had been run, drawing a few pints here and there. Then there was the prolonged volume from the shower usage, a steady plateau that started at eight minutes before two o’clock.
“Look at this. There’s a two-gallon spike drawn quickly at half-past two and then the flow goes back down to the shower volume. That looks like the mop bucket being filled. And the vacuum cleaner is running at the same time. She fills the mop bucket, leaves the shower running and leaves the vacuum running. In the middle of the night. When she doesn’t want to be discovered.”
We looked at each other. I remembered the evening I’d accused Christmas of helping her. I knew now it wasn’t Christmas. She was as puzzled by the activity as I was. And she didn’t show a hint of guilt or concern that I might be edging toward exposing her as an accomplice.
But there was another woman from Limewood in London that night whose movements were unaccounted for. From my desk drawer I pulled the folded sheet of paper showing Sophie Miller’s driving license details. I turned it over. Christmas and I looked at the innocent face of redheaded Louise Picton.
Online I logged onto Ashley’s multi-player site, WatchTowerFall, and searched the games in progress for her player name, TigerFeet4. Her armored avatar was rampaging through a graphic battlefield styled like a medieval town, blasting buildings and vaporizing figures.
I logged onto the separate voice chat platform used by her and her team. As soon as there was a pause in the jabbering about tactics from her team mates and advisors, I spoke into the microphone.
“Tigerfeet, it’s ShinyElbow.”
“Can’t you see I’m busy?” Blasting noisily.
“When are you free?”
A long pause, and then, “Whaddya want?”
“You remember the two faces? I want to know where the redhead is, just at the moment.”
A pause, more blasting. “Gimme a few minutes.”
Christmas and I watched the bouncing flashing graphics for a while.
Then Ashley announced, “She’s at home. Made a call ten minutes ago.”
“Thanks. I owe you.”
“One hundred.”
“What? For a minute’s work?”
“You’re paying for what I know, not what I do. And that’s my new smallest unit of measure.”
I silently cursed Dave Slaughter’s pricing philosophy.
After logging off I turned to Christmas. “Are you up for a long drive?”
“Can you cope with my noisy coupe in your condition?”
“Time is short. We have to go back to Limewood.”
We hastily filled a bag with food from my kitchen and bottles of tap water. Christmas tenderly helped me down the stairs. It was late afternoon by the time we headed north out of London.
FORTY-THREE
We ate in the car while Christmas drove briskly to get ahead of the evening exodus from town. On the expressways she kept up a fast pace. I scoured social media online for background on Louise Picton. Our accomplice murderer had a lot of interests. In the summer she worked as a volunteer instructor in the local sailing club, teaching children to sail small boats. She was a part-time teaching assistant in a primary school. She helped run an animal rescue center. When she wasn’t doing any of those things, Louise painted the animals, insects, flowers and landscapes in and around Limewood.
Her friend Sophie Miller had exactly the same interests. They seemed to be joined at the hip, doing everything together, including, I guessed, killing truck drivers. I found pictures of the two women crouching in group photos with smiling children; sailing boats; ruffling the long ears of cocker spaniels whose tongues lolled happily, fur mingling with masses of red and blonde hair.
Along with the photographs, Louise had uploaded dozens of her watercolors and sketches of life in a rural idyll.
Five hours after leaving London, we were parked one street away from Vanessa Miller’s home, ready to confront Sophie’s accomplice.
&nb
sp; Christmas helped me along the front path of another large house. One of the garage doors was open and three teenage boys paused from their tinkering with a small motorcycle, turning their faces to watch us make our way slowly to the front door. Lights were on in most of the rooms. I could hear indistinct voices in the back garden, even though the light had faded from the sky.
We rang the doorbell. Moths fluttered around the porchlight and the heady scent of honeysuckle hung in the still air.
The door was opened by a woman who looked at least a decade younger than her true half-century. One of Ariadne’s children, she was instantly recognizable as both Vanessa’s sister and Christmas’s aunt. She had the Limewood face, oval-shaped, straight nose, wide mouth, almond shaped eyes.
Christmas said, “We’re sorry to call on you so late Mrs Picton.”
The woman replied flatly, “Hello Christmas,” with none of the surprise, joy or sadness that her sister had shown just days earlier. She looked at me standing unsteadily, Christmas’s hand at my elbow. I could see the question forming on her face, but then she decided it wasn’t important and merely said, “I knew you two would be coming. Wait here. I’ll get her.”
Though slim like Vanessa, she moved slowly up each step of the stairway at the back of the entrance hall. I guessed that Miranda’s death was weighing heavily on her siblings.
After a minute, the step of a younger woman thumped lightly on the carpeted stairway, her feet in burgundy suede sneakers coming into view, then close-fitting blue denim jeans, a light-gray hooded sweatshirt and a mass of red hair. The red hair we’d been expecting. The concerned face it surrounded was a surprise.
Christmas and I stood open-mouthed as we came face to face with Sophie Miller.
Sophie smiled ruefully, stepped forward and held Christmas lightly around the waist. Leaning back to look at her face carefully, she said, “Hello sister,” before hugging her tightly.