‘And didn’t it occur to you that this Lysa might report you to the police when she discovered what Julius Wong had been accused of? Especially knowing that what nailed him conclusively was the DNA test.’
‘Of course, there was always that possibility. But that was another problem I solved. Without knowing I was in any way involved, she herself had written to tell me she was moving to New York, and to give me the address of the apartment she had rented. And you want to know something funny? It was the apartment of Jordan Marsalis, the Mayor’s brother, Gerald’s uncle . . .’
For a moment, Roscoe seemed to be reflecting on the mocking way that fate managed the affairs of men. Then he dismissed that thought with a gesture of his hand, as if waving away a troublesome fly. ‘In any case, as I said, it’s no longer a problem. I read in the newspaper that she’s had an accident . . .’
Maureen was horror-struck by the chilling significance of those words. ‘You’re crazy.’
‘That’s possible. Maybe you have to be crazy to do what I did. But I succeeded.’
‘Not entirely. Things didn’t go too well with Alex Campbell, did they? He managed to get away from you.’
William Roscoe gave Maureen a devilish smile. ‘Do you really think so?’
Maureen looked at him, stunned.
‘Congratulations, Maureen, I see you’ve understood. It was all planned. I made sure he got away because I needed him alive, he had to be the person with the final clue that would identify Julius Wong. I chose him because he was actually the least guilty of them. That day, he was the only one who begged the others to leave us alone.’
In the meantime, Jordan had reached the opposite side of the central bench and ducked down beneath it. Maureen assumed he was planning to creep around it until he was behind Roscoe, then take him by surprise. Unaware of his presence, Roscoe continued his macabre account of his actions.
‘I knew he’d gone to his house on Saint Croix. Luckily, thanks to my work, I’ve developed a few computer skills. I managed to get into the airline’s database and find out what day he was due back. I waited for him in a stolen car and grabbed him just outside his house, making sure that the tailor in the shop opposite saw me and was able to describe me to the police, obviously with the usual tracksuit and slight limp in the right leg. I took Alex to that warehouse in Williamsburg to make it look as if I’d been planning to arrange his body to look like Snoopy. I’d had a tattoo of a demon with butterfly wings drawn on my arm in soluble colours. It might not have been identical to Julius Wong’s tattoo, but it was certainly close enough, and in that light it was sure to terrify Alex. I didn’t think he’d be paying too much attention to details. Unfortunately, I didn’t know he had a weak heart. He died, but not before completing the task I’d given him, which was to set the police on Julius Wong’s trail.’
‘There’s one thing I don’t understand. How could you be sure Julius Wong wouldn’t have an alibi for the nights when the murders were committed?’
Roscoe pointed to a number of medium-size cylinders in a compartment to his right. ‘Nitrous oxide. Colourless, tasteless, odourless.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Julius Wong lives in a loft on 14th Street. It’s a two-storey building, with a flat roof that can easily be reached from the fire escape in back. All I had to do was connect one of those cylinders to the ventilation system to send him into a dreamless sleep until the following day.’
Roscoe shrugged casually, as if he had just finished telling a friend about a pleasure trip.
‘What else is there to say? Nothing, I think.’
Maureen realized that there was no narcissism in his attitude, no pride at the Machiavellian plan he had concocted. Instead, there was the naturalness of a person who feels he has done what is right. And privately, although Maureen cursed herself for the thought, she could not entirely blame him.
‘Now you know everything. It’s taken me years to get this far and I’m not going to let you ruin it for me now.’
‘You’ve forgotten something,’ Maureen told him. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that, if someone discovered you, you’d have done all this for nothing? Julius Wong would be free and you would go to prison in his place.’
Professor William Roscoe smiled gently. ‘No, my dear. I have taken certain precautions, you see. Should that happen, there’s a very professional gentleman who’ll take care of Julius W—’
Roscoe did not finish the sentence, because at that moment Jordan leaped out from behind the shelter of the bench and threw himself on him.
CHAPTER 51
It all happened in a few seconds, even though to Jordan and Maureen it seemed to last forever, as if they were moving in slow motion.
Jordan, with his one good arm at his disposal, had grabbed Roscoe’s right hand and at the same time lifted his leg in order to knock the Professor’s wrist against his knee and make him loosen his hold on the gun.
But surprise did not seem to be in William Roscoe’s repertoire. If Jordan’s unexpected arrival had shaken him in any way, it was not reflected in his reactions. The only result that Jordan did obtain was that his opponent’s finger tightened on the trigger and the gun went off, sending a bullet thudding into the tiled floor and raising a cloud of fragments.
Jordan realized immediately that it would not be easy to get the better of Roscoe, not least because he himself was forced to fight with only one arm. He was taller and younger, of course, but from the force with which Roscoe had met his onslaught it was clear that the Professor was in excellent shape – and of course could count on both arms.
Ignoring the agony from his shoulder, Jordan managed to force the Professor’s arm backwards and bring his wrist down several times on the tiled edge of the bench.
The gun went off again, and a computer exploded in a shower of sparks.
At last, Roscoe’s grip relaxed, and Jordan heard the wonderful sound of the gun clattering to the floor.
Maureen was watching every movement, wondering how she could be of help. Her options were very limited, in that she was still trapped in the chair. One thing she could do, though, was to make it more difficult for Roscoe to reach his gun if he broke free of Jordan. Pressing down on her feet and thrusting her chest forward slightly, she moved the chair as best she could until her feet were close enough to kick it away. The two men who were fighting heard the metallic scrape of the Beretta sliding across the floor, hit the base of the opposite wall, bounce back towards the middle of the room and stop just below the gallery.
Maureen had no idea why Jordan could hardly use his right arm, but it was obvious to her that the fight she was watching was an unequal one.
Roscoe had easily freed himself from Jordan’s grip and now was facing him in a defensive posture, like a boxer. It might well have been a sport he had practised as a young man, at university, and it was possible he had continued training over the years.
Unlike Maureen, the doctor had immediately guessed, from the unusual position of Jordan’s shoulder, that his attacker had a major weak spot. Every time Jordan came close to hit him with his left hand or attempted a kick, he managed to swerve and hit Jordan directly in the right shoulder, then immediately retreated, to wait for another move from his opponent.
Knowing that Jordan could not keep on taking this punishment, Maureen started moving the chair again, trying to get as close as she could to Roscoe, to trip him with her legs and give Jordan a moment’s breather. But when the Professor saw what she was doing, he raised his leg, placed his foot on the chair and gave it a violent push.
The chair went zooming back until it hit the bench and tilted to one side. For a moment, Maureen hung suspended, as if the chair had a will of its own and was desperately trying to regain its balance. Then she saw the white tiles of the floor come closer at a vertiginous speed.
As she hit the floor, she tried to cushion the fall with her shoulder, but despite her efforts, her elbow hit the tiles hard. A kind of electric shock spread up her
arm, which immediately turned into a strong burning sensation.
In the meantime, thanks to the diversion offered by Maureen’s intervention, Jordan had managed to put his good arm around Roscoe’s throat and was squeezing with all the strength he could muster. The Professor responded by hitting him in the stomach with his right elbow.
From her position on the floor, Maureen could not see what was going on. She heard the panting of the two men behind her as they fought for their lives, but could not turn her head to find out who was winning.
She started to wriggle free. Inch by inch, using her legs as much as possible to brace herself, she managed to slide her arms completely off the back of the chair. She turned, still lying on the floor, and kicked the chair away from her.
Now that she could see, however, the two men had disappeared. She could still hear their panting and the noise of the fight, but didn’t know where they were. Presumably, they were now fighting, locked together, on the floor next to the refrigeration chamber, behind the central bench.
Raising her head, she saw the gun lying on the floor, on the other side of the room.
Hoisting herself up into a kneeling position she started edging towards the Beretta. When she reached it, she placed her knees on either side of it and bent forward until she was able to take it in her right hand. She did not know how accurate her aim would be if she fired with her hands behind her back, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to. All she really needed to do was to be able to hand it to Jordan, to stop any further attempt at resistance from Roscoe.
Unfortunately, things did not go as she had foreseen. All at once, she saw Roscoe rise up over the top of the workbench, thrown backwards as if Jordan had succeeded in placing his feet on his chest and given him a powerful push with his legs. The Professor went sprawling against the big cylinders of liquid nitrogen that fed the refrigeration chamber. The polo shirt he was wearing was all creased, the back of it completely out of his pants, and blood was pouring from his nose. He wiped it with his sleeve, his eyes fixed on his opponent, who was still on the floor, out of sight of Maureen.
Then, about halfway along the bench, a hand appeared over the top, seeking support, and Jordan emerged, panting hard, his face wracked with pain.
Maureen admired his resistance, but could tell that he would not be able to hold out much longer. If his shoulder hurt as much as she supposed, she was surprised that he had not yet fainted.
When he saw Jordan getting up, Roscoe also seemed surprised. A cruel expression distorted his face. To Maureen, he seemed like a man now convulsed by madness, an endless limbo in which the hatred he had harboured all these years had engulfed him.
She saw him bend and grab one of the tubes carrying the liquid nitrogen from the cylinders into the refrigeration chamber. Maureen realized what he was planning to do, and she felt the blood in her veins run cold, as cold perhaps as the liquid running through the cable the Professor was now yanking furiously.
In the meantime, Jordan had got completely to his feet and was advancing towards him.
If Roscoe managed to extract the tube from its base and aim it at him, Jordan would be hit by a jet at almost 200 degrees below zero, which would cause the same burns as a flamethrower.
Maureen had only a fraction of a second to make a decision.
She lay down on the floor and rolled on her side, with her legs towards Roscoe. In that position, she pointed the gun and tried to take aim.
If she missed and hit one of the cylinders, it would explode, and that part of the house would become a small crater covered with the fragments of their bodies.
‘Get down, Jordan!’ she shouted, and pressed the trigger a fraction of a second after the Professor had managed to extract the tube from its housing.
The gunshot echoed through the room like the tolling of a huge funeral bell.
Roscoe swivelled his head towards Maureen. He looked at her for a moment as if she was someone he thought he knew, but whose name he could not remember.
Then, swaying slightly, he looked down at the bullet-hole in his chest and the bloodstain spreading to cover the Ralph Lauren logo on his polo shirt.
The hand holding the tube, from which a jet of liquid nitrogen was escaping, lost its grip and the tube tilted downwards. The frozen stream hit Roscoe’s calves and feet, yet he seemed not to feel the effects of what must have been a horrendous burning. He fell to his knees and then, after what seemed an eternity, closed his eyes and slid to the floor with his face down, covering the tube with his body and stopping much of the flow with the weight.
As Maureen got to her feet, she found it hard to take her eyes off the corpse of Professor William Roscoe.
Then she turned to look around the lab in search of Jordan, fearing he might have been reached by the liquid nitrogen spreading across the floor.
As soon as Jordan had heard Maureen’s warning, he had thrown himself to the floor, on his left side, hoping that the jolt to his dislocated shoulder did not make him faint.
The temperature in the room seemed to be rapidly decreasing, and from somewhere in the distance he could hear Maureen crying, ‘The cylinder! Jordan, you have to close the cylinder!’
With the little energy he still had left, he made an effort to get up off the floor. But then, instead of going to the cylinder to close the valve, he moved around to the other side of the bench and grabbed Maureen’s arm.
‘Let’s get out of here, quick.’
They rushed up the three steps of the gallery and, supporting each other, climbed the stairs and emerged out into the open.
CHAPTER 52
‘Does your shoulder still hurt?’
Jordan took a sip of coffee and said, ‘No. The pain’s almost gone.’
Maureen and Jordan were sitting facing each other across a table in Starbucks on Madison Avenue, two figures dusty with fatigue behind a window that reflected the morning traffic. The sleepless night had left marks under their eyes.
There was no sense of elation or triumph in them, only the exhaustion of survivors, and surprise at the fact that they were still alive.
When they had left the house, Jordan had called Burroni and told him where they were and what had happened.
It had not taken long after that for the usual bedlam of lights and yellow tapes and barriers and vans and Medical Examiners to begin. The pair had managed to get away before the inevitable onslaught of reporters. The media would have a field day with this cloak and dagger story that had two outsiders as protagonists.
As they walked away from the big gloomy house on Henry Street, they saw the body of Professor William Roscoe disappear into the back of an ambulance.
Burroni had approached as they were getting in a patrol car. ‘I’d like to know how you managed it, though I suspect I’ll never know the truth. Congratulations, anyway.’
He had waved goodbye to them and gone back to his duties, his black hat seeming to float above the bustle of officers and technicians. They had been driven to the Emergency Department at Saint Charles Hospital in Brooklyn, where an orthopaedic consultant had fixed Jordan’s shoulder and dressed it with an elastic bandage. On the basis of the X-rays, the doctor had been rather pessimistic about the lesion, saying that Jordan would probably have to undergo a small operation to recover the complete use of his shoulder.
Maureen had been treated for a slight burn on one leg, caused by contact with the fumes from the liquid nitrogen.
Now they were sitting over the coffee they had both felt they needed. What they had needed even more was a pause to take stock of what had happened.
‘How did you know it was him?’ Jordan asked.
‘I told you there was something I couldn’t remember, some elusive detail I just couldn’t get hold of. Last night, without the help of any vision, I realized what that detail was.’
‘Yes? What was it?’
‘When Roscoe removed my bandages after the operation and I opened my eyes, for a moment I saw him leaning over me with his hands near
my face. Then the image faded out and, as you can imagine, I was really upset. I thought the operation had been a failure, that I would be blind forever. But then the light came back and I saw his face again, very close to mine. I was so relieved that I missed one crucial detail. Between the two figures there was a difference – unfortunately it took me all this time to pinpoint it.’
‘Go on.’
‘In the first image I saw of him, Roscoe wasn’t wearing a white coat. When I saw him again, he was. That meant one thing. When he took off the bandages, the face I had in front of me wasn’t the first thing I saw, but the last thing Gerald Marsalis saw. The face of his killer.’
Jordan leaned back in his chair. How could it have been otherwise? he thought ironically. An absurd ending to an absurd story. The problem was that after all that had happened to them, they would have to continue living in a world of normal people.
Jordan finished his coffee and threw the paper cup in the trash can. ‘What will you do now?’
Maureen shrugged – a powerless but not desolate gesture. ‘What can I do? I’ll go back to Italy and carry on. What do they say? While there’s life, there’s hope.’
Both remembered Roscoe’s threat. When she had found herself having to choose, Maureen had made her decision in a flash. Jordan was safe and Roscoe was gone, carrying with him any certainty that she would continue to have the use of her eyes.
It might have been just a threat, or it might not. Only time would tell. But Jordan would never forget the choice she had made.
‘Don’t you want to tell anyone?’