Bite (21 page)

The aged Ford screamed up Amstelveense Weg, and up onto the southern ring road, heading east for the Randstad Medical Centre. Saskia had her mobile phone pressed to her head talking to Paul Jeker, the duty registrar at intensive care. She floored the accelerator as she passed a poorly-lit quarry truck on the inside, earning herself an angry baritone horn blast. Once clear, she looked in the mirror. On the back seat a nervous Hennie was holding Caroline on her lap in a blanket. The child was twitching and trembling, mumbling to herself. The car reeked of vomit.

Saskia needed to know for certain, and the only way was to do again, now, in the middle of the night, what she had spent all day doing. To take a drop of her precious daughter's blood on a thick film slide and compare it under a microscope with that of Erskine, to look for the grey rings in the blood cells.

‘Soon be there, soon be there. Just hold on.'

The familiar concrete shape of the Randstad's entrance seemed as welcoming as a mother's arms. Saskia drove straight into the ambulance bay under the main entrance, flashing her pass at the security man. Two orderlies and a nurse were with Paul Jeker at the scratched double doors through which over the years so many people had been rushed, not knowing whether they would live or die.

Fifteen minutes later, seated at her microscope, Saskia held back her head and howled. Jeker, standing at her side, held Saskia's head and stroked her face as she clenched her fists and hammered them on the desk.

‘Sshh Saskia. Sshh, my darling. It may be inside her, but the fight hasn't even begun. There are the best people in the world on this, you know that. And our daughter is a survivor.'

The last morning of the parasitology conference was devoted to river blindness, but even though it was only ten o'clock most delegates had already left. Max had spent a fruitless hour waiting in the lobby of the RAI Congress Centre, hoping to spot Henry Waterson, hoping to find out why he had driven out into the wastelands of Rotterdam to an obscure company called Xenix Molecular Solutions. Finally he gave up and went into the organiser's office, where John Milward was stacking up bundles of unused agendas.

‘Hello, Max. Any news on Erica?'

‘None I'm afraid. Have you seen Waterson?'

‘No. Not for days. He may have left.'

‘Do you know where he was staying?'

Milward sighed heavily. ‘No, but most of the bigwigs stayed at the Golden Tulip, the Marriott, the Okura or the Hilton.'

Max thanked him and after twenty minutes working the phone he hit paydirt. Waterson was staying at the Marriott. The telephonist had put him through to the room, but there was no reply and Max hung up when the answering service kicked in.

The lobby of the Marriott was heaving with a coachload of tourists as Max arrived. He skirted around the back of them, keeping his bandaged hand in his pocket and walked up to the most junior looking woman at the reception desk.

‘Hi. I'm Henry Waterson. I'd like to check out.'

‘Room number?' She didn't even look up as she worked the terminal.'

‘Um.' Max looked puzzled. ‘It's either 466 or 646.' He rummaged in his pockets as if looking for the key.

‘It won't be written on your plastikey, Sir. Just one moment.' She typed in his name and seemed to see what she was looking for. ‘Did you drink anything from the minibar?'

‘No.'

She printed out the invoice and gave it to him to sign. The room was 312.

‘Shoot, I even got the floor wrong. Too many hotel rooms in my life, that's the trouble.' Max patted his jacket. ‘Durn it. I think I've left my wallet in the room. I'll be back in a minute. Don't go away.' The receptionist gave him a dull-eyed glare as he walked to the lift.

The drone of a vacuum cleaner greeted Max as he stepped out at the third floor. Waterson's room was near the end of a long corridor. The chambermaid's cart was just outside the next room, where a draught of cool air wafted through the open door. Max stepped back as a short middle-aged Filipina emerged, weighed down with bed linen and towels, and waddled back up the corridor towards the linen room.

Once she was out of sight Max listened briefly at Waterson's room. No sound. He slipped into the next door room, and saw as he had hoped that the window was open. He looked out across the city and its glittering spires and the traffic, winking in the sunshine. Craning his neck out further he saw the methodical chambermaid had opened the window a few inches in every room she had cleaned, including Waterson's, just five feet away to the left. Max pulled the window open to its full extent and took a deep breath. The bad news was that this was a modern hotel and the concrete sill beneath the window less than two inches wide, about half the width of his shoes.

Gingerly he eased himself out, turning around so he was looking back into the room, his feet sideways on the sill. With fingers on the window frame he was fine. But it was spanning the gap to Waterson's window, now to his right, without the benefit of handholds that would be tricky. Carefully, he slid his feet right, shuffling along as far as he could while still gripping the window frame with both hands. Then he released his still bandaged right hand, face to the blank brickwork, stretched blindly until his sore fingertips made contact with the aluminium edge of Waterson's window frame. Spreadeagled against the wall he slid his feet further right until they could go no further without him leaving hold of the window he had exited. Max took a deep breath and made the final commitment, swinging the free hand over his head. For a second he was holding himself only by the tips of his scabby, injured hand. Then he found a second handhold and made the last desperate shuffle until he could see inside Waterson's room.

It was empty and tidy, but for a few clothes folded on a chair. Max slid open the window and hauled himself inside. On the circular table by the window was a sheaf of scientific papers. He flicked through but could see no mention of Xenix Molecular Solutions.

Inside the wardrobe he found a few suits and a natty executive attaché case. It was locked, but like most stylish luggage, security takes second place to looks. Max stood the case on its edge, stamped on it twice, and the thin brass locks flipped open. Inside was a cheque book, passport, pens, papers, airline ticket and a bottle of orange pills.

Max snatched up the bottle, opened it and tapped out a handful. They were orange with a small blue dot, identical to those used by the guy next to him on the aircraft. There was no label on the bottle. He wrapped a dozen pills in a tissue and pocketed them, then resealed and replaced the bottle. Five minutes of effort could not persuade the attache case locks to re-engage, so he gave up and looked around the room to see what else he had disturbed. Papers were tidy, the window part closed. All he had to do was wipe off his dusty footprints from the window ledge. That done, he opened the door and closed it carefully behind him.

He walked rapidly back around the corner to the elevator. Waiting there was the disabled man that Max had carried up the stairs at the Erwin Hotel on his first day in Amsterdam. He was in a high tech wheelchair with a thin computer screen mounted on its arm, connected by a thick tube to a metal mouthpiece. His eyes swivelled up at Max and recognised him.

‘I guess this is more to your liking than the Erwin,' Max said. ‘Going down to the ground floor?'

The man's bony head twitched and his brown eyes crinkled. Letters began to click up on the screen.
Yes. At least I can thank you now. I'm voiceless as well as rather helpless in the folding wheelchair. Mary-Anne had not realised the Erwin had no lift. This is much more suitable.

The elevator arrived and Max held the door open while the man drove his wheelchair in. ‘So what brings you to Amsterdam?'

Criminality. I specialise in understanding the criminal mind.

‘So that makes you a psychologist or a psychiatrist?'

A psychologist. I'm Dr Johan Grzalawicz of the University of Antwerp.

‘Max Carver. Good to meet you.'

My field is never short of work. Every day, some new fascinating event. Like you, Mr Carver. You are not Henry Waterson. Why were you impersonating him at the reception desk?

At one moment in timeless darkness John Sanford Erskine III awoke, knowing he would never see morning. A car hissed past, headlamps sweeping like a lighthouse the white ocean of the ceiling. In the following quiet he heard the pumps thumping in his ears, the rasping breath, the tired engines of existence. Now he knew this body was only something he had hired for the occasion of life. Very soon he had to give it back. It didn't belong to him. What terrified him was imagining what was left of him afterwards.

A tiny high-pitched whine distracted him. A dark exclamation mark separated itself from the wall above his head and drifted down towards the heavy bare arm that lay across his chest. Alien head bent low, eyes like giant goggles, the mosquito landed gently amid the jungle hairs of his wrist, crawling until it found a way though to the skin. Paralysed, Erskine could not look away as the needle penetrated, as the mosquito's body engorged with blood, its antennae twitching with desire.

Suddenly, Erskine understood. You bastard, he thought. Why didn't I think of you sooner? I gotta get Penny, she could find him.

‘Penny! Penny!' His voice, no more than a croak, disappeared into the empty air above him. ‘Penny. It's important. I know…who it is.'

A dark blurry shape entered the room, and the mosquito flew away. The soothing voice seemed to come on warm wings from a hundred miles away. ‘Sshh, now Mr Erskine. You've been dreaming.'

Erskine felt something cool dabbing his brow. ‘Penny?'

‘No, I'm the duty nurse. Penny can come in the morning, yes? When you feel a bit better.'

‘No! I've got…urgent…Penny!'

‘Try to sleep.'

‘No time left, no time. Must.'

The nurse unplugged the heart monitor and packed away the I-V drip stand, stripped the bed of its soiled sheets. She was surprised how strong a grip the patient had, in those last few seconds. Her fingers still tingled now, several minutes after the body had been wheeled to the hospital mortuary. There had been plenty of white coats around, considering it was the middle of the night, and they spent a long time trying to resuscitate him.

She wondered if he was famous. She hadn't recognised the face. If somebody named Penny came to see him, she would tell her that it was her name that Mr Erskine had called out, at the end. Perhaps that would make her happy, or at least soften the pain.