Bloodline (27 page)

Zurich.

Thursday, December 4.

Eight p.m.

The cold winter night had fallen, snuffing out the brief twilight. It had begun to snow, a soft, windblown powder that dusted the city. In the administration building of Roffe and Sons, the lights of the deserted offices glowed against the darkness like pale yellow moons.

In her office Elizabeth was alone, working late, waiting for Rhys to return from Geneva, where he had gone for a meeting. She wished that he would hurry. Everyone had long since left the building. Elizabeth felt restless, unable to concentrate. She could not get Walther and Anna out of her mind. She remembered Walther as she had first met him, boyish and handsome and madly in love with Anna. Or pretending to be. It was so hard to believe that Walther was responsible for all those terrible acts. Elizabeth’s heart went out to Anna. Elizabeth had tried several times to telephone her, but there had
been no answer. She would fly to Berlin, to give her whatever comfort she could. The telephone rang, startling her. She picked it up. It was Alec on the other end of the line, and Elizabeth was pleased to hear his voice.

“You’ve heard about Walther?” Alec asked.

“Yes. It’s horrible. I can’t believe it.”

“Don’t, Elizabeth.”

She thought she had misunderstood him. “What?”

“Don’t believe it. Walther’s not guilty.”

“The police said—”

“They’ve made a mistake. Walther was the first person Sam and I checked out. We cleared him. He’s not the one we were looking for.”

Elizabeth stared at the phone, filled with a sense of confusion.
He’s not the one we were looking for.
She said, “I—I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Alec replied hesitantly, “It’s awkward doing this over a telephone, Elizabeth, but I haven’t had an opportunity to speak to you alone.”

“Speak to me about what?” Elizabeth asked.

“For the past year,” Alec said, “someone has been sabotaging the company. There was an explosion in one of our South American factories, patents have been stolen, dangerous drugs have been mislabeled. There isn’t time to go into it all now. I went to Sam and suggested that we engage an outside investigating agency to try to find out who was behind it. We agreed not to discuss it with anyone else.”

It was as though the earth had suddenly stopped and time was frozen. A dizzying feeling of
déjà vu
swept through Elizabeth. Alec’s words were coming through the telephone, but it was Rhys’s voice she was hearing. Rhys saying,
Someone has been sabotaging Roffe and Sons. It was done very cleverly, so
that it seemed to be a series of accidents. But I began to see a pattern. I went to Sam with it and we decided to hire an outside agency to investigate.

Alec’s voice was going on. “They finished their report and Sam took it with him to Chamonix. We discussed it over the telephone.”

Elizabeth could hear Rhys’s voice saying,
Sam asked me to come up to Chamonix to discuss it with him…We decided to keep it just between the two of us until we could find out who was responsible for what was happening.

Elizabeth was suddenly finding it hard to breathe. When she spoke, she tried to make her voice sound normal. “Alec, who—who else knew about the report beside you and Sam?”

“No one. That was the whole point. According to Sam, the report showed that whoever was guilty had to be someone high up in the company.”

The highest echelon. And Rhys had not mentioned being in Chamonix until the detective had brought it up.

She asked slowly, the words dragged out of her, “Could Sam have told Rhys about it?”

“No. Why?”

There was only one way Rhys could have known what was in the report. He had stolen it. There was only one reason he could have gone to Chamonix. To kill Sam.
Elizabeth did not hear the rest of what Alec was saying. The roaring in her ears drowned out his words. She dropped the receiver, her head spinning, fighting off the horror that was starting to engulf her. Her mind was a series of chaotic, jumbled images. At the time she had had the Jeep accident, she had left a message for Rhys that she would be in Sardinia. The night of the elevator crash, Rhys had
not been at the board meeting, but he had appeared later when she and Kate were alone.
Thought I ought to give you a hand.
And soon afterward he had left the building.
Or had he?
Her body was trembling now. It had to be some terrible mistake. Not Rhys.
No!
It was a scream in her mind.

Elizabeth rose from the desk and on unsteady legs walked through the connecting door to Rhys’s office. The room was dark. She turned on the lights and stood looking around uncertainly, not sure what she expected to find. She was not searching for evidence of Rhys’s guilt, she was looking for evidence of his innocence. It was unbearable to think that the man she loved, the man who had held her in his arms and made love to her, could be a coldblooded murderer.

There was an engagement book on Rhys’s desk. Elizabeth opened it, turning the pages back to September, to the holiday weekend of the Jeep accident. Nairobi was marked on his calendar. She would need to check his passport to see if he had gone there. She started to look through Rhys’s desk for the passport, feeling guilty, knowing that somehow there had to be an innocent explanation.

The bottom drawer of Rhys’s desk was locked. Elizabeh hesitated. She knew she had no right to break into it Somehow it was a violation of faith, the crossing of a forbidden boundary, from which there could be no return. Rhys would know that she had done this and she would have to tell him why. And yet Elizabeth had to know. She picked up a letter opener from the desk and broke the lock, splintering the wood.

In the drawer were stacks of notes and memoranda. She lifted them out. There was an envelope addressed to Rhys Williams in a woman’s handwriting. It was
postmarked a few days earlier, from Paris. Elizabeth hesitated a moment, then opened it. The letter was from Hélène. It began,
“Chiri,
I tried to reach you by phone. It is urgent that we meet again soon to make our plans…” Elizabeth did not finish reading the letter.

She was staring at the stolen report in the drawer.

M
R
. S
AM
R
OFFE

C
ONFIDENTIAL

N
O COPIES

She felt the room begin to spin and she clutched the edge of the desk for support. She stood there forever, eyes closed, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Her killer had a face now. It was the face of her husband.

The silence was broken by the insistent ringing of a distant telephone. It took Elizabeth a long time to realize where the sound was coming from. Slowly she walked back to her office. She picked up the telephone.

It was the attendant in the lobby, his voice cheerful. “Just checkin’ that you’re still there, Mrs. Williams. Mr. Williams is on his way up to you.”

To stage another accident.

Her life was all that stood between Rhys and the control of Roffe and Sons. She could not face him, could not pretend that nothing was wrong. The moment he saw her, he would know. She had to escape. In a blind panic, Elizabeth grabbed her purse and coat and started out of the office. She stopped. She had forgotten somehing. Her passport! She had to get far away from Rhys, someplace where he could not find her. She hurried back to her desk, found the
passport and ran out into the corridor, her heart pounding as though it would burst. The indicator on the private elevator was swinging upward.

Eight…nine…ten…

Elizabeth began racing down the stairs, running for her life.

There was a ferryboat that ran between Civitavecchia and Sardinia, carrying passengers and automobiles. Elizabeth drove aboard in a rental car, lost among a dozen other cars. Airports kept records, but the huge boat was anonymous. Elizabeth was one of a hundred passengers crossing over to the island of Sardinia for a holiday. She was sure she could not have been followed, and yet she was filled with an unreasoning fear. Rhys had gone too far to let anything stop him now. She was the only one who could expose him. He would have to get rid of her.

When Elizabeth had fled from the building, she had had no idea where she was going. She knew only that she must get out of Zurich and hide somewhere, that she would not be safe until Rhys was caught.
Sardinia.
It was the first place she thought of. She had rented a small car and had stopped at a phone booth along the auto route to Italy and had tried to call Alec. He was out. She left a message for him to call her in Sardinia. Unable to reach Detective Max Hornung, she left the same message for him.

She would be at the villa in Sardinia. But this time she would not be alone. The police would be there to protect her.

When the ferryboat landed in Olbia, Elizabeth found that it would not be necessary to go to the police. They were waiting for her in the person of Bruno Campagna, the detective she had met with Chief of Police Ferraro. It had been Campagna who had taken her to look at the Jeep following the accident. The detective hurried over to Elizabeth’s car and said, “We were beginning to get very worried about you, Mrs. Williams.”

Elizabeth looked at him, surprised.

“We received a call from the Swiss police,” Campagna explained, “asking us to keep an eye out for you. We’ve been covering all the boats and airports.”

Elizabeth was filled with a feeling of gratitude. Max Hornung! He had gotten her message. Detective Campagna looked at her tired, drawn face. “Would you like me to drive?”

“Please,” Elizabeth said gratefully.

She slid over to the passenger seat, and the tall detective got behind the wheel. “Where would you rather wait—the police station or your villa?”

“The villa, if someone could stay with me. I’d—I’d rather not be there alone.”

Campagna nodded reassuringly. “Don’t worry. We have orders to keep you well guarded. I’ll stay there with you tonight, and we’ll have a radio car stationed at the driveway leading to your place. No one will be able to get near you.”

His confidence was enough to let Elizabeth relax. Detective Campagna drove swiftly and expertly, winding through the little streets of Olbia, heading up the mountain road that led to the Costa Smeralda. Every place they passed reminded her of Rhys.

Elizabeth asked, “Has there been any—any news of my husband?”

Detective Campagna gave her a quick, compassionate glance, then turned his eyes back to the road. “He’s on the run, but he won’t get far. They expect to have him in custody by morning.”

Elizabeth knew that she should feel a sense of relief, and instead the words brought a terrible, aching pain. It was Rhys they were talking about, Rhys who was being hunted like some animal. He had placed her in this terrible nightmare, and now he was caught up in his own nightmare, fighting for his life, as he had made her fight for hers. And how she had trusted him! How she had believed in his kindness and his gentleness and his love! She shuddered. Detective Campagna asked her, “Are you cold?”

“No. I’m fine.” She felt feverish. A warm wind seemed to be whistling through the car, setting her nerves on edge. At first she thought it was her imagination until Detective Campagna said, “I’m afraid we’re in for a scirocco. It’s going to be a busy night.”

Elizabeth understood what he meant. The scirocco could drive people and animals crazy. The wind blew in from the Sahara, hot and dry and grainy with sand, with a macabre keening sound that had an eerie, unbalancing effect on the nerves. The crime rate always went up during a scirocco, and the judges treated criminals leniently.

An hour later, out of the dark, the villa loomed ahead of them. Detective Campagna turned into the driveway, drove into the empty carport and turned off the engine. He walked around to the side of the car and opened Elizabeth’s door. “I’d like you to stay right behind me, Mrs. Williams,” he said. “Just in case.”

“All right,” Elizabeth replied.

They moved toward the front door of the darkened
villa. Detective Campagna said, “I’m sure he’s not here but we won’t take any chances. May I have your key?”

Elizabeth handed him the key. He gently edged her to one side of the door, inserted the key and opened the door, his other hand hovering near his gun. He reached inside and flicked on the light switch, and the hallway was suddenly flooded with brilliant light.

“I’d like you to show me the house,” Detective Campagna said. “Make sure we cover every room. Okay?”

“Yes.”

They started walking through the house, and everywhere they went the huge detective turned the lights on. He looked in all the closets and corners and checked to make sure the windows and doors were locked. There was no one else in the house. When they returned to the living room downstairs, Detective Campagna said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to call headquarters.”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said. She led him into the study.

He picked up the telephone and dialed. A moment later he said, “Detective Campagna. We’re at the villa. I’ll camp here for the night. You can send a cruiser up to park at the foot of the driveway.” He listened a moment, then said into the phone, “She’s fine. Just a little tired. I’ll check in later.” He replaced the receiver.

Elizabeth sank into a chair. She was feeling tense and nervous, but she knew that it was going to be worse tomorrow. Much worse. She would be safe but Rhys would be either dead or in prison. Somehow,
in spite of everything he had done, she could not bear the thought of that.

Detective Campagna was studying her, a look of concern on his face. “I could use a cup of coffee,” he said. “How about you?”

She nodded. “I’ll make some.” She started to rise.

“You stay where you are, Mrs. Williams. My wife says I make the best coffee in the world.”

Elizabeth managed a smile. “Thank you.” She sank back gratefully. She had not realized how emotionally drained she felt. For the first time now, Elizabeth admitted to herself that even during the telephone conversation with Alec she had felt that there might be some mistake, some explanation, that Rhys must be innocent. Even while she was fleeing, she had held on to the thought that he could not have done all those terrible things, that he could not have killed her father and then made love to her and tried to kill her. It would take a monster to do those things. And so she had kept that tiny ember of hope flickering in her. It had died when Detective Campagna had said,
He’s on the run, but he won’t get far. They expect to have him in custody by morning.

She could not bear to think about it anymore, but she could think of nothing else. How long had Rhys been planning to take over the company? Probably from the moment he had met that impressionable fifteen-year-old girl, alone and lonely in a Swiss boarding school. That was when he must have first decided how he was going to outwit Sam—through his daughter. How easy it had been for him. The dinner at Maxim’s and the long friendly talks during the years, and the charm—oh, the incredible charm! He had been patient. He had waited until she had
become a woman, and the greatest irony of all was that Rhys did not even have to woo her. She had wooed
him.
How he must have laughed at her. He and Hélène. Elizabeth wondered whether they were in it together, and she wondered where Rhys was now, and whether the police would kill him when they caught him. She began to weep uncontrollably.

“Mrs. Williams…” Detective Campagna was standing over her, holding out a cup of coffee.

“Drink this,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”

“I—I’m sorry,” Elizabeth apologized. “I don’t usually carry on this way.”

He said to her gently, “I think you’re doing
molto bene.”

Elizabeth took a sip of the hot coffee. He had put something in it. She looked up at him, and he grinned. “I decided a shot of Scotch wouldn’t do you any harm.”

He sat down across from her in a companionable silence. She was grateful for his company. She could never have stayed here alone. Not until she knew what had happened to Rhys, not until she knew whether he was dead or alive. She finished her coffee.

Detective Campagna looked at his watch. “The patrol car should be here any minute. There’ll be two men in it on guard duty all night. I’ll stay downstairs. I suggest you go up to bed now and try to get some sleep.”

Elizabeth shivered. “I couldn’t sleep.” But even as she said it, her body was filled with an enormous lassitude. The long drive and the tremendous strain she had been under for so long were finally taking their toll.

“Maybe I’ll just lie down for a bit,” she said. She found it difficult to get the words out.

Elizabeth lay in her bed, fighting against sleep. Somehow it did not seem fair that she should be asleep while Rhys was being hunted. She visualized him being shot down on some cold dark street and she shuddered. She tried to keep her eyes open, but they were heavy weights, and the instant they closed she began to feel herself sinking down, down, into a soft cushion of nothingness.

Sometime later she was awakened by the screams.