Lethal Profit (24 page)

It was in that direction that Eva was staring when she noticed a shadowy figure enter the park and start to move at speed in their direction.

‘Leon.' She stood; instinctively, she grabbed her bag. She took one look at Leon reaching for his gun and then she turned and started to run. Before she had taken two steps she felt as if she was falling. All the breath was knocked from her body as someone caught her from behind. She felt her neck and throat being crushed as she was slammed backwards against the bench she had been sitting on. Another arm came over her head, across her chest and grabbed the belt loop of her jeans as she was lifted bodily from behind over the back of the bench and dragged backwards across the gravel. Panic reflexes seared through her brain and she fought and kicked and tried to scream but remained caught in the iron grip as another hand clasped her throat and fingers tightened around her vocal chords, choking her. The park pathway quickly disappeared from view and suddenly she was behind one of the high privet hedges that surrounded it.

She was dumped on the floor and masking tape was quickly and brutally wrapped around her mouth and head, catching and tearing at her hair. She shouted out in anger but the noise was muted and useless. Eva was flipped over face down onto the ground, which was covered in the brown, wet leaves of autumn. She tried to raise her head to see where she was. Surely someone could see this, they were outside the park now. When she managed to get a glimpse of her surroundings, she realised she was completely hidden in the back of the park where all the hedges converged to create a natural hiding place. She felt her hands being bound once again behind her, this time with some kind of tape, and then a boot obscured her vision before she was flipped over onto her back and roughly propped up against one of the hedges.

Once she was upright Eva tried to calm her breathing, which was coming in raw, ragged gasps through the black tape. Where was Leon?

In the small space with her were two people, both men, both dressed in black and wearing woollen masks over their heads.

One of the men began trying to fasten the tape around her ankles. She kicked out at him and he delivered a sharp blow just below the knee of her left leg that sent scorching lines of pain travelling up to her hip and down to her ankle before her muscles started to go numb. She tried to struggle but her leg was lifeless and it weighted her in one place. Another of the masked figures produced a small black leather medical case which when opened fully revealed syringes, two of them.

Just behind her on the other side of the hedge Eva could hear street noise. The man with the medical bag pulled out the first syringe and began to hold it up and tap the side. Neither of them spoke. A pre-arranged plan was being executed. Eva listened to the sound of her heartbeat singing in her ears.

She bent her knees up and shunted herself backwards using her one good leg and this time sensed give in the hedge behind her. The men glanced at her but made no move to stop her and carried on with what they were doing. She pushed gently against the foliage with her back once again and realised that the hedge was made up of not one tree but several. There was space between each one, just a tiny amount but if she pushed hard enough she might be able to slide through. Eva began backing herself up more and more against the hedge by pushing with her one good leg and sliding the rest of her body against the floor, whilst the masked man prepared the syringe and his colleague left the sheltered space, presumably to collect Leon. Behind her back she rubbed her wrists together and realised the tape was a poor substitute for plastic cuffs and she could pull her wrists free. For several seconds she worked her wrists until she was able to pull one out of the loop of tape. She kept her hands behind her back as if they were still bound. She had to avoid anyone holding on to her arms, she couldn't let them hold her down.

Inside her head, calm logic fought with emotional panic. How the hell had this happened? Suddenly, panic won. The surge of adrenaline the anxiety sent through her body seemed to give Eva the energy she needed and, as the masked man turned towards her, she suddenly pushed against the floor with all her might, used her hands to make a grab for the trees on the inside of the hedge and then shunted herself backwards into the foliage. On the first push she was inside the trees and then, with a second, suddenly the top half of her torso was through and she hit the pavement on her back the other side. As she tried frantically to pull the rest of her body through, she heard a shout and she could feel hands trying to catch at her shifting limbs inside the hedge.

For several seconds Eva fought the man on the other side of the hedge but he was stronger and she couldn't free her numb leg from his grip. Gradually, inevitably, she was hauled back into the space behind the hedge. Eva stopped fighting and closed her eyes as she was dragged along the rough ground, until she felt a presence over her. When she opened them she was face to face with a pair of piercing black eyes looking directly into hers. The man above her had pulled her through and was crouching over her, positioning her arms so each of his knees was painfully trapping her hands. For several seconds there was stillness as the man continued to stare. Eva felt the blood begin to drain from her body. What was he going to do?

Slowly he positioned one hand with the thumb and fingers either side of her throat and began to tighten his grip. Eva felt herself choking and opened her eyes wide with fear. The man stopped instantly; Eva was sure that she saw him smile. She started to struggle and the man hit her hard around the face. Eva felt dizzy; she smelled menthol. The man leaned back and then removed one of his legs from her right hand and crouched at her left side, securing her left hand. Immediately, she raised her fist but his colleague who had returned grabbed both her wrists and fastened them with more tape in front of her, before pushing her back to the floor and holding her there. As the black-eyed man began to walk out of the clearing, out of the corner of her eye Eva saw the other man reach for the syringe.

Again, Eva tried to move, but she was pinned down by just one of his huge hands. The man holding her pushed her further against the cold ground as he positioned himself above her and began to aim the needle. She realised that the target was not an arm or leg but the left side of her chest, right above her heart.

I
NSPECTOR
L
EGRAND
SAT
AT
HIS
desk behind a pile of old notebooks that he had found himself unable to throw away. There was no telling when the notes from old cases would come in useful. He was staring down at the autopsy report from Dr Shume, which was side by side with a report he had arranged to have faxed over from St Thomas's Hospital in London. Inspector Legrand had a photographic memory, the kind that remembered words – headlines – and once he had written down the conditions Dr Shume had identified down in the morgue he realised he had seen them before, and fairly recently. The inspector had Googled the two words together and a whole page of results had appeared concerning the death of a British journalist on the Eurostar only days before. From there it had been a fairly easy step to obtaining the autopsy report.

According to the report, the man had presented with exactly the same causes of death, right down to the shocked expression on his jowled face. The hospital had had access to his medical records and had been able to confirm that a recent medical only two months before he died showed he had none of the symptoms of either disease. Insane as it was, there did seem to be some basis for Dr Shume's suggestion that someone had manufactured the diseases in all three victims. But why? Legrand had called the hospital to ask for confirmation of a red welt anywhere on the journalist's body and an hour later the call had come back with an apology for missing it from the report: his right thigh.

Legrand had spent the rest of the day searching but he could not find anything to connect the three men, one a British journalist in Paris only for the day, one an estate kid and the third a worker in the post room at the British Embassy, also British. Then there was the girl seen running from the scene of the Englishman's Paris flat – another Brit according to a neighbour, dark-haired, average height. They had found a set of fingerprints in the flat but been unable to identify them as the girl obviously had no previous form. If indeed they were hers.

Legrand was now at something of a dead end. Which was a very bad place to be when there was a serial killer on the loose in Paris. Although something told him the killer would not be in Paris that much longer. The only connection he had between everyone involved in this case was that all but one were British. He considered calling his ex-wife Irene – he had helped her out with a young British man she wanted followed in Paris not that long ago so she owed him a favour. However, after some thought he realised this was not something he could do remotely and not something he wanted to involve MI6 in. He would have to go himself to London – and below the radar.

Eva opened her eyes. Everything around her seemed to be moving in slow motion. Above her the man with the syringe seemed paused. Her eyes slipped up towards the blue sky. Such a bright, azure colour it made her heart sing. She found such peace in nature – if there was a god she had always felt the natural world was where she would find evidence of him or her. She took one last look at the strip of blue above her, closed her eyes once again and inhaled the rich scent of the wet leaves and the woody surroundings of the little clearing in the park. As she began to exhale, time sped up once again.

She opened her eyes. The syringe was jammed.

She saw the flicker of panic in the eyes of the man above her. She looked past him to the medical box just out of reach where the second syringe lay. He couldn't reach it without releasing her.

He threw the first useless syringe to one side, stood up and grabbed the front of Eva's jacket, dragging her towards where the medical box lay. As she stumbled after him, one of her ankles came loose from the masking tape.

She pushed herself to her feet and then she tripped him with her numb leg, swinging it into his path. The man fell face down onto the floor next to the medical box. Eva threw herself across his back, reached across him with her bound hands and pulled the second syringe free from the felt fabric lining. She stabbed it into the back of his neck and drove the plunger home.

For several seconds neither moved. Then, as she felt the man below her try to turn over, Eva pushed herself to her feet and limped away, backing up against the hedge behind her.

Slowly, the man on the floor pushed himself to his knees. He looked at her and then back at the empty syringe and then he felt the point on the back of his neck where she had injected him. He seemed as if he might make a grab for her and then suddenly his eyes widened and his body jerked forward. He took a large gulp of air but struggled to do so; then he tried to take another.

Eva took two paces backwards, watching in horrified fascination.

The man was still trying to suck air into his chest but he couldn't. Eva could hear a soft rattling coming from him each time he tried.

Suddenly, he began choking. He pulled off the balaclava to reveal a painfully young face. His hands were at his chest above his heart; he stared at her, eyes wide, his mouth working as he tried desperately to breathe. Then he collapsed to the floor, first to his hands and knees and then onto his back.

Eva felt as if she should help this man, but she couldn't move. She was acutely aware that had the first syringe not jammed that would have been her.

The man on the floor began groaning. He was twisting his body unnaturally, flailing on the floor, his hands clutching and clawing at his chest and throat, a look of sheer terror on his face. Then suddenly he stopped moving. His body remained rigid, arms clasped at his throat. Eva watched the gradual rise and fall of his chest as the movement became less until it stopped completely. He lay there, eyes wide, utterly still.

Eva blinked and looked around her.

She stood for several seconds and then her brain roared into action.
Move
.

With adrenaline still surging in her veins, and aware that at any minute the other men could return, Eva pulled her wrists apart and tore the tape binding them. She ripped the masking tape from her face as she stumbled slightly. She felt like a newborn deer, her balance was shot and the adrenaline in her system made her head spin.

She forced her breathing to slow and tried to empty her mind of all the panicky thoughts so she could think straight and then began working some feeling back into her numb leg.

When she could walk properly again, Eva took a few steps across the small space, back to the opening into the park itself. Her heart was beating like a drum in her ears. Slowly, she looked around the side of the hedge.

Leon seemed to be out cold, lying only a few feet away on his back, hands and feet unbound. Kneeling beside him was a man who looked just like the others she had seen earlier in the park. Eva's eyes widened in surprise. An unlikely knight in shining armour. Next to him lay one of the men in balaclavas, a bright red gash across his neck where his head covering had been lifted and his throat cut. There was no sign of the third masked man.

Looking at the scene Eva couldn't work out what was going on. Was the hooded man helping Leon? She glanced around the rest of the park but it was completely empty. Not a witness in sight. Her attention was drawn back to Leon as he apparently began to come around. He did not look surprised to see the man leaning over him. They exchanged a few words and then the man stood up. He walked over to the dead body, removed the balaclava, checked the pockets and then rolled the corpse at speed into a huge pile of raked leaves, covering it completely. Then he quickly walked off in the other direction as Leon sat on the ground, rubbing his head.

Eva pulled herself back behind the hedge and shut her eyes. She took a deep breath and when her eyes opened again her gaze fell on the still-full jammed syringe. She picked it up, broke the needle off, tore the felt from the inside of the medical case and wrapped it around the vial before shoving it into her bag as she retrieved it from the floor. Then she ran around the side of the hedge towards Leon. He looked up immediately.