Lethal Profit (25 page)

‘What happened?' she asked, coming to kneel as she reached his side.

‘I don't know. I was out cold.'

They stared at each other for several seconds and Eva debated whether or not to ask him about the ‘good Samaritan', seeing as he apparently wasn't going to mention it. She looked up at the sky; the sun was setting. There was no time.

‘Can you walk?'

‘I don't know.' He struggled to stand up but his legs gave way. He tried again and this time managed to pull himself upright. Eva half-dragged him over to the bench and forced him to sit whilst she sat next to him with her ear to his chest, listening for the sound of the death rattle.

‘What the hell are you doing?' exclaimed Leon and she heard his heartbeat start to rise, but he didn't push her head away.

His chest sounded clear.

‘Back there,' she said sitting up and indicating the hedge behind which the dead man lay. ‘They tried to inject me with something but the needle jammed. There was a second syringe and I stabbed a man with it. He died…'

She hesitated.

‘He died in such an awful way…' The man's face flashed into her mind. All of a sudden it was Jackson's face. She shook her head and banished the image.

‘How did he die?' There was an urgency to Leon's tone.

Eva ignored him and pulled her phone out of her bag, feeling the felt wrapped around the syringe brush her hand as she did so. ‘We have an hour and forty minutes to make the train.'

‘We're still going?'

‘Of course. We don't have any other option now, not after… that.'

He nodded slowly. ‘You never give up, do you?'

‘No.'

The station was a five-minute walk away so they left the car and set out on foot. Eva checked constantly for the USB stick in the pocket on the front of the right thigh of her jeans. Throughout all the drama that had unfolded since she had first put the stick in there, it had remained wedged tightly against her leg.

Once at the Gare du Nord train station, Eva left Leon sitting at a café under some escalators and went to pick up their tickets, grateful that she'd chosen not to leave her passport at the hotel. Leon kept his in the glove box of his car, which struck her as odd. But there was so much she and Leon needed to straighten out at that moment that it was just another thing to add to a list they didn't have time to go through. She bought them both strong coffees and picked up medical supplies, cleaning wipes and a hairbrush from a pharmacy inside the station. They found the public toilets on the lower ground floor and spent another five minutes making themselves look presentable before climbing the escalators up to the Eurostar departure lounge.

Their train was leaving in twenty minutes and after being rushed through the ticket barriers and English and French customs, they were funnelled straight onto the waiting train, which left the station no more than five minutes after they had boarded it.

At 5am, two buses arrived at an area twelve miles west of London and began to spew out people. The figures were clad in waterproof galoshes and raincoats, layered underneath with thick jumpers to keep out the cold of the dark November morning. The sun was not yet up and the figures huddled around the buses, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee being handed out to them from Thermos flasks. There was an air of grim determination as they stamped their feet on the frozen ground and wrapped gloved fingers around the steaming coffee to keep them warm. Five minutes after they had arrived they began distributing backpacks amongst themselves. The backpacks were the shape of a large cylinder with a hose hanging from the bottom. Each contained a barrel full of algaecide.

Silence was called and instructions were given by the group's leaders – don't touch the algae and try to keep your mouth and nose covered just in case. Several members of the group – a small Asian woman with long dark hair and a tall lanky teen among them – said they had not thought to bring face coverings. For a second the group leader hesitated and then he said, ‘Not to worry, I'm sure this stuff isn't harmful to humans.' Then the teams set off to their allocated areas.

Within an hour they had made good progress and several Environment Agency tankers had arrived to pump algaecide into the reservoirs in the area. Everything seemed to be under control. The team leader noticed with satisfaction that much of the algae was already dead.

A
S
L
EGRAND
STEPPED
THROUGH
THE
Eurostar exit at St Pancras International, he was happy to see his old friend Tom Chard waiting for him, leaning up against the glass wall of an expensive-looking supermarket.

‘Tom,' he smiled.

‘Legrand. Your message sounded urgent. Someone stolen your bicycle and onions?'

Legrand laughed at the obligatory xenophobic joke.

‘The bicycle and onions are safe. Along with the beret.'

The two men started walking towards the station exit.

‘It's good to see you. How many years has it been?'

‘I'd say five at least.'

‘Long time.'

‘Indeed, my friend. Now what is it you're here for? I take it it has nothing to do with these algae.'

‘I'm here mostly on a hunch, Tom. We had this odd case in Paris this week, a man found dead in his flat, and a kid on an estate, both apparently died of natural causes, but the pathologist has this mad theory that it's murder.'

‘How so?'

‘There are needle marks that could indicate they were injected with something he thinks may have triggered the onset of the conditions that killed them.'

‘What were the conditions?'

Legrand hesitated. ‘Well, I'm not so good with these medical terms but basically I think it's where the muscles give way and the lungs become filled with scar tissue.'

‘That sounds pretty nasty.'

Chard led Legrand out through the station exit and indicated his unmarked police car sitting in one of the taxi bays. He opened the automatic locking system and the two men climbed inside. As Chard pulled out of the station towards a flow of traffic Legrand continued.

‘I didn't believe the doctor at first of course – it all sounds a bit fantastic – but then there was another man who turned up dead with the same symptoms. On the Eurostar.'

‘Terry Dowler – that's my case.'

‘The journalist, yes. It turns out that he had a strange puncture mark too.'

Chard was silent.

‘So I'm over here to take a closer look at Dowler's body, try and trace the family of one of the victims to speak to them on an unofficial basis and see if I can't find a common link.'

Chard nodded, reached over to the glove-box and pulled out a box of cigarettes and a lighter. He rolled down his window, lit a cigarette, threw the box back in the glove compartment and slammed it shut.

‘Unfortunately, I think I may have to throw a spanner in that works,' he said, exhaling out of the window.

Legrand was surprised. And alert. ‘Oh? Why's that?'

‘Well, we've had another case; another man apparently victim of exactly the same conditions Dowler died of. Time-frame is the same, end result the same, even the look on their faces when they died is exactly the same.'

‘So what's the problem?'

‘No needle marks.'

Legrand frowned. ‘Are you sure the conditions weren't naturally occurring?'

‘One hundred per cent. The man had a horrendously expensive medical not more than six months ago and there was no sign of either disease. Apparently it would be impossible for the conditions to advance as far as death in that time.'

‘Well, are you
sure
there's no needle mark?'

Chard looked over at Legrand. ‘Trust me, mate, we've made sure.'

Legrand felt chastised. ‘What was the man's name?'

‘Rob Gorben.'

The only fares left on the Eurostar had been first-class so Leon and Eva had found themselves cocooned in the enormous seats of the luxurious carriage, being served food and drink as the train flew across the darkening French countryside. As night fell, Eva was becoming more anxious. She had spent the first half of the journey thinking about the episode at the park. It was pretty obvious that whoever had been behind it was keeping tight tabs on them and was not afraid to attack them in public. As she and Leon really had no idea as to why whoever was chasing them was trying to kill them – or what was the significance of the syringes – they were forced into drawing conclusions, a dangerously vague way to proceed. Presumably, they had become targets because of the information they held – because that would influence the outcome of something, somehow, for someone very powerful – which meant that they had no option but to race these people to the point at which they handed the information over to someone else. Although somehow she doubted that would be the end of it. They seemed to have made some very unpleasant enemies.

As they had no real idea who those enemies might be, that meant that there really wasn't anywhere that they were safe.

Eva glanced at the aisle.

Whilst standard class had been full, their part of the train was almost empty and there were at least three vacant seats behind them; still every time she heard footsteps Eva tensed and prepared to have to defend herself in some way. She took a long drink of a brandy she had ordered after they had eaten, to calm her nerves.

The more she thought about the attack at the park, the more puzzled she was about Leon's ‘good Samaritan'. He had vanished by the time she had emerged back into the park – not even walking in the other direction but completely vanished – and she still didn't understand what had happened on the other side of that hedge. One masked man had died, the other – the black-eyed man who had seemed to be in charge – had escaped. Leon had apparently not been involved in any of it.

She looked over at Leon who, unexpectedly, was fast asleep. He had gone from being alert and full of adrenaline in Paris to out cold as soon as he had eaten, which surprised Eva given the intense energy of paranoia and suspicion that seemed to drive him. His sleeping face gave nothing away.

Eva shifted in her seat. Her body ached. She felt like she needed a good long soak in a hot bath. But to be honest she was just happy to be alive. After witnessing the shocking death in the park, she knew that were it not for blind luck it could have been her lifeless on that wet ground thanks to whatever was in those syringes. Why were they being used as a weapon rather than a gun or a knife? They seemed an awkward choice for a moving victim and far less efficient than a bullet or a blade. Although whatever was in them was certainly as effective as any other murder weapon, she thought, remembering the dead man's tortured face.

Eva turned away from Leon and rested her temple against the soft, comfortable headrest of the first-class seat as a wave of tiredness swept over her.

When she awoke an hour later it was to the muted tinkling of the hostesses' trolley distributing coffee and papers. She took a deep, relieved breath and then exhaled slowly; apparently on this train at least, they could sleep safe. When the trolley arrived at her seat she asked for a black coffee and picked up a broadsheet from the pile. They were on the other side of the Channel now and couldn't be far from London. Eva checked the clock on her phone: nearly 9pm UK time, less than an hour until they arrived, and the only plan they had been able to come up with so far was contacting the woman who had broken her family apart and asking her for help. It wasn't ideal. Eva leaned back and rested her head against the soft seat and wondered how much of her suggestion to make contact with Irene Hunt was about resolving this current situation and how much was about the chance finally to confront a woman she had hated
in absentia
for more than a decade.

Across the table, Leon stretched in his seat and kicked out with one heavy boot, banging it against the table leg. She gazed again at his sleeping features. Dark hair, two-day stubble swathed around his chin and throat, a large bruise forming over his left eye and a deep graze on his right cheek. He had grey hollows under his eyes and his long, black eyelashes flickered against them as he dreamed. She looked at his muscled arms, tight stomach and thick legs; he exuded some kind of raw strength even in his sleep. It wasn't something Eva found attractive. He was an unknown quantity: a dangerous, violent unknown quantity who had already killed at least three people.

And saved her life.

The state of confusion that left her in was not one she was used to. Eva made immediate judgement calls about people and they were usually right. After that, she rarely gave anyone a second chance.

She cut short the thought and turned her attention to the papers. The algae was quickly spreading through the UK waterways. However, the front page article that covered the story seemed to conclude that, although the plants were a nuisance, they posed no real threat to the public. Was that panic control or a cover-up? Halfway through the paper she came across an article, apparently considered non-headline news, positioned between the sports section and the classifieds, linking the algae explosion with Bioavancement S.a.r.l.. Why was this not on the front page? Eva read the article and realised that it had been ‘buried'. It was a trick she recognised from her editor days. Where there was a piece that could not be removed completely from a publication but that wasn't considered newsworthy enough – or was news that someone wanted to hide – it was kept off the pages of the paper that drew the most attention. Burying the article on those dead pages meant that subconsciously the readers would give its contents short shrift. It was a clever way of making a molehill out of a mountain. Eva continued to stare at the page in front of her. Someone was controlling this situation; the power of the press was being used to great effect to ensure that the public knew nothing about who was really behind this, what was actually happening and what the consequences might be.