Lethal Profit (30 page)

After several minutes had elapsed the CEO spoke. Gone were the polite tones of his cut-glass accent. All pretence at manners had vanished.

‘I should have you killed.'

‘I wouldn't do that if I were you. You're not in a position to survive if I send this information out. I could do that right now before you have time to action anything.'

‘What do you want?'

‘I just want what I have always wanted, that is all. I want my money and I want to disappear.'

By the time Leon returned to the room they were to wait in, Eva was once again composed. She was angry and uneasy but she couldn't bring herself to confront Leon. If she lost him as a collaborator at this critical moment then she would be carrying the considerable burden of everything that was going on alone. He was the closest thing she had to an ally and, even though he behaved erratically, so far he hadn't actually done anything against her interests. As far as she knew. Even so, when he walked back into the room, she couldn't stop herself from looking for some kind of indication that he wasn't who he appeared to be.

‘Mansfield isn't back yet.'

‘No.'

Eva waited to see if Leon would provide an explanation for his quick exit but he took a seat back at the table by the biscuits. ‘Why did you tell him there was more than one copy of the stick?'

Not only was there going to be no explanation for the disappearing act but there was also criticism for Eva's handling of the situation. She was about to spit out a sharp reply and then she stopped.

‘You don't trust him, do you?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Habit.'

‘Would you like to follow me please?' Before Eva could ask any more questions they were interrupted by Mansfield's assistant. Leon was clearly unnerved at her almost silent arrival.

‘We were asked to wait here,' he said, remaining at the table and meeting her glacial smile with a little Arctic charm of his own.

‘Mr Mansfield has asked me to take you downstairs whilst he finishes some business. He won't be long.'

Eva looked from Leon to the woman and then back again. Leon inclined his head slightly, sighed and then pushed himself up from his chair and began walking towards the door.

‘Are we going back down to the ground floor?' asked Eva.

‘No,' was the reply, ‘I'm to take you to the first floor. Mr Mansfield will meet you there. Shall we go?'

Eva nodded and the suited woman turned quickly out of the room with Leon behind her.

She was leading them back towards the stairs, her light, trotting footfalls in direct contrast to Leon's heavy, powerful tread. All around them the house was completely silent and still, almost as if waiting to see what would happen next.

‘I will leave you here,' she said as they reached the first floor, an altogether less comfortable environment than the plush surroundings of the third. ‘If you could just wait in that room over there, third on the left.'

‘Sure.' Eva nodded and glanced at Leon who now seemed a lot more tense than he had been up on the third floor. His violent mood swings were unnerving.

Leon stopped halfway down the hall, halting them both just outside the door they had been instructed to go through. Blinding afternoon sun was streaming through the doorway, making it impossible to see what lay on the other side.

He stood motionless, staring at the light as if waiting for something or someone to appear. When no-one did, he took a few paces in front of Eva and stepped through the gap into the light-filled door space. And then disappeared.

By the time Eva had realised the trick the brightness of the light had played on her eyes another figure was already filling the doorway. A slighter figure with quick movements who immediately reached out towards her and took a painful grip of her right arm.

Instinctively, Eva tried to wrench herself away and run in the other direction but the fingers around her arm were like a vice and she felt herself being propelled through into the larger room as if she weighed no more than a feather.

A sick feeling overwhelmed her. This had been a big mistake.

‘Miss Scott.'

Blinking at the white spots swimming in front of her eyes, Eva recognised John Mansfield's voice coming from somewhere directly in front of her. As her vision cleared she saw him sitting behind an enormous desk, a huge piece of modern art behind him and indecipherable sculptures framing the desk to the left and the right. He was smiling but the smile made Eva's skin crawl.

She found herself propelled forwards towards an uncomfortable-looking, high-backed chair where she was unceremoniously pushed down onto the cushioned seat and then lashed tight with tape to the arms. As her wrists were tied down, the smell of menthol drifted up into her nostrils. She remembered it from the park in Paris and looked up at the man fastening her to the chair. Black eyes smiled back at her.
Hello again, Eva.

A shiver travelled down her spine.

Leon was seated in a similar chair to her right where he was staring at John Mansfield. To Leon's right was a man holding a gun trained on Leon's head.

‘Administer it, Joseph,' said Mansfield, his voice shaking slightly. Eva got the impression that no matter how much he might be enjoying his powerful position, Mansfield hadn't done this before.

Her mind began to rush. ‘Administer it…'

The black-eyed man moved over to a small wooden flip-top desk in the corner of the room. The design reminded Eva of her desk at school but this one was polished and varnished until it shone in the early afternoon sun streaming in through the open windows. He opened the top of the desk and removed a small leather case of the type Eva had seen before in the park in Paris.

She started to struggle in her chair. One of the guards forced her to sit still by punching her in the side of the head and Eva groggily aimed a savage kick at any part of him near enough to reach. She heard him grunt as her heel made contact with his calf and was rewarded with another blow to the side of the skull, this one so hard that it made her head start to spin. She heard Leon protesting and then vaguely registered the sounds of a fight on the other side of the room. Then she felt a sharp pain in her right arm before the dizziness gave way to black.

Tom Chard took Legrand straight to the morgue to look at the bodies of Rob Gorben and Terry Dowler. Legrand spotted and made a note of the red mark on Dowler's right thigh, the result of a needle being inserted under the skin and a substance injected into his body. On Gorben, Legrand could find nothing. He and Chard had turned and turned the body, to the great chagrin of the pathologist who insisted that he had already done this himself and could they please not disturb the corpse, but still they had found nothing. There wasn't even anywhere the injection could have been administered without leaving an obvious mark – the man didn't have pierced ears or tattoos, the skin over his skull was smooth and they had checked every other orifice but there was no sign of anything unusual.

‘So, they both died in exactly the same way,' said Legrand as the pair sat down in a local pub with a pint as they waited for their late lunch order of ham and mustard sandwiches on white bread. Legrand looked at his watch. 3pm in London, 4pm in Paris, no wonder he was so hungry.

‘Yep,' said Chard. ‘Both had the same odd combination of diseases and that same implausible advancement of the conditions.'

‘And yet they both seem to have managed to contract whatever it was from different sources.'

‘It can't be a coincidence, there must be a link.'

‘Agreed,' said Legrand as the waitress delivered two enormous plates of triangle-cut sandwiches lined on the outside with crisps.

‘Do you think the second man ingested something?' said Chard, nodding his thanks at the waitress.

‘You saw the autopsy report, nothing in his stomach at all. He died in the morning. His wife said he skipped dinner the night before.'

‘The only other way it could have got into his system is if he absorbed it.'

‘Nothing on the skin.'

‘What about his lungs?'

‘Youngish man, non-smoker, should have been in peak condition but, according to the report, the lungs were full of scar tissue because of the fibrosis.'

‘Bad.'

‘Yes. That would have made it difficult to see if there was anything else in his lungs right?'

‘I guess so. But they must have taken a sample of the lung tissue.'

‘What if he inhaled something?' said Legrand suddenly as the thought struck him. The other man hesitated for a second and then the idea seemed to fall into place.

‘We need to speak to the pathologist again. I'll call him now, ask him to go back and check the lungs,' said Chard, retrieving his phone from his pocket and punching in a number.

Legrand took a bite of the thick sandwich and recoiled slightly at the overly soft, unfamiliar bread. He washed the mouthful down with a large gulp of the strange, bitter ale his friend liked to drink and wished he had a baguette and a cold
pression
in front of him instead.

Everything had taken a rather strange turn and he had an uneasy feeling about the way this case was going. He glanced up at the TV in the pub which was reporting the same disaster he had read about on the train on the way over – the UK being overcome by some strange algae. Given the reported scale of the problem he had been surprised to find such vague coverage in all the papers he had been able to get hold of. Legrand's mother had been a keen environmentalist and after a lifetime of lectures he knew the dangers of water pollution to countries so dependent on fresh water. Surely this strain of algae was a really big deal? But since he had arrived the situation seemed to have calmed. He had received a call confirming his return Eurostar tomorrow and there seemed to be no hint of a water shortage in this London pub.

Chard put down the phone, looking slightly aggrieved, and took a long draught of his drink.

‘What is it?'

‘I spoke to the pathologist again and he was pretty annoyed with me.'

Legrand laughed at the offended expression on Chard's face. ‘Why?'

‘He accused me of all sorts – telling him how to do his job, accusing him of not doing it properly. He is a very angry man.'

Legrand risked another bite of the sandwich, quickly followed by more beer. ‘So what did he say?'

‘He says he's already carried out a thorough inspection of the skin and there's nothing to suggest any suspicious contact with anything that could have caused the death.'

‘And the lungs?'

‘Despite the fibrosis he said he got a completely clear picture of what was in them and there was only one thing that would not normally be there.'

‘What was that?'

‘Algae spores.'

M
ANSFIELD
WAS
SURPRISED,
AND
slightly annoyed, when Joseph Smith re-entered his study. The man had no manners and simply opened the door, rather than knocking first. He shut the door carefully behind him and locked it so quietly that Mansfield didn't hear the bolt slide home.

‘Are they dispatched?'

‘I've sent them with some of my best men. We had a girl to deliver, along with a small consignment and so they have gone on one of our private scheduled flights.'

‘Girl?' Mansfield was confused.

‘Yes. She will work there for the CEO – if you know what I mean.' Joseph Smith's eyes flashed, challenging Mansfield to be outraged.

Suddenly Mansfield felt nervous. There was no reason for Smith to be telling him this. In fact, passing over such incriminating information about the CEO's business affairs would give Mansfield even more of a hold over him. Mansfield had always suspected that the CEO's organisation sat more on the dirty side of business but he had chosen to ignore it to pursue his own goal of a well-lined purse. But now Smith seemed to be feeding him a story of a ‘consignment' – drugs? – and a ‘girl' – trafficking? Was he trying to undermine the CEO, looking for another paymaster like a rat off a sinking ship?

‘Has the CEO made the payment?' Mansfield just wanted to extricate himself from this mess.

‘He said to call him.'

Irritated, Mansfield reached for the phone. He had done his part now – twice – and he expected to be paid. He was a government minister and he still held considerable power – no matter what the CEO thought, there
was
action he could take if the payment wasn't forthcoming this time.

He entered the pass code into the slim metal device and watched the screen light up. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Smith moving around the room, handling Mansfield's precious
objets d'art.
The other man stopped at the small wooden flip-top desk that had been Mansfield's school desk at Eton, which still had his initials carved into the side above the leg. On a sentimental whim Mansfield had offered the school an obscene amount of money for the desk and then later regretted it, but looking at it now he realised having it in his office was a constant reminder of what had been the happiest days of his life.

He was about to tell Smith to stop playing with it when the CEO answered the phone and all Mansfield's attention was focused on the sound of his voice.

‘Well done, John. We are most grateful.'

‘It was a pleasure.' Mansfield said, his voice hard and flat to disguise the nerves that were flaring at every ending.

‘And they are on the plane.'

‘Yes, they left with your… consignment.'

After momentary consideration, Mansfield had concluded that he had been taken somewhat into the CEO's confidence when Smith had imparted that information. He wanted somehow to convey to the CEO that, as long as he upheld his end of the bargain, knowledge he held about the CEO's business dealings would remain confidential.