Mrs. John Doe (20 page)

Key. Ignition. Lights. Windshield wipers. The car was an automatic, thank God, but she reached down with her right hand for the gearshift. The big man was pounding this way, his huge arms working like pistons.
Left
hand, she commanded herself. Her left hand fumbled awkwardly down to the lever and she pushed it from
P
to
D
and slammed her right foot—
right,
not left!—down on the accelerator. The car lunged forward, directly into the back end of the SUV parked in front of her. A dull crunch. Reverse, reverse, push backward for reverse…

Another quick glance at Andy Gilbert through the row of parked cars ahead. He was three cars away now, closing in, his right hand touching his ear, his lips moving. He was speaking into a headset. Reverse—the car jerked back, away from the dented fender of the SUV, and smashed into the front bumper of the car behind her. She was thrown forward, grasping the steering wheel to avoid colliding with it. She twisted the wheel to the right and hit the accelerator again, and the Focus shot out of the space into the street. A blaring horn, the sudden shriek of brakes on wet asphalt just behind her, and the blinding glare of headlights from the bright red car she'd just cut off. More honking. She saw in the rearview mirror that a line of cars had come to a sudden stop, thanks to her. Ignoring the horns and the angry shouts, she straightened the front end of the car and pressed the accelerator again.

He'd seen what she was doing, so he was clearly planning on heading her off. He pivoted on the sidewalk and shot out between two parked cars just ahead of her, directly into her path, raising his arms in front of him.

“Stop!”
he bellowed.

Her headlights caught the look on his face, the widening of his eyes and the opening of his mouth as he realized that she was not going to obey him. She pressed down harder on the pedal, shutting her eyes and bracing for the inevitable impact. He must have tried to leap out of the way, because the thump, when it came, was on the left side of the car, not the center. Against her will, her eyes opened, and she saw. Andy Gilbert fell forward across the left side of the hood, then bounced and flew off to the side, the back of his head smashing into a window of the parked car behind him, shattering it. The Focus slid past and headed for the intersection. A red light.

Nora stomped her left foot down on the brake and skidded to a stop on the wet road just as a young woman with an umbrella stepped out in front of her. Turn signal, turn signal…there. Turn left, she instructed herself, into the left lane,
not
the right lane. The blinker blinked, the wipers swept rhythmically back and forth across the windshield, and the red car she'd nearly sideswiped came to a stop behind her. The driver, a middle-aged man, was leaning his head out his window, shouting and gesticulating at her, pointing back the way they'd come. He'd seen the collision, and he was berating her for leaving the scene of an accident.

She peered into the rearview mirror, straining to see through the rain. A large, dark figure was crumpled in the street beside the parked car some thirty yards behind her, and other pedestrians were arriving there. A gaggle of umbrellas closed in on the spot, and she heard more shouting. It had seemed so artificial to her, so choreographed, the impact and the body bouncing gracefully back into the other car, smashing the breakaway window like a stuntman in a Bruce Willis movie. It couldn't have been real, could it? She couldn't possibly have just killed a man.

The man in the red car was opening his door, preparing to get out and give her a piece of his mind. He'd make a citizen's arrest, no doubt, and she would be taken to a precinct station and charged with vehicular manslaughter, held without bail, her passport confiscated, and tomorrow afternoon Jeff would die. Her husband was alone and afraid and probably injured in some remote place, and she was his only hope of survival. No, she thought.
No!
This clown in the red car will not detain me. If I killed Andy Gilbert, so be it. I must find my husband. That's what matters. That's
all
that matters. The man was out of the car now, moving toward her driver's door, an angry scowl on his face, and now he would—

Nora didn't even think; she merely acted. She spun the wheel to the left and mashed her boot down on the accelerator. The Focus slued sideways, the tires sliding in the rain as she made the turn before the light had changed. The whine of the engine and the screech of the tires filled her ears, but they weren't as deafening to her as the pounding in her chest. She struggled to draw breath.
Go, go, go, go
. Her mind repeated the word over and over as the car shot forward and flew off down the quiet side street.

And there was Craig, caught in the headlights, standing on the sidewalk in front of the pub, staring as she bore down on him. She shuddered to a stop beside him, stalling the engine in the process. She managed to slide the gearshift into neutral before throwing herself over into the passenger seat, sobbing, feeling blindly for the seatbelt. By the time she'd strapped herself in, he was in the driver's seat and maneuvering the car forward toward the next intersection.

“What is it?” he asked, glancing over at her. “What's wrong?”

It took her a few moments of hyperventilated gasping before she could draw enough breath to speak. “I—I think I killed him.”

“What?”
he cried. “Who?”

Another gasp, another hiccup. She fought for control, but panic was setting in. “Gil—Gilbert. Andy Gilbert. I hit him with—with the car.”

Now it was Craig's turn to gasp, and he muttered a word she'd once berated Dana for using. Then he said, “Where was Andy Gilbert when you first saw him?”

“In front of your building,” she said, breathing more deeply now. “He was waiting there for you. He must have killed Bill and Viv, and your friend Wendy. He saw me when I got in the car, and he—he ran right out in front of me. I knocked him down, and the man in the car behind me started to—”

As if on cue, a loud honking began behind them. Nora turned in her seat and peered through the rain at two bright headlights. Her eyes adjusted to the glare, and she saw a red car, just like…

“Oh God, that's him!” she cried. “That's the man who was behind me! He's following us!”

Craig glanced briefly in the rearview mirror. Very briefly.

“Hang on,” he said, and they sped through an intersection just as the lights changed. A late pedestrian, a tall young man, cried out and leaped for the curb as they flew past him. The squeal of tires behind them told her that the red car had been caught by the light, and the civic-minded busybody—unlike Craig—was obeying the traffic laws.

Craig turned the car into another wide street, then another. She had no idea where they were; they might be heading north now, but she wasn't sure. No, there was Hyde Park again. East—they were traveling east. She fell back against the seat and shut her eyes, content to let him steer them out of this, and concentrated on breathing evenly once more. Bright lights in the rain: Piccadilly? Oxford? One of the circuses flew by, then more side streets. She knew the East End of London even less than the western sections they'd just fled. She had vague memories of docks and Whitechapel and long lines of seedy rowhouses and very little else.

“Where are we going?” she finally ventured.

Craig didn't remove his gaze from the rainy road ahead. “Somewhere safe,” he said and left it at that.

She nodded, saying nothing, and leaned back again. The night was catching up with her: the shocks, the heartbreak, the near-constant running. And now she'd killed a man—a murderer, perhaps, but nevertheless, another human being. The enormity of it pressed in on her, shutting down her senses. Despite her best efforts to remain alert, she drifted away, out of the rain and the death and the horror into soothing oblivion.

She woke in darkness, and her first instinct was to panic. She sat up in the car seat, blinking around, aware that they were stopped and the driver's seat beside her was empty. She was alone in the car. Beyond the windshield and side windows, she could see nothing: It was pitch black, everywhere.

A thrill of terror rose up in her, only to be quelled a moment later. She heard a rhythmic scraping sound from behind the car, and she felt a slight vibration. She twisted around in the seat to see a small light bobbing up and down just behind the rear window, and she could just make out the dim glow of Craig's face. He was holding a penlight in his mouth while he did something with his hands.

Nora yanked off her seatbelt and got out of the car, nearly colliding with the side of another vehicle parked beside it, a low-slung sports car. She blinked in the gloom, taking in the dark shapes of other cars in a line beyond the one in front of her. They were parked in a garage, the sort she'd seen on plenty of London side streets: long, low buildings that accommodated anywhere from three to ten cars in a row, each with its own door. Perhaps they were in a mews or a gated, private street. Wherever they were, it was very quiet. She couldn't hear a sound of traffic or people, any life at all, beyond the walls and doors that surrounded them.

Craig took the penlight out of his mouth. “Sorry if I woke you,” he said, rising from his kneeling position behind the car. He switched the light off, plunging them into total darkness.

Nora blinked. “Where are we?”

“Just a stop,” he said, joining her at the side of the car. “A necessary pit stop. This Nissan”—he gestured at the sports car—“belongs to someone I know. I'm borrowing her number plates for a bit. She's in Australia at the moment; she won't miss them. But that man back there probably wrote down our number, so…”

Nora's eyes were adjusting to the dark, and now she saw the flat metal objects in his hands. He'd switched the Focus's license plates for the ones from the Nissan.

“She,” Nora said. “Let me guess: You mentioned two girlfriends, and this is the other one, right?”

He went over and crouched down, grasping the handle to raise the garage door behind the Focus. “Aye, Sandra. She's a flight attendant, and she's off in Sydney today. I sometimes use this parking space next to hers when I'm, um, visiting her. I wish we could stay here—her place is just nearby—but her flatmate is home, far as I know, and she's probably heard the news by now. It wouldn't do. We'd best get out of town.”

He slid the door up and headed for the car. Nora waited while he backed out onto the lane and then followed him outside, pulling down the door before rejoining him in the car. She brushed the raindrops from her hair and face as they drove out of the lane onto a tree-lined city street.

The clock on the dash read 11:03. She'd only slept for a few minutes, and now she realized how weary she was. Her anxiety, her constant need to find Jeff as the hours ticked down, had totally worn her out, and she hadn't eaten since—when? She couldn't remember. Oh yes, breakfast at the Byron Hotel. Coffee and a cookie at Jeff's place. Then she'd had those gin martinis at Vivian's and thrown up everything in her stomach. A glass of brandy and half a cup of tea at the pub; the shortbread had gone untouched with the jarring news on the television and their quick getaway. She was tired and hungry, and she'd killed a man, and she was sick with worry. Three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Sixteen hours…

As though reading her thoughts, Craig said, “We can't do anything for Mr. Baron at the moment, and we won't be able to do anything, period, if we don't eat something and sleep for a while. I know a place, an inn off the motorway not far from London. It's what you Americans would call a ‘no-tell motel,' and thanks for not asking how I'm acquainted with it. But they take cash and ask no questions, and there's a lay-by just down the way. We'll get food there and take it to the room. Then you can sleep and I can make some calls.”

“Calls?”

“A colleague of Mr. Howard's, someone he trusts.
Trusted
. God, I can't believe what's happened; I can't seem to get my mind around it. I can't believe Mr. Howard is— Well, anyway, I placed a call while you were dozing, and they might have some answers for me by the time we get where we're going. They're handling things at the house in St. John's Wood.”

Nora was about to ask what that meant, what exactly was being
handled,
but another wave of weariness washed over her. Her head fell back against the seat, and she drifted off again, the steady hum of the tires on the wet road lulling her back into somnolence.

The sound of the car door closing woke her this time, and she sat up and blinked around. The clock on the dash now read 12:11. The rain had let up, at least momentarily. They were stopped in a large parking lot, and Craig was disappearing inside a brightly lit building ahead of her. She looked around the lot until she found the big sign near the motorway behind her:
R
OAD
C
HEF.

While she waited, she found the compact in her bag and studied her face, expecting what Jeff always called
the cat's breakfast.
Instead, she marveled again at the fact that the bizarre events of the past few days didn't seem to be taking a particular toll on her looks. The woman in the compact mirror appeared to be as she always was: composed, sedate, almost serene. Tired, definitely, but not haggard. The actress was still onstage, apparently, concealing her inner torment beneath a placid exterior. She smiled grimly to herself, thinking, Once a trouper, always a trouper.

Craig came back with two bags and placed them on the backseat before getting in and driving back out onto the motorway. The scent of fresh coffee filled the car, making her mouth water in anticipation. Minutes later, they left the road again, this time into the lot of a long, shabby-looking, one-story block of a building with pink walls and green doors. The sign by the road had the name
O
ASIS,
spelled out in pink letters beside a green palm tree. A dozen rooms but only two cars in the lot—three, now that the Focus had arrived. Craig had chosen well; they were guaranteed privacy here.

She waited outside while Craig went into the glass-fronted office at one end. The old man at the desk was asleep, she noticed, but he stirred himself and handed over a key for cash without even looking up at his guest. Then he went back to sleep.

Room 4 was surprisingly clean and tidy, with a big bed, an armchair, a table with two chairs, and a tiny bathroom with a shower. They sat at the table, and Craig proceeded to lay out roast beef and chicken sandwiches, potato chips, bottled water, a huge can of Foster's lager, two coffees, and two Cadbury fruit-and-nut bars. They fell on the meal without a word, she taking the water and he the beer. All the food disappeared, and they were on the coffee and chocolate bars when he finally spoke.

“Okay, let me call London, and then I want you to tell me everything you heard in the park again.”

She nodded, picked up her bag, and went into the bathroom. The facilities here were as clean as the room, she was glad to note. She brushed her teeth and washed her face, frowning at her reflection as she recalled her similar actions in Vivian's upstairs bathroom four hours ago. When she came back out into the room, Craig was just ending his call. He pocketed the phone and reached for his coffee.

“The house is secure,” he said. “The agency sent people there, and the police have been kept out of it. The woman from the grocer's was told that the dinner was canceled and the cream wasn't needed. Mr. and Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Bellini have been taken to the morgue. There's still a call out for me, but I'm not a suspect; the police just want to question me. They know I was in the takeaway at the crucial time, and someone has come forward who saw a large black man running from my building—that would be our friend Andy Gilbert, who's in the hospital with a head concussion and broken ribs. They're at his bedside, waiting to arrest him. He's unconscious but expected to make a full recovery. He'll probably wake up in Dartmoor, but that's his lookout.”

“Oh, thank God!” Nora cried. “But can't they force him to wake up? Drugs or electrodes or whatever? It may be illegal, but I don't care!
That man knows where Jeff is!
”

Craig didn't seem to be at all disturbed by her sudden violent outburst, but he was definitely more realistic about their predicament. “No, Nora. In his condition, any of those things could kill him sooner than he could tell us anything. As little use as he is at the moment, he'd be a lot less useful if he were to die.”

She didn't like admitting defeat, but what was left of her common sense told her that he was right, and it was galling.

“I suppose,” she muttered at last. “I guess we'll just have to concentrate on the
good
news.”

He nodded. “Yes, the good news is, you didn't kill anyone and I'm not a murder suspect. But the bad news is, we can't question Andy Gilbert, and we still haven't found the Frenchman and his henchmen. Hey, that's pretty good—the Frenchman and his henchmen! I wish I felt like laughing. So, what do you remember from the park? What, exactly, did Andy and this Yussuf character say?”

Nora was still recovering, torn between her relief that Andy Gilbert was alive and her frustration that he was unable to communicate, and it took a few moments for her to organize her thoughts. She repeated the conversation on the park bench as best she could, and he listened intently.

“Okay,” he said when she was finished. “I agree with you; it sounds like Mr. Baron—
Jeff
—is alive. They were talking about him in the present tense. That's good, but I'm damned if I know what the rest of it could mean, Copperfield and Laura. The only Copperfield I ever heard of is in the Dickens story, and I don't know anyone named Laura.”

“That's what Bill said,” Nora told him, wincing at the memory of the house in St. John's Wood. She was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of futility. She slumped over the table, shutting her tired eyes. “What can we do? We're no closer to a solution than—”

“You get some sleep, Nora,” he said. “Just for a while. I'll think of something, don't you worry.”

She nodded and went over to the bed. She sat on it, removing her boots.

“Craig,” she said, “where do we go from here? Back to London? If the police aren't looking for you anymore—”

“No,” he said, “we're going to continue heading east. Mr. Baron was taken from King's Lynn train station, and I don't think they'd chance taking him too far. He's probably being held somewhere near there. The Frenchman must be holed up there too. Where else in England would he have gone? And Nassim Gamal and the man and woman who arrived from wherever—”

Nora had to think a moment. “Libya.”

“—Libya. All these people are meeting up someplace, and that place is most likely where they're holding Mr. Baron. In the morning, you and I are going to Norfolk. My people in London are calling me back with the address of Mr. Howard's house there, and I figure it's the best place to start looking.”

Nora took off her jacket and lay down on the bed. Staring up at the ceiling, she said, “We only have a few hours. Three o'clock tomorrow afternoon…”

“Yes, but now we have something we didn't have before. We have Mr. Howard's entire agency. They're all looking for Maurice Dolin, and Mr. Howard's death has convinced them that Dolin is involved in the arms deal. Our work is finally being acknowledged by the brass.
More
than acknowledged: They've joined us in it. By noon tomorrow, Norfolk will be swarming with field agents. All roads and airports will be monitored, and all big cars and lorries will be stopped and inspected. Dolin and his friends won't be able to go anywhere. Rest now, Nora. I have a good feeling about this.”

Nora nodded and shut her eyes. The pillow was soft beneath her head. Her last thought before sleep overcame her was that finding Dolin and the weapons was all well and good, but it wouldn't necessarily save her husband…

She was awakened a moment later, or so she thought. Craig was gently shaking her and calling her name. She sat up on the bed, instantly alert, surprised to see sunlight streaming in through the curtains at the window.

“What?” she gasped. “What time is it?”

“Get up, Nora. It's 9:15, time to hit the road.”

She looked up at him, at his beaming face, and felt a glimmer of hope. “What's happened?”

In answer, he reached for her hand and pulled her up from the bed. She stood in her stockinged feet, blinking at him as he held up a notepad before her face. Three words were written there in block letters. The first two words were
COWPER FIELD
.

“What's this?” she asked.

Craig was grinning in triumph. “The head office in London called me back just now, and I wrote down what they told me. They were looking for a
Copperfield
in the Norfolk area, and they found it. A small private airfield near Titchwell Marsh, you know, the bird reserve. Not Copperfield—
Cowper
Field!”

Nora nodded, then lowered her gaze to the third word:
LAURELS
. She stared. “Laurels? What's Laurels?”

Craig Elder's grin grew even wider. “That's where we're going. Not Laura's—
Laurels
! It's the name of Mr. Howard's country house!”

Nora didn't even bother to put on her boots. Snatching them up from the floor, she grabbed her coat and bag and marched to the door, with Craig right behind her.