The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (37 page)

"In twenty-four hours Rosenthal could have found him and killed him." Helena seemed to find some delight in locating a potential drawback.

Eisenmenger sucked in air, then abruptly stood up. "It's not a bad backstop, but I think we've got to work out where he's gone without relying on looking for any ripples on the surface that he might make."

He held out his hand to help Helena up. Beverley stayed sitting. She asked, "So what happens now?"

Eisenmenger didn't seem to hear; he was already heading for the door. Behind him, Helena said, "We'll let you know."

*

Hartmann's mood as he returned home was still unfamiliar to him. Elation. Even the syllables of the word were foreign in his mind, their coincidence producing a strange, but not unpleasant noise. For two days now he had been happy, had constantly repeated this single, simple collision of sounds.

Elation.

He knew that it was one of those few moments in life when happiness was all there was, all that there needed to be, when no outside force or event could spoil his world. He even felt good about Annette, about the children, about his life as a whole.

But he was wrong …

The police car parked in the road outside was of interest, but not sinister. Even the presence of his father-in-law's rather stately car did not trouble him, so happy was he. He guessed that they might be related.

As soon as the door closed behind him, a small face appeared from the relative gloom of the first-floor landing. "Daddy?"

He perhaps should have known something was wrong then, but the unaccustomed inebriation of elation dulled his perception. "What is it, Jay? Why aren't you in bed?"

Jay had been crying. He came down the stairs holding on with a hand held high to touch the banister rail. As he came nearer and into brighter light, Hartmann saw that not only had he been crying, but he was also terrified. Something changed in Hartmann's world then.

"What's wrong, Jay? Has something happened? Is it your sister? Or Mummy?"

The little boy looked at him and said, "Mummy's been upset. She's been crying."

"Why? What's happened?"

If Jay knew, he didn't have the chance to answer, for it was then that the doors to the sitting room opened and Piers Brown-Sequard stood looking out at him. His gaze fell first upon Hartmann, then flicked down to Jay. Hartmann saw in that single instant such loathing, such anger, and yet such triumph, that he knew at once. The truth of what had happened, of his situation and of his future where all there in that single glance. He was paralyzed by the realization, the transition from what he had thought to what he now knew.

"Go back to bed, Jake." Brown-Sequard smiled at the boy who looked in turn at Hartmann, but Hartmann was no longer interested in anything his son might have to give or need.

"Go on, Jake," urged his grandfather. "I'll be up in a moment."

He was reluctantly obeyed. Once the small boy had gone from sight, another glance fell across Hartmann, then Brown-Sequard turned and went back into the sitting room.

It was some minutes before Hartmann joined him. His footsteps felt plumbic.

Brown-Sequard was standing before the fireplace. In his hand was a glass of brandy; on the coffee table was a videotape. Hartmann felt that he was close to fainting. His respirations were as noisy as a scuba diver's, his heart no longer beating but striking his chest wall, slapping it with vicious intent. He said nothing, just standing there, a little away from the tape.

Brown-Sequard again cast a malevolent gaze upon him. "You know what that is?" It was even there in his words, this loathing, as if there so much bile inside him it slipped out whenever it could, grasping any opportunity to escape.

Hartmann looked again at the tape. He said nothing, though. Words seemed now to be treacherous.

"It came late this afternoon.
Special
Delivery
!" Brown-Sequard snarled the last two words, as if this were the final, crowning insult. "One to me, one to Annette."

Hartmann continued to stare at the black, plastic video cassette. Brown-Sequard was finding eloquence as he went on, the sentences following one another in a rather less staccato manner. "I played it fairly quickly. Thought it was odd, but obviously had to play it. I played it and … " He paused for some hyperventilation, then, "I rang Annette at once, but I was too late. She had already played it … "

Suddenly Brown-Sequard seemed to experience a form of brief seizure, for his words were interrupted and he twitched. Then he took four steps around the coffee table, came up to Hartmann (still addressing the tape with a fixed gaze) and brought his fist up in a poor, ill co-ordinated right hook. He was quite a small man, and not a boxer. The blow hurt Hartmann, but it did little more than cause his head to move slightly, then to look blankly at his father-in-law.

Brown-Sequard was off on a different course now. Gone was explanation, replaced by condemnation. "You unspeakable little shit! You disgusting, perverted piece of excrement! How dare you? How dare you do those things? How dare you betray Annette and her children?"

He was loading up some more ammunition — more unanswerable questions and pithy adjectives — when at last Hartmann found voice. "Where is she? Where is Annette?" His voice was plaintive.

Brown-Sequard's reply was poison-tipped with contempt. "That is nothing to do with you. You are never going to see her again. You are never going to see the children again. You will leave this house — her house — tonight, and you will not return."

Hartmann said, "I'd like to see her. Try to explain … "

Brown-Sequard was already shaking his head, a smile on his face that was far more menacing than a frown would have been. "No. You will leave now."

Hartmann awoke. "You can't do that … "

"Yes. I can. The police car outside is here at my request. They will escort you out if you refuse to go voluntarily."

"But that's not legal … "

"By tomorrow lunchtime there will be a court order forbidding you from approaching my daughter or her children. Divorce on the grounds of adultery will also have been commenced."

Hartmann was sinking now into despair. The words, the demeanour, the tape, all combined to crush him. The shame, the horror, the fear, all these formed a luminous mass of rampaging fear in his head. Questions, too, came to plague him. Who else had received copies of the tape? His parents? The Medical School? The Royal College?

He tried once more. "Please?" It might not be too bad if he could at least salvage his marriage, if he could at least be given something to stop him drowning.

Brown-Sequard said only, "No. Get out, and don't come back."

Hartmann stood still for some seconds, his thoughts disconnected, both from each other and from action. He kept thinking that it might not be as bad as it appeared, that he might still rescue something of worth, something on which to base the rest of his life.

Then Brown-Sequard said, "I have written to the General Medical Council and I will be passing the tape to the police."

And then he saw his future, bright and clear.

*

They went to Eisenmenger's house. It was the first time that Helena had been there. Her first thought was that it was a considerable improvement on his last domicile, her second (her last on the subject) was that she could see no proof that he had actually taken up residence. The only sign that anyone had even been present were some papers on the dining table by the small bay window. She peeked into the kitchen but again the surfaces were bare and opening the refrigerator only yielded light. At least the perfume of damp was absent.

Eisenmenger was distracted to the point of invisibility. When she offered to make him coffee she had to be satisfied with no answer for assent. When she brought it out, he was sitting at the dining table, looking at the papers, scribbling on others. She sat opposite him, peering down at the words, phrases and fragments he had written.
Where
would
he
go
?
Does
he
suspect
infection
?
Girlfriends
.
Random
?
Is
he
dead
?

Helena waited, sipping her coffee.

Eventually, a sigh signalling his return, Eisenmenger stopped staring at the white paper and looked up. He was genuinely surprised to see the coffee. "Oh. Thanks."

"Has inspiration struck?"

He frowned and shook his head. "No. Not this time." He swallowed half of the coffee. "Have you got your notes from Beverley's file?"

Helena produced them from her briefcase. "I appreciate the practicalities of the situation, but aren't you in the least disturbed by the existence of such a file? That she could amass such a document, and in only one day?"

He really wanted just to think about the case, but he could see that this was important to her. "Does it disturb me? Yes. Does it surprise me? No. The state's ability to acquire knowledge on its citizens has never been greater, but will undoubtedly become greater still."

"I'm not naive, John. I'm aware of what the security services can and do get up to in the name of 'national security,' but this is an ordinary police inspector we're talking about. She shouldn't be able to access information like that."

He couldn't stop a small smile as he asked, "Are you entirely sure that your concerns are about civil liberties in general?"

Helena was suddenly defensive. "Meaning?"

Realizing that the smile had been a mistake, Eisenmenger tried to sound conciliatory. "Perhaps the fact that the 'ordinary police inspector' is Beverley Wharton makes the situation slightly more difficult for you."

If he had thought that their recent closeness meant that he had seen the last of Helena's temper, he was now corrected. "Why shouldn't it?" she demanded. "You might have persuaded me to ally myself with that bitch for the sake of Raymond Sweet and the truth, but that doesn't mean I've forgiven her. She destroyed my step-brother, and she ruined my life at the same time. I've still to make retribution for that."

"Of course. I didn't mean … "

"You meant that I wasn't being objective. That's always your opinion. Why do you think that I can't stop my emotions from interfering with my judgement?"

"I don't … "

"Is it perhaps because I'm a woman?"

Eisenmenger felt as if he were fighting fire with paraffin. "Not at all. I just … "

"Or is it because you see me as damaged in some way? Is that it? So scarred that my whole perspective is skewed?"

Helena was working up a fair velocity as she flew down the avenue of his attitudes, real and misconceived. He tried again. "I don't think that at … "

"Don't you?" she demanded and Eisenmenger found that he had had enough. "No, I bloody don't! Now, will you stop interrupting me and listen for a change?"

It silenced her, but it did nothing for international relations. She wore a face of rapidly respiring ire. As calmly as he could he said, "I appreciate how you feel about Beverley Wharton; really, I do. One day, I will take great pleasure in helping you prove your stepbrother's innocence and her complicity, but not now. Now we have to fight Pel-Ebstein Pharmaceuticals. They are big — huge — we are small. We are infinitesimal. Without help, we don't stand a chance."

She said, "That doesn't mean I have to like it."

"I don't ask you to like it. I merely ask you to endure it, preferably in silence."

She opened her mouth but said nothing. One deep breath later she said through a grimace, "You ask a lot."

He stretched out his hand to take hers. "We have to find Carlos before Rosenthal does."

She nodded.

*

Rosenthal picked her up in a nightclub. She told him her name was Bobby and she claimed to be nineteen, but a brief perusal of her handbag when she went to the restroom just before they left told him that she was in fact seventeen. She was impressed with his car, clearly congratulating herself on a wise choice; he wondered what she would say in a few hours' time.

The flat he took her to was one of several he had access to. Its luxury found approval in Bobby. Rosenthal found some champagne in the refrigerator, poured two glasses, and settled back. Bobby, he guessed, would know what to do.

She did not disappoint.

She downed her glass of champagne (he forgave her the cavalier treatment of a fine vintage), stood up and slipped her short red dress off. It fell away as if it had rehearsed this routine a thousand times and her underwear followed obediently. Rosenthal looked her up and down, nodded, then stood. He turned and walked away from her, into the bedroom. She followed without a word.

*

They spent the rest of the evening trying to set in their minds the sequence of events. Helena said, "The Proteus project was to develop a virus that was loaded with genes that cause cancer."

They were sitting together on a small blue leather sofa. They had eaten a takeout pizza and were now drinking red wine. Eisenmenger could have been asleep.