(1998) Denial (56 page)

Helplessly, he watched Goel leave the room. Then he tried to move his legs apart, but they were too tightly bound, as were his hands. His thinking was becoming clearer. Amanda waking him. Angry. Desperate. Threatening.

Where was she now?

What was Terence Goel doing here in Gloria Lamark’s house?

He tried to struggle but the pain in his shoulders became worse. He bent his legs back until they touched something hard, the wall behind him. For an instant he got a purchase, a fraction of a second’s relief on his arms, then they slipped and his arms and shoulders took his full weight again with an even more agonising jerk. It was hard to breathe like this and the pain from his shoulders was making it difficult to think clearly.

A clattering sound snapped his attention to the door. A metal table on wheels was coming in through it. Someone was strapped to the table; he saw white, bloodstained trainers, blue, bloodstained jeans, a white, bloodstained T-shirt. His throat tightened. Amanda: strapped down on that trolley, cords binding her legs, midriff, arms, a breathing tube in her mouth, eyes wide open, staring at him, being pushed in by a tall figure in green surgical scrubs. And in that instant a terrible, silent scream shook every cell in his body.

Amanda. No. Amanda. Oh, God, no, no, no, no, no
.

Goel took his time, lining up the table squarely in front of him. Michael watched him, took in the tray of surgical instruments attached to the side of the table, the hideously calm way in which Goel checked Amanda’s pulse, then her blood pressure. He twisted inside at the pitiful sound of the choked groans and grunts as she tried to speak. Tried to catch her eyes to give her some reassurance that whatever nightmare they were in, somehow they would find a way out of it.

But she did not once look at him.

Dr Goel went out of the chamber, then returned carrying a large radio cassette player. He set it down on the ground, switched it on, and Michael’s voice boomed around the chamber.

‘
This is Dr Tennent speaking. Gloria, would you please give me a call as soon as you get this message. I’m afraid I upset you this morning. It might be helpful if we had a quick chat over the phone
.’

Goel pressed
STOP
and stared up at Michael. Finally, Michael connected. Now he realised who Dr Terence Goel really was. And now he understood the chilling words of Dortmund.

Avenger of Blood
.

In disbelief he stared back. Is this what it was all about? His error of judgement with Gloria Lamark?

Why was Amanda here, strapped to the trolley? There had to be something more complex going on. Was she a past girlfriend of this madman?

Thomas Lamark reached up and tore the duct tape from Michael’s mouth. It felt to Michael as if half his face had been ripped away.

‘Something you want to say, Dr Tennent?’

Screwing up his eyes from the pain, Michael gasped, ‘This has nothing to do with Amanda. Let her go.’

Staring coldly at him, Thomas said, ‘Gloria Lamark was my mother. She had beautiful breasts.’

Michael stared back at him, his wits dulled by the pain and his difficulty in breathing. He thought back to his sessions with this man in his consulting room. The deeply troubled unstable Dr Goel. Close to a breakdown. Filled with anger. A man who liked to play games. Intelligent. All the parallels. His dead wife. The dove in the cage separated from its mate. A control freak.

Fallout shelter
.

‘Terence,’ he said, ‘you should let Amanda go, please.’

Eyes flaring in anger, he said, ‘My name is
Thomas
. Don’t try to be smart.’

‘I only know you as Terence. Dr
Terence
Goel.’

‘This woman made love to you, Dr Tennent. She polluted her body with your filthy seed. She has inside her the seed of the man who murdered my mother. Were you ever breastfed, Dr Tennent?’

Michael tried to think what the best reply would be – the reply that this man wanted to hear. He hedged, ‘I believe so. I don’t remember.’

‘You’d remember. You really would remember. My mother had such very beautiful breasts. She was famous
for her looks, as I am sure you are aware. What I’m going to do, Dr Tennent, is to help you to take your mind back to your infancy. I’d like you to suck Amanda Capstick’s breasts. But you stay where you are. I’ll bring them over to you.’

Thomas Lamark picked up a scalpel, lifted the neck of Amanda’s T-shirt, then cut it open all the way down and pulled the two flaps apart, exposing Amanda’s breasts.

Amanda was writhing under her bonds.

Michael howled, ‘For God’s sake, Thomas, leave her alone!’

‘Would you like duct tape over your mouth again, Dr Tennent? Or can I rely on you to remain quiet? You must understand, my need to concentrate during surgery will be crucial to the welfare of my patient.’

Desperation corkscrewed through Michael’s utter helplessness. ‘Operate on me, Thomas,’ he gasped, imploringly. ‘Cut me to pieces, just please don’t hurt her.’

‘Don’t worry, Dr Tennent, you will get your turn. I intend to ensure you are never able to harm another patient, Dr Tennent. You have condemned me to twenty-five days of greater pain than it is possible for any human being to imagine. I’m intending to ensure that at least once, every day for the next twenty-five days, you will beg me to end your pain. And each time I will quote a line from Shakespeare’s
King Lear
to you. “The worst is not, so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’”’

He turned his attention to Amanda, who was thrashing even more desperately in her bonds, her eyes bulging in terror.

‘Now, little thing, this wriggling around is no good!’ He lifted a tiny glass vial from the instrument tray attached to the table, and held it in front of her. ‘Are you familiar with the techniques of modern anaesthesia?’

She stared at him in abject suspense.

‘We use a balance of three or four agents. One paralyses to produce complete muscle relaxation. The agent I favour is curare, an extract from a South American plant used in the tips of poison arrows – nice to be able to use natural
medicines, don’t you think? Natural curare is so much better for you than some horrible fabricated chemical concoction.’

He broke the seal on the vial, then tore a hypodermic syringe free of its pack. ‘The second agent would cause the patient loss of consciousness, but I really would not want to deprive you of consciousness today. It would be too much of a wasted opportunity – I’m sure you understand even if you do not approve. And, similarly, the third agent, which will deaden any pain, will not be needed. But a fourth agent, which is adrenaline-based, will be helpful in constricting your blood vessels, to prevent excessive blood loss – and it will help prevent against your passing out in shock.’

‘Thomas, please, listen to me,’ Michael begged. ‘Let’s talk about this.’

Without turning round, Thomas felt in his pocket for the vial of adrenaline. It wasn’t there. He rummaged around inside his scrubs, getting increasingly angry with himself.
Shit, shit, shit
.

He knew exactly what he had done. He had put the vial of adrenaline into his jacket pocket. When he had changed into his scrubs in the kitchen, he had hooked his jacket over the back of a kitchen chair.

Shit, shit, shit
.

Dr Michael Tennent was saying something to him, but he tuned the man’s voice out. He had more important things to think about right now than the whingeing psychiatrist.

Damn you, Dr Tennent, you made me forget the bloody adrenaline
!

He stormed out of the chamber.

Michael heard the footsteps receding. Then the sound of the door opening. He was staring at Amanda, and finally she was staring back at him. Anger rose through the raging storm of fear inside him. Anger at his foolishness for getting himself – both of them – into this situation.
Oh, God, why the hell hadn’t he let the police deal with this
?

‘Amanda,’ he gasped. Then his voice dried.
What could he say
? Lamark was out of the chamber. He needed these
precious moments to
think
not speak. There must be
something
he could do. He tried to drill the pain out of his mind. To clear everything out, to focus on one thing, this reality now, these few precious seconds.

Could he lure Thomas over to him, then lash out with his legs and knock him unconscious? He tried a kick now and it felt pathetic. Dangling like this he couldn’t get any kind of power into his legs. He tried to get a purchase on the wall behind him, but that barely helped. Besides, even if he succeeded and got the man in the right place, under his jaw, and knocked him out, what then?

He was hanging as helplessly as a dead chicken, the cords cutting deep into his wrists. How the hell was he going to get down even with Thomas unconscious?

There had to be another way.

He stared at Amanda again. Searching for a signal in her eyes. But all he could see in them was his own helplessness mirrored back at him.

The front doorbell rang assertively.

Thomas heard it as he hurried out through the sauna door. Then he heard it again as he reached the brick steps from the cellar gymnasium up to the kitchen.

Go to hell
.

His jacket was hanging on the back of a chair at the kitchen table. Just a few steps away. Quickly, hand into the side pocket and there was the vial of adrenaline.

My bloody memory. Forgetting the adrenaline!

The doorbell rang again. Who
was
it? They were knocking as well now, solid insistent raps with the brass knocker.

His mother hated people who rang and knocked at the same time like this.

He turned towards the door and said, quietly, ‘Do you think we’re deaf or something?’

On tiptoe down the passageway, across the slate floor, up to the spy-hole. He looked out.

No one was there.

Gone.

Relief.

He walked quickly back along the passage, but as he entered the kitchen he stopped dead in his tracks.

A man outside was looking in through the window. A tall, bald, black man in a suit.

Thomas ducked back into the passageway, everything lopsided in his brain now. Had the man seen him?

There was rapping now on the patio door. Bare knuckles on glass. Thomas stayed in the shadow of the passageway, holding his breath, not daring to move. Who was this man? How dare he come prowling around the back of the house?
Could he be from the police? Thomas tried to think this through. If he was a police officer and he had seen him, what was he going to think if he didn’t answer the door?

Was he following up from the detective this morning? Was he suspicious?

Let him in or ignore him
?

If Thomas ignored him, what would the man do? Did he have a search warrant? Would he break in? Thomas realised he would be fretting about this while he was performing his surgery. He needed a steady hand, a steady mind. Best to open the door, find out who it was, what he wanted, deal with it. If necessary, he could buy enough time to get down into the cellar and conceal the entrance to the shelter. No one would find it.

Except, he wondered, how had Dr Michael Tennent found it?

The rapping had stopped. Had the man given up and gone away? Was he prowling around the outside, trying to look in more windows? The front doorbell rang again, followed moments later by another rat-tat-tat from the knocker.

‘Coming!’ he said quietly.

Then he remembered what he was wearing. Quickly he tugged the strap of his night-vision goggles over his neck, peeled off his surgical scrubs, balled the goggles up inside them, threw them into the broom closet beneath the stairs, then hurried through into the kitchen, grabbing his jacket off the chair back and tugging it on.

Need to look respectable. Calm
!

Glenn Branson, standing with Nick Goodwin outside the front door, was certain he had seen a figure moving inside the house when he had looked through the kitchen window just now. The London police constable who picked up and followed Dr Goel’s Mondeo had called for assistance, and the house had been watched front and back for the hour and a half that it had taken Glenn and Nick Goodwin to get here. Unless Goel had made off over a garden wall, he was still in here. And if Dr Goel was in here,
Glenn wanted him to be under no illusions that if he ignored the bell the police would simply go away.

I’m missing out on one of the most beautiful evenings of the year, Dr Goel. I’ve missed out on playing with my son tonight. I’ve missed out on sitting in the garden eating a meal with my wife tonight, just so that I could have a chat with you. You are going to answer this doorbell, Dr Goel, I promise you, I’ll drive you into dementia until you do
.

He pressed the bell again. Rapped the knocker. Pressed the bell.

Suddenly, the door opened. A tall man, in a cream linen suit, beamed out at them, his face a picture of charm.

‘So sorry to keep you,’ he said, in a cultured English voice. ‘You caught me short. I was having a pee.’

The man seemed normal, relaxed, good-natured. The description from PC Tim Willis, who had stopped Dr Terence Goel’s car in Tottenham Court Road last Saturday night, was in the forefront of his mind.

‘
He was tall, about six foot six. Medium build. Slick dark hair, good-looking – very good-looking, if you know what I mean, movie star, matinée idol looks, and he had an American accent
.’

This man was about six foot six. He was of medium build. He had slick dark hair, and he was
very
good-looking, no question, but his voice was public-school English, no trace of American. Was the accent an invention – like his address in Cheltenham?

Watching him closely, Glenn asked, ‘Dr Terence Goel?’ He clocked genuine surprise in the man’s eyes.

‘
Goel
? Did you say
Goel
?’

‘Dr Terence Goel.’

The man looked too at ease to be hiding anything and yet the description was perfect in every detail – except for that accent.