(1998) Denial (57 page)

‘I’m sorry, no, the name Terence Goel means nothing to me. I’m afraid I can’t help you.’ He took a step back.

To halt him, Glenn held up his warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Constable Branson from Sussex Police. This is PC Goodwin.’

Goodwin produced his warrant card and held it up.

Eyes scanning the body language of the man’s hands for a brief instant – they were relaxed, gave nothing away – then back up to his face, Glenn said, ‘A Ford Mondeo motor car registered in the name of Dr Terence Goel was seen entering the garage at the rear of these premises, at approximately five past six this evening.’

Still totally at ease, the man said, ‘Ah. My mother let the garage. This must be the tenant.’

‘Dr Goel is your tenant?’

‘My mother’s. I really wouldn’t know the name. I’m just keeping an eye on the house. You know what it’s like when a celebrity dies – all the ghouls who want to break in and steal souvenirs.’ He stared hard at Glenn, as if for confirmation.

‘I can imagine.’

‘I haven’t been able to bring myself to go through her papers yet. She died three weeks ago – Gloria Lamark, the actress, you would have heard the news.’

‘Yes. I’m very sorry.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re Gloria Lamark’s son?’

‘Yes, I’m Thomas Lamark.’

‘I was a fan of hers.’

His face lit up. ‘You were?’

‘She was a truly wonderful actress. She was in some of my all-time favourite films.’

Almost bursting with excitement, Thomas said, ‘Which ones?’

‘
Wings of the Wild
and
Paris Romance
. I’ve seen them both several times.’

‘
Wings of the Wild
? You really like that?’

‘Uh-huh. That scene when Ben Gazzara’s out on the wing of the plane with the gun, and she’s flying it and trying to knock him off under the bridge – that’s one of the greatest scenes in cinema, I think.’

‘Me too,’ Thomas said. This was good, he liked this man. He wished he could spend time with him talking about the films, but this was not the moment.

‘Mr Lamark, these papers of your mother’s, do you have
them in the house? The ones that might show the name of the tenant?’

Careful
.

This man was pleasant but he had a quiet persistence that made Thomas uneasy. He needed to think this through.

‘I – yes – possibly.’

‘Would you mind taking a look while we wait?’

Thomas wanted to say a firm no. But then the detective added, ‘I’ve seen every single film your mother has been in.’

There was such sincerity in the detective’s face that Thomas was elated. ‘I can’t understand why she never won an Oscar.’

‘Me neither. Any chance you could take a quick look for those papers?’

‘Of course, come in.’

Thomas cursed himself. This was stupid. Dangerous. He should have told them it was inconvenient, to come back another time. Yet, perhaps, if he could keep up this pretence – this masterstroke, his mother’s tenant – maybe he could buy some time. There was nothing in this house to link him to Dr Goel. Even the mobile phone was in the car. The garage was clear. Dr Goel’s Mondeo and Dr Goel’s white van. All traces of the Alfa gone now.

If he could just remain calm and convincing, he would fool the detective. Fool him enough to get rid of him for now – and that was all he needed. The future would take care of itself.

He stepped back, closed the front door behind the police officers and watched the detective immediately walk over to the painting of his mother stepping out of the limousine.

‘The royal premiere of
The Widow of Monaco
,’ Thomas said proudly.

‘She was an incredibly beautiful woman,’ Glenn said. It felt strange to have been in the homes of two of his idols and within such a short space of each other. And it felt strange also, that Cora Burstridge, who had been so much bigger and more enduring a star, should have lived in a far less grand home than Gloria Lamark.

This man was strange, too. His mother had died three weeks ago, yet he seemed as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Was this English accent an act?

Thomas ushered the policemen into the drawing room. He was picking up bad vibes from the detective now, he could tell that he was suspicious.
Get them out of the house
.

Or kill them
?

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Thomas said. ‘I’ll go and have a look in her files.’

Glenn, standing in front of one of the dozens of framed photographs on the wall, watched Thomas Lamark leave the room. He listened to the tramp of his feet receding up the stairs, all his instincts telling him he should not let this man out of his sight. Then he silently signalled to his colleague to stay down here.

In his den Thomas was losing his calm. He pulled open a drawer, rummaged around in it, slammed it shut, loudly, so the detective would hear him downstairs, would know that he was looking. He opened another drawer, rummaged in that, trying hard to think now of something convincing to say.

He slammed the drawer shut.

He opened a third drawer, then, from the corner of his eye, saw a shadow. It was the detective, standing outside his den; there was an expression on his face that Thomas did not trust.

‘Beautiful house,’ Glenn Branson said.

‘I’m having a problem,’ Thomas said. ‘I cannot find –’

He was cut short by a sharp crackle, followed by the sound of Dr Michael Tennent’s gasping voice.

‘Amanda – can you move? Can you move anything at all?’

Their eyes sprang towards each other and locked for one fleeting second, before Thomas lunged across the room and snapped off the loudspeaker. Turning back to the detective, he said, with a broad, edgy smile, ‘The radio – I – was listening to a play –’

But Glenn barely heard him. He was staring at something he had just noticed. A tiny rip, no more than half an inch long, on the right hand shoulder of Thomas Lamark’s jacket. His mind hurtled straight into Cora Burstridge’s loft. The strips of cream thread hanging there, high up, caught on a nail that was sticking out of a rafter.

The same cream; the same length.

Glenn glanced away, but not quickly enough. The man had noticed. Their eyes locked again and this time the man’s expression was that of a cornered animal.

Glenn’s brain was spinning with several different thoughts simultaneously.
Amanda
. The name of the woman who had gone missing this week. The name Simon Roebuck had said last night in the pub.

And today Simon Roebuck was dead.

The terrible bitterness between Gloria Lamark and Cora Burstridge. How much did Thomas Lamark share in this? Enough to go and gloat at the crematorium? Enough to have killed Cora Burstridge?

‘
Amanda – can you move? Can you move anything at all
?’

And what play? It was a quarter past seven. Radio 4 was the channel for plays and
The Archers
was on now.

What the hell was going on here?

A voice was screaming in Glenn’s head to arrest this man. But on what charge?

The fist came like a missile from the dark, powering into Glenn’s face so fast that it wasn’t until he was falling back against the door jamb that he even realised he’d been hit. He crashed down onto the floor, dazed and disoriented as if he had just dived into a murky pool and was still somewhere underwater.

A shadow passed over him; he reached up and grabbed, instinctively, felt something hard, shoe leather; holding on with all his old club brawl self-preservation, not sure what he had hold of, but it felt like a leg, and he pulled hard, wrenching it sideways at the same time. The floor shook with a crash and now he was up on his knees. Groggily, he saw Thomas Lamark pulling himself up from the landing floor. As Glenn stood, Lamark launched himself at him; he
felt a winding blow in his belly, then another stupefying punch in his jaw and he was jerking up in the air, and falling over backwards.

He crashed to the floor with a jarring, winding thump; he lay for a few seconds, instincts screaming at him to keep moving. Somehow he found the energy to roll, then he got up on his hands, ready to turn, to dodge, looking for the enemy, trying to work out where he was coming from next, how to get an advantage. But Thomas Lamark had disappeared.

He staggered to his feet, pressed a hand to his face – it felt like half his jaw had been knocked off – then looked warily out through the doorway into the landing. Where the hell was the man?

Nick Goodwin came pounding up the stairs.

Glenn stepped warily out onto the landing, heart thudding, listening hard. There were half a dozen doors, all shut; Lamark could be behind any of them. Or have gone up or downstairs. Was he making a run for it?

One floor up in his mother’s bedroom, Thomas rummaged through piles of her silk scarves in a drawer. He
knew
it was somewhere here, in this drawer, where she always used to keep it, permanently loaded, for Armageddon. Then he found it, carefully wrapped inside a Cornelia James silk square. Just as heavy as he had always remembered.

She had smuggled the gun back from America and had shown it to him several times when he had been a child, taught him how to take the safety catch off, how to aim it. She said that when nuclear war broke out they might need this gun to stop other people getting into their shelter.

He was going to use it now to stop the policemen getting into the shelter.

‘Did you see him?’ Glenn asked.

Goodwin shook his head.

‘Cover the back of the house – I’ll take the front.’ Glenn reached for his personal radio, and was about to press
TRANSMIT
, when there was a sharp crackle like an insect buzzing past him, a blast of air against his ear, then a startled look on Goodwin’s face, his eyes
bulging, his hair lifting up like a toupee, as a bullet tore out of his temple. A shower of blood and bone splinters sprayed hard in Glenn’s face, stinging his cheeks and eyes like grit, accompanied almost instantaneously by a throbbing Shockwave and a deafening bang.

He dived onto the floor and rolled, and a chunk of polished oak board exploded inches in front of his face. As he rolled again he saw Lamark above and flame burst out of the muzzle of the gun he was holding. The next instant he was hurtled backwards by a thump in his chest like a massive kick.

He’d been shot, too, he realised, running on autopilot now. There was no pain. He just knew he had to get off this landing. Goodwin was down, dead, oh Christ, the poor bastard was dead. He saw another flash from the muzzle as he threw himself headfirst down the staircase, curling into a ball, head buried in his arms, thumping down the treads. He heard another bang as he rolled. Then he was at the bottom.

Still balled, he rolled twice along the floor, scrambled to his legs without looking up or behind him and ran forward, into a passageway, through it, along into a kitchen. Patio doors at the far end. He ran at them, tried to open them; they were locked, with the key removed.

Panicking now, he charged the glass with his shoulders, and bounced off it. Toughened glass; he wouldn’t be able to throw a damned chair through it. He looked around, desperately, for a weapon or a shield. Then he could see Lamark lumbering down the passage. He saw the open door that went somewhere internally, probably to a cellar, didn’t like it, but had no choice. He upended the kitchen table, pushing it in front of him, like a shield, ducked down behind it, then dived through the door and slammed it shut behind him, just as the gun fired again.

No damn key on this side.

He launched himself down the brick steps into the gymnasium. Running across it, towards the only solid
structure, the sauna, he scanned the keep-fit equipment looking for something to get behind. Another bang and a hole ripped in the green carpet right in front of him. He threw himself to the ground, praying silently, curled into a ball again, crashed in through the open door of the sauna, pulled it shut behind him, felt a hammer blow on it and saw wood splinter inwards, stinging shards striking him in the face and body.

Going to die in a goddamn sauna. Oh, God, no
.

Sammy’s face flashed in his eyes. Then Ari’s.

Now he saw the blood all over his chest. But also he saw the hole in the floor, the steps spiralling down. Horribly aware that he was trapping himself, he found the strength to propel himself forward and down them.

Panting hard at the bottom, gulping air, he stared, in near blind panic, through the open door into the empty chamber ahead, and at the second open door on the far side that looked as if it led through into another. What was this place? Where the hell could he hide? He looked up, fearfully, expecting to hear the clatter of footsteps at any second, but instead there was silence.

He waited, watching for a shadow, in case Lamark was tiptoeing down. But nothing moved.

Glancing behind him, he wondered if there was another entrance to this place – and if so, another exit. With trembling fingers, he clicked on his radio but all he could hear was a solid crackle of static. No reception. He looked down at his chest again. Nick’s startled expression flashed in front of him. The bullet tearing out of his temple. He was in shock; had to pull himself together

Not going to die down here, no goddamn way. I joined the police force to make you proud of me, Sammy. I didn’t join it to bleed to death in a concrete vault
.

He took a step back, eyes locked on the spiral staircase. Then another step. Another.

Inside the chamber now, staring at the massive door. Could he lock it from this side?

If he could buy time. The other police officers out on the street watching this place would get concerned when they
didn’t hear from him. All he had to do was sit tight. Wouldn’t they have heard the gunshots – or were they too far away?

Help would come.

It took him all his strength to heave the door shut. Then he looked for bolts. He could see bolt holes, clearly drilled, top and bottom. But the bolts had been removed – and, from the freshness of the marks showing their positions, they had been removed recently.

Christ. His weight against Lamark’s. Lamark was a huge, powerful guy. Glenn looked down at his chest; his entire shirt front was sopping wet with blood, and he was wheezing horribly. And he could feel the pain, too, now; a fierce, intense pain, a blowtorch blazing inside his chest. He pressed all the weight he could against the door, not daring to leave it and risk exploring further.