Double Blind (33 page)

Anita gently pushed one of the swing doors, which opened quietly. After a quick peek inside, she took a step back. “Oh my God,” she whispered, motioning me to come to her.

The door had swung back silently to the closed position, so I eased it open a couple of inches. A body lay on the stainless steel table, covered with a sheet. Velcro straps crossed the torso and legs. That was weird. Bodies don’t get up and walk away.

A man was bending over the table. Even from behind, I knew who it was. And I guessed who was under the sheet. When I turned round, Anita was pale and shaking. I sank down to a crouch, my back against a wall.

“Call the police,” she said. “But do it quietly.”

I got up and tiptoed back into Grace’s office. My fingers felt like balloons and it took two attempts to dial the emergency number. The operator was confused at first about exactly where we were, but she finally seemed to understand and promised help was on its way. While I talked, I picked up the scarab paperweight and put it in my coat pocket. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but a quick glance around the office didn’t reveal any other possibilities.

A sudden shrill scream came from next door. Horrified, I ran back to join Anita. She was holding the swing door open a couple of inches. Inside, Macintyre had a scalpel in his hand. I watched in terror when he slid the blade the length of Grace’s arm, leaving a thin red line that slowly blurred as blood seeped from the wound. Grace was trying to thrash her way out of the straps that held her.

“We have to go in,” I said. “She could be dead before the police get here.”

We pushed the door open, creeping up behind Macintyre. I thought we were going to take him by surprise, but he swung round, scalpel in hand. “Ladies,” he said. “So glad you could join the party. I appreciate your thoughtfulness. Now I won’t need to come and find you.”

“Let Grace go,” I said. “She doesn’t know anything.”

“Oh, she does. She knows exactly where those notes are and she’ll tell me after another little cut or two.” Grace’s face was deathly white, her pupils black pinpricks under the harsh fluorescent lights. “Such a beautiful woman. It would be a shame to ruin that flawless skin.”

“I’ll tell you where the notes are,” I said. “Just leave her alone.”

Macintyre cocked his head to one side as though pondering his options. He held the scalpel directly over Grace’s abdomen. “Tell me.”

“I’ll show you. They’re in a drawer in the morgue next door.” I had no intention of lying to him. All I wanted to do was get him away from Grace and Anita.

Grace was quiet now, still as a cadaver. She also had an aura. I hadn’t noticed it at first, as it was almost transparent against the stainless steel table where her head rested. But it was moving very quickly, which meant she was in grave danger. I glanced up at Anita. Her aura was swirling too.

“So many pleasures, so little time,” Macintyre said, running his hand down Grace’s slashed arm. He lifted his bloodied fingers to his mouth and licked them. I felt like throwing up.

“Let’s go,” I said, desperate to get him away from Grace. He didn’t move, but stood looking at her, the scalpel still raised over her. I saw the muscles in his hand twitch. He was going to kill her. “If you touch her, I won’t tell you where the notes are,” I said. I made a point of looking at my watch. “I’m sure you’d find them eventually, but you’re running out of time. The police will be here any minute now.”

He shook his head as though coming out of a trance.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said to Anita. “Any trouble and you’ll never see Kate again.”

I made eye contact with Anita, willing her to take Grace and get out of there. She gave a slight nod of understanding while Macintyre thumbed something into his mobile with one hand. I wondered who he was contacting, but had no time to finish the thought because he grabbed my arm and forced me towards the door that led to the morgue.

Walking into that room alone with him felt like stepping into hell itself. There were no raging fires, no devils with forked tails. This was the underworld of the Greeks, dark and cold, a pit of despair from which there was no hope of escape.

Macintyre squeezed my arm. “Where are they?”

On one wall, six stainless steel drawers gleamed, reflecting distorted, ghostly images of us both. It seemed like a long time since Grace and I had hidden the notes. Was it the second or third drawer down?

“Don’t mess with me. Which drawer?”

“That one.” I pointed. He slid the drawer open to reveal a man’s body, partially covered with a sheet. His feet were grey. I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat.

“It must be the next one down,” I said. Macintyre seemed amused to hear the shake in my voice. “Are you scared of dead people, Kate?” he asked, putting his hand under my chin and gazing into my eyes. I turned away, not wanting to hear any more of his rantings on death and dying. When I didn’t answer, he slammed the drawer closed and opened the next one.

There lay the envelope, holding Anita’s handwritten notes.

“Is it really worth it?” I said to him as he grabbed the envelope. “All this to stop some creep in management from going to prison? What do you get out of it?”

He slid the drawer closed. “Why does anyone do anything?” he said. “It always comes down to money and power. They go hand in hand. Money buys power. Power generates wealth. I love the simple synergy of it, don’t you?”

Although I hated breathing the same air as him, I needed to give Anita time to get Grace out of harm’s way.

“So you’re getting paid a lot to derail an inquiry into a drug that is known to have negative side effects,” I said. “A drug that has actually killed people. Doesn’t that make you feel bad?”

Macintyre laughed. “I never feel bad. It’s a weakness, Kate. Expunge the word from your vocabulary. There is no bad. There is no guilt. I feel good about everything I accomplish.”

“Even an attack on our elected politicians?”

“Of course, when the end justifies the means. The means in this case being poison. A fatal dose in a coffee pot. With a vast panoply of drugs at my disposal, I found great enjoyment in selecting the right one. Too bad I couldn’t wait to watch the results.”

Shivering, I wondered if he knew something I didn’t. He looked very self-satisfied, with a hint of a smile on his lips. Had Scott and Lewis died?

I glanced up at the clock on the wall. The red second hand didn’t move smoothly but flicked and jarred its way around the face as though reluctant to keep moving. I wondered why the clock was there at all. Time meant nothing for the inhabitants of this bleak room.

It had only been a minute since we left the autopsy room. Not enough time for Anita to free Grace.

“How did you know to come down here?” I asked Macintyre. “And how did you know the access codes?”

“Always so many questions, Kate. Snooping around, meddling in things that don’t concern you. There’s something about you that I don’t quite understand. That’s why I find you so interesting. Alluring, almost. We’d make a good team.”

“So answer the question.”

“Ted was kind enough to help me out.”

“Ted the pharmacist? But he’s friends with Grace.”

“Yes, and he’s also addicted to barbiturates. I’ve been able to supply him with what he needs so that he no longer has to steal drugs and risk discovery. In return, he told me you and Anita spend time with Grace and that the three of you had been asking him questions. The minute I heard that, I knew. The morgue would make an excellent hiding place. You and I think alike, Kate.”

“Hardly.”

A sudden scream from the autopsy room sent chills skittering down my spine. I moved towards the door. I had to go help Anita. Macintyre grabbed my arm and backed me up against the wall of drawers. “Sit down on the floor.” He brought the scalpel within an inch of my eye. All I could see was the cruel tip of stainless steel, filling my vision. “If you move, I won’t hesitate to use this,” he said.

I sat, my back against the front of a steel drawer, my legs out straight. Cold seeped into my jeans and coat, feeling damp against my skin. I heard more sounds from next door, a crash, another scream. Macintyre ignored it all. Crouching at my feet, he put the scalpel down close to him, out of my reach. Then he pulled the notes from the envelope, six pages in total, and started to look through them. Another shout from next door made me jump. I shifted my weight, getting ready to move.

Without warning, Macintyre grabbed the scalpel and stabbed it into my thigh.

“I said to keep still,” he said.

I felt no pain, but blood darkened my jeans, a spreading circle of glistening black. I panicked. If he’d cut an artery, I could bleed out fast. Macintyre saw the look on my face and he laughed. “You’re not going to die, not from that wound anyway. I need you for a little longer.”

“It’s all pointless,” I said, willing myself to ignore the blood. “I took photocopies of the notes and left them in a safe place.” It wasn’t true. I hadn’t even thought of making copies.

“Perhaps you did,” he said. “Although I suspect not.”

“That means we’ll still have evidence to give the police.”

“You’re assuming, wrongly, that you or Anita or Grace will be alive to hand over that evidence.”

“Not necessarily. There’s someone else who knows where the copies are,” I lied.

“Really?” He didn’t seem concerned. “Are you going to tell me who that is? I can probably guess. Your boyfriend perhaps?”

Macintyre’s words were like a bucket of ice water over my head. The last thing I’d intended was to send him after someone else. He’d done enough killing already.

I slumped back against the drawer front. “There are no copies.”

“I thought not. It doesn’t matter to me anyway. My part in all this is almost done.”

Spreading the pages out on the floor, he used his mobile to take a photo of each page, his eyes flickering between me and the notes. After typing something into his phone, he gathered the papers into a pile and pulled a small gold lighter from his pocket. The mini-bonfire crackled, the smell of burning paper replacing the stink of disinfectant. A fire was good, I thought, hoping it would set off an alarm. But the papers burned bright for less than a minute before collapsing into a little heap of charred scraps.

It had gone very quiet next door. My guesses at what had happened left me numb with despair. I imagined that Lizardman was in there. Perhaps he’d already killed Grace and Anita. If so, I was next.

Macintyre’s phone beeped. When he looked up at me, he was smiling. “We’re done here, Kate. The money is in my account and all I need to do is get out of this building.”

“There’s nowhere to go. It’s a dead end. Haha, get it?” I waved a hand around the morgue, feeling slightly hysterical. “The police will be here any minute now.”

“Yes, I think they will, but you, dear heart, are my ticket out. You’re my hostage, and they can’t harm me when I have a knife at your throat. Now stand up.”

He didn’t wait for me to obey, but dragged me to my feet. Now I felt pain where he’d stabbed me, cold and sharp. My blood-soaked jeans stuck to the wound and dragged on my skin.

Bending my arm behind my back, he shoved me forwards across the morgue to a steel door secured with another keypad. Punching in numbers, he eased open the door, which led outside to a small parking area. “This is where the hearses are loaded,” he said. “So very appropriate.”

The door closed behind us as he lifted an arm to summon a car waiting on the road. When the vehicle swung into the car park, I saw that it was the black Audi, with Lizardman at the wheel. So who had been in the autopsy room with Grace and Anita? I had to get back there to find out what had happened.

With my free hand, I dug into my coat pocket, held firmly on to the scarab paperweight and pulled backwards, planting my heels on the asphalt. For a second, Macintyre was just in front of me, the back of his head in reach. I slammed the heavy glass into his skull. He wavered, releasing my arm to clutch at the wound, which began pouring blood. Almost at once his collar was soaked with it. I took two steps back, bumped into the closed door behind me and raised the paperweight for another blow. Macintyre was fast though. He turned towards me, swinging the scalpel. It caught my arm, cleaving a red gash across my wrist. An astonishing quantity of blood bubbled out. I watched it swell and drip, forming a dark puddle on the ground.

I felt dizzy. I had to stay on my feet. If I fainted, they’d drag me into that car and I’d be dead in no time. Macintyre’s expression sent my pulse racing. He looked smug, as though he knew he’d won. In desperation, I threw the paperweight at his head. It struck him on the forehead before crashing to the ground, splintering into a thousand golden shards.

Blood dripped down Macintyre’s head into his eyes, crimson smearing his face. But still, like the villain in a horror movie, he stayed on his feet and swung his scalpel in my direction, slicing through my coat and slashing my upper arm. I pressed on the new wound, trying to stop the pain and the bleeding. My vision blurred.

Lizardman revved the Audi. It sounded like a hungry animal, crouching just a few feet away from where I stood. Where were the damn police?

Macintyre grabbed my injured arm, which burned and throbbed with pain. “You’re coming with us,” he said. “Move.”

I felt sure I was going to pass out. Macintyre didn’t look much better though. He was moving slowly, with blood still dripping from his head wound. Out on the road, in the distance, sirens sounded.

“Get in the car,” Lizardman yelled. “Leave her.”

I allowed myself to hope, for a second, that Macintyre would make a run for the car and leave me behind. Instead, he stopped, pulling me to a halt.

“Goodbye, Kate,” he said, raising the scalpel towards my neck. The sudden and real fear of dying was like a jolt of electricity. I no longer felt any pain. The dizziness subsided. Drawing on some primal survival instinct, I jammed my fist into his throat. He coughed and gagged, giving me time to grab his hand and force it backwards, putting precious inches between the scalpel and my skin. He shifted on his feet, regained his balance, and thrust the blade back towards my neck.