ICEHOTEL (44 page)

No, Denny wouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t the sharpest
pencil in the box.
I don’t go looking for trouble.
I don’t need to. I know where it is
.

Her mouth twisted suddenly. ‘For what it’s worth, killing
Harry has brought me neither happiness nor peace. You saw how much he loved the
twins.’ Her voice broke on the word. ‘And they really loved him. He was such a
fine man, in another life I would have loved him too.’ She was convulsed with
sobbing, tears running down her cheeks. ‘And all those others I killed. Oh God,
every day I wish I could turn the clock back. I see them everywhere, on street
corners, in shops, whenever I look at myself in the mirror. Even on the faces
of my children.’ The pain in her eyes was excruciating. ‘I can’t live like
this, Mags, I can’t. If it weren’t for the children, I’d go to the police. But
I did it for them. I had no choice.’

I almost felt sorry for her. ‘You had a choice, Liz, and you
made it. And don’t fool yourself by saying you did it for Annie and Lucy. You
did it for revenge.’ Hallengren’s words came back to me:
Apart from greed,
Miss Stewart, revenge is the strongest motive for murder.

‘I’m so sorry.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘So terribly sorry.
For everything,’ she added, swallowing the word.

I gazed at her swollen eyes, her face washed with grief.
Liz, the mass murderer.

She let her head drop.

‘Whether you’re sorry or not is immaterial,’ I said wearily.
‘There’s a special circle in hell reserved for you.’

She lifted her eyes to mine. ‘Then I’ll meet you there,’ she
said, regret in her voice.

A pulse was beating in my temple. We’d come to the endgame.

Her hand closed round the syringe. She rose quickly and
crossed the floor. I tried to get up, but she gripped my arm and plunged the
needle into my neck. Her lips moved but the words were strangely muted. She
released me, still talking, and stroked my hair, an expression of pleading in
her eyes. Terror-stricken, I strained to make out the words, but I could no
longer hear. My limbs grew heavy, there was a sudden rush of blood to my ears,
and I sank back into the sofa.

I fell sideways. My vision narrowed to a cone. And then it
faded into blackness.

I slipped in and out of
consciousness. My dreams were surreal. I was with Liz and the others. They were
dancing in a circle, laughing raucously. No-one had noticed the axe embedded in
Harry’s skull. I tried to speak, but they were making so much noise they
couldn’t hear me. Their laughter filled my head until it woke me. But waking
was brief, and I drifted off again.

After what felt like days, I opened my eyes, struggling not
to lose consciousness. It was too dark to see. My body ached, and there was a
grinding pain in the back of my head that drilled into my neck and spine
whenever I moved.

Then I remembered. Liz had injected me
. I sat up sharply.

My forehead struck something hard, and I fell back, stunned.
I tried to stretch, twisting my body but, whenever I moved, a part of me hit a
wall. Light was filtering through cracks in the ceiling, but my vision was so
blurred that all I could make out was the faint outline of the room.

My first thought was that Liz had locked me in her coal
bunker. I ran my fingers over the low ceiling, feeling for a latch or hinge.
The surface was smooth and metallic. And too clean for coal.

The pain in my head was receding, and I became aware of the
noise, recognising it as the raucous laughter of my dreams. It was coming from
the walls, loud and relentless, and I was being jerked rhythmically from side
to side. My lower hip was pressing against something so hard that I was getting
muscle cramps keeping my weight off it. I wriggled furiously, rocking back and
forth, and slipped my hand underneath. It was a coiled piece of cable with
metallic ends. I fingered them carefully. Crocodile clips. I’d been lying on a
pair of jump leads.

This wasn’t a coal shed. I was in the boot of a car. My Ford
was too small, and it had been rusting outside my flat for months. This could
only be Liz’s Peugeot.

I kept the panic in check and pushed against the door, but
it wouldn’t budge, not even when I delivered a couple of well-placed kicks.

My eyes were adapting to the gloom and the interior of the
boot was taking shape. How long since Liz had drugged me? The quality of light
suggested it was day, but I had no way of knowing whether it was the same day.

Fragments of our conversation crept into my thoughts. I
pushed them away, but they insisted on returning. Eventually, I surrendered
myself, thinking through every detail, torturing myself by reliving it. I was
staggered by her duplicity, but what shocked me was her patience, how she’d
waited to kill Harry, befriending him, knowing that one day she would kill him.
And how meticulously she’d planned his murder, positioning the chess pieces,
her superb opening gambit of injecting the drug into Purple Kiss. I could
almost taste her frustration as things went wrong.

It was growing stuffy in the boot. Grogginess returned and
my eyelids began to droop, but I made myself stay awake. Falling asleep now
would be fatal: with no advantage from inside a locked boot, I would need to be
alert when Liz stopped the car.

After a while, the rocking became smoother and more
rhythmical; Liz had turned onto a better road, a motorway, perhaps. Despite
myself, the hypnotic rhythm lulled me to sleep. I lurched awake when we went
over a bump. It was still light, I hadn’t been dozing for long.

I forced myself to think of what was going to happen. Liz
couldn’t let me live now that I knew everything. And what was one more murder,
after all? How would she do it, though? Drugs were out of the question, too
strong a connection with Wilson’s death. Would she cave my head in as she had
Harry’s? Colonel Mustard did it with the ice-axe in the conservatory. No, that
was wrong, it would have to be lead piping, Liz no longer had an ice-axe. Nor
did she own a gun. She wouldn’t even know how to use one.

Where in God’s name were we going? Why didn’t she murder me
in my flat and make it look like aggravated burglary? She could wash off the
gore in my shower. Ah, but she’d been clever, wearing two snowsuits. And when
she’d murdered Harry, both suits had been red. Had she planned that nauseating
detail? Of course she had.

But Liz couldn’t kill me the way she had Harry. She would
have to make it look like an accident, like Denny. A terrifying possibility
ballooned like a phantom: she’d push the car into a river, with me in the boot.
I pictured the water level rising while I beat and kicked from inside. It would
be difficult to explain, though, how I’d managed to lock myself in the boot
before getting the Peugeot into the river. And, anyway, I’d drowned once
before, and fate doesn’t strike the same way twice. But whatever Liz might try,
I’d put up a fight – I still had pieces left on the board – because I was a
survivor. That’s what Hallengren had said, and he’d been right about that, if
nothing else.

I dozed fitfully. A while later, we cruised to a stop. The
engine died, and the car juddered as Liz jerked the handbrake. I waited, my
heart beating violently. After a minute, there was the sudden scratching sound
of a key in the lock. I resisted the compelling urge to struggle out fighting,
feigning unconsciousness and keeping my breathing slow and even.

A second later, the door of the boot was flung back and
light streamed in. I smelt salt air and rotting seaweed. Gulls cried overhead.
Were we northeast, on the Fife coast? Or had Liz driven south?

A large shape blotted out the light, and I smelt something
warm and sensuous. Liz was wearing Paris. She wrapped her arms around my body,
and pulled hard. It was more of a roll than a pull. Even Liz didn’t have the
strength to lift someone from the boot of a car. My body balanced on the lip of
the boot, and then she released me and I fell face downwards, scratching my
cheek on the metal clasp. As I rolled onto the ground, the sweet smell of wet
grass filled my nostrils.

She manoeuvred me to a sitting position, then propped me
against the boot. I kept my eyes closed, letting my head loll forward. Her face
was close to mine, and I heard her laboured breathing as she waited for her
strength to return. But she still had the advantage. I had little chance from a
sitting position, even with Liz out of breath. She took a huge gulp of air,
gripped my arms and tugged them smartly forwards, pulling me up and over her
shoulder.

I opened my eyes, and saw grass inches from my face. Liz was
on her knees. With what must have been a superhuman effort, she staggered to
her feet. Swaying dangerously, she stumbled forward, stopping briefly to shift
my weight on her shoulder. I lifted my head to get my bearings. We were
lurching towards the front of the car.

I was about to kick and punch when she stopped at the
driver’s door. She leant in and dropped me unceremoniously onto the front seat,
letting my head bang against the door frame. After a brief pause, she lifted my
legs into the car and positioned them over the pedals. Something soft brushed
my cheek, and I smelt her fragrance again. I half opened my eyes; the fur hood
of her parka was close to my face. With a rapid movement, she yanked the seat
belt across my body and snapped it shut. She released the handbrake, and sprang
out of the car.

Nothing happened. She swore softly and marched to the boot.

Panic swept through me as I realised I’d lost my best chance
of escape. No longer caring if she saw me, I opened my eyes wide and looked
around rapidly. Seagulls were wheeling and dipping across the expanse o
f grey sky, their sharp cries fracturing the silence.

We were on the edge of a cliff. She’d meant the car to go
over, and me with it. It would look like an accident. She’d tell the police I’d
taken her car without permission. Dr Langley would testify to my unbalanced
state of mind. And Liz would get away with murder again.

I peered into the mirror, trying to see what she was doing,
but she was behind the boot. She hadn’t shut it after she’d rolled me onto the
grass, and she didn’t bother to shut it now. So I couldn’t see her. And that
meant she couldn’t see me.

Suddenly, I felt the car sway. It inched forward. But Liz
had made a fatal mistake – she’d left the driver’s door open. With fumbling
hands, I released the seatbelt catch and, gripping the door frame, hurled
myself out.

I rolled heavily and came to a stop a few feet from the
door. The Peugeot was moving briskly, gathering momentum. The bonnet dipped
sickeningly as the car balanced on the cliff edge, its back wheels spinning in
the air. Then, with a sound like the splintering of bone, it tipped over and
plunged towards the sea. Another second, and I’d have gone with it. I didn’t
wait to see what Liz was doing – I scrambled to my feet and ran.

My heels slid over the wet earth and I crashed to the
ground. Before I could struggle to my feet, something heavy landed on my back,
smashing me face downwards. M
y mouth filled
with mud. I gagged, trying desperately to pull my head clear. I
k
icked frantically, pushing against the ground, and
twisted my body until I was on my back. Liz lay on top of me like a crazed
lover, hands at my throat, her face so close I could hear the rasping of her
breath.

It was then that I saw how close we were to the edge. I
stopped writhing, terrified we would roll over, and clawed at her eyes. She
threw her head back, arching her body to escape my fingers. She released her
grip, but before I could push her away, she began to bring her knees up. If she
succeeded in straddling me, the game would be over. I bucked wildly, pounding
my fists against her chest. As she perched on one knee and brought the other
forward, I turned sharply and, with all the strength left in me, twisted my
body and pushed her off. She overbalanced and rolled away with a cry. A second
later, she was over the cliff.

I pulled myself onto my elbows, gasping convulsively, and
dragged my body to the edge.

The fall seemed endless. Liz bounced against the jagged
slope, performing slow cartwheels like a grotesque acrobat. Her agonised
screaming stopped when she hit the rocks far below. She lay in that obscene
position that only a broken body can assume, her limbs splayed like a limp rag
doll’s. The tide crept over her. The receding water left behind a dark stain,
which grew slowly, to be washed away with each wave. On the left were the
burning remains of the Peugeot. I hadn’t heard it crash, let alone explode.

I lay on the muddy grass, with the gulls screaming overhead,
and watched the tide ebb and flow over Liz’s body until they came and took me
away.

I was too numb with shock to tell
them much. The local police, more used to breaking up Friday-night fights than
investigating deaths, brought in the detectives.

They scrutinised the wheel marks and muddy footprints,
manifestly unhappy with my testimony. I said we hadn’t fastened our seatbelts,
Liz had been driving (evidenced by her wearing driving gloves), she’d lost
control of the car, and it had gone over the cliff. I’d had the presence of
mind to jump out at the last minute. The older detective, with the wiry red
hair and watchful eyes, asked how, if I was sitting in the passenger seat, I
came to be found lying covered in mud on the driver’s side. I described how, in
shock and unable to get to my feet, I’d crawled across the mud to the cliff
edge. I could see he didn’t believe me. It was the fact that Liz’s body had
been found outside the car that bothered him, although his companion did
mention a similar case where witnesses saw the driver thrown out of a car that
went over a cliff.