Inescapable (25 page)

‘Man is
pathologically incapable of keeping his shirt on for long periods,’
Fox replied. ‘One of the great burdens of my life is having to look
at a shirtless Sam just about every day.’ She was pleased to see
his cheeks were colouring a little.

‘It must be
terrible for you,’ Marie said, rolling her eyes.

‘Oh, it
is.’

‘Wallace
Deedle,’ Kit said into Fox’s head. ‘A financial services advisor.
He also handles accounting for clients with simpler needs.
Inspector Ivers has sent through the data she obtained from the
bank, finally.’

‘Have a watch
put out for him. If he enters a building we’re monitoring, I want
to know about it.’

‘We should
check over the changes to Marie’s apartment,’ Vaughn said, ‘and
then I think we’re done.’

‘Excellent,’
Sam said, smiling. ‘I’ve arranged for us to go to a restaurant
later, Alice. I thought we should get to know each other a little
better, if we’re to be going into partnership to some extent.’

‘I… Well, I’m
sure that’s a very good idea. I’d love to join you.’

~~~

There was no sign of
the police as Wallace Deedle stepped off the maglev and headed for
the slideway which would take him straight to his destination. He
stood, one hand on the rail, the other holding his briefcase, and
allowed the moving walkway to carry him rather than shifting to the
left and walking. That would have been faster, but he was in no
hurry and he wanted to give society one last chance to stop him
from going through with what he was going to do.

As he walked
through the lobby of the block, it seemed very much as though
society had decided to turn a blind eye to whatever Deedle had
planned. No police, no private security. He was fairly sure that
this block had contracted to Palladium Security Services for
internal policing. They had responded to his last visit here. He
recalled seeing it on the news feeds. He recalled seeing a woman
there with red hair that faded into an almost-white colour at the
tips and remembering that she was Tara Meridian, the woman who had
rescued Teresa Martins in Dallas. It had given him a slight thrill
to have a famous detective hunting for him, but it seemed that NAPA
had frozen her out.

Eighty floors
up, Deedle walked down a corridor to one of the many apartment
doors. The building did not have as many residents as similar
blocks in the metro because the people who lived here liked luxury.
They liked it, but could not quite manage the wherewithal to
purchase some of the single-occupancy houses in the MCD. Stepping
up to the door, he tapped the button beside it and waited.

The woman who
opened the door was young, beautiful, fresh. A cascade of black
hair fell around her shoulders, wisps of it curled across the upper
slopes of her quite expansive cleavage. Deedle did her accounts and
knew she spent little or nothing on physical enhancements: Angelina
Tailor was a natural beauty. She looked at him with large, brown
eyes and smiled with full, red lips.

‘I’m sorry,
Mister Deedle, the sensor must be on the blink. The door didn’t
recognise you. Come in.’ She turned her back to him and padded down
the corridor to her lounge, Deedle following her, his eyes on her
behind in its tight, mid-thigh skirt. She was barefoot. ‘I’m sorry
to get you here so late. I only got back into the metro an hour ago
and I do need to sort out this month’s bills.’ His hand closed
around the cylinder in his pocket and he slipped it free, orienting
it by touch. She turned and smiled again. ‘Can I get you anything?
Coffee?’

‘No, thank you.
We’ll be fine.’ She was about to ask what he meant by ‘we’ when he
lifted his hand and sprayed mist into her face.

‘What?! Mist–’
Her voice cut out as her limbs decided to stop functioning and her
brain fogged. She blinked at him, barely realising she was slipping
to her knees, and then he caught her as she tipped forward.

Habit had him
checking her pulse. The reaction to the spray was so rapid he
worried every time that they were going to die on him. Then rather
than later, when he killed them. Angelina was alive, breathing
normally. He allowed himself a second or two to watch those
magnificent breasts rise and fall. He had admired them for two
years, but she was hardly the kind of girl who would have allowed a
man like him to touch them. Now he would get his chance. He would
touch her. Oh yes, he would touch her. He would touch every inch of
her.

The weird sense
of loss which had plagued him since the voice had gone was leaving
him now. Now that he had another woman in his arms. He carried her
through to the bedroom, his mind working over exactly what he was
planning to do to her. She would be begging by the time he was
done. She would beg him to let her have her freedom, and then he
would give it. He would be the last person she ever saw, the last
man to have her. The loss was gone now, replaced by the anger which
the voice had fuelled and brought to the surface. The voice had
been right: he did not need the voice now, did not need its
encouragement and direction. He knew what he had to do and he would
do it.

Stripping her
of her clothes was easy. She weighed next to nothing and he could
push and pull her as he wished. He had blouse, skirt, bra, and
panties removed in under a minute. To think the fastenings on that
first bra had been so hard. He almost laughed, but he had limited
time assured by the drug. Positioning her on the bed, he retrieved
the cords he had brought with him and lashed her down, spread as
carefully and precisely as he could manage. She was still under
when he finished three minutes later. He was getting faster and had
not needed to give her a second dose.

He removed an
unopened pack of a dozen condoms and a tube of water-based,
spermicidal lubricant from his case, setting them beside the bed,
and then began to undress. His suit was carefully folded and set to
one side on a chair for later. Naked, he returned to the case and
took out a pair of plazkin gloves which were guaranteed to be
sealed against contamination. With those on, he took the lubricant
and walked around the bed, squeezing quite a substantial amount
onto the index and middle fingers of his right hand. And then he
paused, standing at the foot of the bed between Angelina Tailor’s
spread legs because he wanted to admire her beauty one last time
before he changed it forever.

She stirred as
he placed his knee down on the reactive mattress. She was just
sleeping now and would, in all probability, wake up when he touched
her. He leaned forward, reaching down between her legs.

And that was
when two pairs of hands grabbed him and yanked him backward.

~~~

Fox scanned over the
scene in the bedroom. She had Pythia running forensics, but she
already had quite enough physical evidence, without anything her
forensics AI was going to find, to put Wallace Deedle behind
bars.

She turned back
to the girl in the Palladium Security uniform standing stiffly to
attention beside the bedroom door. ‘The prisoner is secured, Miss
McNair?’

‘Yes, sir,’
McNair responded. ‘We have him in the security office awaiting your
arrival. We have restrained the prisoner using electronic
restraints and, as per your instructions, physical ties. My partner
is watching the prisoner.’

‘Excellent. Do
you feel that it was entirely necessary to use a shock baton on his
genitals, Miss McNair?’

‘Yes, sir.
Prisoner was resisting arrest and may have been a danger to the
victim or ourselves. Sir.’

‘Stick to that
story and I doubt anyone will be complaining.’ Fox started past
McNair to the lounge. ‘If it had been me, he’d have been wearing
his nuts around his neck.’

The victim was
sitting on one of the sofas in her lounge holding a glass of
something which looked like whiskey in shaky hands. She was wrapped
in a blanket, but she was shivering. Fox could not really blame her
given the effects of the drug and the shock. Someone had found a
neighbour she knew, though the effect of another woman sitting with
her did not appear to be that calming.

Fox sat down
opposite them and Tailor looked up at her. ‘You’re in charge…
charge of the security people?’

‘I’m Tara
Meridian. I’m Palladium’s investigations officer so, technically,
I’m not in charge of them, but I guess I’m filling in for the man
who is.’

‘They s-saved
me. I wanted to th-thank them somehow and I have no idea how t-to
express–’

‘Just saying it
is usually enough, Miss Tailor, but they responded as fast as it
was humanly possible to do so and I assure you I’ll be recommending
them for some form of bonus for this one. I’d like to ask a few
questions, if you’re feeling up to it?’

‘I don’t know
what I can t-tell you, but… he didn’t really… I mean, he didn’t
hurt me. They stopped him before he could…’

Fox smiled.
‘Yes. My PA is arranging for someone to come and talk to you, and
we’re going to have you stay somewhere else tonight. We need to run
tests and we’ll have the entire apartment cleaned and set right
before you come back. Were you expecting Mister Deedle
tonight?’

‘I’d made
arrangements for him to visit to make sure my account was straight
before the end of the month. I don’t understand. He was always such
a n-nice man. He was… quiet. What happened?’

‘We think he…
had some form of mental breakdown,’ Fox replied. ‘I’ve an expert
coming in to help interview him. You let him in?’

‘I let him in.
Uh, I think there was a problem with the door sensor. It didn’t
recognise him. We went into the lounge.’ Tailor swallowed, hard. ‘I
led him into the lounge and… I asked him if he wanted something to
drink. And then there was this mist in my face…’

Fox nodded. ‘I
know what happened from there. The drug he used has no permanent
effect. You’ll be fine. He didn’t seem at all odd? Nothing struck
you as different about him?’

‘Well… not
until he tried to…’ She trailed off again, swallowing.

‘Thank you,
Miss Tailor. Someone will be here to look after you very shortly.’
Fox got to her feet and headed for the door.

‘The door
sensor is working correctly,’ Kit supplied as Fox left the
apartment.

‘Uh-huh. I
expect we’ll find his implant has been wiped, along with any ID
data. That’s why the transceiver couldn’t tell who he was.’

‘Detective
Dillan has arrived.’

‘Good. Let’s go
talk to Mister Deedle.’

~~~

Wallace Deedle just did
not look like a multiple rapist and murderer, but he also seemed to
fit the profile Fox had constructed of him perfectly. He sat on the
bed in the small containment cell off the security suite, dressed
in a bright, orange jumpsuit. His feet were placed squarely on the
floor, his back was straight, and his hands were on his knees,
palms down. He sat there and watched a spot on the wall, near the
floor, and he said nothing when Fox entered the room with
Dillan.

‘Mister
Deedle,’ Fox said. ‘This is Detective Dillan of NAPA. She’s not the
investigating officer on your case, but she handled Peter Doran’s
homicides and I wanted her to see you. Why have you been killing
young women, Mister Deedle?’

Deedle looked
up. He had grey eyes, soft eyes without a hint of malice in them.
McNair had described the look on his face when they had pulled him
off Tailor, and this could have been a different man. ‘I recognise
you. I saw you on the news feeds, IB-Nineteen. They said you’d been
called in for Miss Hopethorne’s homicide and I recognised you. You
used to be with the UNTPP.’

‘Yes. Then NAPA
and now I’m with–’

‘Palladium
Security Services. An interesting choice of name. I assume people
think it comes from the metal, which is obviously wrong. The city
of Troy was guarded by the Pallas Athena, a statue which became
known as the Trojan Palladium. The word was generalised to mean
something believed to give protection. They say the statue was
stolen and taken to Constantinople by way of Rome. The loss of the
statue was, of course, the reason that Troy lost the war.’

‘Mister
Deedle…’

‘I’ve been
working for them for years, Miss Meridian. I watched them
frittering away money, day by day, like it was nothing because
there would always be more. I watched them strutting about in their
expensive clothes that barely covered them. None of them would look
at someone like me because I had no money. Because I didn’t spend
what I had on muscle grafts and body sculpting. No, I just came to
their homes and made sure
their
money worked as well for
them as it could.’

‘As you said,
you’ve worked for them for years. Why the change?’

‘I…’ He bit his
lips shut and his fists clenched on his knees. ‘You’ll think I’m
mad.’

‘Currently, we
think you’re a serial rapist and murderer, Mister Deedle,’ Dillan
said. ‘Would mad be that much worse?’

He sighed. ‘One
day I woke up and there was a voice in my head. It whispered. It…
said things which I thought about, but I never had the courage to
do anything about them.’

‘It suggested
that you did something about these pretty girls in their short
skirts who wasted their money?’

‘It said they
would see me.
Really
see me. You don’t know what it’s like.
You’re both attractive women. People
see
you, but no one
sees me. Oh, if there’s a problem or a mistake, then they see me.
When everything’s fine and I’m there doing my job as it should be
done, I’m invisible. I’m good at my job.’

Dillan nodded.
‘So they never bothered to look at you, and the voice said they
would. What do you think the voice was, Mister Deedle?’

‘I have no
idea. At first I thought it was me, my subconscious. I thought I
was
going mad. Then it began helping me. It helped me to
plan; it helped me to remain hidden. After the first one, it seemed
as though it was pleased with me and it began to help. My
subconscious couldn’t have fixed computer records.’ He looked up.
‘I recall the Doran case. He said that he was possessed by a demon,
am I right?’