The Lazarus Hotel (29 page)

‘Did you try to kill me, Tessa?' asked Miriam. Her tone was still calm, non-accusatory, but the psychologist knew now exactly who she was talking to: a woman who, to protect herself, had killed two people and tried to kill more. Miriam had known Joe Lockhead for a few months; they had been friends; with all his faults the world was a poorer place without him. When there was nothing more pressing she would grieve. But for the moment it was imperative that she stay on top of what was still, in the absence of anyone equally qualified and without a sore head, her job.

‘No,' Tessa said immediately – too quickly for it to be true. ‘I tried to buy a little time. To think, to work it out. I thought you knew!'

Miriam shook her head sadly. ‘Never suspected. Even when Will guessed I thought he'd got it wrong.'

‘I wish I
had
got it wrong,' Will said grimly. ‘But Joe's dead and his murderer tried to kill you too, to buy her safety with your silence. By the time she'd talked to you she knew nothing less would do. What you didn't know you could get at, and you weren't prepared to cover up for her. So she collected a blunt instrument from the kitchen, came back – your door wasn't locked, she'd taken all the keys earlier – and when your back was turned she hit you as hard as she knew how.'

His gaze came back to Tessa. Even now she had too much pride to avoid it. ‘You thought you'd done enough, but she was still alive when Joe found her. His confession must have knocked you sideways. Whatever Miriam knew about you, he did too. Now you needed them both dead.

‘Miriam shouldn't have been a problem. But Mrs Venables knew better than to leave her alone with any one of us. She only left the room when we were all in here.

‘The neatest solution was to blame everything on Joe. You fused the lights, steered him away on some, pretext and shot insulin into him. When he was found you diagnosed diabetic coma and gave him some more. None of us knew enough to stop you.'

In the shadows Mrs Venables bowed her head. She'd known, but not in time.

The end was in prospect. Will laboured on. ‘That delivered him into your hands, but to make him a credible scapegoat you needed him physically out of the way. Sick in bed he couldn't be blamed for any more attacks, and by now you were aware that mass murder might be your only option. You no longer knew who knew what. We were putting together facts and deductions and intuitions so quickly you'd be in danger if any of us left here alive.

‘You took whatever chances presented themselves. With better luck that smear of butter would have disposed of two of us and always looked like an accident. If we hadn't worked it out, by Monday you'd have been the terrified sole survivor of a massacre by a madman. The police would have accepted your account for lack of any other.'

He was done at last. He thought he'd covered everything, but it wasn't an achievement to take much pleasure in. He looked drained. ‘Have I left anything out?'

Tessa regarded him almost without blinking. At length she said with quiet venom, ‘I wish that stupid bloody boy had left you where he found you.'

Will gave a grim chuckle. ‘I'll take that as a compliment, shall I?'

Her eyes narrowed at him. ‘Don't you dare judge me! I didn't start any of this. I was defending myself – from a blackmailer, from her crazy father, from a nosy sod who couldn't leave well enough alone. Everything that's happened was Cathy's doing, even the things that happened after she was dead.'

‘She was sick!' cried Will. ‘Partly from the stress of her career, but mostly because what should have been her salvation – getting friendly with a doctor – turned out to be anything but. If she'd fallen for a steel-rigger, or a road-sweeper, or God help her if she'd stayed with a solicitor, she'd be alive now. This harpy you talk about – she wasn't like that until she knew you.'

‘No? Or was it just that she never found anything you were useful for? What
are
you useful for, apart from digging up things that should have been left buried? I wouldn't mind so much,' Tessa added, her voice rising querulously, ‘if I thought you did it for Cathy, because you loved her. That I could understand. But you set out to destroy me for no better reason than to see if you could. Mere cleverness. Never mind that lives were in danger, you had to show what you could do. You want to know why Joe's dead? Because of you. If you'd been just a shade less clever, maybe we could have got through this without anyone getting hurt.'

He recoiled as if she'd spat in his face. It wasn't true; but it was what he was afraid of and so he believed her. His lips parted on a little pant of grief. ‘No.'

‘Yes,' said Tessa savagely. ‘You hadn't the guts to keep Cathy when you had her, or the sense to let go when she was gone, or the decency to put the needs of others ahead of your pride. People have paid for your arrogance in pain and in death, and my one consolation is that you're going to feel that, in here' – under the quilt she thumped her heart – ‘to the day you die.

‘So maybe there's one last thing you should understand.' She produced it from under the quilt, held it up between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand.

He couldn't make it out. It looked like a cork. Stung by the contempt in her voice he leaned closer. It
was
a cork, the stopper from the neck of a small bottle. One end was darkly stained and there was a deep cut incised into it. ‘What—?'

Perhaps if he hadn't been so tired, if he hadn't thought it was over, he wouldn't have made the mistake of leaning still closer in the effort to identify it. The stain on the cork was of no consequence. The incision
was
significant, and in another moment he'd have realized why. He'd have remembered what a cork was good for when you had something sharp in your pocket.

But the main function of the cork in Tessa's left hand was as a decoy, to draw him in closer – and stop him wondering what she had in her right hand.

As he leaned over her the tawny woman rose from the folds of the quilt like a snake uncoiling from a basket. In weary bewilderment Will had put himself within striking range, and as she surged to her feet Tessa stabbed fiercely upward, driving her scalpel into his throat.

Blood fountained. Sheelagh gasped. Locked together, the strong woman and the small man pitched over and rolled across the carpet. Will's eyes flared whitely and a sound of some kind, unrecognizable but for the note of horror, bubbled from his throat.

It was too late for Tessa to buy her freedom with his death as she had once hoped to. If she could have continued undetected perhaps she would have killed them all and passed it off as the work of a madman, but she couldn't do that now. So her only motive was personal satisfaction. Not getting away with it. Just doing it.

There was no reason to suppose that when she'd finished with Will she would turn her attention to someone else. So when Sheelagh leapt on the back of a woman bigger than herself, a woman armed with a lethal weapon, a woman who had already killed twice, it was because of what she was doing to Will not what she might do next.

But Tessa had nothing left to lose. As soon as she felt the younger woman's arms she twisted snake-like inside them, rolling her own body on top and freeing her right hand. Sheelagh saw her face from a range of inches and was appalled by the hatred there. Tessa had convinced herself that others were to blame for her situation, that she was their victim, that all her actions were justifiable. She stabbed the blade at Sheelagh's eye.

On a good day Sheelagh looked and even behaved like a respectable woman, the proprietor of a thriving business, a woman with a stake in society. But it was only skin-deep: underneath she was an alley cat. She wasn't afraid of being hurt, only of being beaten. She couldn't get away from the blade so she did the next best thing: combined a last-ditch defence with a dirty counterattack.

She thrust her left hand in front of her eye. The blade punched deep into her palm and Sheelagh yelled, as much in rage as pain, and struck out with her own weaponry – a right hand armed with talons filed to a point under a scuffed coat of blood-red lacquer. It was no time for scruples: she too went for the eyes.

She had the satisfaction of feeling her nails rake the torn skin of Tessa's cheek and hearing her screech. Then Tessa snatched back the scalpel – blood leaping from the younger woman's palm – and scythed at the exposed artery inside Sheelagh's right wrist.

Abandoning their battering-ram the men headed back to the conference room. They peered cautiously round the corner, still wary of the madman who had tried to push Tessa down the lift shaft. When they realized how silly this was they looked away in embarrassment and moved up a gear.

Before they reached the door they heard screaming: a prolonged, high-pitched, soul-piercing scream that momentarily froze the marrow in their bones.

Larry recovered first. He hissed, ‘Jesus Christ' – it may have been a prayer rather than a curse – and hurled himself at the door. It barely shifted, baulked by the sofa wedged behind it.

Richard hammered. ‘Let us in! What's happening?' His voice cracked and soared but no one answered. Even after the scream grew thin and died no one came.

‘We have to move it,' Tariq said tersely. He wasn't underestimating the task, only knew it must be done. They set their shoulders to it and pushed with every ounce of their strength; with their feet sliding from under them, the veins standing out on their temples, their jaws clenched and their eyes staring; with the bunched muscles trembling in their shoulders and braced thighs. And it wasn't enough. So they delved beyond strength into the very substance of their bodies and used that, knowing that if the door didn't give soon somebody's heart would.

The door eased. Just a fraction; then a little more. Encouraged to a final bruising effort they attacked it like draught-horses with a mired wagon to move, and as the aperture inched wider Larry snaked through and tugged at the sofa from the inside.

They came in on carnage. Will was on the floor, blood pouring from a wound in his throat. Sheelagh was in a chair, blood pooling in her upturned palm. Mrs Venables was on her knees, both hands clasped to her face, blood oozing between the fingers. Miriam, staring, mouth agape, had half-risen from her mattress before shock froze her there.

Tessa stood silhouetted by the window, her hands behind her, one over her shoulder and one up her back as if trying to scratch an unreachable itch. Larry stared round him wildly, dumbstruck. Richard said again, still in the same odd, high voice, ‘What
happened?
‘

Tessa made no answer. She seemed to bow to him; but instead of straightening she continued to lean forward until it turned into a slow-motion fall and she pitched to the floor at his feet. A single tremor shook her body, then she lay still. The back of her jacket was soaked with blood and the handles of the long-bladed kitchen scissors protruded from it.

Mrs Venables lowered her hands. The blood on her face was in the shape of her fingers: it was not her blood. She said, almost calmly, ‘I had to do it. She was killing them.' Then she began to weep.

Sheelagh's injury was bloody but not dangerous: the blade never reached her wrist. She wrapped her hand in a towel and nursed it in her lap like an ailing child.

Tessa needed no help either. Her life shuddered out while Richard stared down at her.

But Will was an emergency. His windpipe intact, he was breathing and still conscious; but eyes great with shock and the bright blood pumping foreshadowed imminent collapse. He was bleeding a river: too much and far too fast. No one could bleed like that for long. He was trying to lever himself up on his arms as if sitting up would make a difference.

Larry knelt over him and clapped both hands to the incision. ‘Get something to bandage it with. Lots of something! Even if we can't stop it we can slow it down.'

‘Esme, help me up.' Short of top form both mentally and physically, Miriam was still a doctor and the wounded man's best chance. She forced the weakness from her limbs by sheer will-power, made herself turn from the tragedy which had happened to one which might still be averted. ‘Good, Larry, hold it tight. The less blood gets between your fingers, the more there is keeping him alive. Esme, the First Aid box. I'll suture it though God knows if it'll hold. Esme! And then bandages – all you can find.'

Urgent demands on her were what Mrs Venables needed most. There would be time later to reflect on what she'd done, to weep and fall apart if she had to. But the present crisis made self-immolation an unaffordable luxury and she responded like a trouper, striding off to the kitchen and returning with a red box with a white cross on it. While Miriam quickly located the items she'd included in case somebody needed a stitch or two, Mrs Venables – using another pair of scissors – started cutting a sheet into strips.

Miriam turned to the strongest man present to hold the patient still. But Tariq had held Joe Lockhead while Tessa pumped death into his veins, and he backed away, hollow-eyed, shaking his head. Larry understood if Miriam didn't. ‘I'll hold him.'

In the event Will took very little holding. His senses were fading fast, dulling even the awareness of someone sewing his throat back together. Larry steadied his head; that was all that was necessary.

‘I don't know how well this is going to work,' Miriam said tersely. Her broad fingers were inserting the stitches deftly enough but there was a lot of damage and not much time: if she was meticulous with every single one he was going to be the neatest corpse in the morgue. ‘I thought I'd left all this behind when I got out of medicine.' She finished suturing and started clapping dressings over the wound. Blood quickly stained the first; without disturbing it Miriam bandaged firmly over the top. A little blood seeped through. Again she bandaged over it, as firmly as she could without closing Will's airway. Then she sat back on her heels, eyes glued to his throat, and waited.