“Yeah,” said a male voice. There were more crunching steps as the man moved nearer to my back. “Shame you had to shoot Richard,” he said.
I recognized that voice. Much suddenly became clear.
“Tie him up,” said Komarov.
The man who had been behind me walked around in front. He was carrying a dark blue canvas carryall.
“Hello, Gary,” I said.
“Hi, Chef,” he said in his usual casual style. There was not a chicken pox scab to be seen. But, then, there wouldn’t be. It had been so simple, and I had walked right into the trap. Gary didn’t have chicken pox, and, no doubt, Oscar hadn’t been going through my papers in the office and hadn’t stolen any of the petty cash. Komarov had needed me back at the Hay Net, and the best way to do that was to create a manpower crisis. Get Oscar fired through Gary’s false accusations, then simply get Gary to call in sick. Hey, presto, I came running. Like a lamb to the slaughter.
“Why?” I said to Gary.
“Why what?” he said.
“Why this?” I asked, spreading my arms out.
“Money, of course,” he said, and smiled. He seemed not to realize how deep he was in, or the danger.
“But I pay you good money,” I said to him.
“Not that good,” he said. “And you don’t provide the extras.”
“Extras?” I asked.
“Stuff,” he said. I looked at him quizzically. “Coke.”
I hadn’t figured him as an addict. Drugs and kitchen heat don’t normally go together. I supposed that it did explain some of his mood swings, as well as his current actions. A drug habit can be very demanding; cravings and addiction usually dispel all logic and reason. Given certain circumstances, Gary undoubtedly would do anything for his next fix, and George must have had quite a hold over him.
He took a roll of brown packing tape from the carryall and used some of it to bind my left wrist to the arm of the chair. Komarov moved off to the side, to make sure that Gary never came between me and the gun, but I had no doubt that Komarov would shoot Gary as easily as sneeze if he thought it was necessary to his plans.
Gary moved to my right wrist.
“Hey,” he said, “he’s got a plaster cast under this tunic.”
“Kurt claimed that Walter must have broken his wrist,” said Komarov. He came close to me. “You broke Walter’s arm,” he said into my face. Good, I thought. I wish I’d broken his bloody neck. “You’ll pay for that,” he said. Then he stood up and smiled. “But Walter always was such an impetuous boy. He probably tried to bash your brains in with a polo mallet.” He smiled at me again. “You might wish he had.” I felt cold and clammy, but I smiled back at him nevertheless.
Gary taped the cast to the other arm of the chair. Then he taped my ankles to the chair legs in the same manner. I was trussed up like a turkey waiting for the knife to cut my throat. Then Gary took some more stuff from his bag. It looked like putty-soft, white putty. It was in a long plastic bag and looked like a white salami. If possible, I felt even colder and more clammy. Gary had removed a couple of pounds of plastic explosive from his bag.
He taped the white sausage to the chair between my legs. Oh God. Not my legs. MaryLou’s legs, and the awful lack of them, haunted me still. Now, it seemed, I was to live my nightmare. Next, Gary delicately took a cigarette-sized metal tube from the bag and very carefully pushed it deep into the soft white explosive, like pushing a chocolate chip into an ice-cream cone. The tube had two short wires coming out of the top that were connected to a small black box. The remote-detonator system, I concluded. I sweated more, and Komarov clearly enjoyed it. For the first time, I became really terrified, absolutely certain that I would die, hopeful that it would be quick and easy and frightened to the point of despair that it would not. Would I be able to not tell him where the balls were? Would I be able to die without giving up that information? Would I be able to keep those I loved safe no matter what was done to me? The same questions that every Gestapo-tortured spy or resistance fighter had asked themselves more than fifty years ago. Neither I, nor they, would know the answer, not until the unthinkable actually happened.
“Where is it?” Komarov asked.
“Where is what?” I replied.
“Mr. Moreton,” he said, as if addressing me in a company board meeting, “let us not play games. We both know what I am talking about.”
“I left it with Mrs. Schumann,” I said.
George appeared slightly uneasy.
“I am informed,” said Komarov, “that that is not the case. Mrs. Schumann gave two of the items to you. One has been recovered, but the other has not.” He walked around behind me. “Mrs. Schumann should not have had any of the items in the first place. They have all now been recovered, other than the one you still possess.” He came around in front of me again. “You will tell me where it is, sooner or later.” He smiled again. He was obviously enjoying himself. I wasn’t.
There was a noise from the kitchen. It wasn’t particularly loud, but it was clear, like a metal spoon falling onto the tile floor. It must be Caroline, I thought.
“Can’t you do anything right?” Komarov said, cuttingly, to George Kealy. He was irritated. “Watch him.” He pointed at me. “If he moves, shoot him in the foot. But don’t hit the explosive or we might all end up dead. You”-he gestured towards Gary-“come with me.”
Komarov and Gary went from the dining room into the kitchen through the swinging door that was more often used by my waitstaff than by a gun-toting murderer. I prayed that Caroline would stay hidden.
George stood nervously in front of me.
“How on earth did you get involved in this?” I asked him.
“Shut up,” he said in reply. I ignored him.
“Why did you poison the gala dinner?” I asked him.
“Shut up,” he said again. I ignored him again.
“Was it so you didn’t have to go to the Guineas?” I asked.
“I told you to shut up,” he said.
“Did Gary add the kidney beans to the sauce?” I asked him. He didn’t say anything. “Now, that was really stupid,” I said. “Without that, I wouldn’t have worried. I wouldn’t have asked any questions.” And, I thought, I wouldn’t be here, tied up and waiting to die.
“Don’t you start,” George said. I must have touched a raw nerve.
“In trouble, are you? With the boss man?” I said, rubbing salt in the wound. He was silent, so I taunted him more. “Messed up, did you? Was George not such a clever boy after all?”
“Shut up,” he said, waving the gun towards me. “Shut up!”
“What does Emma think?” I said. “Does she know what you’re up to?”
He turned and looked towards the door through which the other two had disappeared. He was hoping for reinforcements, and I was obviously beginning to get to him.
“Was it Emma who prepared the poisonous kidney beans for you?” I asked.
“Don’t be bloody stupid,” he said, turning back to me. “The beans were only there to make her ill.”
“To make Emma ill?” I said, astounded.
“Emma was insistent that we go to that bloody box at the races,” he said. “I couldn’t talk her out of it. She and Elizabeth Jennings had been planning it for weeks, ever since we were first invited. I couldn’t exactly tell her why she shouldn’t go, now, could I?”
“So you poisoned the dinner to stop her going to the races?”
“Yes,” he said. “That damn Gary was only meant to poison Emma’s dinner and those of the Jenningses. Stupid idiot poisoned the whole bloody lot, didn’t he? He even made me ill, the bastard.”
“Serves you right,” I said to him, just as Caroline had said to me.
I supposed it was easier for Gary to poison the whole dinner rather than just three plates and then somehow ensure they went to the correct people. That would have involved a conspiracy with one of the waiters. The mass poisoning also gave him the excuse he needed for not being in the kitchen himself at the racetrack on the Saturday.