Final Venture

'I know you killed him, Daniel,' I said.

'Have you talked to the police?'

I needed to play for time. I wasn't sure which answer would give me most.

'Well, have you?'

I shrugged.

'I need to know who you have spoken to.'

'And I won't tell you.'

He jerked the gun at me. 'I'll pull the trigger.'

I glared at him. I wasn't going to let him get the better of me. 'I know you will. I still won't tell you.'

I braced myself for the shot. But it didn't come. Daniel looked confused. He was thinking.

'Where's Lisa?' he asked at last.

'I told you. At the lab.'

'But you said you were both coming up here for the weekend?'

'She's coming this evening. She's got more work than she planned.'

'I heard you call out to her when I came in.'

'I thought you must be her. I assumed she'd left the lab early.'

Daniel scanned the room. 'Is that your bag, then?'

He nodded towards Lisa's black bag, lying on the floor.

'No,' I said simply.

'You're not being very truthful, are you, Simon?'

I shrugged.

'We'll wait here for her. She'll tell me who you've told. Especially when she sees me pointing a gun at you. How long will she be?'

Once again, I shrugged.

He glanced at the old grandfather clock. It was five past ten. 'We'll wait till eleven. Then we'll see. This should be a good spot to watch out for her.'

And it was. From the living room there was a perfect view of the marsh. She would be bound to come into view on her way back to the house.

We waited.

I knew why Daniel wanted to know who we had spoken to about him. If we hadn't told anyone, as indeed we hadn't yet, then once he had got us out of the way he would stand a reasonable chance of continuing to lead a normal life. Provided, of course, he managed to escape blame for our murders. If anyone else did know, then his best bet was to kill us straight away and take the first plane to South America.

Either way we ended up dead. I just didn't want my last act to be giving in to Daniel. But he was right. Lisa would tell him the truth, once she saw him pointing a gun at me.

I thought through again what Daniel had done over the previous few weeks. I had pieced most of it together, but I wanted to fill in the gaps. 'Did Enever have anything to do with Frank's death?' I asked.

Daniel laughed. 'No. Of course not. I thought about asking him for help, but there was really no need. He was doing everything he could to ignore any evidence that neuroxil-5 was dangerous. I think he just couldn't accept the idea that there might be a problem.'

'But Frank knew there was something wrong?'

'Yeah. He met some doctor in Rhode Island who was going to make trouble.'

'Why did you have to kill them? Was it because you'd borrowed money from the loan sharks Sergei Delesov introduced you to?'

'It was worse than that. I'd told them BioOne was a sure thing. The day afterward, huge volume went through in the stock. Millions of dollars. If the bad news had broken about neuroxil-5 when they were still invested, I'd have been dead meat.'

'But they got out?'

'Yep. Thanks to your warning, I got them out in time, as well as myself.'

'And everyone was happy.'

'I wouldn't say they were exactly happy with me. It was hairy there for a while. I don't think we'll be doing business together again, shall we say. But I'm still alive.'

'Yes.' I looked at him squarely. 'You are. But quite a few other people aren't.'

He just grunted.

I thought through what must have happened. 'You changed dinner to brunch with Jeff in New York, and came back to Boston that afternoon to murder Frank?'

Daniel smiled thinly. 'Very clever. I even had time to get the last flight back from Logan to New York. The hotel could vouch that I spent the weekend there.'

'And afterwards you used my spare apartment keys to let yourself in to plant the gun in my closet?'

'Seemed like a good idea,' Daniel smiled smugly. 'It nearly worked.'

'Who killed Dr Catarro?'

'The Russians. And they were the ones who were supposed to deal with you.'

'What about John? Why did you kill him?'

'I had to. He'd remembered something Frank told him about neuroxil-5. He called me to ask about it. He said he'd called you, and you were coming round to his apartment to talk to him about it. I knew I had to shut him up, and quick.'

'So you shot him in the back?'

'Hey, this isn't the Wild West. I did what I had to do to survive. There's nothing wrong in that.'

'Nothing wrong in that!' I exclaimed in amazement.

'Simon. I'm alive, and I'll do what's necessary to stay that way'

It was difficult to think of Daniel as a murderer. Thin, pale, nerdish, he looked more at home with a keyboard than a gun. But I knew Daniel. He was greedy, and he was overconfident in his own abilities. That was how he had found himself in a position where it was either Frank or him. And Daniel had quite a self-centred morality. He'd go for himself any day. If he thought he wasn't going to get caught, and if the alternative was some Russian killing him, I could imagine him resorting to murder.

And once he'd done it once, he had to do it again.

We sat in silence, waiting for Lisa. She had said she wanted to be home before Gardner Phillips called back at eleven fifteen. I remembered all the times Lisa had been late in the past. Please, God, please let her be late just one more time.

The percolator was bubbling away in the kitchen.

'Shall I get your coffee?'

'Leave it! Stay where you are.'

I stayed where I was. The clock between us ticked louder and louder against the wall. Daniel was trying to stay cool, but he was finding it difficult. He was fidgeting, and a film of sweat was building up on his upper lip.

I was finding it difficult too. My earlier bravado, when I had dared Daniel to shoot me, was hard to maintain. I didn't want to die now, especially after all I had been through in the last couple of months to avoid first prison, and then a bullet. Just when I had sorted my life out, it was going to end. Because of Daniel. The bastard! John had been right about him all along.

Half past ten.

The phone rang. A loud, pre-digital, old-fashioned clanging sound. Gardner Phillips. I moved towards it.

'Stay where you are!' Daniel snapped. 'Leave it!'

So I left it. Both of us stared at the telephone as it cried shrilly for attention. Phillips was persistent, that was for sure. Thirty rings. I counted them subconsciously. But finally it went quiet. Daniel relaxed.

My mind raced. I hadn't told Phillips where I was, just the phone number. With the help of the police, he should be able to figure out the address from that. He could have the cops here in twenty minutes.

But why should he? I had said it was urgent, not a matter of life or death. He'd wait half an hour and call again.

In half an hour I'd be dead.

Quarter to eleven. As the time grew nearer when Daniel would shoot me, so also did the chance that Lisa might not return until after his deadline. She might survive. Oh God, please let her survive.

Five to eleven.

Then I saw her. She must have come back along the path through the woods. She was approaching the house from the side, the side I was facing, but in a few seconds she would pass right in front of the big living room window, and Daniel couldn't fail to see her. Unless I distracted him.

I kept my eyes on Daniel, but through my peripheral vision I could see her getting closer and closer. She was smiling, trying to catch my attention: she couldn't see there was another person in the room yet.

When she was a couple of yards from the window, I made my move.

'I need that coffee,' I said.

Then deliberately, but not quickly enough to scare him, I stood up, and moved across the room towards the kitchen.

'I said stay where you are!' Daniel's eyes followed me.

I remembered that Daniel had shot both Frank and John in the back. Perhaps he was squeamish about shooting a friend face-to-face.