The Disciple’s eyes widened. His mouth opened. ‘Lara!’ he murmured. ‘Lara!’
She shot a nervous glance at the door, then, freeing her hand, pushed the needle in through the seal of the vial, and drew the contents out until the barrel was full. She didn’t bother to squirt out a bit, to ensure there was no air going into the vein. Instead she just leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I have to do this,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s just to make sure you don’t say anything by mistake to anyone here. You understand, don’t you?’
His eyes rolled, and for one fleeting instant, she was certain he had actually looked at her face. And signalled his understanding.
Then, rapidly locating a vein in his wrist, she pushed the needle in, then pressed the plunger all the way home.
‘Goodbye,’ she whispered, removing it. ‘Goodbye my sweet, gentle Disciple.’
The door opened.
Lara turned, to be confronted by a nurse in her forties, with a stern face and black curly hair, wearing a badge that said, SISTER EILEEN MORGAN.
‘Who are you? What’s going on? What are you-’ Lara stabbed her in the neck with the syringe, then burst out of the room, collided with a man in a white coat, a doctor, pushed him out of the way, ignoring shouts behind her, and sprinted down the corridor, past the nursing station, along to the stairs, and threw herself down them.
She did not look round, just kept going, kept running, taking the stairs two, three at a time.
Down on the ground floor she crashed through a family with small children, dodged a woman wheeling a trolley laden with library books, pushed open doors marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY and instantly heard an alarm klaxon go off.
Then she was running across the road, digging in her pocket for her car keys. As she reached the car she looked back and saw that the policeman who had been on guard was already coming in through the car-park entrance.
She unlocked the car, got in, jammed the key into the ignition at the third attempt with her shaking hand, twisted it. The engine burst into life. The policeman was right in front of the car, holding his hands up, yelling at her to stop.
She floored the accelerator.
He hurtled onto the bonnet, his face striking the windscreen and buckling a wiper blade.
She swerved the car to the right, then left, racing across the parking lot, trying to shake him off. Then she made a sharp right to the exit onto the busy street, and she saw him slide off to the left and roll away out of sight.
A bus was bearing down from the right. If she went right now, she could make it, just, just. She floored the pedal, pulled out right across the road and made a sharp left, the little car slewing wildly, then picking up speed.
Straight towards a truck.
A truck on the wrong side of the road. Asshole. You asshole!
Saw the shock on the driver’s face.
And then she realized. It wasn’t the truck that was on the wrong side, it was her, forgetting she was in England, forgetting they drove on the left.
An instant later the front bumper of the truck exploded through the windscreen.
109
At five o’clock in the afternoon, travelling back in the dark from the Morley Park Research Laboratories, John and Naomi sat in silence, immersed in their thoughts, while Renate Harrison drove.
The detective’s cellphone rang and she answered it. From her deferential tone it sounded like she was talking a superior officer.
Reggie Chetwynde-Cunningham had been very decent to give up his weekend, Naomi thought. He had this afternoon seconded his entire team of encryptologists to the task of breaking the language codes in the two computers, and assured them he would lead the team through the night, if necessary.
The family liaison officer finished her call and put the phone back in its cradle. ‘That was DI Pelham. There have been some developments.’ Her tone sounded grim. ‘He wants me to take you straight to see him when we get back.’
Naomi felt a whorl of fear spiral through her. ‘What – what developments?’
‘He didn’t give me any details.’
Naomi, in the rear seat, looked at Renate Harrison’s face in the mirror. Every few seconds it was illuminated by the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. The woman was lying, she could see it in her expression.
Was this it? Was this going to be the bad news they were expecting? That their children had been found dead? Murdered by the paedophiles or Disciples, or whoever the hell had taken them?
John was sitting in the front passenger seat. Naomi laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you think this guy, Reggie, will be able to crack these codes?’
John turned his head, put his hand gently over her fingers. ‘He’s doing all he can, hon.’
‘I know, but will he crack them?’
John was silent, wondering what to say to her. He knew that some modern codes were virtually impossible. ‘If anyone can break them, it’s him.’
Naomi responded, ‘Is that another way of saying that if he can’t, no one can?’
For an answer, John took her hand in his, and interlocked his fingers with hers.
She thought back to the expression he had used so often in the past. Love is more than just a bond between two people. It’s like a wagon-train circle you form around you that protects you against all the world throws at you.
Their fingers closed that circle. She and John. They were that wagon train. Except. You were meant to have your entire family inside that circle. Wasn’t that the point?
*
The tall, wooden detective sergeant, Tom Humbolt, who had been one of her two interviewers yesterday, was in DI Pelham’s office with him when they arrived shortly after six. Humbolt was dressed as sharply as he had been yesterday, in a camel suit and a jazzy tie, with a warm smile on his face. Pelham was looking concerned.
They sat down at the round table.
‘Right, to bring you up to speed, Mr and Mrs Klaesson,’ the DI said tersely, ‘there have been a number of developments. At two thirty this afternoon, a woman masquerading as a nurse entered the room of the man we know as Bruce Preston, at the Sussex County Hospital, and administered a lethal injection. I’m afraid the medical team were unable to resuscitate him.’
John stared at him in silence, absorbing this, and the significance. Naomi was wide-eyed in shock.
Humbolt continued, ‘She stabbed a nurse – not fatally – and drove her car at a police officer who had been guarding him, injuring him seriously, and she was subsequently killed in a head-on collision with a lorry. She was apparently on the wrong side of the road.’
‘Committing suicide?’ said Naomi, her voice barely above a whisper.
‘Who – who – what – this woman – what…?’ John said, his voice tailing off.
‘She matches the photograph of the woman that we found in Preston’s wallet – the one I showed you.’
‘This must be Lara, the woman he kept mentioning after he was shot,’ John said.
‘We don’t know anything about her or what their relationship was,’ Humbolt said.
‘She was travelling on an American passport,’ Pelham said, ‘under the name Charlotte Feynman. The FBI have just informed us that the passport number corresponds with a woman of twenty-seven of that name, who died of meningitis in a hospital in Columbus, Ohio, eighteen months ago.’
He paused to let this sink in, then went on. ‘What I’m now going to tell you is in complete confidence and you are not to repeat it to the press, or to anyone, is that clear?’
John and Naomi nodded.
‘We’ve found three items of interest in her handbag, in the boot of her car. A boarding-card stub from a flight from Athens to London earlier today; a receipt – which looks like a bar receipt – from a location as yet unidentified, in Greek currency, dated yesterday; and, what might be the best of all, a receipt for a left-luggage locker at Athens airport time-dated six fifteen a.m. today. I’ve had a copy faxed through to the Athens police headquarters and a request for them to open it and let us know the contents. There’s always red tape involved with the Greek police, and if I don’t get immediate cooperation, I have an officer on standby to catch a flight out there tonight with the original.’