Impeding Justice (37 page)

‘
How so? Not that we were
doing anything of the sort anyway.’

‘
Like I said I have a gut feeling. Sorry I forgot, you’re
not Pete. He always knew how foolish it was to ignore my gut
feelings or a woman’s dangerous sixth sense as he used to call it.
Somewhere out there, Baldwin is hatching a new plan. He
didn’t
die in that blaze.’

‘
Oh, not that old toffee!
Well, we’ll have to see what the forensics say about that, won’t
we? I’m imploring you to rethink your decision, Lorne. Today’s not
the day to make such hasty decisions.’

‘
I’d say today is the
ideal
day, actually.
My desk will be cleared in one hour and my resignation letter
sitting in your in-tray.’

She turned on her heels and left him standing
there.

Chapter Sixty-Seven.

It
wasn’t a cold night, but a chill shivered through Lorne; she
laughed it off. Though it had a sinister feel to it she realised
the situation she’d put herself in, meeting up with another man to
discuss leaving her husband, and all the implications associated
with that, would stir up misgivings. She tried to empty her mind,
allow the rustle of the trees in the park behind her to soothe her.
Her eyes followed the path Jacques would take to emerge out of the
gate; several people meandered up and down it, but not him.
Seven forty five! Where the hell is
he?
Not that she could say
whether he did keep to time schedules or not, she’d never met him
in this way before. Their meetings, well if you could call them
that, had taken place in the mortuary or the cafeteria nearby for a
coffee. Was she mad? Could you really fall in love with someone
under those circumstances? Or, was she blowing up the attraction
she had for him out of all proportion? Thinking about it, those
times had only provided flirtation rights, most of the deeper
banter between them had taken place on the telephone! He’s your
mobile phone lover! And you’re thinking of giving up everything for
him!
Yes, I am mad!

Even though she’d had her phone on her mind,
at that moment its ring made her jump. She looked along the path
again thinking he’d be walking towards her, but he wasn’t. She
flipped open the lid, ‘Hello?’

‘
Ma, Cherie…’

‘
Jacques, you’re not going
to tell me you’re standing me up are you?’ she gave a nervous
laugh.

‘
I…’ His voice trailed off
into a moan.

‘
Jacques! What is it, are
you all right… Jacques?’

‘
He cannot speak at the
moment, Inspector…’

Oh, god!
She looked
around, turning her body in a frantic movement, people dodged round
her, ‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’ ‘Look out!’ She muttered
apologies, walked towards the park gate and held onto it for
support.

‘
Ha, that put you in a spin,
Inspector; you didn’t expect to hear from me, did you?’

‘
Don’t hurt him, please
don’t hurt him. He is just a colleague, nothing more. He doesn’t
deserve to be involved in this…’

‘
Oh, I think he’s a little
more than that. Planning to leave your husband for him were you? In
fact Tom is lucky, it could have been him, if things had been right
between you, but that would only solve a problem for you not cause
you one.’

‘
YOU, BASTARD!’

‘
That’s my name… The one I
took to my grave with me. Remember? I’m a dead man. No one but you
knows I am alive, oh, except this snivelling frog of course, but
dead men don’t have memories…’

A sickening crack sounded in her ear.
‘Nooooo… Jacques…Jacques… My love, my heart…’

‘
They don’t talk either, or
hear last endearments, didn’t you know that? Not as clever as we
thought are we? But then, haven’t I always told you
that?’

Her mind felt like a tornado twisting out of
control, a vice squeezed her heart.

‘
Why… why?’

‘
Oh, you just got under my
skin. No one gets away with that! Not even my father, may he long
rot in hell! You’ve been like a puppy dog with your teeth sunk into
my trouser leg. No matter which way I turned you hung on growling
and snarling, I had to kick you in the teeth to dislodge
you.’

‘
Christ, destroy me you
mean! But you had your freedom, like you said; you were a dead
man…’

‘
Not to you I wasn’t, was I?
Oh, no. You made noises, tried to convince everyone I still
existed. And, as my death couldn’t be proven they would have
listened to you in the end. They’d have stopped thinking of you as
paranoid and started to hunt me again. I don’t want that. I want
you to forget me. And, until you do, until you promise me you will,
one by one they will die. Each and every one of your loved ones
will die. Do you hear me?’

‘
I hear you.’ Her body
trembled; a hopeless sinking of everything she was fell from her.
She leaned heavily on the gate.

‘
That’s good. Compliance at
last, that makes me happy.’

‘
Just tell me, why didn’t
you just kill me? Wouldn’t that have sorted the
problem?’

‘
Yes, but where would the
fun have been in that? I enjoy the games. Most of the time I am
surrounded by idiots, like those two I instructed to torch your
father, that I had planned as my ultimate gift to you. A final
reminder of what I am capable of, but they let me down. They hadn’t
the guts to go through with it. Well, one day, they’ll be released
from prison, I can wait.’

The horror of this admission made her knees
buckle, ‘But, now, why not kill me now?’

‘
Because, then it would end.
I have very little to keep me amused. Yes, I am rich beyond
anything you could dream of, but the pleasure of living openly as a
playboy doing all the things I wanted to do when the killing days
would be behind me, you have destroyed. You identified me. Now, all
I have is to live in a country where extradition doesn’t exist. My
pleasures will be limited. I don’t like surgery, I have undergone a
lot. I didn’t want to undergo more. All that is your doing. You
have to suffer. That can’t happen if you are dead.’

A trickle of anger entered her. He’d fucking
killed two people she loved, and worse, had violated her darling
daughter and left her scarred for life! He so nearly murdered her
father in the most horrific way imaginable and she cowered beneath
him like a wreck… feeding his ultimate fantasy of having her
suffer! Well if he thought that, he had another thought coming to
him!

‘
Like you say you, fucking
bastard, you can’t live openly, not anymore. Well, you’d better dig
yourself in deep, because I won’t rest until I have you behind
bars. So, if I was you I would go and go right now to one of those
countries that will shield you and live as a fugitive, because if
you stay here, I will get you. I will hunt you down until the day I
die. And if that leads to a dead end because of extradition laws,
I’ll make it my life long aim to change that countries
law…’

‘
Ha, that’s the Inspector
that I love, though I did enjoy the one on her knees, too. And that
is where I will get you. So down on your knees you’ll never get up
again.’

The phone went dead.

Watch out for the second book
in the series that will be available in February 2010.

You can keep in touch with the
author at her blogpage @ http://melcomley.blogspot.com/