Tedd and Todd's secret (30 page)

Lance pushed him into the room and forced him to sit down. Two days before he and Aidan had been here looking at William Black's decapitated head.

"I haven't got the foggiest what this is all about," Kodey said coldly.

"We know that you killed him with a boomerang," Carol said. "You cut his head off in the street after cutting a street lamp in two."

"Seriously? That's an interesting story," Kodey laughed. "Have you got any proof? Perhaps you've got the murder weapon?"

"We've got witnesses," Lance told him. "You're going to pay for that, unless you tell us everything. You know what I'm referring to. "

"No. No, I don't. And the whole thing means nothing to me at all. I wouldn't tell you anything even if I did know something. So go ahead, use these witnesses you're talking about. I'm scared to death." He laughed again.

"That's enough jokes for now. I know you killed that man. You're one of the Black gang and you're going to tell me about your war with the Whites."

"Now I see it," Kodey said, changing his tone. "Maybe I've judged you wrong. Do you want to know where I get the black suit from and all that stuff? I used to pick it up from the dry-cleaners regularly. Listen well, because I'm not going to repeat it. I don't know how I did all those strange things, and it doesn't bother me if you believe me or not. Have you got that clear? I haven't got the least idea about any of this."

"I'm asking you for a favour. Give us something," Carol said. "One of our friends is in trouble. He's in jail and we can't get him out if we don't get to the bottom of this first."

"You're breaking my heart, beautiful," Kodey said. "I've already told you I don't know anything."

"Bloody fool," Lance snarled. "I'm going to make sure they put you away for that murder."

"Good luck. Tedd and Todd are my lawyers and they're excellent. I can assure you of that. They got me out of a similar situation three years ago."

"We'll continue this chat down at the police station," Lance said. "Being locked up might loosen your tongue. Get up!"

Kodey didn't offer any resistance as they left the house and went down the stairs. He didn't say anything until they got to the street.

"I can't go to the station," he said nervously.

"You're already on your way. Get in the car," Lance ordered him, shoving him in the back.

Lance Norwood was on the point of losing it. His partner was locked up in jail like a common criminal and this curious individual in front of him hadn't offered even a scrap of information that could help. Lance suddenly felt as if he wasn't a good detective. Aidan would have got Black to talk one way or the other. But with him in charge, nothing had happened.

During his years with Aidan, Lance had left the interrogating to his partner. His height had always intimidated suspects, or at least that was what Lance used to think. But it was more than just physical. The big man had a knack of getting information out of anyone. It was a pity he wasn't here now.

Carol opened the back door and got in.

"It's not what you think," Kodey explained. "But I can't leave here."

"Shut up!" Lance screamed, pushing him in.

A minute later they were thick in the traffic with Carol still trying to work out a way to get some answers out of Kodey Black. But he didn't say anything, and just stared out of the window all the way. Carol gave up halfway to the station, thinking about her feelings for Aidan now that he was behind bars. It had been amazing how quickly her feelings had changed. And she didn't want to see him go from the station to prison. She was going to do everything in her power to stop that happening.

They were driving at a steady speed down a wide two-lane road when Kodey suddenly came to life. Carol studied the road ahead but couldn’t see anything that might have provoked Kodey's reaction.

"Stop the car. I can't go any further," Kodey yelled.

"Shut up!" Lance told him.

"This is going to be painful."

Carol was about to ask Kodey what the problem was when his face became distorted as if he'd crashed into an invisible sheet of glass. The car flew in the air, glass and pieces of metal flying everywhere. Kodey's body was suspended in the air, completely immobile. The rear part of the car had split in two, cut down the middle by the unexpected obstacle.

Lance lost control and the car was veering wildly from one side of the road to the other. The rear had collapsed and the broken chassis was being dragged along the tarmac, sparks flying. They crashed into a parked car and bounced off into a tree. Carol scrambled out and saw Kodey a few yards behind, surrounded by broken glass and metal.

"I warned you about going any further," he said, before turning and running down the street.

She went to chase after him but suddenly remembered that she hadn't checked to see if Lance was injured.

A crowd had formed around the car and she forced her way through it. She opened the door and suddenly her legs lost all their strength. A sharp pain shot through her head. Something weird was happening. Her body was shaking uncontrollably and two men were holding her and others helped put her on a stretcher. As she was carried away she had one last look at Lance in the front seat with a tree branch buried in his neck.

CHAPTER 22

Helen Black was used to being looked at. She was a beautiful woman with a good figure, but the key to what made heads turn was her height. It was unusual to see a woman seven foot tall and wherever she went everyone, men, women and children, looked at her.

Today, however, they weren't only looking at her, but at how she was dressed and at what she was carrying. As she went through the shopping centre, everyone elbowed their friends, or dragged them by the shoulder to turn and see the spectacular woman dressed in an exquisite black dress with a black bow hanging off her back.

Trevor Deemer followed her with difficulty, pushing his way through the crowd of onlookers, with Helen's hair bouncing high above the rest marking his way. He had no idea what she was doing here. He suspected something was going to happen, given that they'd stolen a motorbike and crossed the city like two bats out of hell.

Turning the next corner he ran into a big group of people arguing, and fell over. By the time he got to his feet, there was no sign of Helen anywhere. He cursed and started running as fast as he could in the direction she'd been heading a few moments before. He came out into a circular mall with a fountain in the middle.

"Great throw," he heard someone call out to his right.

Staring in the direction of the caller as he recovered his breath, he recognized Dylan Blair. The millionaire had called out to a tall thin individual dressed in a white suit who was walking towards a huge black-suited man with a spear in his back slumped on the floor of the mall. A brown-haired woman stood near the dead body, and behind her a wheelchair was doing circles under its own power. Then, as if the woman had a remote control or something similar, the chair came at her beckoning, and she sat down.

Trevor didn't have time to try and work out the mystery because at that moment he saw Helen taking aim again. He bolted towards her but didn't make it in time and watched in horror as the arrow found its mark in the man's right shoulder. She shot two more at him that missed.

"Stop, Helen!" he screamed, grabbing her by the arm. He couldn't believe what had just happened. She'd fired an arrow into a perfect stranger in cold blood. "What are you doing? You're going to kill that man."

In one fast and brutal movement, she hit him with a backhander that knocked him to the floor. His head was spinning from the force of the blow as he watched her take another arrow out of her quiver. And before he could do anything, someone grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him back.

"Don't get involved in this," the young man who had been sitting with Dylan Blair warned him.

"And that goes for you too, Ethan," Dylan said, coming up to them. "You're losing it."

Without understanding anything, Trevor followed Dylan's eyes and saw the man with the arrow in his shoulder get up from the floor, pick the spear out of the chest of the fallen giant and spin round and throw it at Helen. He hardly had time to scream as the spear sped through the temperature-regulated air straight at the woman he loved. She ducked at the last second and the spear flew over her head.

"You'll be killed if you get into this," Ethan warned him again. "There's nothing you can do for her."

"She's my bride," Trevor screamed. "And they're trying to kill her. I've got to help."

"You can't," Dylan said flatly. "And she's not your bride. It's better that you accept that as soon as possible. You need a drink. I'd be happy to buy you one if you tell me a little about your girlfriend."

Trevor gave some thought to that but was aghast at seeing Helen firing another arrow in the man's direction. It missed again.

"I'm doing it for your own good," Ethan said. "Helen knows how to look after herself. You can't do anything for her anyway."

"It sounds like you know her? How's that?"

"She's a great woman," Dylan said. "Although the truth is, you should've seen the White woman…"

Trevor was getting angrier by the minute. "What are you talking about?"

"Naturally, she was the same as your Helen, only blonde and blue-eyed," Dylan went on. "It's a question of taste, I suppose. But I preferred Helen White."

Well before he could distinguish the face of the driver, Fletcher already knew who it was. As soon as the police car came speeding into the car park and came to an abrupt halt on the pavement a few yards from the entrance, leaving the area with the smell of burning rubber, the old pathologist knew that his friend had heard the sad news.

"Aidan, wait!" Fletcher called out.

Aidan Zack stopped in his tracks. He'd got out of the car so fast he'd left the keys dangling in the ignition. "Fletcher, where's Lance? What's happened?"

"They've just brought him," Fletcher said sadly. "Carol's inside. She was with him–"

Aidan ran into the mortuary. The pathologist rushed after him as fast as he could. He had no idea how Aidan had got out of jail. But that was a question that would have to wait until later. The big problem now was how to keep Aidan from going over the top. The sight of his friend in a body bag wasn't going to help.

As far as Fletcher was concerned, Lance Norwood had been a poor detective, little more than a lackey for Aidan in the professional sense. It was an open secret that Fletcher and Lance hadn't got on, but he'd been well aware that Lance had given Aidan his unconditional support and had really been his only true friend. His death was going to be a hard load for the big man to carry.

The pathologist entered the room where Lance's lifeless body lay. His head jutted out of the half-open body bag. Aidan was beside the dead body with Carol buried in his arms. Fletcher zipped the bag up as quietly as he could, then pushed the stretcher away and called a companion to remove it.

"They have to take the body to the examination room," Fletcher explained. "His wife's requested that."

Aidan nodded, his face distorted with rage. "You've got to explain how this happened, Carol, I need to know."

Carol somehow found the energy to tell him what had happened. She stuttered her way through the strange sequence of events that had led to Lance's death. Aidan listened stoically, without interrupting her once. He hardly blinked.

Carol's voice seemed to come from a great distance, as if in a way the speaker wasn't her but someone else inhabiting her body. Her words disappeared in her mind, without leaving a trace, or even the softest echo. And when she was finished, all Aidan knew was that Lance had died and that his killer had a name: Kodey Black. He was going to find this bastard as soon as he could and he hoped that he was as resistant to death as James White had been, so that he could kill him over and over again.

Aidan didn't give a damn about what might happen to him now. He only knew that he was passing through a succession of events that had no explanation, and that had cost the life of his wife and now his best friend. Things couldn't get much worse. He had two reasons now to seek revenge. If he went back to jail it was more than likely that the dynamic violet-eyed duo would get him out again. That's how mad everything had become. Everything was absurd, surreal. Nothing made any sense except revenge.