The Lazarus Hotel (24 page)

‘There's been so much going on,' Mrs Venables said apologetically. ‘It was only now, thinking about it, that it struck me as odd. I tried to tell myself I misunderstood but I didn't. Mr Lockhead
was
sweating. And Dr McNaught said she was giving him insulin.'

‘It sounds such an elementary mistake,' said Sheelagh, puzzled. ‘
Would
a doctor get that wrong?'

‘I wouldn't have thought so,' said Mrs Venables.

‘Then what
are
you saying? Tessa wasn't a GP?'

‘Oh, she was a GP all right. I've been with Dr Graves for ten years and most of her friends are medical people. You can spot a doctor at ten paces in a coal-hole. Mrs McNaught couldn't have been anything else. And she diagnosed the diabetes, which was the hard bit. It's not something a layman would guess from sweating and confusion.'

‘If it wasn't a mistake,' Tariq said slowly, not wanting to consider it and not daring not to, ‘what was it?'

But Mrs Venables had said all she intended to. She didn't know what it meant and wasn't prepared to speculate. But it had struck her as odd, and if they'd shared their misgivings from the start they might not have been in their current situation.

‘Could she have intended to disable him?' ventured Richard. ‘We were pretty desperate. Maybe she thought it was the only way we'd be safe till he could be locked up.'

‘Then why not say so?' Tariq pushed the wreckage of his pony-tail off his face with rough fingers. ‘It wasn't unreasonable in the circumstances. He was dangerous. We were entitled to do anything necessary to protect ourselves. Why pretend she was treating him?'

‘Maybe she thought we'd object,' suggested Richard. ‘It was a pretty extreme way to keep the guy out of action. I mean, people
die
of diabetes. If she had insulin in her bag, surely to God she'd some sort of sedative?'

Larry was the first to reach, or at least to put into words, the conclusion they were all trying to avoid. ‘Perhaps she wanted to do more than sedate him. Perhaps she wanted him dead.'

‘Jesus!' exclaimed Tariq in disgust.

‘Think about it. Mrs V knows that giving insulin to a diabetic who's short of sugar would be life-threatening and she only worked in a family with diabetes. Tessa was a doctor: she must have known. She didn't say anything because, with Miriam unconscious, she didn't expect anyone to notice. It's a fluke that someone did.'

‘Why would she want to kill him?'

‘Because she knew what we've just worked out – that he had a bloody good reason to want to kill her!'

‘Because she was his daughter's lover?'

‘Because she got Cathy started on the crap that finished her career and then walked out on her,' snarled Larry. ‘Maybe none of us has much reason to feel proud of ourselves, but Tessa really did fuck her up and chuck her out. If anyone's to blame for Cathy's suicide it was Tessa.'

Will had the scent of his natural quarry, the significant line of inquiry. ‘If we're right about this, or even most of it, Joe would be a danger to her as long as he lived. If he was arrested for what he'd done he'd tell the police why he did it, all the details would come out, and that would mean the end of Tessa's career, maybe her marriage, maybe criminal charges. It could be motive enough for murder.'

‘
Attempted
murder, anyway.' Sheelagh's voice was brittle. ‘She didn't succeed, did she? Even if that's what she intended, what happened is that Joe woke up, brained Tariq and chucked her down the lift shaft.' She seemed to hear herself then because she stopped with a sharp intake of breath. When she began again her tone was sober. ‘Whatever she intended, whatever she
did
, she paid for it.'

Will murmured, ‘Do we in fact know that?'

In the darkness everyone stared at where his voice was coming from. ‘What do you mean? Of course we do.'

‘No,' he explained carefully. ‘What we know is that we've got one broken bottle, one dizzy guard, two missing persons and some long hairs in the lift doors. We've put a certain interpretation on that and we may very well be right. But is it the only possible interpretation?'

Richard glimpsed the ghost of what he was proposing but saw no reason to make it easy for him. ‘Isn't it?'

Will sighed. He suspected Richard knew exactly; maybe the others did too. He felt he was being used as a kind of mental Rottweiler, someone to do their dirty thinking for them. ‘Going off the bare facts, Tessa did something extraordinary and professionally indefensible. And she did it without the knowledge or consent of anyone else.

‘So why assume that Joe killed Tessa? That in the middle of the night while the watchman slept' – Tariq shuffled uncomfortably, the whisper of his clothes the only commentary – ‘everything changed. The unconscious man woke. But not vague, mumbling and wondering which end of the sky fell on him, like Miriam just did. Oh no, he came to in perfect control of mind and body. He knew where the torch and the bottle were, he knew what to do with them, and he slipped out of bed and disabled two fit people before they could defend themselves. We really think that's what happened?'

Larry this time, softly, also aware by now where this was leading: ‘What's the alternative?'

They were determined to make him say it so Will did. ‘That a woman who'd already made one lethal attack now made another. She knew we were in no danger. Joe wasn't going to wake up – not then, possibly not ever. But to be safe she had to get rid of both him and Miriam, and all that stood – or slept – in her way was Tariq. That may have been her doing too. Did she give you some of that lemonade?'

Tariq nodded; then, realizing that wouldn't serve, said doubtfully, ‘Yes.'

‘And soon afterwards you started nodding off? So the answer to Richard's question is, she did indeed have a sedative in her bag.'

‘It was Tessa behind the torch?' Tariq's voice rose incredulously.

‘Look, I don't know,' admitted Will. ‘I wasn't there. But it makes more sense than the alternative. She drugged you, then she hit you – by the state of the bottle, hard enough to put you to sleep for good. When we found you we were meant to think that Joe had come to swinging. It's just her bad luck that Mama Straker didn't raise no weaklings.'

More than the note of levity, the syntax shocked Will a little: he shook his head in disbelief. ‘Then she hauled you away from the door and dragged Joe out of bed and down the corridor to the lift. He was heavy but she's no weakling either and it‘s only a few yards. That's when her hair got caught in the door. Not when Joe was disposing of her body. When she was disposing of his.'

There was a long pause as they considered it: a speculative quiet from those who thought Will could be right, the silence of disgust from those who thought he was wrong. After a moment the torch flashed on, the beam wavering slightly before finding the pale oval of his face. Its strength was waning but they'd been sitting in the dark long enough that it made him flinch. With his eyes screwed up and his face half-averted he looked shifty and unreliable, making it easy to dismiss his words as spite.

Sheelagh sniffed her disdain. ‘That's the sickest thing I've ever heard.'

But Richard had spent a lot of time listening to lies and listening to the truth, and staking his reputation on which was which. He judged will an intelligent, perceptive and decent man, so his opinion was worth something even if unexpected light made him squint. But he didn't switch the torch off. ‘Is that what you believe?'

‘On the balance of probabilities,' said Will, resorting to legal formulae. ‘Perhaps not beyond reasonable doubt.' The missing woman would lose a civil action based on the evidence but win a criminal one. She might have to pay damages but she wouldn't do time.

Such niceties were lost on Larry. He believed in what he knew, and the one thing they were sure of was who brought them here. The rest followed from that. ‘Next you'll be telling us it was her hit Miriam and greased the lift door!'

Will thought about it, grey eyes blinking in the torchlight. ‘Perhaps it was.'

Larry's tone was derisory. ‘Why would she?' ‘Why would he?'

‘Because— You
know
why!'

‘I know why he brought us here – to give us a hard time for failing Cathy. But there's no proof he meant to kill us. Nothing seriously unpleasant happened while Joe and Miriam were the only ones who knew what was going on. Somebody rifled Tariq's briefcase, probably to find out just who he was. Well, Joe knew already. It was only after that, when we all knew what it was about, that people started getting hurt.'

‘The lift going off?'

‘Could have been accidental. Or Joe could have done it to stop us walking out at half-time. Either way, it doesn't compare with a violent attack.'

Richard again. ‘Why would Tessa attack Miriam?'

Will found this end of a cross-examination less familiar than the other. He would have been happier if he'd known anything, but he didn't. It was a matter of conjecture, of looking beyond the obvious answers to where others, less convenient but possibly more illuminating, might lie. He'd hoped the group could pursue the exercise on that basis. But they weren't interested in semantics, they wanted facts. They were afraid and needed to know where the danger lay. Until he started this driverless train rolling they had at least had that consolation, and they resented him for shaking it.

But the train was rolling now and the only alternative to staying with it was jumping off. He improvised. ‘She came here like the rest of us, in good faith. But when she realized what was going on she knew how serious it could be for her. She needed to find out just how much Miriam knew and what she intended to do with it. Remember, none of us knew about Joe at that point. Tessa thought Miriam was the one she had to deal with.

‘She must have meant to kill her – she'd gain nothing by knocking her out. But ask any mugger – it's difficult to judge how much force it takes. The same blow that'll kill one person will put another in hospital and make a third angry enough to grab your blackjack and wallop you with it. Even when Miriam was found alive it didn't seem a major problem. She was deeply unconscious. She wasn't going to wake up for hours or maybe days. In the meantime she'd be at the mercy of the only doctor present.

‘Except that Mrs Venables hardly let her out of her sight. The odd time she was alone Tessa was occupied and couldn't get away without people noticing. When Tariq persuaded Mrs V to get some sleep it was the only chance Tessa would get. By morning Miriam could be awake and talking. It was now or never, and with Joe unconscious and Tariq unsuspecting it wasn't difficult. She set about disposing of the people who knew enough to ruin her.'

Tariq was following the discussion now though his head still sang. ‘What about the lift? What interest had she in making you fall?'

‘My fall was nothing to do with her – Midge forced those doors so often that they gave at a touch. I can't imagine why she'd want either me or Richard dead,' he added honestly. ‘Miriam and Joe, yes, but she'd nothing to fear from the rest of us. We didn't even know she was hiding something.'

‘No, but we'd have found out; Richard said slowly. ‘
You'd
have found out. Maybe your fall was an accident but she knew an opportunity when she saw one. It wasn't me she was after with the butter – it was you.'

Having Richard take up the theory, no longer having to carry the full weight of it in the teeth of blanket disapproval, was like shedding a physical burden. Will's face lifted in almost comic relief. On the tail of that came amazement at what Richard had actually said. ‘
Me?
Why me? I don't know any more about her than you do.'

‘No, but you think better than we do. Before we'd been here half a day that was obvious. When she decided what she had to do she must have worried about you. She could fool the rest of us but you were always going to see that bit deeper. When she decided to dispose of everyone who threatened her, you had to go too.

‘For a while it must have seemed fate had done the job for her. We thought you were dead. Then Midge said you were OK and we organized a rescue, so she had to think fast. To be safe she needed the three of you out of her way. The survivors could leave on Monday and never know that one of us was a murderer.'

‘We don't
know
it now!' Sheelagh said fiercely. When the torch flicked her way her face was flushed. She'd liked Tessa, was not persuaded by an imaginative fiction dreamt up by people with too much time to kill. To the best of her belief Tessa was another victim of the man who, crazed with grief, wanted to punish them all. She despised the way these clever, articulate men were twisting the facts to serve their argument. ‘You
think
it – there's a difference. I'm not even sure you think it so much as like the idea. Neat, hey? – let's have the broad do it this time.'

‘Well, this isn't Hollywood, it's the real world. Death here isn't a dramatic device. It's tangible and it's permanent. It's people getting their skulls caved in. It's people being thrown down forty-storey shafts. It's messy and it's scary, and it isn't a suitable topic for you two to play boy detectives on. If you've got some evidence let's hear it. If not, keep your mouths off a woman who'd be here to defend herself if she hadn't made two honest mistakes. She tried to help a man who was sick, and she assumed that the guy who volunteered to protect her would stay awake long enough to do it.'

The silence in the dim room was complete enough for them to hear the breath hiss in Tariq's teeth. As a judgement it was harsh; as a fact it was unarguable. He preferred Will's theory that he'd been slipped a Mickey Finn, because that way he wasn‘t to blame for what followed. But he didn't know. He might just have nodded off long enough for the sick man to resume his campaign of terror. If Sheelagh was right about Tessa and Will was wrong, Tariq was more to blame for her death than the madman who killed her.