Lesley Thomson - The Detective's Daughter

‘What an adventure, we’ll have hot chocolate when we get home.’

‘I know where they are.’ Sarah ran out, finding her way easily along the corridor without the torch.

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

It was Stella who found the bolt at the top of the door, stopping Sarah’s clumsy struggle with the handle. She slid it across; the oiled mechanism gave at once.

Winding stone steps receded into darkness. Cool damp air laced with a clinical odour drifted up. Stella could smell Eau Savage Extreme; neither Ivan nor Jack wore it.

‘It’s hers.’ Sarah’s breath was hot in Stella’s ear. ‘The studio smelled of it after she had been for a sitting.’

They listened but heard nothing.

Logic came back to Stella: the door had been bolted on the outside so whoever was in the basement had been locked in.

‘We’re too late.’

She plunged down steep steps, catching herself with a rope slung through loops on the wall.

‘There he is!’ Sarah leapt the last three steps, jolting Stella, who lost her balance and dropped the torch, extinguishing the light.

‘Challoner’s dead.’

Stella thrashed about on all fours in the smothering darkness, flailing for the torch. The slate floor grazed her palms. She scrambled to her feet and at last found a switch. She knew it would not work, but habit made her flick it down.

The room was flooded with light.

Stella’s first thought was that there was no blood. Next she saw her van keys on a step beneath a gigantic contraption of red leather beneath a cone of light. A figure lay supine, feet right up, a surgical mask strapped to its face, wrap-around sunglasses shielding the eyes. Thin plastic straps clamped the calves, waist and wrists. Challoner lay motionless, skin waxy in the remorseless glare.

‘Antony!’ Sarah darted forward and grabbed a wrist. ‘I can feel a pulse.’

Stella ripped off the mask.

It was Jack.

‘Pass me a scalpel. Quick!’ Stella gesticulated at a jumble of surgical utensils on a worktop.

She eased the blade between Jack’s skin and the plastic thongs, willing her hand not to slip, and released Jack’s limbs. Only when she had finished did Stella think to remove the wrap-around sunglasses.

Jack stared through her with eyes like Terry’s in the hospital, glassy and unseeing, the pupils dilated. She leant on the lever making the chair descend abruptly to a sitting position. Jack’s head jerked to one side and a string of spittle swung from his mouth.

Sarah shut her eyes and, concentrating, tried his pulse again.

‘There’s a fluttering.’

‘Are you sure?’ Stella willed it to be true. She waved a hand over Jack’s face but he stared impassively at something far away. ‘Jack, wake up. What’s the bastard done to you?’ She gripped his shoulders, holding him to her, breathing in the familiar scent of detergent and damp wool.

‘I think this might explain it.’ Sarah held up an empty syringe. She pulled off the needle and sniffed the open end of the capsule. ‘Lidocaine combined with adrenaline, judging by the size of his pupils.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’m a dentist’s sister, remember?’ Sarah raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s a ten-millilitre syringe. One of these would be fine, the maximum safe dose is five hundred milligrams, which is five of these syringes. It depends how many times he’s been injected.’ She lifted Jack’s arm and tugged up his sleeve. There were two red blotches on his arm.

‘Three is OK, isn’t it?’ Stella demanded. ‘That’s three hundred.’

‘Antony wouldn’t overuse a site.’ Sarah dragged Jack’s shirt out of his trousers. There were three more areas of red on his stomach above the line of dark hairs from his navel. She fumbled with his other sleeve. ‘Hmmm. Looks like he’s had six hundred, with three jabs away from his heart, which gives him a chance. I can’t say for sure – but too many, whatever. You can see he’s suffering from visual disturbance.’

Stella stared at Jack. His gaze was unfocused and his lips working silently.

‘He’s trying to tell me something. Jack, how much did Challoner give you?’ Jack blinked slowly and his tongue appeared between his teeth. ‘It’s no use. Call an ambulance!’

‘There’s no signal down here.’

‘Go upstairs, then.’

‘I don’t have a mobile and there isn’t a telephone. Antony got rid of it. Give me yours.’

‘It’s in the car!’ Stella grabbed her keys and ran up the stairs. At the top she slammed into wood and, grabbing hold of the rope, only just stopped herself toppling back. The door was shut and there was no handle on the inside.

Challoner had locked them in. She kicked at the wood but it did not give. She raced down and wheeled impotently around the room, rattling instruments and banging the counter.

Sarah had somehow got Jack on to the floor in the recovery position and folded her jacket under his head. Dimly Stella considered she would not have thought of that.

There were no windows. No other doors. No way out.

‘Help!’ Stella yelled, her voice cracking.

‘It’s soundproofed. No one will hear us. Not even Antony.’ Sarah swabbed Jack’s mouth with a moistened pad. ‘We won’t suffocate – I can tell the air is fresh, but I don’t know how long we can last without food. At least we have water.’

‘I don’t care about us. What about Jack? Is there something we can give him, to reverse it, neutralize the drug, anything?’

‘I think there’s an antidote but Antony won’t have it here. He doesn’t even keep oxygen down here. Jack needs supportive management – his airway protected and cardiac monitoring.’ Sarah Glyde’s haphazard manner had vanished: she had turned into a medic.

Neither of them said the obvious: if they could not get Jack to a hospital within the next few hours, he would die.

‘Did you tell your office where you were going?’

Stella shook her head. She had not told Jackie where she was going for days. ‘Wouldn’t Challoner’s receptionist think of finding you here?’

‘Mrs Willard wouldn’t care, but if she did ask, he will tell her I’m away.’

Stella went over to the dentist’s chair. Jack looked frightened. She stroked his fringe back from his face.

‘We will get you help, Jack. I promise,’ she whispered.

The counter took up one wall; apart from a sink and the instruments it was strewn with rubbish. And a mobile phone.

‘He’s left his phone!’ Stella grabbed it and pressed the ‘on’ button. The screen lit up, accompanied by Nokia’s tinkling signature tune, but then went blank. The battery was dead. Infuriated she slapped it against her palm and saw minute scratches on the casing. She tipped it towards the light.

‘TCD’. Terence Christopher Darnell. It was Terry’s phone. Final proof, had she needed it, that her dad had been here. Although she was convinced he had not seen Challoner’s secret surgery. Challoner had found his phone and answered it when she rang the night of her dad’s death.

The water fountain trickling into the ceramic bowl beside the leather dentist’s chair filled the silence. The murderer spends time dressed in white beneath the ground beside a bubbling fountain. Not all psychics were crackpots.

Her dad had cleaned dirt off the Ford Anglia’s registration plate. It would have been a strain in the tight space. He had not noticed his mobile fall out of his pocket.

Terry had told Martin Cashman he was going to ring his daughter and Stella had not believed it because he had not called. Terry could not ring because Ivan Challoner had his phone. Too tired to drive, he had slept in his car all night – in his clothes – and when he woke he’d parked near Broad Street and bought ham rolls in the Co-op. He was going to call her before he drove back to London and that was when he realized he did not have his phone. Upset by such a stupid mistake, his heart rate took off. Her dad had died in the street.