Quintin Jardine - Screen Savers

‘No, she fooled me,’ Anoushka snarled, her accent becoming thicker. ‘Both of you did. I loved her, I was good to her, and she said she loved me too. But all the time, all the time she lived with me, all the time I thought that we were a couple, you were playing with me, both of you.’

‘Wrong,’ I shouted at her. ‘You’re totally wrong. For a while Jan believed all that too; you had her fucking mesmerised. I’ll tell you this, though. All that time, I hated you; I knew that inside yourself, you were an evil, corrupting influence. Jan never saw you that way; but she did realise eventually that she couldn’t let you run her life any longer.’

She jumped up and spat in my face. I lost it; I hit her, back-handed, across the cheek, sending her sprawling back across the couch, as Mark Kravitz stepped between us.

‘You’re a liar,’ she shouted. ‘You used me, both of you, and you thought you could get away with it. But Jan didn’t, did she? I punished her, just as I am punishing you.’

I yelled back at her. ‘What the fuck do you mean, you crazy bitch?’

When she smiled at me, I wanted the hatred back, pronto. She really was crazy, and that look scared me stiff. ‘You didn’t really think that thug could have set such a trap on his own, did you?’ she sneered. My blood ran cold. ‘Stephen did that; he was with him, and he wired that machine. He made it lethal because he knew who Jan was, he knew what she had done to me, and he knew how much I wanted to punish her.’

I knew that I daren’t touch the woman again, ever. But I wanted to mark her, in any way I could. ‘And now he’s fucking dead,’ I said, sounding cold, and I admit it, as vicious as her. I touched the middle of my forehead. ‘Right there, the Dutchman shot him; his brains were all over the carpet, and he pissed himself.

‘Know what? Right now I feel just a bit sorry for the bastard. Because I’m sure you controlled your half-brother all his life, and that you turned him into your creature, the way you tried to turn Jan. Poor Stephen probably never had a chance.’

Finally, I got to her. ‘No,’ she protested. ‘That’s not true. I’ve loved two people in my life — Jan and my brother. No one else. My mother was always a weak woman, and when she married that pitiful Scotsman I gave up on her. My father, I never knew.

‘They were my only two. Jan betrayed me, but Stephen never did. It was really me who brought him up; his parents would have held him back, but I showed him what he could be. He was my treasure and when he was older, my little secret. None of my acquaintances knew about him, not even Jan. But he has always been there for me, whenever I’ve needed him.’

And then the madness was back. ‘He and I planned together how we would make you suffer; we had hoped that you would be arrested for poisoning that man, as almost you were. When you talked your way out, we knew we had to do more. Originally Stephen was simply going to kill Dawn Phillips, but then he saw the script, and had the wonderful idea of acting it out, and making himself rich.

‘Your policeman friend was a big help, all the way along. He was corrupt; you know that, don’t you. Stephen was supposed to be his informant, but it was the other way around. From time to time Dylan would give him money that was supposed to be for tips, but Stephen would give it back to him, and lots, lots more.

‘He was included in the kidnap, because I thought it would be too dangerous to leave him behind in Glasgow. He would never have seen any of the money, of course. That was for Stephen. . and eventually for me.’

She sneered at me again. ‘You think now that it is over, Oz? No, it is not. Noosh will always be around. When you and your little Prim are married, I will always be there in your nightmares. When you have children, you will always be afraid that one day-’

Kravitz killed her then; he stepped up behind her and broke her neck. More orders, you see. Stephen had left nothing behind him, nothing to prove that Noosh was behind it all. But when I knew who she was, I knew she had to be. The powers that be decided that they couldn’t pull her in and confront her with it, just in case I was wrong; so instead, they let me run with it, they set me up as live bait to see if she would bite.

What they didn’t tell me was that she was going to die too, jumping off a cliff just south of Aberdeen in a grief-stricken suicide. But what the hell; she’s best off with her murderous wee bastard of a brother.

She was right about one thing, though, was Anoushka Turkel. I still see her in my dreams; keep this to yourself but, occasionally, I wake up screaming.