Lynne Fox - The Armageddon Game

I gave her a slightly quizzical look.

‘I didn’t see a taxi pull up,’ she explained.

‘Oh, right. No, it isn’t too heavy.’ I headed toward the stairs as she returned to her newspaper.

‘It’s terrible that M25 isn’t it?’

‘I beg your pardon.’

She pointed at a photograph on an inside page. ‘Just terrible; another young life ruined I expect and there was him probably looking forward to his holiday.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, it stands to reason doesn’t it; he was heading towards Heathrow apparently.’ She sighed and closed the paper, getting up from the desk. ‘Better start thinking about getting myself some tea.’

I hesitated for a second debating with myself whether I was just being silly and then decided that I wouldn’t rest until I knew. ‘Mm, have you finished with the paper?’

‘Yes, why, would you like it?’

‘If you don’t mind; I enjoy doing the crosswords,’ I said by way of explanation.

‘Be my guest.’ She folded it in half and handed it to me.

I tucked it under my arm and continued up the stairs. Once in my room I propped the suitcase against the wall and immediately extracted Liliad from the wardrobe. Sitting her beside me on the bed I opened the paper, scanning the pages for the article the landlady had been reading.

‘Oh, my God!’ I found the item on page four. It barely took up two column inches but the photograph was enough. Alberto’s car, I was sure it was his as I could clearly see the image of the Venezuelan flag he’d had painted on the driver door, lay on its roof; a badly crumpled van alongside it.

It was clear from the text that the landlady had merely looked at the photograph of battered vehicles and not read the article which stated that the driver had been identified from his driving licence and was the young man involved in the recent disappearance of a patient from the St Joseph’s Psychiatric Hospital in Endover. From an airline ticket found in his belongings it appeared that he was planning to flee the country.

I turned to Liliad. ‘It says here that he’s in a critical condition; a fifty-fifty chance of pulling through. Damn! Why couldn’t he have just died?’

Liliad’s eyelids drooped so that she was observing me through narrowed slits, her nose wrinkling slightly giving her the appearance of an Oriental cat.

‘Why couldn’t he have just got on that plane; it was all he had to do.’ I couldn’t keep the exasperation out of my tone. ‘After all, we don’t want him getting well enough to talk, do we?’

Liliad shrugged her shoulders, making me consider further.

‘Well, I suppose there isn’t much he can say that would be damaging. They’ve probably already worked out what happened, the sequence of events and he’d no idea where we were headed; I’d made sure of that. Hopefully they’ve picked me up on King’s Cross Station CCTV and believe I’m still in London.’

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