Текст книги "Chameleon"

Автор книги: Jackson J. Bentley

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Chapter 4 7

Green Earth Fashions, Church Place, London, Thursday 9pm

It was dark and cold outside by the time Dee and Katie exited Green Earth by the side door. The alleyway into which they alighted was narrow and poorly lit, but a warm and comfortable car was waiting for them just a few yards away.

Dee stepped out first and kept Katie behind her whilst she scanned the alleyway. There were no hysterical fans around. It was too wet and too cold. No-one was visible in the line of sight that Dee had established between the exit and the car.

She was just about to usher Katie into the alley when she noticed the barest wisp of water vapour dissipating into the darkness. She breathed out herself and noticed that her warm expelled breath formed a noticeable cloud. Someone was hiding and trying to conceal their exhalations. Dee turned and whispered to Katie, asking her to go back inside until Dee came back to collect her. Katie looked down the alley but saw nothing amiss, and a puzzled frown formed on her face. Nonetheless, she trusted Dee’s instincts and did as she was asked.

***

Dee had wrapped up tight and warm. She was wearing a heavy coat and scarf over her jeans and polo neck sweater. She unbuttoned the coat and removed the scarf from her neck, keeping her leather gloves on. If there was an attacker in the alley she needed the freedom to move easily and use her martial art skills. Additionally she had no intention of giving any assailant the chance to throttle her with her own scarf.

She walked casually down the alley towards the recessed doorway where she had noticed the wisp of vapour and then, as a diversion, she called out to no-one.

“Katie, tuck in behind me. You never know what might happen.”

She had barely finished the sentence when a figure leapt out in front of her. She could see it was a man, and he was holding something at chest level with both hands. Whatever it was it looked dangerous, and it was aimed at Dee’s head.

“Bitch!” the man shouted. “I’ll make you pay!” His angry voice was distorted beyond recognition.

Dee marvelled at the fact that almost all amateur assailants felt an urge to issue a warning before acting, whereas if they acted and yelled at the same time the victim would be caught unawares. Dee sensed, as much as saw, something coming towards her face and swivelled to avoid it, whilst launching a kick at the assailant’s outstretched hands. A stream of cold liquid splashed onto her coat which absorbed the most of the noxious liquid, but a little sprayed over her ear. The smell of the liquid hit her senses and she was outraged. The strong chlorine smell told her that someone had been trying to blind her by squirting bleach into her eyes.

At the same instant she recognised the odour, her foot connected with her assailant’s weapon and his wrists. He grunted as the force from Dee’s kick cracked his left wrist and dislocated his outspread left thumb. Then he screamed.

***

The scream wasn’t that of a man who had sustained minor injuries to his hands. He screamed as if he was dying. Dee flung off her bleach covered coat and wiped her stinging ear.

“Son of a bitch!” she muttered. “This is undiluted bleach.” In a second she had both feet planted on the pavement and was ready to beat her opponent into the ground. Her training had kicked in instinctively, and she had adopted a closed, long and high stance. In other words, she was presenting a closed or limited view of her body. Her feet were wide apart with her weight resting equally on each foot, and, she was standing tall, ready to deflect any incoming blows or to launch an attack.

The man stumbled towards her, his arms crossed over his face, still screaming.

“I’m blinded!” he cried as he moved ever closer. Dee felt she had no alternative. It could be a bluff, and in any event he had started the fracas. She threw out a series of combination punches to his unprotected midriff and chest, hearing a satisfying gasp as his lungs deflated. She finished with a hard kick to the groin which would have flattened her attacker’s testicles or sent them up as far as his throat.

***

The assailant lay on the ground, crying and sobbing that he was blind, by the time Katie came out into the alley with the security guards. Dee knelt beside the injured man with her scarf ready to act as temporary restraints.

“Bobby,” she called, referring to one of the security men by name. “I need a torch and some bottles of water as soon as you can.”

Dee dragged the man’s arms away from his face but it was too dark to see who he was. He resisted.

“Stop rubbing the stuff into your eyes, you stupid sod,” she shouted.

She pulled his arms behind his back and tied them together with her scarf, wrapping the ends around his ankles for good measure. Trussed up like a turkey, she was saving him from himself as much as restraining him.

The torch arrived, and Bobby pointed it into the man’s face as Dee opened the water bottles and squirted the contents of each into her assailant’s eyes. He yelled and screamed but he could not resist. Dee held his head up and, opening one eye at a time, she squirted water in, rinsing out the bleach. When she was happy that both eyes were thoroughly rinsed, she took her own handkerchief and one from Bobby. Folding them carefully, she placed one over each eye.

Katie came to Dee’s side and saw the man’s blistering red face for the first time. She shrieked his name in shocked surprise.

“Rob Donkin!”

***

By the time the paramedics had arrived and squirted a gooey salve into the young man’s eyes, he was in shock. He wasn’t moving but he was still groaning. The paramedic took a syringe, tapped it and injected Donkin’s left arm. Donkin noticeably relaxed, and the paramedic removed his restraints, holding the scarf out for Dee to take. He looked at her coat.

“You’re covered in it as well,” he noted. “Do you need me to take a look?”

“No, it’s only on my clothes. I’ll be fine. Just get him to hospital before the stupid little sod loses his eyesight.”

Back in Green Earth offices, Dee discarded all of her outer clothing and washed any signs of bleach from her skin. Katie came in with some Green Earth branded clothing and some Tea Tree balm, which she tenderly applied to the red patches on Dee’s skin. Once Dee was fully dressed she examined the damage more closely. She had a couple of red patches on her ear and on her neck, and she could expect to lose some hair colour, but generally she was fine.

Dee looked over to thank Katie for her help and saw tears in the younger woman’s eyes.

“I didn’t see anyone in that alleyway, Dee; I would have walked right into that. I don’t know how I would have coped if you had been hurt protecting me.”

Katie then rushed into Dee’s arms, pushing the older woman back against the countertop.

“That what you pay me for, Katie,” Dee reminded her soothingly, as she hugged her young friend and kissed the top of her head.

***

An hour later in the hotel suite the two women were relaxing in their pyjamas and robes when they heard a brisk knock, followed by a muffled voice from the other side of the door.

“Dee, it’s DC Knox. We met last year.”

Dee checked the TV monitor that showed who was outside the door, just to be sure. She smiled as she saw Detective Constable Knox of the Metropolitan Police, whose round friendly countenance Dee recalled with warmth. She invited him in, and they spent a few minutes reminiscing in the hallway about the case in 2009 where they met.

Eventually the two old friends came into the lounge area and Dee introduced Katie Norman. Katie’s hair was brushed out, her face was make-up free and natural, but the thirty year old DC was still besotted with the star. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“I can’t believe I’m meeting you face to face,” he spluttered, losing any cool or ‘street cred’ he might have imagined he possessed.

“I’m always happy to meet one of Dee’s former boyfriends,” she teased. Knox flushed and spluttered again before Dee rebuked the young starlet with a single word. “Katie.”

DC Knott composed himself and explained that Donkin had managed to get hold of some commercial strength bleach which contained around thirty to forty per cent concentrate, whereas domestic bleach contained only around five to fifteen per cent concentrate when compared to the whole volume of the container. It seemed the enraged publicity seeker had then poured the solution into a plastic water cannon designed for children’s water fights in swimming pools. It became clear that Dee’s kick must have sent the nozzle back in Donkin’s direction, dousing him with a face full of bleach. To make matters worse, the plastic container had cracked as well, pouring the remaining contents all over the would-be assailant.

Donkin had well and truly been “hoist by his own petard”, in the words of the Detective Constable, who continued; “You may have saved him from blindness with your quick action, Dee, but the medics say it’s too early to tell. His eyes are badly burned.”

Katie came over and sat beside Dee, holding her hand. Neither woman would have wished this on Rob Donkin, but they both knew that the idiot could have blinded them both had Dee not reacted as she did. They both concluded that there was little or no chance that, having filled their eyes with aggressive bleach, Donkin would have stayed around to rinse out their eyes with clean water. He was a coward at heart, and they rightly assumed he would have run away.

In the next forty five minutes DC Knox took down their statements, acknowledged that they were free to fly to the USA as planned, and then stood to leave, hugging Dee and telling her that he was delighted that her gunshot injuries from the previous year had healed so well.

“Don’t I get a hug too?” Katie demanded.

DC Knox didn’t wait for a second invitation, and Katie winked at Dee over his shoulder as Dee simply shook her head and smiled.

Chapter 4 8

Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, Friday 8am.

The cruise had been fun, and Gil had even managed to grab a couple of hours’ sleep, but in a few hours she had crossed that narrow channel of the Atlantic Ocean separating the Bahamas from the USA. The Port Everglades Cruise Terminal was a far cry from the terminal in Nassau; to begin with it was filled with cruise ships four times larger than her own. The brilliantly white ships bore different cruise line logos, the most prominent being Royal Caribbean, and were ultra modern in their design. Gil walked down the gangplank onto the concrete jetty a couple of hundred dollars lighter than when she embarked. She was no gambler. In a few moments she reached the terminal building and, for the first time ever, she was standing in the ‘US Passports Only’ queue.

“So, Miss Miles, you have a US passport and this is the first time you have used it?”

“Yes. I read on the Homeland Security website that US passport holders should present their US Passports on entry and exit.” Gil had been expecting a mild inquisition, even though entering the US from the Bahamas through Fort Lauderdale was an extremely casual experience compared to entering the US via one of the major airports.

“Welcome to the USA, Miss Miles, and congratulations on achieving dual nationality. Enjoy your stay.” The border control officer handed Gil back her new passport and smiled before summoning up the next passenger.

Gil was in sunny Florida. The sun was shining but the temperature was in the low sixties Fahrenheit as it was still early. The average daytime temperature in January and February was around low seventies. Amply warm enough after the severe winter she had survived in the UK.

She had a free weekend ahead of her before she travelled north to Virginia, and so she left the ferry terminal, crossed the road and stepped onto a free air conditioned coach, decorated to resemble a cruise liner. The decals down the side of the bus read “Disney Cruise Lines”. Gil was joining numerous other cruise passengers and was heading to Walt Disney World. As soon as she sat down the video screen lit up, and Mickey and Minnie Mouse beckoned her to the “Happiest Place on Earth”.

The coach doors closed with a hiss and the bus moved off to make the three and a half hour journey to The Grand Floridian Hotel in Orlando. Built on the lakeside overlooking Disney’s Magic Kingdom, it was one of the most exclusive resort hotels in the USA. Gil relaxed into her reclining seat and smiled to herself. No-one had any idea where she was, she had millions in her Cayman Island account under the name of Talgarth Business Services Inc, and she was on her way to meet her hero, Donald Duck. Life didn’t get any better than this.

***

It was almost 2pm in the UK when the call came through to Maureen Lassiter. Still sore from the night’s exertions, she shuffled in her seat to find a comfortable position. She listened whilst her contact in the British Embassy confirmed that Gillian Davis had not returned to her hotel and was not expected to do so. After many threats, bribes and favours, the attaché had discovered that no-one matching her name or description had flown from Havana. That information was useless, as he freely admitted.

“She could be planning to stay in Cuba forever as far as we know, and we will probably never know if she has created a new identity here. She has so much money she may never surface,” the attaché pointed out on the phone, which enjoyed better clarity than her internal line within Thames House.

“The odds are that she has left, or will leave soon under an assumed identity, possibly after changing her appearance. I fully expect the travel rep to be on the phone soon, reporting her missing. The Cubans are still uncomfortable about having Westerners circulating freely around Cuba without supervision,” he added.

Maureen thanked him for his help, whilst biting her tongue to prevent her saying what she really thought about their amateurish surveillance efforts. Barry had already guessed that she had slipped away, giving the snatch team only the slimmest of chances of apprehending her in her hotel. He had been angry, frustrated and quite violent in their lovemaking, before holding Maureen in his arms and falling asleep. He didn’t see her crying. She liked raw emotion and unremitting passion, but a lover could go too far and Barry had crossed Maureen’s invisible line. But what could she do? She loved him. Things would be better when this episode was behind them and they were living somewhere serene as husband and wife.

***

The last few hours of Katie’s time in London were spent in the offices of her agent, where her publicist and agent were filling her calendar with film premieres, fashion shows, awards ceremonies and chat shows around the world, without any consideration of how she would fit in her degree studies.

As Katie and her advisers argued in an adjoining office, Dee scanned the web, looking at the newspaper sites. Rob Donkin had made the front pages of the tabloids for the second day in a row, usurping riots in Greece and unhappiness amongst the populations of the Middle East.

The Daily Post led with the story of Donkin’s injuries, sustained during his attack on Katie Norman. Not one paper had thought to mention that Katie was safely secured inside the building when the attack took place. They were all looking for the most shocking headline, and the fiction that the nation’s favourite actress had been terrorised was much sexier than the truth. The Daily Post excoriated Rob Donkin, despising the shallowness of his section of society and decrying the cult of celebrity which enabled unbalanced people to become celebrities without doing anything. Dee noted that in the sidebar next to the article there was a string of photos, beside which were headlines exclaiming; film star photographed by the pool in LA in a bikini, Pop Star and winner of a TV talent show who has only one single to her name gets a new tattoo, and finally, sixty year old soap star who had a fling with toy boy has rampant cellulite.

Dee briefly wondered whether the newspaper editors were even vaguely aware of their blatant hypocrisy, and then decided that they probably were but that they simply didn’t care, as long as their newspapers sold in large numbers.

***

The meeting with Katie’s PA, Jordan Phelps, an Oxford graduate who was paid by the film company, spilled over into the journey to Heathrow Airport. As was usual with individuals who travelled through the VIP terminal, their luggage travelled separately. Dee had returned to her flat in Greenwich, which seemed so empty without her husband Josh around, to throw a few things into a suitcase. She could buy what she didn’t have with her when she got to the US. She could do with some retail therapy and she was on expenses, after all.

As Katie and her young male counterpart settled her calendar, Dee rang Josh, who was still in Dubai. She had emailed him about the attack, and he was genuinely scared for her. She knew that he didn’t like her ‘hands on’ role in personal security, even though that was how they had met, but he would never say so. Josh knew Dee well enough to know that she could usually take care of herself. In a supreme act of irony, the airlines had conspired to have Dee fly out from Heathrow only hours before Josh arrived back. They had been apart now for too long, but they would have to wait a little longer for their passionate reconciliation. They had been married for only a few months, and as far as they were both concerned the honeymoon period was still in full swing.

As Dee wrapped up the conversation, Katie crossed the limo and sat next to her, signalling that she wanted to speak to Josh. Dee handed her the phone.

“Josh Hammond, we speak at last. I’m so looking forward to meeting the man who stole Dee’s heart.” She was teasing again, but Josh was also accomplished at the art.

“Don’t tell Dee, but I fell in love with you first. I think you were only fourteen at the time, though, and so I knew it couldn’t work,” he joked.

“Your husband is a flirt, Mrs Hammond,” Katie said so that all could hear. “Am I going to get to meet you anytime soon, Josh?”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Dee chimed in, making a grab for the phone.

“If you stay still long enough I may eventually track you down,” Josh said finally as Katie let the phone go. The three of them were laughing.

***

As the Airbus A380 cruised over the Atlantic, Katie offered Dee the private cabin’s bed. Dee declined the offer, taking the recliner in the sumptuous private bedroom instead. Katie climbed into the full sized bed and pulled the comforter up to her neck.

“Dee, when I get back to the university, are you going to look for that woman sniper?” Dee looked surprised that her ward should know about the Chameleon. “Sorry, I overheard you on the phone to Pete on Wednesday making the arrangements to meet up in New York,” Katie admitted somewhat sheepishly. Dee did not answer immediately.

“To be entirely honest with you, Katie, I don’t really know what I’m going to do. I do want to track the Hokobus’ killer down, that much is true, but after that...” her sentence trailed off for a moment before she picked up the traces of the conversation again. “One part of me wants to understand why she killed such a lovely and harmless couple, while another part of me wants to see her with a syringe stuck in her own neck, realising she is about to die.”

“That won’t happen,” Katie countered. “You will catch her and you’ll hand her over to the police. You don’t have it in you to be a vigilante.”

Dee wondered whether that was really true. Sitting there on the plane pondering on it, she really did not know whether she could kill in revenge. A minute later she looked over at Katie, who had fallen asleep. Dee decided to get some rest, too, and pulled a blanket around her as she reclined her seat almost flat.

Chapter 4 9

Universal Studios, Orlando, Florida, USA, Saturday noon.

Gil had yet another new look. The hairdresser in the salon at the Grand Floridian had restored her natural hair colour and had cut her hair into a more contemporary style; he called it an urchin cut. Somehow Gil couldn’t imagine an urchin spending over two hundred dollars on a cut and colour.

Handing the keys of her Ford Mustang hire car to the valet, she stepped onto an escalator and rode up to the covered walkway which led into Universal City Walk. Wearing designer jeans, brown leather cowboy boots and a pink Aeropostale tee shirt, all bought at the Florida Mall late last night, she joined the crowds heading towards the parks.

As she passed the AMC multiplex on her right, she noticed that the latest Clara Campbell movie was showing. She decided to give it a try before she left Orlando. She had always envied Clara’s adolescent friendships, and crushes, having been a solitary teen when she was young herself.

A throng of happy and smiling tourists moved with purpose towards the newer of the two theme parks, the Islands of Adventure, home to Hogsmeade, Hogwarts and the Harry Potter ride. Gil was quite excited. She had never been to a theme park as a child, and had never had an excuse to go as an adult, and so she looked at the rollercoasters with awe and more than a little trepidation. Nonetheless, she would ride them all. Not to do so would be cowardice.

***

By 6pm the queue for the Harry Potter ride had dwindled to twenty minutes and so she joined it, jiggling a giant stuffed white tiger on her hip – a prize she won, rather unfairly, in a target shooting sideshow. Gil had been so consumed with the colours, smells and noise of the park that she had paid no attention to a young couple following her around the park. The girl had a white veil on her head that sported Minnie Mouse ears. The man was wearing a tee shirt printed to resemble a tuxedo. Newlyweds, the world and his wife would think, but they would be wrong. The man had his wife stand in front of the gates to Hogwarts, towered over by two large winged boars, and then he took a picture with an expensive looking Sony camera. The picture that showed up on the camera’s screen, however, did not show the impressive gates, or his wife, but a pretty young woman with short hair carrying a white tiger.

The man fell into line a few places behind Gil, whilst his wife kissed him modestly on the lips and proclaimed loudly that she was going to Ollivander’s to buy a wand.

***

The girl headed off to Ollivander’s and joined the queue before reaching for her BlackBerry curve phone. She spoke quietly into the handset.

“This is Sherrie. The girl is here, we’ve been following her all afternoon. I’m sending you some pictures now.” The girl took the phone from her ear and sent four photos, taken on the phone’s built in 8 megapixel camera during the afternoon. The pictures weren’t great quality, but the light was good and it would be obvious to anyone who knew Gil, and who saw the photos, just who the subject was.

“Keep her in sight, understand?” a male voice commanded from out of the ether.

“Yes, boss. You can rely on us.” Sherrie pressed the red button to end the call and took up her vigil outside Filch’s Emporium, the exit from the Harry Potter ride.