Page 117 of First Blood
She took a second to look around. Nothing had been disturbed. If he had disbelieved her he would have been out and gone by now. He had only needed to be ten feet ahead of her in the winding corridor and she’d been slowed tending to Doctor Lambert.
She was now sure he had not ventured outside, which meant he was still in the building somewhere.
She re-entered the clinic with no choice but to retrace her steps. She headed back through the double doors for the third time and instantly felt a frisson of fear. There was something not right here. She should have found him hiding in one of the rooms.
And she couldn’t hear the doctor groaning.
Why the hell hadn’t Carl Wickes gone back to his car and left while he had the chance? He could have…
Her thoughts slowed down as she pondered another question that came to mind after seeing the car out front again.
Yes, she’d seen the car parked at the shelter the times she’d been there. But she’d seen it at the same time as the two vans. It would have been physically impossible for the handyman to drive two bloody vehicles to work.
But if it wasn’t Carl Wickes carrying out the murders, who the hell was it?
All the events of the week began tumbling around in her head and some were bouncing around louder than others. She had fixed her attention on one man because of his behaviour towards the women at the shelter. Her suspicion had increased when he had used his brother to avoid answering her questions. But what questions had he been afraid to answer?
Another common denominator at the shelter and beyond suddenly came into her mind.
Damn it, how the hell could she have been so stupid? she asked herself as she reached the doors of the operating theatre.
They were closed.
She had left them open.
As she stormed back into the theatre her torchlight illuminated the figure of the man she was now expecting to see.
And he was holding a knife to her colleague’s throat.
Chapter One Hundred Eleven
‘Move the knife away from his throat, Nigel,’ she said to the shelter’s hair stylist.
He didn’t move a muscle as he stared back into the torchlight. Bryant was on his knees with a blade poised at the left-hand side of his neck. Doctor Lambert groaned behind them; much quieter than when she’d left the room a few minutes earlier. Without Bryant applying pressure to the wound the man was losing too much blood. He was dying right before her eyes.
She guessed that Nigel had remained ahead of her during the chase with the sole intention of coming back to finish the job. Killing the doctor was more important than trying to get away while he had the chance. That single fact made him dangerous and capable of anything to achieve his goal.
How the hell had she not seen sooner that Nigel was behind the murders?
Because of his charity work he visited other shelters and cut hair for free, especially around the festive period. The season of goodwill, of giving back.
Her brain quickly worked through the murders on the board. All of them.
He knew of Marianne’s story, as did everyone at the shelter. He’d witnessed Hayley’s story for himself. He knew that Luke Fenton had sexually abused little Mia and that Hayley had gone back to him and viewed her equally as guilty as the man himself. He’d spent time at the shelter with Wendy Lockwood and he’d styled Diana Lambert’s hair earlier that day for her meeting with Child Services. Right before the woman had been seen chatting to Carl Wickes.
She remembered his reaction to the children in the pop-up salon. She recalled now they’d been singing ‘Ring a Ring of Roses’. He’d turned up the radio to drown out the nursery rhyme.
She tried not to let the fear show in her expression as she faced him, but she had to get that blade away from her colleague’s throat. Less than a second and he would be dead. She had no weapon. She was twelve feet away from them both. This was a man who wanted to kill and didn’t care much for the consequences.
She briefly considered throwing the torch at him as a distraction so that Bryant could scramble away, but just the raising of her arm could prompt him to do something drastic in response. It would take less than a second.
Think, think, think, she told herself. By her reckoning help was just a minute or two away but any sudden activity could cause him to pull that blade across Bryant’s neck. Whatever she did she had to remain perfectly still.
She had an idea and just prayed that Bryant would understand.
‘People talk, don’t they, Nigel, while they’re having their hair done? Did Butcher Bill tell you all about Tommy Deeley’s past?’ she asked, quietly.
Hell, the homeless guy who had confessed had pretty much told her who the murderer was on the interview tape.
