Louise Voss & Mark Edwards 3-Book Thriller Collection: Catch Your Death, All Fall Down, Killing Cupid. Mark Edwards
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all right then. Kiss me again?’
Half an hour later, they were still kissing. Paul had had to switch on the engine and lower the electric windows, since the car had become almost completely steamed up.
‘We’d make rubbish private investigators, wouldn’t we? Elvis himself could’ve been in and out of that cottage ten times, and we’d be none the wiser,’ Kate said, coming up for air. She was painfully aware of how turned on she was. She was dying to touch him, but didn’t dare. It had been so long since she’d kissed anyone – including Vernon – that she couldn’t even remember the protocol for heavy petting. Perhaps she ought to wait till he touched her first?
‘Don’t worry. I’ve been keeping one eye open,’ Paul replied.
Kate tutted. ‘And there was I, thinking you only had eyes for me!’
‘Isn’t one eye good enough?’
‘No. I’m very demanding. And sex starved.’ Kate slid her hand further up Paul’s thigh. It was no good. She just couldn’t wait any longer, she had to feel his hardness. It felt absolutely wonderful, and they both sighed with pleasure.
‘That’s very impressive,’ she whispered, rubbing it through his jeans.
‘I don’t think those two are quite so impressed,’ said Paul, snatching her hand away too late, as two elderly ladies in tennis whites walked past the back of the car, looking disgusted.
‘Ooops,’ Kate giggled, heady with lust, and relief that he hadn’t recoiled in horror at her forwardness.
‘We’d better stop, otherwise I’m going to rip all your clothes off here and now, and not only will we never get to talk to Mrs B, but we’ll get arrested . . .’ He dropped his voice, ‘. . . And then I won’t be able to explore your body in greater detail tonight, because we’ll be in separate cells getting told off by the local constabulary.’
‘Is that what you’ve got planned for me, then?’ said Kate, feeling like a teenager again.
Paul leaned across to her, moving his own hand up between her legs. He nodded solemnly. ‘Oh yes,’ he murmured, and Kate thought she might just explode with lust.
‘But first,’ he announced briskly. ‘Business!’
Kate groaned.
‘She hasn’t appeared. Her car is still there. It’s been –’ he looked at his watch – ‘over three hours since I did not sneak up on her, so I’m sure she’ll have recovered by now. Why don’t you go and ring the doorbell? It’s worth a try. I don’t think I can sit here any longer without ravishing you.’
‘You’ve got a point. OK. You wait here, and I’ll go and see if she’ll let me in.’
John Sampson was standing on the site of the CRU, where Kate and Paul had stood just twenty-four hours earlier, when his mobile rang. It was the phone that was only ever called by one person: Gaunt. He hesitated before answering it. He had been enjoying the sweet memories from his last night at this place.
‘Yes?’
‘About time. I thought you were never going to answer.’
Sampson waited for Gaunt to continue.
‘Any luck tracking our quarry?’
Sampson knew that Gaunt, who spent most of his life these days in his laboratory, enjoyed the espionage, the spy thriller stuff that added a dash of colour to his days. He pretended not to, but Sampson could hear the excitement in his voice. He told Gaunt what he’d found so far.
‘In other words, she’s got away.’
Again, Sampson stayed silent, clenching his jaw muscles and taking slow, calming breaths.
Eventually, Gaunt said, ‘You’d better get back here to the base. How long will it take you?’
‘Not long.’ Sampson hung up and took a last look around the housing estate. She had been here. The use of the word ‘quarry’ had been appropriate. He was the hound and Kate the fox; he swore he could almost smell her on the air.
Security at the base was strict, aimed at keeping out not just the wrong people but the organisms they carried; the bacteria, viruses and parasites that inhabited the human body. Inside the doorway, Sampson, who had been through this procedure many times, stripped, showered and washed his skin and hair – what there was of it – with an anti-bacterial solution. Next, a doctor wearing a mask checked him over, examining him and asking him questions to make sure he hadn’t noticed any signs of infection recently. Had he suffered from any cold or flu-like symptoms? How about headaches, stomach pains, bowel or bladder problems, fatigue, nausea, dizziness? What about sexual partners? Had he had unprotected sex? Had he visited any of the following countries? He answered a terse no to everything; they knew he hadn’t been abroad since his last visit. After the examination he put on clean underwear, a t-shirt and trousers, then slipped on a pair of soft shoes. Finally, he was allowed into the interior of the building.
Gaunt met him in the corridor. They walked past the rooms where Sampson had recently seen the Vietnamese woman and the Serbian prostitute. They weren’t there anymore. The rooms were empty, scrubbed clean; all trace of their previous occupants had been eradicated.
They reached Dr Gaunt’s office. He gestured for Sampson to sit down, and took a seat at the opposite side of his desk.
‘I saw you looking into the empty rooms. You took a fancy to our little Serbian, didn’t you?’ He smiled, displaying yellow teeth. ‘Nothing left of her now, I’m afraid to say. Incinerated.’
Gaunt opened a drawer and took out a gold chain with a heart-shaped locket on the end. He held it up, and it glinted as it rotated back and forth.
‘Oh, except this. This is all that’s left of her.’
Sampson recognised the locket that the Serbian prostitute had been wearing.
‘Rather nice, I thought,’ said the doctor. ‘I removed the photo of the child that was in it.’ He dropped it back into the drawer. ‘It’s mine now.’
Sampson concealed his contempt for Gaunt’s need to keep souvenirs of the people he’d killed. ‘Why did you ask me to come here?’
The smile vanished from Gaunt’s face. ‘I wanted to let you know that we’re very close.’
‘Close?’
‘To finishing what we started a long time ago. Thanks to your trip to Oxford we’ve had a bit of a breakthrough in the lab and the final part of the puzzle has been solved.’ His smile reappeared, wider and dirtier than before. ‘This is very good news.’
Sampson groped for something to say, ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you. There are just a few final tests to conduct, and some other preparations, making sure everyone’s in the right place and so on. But I would expect matters to be concluded during the next few days.’ He leaned forward across the desk. ‘Which means it’s critically important that nobody and nothing gets in the way.’
‘You mean Kate?’
Gaunt raised an eyebrow. ‘On first-name terms, are we?’
Sampson’s face remained impassive. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to call her Carling or Maddox.’
‘Well, she’s Maddox now. Although we should never have given her the chance to reach her next birthday, let alone get married and change her name. Fucking Bainbridge and his sentimentality, letting her go like that. She’s a loose end.’
Sampson had an image of himself tying the loose end up. Handcuffing her, perhaps.
Gaunt went on: ‘It’s probably a coincidence that she’s come back to England now of all times,