Death Trap (44 page)

It was a standard medical history form: Name; D.O.B.; Address. Past medical history – a tick-box of the usual suspects – diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems . . . The only box that was ticked was allergies. Further information was provided below:

Peanut allergy.

Rio flicked her gaze back up at the doctor. ‘Her allergy is common knowledge. Her mother told you about it if you remember. Nikki’s usually very careful about it—’

‘That’s what worried me. Her mother did tell me about it and when I spoke to Nicola she seemed really aware, which is why the medical history just doesn’t make sense.’

Rio read the papers again.

Personal medical treatment: three entries older than Nikki’s recent stay at Mission Hill Hospital. All recorded at St Theresa’s private hospital.

June 8th 2010: Type one hypersensitivity – allergy to peanuts.

June 8th 2011: Type one hypersensitivity – allergy to peanuts.

June 8th 2012: Type one hypersensitivity – allergy to peanuts.

Why were they all on the same date? And that date rang a bell in Rio’s head. Where had she heard it? Where had she . . .? Rio quickly flipped the pages backwards until she was again on the front page with Nikki’s main details.

DOB: June 8th 1999.

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I thought,’ the doctor said. ‘Why was she admitted to hospital for three consecutive years on her birthday?’

Rio didn’t answer; her mind was buzzing, trying to capture all the conversations she’d had with Nikki. Then it clicked. She heard Nikki’s words:

‘Mum and Dad let me stay with Ophelia on a few of my birthdays. Then they stopped me going around to see her anymore.’

Rio quickly took out her notebook, rushed through the pages until she got to the interview she’d done with Nikki in the hospital. She stopped at the page she was after; the one where Nikki said that one of the killer’s voices had been high. At first Nikki had said that it might be a woman and then she changed her mind and said she didn’t know. Then claimed it was definitely a man. Rio had written down, then scratched out, the one piece of evidence she had immediately discounted. She gazed at the word now in her notebook.

Woman

The file dropped from Rio’s hands. Calum was wrong – this had nothing to do with Terry Larkin. Rio ran out of the room thinking she might already be too late. That she had given the girl’s safekeeping into the hands of a killer.

sixty-two

6:43 a.m.

Rio hit every speed camera on the frantic journey back to Ophelia Bell’s home. She didn’t let herself think about the actress helping her a few hours ago; didn’t let herself think about Ophelia being Nikki’s biological mother; didn’t let any kind of emotional attachment get in the way. Only the evidence got a say. Rio didn’t even lock the car as she ran towards the front door of the flat. The place was dark. Rio raised her hand to pull back the knocker, then hesitated. No, she couldn’t alert Ophelia if something dreadful had happened inside. Instead she shifted sideways to the lounge window. The blind was still up, so Rio peered in. The light from a laptop on a table illuminated the room. No one inside, everything appeared to be in place. Rio’s blood pounded through her body when she caught sight of the half-eaten plate of food on the wooden floor.

There was no entrance point around the back of the flat she could get access to, so she was going to have to get in via the front.

She used her elbow, protected by the material of her jacket, to punch in the bottom right pane of the window. The glass shattered inside, but a few shards glided Rio’s way. Carefully she pushed her arm through, running her fingers along the frame, seeking the lock – found it – twisted the catch. With steady and slow hands she hiked the window up. Then, bracing herself against the outer ledge, she pushed her way inside.

The warmth from the room enveloped her immediately. There was silence all around. Rio made her way straight to the plate of food on the floor. It was right in the light coming from the laptop on the table, which was showing an episode of
The Wilcotts
. She recalled that Ophelia said she would set it up so that Nikki could watch advanced editions of the show. The volume must be on mute because there was no sound coming from the computer. Rio took no notice of the programme as she dropped to her knees beside the plate. She didn’t pick it up, just tried to catalogue the type of food she saw. Mashed-up food, well that’s what Rio called the type of fare she saw on the plate: a little bit of this, a dollop of that. In this instance – although she couldn’t be sure – it looked like hummus, some pink stuff she suspected was taramasalata, and some type of grain. The ideal cuisine to slip in a trace of peanut. But maybe she was wrong and Nikki was snoozing away, comfy and safe, in bed?

Yeah, but what if she wasn’t? Rio scrambled to her feet, her gaze fleetingly catching the scene from
The Wilcotts
on the laptop screen. She froze, transfixed by the scene playing out on the computer screen: men in trenches; an officer was speaking to a crowd of muddy and disheartened looking soldiers. It was what the officer held in his hand that gripped her attention. Was it a gas mask? Of course – it was an earlier model, the kind that soldiers had used in World War One. Old-fashioned, large, made with cloth and a hose. Just the way Nikki had described the gunmen’s disguise in the Bell’s house. Ophelia must have borrowed them from the show’s props department. That’s what Samson Larkin had been tauntingly trying to tell her.
Gas masks from World War One.
Samson’s words in the café in Cyprus came back to haunt her with a vengeance.

‘Sounds like a gas mask, except the baggy cloth bit . . .Wait a minute. During World War One, The Great War—?’

‘You’re gonna wished you’d listened to me—’

He was right. She did. A thug with a genius for general knowledge facts had been prepared to tell her what she needed. And what had she done? Told him to shut up.

A triangular ray of light abruptly invaded the room making Rio slam her gaze up.

Standing by the side lamp that she’d just put on was Ophelia Bell.

‘What are you doing here?’ the other woman asked.

The faint light wiped out all the surface beauty of Ophelia’s face laying bare the skeletal outline of her head, the ravages of a disease that, Rio suspected, she’d never truly been able to beat.

Rio got to her feet. ‘I need to see Nikki now.’

Ophelia didn’t move, but her eyes coolly darted over Rio. ‘She’s in bed—’

Rio strode towards the door as she spoke. ‘Well, I’d just like to see that for my—’

She didn’t even see the other woman’s hand move; all Rio felt was a powerful pressure to the side of her head. Pain carved deep inside her, as black stole her vision, making her fall to the floor. She knew she wasn’t unconscious because she could hear her own laboured breathing. She lifted the lids of her eyes, pain creeping and numbing the side of her face. Ophelia stood over her, the stone carving of a woman and child that Rio remembered seeing during her first visit to the maisonette, clasped tight in her palm. The other woman’s face was cold, the beat of new blood deepening the colour of her cheeks.

‘Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?’

Then, with no hesitation, she bashed the sculpture against Rio’s right knee. Rio bit back the scream of pain so bad it tore through her whole body.

But pain wasn’t going to stop her from doing her job. ‘It was you and Cornelius who killed your parents.’

The actress straightened up, staring down dispassionately at Rio. ‘They stopped giving me money. Demanded that I should find a real job—’

‘But you’re a well-known actress in one of the most popular shows on television.’ Rio’s voice was strained and full of pain.

Ophelia scoffed. ‘That’s what everyone thinks, that we get paid bundles. I couldn’t even afford to buy a flat in London. All they had to do was give me enough for the deposit on a mortgage—’

‘So you decided to murder them, wearing gas masks you got from the costume department on the show. Once they were dead you and your brother would be in line to inherit their millions.’

Anger swept the other woman’s face. With fury she licked the sculpture against Rio’s other knee. This time there was a cracking sound and Rio couldn’t help the high-pitched groan that punched out of her mouth. The pain was so strong now she didn’t think she could utter another word.

‘
Their
money?’ the other woman continued. ‘It was
our
money as well because they were going to leave it to us anyway. So what, we were going to take our inheritance early. Big fucking deal – we were entitled to it.’

Rio didn’t know where she was getting the strength from, but somehow she was able to speak. ‘But your plans went all wrong because you didn’t factor in Nikki being a witness to the killing and that your parents would leave all their money to their only grandchild.’

That made Ophelia tremble as her mouth twisted with the impact of inhaling a nasty smell. ‘I. Loathe. That. Kid.’

‘How . . . can . . . you . . . hate . . . your . . . own . . . daughter?’ Every word Rio said was punctuated with agony and feeling that a heavy weight was on her chest.

The expression on Nikki’s natural mother’s face was savage. ‘She was the cause of every problem I had.’ Ophelia was yelling now, bitterness sparking her every word. ‘When I was fourteen I thought I was getting fat; I couldn’t understand it, but I knew how to deal with it because some of the other girls at school told me what to do. Eat and then sick it up. But it wouldn’t work, my tummy just kept getting bigger and bigger. So I stopped eating altogether. One day I fainted so mummy called the doctor . . .’ She drew in a shaking breath. ‘He told her that I was pregnant. All the time I thought I was putting on weight it was that kid inside of me. If it wasn’t for her I would never have struggled my whole life with this anorexia and bulimia shit. Every time I start putting on weight I get frightened of what’s happening to my body. What if there’s something growing inside me again?’

The shock of her story shook Rio up. ‘Is that why you started trying to kill her on her birthdays?’

Ophelia stabbed a finger against her chest. ‘The bitch deserved it after everything she put me through. She even had the nerve to cut her hair to look like me—’

‘Did you bully Cornelius into helping, just like you bullied him as a child? But he couldn’t live with what he’d done, so he killed himself. Did you know that he left me a letter asking me to save Nikki.’ Rio saw that she had the other woman on the back foot. ‘He knew about you trying to kill Nikki on her birthdays, didn’t he? He knew you were planning to try and do it all again. So you got a hitman to try to silence Nikki about the killings and to make sure she was out of your life for good.’

Suddenly the other woman relaxed, her voice came under control and lowered. ‘You may think you’re smart, with all your years of policing, but you still haven’t figured it all out. The one thing I learned about being on
The Wilcotts
is there’s always another twist to the story—’

‘Are you saying . . . that you didn’t contract a hitman? That someone else did?’

Ophelia shook her shoulders back and settled her body into a pose, like she was about to take the stage. ‘Everyone will believe me, you know. When I tell them how I thought you were an intruder who terrified me in my own home.’ She placed a hand dramatically over her heart. ‘How shocked I was to find that you were that nice detective who had helped Nicola so much . . . But Detective Wray was suspended, so what was she doing in my home?’

Ophelia strode past Rio and walked towards the attached kitchen. Rio knew she had to get away. Pain lacing through her, she started wriggling her body against the floor towards the doorway.

Rio heard something being thrust open, like a drawer.

She tried to pick up the speed of her movements, but the burning in her leg made that impossible.

She groaned.

Footsteps headed back towards her.

Rio frantically shifted her shoulders and back from side to side.

But it was too late. Ophelia was standing over her with a large kitchen knife.

‘Don’t do this, you’ll never get away with it,’ Rio said breathlessly.

‘She’s probably dead already. As soon as she’d eaten the meal I gave her she went upstairs. I’ll check on her after I’ve finished with you.’

Ophelia bent over Rio. The knife came up as Rio raised her hands to fight for her life. But Ophelia let out an outraged scream as another pair of hands clamped and tightened around her wrist. Rio and Ophelia looked at the newcomer at the same time – Nikki.

‘Let go!’ Ophelia shouted.

But Nikki wouldn’t. Instead, with her whole might, she twisted her biological mother around. Then leaned her weight onto the older woman. They tumbled to the floor. Ophelia’s lips parted and a strange gurgling sound left her mouth.

Then silence.

Everyone remained frozen: Rio flat on her back by the door and Nikki on top of the woman she adored so much. Finally Nikki scrambled off the other woman on to her knees, giving Rio a view of Ophelia – the knife was sticking out of her stomach. Blood was growing against her long T-shirt. Nikki twisted towards Rio. The front of her night clothes were stained with blood.