The Mask of Destiny (2 page)

The woman cocked her head to the side; she had a quizzical look in her eye. Lethbridge swallowed, wiped his palm on the back of his pants and thrust it into the woman's hand.

‘My!' she said. ‘Aren't you the strong one.'

She retrieved her hand and, with effortless poise, spun Lethbridge around and slid her arm into his.

‘Let's go inside,' she said. ‘It's nice and warm in there.'

Lethbridge stumbled up the front steps arm-in-arm with the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He could sense people watching her—watching
them
. The beautiful maiden with the handsome young policeman. He puffed out his chest. Then with his spare hand he reached around and plucked his underpants from between his bottom cheeks.

‘You're a police constable, David?' Charlotte said as they wandered among the garden beds inside. ‘How terribly brave you must be.'

Lethbridge's blood pressure shot up ten points. ‘Oh, I don't know about that,' he said. ‘Just doing my job— working together for a safer London. That type of thing.'

‘You're too modest,' the woman teased, squeezing his arm. Lethbridge's face lit up a bright pink. ‘Tell me about yourself, David. Tell me something…interesting.'

Lethbridge glanced at the woman by his side. Her eyes were locked on him, as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

‘Funny you should ask,' he said, ‘because I'm working on something quite interesting at the moment.'

‘Really?' The woman guided Lethbridge through a set of glass doors as if he was a shopping trolley. ‘Do tell.'

‘Well, I'm putting the finishing touches to an automatic closing gate for my pigeon coop. You see, when the birds come in after a flight—'

‘No!' Charlotte interrupted. ‘Not about pigeons, David. Tell me about your real work. About stopping the bad people from hurting the innocent people. Like me.' She stopped walking and gazed at Lethbridge with an intensity that set his heart racing. Her rich hazel eyes opened wide. Lethbridge was mesmerised.

He gulped again.

‘Well, I have been working on the Mason Green case,' he said. ‘Have you heard of it?'

The woman's eyes melted. ‘Now that sounds interesting,' she purred. ‘Tell me
everything
.' She placed a hand on Lethbridge's chest and eased him onto a garden bench, then slid down beside him.

A fine sweat broke out across Lethbridge's brow.

‘I simply adore the atmosphere in here,' Charlotte said, her eyes never leaving his. ‘The cactus garden is very special to me.'

Lethbridge looked around. They were sitting by a rocky garden bed that contained an array of spine-covered cacti thriving in the desert-like conditions of the hot house.

‘Tell me, David,' the woman said in a dangerous whisper. ‘Tell me about Sir Mason Green.'

Lethbridge swabbed a handkerchief across his face. ‘Well, we've been looking for him for a while now. Wanted for murder on two continents, he is. He killed a man in India and he ordered the death of an old lady here in London. You know the one—Geraldine Archer.'

Charlotte could not have been paying closer attention.

‘The billionaire? The one who left all her money to her great nephew? Now, what was his name…'

‘Gerald Wilkins,' Lethbridge said. ‘We're, uh, quite good friends, actually.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Oh yes. We went on holiday together. To India. I'm spending a lot of time at his house in Chelsea at the moment.'

‘As a guest?'

‘Um, not exactly,' Lethbridge mumbled. ‘On guard duty. He's under twenty-four-hour protection until Sir Mason Green is arrested.'

There was a glint in the woman's eyes. ‘You see a lot of this Gerald, do you?' She opened her handbag and pulled out a delicate lace handkerchief. ‘It is quite warm in here, isn't it, David.' She dabbed the lace across her perfectly dry top lip. Then let it fall to the ground.

‘Oh dear. Clumsy me,' she said. ‘Would you be so kind?'

Lethbridge wriggled upright and levered himself off the bench. ‘Allow me.'

He stooped down and plucked the handkerchief from the floor. And the woman rammed a syringe deep into his right buttock.

The constable's lips clamped shut and a muffled yelp seemed to escape through his ears. He remained bent over, snap frozen in place, his face blooming as purple as the cactus flowers behind him.

The woman yanked the needle out and reached down to take her handkerchief from Lethbridge's fingers. She wrapped the syringe in lace and dropped it into her handbag.

‘Let's sit you down again, shall we?' Charlotte said. She took Lethbridge by the elbow and heaved him back onto the garden bench. He flopped into place like a sack of potatoes. A look of dazed stupor was plastered across his face.

‘Comfy are we?' the woman asked.

‘No,' Lethbridge said, his voice a dreamy wave. ‘My bum hurts.'

The woman suppressed a grimace. ‘David, I have just injected you with a powerful serum. It's derived from the poison in the cactus right behind you. It has the intriguing effect of making anyone under its influence tell the truth.'

Lethbridge blinked. He cast his eyes about as if he'd just landed from another planet.

‘So you're not from the matchmaking service?' he slurred.

The woman managed a slight grin. ‘No, David. Sorry to disappoint you.'

Lethbridge jerked his head to the front and blinked again. ‘I'm not going to get a kiss at the end of this?'

‘David, I need you to concentrate,' the woman said. ‘Tell me about your friend. About Gerald Wilkins. Does he ever leave the house?'

Lethbridge lolled his head around to face the woman.

‘Nope,' he said. ‘Can't go out. Not allowed to.'

‘Is he planning any trips away? Abroad perhaps?'

Lethbridge's head started a slow descent towards his navel. His chin banged onto his chest and he jolted upright. ‘France!' he bellowed, as if spotting land from the crow's nest of a pirate ship.

A few heads turned their way. The woman shushed Lethbridge, and placed a calming hand on his arm. ‘Where David? Where in France?'

Lethbridge looked at her with uncertainty, as if he was undergoing some great internal struggle. ‘I don't know,' he said.

‘I'm sure you must have overheard something.' The woman considered him carefully. ‘There might be a kiss in it for you.'

Lethbridge's purple hue deepened two shades.

When his answer came it was greeted with a smile of glacial warmth.

‘You've been very helpful, David,' the woman said. ‘One last thing. Did Gerald bring something back with him from his holiday in India? A little souvenir he keeps hidden away?'

Lethbridge's head bobbed like a drunken sock puppet. His lips quivered open, and his reply set the woman's eyes afire.

Charlotte gathered her things and stood up from the bench. ‘Goodbye, David,' she said.

She turned to leave but a grunt of protest stopped her departure. Lethbridge stared up at her.

‘K-kiss?'

The woman looked at him and sighed. She straightened her coat, grabbed Lethbridge by the lapels and hauled him to his feet. Then, as if planting a seed in a pot, she pressed her lips to his cheek, leaving behind a smear of crimson lipstick. Lethbridge's eyes beamed out like headlights.

Charlotte then shoved his chest, sending the constable backside-first deep into the nest of cactus plants.

When Lethbridge woke, he was facedown on a hospital gurney. A nurse armed with a set of pliers was plucking cactus spines from his buttocks. The constable turned his head and gazed up through groggy eyes to find Inspector Parrott frowning back at him.

Lethbridge took in a deep breath, smiled up at his superior officer and gave him a shaky thumbs-up.

‘K-kiss!' he said.

Chapter 1

T
he photographers leaned against the crowd-control barriers. There were more than a dozen snappers and each one had two cameras: one at the ready and a spare slung over the shoulder. A couple of the shorter ones had brought along stepladders. They all huddled under rain jackets, slickened by showers that had scudded across London all morning, and waited.

People had started gathering outside the central criminal courts of the Old Bailey soon after dawn. There were newspaper reporters, television crews and satellite vans.

But mostly there were teenage girls.

Hundreds upon hundreds of teenage girls.

Some clutched flowers. Others held teddy bears. There were scores of hand-painted placards, the colours streaked by the rain. A team of mounted police stood to one side. The horses snorted, stamping their hooves, alert to the tension in the air. More police lined the opposite side of the barriers, facing the crowd as it multiplied by the minute.

Everyone was on edge. There was some distracted chatter among the girls but most of them were concentrating on the ten-metre expanse of cobblestones that stood between the steel barriers and a set of wooden doors on the far side of a courtyard.

The wait was getting too much for some. A woman aged in her forties, clutching a copy of
Oi!
magazine, prodded her daughter. The woman pointed to a photograph of a blonde girl aged about thirteen or fourteen—fresh faced and aglow with a summer tan. The shot had clearly been taken without the girl's knowledge—her head was half-turned and the image was slightly blurred. The caption underneath read:
Is this the
boy billionaire's love match? Pals say Ruby Valentine
has hardly left Gerald Wilkins' side since returning from
a holiday with him in romantic India.

The woman frowned at the photograph. ‘Who's she to be putting on airs and graces?' she said. Her daughter wiped the back of her hand across her nose, shrugged and mumbled something. The woman glared at her, then back at the magazine. She tensed, unsure if she should voice what she was thinking. Then it burst out. ‘Why can't that be you?' the woman snapped. ‘Why can't you be Ruby Valentine?'

The girl stared down at her shoes. A dozen other girls nearby did the same thing.

Then a voice from the top of a stepladder called out. A photographer wearing a red vest had a camera to his eye. ‘Here they come!'

A murmur of excitement swept the courtyard. Bodies surged. Two of the snappers were jolted from their ladders and tumbled into the crowd below.

A robust woman entered the courtyard through an arched walkway. Dressed in an ensemble that oozed new-season Paris with shoes entirely unsuitable for cobblestones, she waddled towards the wooden doors. She was halfway there when a spindly heel lodged between two stones and stuck fast. She stopped midstride and tugged on her foot. It wouldn't budge. She hitched her skirt above her knees and bent down to grab at her ankle when a volley of cries burst from the photographers.

‘Vi! Vi Wilkins! This way, darlin'! Over here!'

Shutters snapped and whirred. The woman's head shot up, a look of horror on her face. She redoubled her efforts to free the trapped heel—pausing to straighten and wave to the cameras—before finally abandoning her shoes and completing the walk in her stockings.

As she disappeared through the doorway, three people emerged from the cloisters: a man dressed in a business suit, and his son and daughter. The boy and girl, both fair-haired and tanned, were clearly twins. The boy nudged his sister and nodded towards the crowd. She looked up and a gasp of recognition shot out from the onlookers.

‘Ruby! Over here, sweetheart!' The snappers wound themselves into a frenzy. ‘Over HERE!'

The girl buried her head into her father's side and they hurried through the doors. A second later, the crowd got what it had been waiting for. A barrage of camera flashes whitewashed the courtyard as a thirteen-year-old boy stepped onto the cobbles. His untidy hair fell over his ears and he looked uncomfortable in a grey suit and tie. He dragged on the arm of his father, who was lagging behind him. The man stopped to collect his wife's shoes.