Love You Dead

105 Friday 13 March

Tooth rose at 5.30 a.m., adrenalin pumping, not wanting to miss what should be the big event of the day. He went over to his desk, opened his laptop and checked the cameras in Jodie Carmichael’s house. She was still asleep in bed, just like most of her fellow reptiles. The only activity in that room was in two of the glass vivariums — the one containing the cockroaches and the other the mice. All of those crawling, wriggling, twitching, darting creatures, unaware that the sole reason for their existence was to be fed to their neighbours in the other vivariums all around them.

Just as Jodie Carmichael was at this moment unaware of what lay ahead for her in her garage.

Enjoy your last few hours on earth, sweetheart, he thought, squatting down on the floor to begin his regime of recuperation exercises.

When he’d finished, he showered and shaved, then began applying his Thelma Darby make-up. Shortly after 6.30 a.m., the breakfast he’d ordered on the card he’d hung on the door last night arrived. ‘Thank you, madam,’ the young room-service boy said gratefully, palming his tip.

He ate whilst continuing to watch the sleeping woman, then packed his bag, slipped out of the hotel and headed over to his car. He didn’t plan to return, but he didn’t want the hotel to know that. Let them think he was still here for the three more days he had booked and paid in advance for. It all helped to cover his tracks from smartass Detective Grace. But, with luck, by the time the police came to the hotel looking for him, he’d long be back home with Yossarian.

Fifteen minutes later he drove along Roedean Crescent, checking out the stationary cars he remembered from last night. All of them had misted windows, including the Range Rover he had parked behind.

He continued past No. 191 to the end of the street, made a U-turn and parked up on the opposite side to her house, a couple of hundred yards away, with a clear view of the entrance to her driveway. He switched the engine off, moved his seat back, put his computer on his lap and logged on via his 4G phone connection, once more checking the cameras.

She was awake.

Good.

Jodie sat up in bed, sipping water, trying to resist taking some paracetamol for the hangover that seemed to be worsening by the minute, intending instead to go to the gym and do an hour’s hard workout. She had drunk too much last night, far more than had been wise, and she was thinking hard for anything she might have let slip about her past to Paul Cornel. J. Paul Cornel. Julius Paul Cornel. But she reckoned she had it covered, and he’d had a skinful too.

And she couldn’t believe her luck. Inside she was smiling. She had found him in the first bar she’d entered and they had got on so well. What a brilliant night, it had gone better than she could have possibly imagined! And the bonus was she actually did like him, a lot. He really could be the cash jackpot she had been hunting for for so long. All that money and no children alive! Her immediate task would be to prevent him from doing the stupid thing he had talked to the newspaper about, giving all his money away to charities. She needed to get that ring on her finger fast. Sometime during their evening yesterday he’d said he was intending to return to California next Tuesday. Which gave her just the weekend. Between now and Monday she had to have him invite her to go to California with him — and make him think it was all his idea. She did not want to risk any time apart. Not even a day.

He wasn’t the greatest looker in the flesh — he’d seemed more attractive in his newspaper photograph — but he had a sense of fun that she liked. And hell, she had slept with a lot worse. She was going to give him the best night of his life. And the best morning in bed, too. By the end of the weekend he was going to be sated, and he was not going to want to be without her. No man she’d slept with since she had matured ever had.

Rays of sun were streaking through the window and, despite her headache, the day felt full of promise. She glanced at her clock. 7.05 a.m. She needed to get up and on it.

She was meeting Paul at the Grand at 12.30 p.m. He was going to take her for a bite of lunch, then on a tour of his Brighton, the Brighton he remembered from his youth. Then she planned to cook him a meal here this evening. He’d already told her his favourite foods last night. If she got up now she’d have time to go to the gym, get her hair and nails done, do the food shopping and be back in good time.

She pulled on her tracksuit and trainers, and went down to the kitchen, trying to remember the disturbing dream she’d had during the night, which she had woken from crying out for help, but it eluded her. She put it out of her mind, focusing on what lay ahead. She took a strawberry yoghurt drink from the fridge, shook it and swallowed it, then went upstairs and opened the entrance to the reptile room.

Everything looked fine. Pulling on her heavy-duty protective gloves, she removed a cockroach and dropped it into one of the vivariums containing a saw-scaled viper; moments later, she watched the snake pounce on it. She fed the other three vipers similarly. Next she took a live white mouse by the tail and dropped it into the emperor scorpion vivarium. Then she took out another mouse and carried it over to Silas the boa constrictor’s vivarium, unclipped and lifted the lid, and dropped the wriggling, terrified creature in.

She knew the snake must be hungry as it had excreted the last food she had given it. But instead of instantly coiling itself around the terrified-looking creature, as it normally would have done, it did not move. Then she noticed the small bulge about a foot down its body, and frowned.

The bulge could only be caused by something it had eaten.

She felt a stab of panic. What was going on? She peered down into the foliage and saw, to her relief, the USB memory stick lying there. Then she stared back at the bulge. ‘What have you eaten, Silas?’ she asked, out loud.

Tooth, watching her on the screen in his car, smiled. Nice to see you worried. Don’t want you dying happy.

Jodie left the reptile room, closing the secure door behind her, mystified. That looked like a food bulge — the kind made by the snake swallowing a rodent. But she had not fed it. Was Silas sick? Was it a tumour? How the hell could a rodent have got into the vivarium? She tried to think back to the rush she was in before leaving for the cruise. Was it a mouse she had left him in his tank that she’d not noticed, and which he had only just now eaten?

Fretting, she went back downstairs, took her Mercedes key fob out of the hall table drawer, then went into the kitchen. She opened the door to the integral garage, switched the light on and stared for a moment at the beautiful dark blue car. Although, if all went well in the coming days, she decided, maybe in time she would buy the car she had always really dreamed of, an Aston Martin.

She pressed a button on the fob and the doors opened with a clunk, the indicators all winking together. She climbed in, picked up the garage door clicker and pressed it. The door began to rise. She fired up the engine and watched the dials come to life, put on her seat belt, then let off the handbrake. She was about to move the gear shift to D when she suddenly noticed a distinct whiff of alcohol. She frowned, placed her hand in front of her mouth and exhaled. The smell of booze was on her breath.

Just how much had she drunk last night?

She tried to calculate. How many units? A lot, for sure. And she actually wasn’t feeling that great, as if she still had plenty of the stuff in her system. She would feel a lot better after a good workout in the gym, she knew. She pulled an open pack of chewing gum from the door pocket, popped a piece in her mouth and chewed, enjoying the instant minty taste explosion. But as she put her hand on the gear shift her head swam.

Am I fit to drive? she wondered, thinking about the piece in the Argus yesterday, about the new police blitz in the city on morning-after drinkers.

That would not be clever, to be caught in one of those spot checks. Quite apart from the risk of blowing her date with Paul Cornel, the consequences of being arrested could be catastrophic if any of her alternative identities were uncovered. She switched the engine off, walked round to the rear of the car, opened the boot and took out a breathalyser kit she had bought a long time back. She read the instructions, clipped a mouthpiece into place, switched it on and blew into it as hard as she could.

The dial glowed red. It showed a reading of 51.

She cursed. The legal limit for a breath alcohol reading in England and Wales was 35 microgrammes per hundred millilitres of breath.

For the cost of a taxi, it wasn’t worth the risk, she decided. She went back into the house and called Streamline.

Tooth watched her in impotent fury. Testing her breath? Over the goddam alcohol limit? Ordering a taxi? You bitch! Think you are being clever? I’ll show you what clever is. Get back in that goddam car!