Hell Is Too Crowded - Jack Higgins [36]
She opened her eyes and nodded wearily. "I'm fine, just fine. I feel as if I could go to bed for a week, that's all."
"I'll be back in a couple of minutes," he said. "Then I'll take you straight home."
He got out of the car and walked across to the tube station. Just inside the entrance, there was a row of phone booths. Soames was in the end one, talking animatedly. He watched her for a moment, a tiny frown on his face, and then turned and hurried back to the car.
That she would get in touch with Jane Gordon was a chance he'd have to take. All it meant was that he would have to move much faster now.
Despite the poor weather, the West End was crowded as usual and it took him longer to reach Kensington than he had counted on. It was nearly eight o'clock when he braked to a halt outside the house in the quiet square.
Anne was a dead weight on his arm as he mounted the stairs to the flat. The drug seemed to have taken even greater control and he carried her into the bedroom, half-fainting, and quickly stripped the clothes from her slim body.
She shivered slightly in the cool breeze from the window and he quickly pulled back the blankets and put her to bed. Her hair spread across the pillow, a dark halo round her head. She moaned once softly and he bent down and kissed her and then he quietly left the room.
There was a map of central London in the glove compartment of the car and he quickly located Baker Street. It was no more than fifteen minutes away by car and he drove through light traffic, past Kensington Gardens and out into the Bayswater Road. Some inner caution prompted him to park the car near Bond Street tube station and he went the rest of the way on foot.
Carley Mansions was an imposing block of flats at the Marylebone Road end of Baker Street. It looked extremely expensive. In a discreet gold-and-glass frame in the entrance there was a list of the residents. Miss Jane Gordon was listed as flat eight on the fourth floor.
Inside, a brocaded porter sat in a glass booth and read a magazine. As Brady watched, the telephone started to ring. The porter picked it up and turned wearily, leaning against the counter, his back to the entrance.
Brady didn't hesitate. He pushed open the heavy glass door, crossed the heavy carpet soundlessly, and went straight up the stairs.
The whole place looked very new and the soundproofing was perfect. A stillness that was almost uncanny seemed to move ahead of him as he mounted to the fourth floor.
Flat eight was the last one in the corridor. He knocked lightly on the door and waited. There was no reply. He knocked again and tried the handle. The door opened smoothly before him.
The lights were on, but there was no one there. Several broad steps dropped down into a luxuriously furnished room, one side walled with glass, giving a magnificent view of London.
He could see through the serving hatch into the kitchen. It was in darkness, but the bedroom door was slightly open and the light was on.
It was the shoe he noticed first, lying in the middle of the carpet, slim and expensive, the stiletto heel somehow infinitely deadly.
The rest of her was sprawled on her face at the end of the bed, her dress rocked up wantonly, one slim hand clawing at the carpet. Someone had shot her in the back twice at close quarters with a parabellum from the look of the wounds.
She was only just dead, that much was obvious, and the faintly acrid taint of gunpowder still hung upon the air. He sighed heavily, crouched down and turned her over.
The sight of her face was like a heavy blow in the stomach, delivered low down, taking the breath from his body, for this wasn't Jane Gordon. This was the woman he had known so briefly as Marie Duclos. The woman whose smashed and violated body he had last seen in the bedroom of her Chelsea apartment.