The Alex King Series A BATEMAN (summer reading list txt) 📖

changed and headed downstairs for breakfast, where the Holiday Inn had made it’s first mistake. A breakfast-buffet. Rashid had filled a plate with toast and pastries, taken the entire jug of orange juice back to his table. He ordered coffee, then went back up to the buffet where he filled another plate with sausages, bacon, fried eggs, mushrooms and beans. The waitress raised an eyebrow when she brought his coffee, but he polished it off quickly and took advantage of the Holiday Inn’s second mistake: there didn’t seem to be a one-visit rule. Rashid filled his plate again, returned to his table and started all over, as Neil Ramsay walked in, caught the waitress to order a pot of tea, and headed over.

“Sleep well?” he asked, sitting down and watching him eat with amusement.

“Yes, before you ask; it’s bacon and pork sausages.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” he smiled. “Looks like a heart attack on a plate to me. Didn’t fancy muesli, then?”

“How far have you run this morning?”

Ramsay shrugged. “Fair point,” he said. “Well, when you’ve finished stripping the Security Service’s hospitality budget, we’ll head back to Thames House and see what we have on Helena Snell.”

“Milankovitch,” Rashid said. “Snell will be a shadow. She married a billionaire, started a fashion concern, but she even kept her Russian lover the entire time. She then plotted with her lover, formed a terrorist organisation as a front to detract from the real motive of killing her husband. In doing this, she sacrificed people to act as a cover for her plan. She’s a cold bitch. There will be nothing worth knowing from the time she was Helena Snell. But believe me, there will be something as Helena Milankovitch. That’s the key. Her past.”

34

 

Caroline came around slowly. The bright light shining through the bathroom window, shafts of golden light warming her face, forcing her to blink as she opened her eyes. She felt groggy, her mouth dry. Her head thudded like a hangover after a night of champagne. A sharp, incessant thud that she not only felt inside her head but heard incessantly in her ears.

She raised her head, had to fight through the light-headedness to refrain from falling back down. She could not place exactly where she was at first, but it flooded back to her and filled her with foreboding and fear. She sat up, blinked away her dry eyes. And then she felt herself all over. Her underwear was intact. The thought, as she checked, made her feel close to vomiting. She looked at the door. It was an inch ajar. She looked under the door, near the jamb. The wingnut had scarred the floorboard, dug in deeply. She got up slowly, knelt on the floor. Her head banging and pulsing. She pulled on the door, but it did not budge. She felt a wave of relief, a near-euphoria. But she was in no doubt that she had been drugged for sex.

She turned and ran the cold tap, splashed some water on her face and swilled her mouth out. Then she drank until she was full. The water would flush her system, take the toxin out of her, slowly bring her back. She rubbed some water around her neck, shuddered as it trickled down between her shoulder blades.

  It was with a mixture of anger and a sense of hope that she kicked the door closed. The wingnut was pulled out of the floorboard, and she picked it up and tucked it back into her bra as she opened the door inwards and stepped back into the bedroom. She would not be a victim anymore. The coffee Michael had given her had been drugged. She would not let her guard down with him again. It was time to discover her fate. Or at least take a hand in controlling it.

35

 

King sipped his orange juice and picked at the pastries. They tasted like yesterday’s. Maybe older. He’d always found breakfast in Italy to be a lacklustre affair, neither appealing to his appetite or constitution. Coffee, which he did not drink, a few biscuits, or perhaps bread and jam, or cheese and charcuterie. He wondered how the Italians got anything done before lunch. And he’d given up trying to order a pot of tea.

He had decided to put some distance between himself and the mountain. There was a lot happening up there, in all three locations, and he needed to be as far away as possible while the police scoured the mountain region for a person or people, undoubtedly armed, certainly dangerous.

As always, when making a getaway, King had driven right on the speed limit and made sure he observed traffic signs and signalled accordingly. He needed to be invisible, and he knew from his personal experience and cost that police could pull over a motorist and get lucky. It had happened to him a lifetime ago. Any lesson learned through pain and suffering did not need learning twice.

King had found the hotel in Siena using an app and Google Maps on his phone. Situated conveniently on the outskirts, overlooking the attractive, culture-rich city of spires and castles, fortified walls and towers. It had been on the list to visit with his wife Jane. Caroline had also put the city of her list, along with Florence, but King had merely agreed with her and not mentioned the fact he had dreamed of visiting with somebody in a previous life. Caroline had to have some things for the two of them, something she had not been beaten to, or be competing with a dead woman’s dreams.

The hotel had a vacant double room, which out of habit, King took for two nights, although he did not plan on staying any longer than the time it took for him to eat his meagre breakfast on the balcony and plan his next