‘When we get there, I’m going to shoot out the light and catch them off guard.’ He drew a large rubber-covered torch from his pocket. ‘Then switch this on. That should give us the advantage. I’ll deal with the two thugs. You keep Dr Potter covered.’
‘No problem,’ Mrs Pargeter breathed back.
‘And if he tries anything, just pull the trigger. Will you have any difficulty about doing that?’
‘No,’ she replied, with a certitude whose instinctiveness surprised her.
They moved silently downwards. With each step Mrs Pargeter felt the strain at the back of her knees, a chilling reminder that it really wouldn’t have taken long for the exerciser to exhaust her totally.
Along the passage some way ahead, light spilled from the room where their friends were held and, as they approached, they could hear the icy precision of Dr Potter’s voice outlining his plans for the prisoners.
‘… particularly convenient since the drugs require further testing — and on a more robust body than that of a young girl. Mr Mason here will be an ideal candidate for the treatment.’
‘But, Doctor,’ Ankle-Deep Arkwright’s voice protested, ‘those drugs have already killed one girl. Surely you don’t want Truffler Mason to-?’
‘Truffler Mason has caused me considerable inconvenience,’ Dr Potter snapped back. ‘He’s lucky I haven’t just killed him straight off. At least with what I’m proposing, he has a chance of survival.’
‘Not much of a chance.’
‘No, Mr Arkwright, not much of a chance,’ the doctor conceded with a hint of humour.
Mrs Pargeter wondered why Truffler was silent during this exchange, and concluded that he was probably still unconscious. As she and Jack the Knife edged closer, this conjecture was confirmed by the sight of Truffler’s body still stretched out on the cellar floor.
Ankle-Deep Arkwright maintained his protest. ‘I don’t think you should do it, Doctor. There’s been enough destruction here. I never wanted to be part of this in the first place. I-’
‘Mr Arkwright!’ Dr Potter interrupted malignantly. ‘You will do as you’re told. Either we get back to the arrangement we had before — that you run Brotherton Hall and do whatever I ask of you whenever I ask it — or I inform the police of your criminal past. And the same goes for you, Stan.’
‘But I can’t stand any more of this killing. First there’s the student kid, then Lindy Galton, and if you’ve done anything to Mrs Pargeter, there are people all over the world who worked with her husband and will avenge her, whatever-’
‘Mr Arkwright! If I cannot count on your co-operation, then I will put you on the same medical programme as Mr Mason. My product still needs a lot more testing, you know.’
There was a chill silence as the impact of these words sank in, and Jack the Knife seized his cue.
A gunshot sounded, shatteringly loud in the enclosed space. Then came the smashing of glass, followed by a muddle of curses in the blackness.
By the time Jack the Knife had switched his torch on, half the job was done. Ankle-Deep Arkwright and Stan the Stapler, well trained by the late Mr Pargeter, had taken advantage of the confusion to immobilize the two ambulance men, who found themselves looking down the barrel of Jack the Knife’s gun.
And in the spill of light from the torch, Dr Potter and Mrs Pargeter faced each other, machine-gun and automatic pistol trained.
‘I will have no hesitation in using this,’ he announced silkily.
‘Nor will I in using this.’
‘Do you know the rate at which this machine-gun pumps out bullets, Mrs Pargeter?’
‘No. And I’m not particularly interested. It’ll only take one bullet from my gun to blow you away, Dr Potter. I’m not going to miss from this range.’
There was a momentary impasse. Nobody moved, or seemed to breathe.
Then the doctor spoke again, his voice corroded with bitterness. ‘I haven’t come this far, I haven’t come through everything to get so close to recognition as a brilliant chemist, to be thwarted by you. You’re in my way, Mrs Pargeter, and when there’s someone in my way, I always succeed in getting them out of my way!’
He concluded the sentence as if it were a cue — presumably a cue to squeeze the trigger of his machine-gun and blow Mrs Pargeter out of his way.
But the cue was missed. There was a sudden movement from the floor. Truffler Mason, with surprising athleticism, arched his body and brought his legs up to send the machine-gun spinning. The impact hurled Dr Potter back against the wall, where his head slammed against a low pipe. He crumpled unconscious to the floor.
‘Brilliant, Truffler!’ Mrs Pargeter gazed fondly down at her protector, who sat on the floor lugubriously rubbing his head.
Jack the Knife looked across at the two ambulance men, dispirited in the unyielding embraces of Ankle-Deep Arkwright and Stan the Stapler. Any fight there had been in the thugs was gone. ‘Tie them up,’ he ordered.
Then the surgeon moved across to focus his torchbeam on Dr Potter. He noticed something behind the man’s ear and looked closer.
‘Good heavens!’ he murmured.
‘What is it?’ asked Mrs Pargeter.
‘These scars behind his ears.’
‘What about them?’
‘Just that I recognize them.’
‘Hm?’
‘A surgeon always recognizes his own handiwork, Mrs Pargeter.’ Jack the Knife pushed Dr Potter’s head sideways and peered closely at the network of lines around his eyes. ‘Good God! Do you know who this is?’
‘No.’
‘Julian Embridge.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Hell had no fury like Mrs Pargeter in pursuit of justice. Shylock was not more pertinacious in his demands than she in her determination to settle scores with Julian Embridge.
The three villains were tied up to cellar pipes as Ankle-Deep Arkwright had been. ‘Dr Potter’ was still unconscious as he was manacled and Jack the Knife inspected his body, first removing the man’s shoes.
‘Look at this.’ He pointed to the heavily built-up sole. ‘Made him a good three inches taller.’
‘Which explains why his body looked so out of proportion,’ said Mrs Pargeter. And also, she thought to herself, why he refused to take his shoes off when he removed the body of the girl he’d killed from the Dead Sea Mud Bath.
‘The hair’s dyed, obviously,’ Jack the Knife observed, ‘and he had coloured lenses over his blue eyes…’
‘Which is why they looked that strange muddy colour.’
‘Yes, Mrs Pargeter. And all that, with the work I’d done on him, was sufficient to change his basic appearance.’ The surgeon paused and looked puzzled. ‘But there’s more to it than that. I mean, Julian Embridge was a short, tubby person. This isn’t the body of a short, tubby person.’
Mrs Pargeter smiled a bleak smile. ‘I don’t think we have to look far for the explanation, Jack. Think of the drug “Dr Potter” has been trying to develop, the drug that killed that poor girl. I think he was his own first guinea pig.’
Jack the Knife slowly nodded agreement as she went on, ‘His background was as a chemist. He always had ambitions to produce something that would make him famous. The need to change his identity gave him the perfect incentive to experiment. But clearly the side-effects of whatever he developed meant that he couldn’t put it straight on to the market. He needed to test it first and maybe he had suffered so much from earlier versions that he decided to try the drug out on other guinea pigs…’
‘Hence the Private Eye small ad and all of that…’
‘Yes.’
The surgeon looked thoughtful. ‘Mind you, if he ever had developed it — a drug that could change basic body type — the slimming industry would have killed to get hold of it.’
‘Unfortunate choice of phrase in the circumstances, Jack.’
‘Yes. Sorry.’
‘But it explains Sue Fisher’s interest.’ Mrs Pargeter pursed her lips. ‘Hm, I’d really like to get Sue Fisher too…’ But no, Ellie Fenchurch had made a deal with the creator of Mind Over Fatty Matter. Sue Fisher could not be implicated unless she broke her side of that bargain.