Earlier that day, in the back of a second-hand camper van, parked anonymously near the railroad station, Chameleon had carefully slit the security seals and opened the clear plastic cover of the sushi container. Then, wearing a protective facemask and gloves, the killer had delicately dissected the two female puffer fish and gingerly extracted their tiny ovaries. These were carefully sliced with a scalpel to release the lethal juices before being wiped repeatedly along each roll of sushi. Once the packaging had been invisibly resealed and decontaminated, along with the countertop in the camper van, Chameleon bagged all of the waste and stuffed it into a garbage can. With the poison delivery system prepared, the rest of the day was spent working on a disguise.
After such a stressful day at the House of Commons, Valerie Jenkins was grateful that it was such a short walk from the supermarket to her London apartment. She juggled her handbag, umbrella, and the shopping, to free a hand so she could unlock the door. Inside, she picked up the mail from the doormat and after a token glance, dumped it on the hall table, hung up her coat, and took her shopping into the kitchen.
After putting away the bread and a few tinned items, she took a half-empty bottle of La Prendina Estate Pinot Grigio from the fridge and poured a large glass. After two long sips from the wine glass, she pulled the sushi container from the shopping bag and placed it on the marble countertop. She smiled as she remembered the elderly Japanese shop worker who was restocking the fresh food shelves. He had been so polite in that endearing Asian way, making a big fuss over her, smiling, and bowing as he gave her a fresh box of sushi. She had noticed how delicate and smooth his hands were, for such an old man.
‘This stuff must be good for you,’ she thought to herself with a smile.
For a few seconds she considered sitting at the table and eating the sushi from a plate like a civilized person, but she was tired and ravenously hungry, so she sat at the breakfast bar and ate directly from the plastic container. Using her fingers, she ate one squid nigiri and then both salmon faux unagi, which were her favourite. Each delicious morsel was washed down with several more sips of wine. With her immediate hunger satisfied, she left the kitchen for a few moments and went into her bedroom to change her clothes.
After kicking off her shoes, Valerie removed her jacket and skirt and hung them in the closet. Then she undid her blouse and bra and dropped them into the wash basket. As she reached under her pillow for her cotton pajamas, Valerie became aware of a sudden feeling of heat in her lips and hands. The sensation quickly developed into a powerful numbness in her face that was reminiscent of being very, very drunk. Concerned that perhaps she was about to faint, Valerie sat heavily on the edge of the bed and then lay onto her back; leaving her feet still touching the floor. A few strands of hair had fallen onto her face and she reached up to brush them aside, only to discover that she could not raise her arm. Then she realized that she couldn’t move at all.
The poison tetrodotoxin that Chameleon had wiped on Valerie Jenkins sushi, acts as a sodium channel blocker, paralyzing the muscles while the victim stays fully conscious. Tetrodotoxin poisoning is rapid and violent, beginning with numbness around the mouth, then paralysis and finally death. The terrified and confused victim is unable to breathe, and eventually dies from asphyxiation. There is no known antidote.
Although she was completely paralyzed, Valerie remained oddly calm. Her body felt warm and incredibly still, exactly as it had felt when she had floated in the buoyant, briny waters of the Dead Sea, during her last vacation. She stared curiously at the little cracks on her bedroom ceiling as she waited for the sensation to pass, as she expected it must. Then she noticed that her eyes were becoming dry because she was unable to blink. Seconds later, when she was struck by the sudden urge to breathe, Valerie Jenkins realized that her chest was also paralyzed. Finally, confused, frightened, and alone, she started to panic. For another half a minute her mind fought desperately in a futile effort to make her body inhale. Then, accepting that she was about to die, she relaxed into a state of peace and tranquility.
In her last few moments of consciousness, Valerie’s life did not flash before her eyes. She did not remember her childhood and schooling, or her exciting trips abroad with her parents. She did not recall breaking her leg skiing, when she was seventeen, or breaking into politics at twenty-seven, and then winning her first election. She did not even recollect losing her virginity, getting married, or getting divorced. She did not remember any of these things, she only remembered the last hour of her life. In particular, she found herself remembering the elderly Japanese man with the kind eyes and unusually smooth hands, who had handed her the tray of sushi. As her vision faded, she remembered that he had also given her a wink and a smile.
Eric Stone liked to think of himself as a patient man, always considered, never impulsive. It was entirely predictable that after watching Charles Rathbone’s final words on video, and reading all of the documents, the first thing he did was nothing. He gave himself two full days to digest and carefully consider all of the information Charles had provided. Although his martial arts skills required lightning fast reactions and swift decisive movements, he still believed that the best results in most other situations were obtained by taking some time to stop and think.
Experience had taught him that one day was too short and three too long. On the first day, any information received was too fresh, the first impressions formed — although important — were too vivid and influential. On the other hand, three days was too long. Important details first learned, could easily be forgotten or confused; by the third day your thinking could become circular or disordered. By the third day, clarity and determination would give way to doubt and inaction. For the most part, Stone felt that two days was a good time to think and plan before taking any important action.
Now that he had studied the video and documents for two full days, he was both angry and decisive; angry that someone’s deliberate actions had caused the death of his best friend, and decisive about his reaction. Eric Stone had decided to destroy the Wrecking Crew. He was going to find the person or persons that ordered Charles’ destruction, look them squarely in the eye, and then kill them. It was not a decision he had taken lightly. He was very clear about the gravity of what he was about to undertake, but if he was going to cut off the head of this snake, as Charles had asked of him, then there was really no other option.
After two days of studying the file on the Wrecking Crew, Eric was appalled by that organisation’s greed and its callous disregard for the damage it had inflicted on so many innocent victims. Clearly, whoever was sitting at the top of this stinking pile had both protection against physical attacks, and deniability in the face of exposure. Such people would only ever stop in death — and he was going to deliver it.
Stone pulled his car into the parking lot of a bar called the White Horse, near Brentwood, in south Essex, and parked in a block of vacant spaces so that his car was facing back towards the main road. At half-past eleven in the morning, the bar would be almost empty, which was part of the reason he had chosen it; along with being equidistant between his house and the office of Ed Carter, the man he was there to meet. Although Brentwood town is really just a suburb of north London, the bar was situated on the side of a surprisingly rural stretch of road, a short distance from the town center. When Stone climbed out of his car, he could clearly hear the ever-present roar of rubber on asphalt from the nearby Colchester road and the M25, the London outer beltway. The two roads met at junction 28, an intersection where Stone had thankfully left the seemingly endless stream of commuter traffic just ten minutes ago.