An Unholy Whiff of Death Read online

  Gordon gulped and nodded, then watched her short-skirted form walk around the front of his car and enter through her garden gate. The swish of a suspicious curtain from inside the house, however, had him quickly accelerating away.

  At forty-two, Gordon was not an obvious ladies’ man. His brown hair was thinning, his tall frame was lanky rather than lean, and his dress sense was not particularly notable. Back in London, he’d been eminently anonymous. But here in Caulcott Green, an unattached, highly educated professional male was a big catch. And the salary he earned at the lab was, by itself, enough to set many a fond mother’s mouth a-watering, and thrusting unmarried daughters his way.

  Linda Gregson, however, was in the top running. She was wily and pretty, and had the instincts of an alley cat that had found a prime fishbone and wasn’t about to give it up. And Gordon knew it. He just wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

  As he drove up to the front gate of the lab, and nodded to the guard on duty there (a local lad who told everyone that he was ‘in security’) he wiped a hand wearily over his forehead. Around him, the air rumbled with ominous thunder, and fat raindrops began to bounce off his windshield.

  He was not used to dealing with the likes of Linda, or the other young lady who was currently trying to wrest him so assiduously from Linda’s ample bosom. In some ways he revelled in his new-found popularity and the suggestion of power it gave him. But an innately honest part of himself could never let him forget that it was all a sham, a misleading and potentially painful distortion of who he really was – a nondescript nobody. A failure. A nothing.

  As the gates opened and the uniformed young man waved him in, Gordon had the grace to laugh at himself. If only his mother could see him now. She’d long despaired of ever getting him off her hands – quite rightly, as it had transpired – for he’d lived with her, in their neat little semi in Fulham, right up until her death. He’d been thirty-eight.

  He’d always been a clever boy, a swat and a teacher’s pet, a combination that had earned him a place at Oxford and his subsequent career, but he had few social skills, and even fewer friends. And now even his professional life had become a mockery.

  As he parked in his reserved space, he admitted to himself that Linda didn’t love him. Indeed, for all he could tell, Linda might not even like him very much. It was a depressing thought, and coming, as it did, on top of a year of frustration and rage, it didn’t help his frame of mind one little bit.

  He nodded bleakly to a fellow chemist, who was just leaving for the day. ‘Dave,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Gordon,’ came the just as unenthusiastic response.

  Feeling more and more depressed, he walked through a number of security devices and down antiseptic-smelling corridors, before using his key-card to open the electronic locking system to walk into his own, tiny domain – the modern, clean, state-of-the-art laboratory that felt like home.

  Whatever else that bastard Ross Ferris was, he was not a skinflint, Gordon admitted to himself sourly.

  He walked to his locker, put on his white overcoat and went to a galvanized steel desk. There he very carefully unlocked the drawer and pulled out a small square tin. He couldn’t help but look over his shoulder as he did so, even though he knew that no one would be able to get into his office unless they had a key-card like his own. Still, you never knew in this place when you were being watched.

  And he wasn’t being paranoid.

  He slowly opened the tin and carefully placed the odd-looking pieces of scattered equipment onto a workspace. He could hear a Bunsen burner hissing in blue-flamed contentment on the other side of the room. A clock ticked on the wall over the door. The air-conditioner hummed steadily.

  In various other rooms just like this all around him, people as clever as him worked on all sorts of projects, from the new Frankenstein that was genetically modified foods, to old standbys like coming up with better, more environmentally friendly fertilizers and pesticides, to developing new uses for petroleum-based spin-offs.

  Gordon’s own area of expertise, however, was in miniaturized mechanics, which was proving especially useful when it came to keeping up with the ever-growing computer market. He also had a vast working knowledge of various gases and their properties and possibilities. And for years now, Gordon had been working, in his own time and with his own money, on the invention that would ‘make’ him.

  It was not an uncommon dream for working scientists to have, of course. Actors dreamed of becoming the next Hollywood icon; artists of being the next Picasso (or Damien Hirst, at a pinch). Jobbing scientists dreamed of inventing the modern-day equivalent of cat’s eyes, or television, or sliced bread. That one magical invention that took the world by storm and made its inventor both rich and famous, earning them a name that would go down in history.

  And Gordon had done it.

  Or at least, sort of done it.

  He hadn’t come up with anything that the average man in the street would care about. But he had come up with something that had set those in the computer industry salivating.

  He could still remember that day, nearly six months ago now, when he’d first realized the little gizmo he’d been working on was the real McCoy – a gadget that would revolutionize the computer world; something that was surely destined to be incorporated into every personal computer in the world. The royalties alone would have made him millions and millions and millions. At long last, his genius would be recognized. He’d be a man who could command and demand real respect.

  Gordon nearly dropped the tiny glass capsule in his hand and he cursed himself bitterly. His hands were now shaking with rage, and he knew why. Like a sore tooth that he just had to probe with his tongue, he again went over that other fateful day last January.

  And the visit from the lawyers.

  For Ross Ferris, far from being in ignorance of what his employee had been up to, had been kept constantly informed of Gordon’s progress on his revolutionary idea via a series of lab-spies, illegal but effective bugging devices, and sheer instinctive canniness. And because he could afford it, he’d hired a bevy of lawyers who had successfully argued that because the gadget had been made using Ferris Lab’s equipment, on Ferris Lab’s time, and because Gordon was under contract to Ferris Labs, the invention belonged to his employer.

  And although Gordon had tried to fight the lawsuit, putting up every penny of his own money to do so, he was defeated before he’d even started by what had happened with the patent.

  He’d registered it under his own name, of course. But when his lawyers were preparing the case, the patent office informed them that the design had been registered under the name of Ferris Laboratories.

  Gordon couldn’t prove it, but he suspected that Ferris had either bribed someone in the patent office, or, (far more likely) had paid a computer hacker to break into their system and substitute the names. For a man like Ferris, who had many contacts in the technological industry, it could easily have been done.

  Naturally, Ferris had coolly threatened to sue Gordon for every penny he no longer had if he started voicing that theory in public.

  And Gordon had very quickly learned that nothing was beyond his boss. The man was a monster. A liar, a cheat. He’d stolen his life’s work and the kudos and respect that was due to him, and was now poised to reap the financial rewards that should also be his.

  The scientist swallowed back the bile rising in his throat, and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. Although the labs were all carefully temperature controlled, he felt swelteringly hot.

  Ross Ferris had even had the gall to demand that Gordon work out the rest of his three-year contract. To add insult to injury, the engineer still had to accept the man’s pay cheque, to see his smug face every day, and work in his damned lab.

  But no more! The worm was finally turning.

  For long hours, Gordon continued to work frantically but with intense concentration on the tiny glass capsule that was being held suspended by two electron
ic pincers in front of him, all the time peering through a magnifying lens. Once he put on a mask as he produced a clear gas. Once he rushed to the sink to be sick.

  But all the while as he worked on the tiny instrument of death, he kept telling himself over and over again that he was going to use it. That he wasn’t going to wimp out. That this time, this time, he was going to come out on top, and damn the consequences.

  He would, he promised himself, dance on Ross Ferris’s grave.

  The trouble was, however, that Gordon knew, deep in his heart of hearts, that he couldn’t dance.

  He’d never learned how.

  CHAPTER 2

  London

  Melissa Ferris slammed the cab door viciously behind her and thrust the fare into the taxi driver’s hand. Away to the northwest somewhere, a thunderstorm was making its presence known, and she swore mightily when the first raindrops began to bombard her as she sprinted for the foyer of her home.

  The Ferris London residence was a typically up-market penthouse in a large converted Victorian mansion. As she walked through the small, fern-filled foyer to the stairs (she was trying to stay fit by shunning the lifts) she angrily pushed a tendril of long auburn hair off one damp cheek.

  ‘Damned weather. I should be in Monaco,’ she muttered grimly under her breath as she let herself into the two-bedroom, very artfully decorated apartment, and slung her Gucci handbag onto the nearest chair. Maria, the maid who came in when one of the couple was in residence, had been and gone, and Melissa gloomily put on the coffee percolator. She grimaced, feeling damp and thoroughly out of sorts, but then her visits to Hargrove, Gaines and Gaines, always left her feeling like that.

  ‘You’d think damned solicitors would actually do something to earn their money,’ she snarled darkly to a stuffed tiger that perpetually lounged in an antique rocking chair. The coffee made, Melissa kicked off her Maud Frizon pumps (hopelessly rain-spotted) and tucked her long legs beneath her on the buttoned leather couch. Melissa had good legs. Long and shapely, they’d first attracted Ross Ferris’s attention just over eight years ago. She’d been selling perfume at a counter in Debenhams then – their central London branch, naturally. Ross had been in to buy a tiny bottle of Joy for his latest mistress. And the fact that he’d just bought the most expensive perfume in the world had been enough for Melissa Bolan to give him a second look. And then a third.

  At twenty-five, she’d been on the lookout for a man like Ross Ferris for years. The papers claimed that most women nowadays became rich by going into businesses for themselves, but Melissa knew that she had neither the brains nor the courage for such a career. Besides, she was lazy. And looking as good as she did, she had plenty of faith that the old-fashioned credo of sleeping your way to the top would suit her just fine.

  The Ross–Melissa love affair had followed a fairly predictable path after that first, mutually flirtatious, meeting. Dinners at expensive restaurants progressed to weekends in swank country hotels. These were followed by days at Royal Ascot (showing off her new hat), punting at the Henley Royal Regatta, a thrilling balloon ride over Dorset at dawn, and partaking of strawberries and cream whilst watching the action on centre court at Wimbledon. All the things, in fact, that Melissa Bolan, daughter of a Hackney dustman, had always dreamed of.

  She’d been very careful over sex, of course, letting him have just enough to whet his appetite, but always wanting to come back for more. Of course, Ross had not been fooled for one minute. Although she’d carefully erased the worst twangs of her cockney accent he had no illusions as to what was happening. But he had no objections either. He too had grown up poor in a big city (Birmingham, in his case) and thus felt no latent superiority over the grasping Melissa; indeed he understood her desperation to find something better only too well. In fact, he rather admired her gall. If a pretty gal didn’t have enough gumption to try and better her life by fair means or foul, then she didn’t have much going for her at all, in Ross’s opinion. And since she knew how to dress and apply make-up properly and act like a lady around others, there was no worry that she’d be an embarrassment to him.

  No, all in all, Ross hadn’t minded being ‘hooked’. He was at the age when he needed a wife if he wanted to have kids, and Melissa would certainly look and play the part of being a millionaire’s wife very well.

  And so, amid as much fanfare as they could manage between them, they were married. Ross had spared no expense on the food and flowers, of course, and the press had been tipped off well in advance.

  At first, it had all gone much as they’d both planned.

  Melissa was no dummy and she was always careful to butter up her husband’s business associates. She quickly learned the delicate art of hostessing, and for many years, the Ferris marriage had, if not love, then at least as much going for it as most marriages in modern-day Britain. But three years ago the cracks had begun to show. The first major ruction was the issue of children.

  Ross, fast approaching the spectre of the dreaded middle age wanted them immediately. Melissa didn’t want them at all. She’d always had to fight a running battle with her weight, and she’d seen for herself what the ravaging effects of childbearing had had on some of her friends. She had a morbid fear of becoming fat and dowdy. Also, coming from a big family that had been packed into a tiny council house, just the thought of wailing babies sent her into a fit of the shudders. And then there was the thought of the pain of it all. All the sweating, screaming agony of childbirth. Who needed it? Besides, Melissa had never been good at pain.

  So she’d kept putting him off, telling him that she was young yet, and that they had plenty of time to have fun and see the world before babies irrevocably tied them down and drained all the fun and spontaneity out of life.

  But Ross wasn’t a patient man, and this, naturally, had led to resentment on both sides. Blazing rows had subsequently ensued.

  But the final straw came when he’d bought a house in the middle of nowhere, and had it turned into a lab. Melissa had never before lived in the countryside, and she hated it. She hated Ross’s obsession with his new business, and chose to ignore the fact that this latest addition to the Ferris empire was proving to be the best money-spinner of all.

  Moreover, she found his determination to live close to his work, quite frankly, bizarre. With the big house itself dedicated to offices and laboratories, he’d spent a fortune converting the old stable block into a luxurious bungalow for their private quarters. But although everyone else thought it a triumph, she’d always felt ridiculous living there. Bungalows were so … middle class. And she was a millionaire’s wife. She felt cheated.

  Unfortunately, so did Ross. He had finally realized that if he were ever to have heirs, it wouldn’t be with Melissa. And so, one fine morning six months ago, Melissa found herself on the receiving end of divorce papers.

  The trouble was, as Melissa quickly found out, she was now in an invidious position. Because he’d insisted on it, and because she’d been too afraid he’d slip the net if she refused, she’d signed a pre-nup agreement. At the time, its conditions had seemed marvellously generous. The maintenance payments had seemed huge to her then. Now, of course, when she finally realized how much it really cost to live as well as she did, she saw that the maintenance was peanuts compared with her average credit card spend.

  But the pre-nup was airtight, as her lousy solicitors had just informed her.

  The coffee finished, Melissa got up and moodily walked to the window, looking down at the rain-washed streets. Her solicitor was making hopeful noises that, to avoid a long, drawn-out and bitter court case, Ross might just be persuaded to throw in the London flat in the divorce settlement.

  Melissa’s lovely lips twisted into a snarling smile. Hah. And pigs might fly! She hadn’t been married to the bastard for nearly seven years without learning a thing or two about him. And one of them was that Ross Ferris, when thwarted, was a spiteful, vindictive swine.

  Then her lips slowly curved up into a feline s
mile. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to remind him just how embarrassing a bitter ex-wife could be… .

  Yes. For Melissa, who did indeed know her soon-to-be-ex-husband very well indeed, knew too that if there was one thing Ross liked above all else, it was to be admired by his peers. Oh yes, that was definitely the way to go, Melissa thought, beginning to smile in earnest now.

  It might well be a very good idea to remind him just how vulnerable to ridicule she could make him, if she felt like it. And there was no time like the present, just before the divorce case came to court.

  Melissa’s chocolate-brown eyes crinkled at the corners as she laughed. Then she quickly walked to her laptop and opened up her diary. Her eyes scanned the data and narrowed thoughtfully on a date a little over a week away.

  The Caulcott Green annual flower show. Hell, what a do that was going to be! The thought of all that rustic chi-chi made her want to throw up. But Ross was bound to have his finger stuck well and truly into that pie. Swanning around like Lord Muck! Since moving into the village, he seemed determined to make Caulcott Green his own private little fiefdom. Yes, he was bound to be present, and playing to the crowd.

  Melissa smiled a satisfied smile as the thunderstorm broke in earnest over her head. Yes, the flower show would be ideal for what she had in mind.

  Sean Gregson got off the bus at the main road turn-off to Caulcott Green and tramped the half a mile home. He worked as a mechanic at a garage in Cheltenham, which was ironic, since his own car had just given up the ghost and, unusually, with no spare scrap-heaps back at work that he could borrow, he found himself temporarily carless.

  Now, as he turned into a neat cul-de-sac of well-maintained council houses, he was half-heartedly whistling a vague rendition of Lady in Red.

  In the kitchen, his wife Belinda glanced out of the window and then checked on the progress of the chips frying away merrily in an ancient, blackened pan. Already at the table, Linda Gregson chewed gum and read the funnies in the paper. ‘Here’s your dad,’ Belinda said, unnecessarily.