Page 70 of Nothing But the Night (Basic Instincts 2)

At the lights, the ambulance continued straight ahead, but Nadine turned left. Thankfully the road ahead was clearer.

The line to the police continued to ring.

“You’re wasting your time,” she said. “We’ll get there before they even answer.”

Jason swore again. He hated feeling this inadequate.

“Do something more practical,” Nadine said. “Look up this Chantelle woman. See what you can find out.”

He clicked through the search options. There was a profile page on Archer’s website titled Meet the Team. “Chantelle Readymarcher,” he said, skimming the bland biographical details. “Friend of Soloman and his wife. Former campaign manager. Blah, blah, blah. Now his PA and responsible for running the Blyham field office.”

He widened the search field and found an obituary for her husband. “Eddie Readymarcher, successful businessman. Married Chantelle in 2005 and adopted her son from a former marriage, Stefan.”

“Did she kill the husband as well?”

“No,” he said, continuing to read. “Cancer. There’s no evidence that she’s ever been involved in anything suspicious.”

“Apart from working for the shithouse MP,” Nadine muttered, tearing around a corner and narrowly missing an oncoming car as she veered into the opposite lane. She pulled to the left just in time to avoid a collision, slamming Jason against the door.

He gasped at the pain as the seatbelt locked against his injured ribs.

Nadine sped ahead on the clear road.

Jason glanced at the photographs of Chantelle Readymarcher. A woman in her mid-fifties, beautiful, immaculately groomed with lustrous honey-coloured hair and wide blue eyes. There was a clear resemblance to the images Blake had shown them of Stefan. The son who had taken his own life less than a year ago.

Was this respectable, conservative woman capable of murder?

The chill in Jason’s spine gave him the answer.

* * **

Ryman lay in a heap at Chantelle’s feet. The efficiency with which she had killed him had been abhorrent. Six sharp and powerful strikes to his back. Ryman’s face had contorted, then spasmed in agony, before slipping into an expressionless mask before he fell to the floor. Chantelle didn’t flicker. The execution of a man—two men—hadn’t caused a ripple of emotion.

In contrast, Marc’s blood pounded through his body and sounded like thunder in his ears.

She gazed at him across the desk. Her eyes were stony. It appeared to Marc that she was dead behind them. The knife was in her right hand, held beside her thigh. Ryman’s blood dripped from its lethal blade.

“I’d be correct to assume you didn’t come here without telling someone else where you were? Your investigator chum.” She sounded like a politician herself. Going on TV to announce a new policy or trade deal. Utterly emotionless and insincere.

Jason would surely come looking for him. Marc’s phone had already rung twice in his pocket. It was set to vibrate so she wouldn’t have heard it. He would need to take her by surprise in order to stand a chance. “Jason is on another case. I haven’t spoken to him all day. Ryman has taken over the investigation.”

“For a smart businessman, I’d have expected you to be a better liar. So, he’s on his way now? Or can I expect him to turn up later?”

“I don’t understand… Who are you? Why?”

In another political trait, she ignored the question. “I intended to kill you and Jason. If I’d been more on my game, you’d be in cold storage already. But Soloman, and this guy”—she jabbed Ryman with her toe—“theydidn’t have to die. You pulled them into this and now these two are all on you.”

He trembled in disbelief. “Says the woman holding the murder weapon.”

“Effective, isn’t it. I should have just used this on you in the first place. It was over-ambitious of me to think I could get two for one with the hit-and-run. This”—she raised the blood-streaked knife—“has a far more successful hit rate.”

Her voice hadn’t modulated in tone or volume. It was like she was stating the most mundane fact.

“You killed my brother? You were the hit-and-run driver?”

She licked her lips and gave a short nod. “If I’d known then how much I enjoyed the knife work, I’d have finished him that way. But at the time, I needed it to look like an accident to avoid suspicion.”

Marc was incredulous. She spoke without a scrap of remorse. There was no connection between the words and their meaning. Despite having just watched her murder Ryman, and standing before the corpse of Soloman, he struggled to make sense of what she said. “Why Theo? Surely not because of him.” He gestured to Soloman.

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