Chapter Forty-Six
When Edward came round, he was on a chair in his garden facing the sea.
His head thumped and his temples burned.
How long had he been out for? The ocean came into a kind of focus, though it was ten miles of blackest water beyond the cliff.
The moon hid its face behind a long strip of grey cloud.
He was tied thoroughly to the chair, but not gagged.
He opened and closed his mouth, feeling the pain as his jaw worked.
He moved his elbow and it touched something.
Kim was beside him, similarly bound but gagged.
Charlie Hearst moved slowly around the front of the pair. The vague light of the moon framed him as he spoke. He had the unquestionable authority of the surgeon. His voice was calm.
‘I feel we should give you an explanation before you die. And a choice.’
Hubert appeared at his side. Edward was staggered again at the incredible physical similarity, save the hair colour. ‘We work together,’ said Hubert. ‘In everything.’
‘And we believe in choice, don’t we, Hub?’ said Charlie. ‘That’s how all this started. Why don’t you tell us, Edward?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘What you worked out. I want to know.’
He looked sideways at Kim. There was now a fresh plaster on her neck, as if the twins had treated her for the injuries Wendy had caused.
‘I spoke to a lady with dementia opposite Lev Malnyk’s house.
I now understand what she told me. The day after the crash she saw people removing a box – Lev’s dialysis machine.
The man in the mirror. I’m looking at the man in the mirror now.
That’s you two.’ His voice, he knew, sounded slurred.
But he had to talk. He had just noticed, in Hubert’s right hand, the syringe.
Moonlight jumped in the plastic stem like a lanternfish.
‘She said something like, “Four people went in and two came out.” It was like a crossword clue. She was seeing double. Identical twins.’
‘Okay, that’s good. So she saw us both.’
‘You gave Lev the dialysis machine,’ Edward continued, head still spinning, ‘because you wanted him to do something in exchange. My guess is that he was supposed to deliver those capsules for you. I just don’t know why.’
Kim was trying to speak.
‘For God’s sake,’ he snapped at last, ‘let her say what she wants to say!’
There was a pause and then the twins nodded to a figure behind Edward and Kim. Wendy, out of view, put her fingers to the back of Kim’s head. She loosened the gag until it hung around Kim’s chin like a neckerchief.
‘Assisted dying.’
Edward asked, ‘What?’
‘Wendy started telling me. That’s what they were doing.’
‘Assisted dying?’ Edward’s brain spun and he tried to grasp the threads. ‘So … you were helping people die? With the capsules. You gave people radioactive capsules … so they could choose. You believe in choice and you wanted to let people choose when they died.’
The twins nudged each other, with a little smirk. Look at the clever radio guy. Edward flexed his fingers against his bonds, impotently furious.
‘And Lev delivered the radioactive capsules for you, did he?’
Charlie Hearst said, ‘Not for us to confirm or deny, but you have permission to feel the warmth of completeness as you put the story together.’
Smug git.
Hubert added: ‘You will have a choice between syringe and cliff in just a moment, so we don’t mind you narrating our little history here. We’d quite like to know what you think.’
From behind them, Wendy said: ‘We don’t have time for this. I’ll get you quickly to the end. It began with fine intentions—’
‘It still has the finest!’ cried Charlie Hearst.
‘It had, has, the finest intentions,’ Wendy agreed. She was still not visible to Edward. ‘They see cancer patients and others in the most hideous pain. No doctor is even allowed to administer fatal morphine—’
‘The rules are bizarre. We were showing kindness,’ said Hubert.
‘—meanwhile the government makes promises and does nothing. My friends here found a way of repurposing some of the isotope used in radiography. I didn’t follow the science like they do, but it will kill you in a week and leave no trace.
The first patient they offered it to had bone cancer.
Imagine the pain of the bone of your skull becoming perforated, looking like an Aero bar?
He took a dose and was beautifully comatose within three days.
No coroner found the cause because the isotope is so unstable it evaporates—’
‘Isotopes don’t evaporate, but I’ll let you have that,’ Charlie Hearst told Wendy. ‘And that’s all we did. Offer a service. But you see, we needed funds, and so there had to be a charge. And let’s leave it there.’
There was a moment of silence. The sea churned its infinite symphony below them.
‘It’s about money,’ said Kim. ‘Your husband died because of dirty, filthy money.’
‘I need to explain,’ said Wendy, still standing behind her.
‘By explain you mean justify,’ said Hubert.
Edward put in, ‘If we’re going to die, we should know. I want to know why Wendy killed her husband.’
‘I was IN THE CINEMA,’ she shouted behind him.
‘So who did it?’ asked Edward.
‘Tell him, Hubert,’ said Charlie.
‘Why should I? Why does he need to know?’
‘Because this is on you, Hubert. You were so efficient and so clever until you decided to remove the crossbow.’
‘I told you a hundred times, I cut myself on it. Imagine the forensic trove for the police.’
‘You cut yourself on it,’ his brother repeated mockingly, as if to increase the humiliation.
Wendy said: ‘And that left the mystery, and the suspicion on me, and there we are, Edward and Kim, you have your story.’
‘So why did you bring me in?’ asked Edward.
‘You want to know?’
‘Not really. I have a suspicion.’
‘I’ll explain,’ Charlie broke in. ‘We don’t have time to go around the houses.
My brother messed it all up, so the police were never going to go for suicide.
The mystery left Wendy under suspicion. And although the police investigation had long since stalled, she just couldn’t bear to live with the ostracization.
’ This last was said with such contempt that Edward and Kim both winced.
Behind them, Wendy gave a tut of outrage.
‘It wasn’t just the ostracization, Charlie.
It was everything. My phone line might as well have been cut.
Nobody called. No one said hello. The church group took me off the bloody volunteer email lists, I was oh-so-very-politely told not to bother coming back to whist club, and the school basically barred me from doing reading time with the children any more.
’ Her voice got higher and higher with each perceived insult.
‘I was being cold-shouldered in the street. Ignored by former friends. And as for the lunches—’
‘Oh my God,’ Kim snorted suddenly. ‘As for the lunches? You were so piqued because no one would go for lunch with you any more? And there’s me, such a fool, feeling sorry for you, thinking I would take you for lunch when all of this was over.
’ She was laughing now. ‘You blew your life up, brought us in and blew this whole thing apart because of whist and lunches?’ Kim’s chair creaked under her as she bent forward, trying to catch her breath through gales of forced laughter, as Edward stared in amazement.
‘You fucking bitch.’ Wendy stormed around to stand beside Kim.
‘It wasn’t just the lunches – I used to be someone, and now thanks to bloody Hubert and the bloody crossbow, I’m a nobody.
A NOBODY! Think how you’d like it if someone took away your flashy Porsche and your bloody business and wouldn’t even sit down with you for a fucking sandwich any more – you wouldn’t be so smug, you cow.
’ She gave Kim’s chair a hard thrust and it wobbled on two legs before settling back, ending Kim’s laughter abruptly.
Charlie stepped forward and warded Wendy away.
‘Don’t knock her over, Wendy, for God’s sake.
You’ve done enough harm with all of this already, she doesn’t need some extra bruises before she takes the injection, does she?
Go over there and calm down.’ He nudged her away, back towards the house.
‘Go on, go.’ He turned back to Edward and Kim, both now sober once more.
‘Ahem. So as you see … Wendy had had enough. She needed to find someone completely credulous to clear her name. She had you down as a mug, basically.’
‘A mug?’
Kim said, ‘Don’t,’ as if fearful that Edward’s growing anger might attract some sort of retribution.
From behind them once more, Wendy said, ‘Given that we’ve arrived here, and you found everything out, you can have the satisfaction of knowing that I was wrong. You are no mug, Mr Temmis.’
She started pulling Kim’s gag back into place, but Kim shook her head.
‘Wait. Can I just ask why your husband had to die?’
Charlie spoke. ‘We work as one. Or we used to. He was going to go to the police. Whistle-blow. We couldn’t allow it. Let’s get on with it.’
Hubert Hearst stepped forward, syringe in hand once more.
His brother spoke. ‘We have a choice for you both, which we thought you might enjoy. You’ve spent a lot of time following the trail of our Actinium-224, and now it’s coming to find you.
Safe to hold, lethal to swallow, and horrific for the human body if injected direct into the heart – you can have that.
Or you two lovebirds can walk off the cliff, just miss your footing and go down together.
It’ll be a suicide pact and you’ll be spoken of with reverence for—’
‘Cut the guff, Charlie,’ said Wendy. ‘I know nobody can see us here, but I don’t want to spin this out. Ask Kim.’
The Hearst twins were still between Edward and the sea. He swallowed. His body was shaking. ‘If you inject us, the police will know.’
‘Not if we throw you off the cliff,’ said Hubert.
‘Injection, or walk,’ his brother repeated.
‘Put the syringe down,’ said Kim. ‘Put the syringe down and we’ll walk.’
‘You’ll have to untie us,’ said Edward.
‘You’ll go singly,’ said Charlie. Edward sensed he was the dominant twin; had he come out of the womb a second before his brother? Charlie Hearst was the brains. He was the business. There was no doubt about it, watching the way the others deferred to him.
‘I think I met two of your customers,’ said Edward suddenly. ‘Les and Lily Boyd. She’s in terrible pain. I understand now why she hates me. I stopped her dying. I didn’t mean to. But my show meant you couldn’t deliver any more ampoules.’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Hubert. ‘We’ll get back to business pretty soon. I’m sure the Boyds – did you say that was the name? – will be on our list.’ Edward gaped. If Hubert didn’t recognize the name of his own customers, how many did they have?
‘You wouldn’t believe how many people we’ve got paying fifteen grand for a capsule that costs tuppence-halfpenny to manufacture,’ Hubert was saying, as if reading Edward’s mind.
Charlie shouted: ‘Stop running your mouth off!’ and suddenly there was an explosion of bright light.
Somewhere in the house, a spotlight had been turned on at a window. The beam wobbled and found the group. Coming from behind Edward, it cast his shadow and Kim’s across the two brothers. And then they heard the woman’s voice through a megaphone:
‘Do not move. This is the police. We are here in numbers. Look down and you will see you are targeted by snipers.’
Sure enough, two red dots danced on the twins’ chests.
‘Move backwards five paces.’
The twins did that, checking all the time that they were not about to step back over the edge of the cliff. ‘Do not move a muscle or you will be shot.’ The laser dots moved up their chests to their foreheads.
Edward recognized the voice. If he was wrong, a bullet would be his reward.
He lurched up, still tied to the chair. But he could not move his feet because his ankles were tied together, or catch his fall with his bound hands.
He fell sideways, smacking his head on the grass.
There was a scream and a rush of movement at his feet.
He could not see the twins. He saw a flash of Kim in her chair, and then, with a rumble and tremble and rush of noise, the earth began to move.
Kim screamed.
The cries of the Hearst twins echoed off the cliffs as the ground beneath them crumbled and they plunged over the edge.