Maggie cast her eyes carefully over the floor and was reassured that nothing had been left behind. The place was as she found it: dark, dank and desolate. It was Oliver who had told her about the underground. He’d been shown it as a part of his tour around the hospital and thought it was a great place to do a horror story; another Silence of the Lambs as he called it, with him taking the starring role.
This would be her third trip back to the room in the last hour and also her last. The police were still roaming the place and she didn’t want to chance being seen. She had no more use for the room and had returned the keys and various pieces of equipment she’d borrowed back to their rightful places. The plastic sheeting which had covered the floor for Amy Abbott’s visit had been rolled up carefully after the blood had dried and, if not still in the boot of Alex’s car, was now being forensically examined by the police. She would have to get rid of the Schimmelbusch mask; as much as she would like to keep it as a keepsake, it was safer to destroy it.
The playacting of knocking Alex to the ground and holding a vaporous cloth to her mouth had been risky, but Maggie wanted Alex to believe she’d been rendered unconscious in this way so that when she told her story it would be an unbelievable one.
Dressed for a windy night, her hair beneath a woollen hat, a scarf wrapped halfway round her face, Maggie had simply waited and watched for Alex leaving the department. With a loaded syringe of ketamine, all she had to do was make a small jab as she passed, then follow her to the car park and perform a mock knockout, confident that there would be little struggle because the drug in Alex’s system was already working. The theatrics had greatly appealed to Maggie. In fact the last several weeks had, on the whole, been amusing. To watch and wait for the right opportunities to manipulate the story that was unfolding. To take the risks and get to watch what she’d done. So much of it had been effortless.
The simple switching of the wrong drug left waiting to be found. The spraying of the message on Alex’s car while she wandered off into the night without a witness to testify she hadn’t sprayed it herself. Those were merely teasers, like the phone call. But each moment had then lent an opportunity to fuel the belief that Alex Taylor was falling apart. What Maggie hadn’t banked on was the gift Alex would bring to the play. The beauty of it was that Maggie had to do so little. If Alex hadn’t been drinking she would have been more easily believed. She had destroyed her own credibility so easily.
And the gifts just kept coming.
Leaving her handbag at the doctors’ party had been one. A simple search and Maggie was given the setting for the next killing. However, leaving her own car parked near the scene of the crime had not been part of the plan, and she had theorised what she would say if the police had come knocking wanting to know why her car was there. A visit to her troubled colleague would have been her pretext, but finding her not at home she went back to her car only to find it wouldn’t start. If asked how she got into the car park, she’d say the gates were open. But they hadn’t come knocking because they weren’t interested in vehicles with fat tyres.
Still, it was now immaterial. She had given a good performance to that police officer and he still believed Alex was guilty. That was all that mattered. Alex had finally shown she was a murderer by killing her best friend.
She would get rid of the tranquilliser gun – a very useful tool that she couldn’t imagine ever needing again – which she had used on both occasions to incapacitate Alex. She would also destroy the audio tapes – real recordings of the sounds in an operating room, created especially for Alex. To make her believe that what she heard was really real.
Last night was the end of a make-believe friendship. Alex would have assumed that after she met Oliver and confronted him she and Maggie would drive back to Maggie’s house for a late supper. But of course that was never to be. How could they eat together when Maggie would be at the hospital on a night shift and Alex would be under arrest for murder? And no matter how much she protested, her car would be full of incriminating evidence. Her car, which Maggie had suggested they use.
She tapped grit from the soles of the shoes she had lent Alex. She’d not bothered with putting them back on Alex’s feet. Why give anyone the chance to question why they were too big for her? Better for them to think that Alex had lost her shoes instead. She cast another look around the room. Maggie listened to the cold silence and shivered. It was time to go. She had a life to live.
Chapter fifty
Alex ached with grief for her friend. She’d drifted in and out of sleep for most of the day, partly from all the drugs she’d been given and partly from exhaustion. The psychiatrist had visited a short while ago, and no matter how hard Alex insisted she wasn’t in need of an assessment, he had been equally persistent in staying and assessing her.
Most of the day she lay in the bed numb, refusing to eat or drink and afraid to talk in case she made things worse for herself. She desperately wanted to see her parents and sister; they might be able to help, but the psychiatrist had said they’d already been in while she was asleep and it really was for the best that everyone just try and stay calm for the rest of the day.
Alex wondered if her mother or Pamela had become hysterical on their visit and had been told to keep away. She could imagine her mother crying and Pamela yelling, wanting to know what was going on. Her dad would have been more restrained. He would have wrung his hands and walked up and down, quietly waiting to be told what was going on. Her poor parents must be out of their minds with worry, she realised, and she so badly wanted to reassure them, but she didn’t know how. Maggie Fielding had covered all the bases. Even down to her being in an operating theatre during the time she was with Alex. She had a perfect alibi, and Alex now realised why she had been left alone in the dark for so long. Maggie hadn’t been waiting with her; she’d been carrying on as normal – delivering twins.
She felt the fresh sting of tears. This had been happening frequently in the last few hours. She would suddenly find her cheeks wet and one side of the pillow damp from where she lay curled on her side. The tears now, though, were for Fiona. Her dear, sweet friend. No one would tell her how she had died, believing that she already knew, and she could only imagine the situation her friend had faced and the fear she had felt. Maggie Fielding was a very resourceful woman when it came to thinking up deaths, and Alex prayed it had been quick for Fiona and she hadn’t suffered too long.
The reason Maggie had let Alex live was now obvious. She never did intend for her to die, merely that she be destroyed. She would be blamed for all the deaths, including Fiona’s, and Maggie would have made sure there was no way she could prove her innocence. She would eventually be declared sane, or not, depending on how she handled this situation; either way, she would be locked away for ever.