piece of sharpened bamboo dipped into tetrodoxin.
The poison comes from the reproductive sac of a species of blowfish called the tetrodontidae. This fish is a native to the coastal waters of Japan and Hawaii, and, as it is a pretty creature, it can often be seen gracing tropical aquariums, in homes as well as zoos.
Tetrodoxin is found in the female fish, and then usually only in the mating season February.
At this time, the female egg sac is swollen with around two to three liquid grams of tetrodoxin, which is enough to poison three to four hundred humans. To retrieve the sac from the fish without breaking it, necessitates alarming the fish so that it does its best aggressive trick, inflating itself to two or three times its normal size. At that moment you slit the side of the creature with a razor-sharp knife and remove the sac intact.
In recent years many schools of the Japanese culinary art now openly taught the same ancient secret for removing the poison, for removing it is necessary to make a particular delicacy harmless.
Skilled chefs would do this trick, for the tetrodontidae is the main ingredient in the gourmet dish Fugu. Yet, even now, some are not completely adept at removing the sac, and each year there are still a number of deaths in Japan from eating Fugu which has been improperly prepared.
`It's a horrible way to die.' She shuddered, her skin suddenly pale at the thought. `Complete paralysis and respiratory failure in twenty seconds, the Japanese doctor says.' `Fast, though.' Bond sipped his wine, holding a little in his mouth before swallowing, savouring the flavour. `Over before you know it. He mention that they still use it for suicide?' She shook her head: a cross between saying no and driving the spectre of death by this kind of poison from her brain.
`I read somewhere that people who want out can buy the stuff from chefs. They get drunk then prick themselves with a needle soaked in the wretched venom.' `The cops've found the place where the sniper holed up.' She was distancing herself from the effect, returning to the first cause. `We can go up there tomorrow. Whoever it was made a comfortable hide for himself, slightly higher up the mountain.
`Must've been pretty sure of his target, unless our His March was chosen at random.' `That's exactly what the cops said. In fact it's what they're afraid of, a killer taking pot shots at people with poison darts or capsules. Not the happiest of thoughts, a random poisoner on the loose.' `Which is easier to deal with? The random killer, or some terrorist organization intent on revenge, or headlines?' `One's as bad as the other, really. Scares the hell out of me.' `And you don't look as if you scare easily.' `I don't?' `You're a professional, so..
`Don't you get scared, James? Don't all of us?' `Of course I do, but only when the situation warrants it. We're only going through the motions, investigating a murder. We're working like a couple of homicide detectives, there's no danger in that.' She cocked an eyebrow, and swallowed another piece of lamb. `That's how you think of it?' `Naturally.' `Well, I've seen the body, read the evidence. It's like somebody being bitten by a deadly snake, and the snake hasn't yet been caught.' `Yes, but...
`But nothing, James. Didn't they tell you to move carefully, to watch your back?' Her face was still pale, and there was a new, concerned, haunted look in her eyes.
`My Chief mentioned it, yes, but only in the context of the poor dead His March's employers.' `Well, perhaps he was playing it down. My boss spelled it out to me. Anyone investigating the death is at risk.
If it's a one-off terrorist thing, nobody's claiming responsibility, so they could well have expected a long delay before we worked out the cause of death if we discovered it all.' `And if it's some crazy, I suppose he could still be lurking around. That how it goes?' `Exactly.
We've been told to take great care. If it is a crazy, we re all still at risk. If it's terrorists, the same applies. So, yes, James, I am scared, and I'll be surprised if you don't feel something up on that mountain tomorrow.
`There's something else?' Somehow he felt that she was holding back; delaying facing the truth.
`So, what's turned up, Fredericka? They've found where the shooter holed up; we know how the girl was killed. Have the cops had any other ideas?' `She's stayed there before.
`In Interlaken?' `At the same hotel. At the Victoria-Jungfrau.
Three times previously. Each time with the same man. Once a year over the past three years.' `They IDed her friend?' `No. I've seen stats of the register. Mr and Mrs March. His passport showed him as March, we have the number, and her former employers ran a check. The passport was applied for in the usual way, three years ago. You're going to love this, James, and it might make you almost as frightened as I am. It's her brother's passport. His name was David.
Bond scowled, suddenly looking up into her face. `She was an only child. That's what her service said.' Fredericka smiled, and the nervous, haunted look vanished for a second, then returned. `That's what her service thought. I only saw the signal traffic, and got the documents half an hour before you arrived. It appears that she wasn't quite telling the truth. She did have a brother. An elder brother.
Black sheep of the family. He died in a hospital for the criminally insane five years ago.' It was Bond's turn to look serious.
`Which hospital?' `Rampton. He'd been there since the age of twenty, and he was five years older than her.
`And...' Bond began, but the waitress was beside them again, asking about dessert. Without much enthusiasm, Fredericka ordered the cherry tart, and Bond went for the cheese board. `When in Rome,' he smiled.
She remained passive, as though the spectre of this man, David March, lay across the table between them. `It appears,' she said, `that the family moved from the North of England to Hampshire after it happened. It was a pretty big case at the time.' `David March,' Bond mused, the name hung on the lip of his memory, but he could not quite get to grips with the man or his crime.
`He killed five girls, in the North of England,' she said, her voice calm now. `At the time, the Press drew some sort of parallel between March and ... oh, who were they? Monsters? The Moors Murderers?' I.
`Brady and Hindley, yes. Kidnapped and abused children, then killed and buried them on the moors above Manchester. Sure, a cause celebre. Brady's in a secure facility for the criminal insane now, and Hindley's still in jail. That case broke, oh,. some time in the early sixties ... An appalling business.
Terrible ... yes, monstrous.
`Well, David March made those two look like good fairies. He did his particular thing in the early seventies. I read the file while I was waiting for you to land. He was quiet, unassuming, polite, an undergraduate at Oxford, reading law. The psychiatrists' reports are interesting; the details of the killings are ... Well, I'd prefer that you read them for yourself, James. I was scared before, but after reading what her brother did. ..` `So we have a whole series of bogeymen terrorists, a lone random crazy, and a victim whose brother ...` He stopped as the name David March suddenly connected with a jigsaw puzzle in his head. `That David March?' He looked at her, knowing his eyes had widened. `The one who kept the heads?' She gave a fast little nod. `See for yourself.
Fredericka reached for the leather shoulder bag, but Bond shook his head.
`No, when we get there. I'll read it then. How in heaven's name?
I mean how didn't her people unearth it during her positive vetting?' `How indeed? I rather gather there're a lot of red faces in London.
She didn't even change her name. Nobody in their right mind should have given her a sensitive job with that family skeleton in her closet.' `It was her brother, not her.' `Read what the shrinks have to say before you make statements like that. Lord, James, think about it.
If you remember only small details of the case, he was an horrific, walking, talking, living monster. Yet, two years after his death, sweet little Laura, his sister, lets someone forge a passport with his birth details. What's that make her? To allow someone to use his name, his details. Read it, James. Please just read it.' She had reached down and taken a heavy folder from out of the bag just as the waitress came over to ask if they would like to take coffee. They could use the residents' lounge, she said.
So it was, amidst the normal, pleasant chatter of guests enjoying holidays, or passing through on business, that Bond glanced at Fredericka, who sat beside him, impassive, as he opened the folder and began to read about Laura March's brother.
He was only two paragraphs into the file when the hair on the back of his neck bristled, and rose in fear.
CHAPTER FOUR
BROTHER DAVID
He had barely read the first four paragraphs before the whole story came flooding back. At least the facts read in the newspapers at the time returned vividly. Some of it had been lurid, sensationally reported, with the
