“What if there are homing devices hidden on the boats?”
“We’re too far out for a signal to reach. In this case, Kirkfallen’s isolation gives us the advantage.”
They heard the soft cry of a child from inside the cottage.
“Are we agreed? Or do you want to stay faithful to your jailers?”
The others thought for a while. One by one they nodded their approval. Geoff and Alison, recognising the sound of their own offspring turned to go inside.
“Before you leave.” Edward scratched his cheek. “Could you all give me just one salute? I’d kinda like that.”
“Yeah, right.” The others trooped back inside.
Edward Stapleton leaned against the wall of his cottage and let out the breath he seemed to have been holding the entire conversation.
He had them. Now they could all know the truth.
The next night the unhappy couple were ready to go. Libby sat in the boat, which had been stripped to its timbers and loaded with supplies and fuel.
“There’s no compass on the island, or you could have it.” Edward was almost invisible in the darkness.
“I know how to steer using the stars and the sun.”
“Of course you do.” Edward held out his hand and Colin shook it. “Good luck.”
“Thank you for what you’ve done, Eddie.”
“There’s something I have to tell you, before you leave.” Edward kept hold of Colin’s hand. “Something I’ve never told anyone.”
“If you’re going to say you love me, I’ll be extremely uncomfortable.”
Edward smiled.
“When I was stationed here years ago, I saw Markus Kelty leaving in a boat, after the place had been destroyed.”
“And?”
“He had a woman with him.” Edward finally let go of Colin’s hand. “He said he had fallen in love. It was an open secret on the base that he’d been seeing a young researcher named Aiki Conroy. She’s listed as having burned up along with everyone else, but he took her with him.”
“You never told anyone this? Not even Naish?”
“I thought Kelty deserved a chance at happiness. But Naish says he’s dead.”
“So?” Colin couldn’t muster much sympathy for the doctor. “What about it?”
“Naish said there would be 24 children injected with the Stopwatch Serum and put on this island. But I was at McClellan Base long enough to know the serum was produced in batches of 25.”
“Maybe Naish dropped one.”
“Maybe Kelty kept one.” Edward stuck meaty hands into his pockets. “And injected his partner.”
“Why would he do that? Unless she was…”
“Pregnant?”
“Shit!” Colin caught on immediately. “That means, someday, her kid will release pheromones!”
“Kelty believed it was inevitable anyway.” Edward glanced back towards the tiny lights of the fledgling Kirkfallen community. “He was a conceited man and I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“Then why give Naish any serum at all? If he’d already set the ball rolling ”
“Another of his smokescreens, I guess. If the army had what they wanted, they’d concentrate on that and not go snooping into where Kelty had been in the last few months of his life. He was protecting his family.”
Edward picked at his lip.
“Besides. If his child released Mandibular Pheromones, it might well find itself controlling everyone. An egoist like Kelty would have surely enjoyed that idea.”
“Are you saying he sacrificed himself, to hide some theoretical kid?”
“Why not? He was willing to kill for what he thought was the greater good.” Edward took his hands from his pocket and folded his arms. “I got the feeling he was willing to die for it as well.”
“Well that’s just dumb.”
“Yeah? Then, pray you never find yourself in the same situation.”
“Isn’t it more likely that Naish just dropped a vial and Kelty wasn’t as smart or as altruistic as you seem to think?”
“Probably.” Edward didn’t sound convinced. “Still…. if you make it, you might want to try and find this Aiki Conroy and see if she had a child. Just to check.”
“If I make it?”
“Sorry. When you make it.”
“I’ll do my best.” Colin agreed. “I certainly owe you one.”
“People like me have to prepare for any eventuality.” Edward took a deep breath. “That’s why we’ve begun stockpiling homemade weapons in the old McClellan base.”
He smiled thinly.
“If the army ever find out the true results of the project and try to get rid of us, they’ll be in for the fight of their lives.”
Colin and Libby reached the west coast of Scotland two days later, soaked, frozen and utterly exhausted. With nobody but each other for company, they had talked properly for the first time. The fact that they might die on the journey or miss land altogether had helped with the dubious bonding process.
They lay on a deserted beach and watched the tide pull the boat back out to sea. Colin had broken a hole in the bottom so that it would sink and leave no trace. Eventually Libby sat up.
“Well, I did join the army to travel,” she said, a little too cheerfully.
“Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know.” Libby hugged her knees, a gesture Colin was now familiar with. “Thank you for getting me to safety, though.”
They sat for a while, watching their boat drifting in circles and slowly sinking. Libby was shivering and Colin put his arm round her.
“So, I joined the army. I had a kid without even the fun of sex. It died. Now I’m on a beach in a foreign country without any money or identity. And I’m only nineteen.”
She hugged her legs tighter.
“This life is turning out to be some ride.”
She turned to Colin.
“What about you?”
“Let’s see.” Colin scratched his stomach. “I lived under a false name for years. I’ve faked my death twice. I’m now part of the biggest double cross in world history. I reckon I’m cut out to be a con man.”
“You win,” Libby giggled. “Where you gonna start?”
“I have a PO box number in New York memorised. If I write to it, an old friend called Dan Salty will come for me. He wasn’t bad at conning people himself. I can probably persuade him to go into partnership.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“You could always come along,” Colin ventured.
Libby tried a grateful smile, but her mouth refused to turn up at the corners.
“I could. But I’m a loner, Col. I don’t mix well with people.” She rested her head briefly on her partner’s shoulder. “I got a glimpse though. A glimpse of what others cherish. A home. A family. A great guy. It’s a shame that life isn’t for me.”
She tilted her companion’s face towards her and kissed him on the lips.
It was the first kiss Colin had ever had.
Good luck, mister.” She thumped her chest. “What little is in here? You actually managed to touch it.”
Then she was on her feet and running.
47
The Atlantic Ocean, 160 Miles West of the Hebrides 2000
“What happened to Libby?” Apathy reached up and wiped a tear from her uncle’s cheek.
“God knows. She was trained to blend in and I never tried to find her.” Colin’s voice was laden with regret. “I’m a part of a life I’m sure she wants to forget.”
“Did you ever track down Kelty’s partner and her kid?”
“Yup,” Colin replied dismissively. “When Kelty kicked the bucket, she remarried a man called Andrew Flintheart,” “I kept an eye on them but the whole family died in an accident.”
Apathy gave her uncle a few moments of silence. But she had too many questions to hold back.
“So how did you find her? How did you find me, for that matter?”
“Dan had a th
eory that your mother fled to Scotland. It was where our ancestors came from and, apparently, she’d always wanted to go there.”
“Yeah. Shame we ended up in a shitty tower block.”
“I searched for years.” Colin continued. “All I had to go on was that someone filled with pheromones influenced others in a small but significant way.”
Apathy’s remembered all the fights that revolved around her at school. The fact that her mother always seemed to have a pent up dissatisfaction with life. Now she understood why. She had caused it. The realisation squatted like an ugly toad in her gut.
“I also knew that those pheromone emissions showed up on photographic paper,” Colin continued.
“And that’s how you found me?”
“Hell, no!” Her uncle looked shocked. “I wasn’t going to get arrested taking Polaroids of kids left right and centre. No. One day, Dan was talking about you. He was drunk.”
“He talked about me?”
“He talks about you all the time.”
Apathy sat back on the bunk, surprised and pleased.
“Anyhow, he told me a story I’d never heard before. How he and Emily had joked about calling you Apathy Amazon or Norman D. Landing.”
“You didn’t?”
“Yup. I pretended to be a truancy officer and called every school in the country, asking if they had a pupil by either of those names. And there you were.”
“How long ago was this, Colin?”
The short man looked pained.
“Over a year.”
“And my dad never tried to contact me?” Apathy’s lip trembled.
“He’s a wanted murderer. Can’t really afford to have his picture in the local paper, winning the three legged race with you at sports day.”
Colin shrugged.
“He looked out for you, though. Remember the bullies that picked on you at your last school? How they suddenly stopped for no reason?”
“What about it?”
“They stopped because D.B. paid a little visit to their parents.” Colin raised his eyebrows “I seriously doubt they’ll ever bother anyone again.”
He fished in his pocket for cigarettes, signalling this particular conversation was over.
“I’ve told Colonel Naish that you’re my daughter.” He stood up and paced the room. “She’ll find out pretty quickly that’s not true, but it will be too late. By that time we’ll be on the island. Your father wanted you someplace safe.”
“Why do you think Kirkfallen is safe? I wasn’t injected with Mandibular Serum. I got the original nasty one and there are people there.”
Apathy’s eyes widened.
“If I release those pheromones, won’t it affect the other children and drive them crazy? Won’t it effect you? You’re not a psychopath.”
“Naish is bound to quarantine you while she checks out my story. The island was designed for it.”
“You better hope so.”
“And I used to live on Kirkfallen,” Colin reminded her. “I know how to keep out of harm’s way. As for the kids? Sociopathy is fifty per cent hereditary.”
He lit his cigarette and tossed the match out of the open porthole.
“You seem OK, probably because your mother was normal, but the kids on Kirkfallen all have sociopathic parents – which means they’ll be sociopathic themselves. Even if you aren’t quarantined, you won’t affect them at all.”
“Christ. They won’t exactly be a lot of fun to hang out with, will they?”
“Not necessarily. Me and Edward Stapleton always got on fine.”
“Does that mean I can tell him the truth?”
“Oh, he knows you’re not my daughter but he’ll keep that to himself. Naish is bound to come with an army escort and he’ll have to pretend that everything is going according to their plan. Otherwise the whole population might all be… disappeared.”
“Thanks for putting my mind at ease.”
Apathy closed her eyes and let out a heartfelt sigh. Colin sank into the seat opposite.
“I want you to promise me something.” The teenager opened one eye. “Promise me you wouldn’t con your own niece.”
Colin returned Apathy’s stare.
“I promise.”
He pulled his coat on and let himself out of the cabin.
Then he staggered to the rail and threw up over the side.
48
Amblin Cottage 2000
Dan sat on a wooden crate in the shed and cursed. He had checked the door, but it was locked from the outside. He could see a big key blocking the keyhole – only a few inches away but impossible to reach. He had shouted and pounded on the door but nobody came to his assistance.
Dan had no idea how long he’d been trapped, though it seemed like hours. He didn’t know where his half-brother had gone, but he must have taken Apathy, or else she would have set him loose.
He was going to kill Colin for this.
It was bitterly cold in the shed. Dan considered lighting a fire but he didn’t want to risk burning the place down, especially since he was inside. He wondered if he could set the door alight and break the weakened timbers before the whole shed went up. It was worth a try.
He searched around the empty shed, looking for something to burn and found a newspaper stuffed between a pair of cinder blocks and the wall. Pulling it loose, he fished a lighter from his pocket, still unsure if this was a suicidal course of action.
The paper was dated the day before and folded open at page seven. Dan glanced at the lead article.
Freak ‘Accident’ May Be Murder
A police investigation into the death of an Aberdeen family has ruled out an accident as the cause of death and are now pursuing a murder inquiry.
Andrew Flintheart, 36, his wife Aiki 30, and their daughter Elspeth 15, of 32 Westmoreland Drive were found dead on Wednesday 18th December.
Police originally believed the family’s death was due to an accidental gas leak. However, subsequent evidence found at the scene now points to deliberate interference with the external gas supply.
“As a result of this new evidence we are now treating the deaths as murder.” said a spokesman for Aberdeenshire police.
Neighbours of the Flintheart family reported that they were visited by a short, black haired man the day before the family’s death. He was last seen driving off in a white van with G.B. Paranormal on the side. Police are appealing for more witnesses.
Dan let the paper fall from his fingers.
“Oh God, Colin,” he croaked. “What have you done?”
He heard the throb of a car engine approaching and dropped the newspaper. The noise grew louder, finally pulling up outside. A door slammed. Footsteps approached and the key turned in the lock. Dan got up off the crate, trembling both with cold and rage.
“What the fuck are you playing at?” he shouted. “What have you done with my daughter?”
The door swung open and Dan recoiled.
“Emily?”
Emily Walton slapped him hard across the face. Dan blinked. This was the second time today a member of his family had hit him.
Emily cuffed her husband again.
“You irresponsible, horrendous bastard!” she yelled raising her hand a third time. Dan caught her wrist and held on tight, staring in astonishment at his wife. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying, her face twisted in fury.
But she still looked beautiful.
“How did you find me?” he gasped.
“Colin called me,” Emily snarled. “You kidnapped your own daughter! You didn’t tell me my brother was alive! You didn’t even try to find me!”
“We’ve been looking for years! We only came across you a few months ago.”
“Liar!”
“It’s the truth.” Dan let go of her hand and waited for the next blow. “You’ve been in hiding and I had no idea where. Someone like me can hardly take out an ad in the Times.”
Emily began to sob. Dan started to put his arms around her and then st
opped, unsure of just how to act. Damn! He didn’t know how to comfort either his wife or his own daughter. It struck him again just how incomplete he was as a man.
“Colin’s taken Apathy,” he said, trying to divert Emily’s attention. “I don’t know why and I don’t know where he’s gone.”
Emily pulled a wad of paper from her pocket.
“Colin also left me a long letter. I found it in my flat. Do you know how disturbing that is?”
She thrust the papers into his hand.
“He’s taken Apathy to a place called Kirkfallen Island.”
“Why?” Panic gripped Dan. “What for?”
“Read it!”
Dan sat back down on the crate and began to scan the sheets. Once or twice he risked a glance at Emily. She stood in front of him, breathing heavily.
God, she looked good.
Then he came to a line in the letter that froze the breath in his throat. He read the rest without a pause. When he had finished, he held the paper out.
“Shit.”
Emily took the letter and fished a lighter from her pocket. She flicked the flame to life, set the paper alight and dropped it. They both watched the pages curl and turn black until nothing was left on the floor of the shed but a pile of black ash. It reminded Dan of his relationship with his wife. With everyone, in fact.
“According to Colin there will be a military helicopter here soon. Get ready to be on it.”
“I know. I can read.”
“You’re going to rescue my daughter, Dan Salty.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Your word no longer means anything to me.” Emily turned her back so he couldn’t see her tears. Dan helplessly watched her shoulders rise and fall.
“Have you got makeup in your car?” he asked tentatively.
“What?” Emily whirled round. “You vanish for fifteen years! You abduct my daughter. You put her in the hands of a maniac. Now you’re telling me I’m not pretty enough!”
“You sure look fine to me,” Dan replied softly. He glanced down at the discarded newspaper. “But I have an inkling of what Colin might be up to. And for it to work, you’re going to have to look stunning.”
The Kirkfallen Stopwatch Page 17
