Lockdown

by Peter May

  LOCKDOWN

  By Peter May

  FICTION

  The Lewis Trilogy

  The Blackhouse

  The Lewis Man

  The Chessmen

  The China Thrillers

  The Firemaker

  The Fourth Sacrifice

  The Killing Room

  Snakehead

  The Runner

  Chinese Whispers

  The Ghost Marriage: A China Novella

  The Enzo Files

  Extraordinary People

  The Critic

  Blacklight Blue

  Freeze Frame

  Blowback

  Cast Iron

  Stand-alone Novels

  The Man With No Face

  I’ll Keep You Safe

  Entry Island

  Runaway

  Coffin Road

  The Noble Path

  A Silent Death

  non-FICTION

  Hebrides (with David Wilson)

  PETER

  MAY

  LOCKDOWN

  This ebook edition first published in 2020 by

  an imprint of

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2020 Peter May

  The moral right of Peter May to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library.

  PB ISBN 978 1 52941 169 0

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 52941 168 3

  Ebook by CC Book Production

  Cover design © 2020 Patrick Carpenter

  www.riverrunbooks.co.uk

  For Susie

  ‘This is the worst flu virus I have ever seen . . .

  there will be no place for any of us to hide.’

  Robert Webster

  Virologist

  St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

  Memphis, Tennessee, USA

  Contents

  Lockdown

  Also By

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  FOREWORD

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  FOREWORD

  In 2005 when I was finding it impossible to secure a publisher for either The Blackhouse or my first Enzo book, Extraordinary People, I started researching a crime novel set against the backdrop of a bird flu pandemic.

  Bird flu, or H5N1, was being predicted by scientists at the time as the likely next flu pandemic. In 1918, the Spanish Flu had killed anywhere between twenty and fifty million people worldwide, and bird flu – with a mortality rate of sixty per cent or higher – was being forecast to exceed that by a wide margin.

  Having done a considerable amount of research into the Spanish Flu for Snakehead, one of my China Thrillers, it was a topic in which I was already well versed. But none of that prepared me for what my research on H5N1 would turn up, and the horrors that a bird flu pandemic could unleash on the world.

  I began looking into the chaos it would inflict, and how society as we know it could rapidly start to disintegrate. I chose London as my setting, the epicentre of the pandemic, and a city in total lockdown. Against this background, the rendered bones of a murdered child are uncovered on a building site where workmen are feverishly constructing an emergency hospital. My detective, Jack MacNeil, is told to investigate, even as his own family is touched by the virus.

  During a six-week spell of burning the midnight oil I wrote Lockdown. It was never published. British editors at the time thought my portrayal of London under siege by the invisible enemy of H5N1 was unrealistic and could never happen – in spite of the fact that all my research showed that, really, it could. Then an American publisher bought the Enzo series, and my China Thrillers were published for the first time in the States. My focus shifted to the other side of the Atlantic, and Lockdown was consigned to a folder in my Dropbox, where it has remained. Until now.

  As I write this, I am hunkered down at home in France, forbidden to leave my house except in exceptional circumstances. A new coronavirus, Covid-19, is ravaging the world, and society as we know it is rapidly disintegrating. Even with its mortality rate being just a fraction of bird flu, politicians are having to fight to control the chaos and panic that Covid-19 is spreading worldwide. The parallels with Lockdown are terrifying. So this seemed like the moment to open up that dusty Dropbox folder and dig out that old manuscript to share with my readers – if only to make us all realise just how much worse things could actually be.

  Peter May

  France 2020

  PROLOGUE

  Her scream echoes through the dark, squeezed through a throat constricted by fear. It quivers with the terror she feels, and would make the hairs stand up on the arms and shoulders and neck of any caring mortal. But the thick walls of this old house wrap themselves around the horror of the night, to ensure that the only ears to hear her are deaf to her plight.

  He curses and hisses and spits in the dark, angry and frustrated. She can hear him on the stairs, and knows that he means her harm. The man she has known and trusted, even loved. She is drowning in her own incomprehension. How is it possible? She remembers the cool touch of his hand on her fevered brow during those long, tortured days of sickness. The pity in his eyes. Eyes which burn now with anger and malice.

  She holds her breath. He has gone up another flight. He thinks she is on the top floor, and she slips from the study and sees his shadow on the stairs as he heads up to the attic rooms. And she turns and hurries down, small feet padding on thick carpet, to the light that falls through stained glass windows on to the floor of the hall. Desperate fingers grasp and pull the handle. But the door is locked. There is no way out.

  She freezes as she hears him bellow at the top of the house. He knows he has missed her. For a moment she hesitates. The steps to the cellar lead from the bathroom below the staircase. But she understands that if she goes down there she will be trapped. There is only the old coal chute leading up to the alley between the houses, and tiny though she
is, she is not small enough to squeeze through the gap.

  The house shakes with his footsteps on the stairs and she turns in panic only to find herself confronted by a little girl. A ghost in a white nightshirt, short-cropped black hair, almond eyes wide and black, face etched in chalk. The sight of the child sends fear spiking through her like the stabbing blades of the knives that await her, before she realises she is recoiling from her own reflection. Unrecognisable, distorted by fear.

  ‘Choy!’ she hears him bellow in the stairwell, and remembers suddenly the woman who had first shown them around the house all those months ago. The false panel in the wall of the big dining room at the front. A room they have never used. A room which has simmered always in a sweltering darkness, daylight and lamplight shining in turns through the cracks around the edges of the blinds. The estate agent had shifted a small table to remove the panel and reveal the door behind it. An old, white-painted door with a round handle which she had opened into the darkness beyond. The damp, cold, fusty darkness of a tiny brick room where a family of six had cowered in the blackout to hide from the bombs.

  Choy had no idea what the lady had meant by ‘the Blitz’, but she had said that when the German bombers had finished over London they swung south again, and dropped their unused cargo on this hapless borough. And when the sirens went, people scurried like rats into their brick rat-traps to listen and wait and pray in the dark. Choy hears him scream her name again, and like the sirens of more than half a century before, it sends her scurrying for the front room.

  Quickly she slides the table aside and fumbles to release the catches on the dark blue panel. It is heavy, and her tiny hands struggle to pry it loose. She can hear him on the first landing, then his footfall in the master bedroom above. She leans the panel to one side and pushes the door. It opens into blackness, and the cold, damp air wraps itself around her. She steps inside, and drags the panel back into place. She is unable to fasten it from the inside and can only pray that he will not see that. She shuts the door, and all light is extinguished. She hunkers down and wraps her arms around herself for warmth. It is so cold in here, so dark, so final. There is no way out. She cannot think how six people could squeeze themselves into this space. It is beyond her wildest imagination to know how it must have felt to hear the bombs falling all around and wonder if you might be next. But she needs no imagination to picture the man she hears now on the stairs, or the light catching the blade she knows he carries. The orphanage in Guangdong is a distant memory, the child she had been, another person in another life. So much has changed in only six months, yet still it has seemed an eternity, and that other life just the shadow of a dream.

  Her breathing is shallow and rapid, and seems inordinately loud. But above it she can hear him in the front hall. Heavy footsteps on parquet flooring. The anger in his voice as he calls her name again. And then silence. A silence which stretches from moments to what seems like hours. She holds her breath now, for as long as she can, for she is sure he must hear it. Still the silence. And then she gasps as she hears the scraping of the panel on the other side of the door. Her heart beats so hard it feels like someone is punching her chest.

  The handle turns, and she presses herself back against the wall as slowly the door opens. He is silhouetted against the light from the hall in the doorway behind him. She can see her own breath misting in the cold air, caught by the same light. He crouches slowly and reaches a hand towards her. She cannot see his face, but she can hear him smile.

  ‘Come to Daddy,’ he says softly.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I.

  The Friends of Archbishop’s Park – those who were still alive – were spitting blood. Those who were not, were certain to be turning in their graves. Years of careful planning, aimed at preserving this tiny patch of green and pleasant land for the people of Lambeth, had been brushed aside by a single emergency Act of Parliament. A flag was hanging limply in the dark above the crenellated turrets of the palace. The Archbishop was in residence. But since the bulldozers had started up at five, after only six short hours of silence, it seemed unlikely that he was still asleep. Neither did it seem likely that those of his predecessors who had gifted the park to the borough were resting in anything like peace.

  Arc lights illuminated the site. Caterpillar tracks had churned and macerated the earth where once children had played, the echo of their tiny voices drowned out now by the roar of the machines. The railings around the football pitch and basketball court had been ripped up and cast aside. The mangled remains of swings and climbing frames were piled up against the derelict buildings on the west side of the park awaiting removal. The old toilet block, destined to have become a café, had been demolished. Time was of the essence. Hundreds of men had been assigned to this task. Shifts were eighteen hours. No one complained. The money was good, although there was nowhere to spend it.

  They moved around under the lights without speaking. Figures in orange overalls and hard hats, and white masks. Each one kept his own counsel – and his distance from the others. Cigarettes were smoked through the fine fibres of the masks, leaving round, nicotine-stained patches, and a brazier was kept burning for the cigarette ends. Infection was too easily spread.

  Yesterday they had dug the holes for the foundations. Today, the mixer lorries were arriving in fleets to fill them with concrete. A giant crane was already on site, ready to hoist and swing steel girders into place. A delegation from the emergency committee had taken the short walk from Westminster the previous afternoon to watch with hope, and fear, the vandalism they had sanctioned in desperation. White cotton masked their faces, but could not hide the anxiety in their eyes. They, too, had watched in silence.

  Now a voice rose above the churning of cement and the growl of the diggers. A single figure raising his hand in the dark, calling for a halt. He was a tall man, lean and fit, perching on the edge of a ten-foot crater in the north-west corner. The concrete chute swung wide and shuddered to a halt. It was only moments away from spewing its thick grey sludge into the earth. The man crouched on the edge of the hole and peered into its darkness. ‘There’s something in there,’ he shouted, and the foreman strode angrily through the mud towards him.

  ‘We’ve got no time for this. Come on!’ He waved a thickly gloved hand towards the man whose levers controlled the concrete. ‘Move it!’

  ‘No, wait.’ The tall man swung himself over the edge and dropped into the hole, disappearing from view.

  The foreman raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘God save us. Get a light over here.’

  A group of men crowded around the lip of the hole as a tripod rattled and a light was tilted downwards. The tall man was crouched over something small and dark. He looked up at the faces peering down at him and shaded his eyes against the glare of the light. ‘It’s a fucking holdall,’ he said. ‘A leather fucking holdall. Some bastard thinks we dug this hole just so’s he’d have somewhere to dump his crap.’

  ‘Come on, get out of there,’ the foreman shouted. ‘We can’t afford any delays.’

  ‘What’s in it?’ someone else called.

  The tall man dragged a sleeve across his forehead and removed a glove to unzip the bag. They all leaned closer to try to see for themselves. And then he jumped back, as if he had touched live electric wires. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘What is it?’

  They could see something white, something catching the light. The tall man looked up. He was panting, short, shallow breaths, and all colour was washed from a face already pale from lack of sleep. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘What the hell is it?’ The foreman was losing patience.

  Carefully the man in the hole leaned over the bag again. ‘It’s bones,’ he said in a hushed voice which was, nonetheless, audible to them all. ‘Human bones.’

  ‘How do you know they’re human?’ The question came from one of the others. His voice seemed somehow shockingly loud.

&n
bsp; ‘Because there’s a fucking skull looking up at me.’ The tall man turned his own skull upwards, and his skin seemed to be stretched very tightly across it. ‘But it’s small. Too small for an adult. It’s got to be a kid.’

  II.

  MacNeil was somewhere far away. Somewhere he shouldn’t have been. Somewhere warm and comfortable and safe. But there was a strange nagging at the back of his mind, an uncomfortable sense of something forgotten, something missed. And then he remembered, with a sickening start, that he hadn’t been to work for months. How could he have forgotten? But he’d done it before, he knew. He had this vague recollection. Oh, Jesus, how was he going to explain it? How could he tell them where he’d been, or why? Oh, God. He felt sick.

  He heard the phone ringing and knew it was them. He didn’t want to answer it. What could he say? They’d been paying him all this time, and he hadn’t even bothered to show up. Others must have had to cover for him. To fill in his shifts. They would be angry, accusing. And still the phone rang, and still he didn’t want to answer it. ‘Shut up!’ he shouted at the phone. It ignored him, each ring a stab to his heart. It was going to carry on stabbing him until he picked it up. Sweat broke out all across his forehead. Something was sticking to him. And the more he tried to free himself the more it stuck. He turned and pulled and kicked and woke up gasping, staring at the ceiling with wide, frightened eyes, his short, cropped hair damp on the pillow beneath his head. The figures 06:57 stretched in digital fragments towards the light rose. It was the only thing he’d taken with him from the house. A gift from Sean. An alarm clock that projected infrared figures on to the ceiling. No need to turn your head to look at the clock during all those insomniac hours. There was always that big clock in the sky to remind you how slowly time could pass.

  Of course, he knew that it wasn’t really Sean who’d bought it. Martha knew how he liked his gadgets. But it was Sean who’d had the pleasure of giving it to him. The innocent pleasure that only a child seems to derive from the act of giving, as real as the joy of receiving.