by Peter May
She passed the visitors’ entrance to Fairley House School, and the Archbishop Davidson centre next to the alleyway that led into Archbishop’s Park. She turned right into Pratt Walk and drew up opposite the steps to the lab at 109 Lambeth Road. There were only a handful of lights burning in windows in the four-storey complex. It took several minutes to get herself out of the car and cross the street to the double ramps they had installed especially for her. Glass doors slid open into the foyer. The lobby hummed under the glare of fluorescent lights and was strangely empty. There was no one at the security desk. Amy crossed to the lift, pressed the button and manoeuvred herself into it. It was not until she had turned, and pressed the button for the third floor, that she saw the legs of the security guard poking out from behind the desk. There was blood smeared all over the tiles. She could see his hand lying motionless at the end of an arm extended through a pool of red. Quickly she hit the button to stop the lift, but too late. The doors closed, and with a jerk, it began its rattling ascent.
Amy went rigid with fear, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Her throat swelled up, trying to choke her. What to do? She considered hitting the alarm, but the thought of being trapped in the lift between floors for God knew how long was more than she could bear. So she waited, for what seemed like an eternity, until the lift reached the third floor. The doors slid open, and she could see down the length of the darkened corridor. Light fell out here and there in geometric slabs from open doors to labs and offices.
The whine of the electric motor in her wheelchair seemed deafening as she propelled herself out of the lift and into the corridor. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the doors slid shut behind her, leaving the corridor even darker than before. She sat for a minute, maybe two, just listening. But there was nothing save the hums and murmurs and burrs of heating and ventilation and lights, the sounds a building always makes, but that you never hear.
‘Hello,’ she called out, and her voice seemed feeble in the dark. ‘Is there anyone there?’
As she moved forward a shadowy smudge on the floor caught her attention. She leaned over to take a closer look. It was the smear of a bloody footprint. Her mouth was completely dry. She could barely keep her tongue from sticking to the roof of it. Her hands trembled on the controller as she made herself go forward.
The door of Tom’s office stood wide open. But it was empty. She rolled past a couple of other doors, both closed, before she reached the lab. A light shone through a glass panel in the door. But it was too high for Amy to see in. She pushed it open and propelled herself forward. Tom was standing at a workbench not twenty feet away. She had never seen him so pale. And it was hard to define the expression on his face. Somewhere between abject terror and unbearable guilt. He stood absolutely motionless.
‘Tom, what’s wrong?’
He glanced beyond her, and Amy half-turned as Zoe was pushed into the nearest bench, letting out a yelp as she slipped and fell heavily to the floor.
A movement in her peripheral vision made Amy turn further, and in quite the most involuntary reaction she had ever experienced, a scream tore itself from her throat and reverberated around the lab.
The figure that presented itself to her was like something out of a nightmare. She had seen burn victims before. But this bad, they were usually dead on a slab. Protruding eyes stared at her, lips stretched back in a hellish imitation of a smile. Burned, exposed, subcutaneous fat wept constantly, dripping on the floor. The smell reached her now, of charred meat, sickening, almost overpowering. He was holding a British Army-issue SA80 rifle, and moving with difficulty as the scorched muscles in his arms and legs contracted further. He was freshly burned, she could tell that much, and there was a chance that he was still cooking.
His breath came in short, rasping bursts. He stepped forward and checked that she had the head and the skull, and she pressed herself back in her chair, gripped by revulsion. He stopped, his face close to hers, and stared deeply into her eyes. It was hard to believe that he was human.
He straightened up and turned towards Tom, waving his rifle at the door. Tom lifted the plastic bin bags which Pinkie had forced him to fill with the child’s bones and all the samples they had taken and tests they had made.
Zoe got to her feet and gasped twice before sneezing violently, charred dust in the air inflaming the sensors in her nose. Pinkie turned and shot her three times in the chest. Amy recoiled from each shot, as from a blow, and stared in disbelief as the girl slid to the floor. There was no question that she was dead.
‘I hate people who sneeze,’ Pinkie said. ‘Didn’t her mother ever tell her to cover her mouth?’ But all that Amy and Tom heard was a strange gurgling that issued from somewhere deep in the back of his throat.
III.
Sara Castelli’s car was parked where she had left it at the top of Routh Road. MacNeil pulled in behind it, and they got out and walked down to the neighbour’s house. Le Saux had continued to leave his security lights off as MacNeil had advised, and they approached his front door by the light falling in fragments through the trees from the streetlamps beyond. MacNeil pressed the bell push several times and a buzzer sounded somewhere inside the house. He stepped back into the visual field of the CCTV camera above the porch. Le Saux’s annoyance was clear in a voice thick with sleep.
‘What is it now?’
MacNeil held up the print-off that DS Dawson had given him. ‘Can you see that alright?’
‘Yes, I can see it.’
‘Is that Mr Smith, your neighbour?’
Le Saux came back without hesitation. ‘Yes, that’s him.’
‘Thank you, Mr Le Saux.’ MacNeil folded the photograph into his pocket and strode back down the path to the front gate. Dr Castelli hurried after him.
‘So what now, Mr MacNeil?’
‘We go and wake up a magistrate, and you tell him all about Choy.’
‘You know where all this is leading, don’t you?’
‘I don’t even want to think about it, doctor.’
‘Scotland the Brave’ rang out along Routh Road. MacNeil fumbled for his phone. It was Dawson.
‘Jack. Thought you’d want to know straight away. That car. The one you pulled the guy from on Lambeth Bridge . . . It’s officially registered to Stein-Francks. Designated driver, one Dr Roger Blume.’
MacNeil came to a halt in the middle of the road, staring straight into nowhere, as if he had caught a glimpse of some other world, something beyond the one we know and feel and see. Dr Castelli stopped abruptly beside him. ‘Are you okay?’
MacNeil said to Dawson, ‘That wasn’t Blume I pulled from the car.’
‘I don’t know who it was. And neither do they. Apparently after you’d gone, he killed one of the soldiers and disappeared with his rifle.’
‘Jesus,’ MacNeil whispered. It was hard to imagine that the creature they had seen lying in the back of the truck might even be capable of such a thing. But a Stein-Francks car? It didn’t seem possible. ‘What about the other person in the vehicle? Have they any idea who that was?’
‘Not a clue.’
When they finished their call, MacNeil stared at the road, thrown into confusion. Was Blume the other occupant of the car? What in God’s name was it doing there? And what strange quirk of fate had brought MacNeil to Lambeth Bridge just at that moment?
Dr Castelli was still badgering him for information. But he hardly knew where to begin. He glanced at the display on his mobile phone, still lit from his call with Dawson. It reminded him that there was a message. He had forgotten all about it.
He raised a hand to silence the doctor. ‘Just a minute.’ And he dialled his voicemail.
A pre-recorded female voice said, ‘You have one new message. At two-oh-five a-m today.’ A beep, and then Amy’s voice. Abnormally strained and quivering with fear. ‘Jack, there’s someone here in the house. Please, come quick
ly. I’m scared.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I.
MacNeil drove like a man possessed. Reflected street lights floated across their windscreen like a stream of disembodied yellow heads. They passed Kennington Oval and headed north-east along Kennington Park Road. MacNeil was trying Amy’s number every few minutes. Each time it rang out. He reached for the phone again, but this time Dr Castelli got to it first. ‘I can do that,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s not beyond me. And it’s better than winding up wrapped around a lamp post.’
She made the call and let it ring for thirty seconds or more. Then she shook her head and hung up.
MacNeil had a horrible vision of Amy lying dead on the floor of her apartment. He knew that these people were utterly ruthless. Why wouldn’t they go after Amy, too? She had the skull, after all, and she’d rebuilt the head of the murdered girl. Why in the name of God had he not picked up her message earlier? He knew he could never forgive himself if anything had happened to her. This whole investigation had been about him. About his obsession. About his need to close his mind off from the death of his son. It had made him blind to everything else.
There was an army roadblock at Elephant and Castle. It wasn’t enough to slow down to let them check his number. After the incident on Lambeth Bridge, all checkpoints were under orders to stop every vehicle. A senior officer checked their papers, and took his time about it. MacNeil knew it was pointless to try to hurry him. He gripped the steering wheel with still burning hands and clenched his jaw. The tension in him was greater than his pain. He felt like an elastic band stretched to breaking point. The edges were fraying. It was only a matter of time before he would snap.
Finally the officer stood back and waved them on. MacNeil left rubber and smoke in his wake as he accelerated along New Kent Road to the junction with Tower Bridge Road and turned north. Straight ahead, in the distance, they could see the lights of Tower Bridge itself, and the Tower of London beyond on the far side of the river. MacNeil swung the wheel sharp right, and they careened across the junction into Tooley Street.
In Gainsford Street, he abandoned his car and ran. Dr Castelli chased gamely after him. He punched in the entry code at the gate to Butlers and Colonial and sprinted across the cobbles to Amy’s door. He fumbled infuriatingly with clumsy, bandaged fingers to get his key in the lock. The door flew open, and he immediately saw the stair lift at the foot of the staircase.
He stood looking at it with a mixture of relief and confusion. Dr Castelli caught up with him in the doorway, gasping for breath. ‘I haven’t run that fast since I came in second at the egg-and-spoon race,’ she said. He looked at her, and she said, ‘I know, I’m sorry. I’m renowned for saying the most inappropriate things at the most inopportune moments.’ She looked at the stair lift. ‘So she’s out, huh?’
‘If the lift’s at the foot of the stairs, that’s usually what it means. And her wheelchair’s gone.’ But he wasn’t taking it as read. He ran up the stairs two at a time to the first landing. The other stair lift was there, silently waiting at the foot of the next flight. He searched her bedroom, the bathroom, the coat closet, flicking on lights as he went, and then ran up to the attic. He switched on all the lights at the top of the steps and flooded the roof space with hard, bright light.
‘Amy!’ He called her name, but knew she wouldn’t answer. She wasn’t here. He checked the little metal balcony, but the French windows were locked, and he could see that there was no one out there. And then he noticed that the head of the child had gone. All that was left on the table were clippings from the black wig. As Dr Castelli reached the top landing MacNeil said to her, ‘Wait here.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she called after him. ‘It’ll take me half an hour to get my breath back.’
He was gone less than five minutes, and when he returned he looked troubled. ‘Her car’s gone,’ he said. ‘She has a place in the multi-storey next door. It’s gone.’ He looked at the doctor, who had recovered her breath by now, although her face was still pink. She was sitting at Amy’s computer. ‘Where would she have gone in the middle of the night?’
‘Maybe you should take a look at this,’ Dr Castelli said, and he crossed the room to stand behind her and look at the computer screen. It was Amy’s instant message dialogue window. ‘Who’s Sam?’
‘Sam’s Amy’s mentor in an organisation that specialises in identifying human remains.’ He read the final exchange.
Amy – Here’s something strange – Zoe said it wasn’t H5N1. At least, not the version that’s caused the pandemic.
Sam – How does she know that?
Amy – She said she’d recovered the virus, and the RNA coding. It’s all a bit beyond me, Sam. Something to do with restriction sites and code words that shouldn’t be there. Anyway, she said this virus was genetically engineered.
Amy – Hello, Sam, are you still there?
Sam – I’m still here, Amy.
Amy – So what do you think?
Sam – I think that changes everything.
And then clearly Sam had left the conversation without explanation. There was a sense of confusion and hurt in Amy’s plaintive Sam, are you still there? Hello? Sam? Talk to me!
Dr Castelli said, ‘Seems to me like Sam was taking just a little too much interest in your investigation. And Amy was doing just a little too much talking.’
MacNeil leaned over her shoulder to take the mouse and scroll back through a day’s worth of dialogue. Sam had come back to Amy repeatedly, asking how the investigation was going. Were there any new developments? Had DI MacNeil picked up any new leads? Questions about the head, about the recovery of the bone marrow. Discussions about toxicology, the request for DNA, the discovery of the flu virus.
‘She told him everything,’ MacNeil said, and a red mist of depression and anger descended on him. ‘Every little detail.’ Sam had been able to follow his investigation every step of the way. Every time MacNeil had phoned Amy, she had talked to Sam. There wasn’t anything he had done that Sam hadn’t known about. Amy had been an unwitting conduit, an unknowing spy in his camp. She had trusted Sam with everything. MacNeil had to choke off his anger and think rationally. Why shouldn’t she? Amy and Sam had a history. They discussed stuff all the time. They were on the same side. Weren’t they?
Thoughts crowded MacNeil’s head like a flock of startled pigeons. So who the hell was Sam? This name in the ether who had been looking over his shoulder all day. Watching him all night. He spotted Amy’s address book on the dock at the foot of the screen.
‘Let me in,’ he said to Dr Castelli, and she vacated the seat. He clicked on the address book and its window opened up on the screen in front of him. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why it was Tom Bennet’s address that came up first – the last address to be searched for. He was in too much of a hurry to consider why Amy would need to look it up. He typed Sam in the search window, and the software immediately pulled Sam’s name and address out of its database. Dr Samantha Looker, 42A Consort House, St. Davids Square, Island Gardens, Isle of Dogs. He swore softly.
Dr Castelli peered at the screen. ‘So Sam’s a woman,’ she said.
More startled pigeons in MacNeil’s head. He desperately tried to focus on a single one, like a hunter with a gun attempting to bring one down. But he kept missing. Nothing made any sense. How could this Dr Samantha Looker possibly be involved? And yet somehow she was.
Almost as if she had read his mind, Dr Castelli said, ‘I guess you’re going to have to ask her.’
MacNeil lifted Amy’s phone from beside the computer and dialled Sam’s number from the address book. He waited a long time before hanging up on the unanswered call. He shook his head. ‘Looks like we’ll never know.’
‘Maybe she’s just not answering the phone. We can always go to her house.’
‘She lives on the Isle of Dogs.’
‘So?’
‘They haven’t been allowed to report it in the press, but it’s a no-go area. Sealed off from the rest of the city. A little island of flu-free London that the people who live there want to keep that way.’
‘But you’re a police officer.’
‘I could be the Queen and it wouldn’t make any difference. If we try to get on to the Isle of Dogs they’ll shoot us.’
‘Sounds more like the Wild West than the East End of London,’ the doctor said. She frowned for a moment, and then her face lit up. ‘I know how we might be able to get on.’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ MacNeil said. ‘Especially anywhere near the Isle of Dogs.’
Dr Castelli shrugged. ‘Then you can find your own way.’ He gave her a dangerous look, but she only smiled. ‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘I’m a doctor.’
But MacNeil wasn’t smiling. Samantha Looker was a doctor, too. Amy had trusted her, and now she’d disappeared. And MacNeil couldn’t think of any other way of finding out what had happened to her. He turned to Dr Castelli. ‘Okay. Tell me.’
II.
In the narrative poem ‘Tam O’Shanter’, by the Scots bard Robert Burns, the eponymous hero sees a young woman clad only in a cut-down shift, dancing to the Devil’s tune in a haunted churchyard. He cries out, quite involuntarily, ‘Weel done, Cutty-sark!’, thereby attracting the unwanted attention of witches and warlocks. And providing the name for the most famous tea clipper ever to ply its trade across the world’s oceans. The Cutty Sark, lovingly restored to its former glory, was visited each year by millions. It sat now in the brooding darkness of its dry dock at Greenwich, five hundred miles from its birthplace at Dumbarton on the River Clyde.
MacNeil left his car in Greenwich Church Street, and he and Dr Castelli hurried past the towering masts of the clipper, across the huge open concourse that led to Greenwich pier and the distinctive red-brick rotunda above the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. Just four hundred yards to the north, the lights of the Isle of Dogs reflected across the sluggish waters of the Thames. They could see the apartment blocks lining the embankment on the far side, the street lights in St. Davids Square. They were so close. Almost within touching distance. And yet it seemed to MacNeil that the gap was an impossible one to bridge. He knew that snipers kept watch from the rooftops. He knew, too, that although no one had yet been shot in this stand-off, the risk of it was real enough. And he didn’t want to be the first.
