Cry Darkness

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘How the hell would you know anything about me?’ he enquired sharply.

  She winced.

  ‘In any case, I don’t smoke,’ he continued. ‘Not usually.’

  ‘Well, this is certainly not a usual day,’ Jones ventured.

  ‘No.’

  His voice was just a little softer.

  ‘I’m sorry, I feel a bit raw,’ he continued.

  ‘Of course.’

  It was weird. So awkward. As if she were a stranger. But then, she supposed that’s exactly what she now was.

  ‘I’m sorry to spring myself on you, Ed. I just, well, I just booked myself onto a flight and came here. Straight away, almost, after I heard the news.’

  Ed stared at her levelly.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  She was startled.

  ‘W-why?’ she repeated uncertainly.

  He was clearly irritated. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue.

  ‘Why have you come here?’

  The irritation was in his voice too.

  She sought the words to explain. They didn’t come. she gave the only answer she could.

  ‘I had to, Ed, I just had to.’

  ‘After all this time …’

  There was an inflection in Ed’s voice that Jones could not quite identify. She looked down at her hands on the table.

  ‘They would have been glad, though, that you came,’ he said suddenly.

  Jones was touched. This was the first moment of comfort of any kind that she had experienced since the shock of seeing that first news item about the explosion.

  And Ed had been closer to Paul and Connie than anyone. He and his younger brother Michael had been brought up by their maternal grandparents after their mother and father were killed in a car crash. Ed, aged three at the time, and Michael, just a baby, had been in the car, strapped in on the back seat. Their survival was considered a miracle. The much-loved grandparents had both died while Ed was at Princeton. So the boys were orphaned all over again, more or less, and Connie and Paul had become even more important to Ed.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jones.

  Ed shrugged.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jones blurted out impulsively. ‘Sorry I’ve never been in touch …’

  Ed shrugged again.

  ‘That’s life,’ he said, his voice expressionless.

  ‘I know, but I should have …’

  She paused, not knowing quite what to say next, which, of course, had been the problem twenty-one years earlier.

  ‘You should have said goodbye,’ he finished for her, raising his voice. ‘That, at least, would have been nice. You didn’t even tell me it was over. You let me think you were coming back. You didn’t tell me anything. You just walked out on me. I read about you and Dr damned Darling online, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I-uh, I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  And she was too. Probably far sorrier than Ed would ever know.

  He lit another cigarette, puffing on it in the slightly desperate way of someone not used to the habit.

  ‘So, how can I help you, then?’ he asked, his voice quiet again, polite and distant.

  ‘Do you know what happened to Paul and Connie, exactly what happened?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘There was an explosion, Sandy. I’m sure you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Yes. But was it an act of terrorism? Was it a bomb? And was RECAP the target?’

  ‘They’re saying that it might have been a gas leak.’

  ‘I know. And I don’t believe that. Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I believe. Why would terrorists attack Princeton? We’re a university, a seat of learning.’

  ‘And not the first innocent place to be torn apart that way. Think of Bali. The Twin Towers, the London Underground, Paris, that concert in Manchester. Not exactly military targets.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank God you weren’t in the lab, too.’

  ‘I teach more or less full time, now.’ Ed laughed without humour. ‘At the high school. It was either that or skid row. So I have a price too. Ironic really.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  She knew what he meant. Whilst Jones had taken the career path, Ed had stuck to his vocation, to following his dream. And now he was teaching school, because it had been that or the street.

  ‘So you haven’t been working with Paul and Connie lately, then?’

  ‘Oh I have. Unofficially. That’s always been the euphemism round here for not getting paid. RECAP’s budget had been slashed to a fraction of what it used to be. And God knows, it was never great. But I couldn’t really stop. I’ve been monitoring things …’ His voice tailed off. ‘You know, the usual.’

  ‘I’ve got a fair idea.’ She paused. ‘Look. Connie called me a few days ago. She sounded … troubled. Something was wrong. Very wrong. I’m sure of it. She wanted to talk, only …’

  She didn’t want to tell Ed how she had failed so dismally to respond to Connie’s plea for help, though she reckoned he’d probably already guessed.

  ‘I was going to call back,’ she finished lamely. ‘But … but then it was too late … So I wondered if you knew what was bothering her. She mentioned something about the lab being put under pressure. She was afraid there were plans to close it down.’

  ‘Close it down?’ Ed sounded genuinely puzzled. ‘There’ve always been plans to get rid of RECAP. Nobody has ever succeeded though …’

  The sentence tailed off as he realized what he’d said.

  ‘Did Connie talk to you about it at all?’ Jones asked.

  ‘No. Not really. Well, she was always grumbling about lack of resources, that sort of thing. That’s all.’

  ‘What about Paul?’

  ‘Oh you know Paul. If the lab were going to close he wouldn’t have noticed until he was actually physically thrown out of the place. All he was ever aware of was his work, particularly after Gilda died.’

  Jones tried again.

  ‘Ed, have you really no idea at all what may have been troubling Connie?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ he responded immediately.

  ‘Well, she was troubled. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘OK, but even if she was, what has that necessarily got to do with the explosion?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Jones replied. ‘But I sure as hell would like to find out. I’m convinced there’s a connection.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. What do you think?’

  He shrugged. ‘Knowing Paul and Connie, the explosion could well have been some kind of accident. Not connected with anything. For a start she still smokes …’ Ed paused, remembering. ‘She still smoked in the lab. She and Paul weren’t exactly hot on health and safety, were they?’

  ‘The health and safety people had just been in, Connie told me. Fitted sprinklers.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Ed, it really could have been a bomb, you know.’

  Ed shrugged again. ‘Or a gas leak. You can choose whatever you like to believe at this stage, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, so can you think of any reason why RECAP would be a target for a terrorist attack?’ Jones persisted.

  ‘I don’t think it was. Even if some terrorist group was responsible for the blast, then surely it would have been just a matter of hitting another high-profile target. Princeton is a major Ivy League university, after all.’

  ‘Yes. And RECAP was an obscure half-forgotten research lab tucked away deep in the bowels of the campus.’

  ‘Sandy, what are you trying to prove?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. But, look, Ed, I let Connie down. And it wasn’t for the first time.’

  ‘So that’s what this is all about. Your fucking guilt. Well, you damned well should feel guilty, that’s for sure.’

  He spat the words at her. Angry again. She was startled, and recoiled at once.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Me too,’ he responded quickly. ‘I’m
just, so, so on edge—’

  ‘It’s all right. I understand,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t suppose either of us is thinking straight. I’ll go now. Maybe I’ll phone tomorrow, if that’s OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  They both stood up. The dog started to bark again, demanding attention.

  ‘No, Jasper, it’s not time,’ said Ed, scratching the dog’s head affectionately.

  ‘Does he want to go out?’ asked Jones, in an effort to make normal conversation.

  ‘I take him around the block every night, but not yet, or he’ll only want to go again.’

  Jones attempted a smile. Ed just looked at her. No smile. No comment.

  ‘I’ll call tomorrow,’ she repeated.

  He nodded curtly. She deserved it, but it still hurt. She felt not only bereft, but a little surprised. She suspected Ed’s anger was rather more because of the way she had treated him, than because of her neglect of Connie and Paul. And that had been twenty-one years ago.

  Either way, on that awful day, it was irrelevant. And Ed had said nothing at all to shake her growing conviction that the explosion at RECAP had been neither accident nor random.

  Outside a man wearing a hooded anorak, quite unnecessary on such a balmy evening, was walking up the path towards Ed’s apartment block when the front door opened. Ed had escorted Sandy downstairs, possibly to make sure she left the premises, she had thought wryly. He opened the door for her, stepping momentarily outside as she departed. Intent on dodging the shaft of light emitting from the building, the man dived for cover in the shrubbery to one side of the picket-fenced garden area.

  Crouching there, he watched Sandy Jones walk down the path, open the white-painted gate and step out into the street.

  Jones was at first silhouetted against the lights of the building as she headed almost directly towards the man in the anorak, and then had her back towards him as she proceeded down the street.

  The man had been unable to see her face. And he had no idea whether or not he would have recognized her even had he been able to do so.

  Once Jones was out of sight the man emerged from the shrubbery, approached the apartment block again, and without hesitation pressed one of the row of doorbells set in a panel on the wall. Very soon the man would know who Ed MacEntee’s mystery caller had been. He would make it his business to do so.

  Jones had no idea that anyone had observed her leave Ed’s home. She strolled slowly into what passed for the centre of Princeton. It seemed extraordinary that she had never returned to the place. Not once since 1998. Yet it was still so familiar. Little seemed to have changed, visually at any rate. Nassau Street, the main drag on the edge of campus, continued to house a number of bars and cafes. But as it was now after nine o’clock at night the place seemed pretty much deserted, and Jones didn’t think that necessarily had anything to do with the explosion. Princeton had never been hot on nightlife.

  She walked across Palmer Square, past the life-size bronze of a boy sitting reading, until she reached the Nassau Inn, where she had already reserved a room. She checked in, then went straight to her room where she immediately showered and washed her hair, which her boys insisted on calling her ‘Claudia Winkleman’. She still wore it in a long bob, and it was still an exceptionally glossy black. Keeping it that way was probably her biggest vanity. Although she had also developed a liking for designer clothes, albeit favouring a casual look. And she had retained her penchant for jeans and unfussy shirts.

  After her shower she ordered wine and sandwiches on room service, and channel-hopped the television for a couple of hours before trying to sleep. However, although she felt bone weary, sleep did not come. She was besieged by unwelcome thoughts, and disorientated by jetlag.

  Somewhere around four a.m. local time, and God knows when by her body clock, she gave up trying. She couldn’t lie there any longer. She just had to do something. She dressed swiftly in the black jeans she had worn on her journey, and her black DKNY hoodie, let herself out of the front door of the Inn, as quietly possible, and started to walk towards the campus.

  It was a dark night. No moon and no stars. In the dim glow of the streetlights and the occasional lit-up shop window Princeton looked even more unreal than ever. At one point a lone police patrol car drove slowly by, drawing almost to a halt alongside Jones, who became acutely aware of being closely scrutinized. One of the few examples of the power of human consciousness experienced on a regular basis by almost all of us, she reflected. As Connie had always pointed out to her critics, we often know when the eyes of another creature, human or animal, are fixed upon us, even when we cannot see them. How can that be, Connie would ask, if there is no link between our minds?

  Jones continued steadily on her way, deliberately letting her arms hang loosely at her sides. Apparently she did not look suspicious because, even though it was so early in the morning and she had yet to see another pedestrian, after a few seconds the police car proceeded on its way, accelerating past her up Nassau Street.

  She had half expected to be stopped, walking through the town in the early hours, and less than two days after a fatal explosion. Being a woman had probably helped, she thought, even in this age of almost obsessively applied gender equality.

  As she turned right into the Princeton campus, past Nassau Hall, she was further surprised that, apart from the lone patrol car, there appeared to be no visible police presence. This was Princeton though, she reminded herself. The campus blended seamlessly with the town. She knew the authorities had evacuated the university buildings, but it would be virtually impossible to physically shut them off from the town. And the university itself had never been too hot on security, not in her day anyway.

  That had been before 9/11, of course, and the various international terrorist attacks which had followed. But only a few weeks after the tragedy of the Twin Towers, Jones had chatted to a colleague, who had just returned from a trip to Princeton, and expressed surprise at the continued lack of security there.

  The famous Orange Key Tours still ran several times daily, when not only prospective students but any casual visitor to the town, and indeed any would-be terrorist, could join a small group and be shown around the campus by an eagerly informative student.

  Dormitories and lecture rooms were all on the itinerary for a visit as well as the main university libraries, including the cavernous Firestone, the Art Museum, Nassau Hall, and other hallowed places. Those joining the hour-long campus tours underwent no security checks whatsoever. There were no electronic gates to pass through, no bag searches, certainly no body searches, and not even a routine identity check. Indeed visitors weren’t even asked to give their names, let alone show proof of identity.

  Jones continued to walk along shadowy paths, which she did not have to be able to see clearly in order to know were immaculate, the buildings around her bringing back even more memories. She crossed the lawn at Nixon’s Nose, and scuffed at the ground with the toe of a shoe. It had been a favourite place for her and Ed. She was reminded again of how badly she had treated him.

  The Science Research Building was just around the corner now, but the RECAP lab was at the far end. She assumed the main entrance to the building would be a protected crime scene, and she was right. She stood very still in the shadows by the corner of the block, hoping to see without being seen.

  The front of the science building was lit by arc lights, as, being an aficionado of TV detective shows, she had expected. Yellow tape stretched around the building cordoning it off. Four armed men in dark uniforms, flak jackets, and helmets, were standing by the door silhouetted against the stark light of the arc lamps, casting elongated angular shadows across the paved forecourt. She could see quite clearly the bulk of their body armour and the angular shape of their automatic rifles as well as the bulge of their pistol holsters. Jones had no idea whether they were police or military. Either way she didn’t intend to allow herself to be confronted by them.

  Instead she backed slowly and quietl
y off and began to make her way in a big loop around to the right of the affected building in order, she hoped, to arrive unnoticed at the site of the lab at the rear. It was no accident that she had chosen to wear black.

  Another set of arc lights illuminated the building which housed the RECAP lab – or rather, she realized with a sudden flash of unpleasant reality, the place where the RECAP lab had once been.

  Jones had known what to expect. Or she’d thought she had. The TV news items on the explosion had shown the scene only from a safe, almost discreet, distance; a television reporter standing in the foreground. But, like most people, Jones had over the years seen enough television footage of bombings to feel that such a scenario, however horrific, would hold no surprises for her. However, she’d never before actually been present at the scene of a major explosion, nor indeed of any similar incident involving huge devastation, and she found that she was completely unprepared.

  Once again this area of campus was cordoned off and guarded. Once again Jones held back, reluctant to confront those patrolling the site. After all, what would American security forces make of a lone Englishwoman wandering around a designated crime scene at this hour? Particularly when the possibility of an attack by unknown terrorists was still being investigated. American security services, rightly or wrongly, had a reputation for being rather quicker on the trigger than their British counterparts. And even the British police, in the widespread near-panic which had followed the 7/7 London Underground bombings in 2005, had at one point killed an innocent man by mistake.

  Jones positioned herself behind a conveniently placed tree, and stood as still as possible while she surveyed the scene. The lab area was partially concealed by a large tarpaulin construction. Nonetheless Jones could see clearly the level of devastation. And even if the presence of security forces had not halted her, she would have been totally stopped in her tracks.

  It seemed that a large chunk of the ground floor of the building, and of the first storey above, had been totally demolished. Metal-reinforced concrete girders hung, broken and twisted, at crazy angles. The Science Research Block was four storeys high, and the rest of the structure too had been severely affected to such a degree that it leaned sideways at an angle, giving the curiously shocking impression of being a brick and concrete jaw, gaping wide open.