Jones could only imagine what it must have been like to have been inside the building when the explosion occurred. She realized now, looking at such devastation, just how remarkable it was that so few had been killed and injured, even taking into account the time of the blast.
The three people who had died, including her two old friends, would, she thought, have known absolutely nothing about what had happened. But she couldn’t help thinking about the injured students, at least one of whom, according to news bulletins, had been very seriously hurt. They may well have been aware of the full horror.
Jones shuddered.
Pulling her hood over her head, she took a cautious step forward, trying to guess exactly where a bomb might have been placed in order to cause the devastation she saw before her. It was hard to tell exactly, but there seemed little doubt, she felt, that its location would have been within the RECAP lab.
Jones could feel her brain beginning to work properly again, but, as certain unwelcome thoughts began to race through her mind, she reckoned she would probably prefer to be still wandering around in a jet-lagged fog.
Her vision of the lab the way it had been before was still extraordinarily vivid. She wondered if the bomb had been given to the lab by someone, disguised within one of those famous cuddly toys Connie had always welcomed, or maybe just hidden behind the old sofa. Nobody would have checked. Nobody would have dreamed of it.
Jones moved slightly to her right, trying not to make a noise. She was grateful for the various trees and undergrowth which surrounded this corner of the building, and which, thankfully, were somewhat less manicured than in other areas of the campus.
She noticed that a large piece of tarpaulin had come loose from the building, and that the only two guards she could see were standing together some distance away. Their heads came close, almost touching, brought into sharp relief by a small flash of light. It looked like they were having a smoking break. It was more than likely that they were not the only security operatives present, of course, but Jones still decided to take the opportunity to make her way a little nearer to the building.
She inched further forward. Conveniently the arc light was shining directly through the area from which the tarpaulin had fallen away, so she could see clearly into what remained of the interior.
There was nothing inside at all. Nothing except a pile of ash and twisted rubble. It was horrible. Eerie. Jones might have expected little else. But she was shocked to the core. She could smell the acrid stench of burning. And she thought she could smell the stench of burned flesh. She knew she was probably imagining it, but it still made her want to retch.
As she fought against the urge, she heard a sound directly behind her. The sound of movement. A crunching noise, possibly from gravel or loose soil, or maybe rubble from the blast, beneath an approaching foot. Startled, she turned right around, 180 degrees, and found herself staring almost directly into the glare of the arc lights. For a few seconds she could see nothing. Then she became aware of an approaching human shadow. She could see no features, just a dark shape.
Overcome by fear, she swung around in the other direction, away from where she felt the immediate danger lay, and began to run.
She didn’t get far. The front of her right shin hit an immobile object, a piece of debris from the blast. The pain shot through her leg as her upper body carried on moving whilst the lower part remained locked solid. She catapulted over whatever it was that had tripped her up and crashed heavily to the ground, falling flat on her face.
If her presence had gone unnoticed before, there was no longer any chance of that.
A man’s voice shouted something. Then a second voice joined in. She thought she heard the word ‘stop’, but beyond that had no idea what they were saying.
Heavy footsteps approached. She had fallen just outside the area illuminated by the arc lights. She was aware of being caught in the beam of a torch. She struggled to rise to her feet. Then she heard a gunshot. For a second she froze. There was a second gun shot. Was she being fired at? She had no idea. She reacted instinctively. She tried to run again.
A heavy body cannoned into her. Jones fell to the ground once more, with a bone-crunching thud. The heavy body descended upon her, pinioning her down. Jones kept struggling. But it was hopeless.
She heard swearing, then a burst of some kind of liquid hit her full in the face. The pain was instant. As if her eyes were on fire. Instantly they began to stream water. And it hurt like hell. She realized she must have been sprayed with something highly unpleasant and injurious, possibly toxic. Oh my God, she thought, involuntarily squeezing her eyes shut. Could it have been acid? She continued to struggle and was rewarded with another face-full of noxious spray. She collapsed in agony, desperately trying to get her hands to her face, to wipe her burning eyes.
But a second assailant had now joined the first. Jones’s arms were pulled roughly behind her back and handcuffed together at the wrist. Probing fingers were all over her body, rough and intrusive, presumably searching for a weapon. Then a torch was shone right into her damaged face, and her hood pulled back.
‘It’s a goddammed woman,’ she heard a gruff male voice mutter.
However, the revelation of her gender did not appear to make things any easier for her. Not this time. A knee was pressed into the small of her back, and an arm wrapped around her neck almost choking her. There was no longer a chance of Jones moving or resisting in any way, even if she’d had the slightest intention of so doing. Which she didn’t. Not anymore. Her entire face felt as if it was burning, and the wind had been knocked out of her. She couldn’t see. She could barely breathe. She had been afraid before. Now she was plain terrified.
Then the pressure was abruptly released. Strong hands grabbed her upper body and strong arms hauled her upright.
She felt so weak she could hardly stand. She seemed to have no control over her body at all. She feared that she was about to wet herself.
‘Stand still with your legs apart!’
The order was barked at her. Jones, her breath coming in short sharp gasps, obeyed at once to the best of her ability. Squinting through swollen eyelids, she tried to get a glimpse of the faces of the men holding her. They wore shiny black helmets and goggles, which concealed most of their features, a bit like the headgear she’d seen riot police wear in England. Jones wondered what on earth they were expecting to confront on the campus.
Their appearance alone was quite terrifying. So much so that Jones wondered again if they really were police – or indeed any other security force. Perhaps they were terrorists. She just couldn’t think straight.
Suddenly, and none too gently, a pair of leg irons were fastened around her ankles.
‘Right. Walk. Now. Straight ahead!’
She did her best to comply. But the hard unforgiving metal of the irons bit into the already bruised flesh of her ankles and lower legs, grating against the bone.
Involuntarily she cried out. The only response from her captors was a rough push forwards. She could only shuffle awkwardly in the irons, and would have fallen again were she not still being more or less held upright.
Jones was frightened out of her wits. She had absolutely no idea what she’d thought she was doing wandering around the scene of a major crime at such an hour in the morning. And, as, coughing and spluttering, she was half dragged along the ground by what appeared to be a small regiment of black-clad men, armed to the teeth, she could only hope that she would be allowed to live to regret it.
SEVEN
They manhandled her towards a parked van and told her to climb in the back. Even without the leg irons she wouldn’t have had the strength, so they more or less picked her up and threw her in.
The doors slammed shut, and the van set off almost at once at considerable speed.
With her hands still cuffed behind her back and her legs still in irons, she lay spread-eagled on the bare metal floor unable to use her arms to raise herself into a sitting or even a kne
eling position.
Every time the van swung around a corner, or its speed increased or decreased, she was flung from one extreme of the rear compartment to the other, causing her already bruised and battered body even more damage. To make matters worse her eyes, nose and mouth still burned. And she couldn’t stop coughing.
There were bench seats along each side of the van’s otherwise empty rear compartment. During one particularly violent movement Jones found herself lifted in the air. She smashed into one of the benches with considerable force, the side of her face colliding with the edge.
It felt as if her cheekbone had been crushed. She could taste a salty wetness on her skin. Blood. She was bleeding.
What the hell had she got herself into?
The van suddenly lurched to a halt. Jones gratefully released the tension in her legs. Then she heard the handle which fastened the van’s double doors turn.
She still didn’t know who her captors were. They could well be the people who had caused the dreadful explosion.
The van doors swung open. Jones could feel her bladder involuntarily opening again, and only just managed to restrain it.
Outside the van two of the men, still with their balaclavas pulled down over their faces, were standing to one side. And, framed in the rear doorway, illuminated by bright lights from the building behind them, were two more men, each wearing, without any doubt at all, the uniform of the New Jersey State Police.
Big double gates closed with a loud metallic clunk. Jones looked around. At first she had no idea where she was, except that she, and the vehicle she had travelled in, had now been shut in some kind of enclosed yard. Then she spotted a sign by the door leading into the building. ‘Booking Office Entrance. Princeton Borough Police Station’.
And if chemically-induced tears had not already been tumbling from her eyes, Sandy Jones would probably have wept with relief.
She was led straight into what she assumed must be the booking office, known in the UK, she was aware from that predilection for TV detective shows, as a custody suite. Her head was immediately and unceremoniously dunked into a small washbasin to one side where a kind of customized fountain gushed water upwards into her burning face. At first she wondered what the heck was going on, and was further unnerved. But the relief the water instantly brought made her realize that this must be what the washbasin was for, and that spraying a noxious substance into the face of a suspect was probably common practice in these parts – or certainly when the suspect was dumb enough to appear to be putting up a fight.
Jones’s cuffs and leg irons were removed by the two officers who had arrested her, and she was asked to empty her pockets. All she had on her was a few dollars and her mobile phone, which were duly placed in a brown envelope. She had left everything else in her hotel room. She hadn’t planned to be gone long. Her father’s watch was also removed and bagged. She hated being without it.
She was then told to stand with her legs apart and arms akimbo while she was searched by a third, female, officer.
‘Look, there’s been a dreadful mistake,’ she said, eventually gathering courage. ‘I’m Dr Sandy Jones from Exeter University in England. I just came to see the damage for myself. Two great friends of mine have died. I realize I behaved stupidly, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong …’
Jones wished she hadn’t left her shoulder bag containing her passport, credit cards and all the rest of her documentation in her room at the Nassau Inn. Glumly she realized that she couldn’t even prove her identity. Not immediately anyway. But it seemed to make little difference. Nobody was listening.
‘I want to see the British consul,’ she demanded.
Even as she said the words she was struck by how silly the request sounded. The officers didn’t exactly smile – it was hard to imagine them smiling, actually – but they definitely looked mildly amused.
‘I must speak to someone. I’m entitled to representation. Surely I’m entitled to representation?’ Jones continued.
‘You will be interviewed in due course, ma’am,’ said one of the officers eventually, as he replaced, in spite of her protests, Jones’s cuffs, but mercifully not the leg irons. ‘Meanwhile, please cooperate and you will come to no harm.’
It sounded like a threat. Jones stopped protesting and did as she was told. She had no choice, it seemed.
She was led to a cell by the two officers. One of them, a short skinny man who somehow gave the impression that he was acting extra tough in order to compensate for his lack of height and bulk, pushed her ahead with what Jones felt was unnecessary force. The second officer removed her handcuffs.
The cell was a surprise. Jones had never been in a police cell before, but doubted if many were as smart and clean as this one. A stainless-steel lavatory and wash basin ensemble had been installed behind a slotted wooden bench which ran along one immaculately white wall, and neither would have looked entirely out of place in some kind of ultra-modern, minimalist-designed apartment. Jones was reminded that this was Princeton. And Princeton was not only smarter and richer, but also totally different from anywhere else on earth. There was even a phone on the wall. She glanced enquiringly at the officer.
‘Collect calls only,’ growled the short skinny officer. ‘But it’s out of order, anyway.’
The officer seemed to derive a certain amount of pleasure from that. And it occurred to Jones that the phone being out of order might well be no accident. Even in Princeton, cops will be cops, she thought.
Her arms still ached. She flexed and stretched them, seeking relief. The two officers backed watchfully away, as if she really was some sort of violent criminal. She made one last futile attempt to explain herself.
‘This is a mistake, a complete mistake,’ she began. ‘I’m Dr Sandy Jones, ask anyone. I’m always on TV back home. I’m very well known.’
She couldn’t quite believe she’d said that. It was such a crass remark. But these were desperate circumstances. And it made no difference anyway. Nobody was listening. Nobody cared. The officers retreated into the corridor. The cell door slammed shut.
Without either her phone or her treasured watch, she had little idea of the time. And there was no window.
Jones wasn’t normally claustrophobic, and this cell was far less unpleasant in every way than she might have expected. All the same, she couldn’t quite conquer the feeling that the walls were gradually closing in on her. She felt as if she was suffocating. It took a great effort of will not to panic.
There were actually two cells side by side – their doors iron-barred gates and the division between them also made of iron bars – within one bigger outer room. The second cell was unoccupied. Jones didn’t know whether that was good or bad. Periodically an officer opened the solid door of the outer room and looked in. At first Jones called out every time, demanding to speak to someone in authority, to be allowed to make a phone call from a phone that worked, to be given the chance to explain herself.
After a while she realized she was wasting her time. At some stage a packet of fat cheese sandwiches, wrapped in paper bearing the legend Wa Wa, and a paper carton of luke-warm milky coffee, were pushed through the bars. Princeton Borough Police Station did not, apparently, run to a canteen. But it still fed its prisoners. Jones recognized the Wa Wa logo from her Princeton days, and assumed the food and drink must have come from the store over by the Dinky Train station. She couldn’t eat anything. However, she drank the insipid coffee gratefully.
Soon afterwards the outer door opened again, and two different police officers entered. Jones had absolutely no idea how long she had been in the cell. It seemed like days, but she knew it must only be a few hours at the most.
The officers, in what she regarded as normal uniform, were both reassuringly ordinary looking, one tall and very young, the other shorter, plumpish, and middle-aged. Jones was rather glad not to see the skinny aggressive man she had encountered earlier in the day.
‘Right, let’s go then,’ said the middle-aged of
ficer, unlocking the barred gate to Jones’s cell.
‘Go where?’ asked Jones.
‘There’s somebody wants to talk to you.’
Jones relaxed slightly. She welcomed the opportunity of speaking to almost anybody.
‘’Fraid we’ve got to cuff you again first.’
Jones flinched. She knew well enough this was the way American police did business. Those under suspicion of almost any sort of crime were cuffed all the time when they were not actually under lock and key.
Meekly, she held her hands out.
‘Behind your back, ma’am.’
Resignedly, she thrust her arms behind her back as directed, and the cuffs were locked into place.
They took her to what she assumed was an interview room and directed her to sit at a small table. The room was not equipped with any visible recording equipment. Jones guessed there would be a video system. She glanced upwards. Sure enough, there was a tiny camera in one corner of the ceiling.
The door opened again. A large man of indeterminate years, probably nearing retirement, Jones thought, advanced into the room in a business-like manner. He was wearing a cream jacket rather cleverly tailored so that he looked big rather than fat. and stood with a hand on each hip looking Jones up and down.
Jones began to get up out of her chair. The man gestured for her to stay sitting.
‘I am Detective Ronald Grant of the New Jersey State Police Force, and you, ma’am, are in a great deal of trouble,’ he announced.
Jones opened her mouth to again plead her innocence. Detective Grant, straightening with one hand a tasteful cream-and-brown striped silk tie which did not need to be straightened, didn’t give her the chance.
‘Right. I would like to know who you are, and what you were doing lurking around at a major crime scene?’
Almost gratefully Jones answered the first question, but found she had no proper answer to the second.
Cry Darkness Page 7
