Norman/Dom leaned into the driver’s compartment and pressed a button on the cab’s central consul. There was a click, and Jones guessed that the rear doors had been unlocked. She turned the handle of the door nearest to her. It opened.
Dom, who had moved alongside, reached out with one mighty arm, placed a huge hand under one of Jones’s elbows, and with surprising gentleness, helped her out of the cab. Jones was quite grateful for the assistance. Her legs still felt as if they were made of jelly.
‘Sorry for the rough ride, lady. You’ve nothing to fear here, I promise you.’
Jones was not entirely reassured. She leaned against the cab, still needing support.
‘You can go, Norman,’ she heard Mrs America tell the driver. ‘I know you’ve places to be today. I’ll take it from here.’
‘You sure Aunt M, sweetheart?’ he replied.
‘Sure I’m sure, Norman. Look at the poor woman. She’s no danger to anyone, is she?’
Norman/Dom turned to look at Jones, who eased herself away from the support of the cab and tried very hard to stand up straight. Cautiously she flexed her legs, which, rather to her surprise, appeared able to hold her upright after all. But only just.
The big cabby laughed. It came from his belly. Quite friendly laughter, but mocking at the same time.
‘Guess you’re right, Aunt M, honey. But I’ll be in the neighbourhood all day, OK? You have any problems, you just holler, all right?’
He turned to face Jones.
‘And you, ma’am. I’m going to open these doors and get my ass out of here, while you just stand quietly over there. I don’t want you even thinking ’bout running off or nothing. Do you hear?’
Jones nodded. Norman/Dom pointed to the far end of the garage. Jones meekly walked to the exact spot.
‘Right on. So you just stay there, ma’am, or you’ll be hellish sorry. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ said Jones, being careful to stand very still.
‘Now Norman, there’s no need for that,’ said Mrs Middle America reproachfully.
‘Mebbe not,’ responded the big driver. ‘But I ain’t taking no chances. Not with you, Aunt M, sweetheart.’
He glowered at Jones one last time before pointing a handheld remote control at the garage doors which once again opened obligingly. He then climbed back into his cab, and set off into the street. But he stopped outside, and Jones could see that he was still watching as the doors closed again.
Jones stood so motionless she might have been rooted to the ground.
Only when the doors were firmly shut, and Dom/Norman safely locked outside, did she allow herself the luxury of lifting a hand to her head in order to wipe away some of the sweat that had gathered on her forehead.
‘I really must apologize for all of this,’ began Mrs Middle America. ‘But we couldn’t think of an alternative.’
‘We? We?’ Jones found she was suddenly angry. Her relief at the departure of Dom, or Norman, or whatever he was damned well called, appeared to have given her some temporary bravado.
‘Who the fuck is “we”?’ she yelled. ‘Who the fucking fuck is “we”? And what fucking right do you think you have kidnapping a British citizen in broad daylight on the streets of New York. Eh? Eh?’
She spat the words out.
Mrs Middle America took a step backwards. Emboldened, Jones took a step forwards.
‘Well?’ she shouted. ‘Well? Are you going to answer me, woman, or what?’
As she spoke she was aware of the smaller door at the far end of the garage opening yet again.
A second figure stepped into the dimness there. Again all Jones could make out was a shape. But when that shape spoke Jones felt her already extremely wobbly knees buckle.
‘Stop making such a goddamned fuss, you Limey lamebrain.’
Jones peered into the gloom, straining her eyes. It couldn’t be. Yet it had to be. It could not possibly be anyone else. Not only had nobody else ever spoken to her like that, but she would recognize that voice always. Any time. Any place. And under any circumstances.
Even when the person it belonged to was supposed to be dead.
‘Connie,’ she whispered, half under her breath.
Then louder: ‘Connie?’
‘Who the hell else do you think it is, chowderhead?’
The figure moved further into the garage. It was Connie Pike, all right. An older, slightly broader Connie, but, by and large, a remarkably unchanged Connie, standing there looking as if nothing much had happened, and still with her trademark mane of unruly red hair.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Jones. ‘I just don’t believe it. What the fuck is going on? You’re supposed to be dead.’
Connie smiled, and her face lit up just the way it had the very first time Sandy Jones had seen her. She still had a great face. Never beautiful, but strong boned, sharply defined, and kind.
‘You’re not wrong there, Sandy,’ she said. ‘I sure am supposed to be dead, and the longer I can remain so, the safer I am.’
‘Jesus Christ, what’s going on, Connie?’ Jones asked. ‘What on earth is going on?’
‘Now that’s one hell of a long story,’ Connie replied. ‘One hell of a long story.’
She was dressed in a vivid orange shirt and baggy purple trousers. She clearly still had the same penchant for bright colours which fought each other. And she still appeared to have the same absence of any awareness at all of the impact she had on those around her, with her startling clothes, her big red hair, her flashing green eyes, and her way of looking right into your soul. This was the same wonderful old Connie. And this time she really was a miracle on legs.
Jones was probably in an even greater state of shock than she had been at any stage over the previous couple of days. And that was saying something. She was also totally confused. She began to fire questions at Connie.
‘Why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff? How did you escape that explosion? I’ve seen the mess the lab’s in. Nobody could have survived. Why the fuck aren’t you dead, Connie?’
The smile faded.
‘Now that would be funny, really funny, if only …’ She paused. ‘If only Paul were here.’
Jones didn’t say anything. Connie’s eyes were full of pain. Jones stepped forwards. Connie held out her arms. They hugged. Jones felt close to tears again. Her nerves were in bits. But Connie Pike was clearly not going to allow herself to break down. So neither must Sandy Jones.
‘I’m so very sorry, Connie,’ she said as calmly as she could manage.
‘I know.’
‘But you’re alive. I can’t believe it. Connie, you’re alive!’
‘Yup. And I can’t believe you’re here. That you came.’
‘Of course I came. Too little too late. I can’t explain why I stayed away so long, but—’
‘It’s all right,’ Connie interrupted. ‘You don’t have to explain.’
Jones glanced around.
‘But you have to,’ she said, after a pause.
She gestured at Mrs Middle America.
‘Who’s she? Who’s Norman, or is it Dom? And why did you hijack me off the streets? I nearly died of shock. I’ve been in America less than forty-eight hours, and I seem to have spent most of the time being terrified out of my wits.’
Connie smiled. ‘I’m sorry, we couldn’t think of another way.’
Jones gestured towards Mrs Middle America again, pointing an extended thumb at her.
‘That’s what she said.’
‘That’s Marion,’ said Connie.
Marion smiled. Jones waited to be told who Marion was. Instead Connie ushered her towards the door at the back of the garage.
‘Right. Well, come on in. We’ll have coffee and talk properly.’
She led the way up several flights of rickety stairs to a huge loft style apartment. They entered directly into a vast open-plan living area, which included a kitchen at one end and a huge oblong wooden table surrounded by a set of quite formal dining c
hairs.
The floor was of polished dark oak and most of the furniture was made of tubular steel, the soft furnishings black leather. A couple of in-your-face abstract paintings, one predominantly green and the other mainly pillar box red, were the only adornment on bare brick walls. The grey painted ceiling was criss-crossed with huge wooden beams. Big arched windows gave a magnificent view across the rooftops of Lower Manhattan towards the famous high-rise buildings around Fifth and Sixth Avenue and Madison.
The whole place was minimalist and scrupulously tidy – apart from a messy pile of newspapers and magazines scattered across the big glass-topped coffee table which stood between two black leather sofas. Jones could not imagine that the apartment had anything at all to do with Connie, and the accumulated clutter which had always been so much a part of her.
‘Wow,’ she said, at the same time glancing questioningly at the two women.
‘Norman’s place,’ said Marion. ‘He’s staying with his girlfriend, given us the run of it.’
‘Norman’s place?’ Jones echoed. ‘A New York cabby with a Mohican haircut owns this?’
‘Norman is not quite what he seems,’ responded Marion.
‘I think I’ve gathered that. He seems to have more than one name for a start.’
‘He’s only Norman to Marion,’ explained Connie. ‘No one else dares call him anything other than Dom.’ She grinned. ‘It’s short for the Dominator.’
‘It’s short for what?’
‘The Dominator. Dom used to be a World Series wrestler. Had to give it up because of a back injury, but unlike most of ’em he invested the money he made wisely – in property.’
‘Good God.’
Connie gestured towards the two sofas. Jones obediently sat on the nearest one.
‘I’ll make the coffee,’ Marion offered.
Connie murmured her thanks as she sat down next to Jones. She rummaged beneath the pile of papers on the table before her and unearthed a packet of cigarettes. Jones watched in silence while she removed one and lit up. No health campaign in the world was ever going to stop Connie Pike destroying her lungs if she so wished.
‘Right then,’ said Connie calmly. ‘I expect you’d like a few answers, Sandy?’
Jones looked at her in disbelief. Upon closer examination the voluminous head of hair was almost certainly dyed red now. The roots were grey. Maybe Connie did have some personal vanity after all. Her hair was also slightly singed around the ends, and there were scratches on her hands, the only visible signs of any damage the explosion, and her miraculous escape, may have caused her.
‘I think that’s something of an understatement, Connie,’ she said.
TEN
There was one question Sandy Jones wanted the answer to which overshadowed all others.
‘So, Connie Pike, how the hell are you still alive?’ she asked.
‘Ah yes. I lay awake most of last night listening to my heart beating. Strange how comforting that sound is when you know it has no right to be beating at all. I should be dead, like Paul …’
She paused, the anguish of loss all too apparent.
‘Well, you know how we’ve always managed at RECAP to keep ourselves apart from the rules of Princeton,’ she continued eventually.
‘Don’t I just.’
‘Yes, in every way really, how the lab looked, how we worked, what we did. We were always a law unto ourselves. The toys, the cards on the wall, even the design of our equipment, and, of course, Paul’s various dogs …’
Her voice tailed off. The memories came flooding back to Jones again. For just a moment she almost half forgot the terrible tragedy which had struck in such a final and irrevocable fashion.
‘Paul’s dogs,’ she murmured. ‘Have they all been incontinent?’
‘Only at the beginning and the end of their lives. It’s just that the house-training phase went on forever with Paul. He had his own views on dog training, if you remember, and they weren’t always immediately successful. I reckon Gilda was a saint.’
Jones chuckled. Then she had a thought.
‘I wondered … did Paul have a dog with him in the lab when …’
She didn’t bother to finish. She knew.
‘I told you on the phone he had a new puppy,’ said Connie. ‘Well, she died with her master.’
‘Ah,’ said Jones.
The thought of that made her sadder than ever.
Connie looked away.
‘Anyway, I was telling you how I escaped,’ she continued. ‘You’ll remember that we always allowed smoking in the lab, even though it was against the rules. Not least because we were both smokers. And I still am, but Paul had given up, of course.’
She paused, as if she had said something profound.
Jones was puzzled.
‘Yes?’ she queried.
‘I’m sorry, I thought I told you. On the phone?’
‘Told me? Told me what?’
‘The sprinklers. Health and Safety suddenly remembered we existed and put in sprinklers. One right above my desk. Well, I was deep into something really fascinating one morning, the morning after you and I spoke on the phone, I think, and forgot all about the damned stupid things. I dropped a match in my ashtray which carried on burning for a moment. Next thing it’s raining. Place got drenched. Miraculously the computer system survived, not that it was to matter much …’
‘But obviously even I knew better than to attempt to smoke in the lab again. So, well, thankfully we were on the ground floor, with those big low windows, remember? I started the habit of climbing out of a window and walking around the quadrangle when I wanted a smoke. And that’s where I was, outside having my breakfast-time nicotine fix, when, just four days after the sprinklers had done their stuff, the lab was blown up.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
It was, thought Jones, so wonderfully simple, so ordinary, so human.
‘And so, if it was a bomb, whoever planted it still thinks that you were in the lab?’
‘It was a bomb all right, I’m sure of it.’ Connie leaned back and stretched her legs. ‘And yes, of course, whoever planted it almost certainly still thinks I was inside when the explosion happened. The university authorities too. Everybody involved believes I was there. And that I was blown to pieces, like Paul. Everybody who ever knew me – except Marion and Dom, and now you. No reason to think otherwise. Nobody knew I left the lab at all that morning. I certainly didn’t leave through the only door, did I?’
She turned her back to Jones and pulled the orange shirt down off one shoulder. There were several angry looking lacerations clearly visible on the skin of her upper back.
‘I think some fragments of glass got me, but I was extraordinarily lucky. I’d walked over to that little pond in the far corner of the quad. It’s full of some quite interesting fish now.’ She paused again. ‘Or it was, anyway. I was just standing on the path looking at the fish, when the entire place blew. The force of the blast sent me catapulting forwards, right into the scrubby bushes around the pond. Picked up a few scratches too, but I sure got off lightly.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve been back there since, have you?’ Jones enquired conversationally.
‘Uh, yes. I went back.’
‘I see.’
It was suddenly all becoming clear.
‘And did you by any chance happen to go back there very early yesterday morning?’ Jones queried carefully. ‘And did you just happen, perhaps, to be there when I was there?’
‘Well, yes—’
‘Yes,’ Jones interrupted. ‘And so it was you, was it, who half frightened the wits out of me, thus leading to me being thrown in a police cell, given the third degree, and generally having the worst day of my entire life?’
Connie’s smile was the broadest so far. Almost up to the standard Sandy Jones remembered.
‘C’mon,’ said Connie. ‘You took off like a startled rabbit before I had a chance to make myself known to you, fell over with a great crash, attrac
ted the attention of every policeman or security guard within a ten-mile radius I shouldn’t wonder, and nearly blew my cover completely.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,’ Jones responded wryly.
‘Sure is. What the hell were you doing there, anyway?’
‘Much the same as you I expect.’
‘Me? I just had to go and look. I needed to see what was left of the place, if there was anything that could be salvaged. Maybe see if I could spot any clues too …’
She stopped, lowered her face briefly into her hands, then looked up again at Jones.
‘Any clues? You saw the place. Modern forensics may discover something, but what the hell I thought I was going to find out just by taking a look, I have no idea. I left in such a hurry after the blast I didn’t take any real notice of anything. I realized at once that nobody inside could possibly have survived. I knew Paul must be dead, and I knew I had to get away fast or I would be too. I was quite sure straight away that the explosion was deliberate, and that Paul and I had been the targets. I told you on the phone, didn’t I, that I was already concerned about a campaign to get rid of RECAP. I hadn’t imagined anything like that explosion though. I never thought anyone would go that far. Anyway, I remembered the steam tunnels. You knew about them, didn’t you, in your time?’
Jones nodded. ‘Of course. The CHP system, cooling, heating and power supplied throughout the campus within a network of pipes housed underground in tunnels. Like here in New York, yes?’
‘Yes,’ Connie agreed. ‘And the tunnels criss-cross the entire campus. I knew there was a manhole cover at the far side of the quad from the lab. I went straight to it. The cover opened easily. The manholes are in regular use for maintenance, of course. I pulled it down behind me and felt my way along the tunnel until I reckoned I had put enough distance between myself and the explosion. I could see strips of light around the edges of manhole covers all the way along. Eventually I chose one to come up at. It was right on the edge of campus, as I’d hoped, and, as luck would have it, right by a public phone. I’d left my cell in the lab, and in any case it wouldn’t have been safe to use it if I’d still had it. Not if I was supposed to be dead. I called Marion. The one person I knew I could trust. She came to get me as soon as she could. She even remembered to bring me some fresh clothes. I hid in someone’s back yard till she arrived. But actually all attention was focused on the scene of the blast. And if anyone had thought they’d seen me, then they more than likely wouldn’t have believed their eyes, would they?’
Cry Darkness Page 10
