He touched it and we watched as one of the lines on the network was highlighted.
“That’s presumably the route the vehicle took,” I said.
Davie zoomed in and what I took to be the names of stops came up.
“EX, JES, UN, PET, CAS, HOT, STAT,” I read. “Shit.” Not for the first time I regretted that I hadn’t brought the old man’s guidebook. “The line seems to be heading west. Yeah, STAT’s probably the old railway station.”
“Shall we get going?” Davie asked, a finger hovering over the screen
“Aye.”
He touched “Call Car”, his face splitting into a wide grin as a rush of air came into the plastic box through small ventilation slits. “This is magic,” he said. “Almost as good as the helijet.”
A low, unroofed two-seater vehicle whisked to a stop beside us. The lift shaft cover rose and we were able to step on to the car. As soon as we sat down – Davie making sure he got the driving seat – the cover came down again. Although the air was cool and there was a current of movement from the other tunnels, the atmosphere was sterile. I was glad I didn’t suffer from claustrophobia.
“I’ll go the way the last car went, shall I?” Davie said, his hands on the control panel.
“Well spotted, guardsman,” I replied, settling my buttocks on the uncomfortable seat.
“Light blue touch paper,” he said, “and ret—”
The word was lost in a blast of air as the car rocketed forwards. Fortunately a windscreen had risen up when we boarded, so I didn’t lose my hair. I couldn’t make out the speed monitor on Davie’s panel, but we were going fast enough to make my eyes water. Almost immediately the speed was cut and we reached the first stop. It was an enclosed plastic box like the one we’d just been in and it was unoccupied. The letters EX were displayed on the outside.
“Stop?” Davie asked over his shoulder.
“No,” I said. “This must be Exeter College. We can assume that bulldogs will be sitting on top of every exit shaft near the theatre. Go on.”
So he did. We slowed down at every stop but saw no sign of the shooter. And then we came to the end of the line. What we found there wasn’t a pretty sight.
“Fuck,” Davie said, shaking his head. “We know where the bastard got off anyway.”
The plastic shield that bore the letters STAT was hardly legible. It looked like the inside of a man-size version of the food processors I hadn’t seen in Edinburgh since I was a kid – one that had been used to produce a barrel of tomato sauce.
We weren’t able to activate the lift shaft’s “Raise” function; no doubt the shooter had dealt with it. So we turned the car round in the circle dug out for that purpose and headed back to the previous stop. HOT turned out to be underneath a dilapidated hotel, the lift bringing us on to an enclosed section of the pavement outside it.
I got Connington on the nostrum and told him what we’d found at STAT.
“Bulldogs have already arrived there, citizen,” he said. Even on the small screen I could see how grim his expression was. “The alarm at the top of the shaft was triggered three minutes ago.”
“And?” I demanded.
“There was no sign of the target. The sentry had been shot and dropped down the lift. We think an Eagle One was used, with delayed detonation.”
“Christ,” I said, trying not to imagine what the last seconds of the bulldog’s life must have been like; if he was lucky the impact of the projectile would have killed him instantly. “I don’t suppose the shooter is showing up on your much-vaunted surveillance system?”
He shook his head. “Grendel Mark Twos are—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Grendel Mark Twos are issued with cloaks of invisibility. I just wondered if he’d let his slip for a moment.” I was thinking of what had happened in my bedroom when the Grendel’s face briefly came into view. I broke the connection. “We’ve lost him,” I said to Davie.
He was looking down the street towards the former railway station. There were two Chariots with flashing lights outside the low buildings. “What now?” he asked, looking at me. “Back to the theatre?”
I was peering down the road to my left, trying to get my bearings. A couple of hundred yards up there was the canal I’d walked down yesterday on Pete Pym’s tail. What had happened to him? I wondered. Had he ever got out of the tunnel, or had the Grendel been waiting for him on the way to the House of Dust? Then I remembered where I’d been before that: the college called Worc.
“Raphael’s people can handle the scene at the Sheldonian,” I said. “Let’s see how the chief toxicologist’s getting on.” I shook my head at him. “It might be our last chance.”
There was a narrow wooden gate set into the high wall on the college’s southern extremity. My control card made it swing open and we found ourselves only a few yards away from the brick building where Lister 25 had been lodged. Before we entered, I stepped over to Hel Hyslop’s window. The curtains and blind were fully open. There was no one inside.
I ignored Davie’s raised eyebrow and led him upstairs. It was dead quiet on the third floor and there was no sign of any interfering nurses. Lister 25’s door clicked open when I waved my card at it. I stuck my head round cautiously.
“Hello? Ramsay? It’s Quint.”
No answer. I beckoned Davie in.
“Where is he?” Davie asked in a loud whisper.
“H-eeee-re,” came a long-drawn-out croak from behind us.
We jumped and crashed into each other as we turned.
“Shit,” Davie grunted. He leaned forward. “Is that you, Lister 25?”
The figure in the chair was bent and limp, the head facing the knees as if it were too heavy to be held upright.
“Hu-uuume . . . 2 . . . 5 . . . 3?”
At least the old chemist’s memory hadn’t been affected. His brain must have been one of the few organs that was still intact, though. His hands were shrivelled and his breath rattled out of lungs that sounded like they were on the brink of terminal shutdown.
Davie kneeled down beside him and loosened the straps that attached his arms to the sides of the chair.
“The nurse . . . she . . . she said I might fall.” Lister 25 made a cracked sound that I realised was a laugh. “I wish . . . I wish I would.”
I joined Davie on the bare floor in front of the toxicologist. I was thinking again about the RED file that the visitor to my bedroom had put me on to. I wasn’t only being pointed towards the Grendels. My attention had also been drawn to Lister 25’s presence in New Oxford.
“Look, Ramsay,” I said. “We haven’t got much time. You remember you were telling me about the research facility at Sutt?”
The old man raised his head a couple of times, enough to signal that he was following me.
“Did you see anyone you recognised there?” I asked. “Anyone from back home?”
Now Lister 25 managed to lift his head and keep it up, one hand under his chin.
“Quint? Have . . . have you got . . . a blues cassette . . . with you?”
I stared at him then shook my head slowly.
His lips separated in a loose smile. “Pi . . . pity,” he said with a gasp. “I’d . . . like to . . . to hear RJ once . . . once more . . .”
“You’ll be hearing plenty of Robert Johnson songs when we get you back to Edinburgh, Ramsay,” I said.
The toxicologist twitched his head. “Too . . . late.” He focused his rheumy eyes on mine. “Did I see any . . . anyone . . . I knew?” His eyes narrowed and he seemed to nod his head.
For a few moments I thought I’d struck the mother lode. Then the old man’s face slackened and his chin hit his upper chest.
“No, Qui . . . Quint,” he drawled. “No.” He looked up once more. “Now . . . get out of . . . here. I . . .”
We waited to hear the rest of Lister 25’s sentence but he left it incomplete. I squeezed his fleshless arm once then left him to whatever thoughts were filling his mind.
And
hoped that he was hearing sweet and melodious acoustic blues by the master.
Davie and I left the way we’d come. It was while we were on the corner under the spire of Nuff College as a posse of students on bicycles raced past that my mobile rang. Raising it to my ear, I saw that a message had also been left earlier, presumably when I was out of contact in the mole run. Shit, I hadn’t checked it.
“Quint? Where are you?”
“Katharine,” I said, relief breaking over me like a storm surge. “Where are you?”
“Don’t interrupt me, Quint,” she said, her voice taut. “Whatever you do, don’t interrupt me.” She paused and I had to bite my tongue to stop myself asking her what was going on. “I’m to tell you that he’s waiting for you.” Another pause. Who the hell was “he”? “He’s waiting for you . . . and Davie.” She stressed the last two words, which made me wonder. “He says you’ll know where to find us.” Again she left a space between sentences. “Us,” she repeated. “You understand that? I’m . . . I’m at his mercy.”
I felt my heart race even more, but I forced myself to keep quiet.
“And Quint? He says no nostrums, okay?”
I decided against answering.
“Come now, Quint,” she said, her words suddenly rushed. “I know who he—”
Then the connection was cut.
“Fuck!” I shouted, pressing buttons to pick up the earlier message. I held the phone up for Davie to hear. Katharine’s voice came again, this time the words interspersed with rapid breathing. The message was the same.
“Christ, he’s got her,” I said, kicking the kerb. “He’s had her all morning. He must have had her stashed somewhere when he took the shots.” An image flashed before me. “I hope she didn’t see what he did to that poor sod at STAT.”
“What does it mean?” Davie demanded. “Where are we supposed to go?”
I took off my nostrum and held my hand out for his. I put them in the pockets of my jacket and stuck it behind the nearest fence. Looking back towards the wall outside Worc, I nodded slowly.
“The tunnel,” I said, starting to move. “The tunne I was in yesterday.”
“What?” Davie said, his eyes opening wide. “You mean the tunnel that leads—?”
“To the House of Dust? Aye, that’s the one. Come on.”
“What about Raphael and her crew?” he asked as he caught up with me.
“What about them?” I replied, thinking of Lister 25’s wrecked body. “They can go to hell. Anyway, we haven’t got our nostrums so how can we let them know where we’re headed?”
Davie grinned.
Thinking of our destination and the Mark Two Grendel that was waiting for us down there with Katharine, I didn’t.
We were standing on the towpath outside the tunnel entrance, the water of the canal stagnant and unrippled by bulldog punts or any other craft.
“In there?” Davie asked, inclining his head. “Do you think the surveillance teams in the Camera have picked up the Grendel and Katharine?”
I was looking at him thoughtfully. “I wonder. The shooter seems to be able to shield himself from the cameras and sensors, but Katharine would show up all right. But he told us not to bring our nostrums; presumably he’s already dumped hers.” I took my control card out of my pocket. “What about these? Do you think they have some kind of bug in them?”
“Maybe. Let’s keep a hold of them all the same,” Davie said, examining the brickwork of the arch. “We might need them later.”
I nodded and stepped forward. “Right, big man. Let’s do it.” I went into the enclosed passage. My heart pounded as I thought of Katharine at the Grendel’s mercy, but I managed to get a grip on myself. Walking into the lion’s den in a state of panic wasn’t a good idea.
We moved further inside and paused for our eyes to get accustomed to the ghostly light from the tunnel roof. Water was dripping on to the floor and the air had the stale, rank edge that I recalled from my last visit. I listened, but couldn’t pick up the sound of anyone else in the vicinity. I started forward again as quietly as I could.
Underground, in a confined, brick-lined tube that bends all over the place, you quickly lose your sense of distance and direction. Keeping an eye on the time is the only way of maintaining perspective. After five minutes I reckoned we’d done about three hundred yards. I stopped before a left-hand kink in the tunnel and looked round it cautiously. I didn’t get much joy. There was another bend about fifty yards on, this time to the right. In a patch of damp earth I saw a clear footprint among a series of scuffs. I recognised it immediately. It was a large Grendel-issue boot – size eleven, I was pretty sure.
“What do you think?” Davie asked in a whisper. “This must get somewhere soon.”
I was trying to work out where we might be, but the tunnel’s course had disoriented me. If Pete Pym was right about it leading to the House of Dust in what used to be Christ Church, we must have been pretty close.
“Where the hell is Katharine?” I said, swallowing hard. “The Grendel must—” I broke off as the unmistakable sound of booted feet moving at speed came from the canal end of the tunnel. “Shit. We’ve got company.”
Davie grabbed my arm. “Come on. That sounds like a pack of bulldogs. I don’t think the shooter’s going to be happy.”
We ran round the corner, then the next one. Now the tunnel was straight, a stretch of under a hundred yards leading to a heavy metal panel. There was more light around it.
“Jesus, there they are,” I gasped. I broke into a sprint.
A pair of figures were standing at the tunnel end. Katharine was close to her captor and I could see a thin rope or wire joining her to him. They turned when they heard our footsteps and I saw the Grendel again. This time he was wearing a suit, as Davie had said, and his hair was brown and curly. But even at that distance, it was the eyes that got me. They were stark and inhuman, as black as a hole in the galaxy.
The Grendel pointed a device at the metal panel and it hissed upwards. He pulled Katharine through, then swivelled back to us. We were still pounding towards them, about twenty yards off.
“You led them to me, Citizen Dalrymple,” Katharine’s captor said in a loud, steady voice. “Big mistake.” He stared at me for a couple of seconds as I got nearer. “Now everybody dies.”
The gate slid down an instant before we reached it.
“Bastard!” Davie roared, turning to look back down the tunnel. The stomp of bulldog feet was getting nearer.
I was waving my control card frantically around the solid barrier, trying to activate the sensor. Nothing. The shooter must have programmed in a delay.
In the seconds before the gate rose again I had a vision of Katharine’s pale, lined face. Earlier, she’d thought I was the bait. Now it looked like she was.
The first body was a few paces beyond the gate. I heard Davie grunt as he bent over it.
“Bulldog,” he said. “Head blown apart.”
I was staring at a matt black box that had been attached to the wall inside the gate. Red numbers on a small panel were changing rapidly. “Fuck!” I yelled as I saw they were counting down towards zero. “Bomb! Move!”
We hurdled two more shattered bodies and ran down a much more high-tech passage, shining metal walls enclosing a cork-tiled floor. Access panels like those in the science faculty buildings were at regular intervals and the lights were bright. But not as bright as the explosion that boomed out and cascaded after us in waves of igniting gas. Fortunately my control card got us into an entry on the left, the door closing just before the blast reached us.
“That was a bit close for comfort,” Davie said, squatting down.
We listened as another explosion rocked the underground complex, this one further down the passage.
“You could say that.” I drew the blackened sleeve of my white shirt across my eyes, then stared as they focused on what was ahead. “Bloody hell, Davie. Look at this.” I walked unsteadily down a narrow gantry that led out from
the room.
He followed me into mid-air and, in silence, we took in the panorama of coercion that was all around. We’d moved into a small round area, some kind of viewing chamber. It was a glass-covered module suspended above a vast expanse of large chambers that must have been dug out of the ground at tremendous expense. There were retaining walls beneath us, separating the huge space into self-enclosed sections, all of them without roofs so that we could see down into every area. There were people all over the place, some of them in bulldog apparel but the overwhelming majority in tattered blue vests and trousers. They were mostly at work, those in the unit immediately below us bent over tables covered in the innards of large computers. I could see others further away packing books into cases and folding up clothes.
“What the . . .?” Davie’s words trailed away as he pored over a screen at waist level. “Here, we can move this speed ball.” He glanced at me. “Do you want to see more?”
I nodded slowly. “It’s our best chance of spotting Katharine and the arsehole who tried to atomise us.”
Davie ran his fingers over the keys and the viewing module glided smoothly away from the gantry, its suspension cables attached to a network of junction points on the roof.
“You know what this is, don’t you?” I said, moving my eyes over the honeycombed complex below before pointing at the name on the screen. “It’s a panopticon.”
“Oh aye,” Davie said, his head bent over the control panel. “What’s that then?”
“The first modern prison was designed by Jeremy Bentham at the end of the eighteenth century. It was a circular building that grew out from a central observation tower. This is the New Oxford equivalent.”
“Is that right?” he said, stopping the module’s motion. “Well, take a look at this. According to the plan I’ve accessed, we’re over the Interrogation Section now.”
What we were actually over was a vision of hell. I stripped the skin from my lips with my teeth as I took in the naked bodies on racks, the women spread-eagled in front of bulldogs with leather aprons over their suits, the banks of machines with wires leading to the victims’ tenderest parts. As we were hanging there, one of the torturers looked up and met my gaze. The Grendel’s eyes were hard to live with, but this guy’s were even worse. He gave me a twisted smile and went back to work with a knotted lash.
House of Dust Page 35
