by CJ Carver
Dan scrutinised him narrowly. He had intelligent green eyes and a way about him that told Dan he did more than take tourists out fishing for halibut. Little wonder he knew Julia and Philip.
‘Very well,’ Dan replied.
They haggled briefly before settling on what appeared to be a mutually agreeable price. Within the hour Dan was aboard a fishing boat and cruising across the English Channel.
In Calais, he picked up a hire car and headed east. He’d bought a pay-as-you-go phone earlier, specifically to thwart any eavesdroppers, and now he rang Jenny.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How are you? How’s Mischa?’
There was a long silence. Inside he cringed.
‘Jen’?’
‘Oh, just great, thanks. Staying with yet another stranger in a strange house while my husband swans off to do whatever he’s doing.’
‘Look, I couldn’t think how else to keep you all safe except—’
‘I know, I know.’
She was furious with him, but when he’d insisted he was going to Germany because he thought he knew who had killed his father, she’d finally relented. Even she had enough sense not to expose herself to another visit from Sirius.
‘I have to do this. Please, understand.’
When Jenny didn’t say anything further, he filled in the silence saying, ‘Julia will look after you guys.’
Julia from the office was ex-CIA and highly trained, but the most important thing was that nobody knew that Jenny, the baby and Aimee were staying with her. Not even Philip Denton or Jenny’s parents.
Still Jenny didn’t say anything.
‘Love to you. Love to Mischa and Aimee.’
He hung up fast, his palms sweating. Would she divorce him? He supposed he deserved it if she did, but he didn’t know what else to do. He could no more stay at home twiddling his thumbs than deliberately crash his car. How could he not confront Arne? Discover what had happened between him and his father?
He was passing Dunkirk thirty minutes later, when he called Aimee.
‘Hi, sweetheart.’
‘Daddy!’
‘What’s Julia’s place like?’
‘She’s got a cat! It’s a tabby and it’s so sweeeeet! Have you seen Mischa? Isn’t he cute?’
‘I saw your little brother yesterday, and yes, he’s cute. How are you?’
‘Julia’s going to take me to the zoo tomorrow, I can’t wait!’
Yet another person he owed big time.
Eventually they hung up. Family done, Dan turned back to business and rang Mac.
‘Any luck on Lucy?’ he asked.
Silence.
‘I’m sorry.’ If anything happened to Lucy, he would blame himself. And so would Mac. And Grace. And the rest of the world. Lucy had done him a favour by investigating his godson’s death, and now she was missing. All thanks to him.
‘You . . .’ said Mac. He was so angry he was obviously having trouble speaking, Dan realised. He couldn’t blame him.
‘I think I may have found my father’s murderer,’ Dan told him. Of all the distracting statements he could offer the DI that was one of the best.
After a pause Mac said carefully, ‘Lucy mentioned something about that.’
‘I think it’s connected to Connor’s murder.’
‘How so?’
Dan wanted to share his new-found knowledge with the detective, but not yet. He said, ‘Who was the last person to see Lucy?’
‘The man you told her to meet.’
‘Firecat.’
‘Aka journalist, Murray Peterson . . .’
As Mac filled him in, Dan began to put the picture together. This whole thing had started when his father had seen Murray’s article in the Mail on Sunday.
Olivia Liang’s voice rang though his mind: He told me he’d read something in the newspaper that had scared the ‘living daylights’ out of him. He was looking into it in case it was true.
His father had suspected that Project Snowbank was in play. He’d wanted to see Murray, but when Murray put him off he’d gone to see Rafe. His suspicions had probably deepened because before he flew out to Germany, he’d lodged his letter with Olivia.
If Olivia has given you this, then I am dead . . .
When DI MacDonald described the man who’d paid Murray not to serialise his story, adamant he didn’t want any mention of genetic testing in Scotland ever again, Dan’s soul shivered.
Sirius Thiele.
His mind fought with his next idea.
What if the government was still involved in Project Snowbank? What if Isterberg and Duncaid were its testing grounds?
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
It was 1.30 a.m. when he arrived in Isterberg. The ancient cobbled streets were shiny and lit with a soft yellow light from traditional iron lamps. It looked as pretty as before, but as he recalled his last car journey with Arne, he also remembered thinking about the gruesome fairy tale Hänsel and Gretel. This in turn made him think of little Christa, who was missing her dead friends.
He pulled up outside Arne’s house. All the windows were dark, except for one upstairs that Dan guessed was a night light of some sort. Pulling out his mobile, he rang Didrika Weber.
‘Ja,’ she said, sounding sleepy. ‘Weber hier.’
Dan told her where he was, but not why.
‘Scheisse,’ she cursed. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I just want you to know where I am.’
‘No! I will not be your alibi or whatever it is you want from me.’
Dan took a breath. ‘His name is Mischa.’
Small pause.
‘Your son?’
‘Yes.’
‘Congratulations.’ Her voice softened a fraction.
‘Thank you.’
Dan hung up. Climbed out of his car and walked to the front door. He pressed the doorbell hard. He could hear it ringing inside. A light went on upstairs, then another. He pressed the doorbell again.
A curtain was drawn back briefly, then dropped.
All was quiet. Seconds later, lights snapped on downstairs. Finally, the porch light was lit and the front door flung open.
‘Dan! What the hell’s going on?’
Arne stood there in blue pyjamas and a silk dressing gown belted around his waist. Leather slippers on his feet. He was blinking behind his spectacles, obviously trying to clear his head.
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Of course.’ Arne stepped back. ‘Come in, come in. You woke Anneke too. She’ll be down in a minute.’
‘It’s you I want to talk to.’
Arne started to walk for the sitting room but Dan stayed where he was, in the hall.
‘I want to talk about Project Snowbank.’
Arne went quite still. He turned to face Dan. ‘What about it?’
‘You’re using Isterberg as a testing ground for Snowbank.’
At that, the strength seemed to leave Arne’s body. He stumbled but Dan didn’t go to help him. He watched dispassionately as Arne fumbled for the chair next to the radiator and sank on to it.
‘Who told you?’
‘Come on, Arne. You think I couldn’t work it out for myself?’
‘Who else knows?’
‘Did you kill Dad?’ Dan stalked over and looked down at his father’s old friend. ‘Because he found out what you were doing?’
Arne stared at the floor. His shoulders were slumped, defeated.
‘Who’s bank rolling it? Is it your government? Or is it private?’
Arne didn’t speak, didn’t move.
‘Arne!’ Dan snapped.
‘Private,’ he whispered.
That one word triggered Dan’s memory of the Isterberg Cemetery. The rows of new memorials. Dan’s mind switched to Christa. Our village is cursed. That’s why George and Alice died.
‘You’re killing children?’ Dan hissed.
At that Arne looked up, shocked.
‘No! That was never the intention, I swear! We
figured the genetics of progeria and modified them – that was the basis of our work. What we couldn’t imagine was that methylation would occur in the next generation . . . We had no idea that the children of our test base would start dying even younger . . . but this means we’re even closer to finding the perfect solution.’ His face became animated.
‘Dan, even your father could see the project was a massive success! People dying naturally without suffering for years from some ghastly disease. Rafe was so pleased with what we’d done, I can’t tell you.’
‘Are you insane?’ Dan said. His mind was reeling from the man’s ego. ‘You’re not God. People aren’t lab rats. I know Porton Down use volunteers to experiment upon but it’s with their permission. You’re not at Porton Down any longer and these are real people with real lives, real problems, real children, and you’ve taken all their choices about their lives away!’
In the sudden silence, Dan became aware of a clock ticking.
‘How did you modify these people’s genes?’ Dan asked.
Arne shakily rose to his feet. ‘An injection. It was 1958, don’t forget, and things were—’
‘You were at Porton Down?’ Dan was shocked.
Arne looked away.
‘Jesus Christ. Did anyone there know what you were doing? What you did?’
‘No.’ It was a whisper. ‘I knew the . . . nurse at the hospital. We’d gone to school together. She told the young mothers their babies needed a baby booster for their health.’
‘How many?’
Arne kept silent.
It wasn’t often Dan raised his voice, but when he did, it roared.
‘HOW MANY?’
Arne shrank back. ‘A hundred and five.’
‘And you killed my father to stop this from becoming public knowledge.’
‘No!’ Arne looked at him, appalled. ‘I loved your father. I would never harm him. When he came over, he didn’t say anything. It was only later—’
Dan moved towards him, angry that Arne was lying, wanting to grab him, shake him into telling the truth, and at that moment the roar of a shotgun blasted between them.
BOOM!
Dan heard the pellets hit something metallic next to him and he shoved Arne away, diving for the floor, rolling for cover, scrambling on his knees and elbows down the corridor.
Arne was shouting something, he couldn’t discern what. His heart was pumping, his legs driving him into the kitchen. Pushed on by fear and adrenalin he leaped up and grabbed a knife from a block on a worktop. Raced into the room next door. A utility room. A door led to the back garden. Still holding the knife, he shouldered the door open and slipped outside. He’d barely gone four paces when there was an infinitesimal movement of air behind him but before he could move, he felt the barrel of a gun pressed in the crease between his neck and his skull.
‘Don’t move.’ The words were English, cut glass. ‘Raise your hands.’
‘Sophie?’ he said disbelievingly.
‘Fuck.’ The gun dropped from his neck. ‘Dan?’
He spun round.
‘What the hell?’ Her face was ghostly white in the shadows.
‘I’ve just been shot at,’ he hissed.
‘Jesus. I heard a shotgun go off but—’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Anneke pressed the panic alarm. It goes straight to Gustav’s phone, as well as the police. I came along for the ride.’
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her along with him but stopped when a figure appeared around the corner, just two yards away. Dan’s eyes went to the shotgun aimed straight at his chest. His head went light. If it fired, he would die from the blast. There would be no second chance.
‘You think you’re so high and mighty,’ said the shooter. ‘You can’t see the future. You can’t see the great work that’s been done.’
Slowly, Dan put up his hands. He dropped the knife with a clatter on the paving stones, wanting the shooter to see he wasn’t a threat.
‘The work is incredible,’ he said. ‘I’m not arguing with that.’
‘You’re a destroyer.’
‘No.’
‘You and your father. You are so liberal, so self-righteous. You don’t understand anything.’
With his fingertips, Dan wiggled at Sophie to move away. She stepped slowly and carefully to the side. She still held her gun but it was out of sight, behind her back.
‘You administered the injection,’ Dan said. ‘You were the nurse who told the mothers their babies needed a booster.’
‘And none of those babies grew to suffer the endless debilitation of old age.’ Anneke’s eyes blazed.
‘But what about their children?’
‘I am not going down in history as a monster,’ Anneke hissed. ‘Or having my family stigmatised by what has happened.’
Everything around him narrowed into a pinpoint of concentration. There was nothing but the metallic taste in his mouth, the pounding of his pulse in his ears.
It wasn’t the first time he’d faced death. But it was the first time he was going to die with his wife and daughter, and his newly born son waiting for him.
Fury burned. He couldn’t see the finger tightening on the trigger but he knew that’s what was happening, and he pushed his left foot hard against the ground, dropping his right shoulder, already plunging to the ground, when another figure appeared at a run.
‘MAMA! NEIN!’
Anneke fired once. The compressed thump! of the shotgun reverberated through Dan’s body but he didn’t feel any shot piercing him, tearing him apart, and as his shoulder smacked against the wet paving, he kept rolling until he collided with a bin, toppling it with a crash.
Lungs heaving, blood pulsing, he scrambled up to see Anneke sprawled on the ground. Sophie was above her, pistol against Anneke’s head.
Gustav was holding the shotgun. He was shaking.
‘Du wollten ihn erschießen. Sie waren wirklich.’ You were going to shoot him. You really were.
‘Es war um Sie zu beschützen.’ It was to protect you.
Anneke’s voice was pleading.
Gustav didn’t look at his mother. His hands were unsteady but he managed to break the shotgun, ejecting the spent cartridge as well as the one that hadn’t fired. His face was ashen.
Dan went and stood over Anneke.
‘You killed my father.’
She pulled her lips back into a snarl. ‘He was going to destroy everything we’ve worked for, everything we’ve built up. The Klinic, our reputation, all our life work.’
Dan became aware of a figure approaching from the shadows. They held a pistol in both hands. Detective Superintendent Didrika Weber.
‘He wouldn’t drop it.’ Anneke squirmed. ‘He wouldn’t let us continue our research. He wanted to destroy everything. Don’t you see? He wouldn’t have just ended our lives, but Gustav’s also. Our entire family would go down in history not as one of ground-breaking scientists finding the solution to a worldwide problem, but as Nazi-like monsters experimenting on humans.’
Dan looked her in the eye.
‘How did you inject the babies in Duncaid? What excuse did you use over there?’
A flash of satisfaction filled her face. ‘Oh, that wasn’t me. That was Gordon Baird.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
‘Gordon?’ Sophie’s eyes were wide.
‘Who else would it be?’ Anneke said nastily.
‘But Gordon wouldn’t do that.’
Arne stumbled into view at the side of the house. Didrika Weber went to him, gripping his arm as he stood swaying beside her, glassy eyed. The DSI didn’t say anything. No matter that Sophie was armed. Didrika was, Dan realised, wanting to see how this unfolded.
‘He didn’t do it himself.’ Anneke made it sound as though she was talking to someone particularly stupid. ‘He got the nurse to do it at Duncaid’s surgery. Told her it was a trial vaccination for measles.’
‘She wouldn’t have just
done what he said, surely,’ Sophie protested.
‘It was 1958,’ Anneke hissed. ‘Doctors were revered in those days. They could do anything.’
Dan couldn’t stop to listen to any more. He had to call DI MacDonald and fill him in. With the hour time difference, it was 2.15 a.m. in the UK, but he didn’t think the man would complain.
‘MacDonald,’ he answered fast. He obviously hadn’t been asleep.
‘Go and pull Gordon Baird in. I think he knows where Lucy is.’
‘How come?’
‘He’s trying to protect a project he and two old university friends have been conducting over the past six decades.’
‘Which friends?’
As Dan explained, he could hear MacDonald was on the move. He heard doors banging down the receiver, footsteps. He paused when he heard the DI talking to someone else, realising MacDonald was on another phone barking orders to Murdoch. When he came back, he said, ‘They all worked at Porton Down?’
‘Yes.’
‘As a pathologist he could easily cover up causes of death. And then there’s the small fact that Gordon Baird’s nephew is Procurator Fiscal of the area. Oh, and the Duncaid funeral director is related to them too.’
‘A real family affair,’ said Dan and at the same time he thought, what about Christopher? Was his friend involved as well? After all, Christopher had never volunteered the fact he was related to the fiscal. Had he been trying to cover things up? And what about Connor? Why had he been murdered? Had he uncovered something to do with Snowbank?
As they talked, Dan rubbed a hand over his stomach where the scar was throbbing after the unusual activity. He watched another two police cars arrive. Sophie had kept her weapon on Anneke until Didrika Weber had handcuffed her and also handcuffed Arne.
After he’d finished the call, Dan went and joined Sophie. She was pale but she was still functioning, still operative. She had guts, as well as an inner strength that kept her chin high despite her father’s death and despite having learned what Rafe had apparently been involved with.
‘Where did you get that?’ Dan asked, looking at her pistol.
‘Gustav. He’s a member of a gun club. They have shooting competitions.’
