by Jodi Taylor
‘What is the matter with her?’
He looked furtively over his shoulder even though she couldn’t possibly hear us. ‘Well …’
I inched closer. ‘What? Tell me?’
‘Hunter says she’s given up smoking. Started yesterday.’
‘No!’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh my God. We’re dead. I’m dead. You’re dead. We’re all dead. We might just as well stop breathing now. The only one likely to survive is Randall and that’s only because there’s some sort of medical code that says you’re not supposed to attack patients in your care, even if you are in the throes of nicotine deprivation.’
‘That reminds me, he’s asked to speak to you.’
‘Who?’
‘Randall.’
‘It’s really not necessary. And anyway, if he wants to speak to anyone, it should be those two.’ I jerked my head at the two miscreants over in the corner, drinking their tea and trying to look as if they weren’t there. ‘Which reminds me …’ I got to my feet.
‘Be gentle with them,’ grinned Markham. ‘It’s not as if you yourself don’t have form.’
‘Not the point,’ I said.
I ushered them into the women’s ward where we were to spend the night under observation. We sat down because my bruised legs hurt.
‘Well?’
They played dumb. ‘Well what?’
‘What was that all about?’
‘You would have left them?’ said Lingoss. Straight into attack mode. That’s my girl.
‘No, I wouldn’t. I ordered you to.’
‘I couldn’t go. I was mission controller.’
‘I was mission controller,’ I said, tightly. ‘You are a trainee. Trainees follow orders. I ordered you to go.’
‘If we’d gone then Randall would have died. And maybe you and Markham as well. You ordered me to go and it was the wrong decision.’
‘No, it was the right decision. We were lucky. The priority was keeping you alive. Randall understood that. And you endangered Sykes as well.’
‘I can endanger myself,’ said Sykes, indignantly.
I ignored her. ‘Both of you could have been swept away at any moment. And don’t give me any garbage about calculating the odds and deciding the four of us could keep Randall alive when two of us couldn’t. You were lucky.’
‘Yes, I was. We all were. What is the problem with that?’
‘The problem is that I can’t rely on you. Either of you. How can I give an instruction and not be able to rely on you to carry it out?’ I took a deep breath. ‘Have you not been here long enough to realise that trust underpins everything we do here? We all trust each other to perform our function.’
‘I do know that, but you always say, “We’re St Mary’s and we don’t leave our people behind.” So I didn’t.’
I was left without anything to say.
She mistook my silence. ‘Look, I’m sorry. Yes, I disobeyed your instructions. I admit it and I am sorry. I apologise. I don’t know what the punishment is, but I’ll accept it. But please, don’t punish Sykes who only followed my lead.’
Sykes opened her mouth to protest vigorously and by the sudden spasm of pain on her face, I guessed she had just been kicked under the table. They glared at each other.
Silence.
‘You just redeemed yourself,’ I said quietly, and got up to go.
Outside I could hear Helen giving some poor sod absolute hell.
‘That’s it?’ said Lingoss. ‘I thought there would be some sort of punishment.’
Helen’s voice was drilling through the wall and getting closer every second.
‘There is,’ I said. ‘Dr Foster has, apparently, given up smoking. Today is her second day in. Enjoy.’
And abandoned them to their fate.
Chapter Five
I should have been tidying up the Valley of the Kings assignment. I’d passed the relevant details to Thirsk but now, instead of looking over their reports, I was doodling on an old piece of paper and staring aimlessly out of the window. The historian at work.
I hadn’t really given Markham’s theory about a traitor a great deal of thought – not because I didn’t believe him, but because I just didn’t want to believe him. I didn’t want to believe that anyone here at St Mary’s could be involved in the murder of one of their own colleagues. That was bad enough, but to stuff the body in a lead-lined chest and bury it for us to discover four hundred years later was something I couldn’t to get my head around. Every time I tried to think about it – to try and get inside the mind of someone who would betray St Mary’s for money – my thoughts refused to focus and just slid away.
I sighed, brought up Sykes’s Valley of the Kings report, and started on the first page. Two paragraphs later and I hadn’t taken anything in. This was ridiculous. I looked down at my doodles. I had drawn a giant pound sterling sign and embellished it with tiny curlicues. Very pretty but not very helpful.
I took a fresh sheet of paper and drew a square, carefully coloured it in, and began to scribble names. I started with the Housekeeping people and deleted them almost immediately. There was no way they could have accessed the coordinates and if any of them had approached Polly Perkins for them, I had yet to hear of it. I deleted Housekeeping. Ditto the caretaking team for the same reasons.
What about Admin? They’d been involved with Dr Dowson’s research into the project, but again, approaching IT and asking about coordinates would have been such an unusual thing for any of them to do that someone would have remembered.
Well, this was progress. One third of the unit eliminated already.
I crossed out the kitchen staff. And Wardrobe too, which left Security, the Technical Section, R&D, the Library staff, and the History Department.
I stared at the list, and after a while, circled R&D and the Library staff and placed question marks alongside. Possible but unlikely.
The Technical Section included IT, so anyone there could have accessed the coordinates without rousing any suspicions at all. I sighed, imagining Leon’s reaction if I went to him with this. Most of his people had been with him for some time and they were as tight as the History Department.
The same could be said for the Security Section. Major Guthrie ran a tight ship. Background checks were more than rigorous. I looked at the list of security guards. Guthrie had saved my bacon at Troy. I’d yanked him and Markham out of the Cretaceous Period. Randall and Evans had been with me when we sorted out Mary Stuart. The whole team had saved Peterson and me when we were having our throats cut in Nineveh. It was impossible to believe any of them would betray St Mary’s to Clive Ronan.
Which brought me, inevitably, to the History Department. If I couldn’t believe the traitor was a techie or a security guard, then how much more difficult was it to believe a member of my own team was responsible? That someone had set in motion a series of events that had culminated in the murder of an historian?
No. This was woolly thinking. If it was anyone, it was someone from those three departments. It had to be. Pull yourself together, Maxwell, and concentrate.
I listed the members of the History Department and stared at them.
Peterson – no. That was the end of it. It wasn’t Peterson. It just wasn’t.
Nor Bashford. He hadn’t even been with us then. I crossed him out too.
Nor Grey, for the same reason. Delete Grey.
Clerk? In my mind, I saw his open, freckled face. Surely, he wouldn’t …
Or Sands? Possession of the world’s largest supply of unfunny knock-knock jokes admittedly made him someone to be shunned socially, but didn’t necessarily make him a traitor.
And then there was Roberts, still skinny and squeaky and still, despite his best efforts, looking about twelve years old.
And Paula Prentiss, with her huge grin – the one like a slice of melon. Calm and capable. How could it be her?
It wasn’t as if any of them hadn’t shown their loyalty to St Mary’s hundre
ds of times over. I remembered them at the Battle of St Mary’s, injured, bloody, and defeated. They’d given their all that day. They’d fought. We’d all fought. Everyone had lined up to defend the unit. Even the civilian staff.
Wait a minute. No. No, they hadn’t. One person hadn’t fought. True, there was no compulsion. Dr Bairstow had stated very clearly that it was volunteers only. Everyone had volunteered except for three people. Old Mr Swanson from R&D who could barely see properly and was, believe it or not, in charge of the poisons cupboard. Mrs what-was-her-name Midgeley, from Housekeeping, recovering from having her appendix removed.
And Miss Lee. Rosie Lee hadn’t fought. I remembered Mrs Shaw telling me. Rosie Lee hadn’t fought at the battle of St Mary’s. She was young, she was fit, she could see. I didn’t know if she had an appendix or not, but she hadn’t fought. And she wasn’t any kind of conscientious objector, either. Rosie Lee was one of the most aggressive and unlikeable people I knew.
I saw her now, her dark wavy hair, her hostile stare, heard her grating voice, but mostly I remembered her shabby appearance. She wasn’t untidy or scruffy. Markham was scruffy. Bashford was untidy. Rosie Lee wasn’t. She was … I struggled to put my mind picture into words. There was never enough money. Her clothes were clean and neat but never new. Her shoes were shined but much repaired. The coat hanging behind the door was practical but not pretty. Her hair hadn’t been styled for … ever. She wasn’t desperately poor, but she had the appearance of one for whom the cost of everything was of the first importance. That day-to-day, never-ending struggle to keep her head above the financial waters. The constant robbing of Peter to pay Paul and hoping that somehow, Peter could be repaid when the time came. That desperate, soul-sapping, endless struggle to make ends meet. No small treats. No little guilty pleasure to reward herself with at the end of a long, hard day. No pleasures at all. Every penny ruthlessly accounted for and spent. Go to work. Draw your money. Pay as many bills as you can. Don’t give way to despair. Do it all again next month. And the next. Until you give in. Or die. Or, of course, until someone steps in to help, with the promise of a sum of money that will change your life forever and all you need do to have your problems solved at a stroke is just this very, very tiny thing, Miss Lee, and no one will ever know …
I stared at her name on my sheet of paper. Of all the people at St Mary’s, she was the one I could believe capable of this crime. People didn’t like her. No one liked her. She was very unlikeable. Prickly, defensive, rude, hostile … and she’d been my assistant. How easy for her to access the coordinates from my own files. A quick telephone call to an anonymous number and job done, thank you very much, Miss Lee, payment as agreed.
And she’d had the sense not to appear with a new hairstyle and smart new clothes. She hadn’t suddenly given in her notice nor done anything to arouse suspicion. She’d quietly taken the money and continued as normal and then sometime in the next eighteen months or so, when Schiller’s death and her own leaving were too far apart to be connected, she would quietly hand in her notice. No one would stop her. In fact, the huge sigh of relief would probably blow her over. Then she would pack her bags and walk down the drive to a new life abroad. She would get away with it.
No. Not now she wouldn’t. I saw Schiller’s body, brutally crammed into that lead chest, heard the gasp of shock as she was discovered. No, she wouldn’t get away with it. I didn’t know what to do, but I’d think of something, In the meantime, I too would do nothing out of the ordinary. I’d carry on as usual. Two could play at that game. I could wait. Wait and see.
With both historians and trainees busy with Leon one morning, I wandered down to Peterson’s office for a mug of tea. We both put our feet up and were competing in the traditional St Mary’s ‘Who’s got the worst job?’ competition when Leon almost erupted through the door, slamming it behind him. Both of us stopped in mid-argument because this wasn’t something you saw very often.
It was clear that Leon … my … husband (note to self: work on this phrase) really wasn’t very happy about something or other and I was at a bit of a loss because the traditional irritants – me and Peterson – had been in here all morning, well out of the way.
He stood, hands on hips, glaring at the pair of us.
‘Bad morning?’ I enquired, displaying the perceptive insight for which I was famed.
Peterson, always the more conciliatory of the two of us, crossed to his illegal chiller and pulled out a soothing can of beer.
Averting his eyes from the big red ELECTRICAL APPLIANCE TEST FAILURE sticker plastered across the door, Leon sank into the nearest chair and drank deeply. It didn’t seem to do him a lot of good.
‘What’s up?’ I said.
He breathed heavily. ‘You! And you!’
Peterson blinked. ‘Max I can understand, but what have I done?’
‘Never mind him,’ I said. ‘What have I done?’
‘You – the pair of you – you’re both in charge of that bunch of … of …’ He paused. As many do when beginning a scathing indictment of the History Department without the aid of a thesaurus.
‘What have they done?’ As far as I knew, they’d been down in Hawking for a pod familiarisation session this morning. What could possibly have gone wrong?
‘We thought …’ said Leon, in a voice heavy with restraint. ‘We thought that since one or two upgrades have tested successfully, that this would be a good opportunity to introduce both historians,’ he nodded at Peterson, ‘and hopefully future historians,’ he nodded at me, ‘to the heroic efforts made by my section to make their lives easier.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’
Neither did we, but it hardly seemed the moment to say so.
‘We herded them into Number Five because we could just about fit them all in. To make things easy for them to comprehend, I was doing the talking and Dieter was doing the demonstrating.’
Peterson unwisely intervened. ‘You mean like cabin crew doing the safety demo.’ He waved his arms in the theoretical direction of the theoretical emergency exits.
Leon eyed him coldly. ‘No.’
Peterson subsided.
‘We’d planned it all quite carefully. Bearing in mind the limited intellectual capacity of the History Department, we thought we’d start with the decontamination strip and work up.’
I nodded. Decontamination was vitally important. On both outward and return jumps. We had a nasty blue lamp to neutralise any germs we might be carrying, the pod walls were painted with that special anti-bacterial paint – and there was a strip of it just inside the door that sterilised our footwear, too.
‘Well, with historians’ giant feet stamping on the strips day in and day out, we’ve discovered they need daily top-ups. A dozen or so spray canisters are to be stored in the lockers for this very purpose. As we never got to inform them.’
Peterson and I made conciliatory noises. A waste of time.
‘From there, we intended to demonstrate the new computer upgrades. More capacity means functions that are more intuitive. Enhanced memory means historians can spend less time wandering around wearing headsets and walking into walls. And the newly installed uplink means you can contact the computer directly and it will download any info required straight to your earpieces.’
‘Neat,’ said Peterson.
‘Furthermore,’ he said, getting into his stride, ‘you can record an image, send it back to the pod, and the computer will identify it for you.’
‘Even more neat,’ I said. ‘What did they say to that?’
Now he stared coldly at me.
‘We’ll never know.’
Oh … dear.
‘And then, we were to demonstrate the Sonic Scream, a modified version of which is now fitted to all our pods.’
The Sonic Scream is brilliant. It’s a soundless way of dispersing unwanted crowds, ravening beasts, teenagers, politicians, and any other of the unpleasant but frequently encountered nuisances of life.
‘
After the unpleasantness in Hawking when you nearly destroyed the place, it’s been modified so that now it doesn’t actually shatter every piece of glass within a hundred yards, cause ears to bleed, or stampede livestock.’
‘So quite dull, actually.’
I was ignored.
‘So,’ said Peterson, unwisely. ‘If all of that is what didn’t happen – what actually did happen?’
Leon crushed the can in his fist.
I moved around to join Peterson behind the safety of his desk.
‘We ushered them inside. They’re all lined up – breathless with anticipation, I’d like to think – and Roberts, whom I’ve always considered to be one of the more harmless idiots in your department, suddenly squeaks, ‘Oh! Wow! Cupholders!’ and the whole bunch of them surge forwards, exclaiming in wonder, and pulling them in and out until, of course, they break one, and when they try to fix it without us seeing, they manage to break the other one as well. They mill around the pod, mewing in confusion, and Dieter and I have to drive them out and shut the door on them before they break anything else. Or each other. God knows where they are now, and I don’t really care.’
He got to his feet. ‘And get rid of that chiller before it electrocutes the pair of you and I get the blame.’ He stopped. ‘Is anyone even listening to me?’
Peterson and I were staring at each other in excitement. ‘Oh! Wow!’ said Peterson, a huge grin on his face.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Cupholders!’
And so on to assignment number two, the purpose of which was for them to undertake research, learn to give briefings and present their findings.
I passed details of the assignment around, enjoying the looks on their faces, and allocated responsibilities.
‘Mr Atherton. You will undertake the initial research and be responsible for briefing your colleagues. Mr Hoyle will assist you.
‘Mr Hoyle, in addition to assisting Mr Atherton, you will be responsible for making the final presentation of your team’s findings. Be aware your audience will comprise your fellow trainees, members of the History Department, and anyone else from St Mary’s who cares to turn up.’
