The Pandemic Plot

by Scott Mariani

  ‘That’s who you are, is it?’ Wilfred shouted in fury, barely able to believe the man’s brazenness. ‘Here’s your pursuit of science. Here’s your love of your fellow man!’ He hurled the prints and they fell to the floor.

  The man picked them up. He frowned as he unrolled and examined them.

  ‘There are more,’ Wilfred told him. ‘These are just a small sample of the evil you’ve done against the world, you … monster.’ He couldn’t think of a stronger word.

  The man tossed the photographs on the desk. ‘You have no proof. Or else you would have gone to the law, instead of coming here like this.’

  ‘Oh, I think I have all the proof I need. But I know what they would do. Men like you don’t face punishment for their crimes. Men like you get away with murder, every time. Just as you think you can buy your way out of this. Well, I’m here to tell you that you can’t.’

  ‘Killing me won’t bring them back,’ the man said.

  ‘No, but at least I’ll have the pleasure of knowing you’re burning in hell, where you belong.’

  And suddenly Wilfred felt the tremors disappear, as though the fear had drained out through his feet. He felt strong. Invincible. He gripped the gun. He would see it through. He would not fail.

  But even as Wilfred’s finger tightened on the trigger, the man darted a hand into the open desk drawer and came out clutching a small automatic pistol. Two gunshots ripped the air, sharp and piercing in the confines of the room. Wilfred staggered on his feet and looked down in stupefaction at the crimson flowers that were already blossoming over his chest. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a wheezing gasp. The unfired revolver fell from his hand. His vision quickly began to fade as the darkness rose up and swallowed him.

  The very last thing he saw was Violet’s face. Then that was gone, too.

  The man watched as Wilfred Grey collapsed in a heap on the study floor. Then he calmly walked over to the body and placed a third bullet into Wilfred’s head, squarely between the eyes.

  The man stepped back to the desk and laid down his Browning .32 automatic next to the empty teacup. He’d have no reason to hide the weapon from the police, when they arrived at the scene. The photographs were another matter. He slipped them inside the drawer, relocked it and pocketed the key. Once the incriminating evidence was out of sight, he rang for his butler.

  ‘Boddington, this blackguard broke into the house, threatened my life and compelled me to defend myself. Kindly get on the telephone to the constabulary, at once.’

  In his dream, he is standing barefoot on an empty beach. He is so completely alone that he might be the only living person in the world. The white sand seems to stretch to infinity to his sides and behind him. In front of him, the ocean that had been calm and mirror-smooth just moments earlier is suddenly whipping up into a terrible storm. Black clouds roll in to blot out the sun, driven by a howling wind out of nowhere, lightning rips the sky like jagged knives piercing the darkness and a rumbling cannonade of thunder shakes the ground. Monstrous waves rise impossibly tall from one extreme of the broad ocean horizon to the other, like great towering walls of foaming water, and surge towards the beach gathering power and momentum as they come.

  He wants to turn and run back for the safety of the land, but something is wrong because his feet won’t move. He looks down and sees that, in the strange way of dreams, they’re buried up to the ankles in the wet sand that has set like concrete and holds him in its grip, making him powerless to do anything except stand there and watch.

  But now as he remains rooted to the spot and helplessly staring out to sea, he realises that he’s not alone after all. Someone is out there among the giant waves. Above the deafening roar and crash of the storm he can faintly hear their voice crying out to him for help. It’s the voice of someone he cares about. He doesn’t understand how or why they have come to be stuck out there in the midst of the raging ocean. All he knows is that they’re in terrible danger, and he is the only person who can save them.

  He struggles to free himself, but the harder he tries to tear his feet out of the rock-hard sand, the more tightly it holds him. He tries to shout, ‘Hold on! I’m coming!’ But his voice is made tiny by the crash of the waves and the screaming gale that seems to snatch the words from his lips. He can no longer see his loved one or hear their cries for help. All he can do is look on in horror as they slip away from him and fade into nothingness, along with all chance of saving them.

  Knowing that nobody else will come.

  Facing the black despair of the realisation that he has failed and that they are lost.

  Chapter 1

  The nightmare woke Ben Hope with a start, and he lay awake for the rest of the night listening to the rain drumming on the roof of the former farmhouse in which he lived. At dawn he finally gave up trying to sleep. He threw himself into his morning exercise routine, then pulled on jogging pants and running shoes and headed out to the acres of woods that surrounded his home with his dog, Storm, trotting along at his heels. Running usually helped to clear Ben’s mind, but not today. He pushed hard for five miles along the dirt tracks, three full circuits of the Le Val compound, before he stopped to rest among the ivied ruins of the old church that nestled among the trees.

  The vividness of his dream was still lingering in his mind as he sat on a crumbling wall and lit a Gauloise. Cigarettes and running didn’t go together too well, but the habit had been with him a long time and so he thought fuck it and lit one anyway. When the first Gauloise failed to settle his mind, he burned up another. The dog sat close by, watching Ben intently with his great shaggy head cocked to one side and those deep amber eyes filled with a curious expression. He was probably wondering why these silly humans did the things they did. That was a question Ben often asked himself, too.

  Ben walked back home, taking his time and deep in thoughts that the beautiful late spring morning and the cheery chorus of the birds in the trees could do little to allay. The Le Val compound was situated in a quiet corner of rural Normandy, set back a long way from the narrow country road that led to it and guarded by tall gates and wire fences. The stone farmhouse at its heart dated back a couple of centuries and had changed little externally in all that time, but nowadays the place served a very different kind of function. Around the cobbled yard stood a variety of other buildings: classrooms, storerooms, an armoury and an accommodation block for the delegates who travelled from far and wide to benefit from the courses taught by Ben and his business associates, who like him were all ex-military. Le Val was a school, of sorts, but it was also a little more than that – as any visitor to the tactical training facility would soon find out when they heard the rattle of gunfire that often shattered the peace of the countryside on a busy range day. One of the more recent innovations to the compound was the killing house, constructed of thick plywood, rubber and car tyres, where Ben and his fellow instructors educated their trainees on the finer points of conducting live-fire CQB hostage rescue and tactical raid operations.

  Today wasn’t going to be one of those days. No classes were scheduled until later in the week, making for an unusually quiet period in which Ben would have no excuse to keep putting off the mountain of tax and insurance paperwork he’d been successfully avoiding. There was also some maintenance work to be done on the south perimeter fence, the classroom roof had sprung a leak, and they were low on various supplies. Returning to the yard, Ben saw that the Ford Ranger truck belonging to his friend and business partner Jeff Dekker was gone. Which meant that Jeff and their associate Tuesday Fletcher had already set off that morning to pick up materials and provisions, a round trip of seventy-odd miles that would keep them tied up for a few hours.

  With the place more or less all to himself for a while, Ben took a shower, brewed up a big pot of strong black coffee and then headed over to the prefabricated office building across from the house to face the unwelcome task of sorting through all his invoices, bills, policies and accounts. Storm met
him again at the bottom of the farmhouse steps and acted as though he hadn’t seen his favourite human for weeks. Ben loved the big dog. Storm was the undisputed pack leader among the team of guard German shepherds whose job it was to patrol Le Val’s forty acres of grounds. But not all the canine residents of the tactical training facility were employed for their security capabilities. Trotting along with Storm was his adoptive little brother and his best friend in the world outside of Ben, a mongrel terrier who went by the appropriate name of Scruffy. Scruffy was really Jude’s dog – Jude being Ben’s grown-up son who until recently had been living in the States with his girlfriend, Rae. Scruffy had come to join the pack at Le Val during Jude’s absence. Pretty much a law unto himself, he spent his days foraging around the barns and buildings in search of rodents, and had formed a strong bond with his much larger companion. Tuesday adored the little guy, but Jeff had started referring to him as ‘that ugly mutt’ ever since Scruffy had twice sneaked into his quarters and cocked a leg on his boots.

  Ben let both dogs into the office, glad of their company as he dug into his administrative chores for the morning. He slumped in his tatty desk chair, turned on the computer, sipped his coffee, fired up another Gauloise, and generally did all he could to procrastinate. As much as he disliked the part of his job that kept him chained to a desk, that wasn’t so much the problem. His mind was elsewhere; he was still feeling shaken by the vivid memory of the dream that had kept him awake for most of the night.

  He managed to stay focused for all of twenty minutes before the columns of figures and lines of text on his screen began to blur out and his thoughts wandered again. He closed his eyes and saw himself again on the beach with those surreal tsunami waves surging towards the shore. Ben was no kind of a psychologist but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the deadly storm that ravaged the still waters of the sea symbolised the emotional turbulence that had lately turned his life upside down.

  The real reason for Ben’s downcast mood was a woman called Grace Kirk. Someone who’d become very important to him over the last several months, after a chance meeting brought them together. Grace was a police officer who lived and worked in the Highlands of Scotland. Ben’s reasons for visiting the region last winter had been as unexpected as their romance, which had blossomed quickly and led him back north to see her again several times. He had been badly hurt in the past by the ups and downs of his love life and could be reticent about opening up to emotional attachments; but he’d really thought that he and Grace might have a future.

  As it turned out, he’d been wrong.

  Ben stubbed out his cigarette, and lit another. He knew he was smoking too much, but at least it was better than hitting the whisky this early in the day. Enough of the damn computer, he decided. He turned it off, leaned back in his chair with a sigh and tried to empty his mind, but couldn’t. For the ten thousandth time, he replayed in his head the phone conversation he’d had with Grace eleven days ago.

  Grace had been upset, but she was a strong person and had told him it straight. Her decision to call an end to their relationship had been a tough one to make, and taken her a few weeks to affirm in her own heart before telling him. It wasn’t that her feelings for him had cooled, or that she felt he cared any less about her. It wasn’t anything he’d said or done to hurt or betray her in any way.

  ‘Then why?’ he’d asked her.

  ‘Because it’s you, Ben. It’s just who you are. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? That’s why this will never work.’

  And he knew she was right.

  Ever since Ben came into her life, Grace had been exposed to danger. She’d been kidnapped once and almost a second time, threatened, witnessed violent deaths and come close to it herself, and all simply because she was involved with a man whose life orbited around trouble and conflict. His was a world of risk. They both knew it wasn’t about to change any time soon. And as deeply as she cared for him, she had come to the heartbreaking conclusion that she couldn’t be a part of it any longer.

  The last escapade had resulted in her having to be evacuated from Scotland to France and placed in the protective care of a former client of Ben’s, the billionaire Auguste Kaprisky, whose vast luxury estate was ringed with armed guards. It was a gilded cage, but still a cage, and Grace had deeply resented being whisked away from her life and kept under effective house arrest in a strange country, just because her attachment to Ben made her a target of his enemies. Her sudden and unexplained absence from home had nearly cost her her job, too, something else she wasn’t inclined to give up.

  ‘When does it end, Ben?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he’d replied after a long pause. He didn’t want these things to happen. They just did. Trouble didn’t want to leave him alone.

  ‘And what will it be next time?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ was all he could repeat.

  They’d talked for hours on the phone. Grace had cried, and Ben had wanted to cry too.

  ‘I understand why you want it to be this way,’ he’d said at the end, when both of them were worn out with emotion. ‘It’s right for you. I’m okay with that.’

  As okay as being mangled in a combine harvester. Or having your innards ripped out by a rusty iron claw.

  ‘I’m going to miss you so much,’ she told him.

  ‘Grace—’ His voice was a whisper.

  ‘Please don’t say it.’

  ‘So long as you know.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Always,’ she said. But he knew he probably wouldn’t see her again. Afterwards he’d put the phone down and stood there for a long time staring at it. ‘Goodbye,’ he’d said to himself, because he couldn’t say it to her. The word sounded as crashing and final as a suicide gunshot.

  Now, as he reflected back over the symbolism of last night’s dream, he thought about the unseen loved one he’d been powerless to save from the raging ocean. It struck him as a terrible irony that the thing he’d feared so desperately when he had to save her from danger in real life had happened anyway, now that she was lost to him.

  She’s alive, he reminded himself.

  That was what mattered most. But it still didn’t stop him from feeling as though that iron claw had plunged inside his chest and left him with a big red ragged hole where his heart used to be.

  As Ben sat, Storm uncoiled himself from where he and Scruffy had been lying curled up together on the office floor, and came over to him. Ben ran his fingers through the dog’s fur as a big sloppy tongue affectionately washed his cheek. Ben said, ‘Yeah, I love you too.’

  The dog looked at him.

  ‘You think I’m feeling sorry for myself, don’t you?’ Ben asked him.

  The German shepherd panted hot breath in Ben’s face but didn’t reply. Probably just being diplomatic.

  That was when the landline phone on Ben’s desk rang. He stared at it for a couple more rings, not really in the mood to talk to anyone. But then he changed his mind and picked up on the fourth ring. Said, ‘Le Val.’

  ‘Dad?’

  Scruffy looked up with a cocked ear, as if he’d recognised the familiar voice on the other end of the line. Jude sounded breathless and agitated. For him to call Ben ‘Dad’, something had to be wrong. Ben hadn’t heard from him in over a week, and he’d sounded perfectly normal then.

  ‘Dad, I’m in trouble. Terrible trouble. I can’t talk long. Tried to call you on your mobile but—’

  ‘Slow down. What are you talking about? What trouble?’

  ‘I’ve been arrested for murder.’

  Chapter 2

  It was destined to be a short call, because Jude had the legal right to let someone know where he was but wasn’t allowed to speak for long. Ben felt numb and cold as he listened and tried to digest what he was hearing, but Jude was gabbling so fast that he could hardly understand.

  ‘Whoa, Jude. Slow down, you’re not making any sense.’

  ‘Tell me something
new. None of this makes any sense!’

  Ben tried to keep his voice steady and calm. He asked, ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Yesterday evening. I’ve spent the whole night being grilled by the cops. I’m in custody at Abingdon police station.’

  Abingdon was one of the bigger towns near the former vicarage that was Jude’s family home, situated a few miles south of the city of Oxford that Ben knew very well. A million years ago in a different life, he’d been a student there and attended the same college as Jude’s future mother, Michaela Ward.

  Ben asked, ‘So you’re back home again?’

  ‘Yes, and no sooner do I get back here but this guy’s murdered and now they’re saying I did it!’

  ‘Stay calm. What guy?’

  ‘Duggan! Carter Duggan!’

  Ben was blank for a second, then recognised the name, remembering something Jude had told him a few months ago. Carter Duggan had been renting the vicarage through a letting agency while Jude was living in the States. Ben had a dim recollection that Duggan was Canadian, but he knew nothing else about the man. Other than the fact that he was now dead.

  ‘The tenant? You’re saying your tenant has been murdered?’

  ‘Oh, he’s been murdered all right. He was stabbed to death.’

  ‘Where did this happen?’

  ‘In the house,’ Jude said. ‘Dude was lying right in the middle of the kitchen floor, all kind of crumpled up, with the handle of a bloody great carving knife sticking up out of his chest. If that’s not murdered, I don’t know what is.’

  Ben knew the old vicarage well, had stayed there many times, and had a strong emotional attachment to the place. The idea of something like this happening there was unthinkable, like a violation against something sacred. Jude’s description was so graphic that Ben wondered how he could know those details. ‘What are you saying, you saw him there?’