Cry Darkness

Six

She rang the bell on the intercom system. He didn’t answer, instead buzzing the front door open. Maybe he was expecting someone else? She entered anyway, and made her way upstairs to his apartment.

She could hear a dog barking.

It was another minute or two before he came to the door, a little black terrier bouncing around his feet. His face was pale and drawn, etched with shock and grief. He was wearing a grubby grey tracksuit which hung from his bony frame. His eyes opened wide with surprise when he saw her.

‘It’s been a long time,’ Jones heard herself say, immediately thinking what a terrible opening remark that was.

‘Sandy?’

He appeared to be asking her to confirm her identity.

‘Yes, it’s me.’

She managed a tentative smile.

Ed just stared at her.

‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

For a split second she thought he was going to refuse. Send her away. And she wouldn’t have blamed him if he did. Also, it occurred to her suddenly that he may not be alone. Connie had told her that Ed had married, only a couple of years after she did, that there had been a daughter, and that he and his wife had later divorced. But that was all she knew.

Eventually Ed stepped back into the hallway and gestured for her to enter. It was a small but cosy apartment. He led her to a bright blue and yellow kitchen at the rear.

The weather was unusually warm and muggy for New Jersey in mid-September, but Ed’s air-conditioning was so powerfully cold that Jones felt herself involuntarily shiver.

Ed’s shoulders were slumped low, his walk a shuffle. He moved the way Jones felt, on that dreadfully sad day. He sat down at a little scrubbed wooden table, bearing an overflowing ashtray and an empty coffee cup, and gestured for her to join him.

‘I didn’t think you’d ever take up smoking,’ she said, more for something to say than anything else.

He looked at her with something bordering distaste, and she didn’t like it at all.

‘How the hell would you know anything about me?’ he enquired sharply.

She winced.

‘In any case, I don’t smoke,’ he continued. ‘Not usually.’

‘Well, this is certainly not a usual day,’ Jones ventured.

‘No.’

His voice was just a little softer.

‘I’m sorry, I feel a bit raw,’ he continued.

‘Of course.’

It was weird. So awkward. As if she were a stranger. But then, she supposed that’s exactly what she now was.

‘I’m sorry to spring myself on you, Ed. I just, well, I just booked myself onto a flight and came here. Straight away, almost, after I heard the news.’

Ed stared at her levelly.

‘Why?’ he asked.

She was startled.

‘W-why?’ she repeated uncertainly.

He was clearly irritated. He made a little clicking noise with his tongue.

‘Why have you come here?’

The irritation was in his voice too.

She sought the words to explain. They didn’t come. she gave the only answer she could.

‘I had to, Ed, I just had to.’

‘After all this time...’

There was an inflection in Ed’s voice that Jones could not quite identify. She looked down at her hands on the table.

‘They would have been glad, though, that you came,’ he said suddenly.

Jones was touched. This was the first moment of comfort of any kind that she had experienced since the shock of seeing that first news item about the explosion.

And Ed had been closer to Paul and Connie than anyone. He and his younger brother Michael had been brought up by their maternal grandparents after their mother and father were killed in a car crash. Ed, aged three at the time, and Michael, just a baby, had been in the car, strapped in on the back seat. Their survival was considered a miracle. The much-loved grandparents had both died while Ed was at Princeton. So the boys were orphaned all over again, more or less, and Connie and Paul had become even more important to Ed.

‘Thank you,’ said Jones.

Ed shrugged.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jones blurted out impulsively. ‘Sorry I’ve never been in touch...’

Ed shrugged again.

‘That’s life,’ he said, his voice expressionless.

‘I know, but I should have...’

She paused, not knowing quite what to say next, which, of course, had been the problem twenty-one years earlier.

‘You should have said goodbye,’ he finished for her, raising his voice. ‘That, at least, would have been nice. You didn’t even tell me it was over. You let me think you were coming back. You didn’t tell me anything. You just walked out on me. I read about you and Dr damned Darling online, for God’s sake.’

‘I-uh, I’m sorry,’ she said again.

And she was too. Probably far sorrier than Ed would ever know.

He lit another cigarette, puffing on it in the slightly desperate way of someone not used to the habit.

‘So, how can I help you, then?’ he asked, his voice quiet again, polite and distant.

‘Do you know what happened to Paul and Connie, exactly what happened?’ she asked abruptly.

‘There was an explosion, Sandy. I’m sure you know that as well as I do.’

‘Yes. But was it an act of terrorism? Was it a bomb? And was RECAP the target?’

‘They’re saying that it might have been a gas leak.’

‘I know. And I don’t believe that. Do you?’

‘I don’t know what I believe. Why would terrorists attack Princeton? We’re a university, a seat of learning.’

‘And not the first innocent place to be torn apart that way. Think of Bali. The Twin Towers, the London Underground, Paris, that concert in Manchester. Not exactly military targets.’

‘No.’

‘Thank God you weren’t in the lab, too.’

‘I teach more or less full time, now.’ Ed laughed without humour. ‘At the high school. It was either that or skid row. So I have a price too. Ironic really.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

She knew what he meant. Whilst Jones had taken the career path, Ed had stuck to his vocation, to following his dream. And now he was teaching school, because it had been that or the street.

‘So you haven’t been working with Paul and Connie lately, then?’

‘Oh I have. Unofficially. That’s always been the euphemism round here for not getting paid. RECAP’s budget had been slashed to a fraction of what it used to be. And God knows, it was never great. But I couldn’t really stop. I’ve been monitoring things...’ His voice tailed off. ‘You know, the usual.’

‘I’ve got a fair idea.’ She paused. ‘Look. Connie called me a few days ago. She sounded... troubled. Something was wrong. Very wrong. I’m sure of it. She wanted to talk, only...’

She didn’t want to tell Ed how she had failed so dismally to respond to Connie’s plea for help, though she reckoned he’d probably already guessed.

‘I was going to call back,’ she finished lamely. ‘But... but then it was too late... So I wondered if you knew what was bothering her. She mentioned something about the lab being put under pressure. She was afraid there were plans to close it down.’

‘Close it down?’ Ed sounded genuinely puzzled. ‘There’ve always been plans to get rid of RECAP. Nobody has ever succeeded though...’

The sentence tailed off as he realized what he’d said.

‘Did Connie talk to you about it at all?’ Jones asked.

‘No. Not really. Well, she was always grumbling about lack of resources, that sort of thing. That’s all.’

‘What about Paul?’

‘Oh you know Paul. If the lab were going to close he wouldn’t have noticed until he was actually physically thrown out of the place. All he was ever aware of was his work, particularly after Gilda died.’

Jones tried again.

‘Ed, have you really no idea at all what may have been troubling Connie?’

‘Absolutely not,’ he responded immediately.

‘Well, she was troubled. I’m sure of it.’

‘OK, but even if she was, what has that necessarily got to do with the explosion?’

‘I have no idea,’ Jones replied. ‘But I sure as hell would like to find out. I’m convinced there’s a connection.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. What do you think?’

He shrugged. ‘Knowing Paul and Connie, the explosion could well have been some kind of accident. Not connected with anything. For a start she still smokes...’ Ed paused, remembering. ‘She still smoked in the lab. She and Paul weren’t exactly hot on health and safety, were they?’

‘The health and safety people had just been in, Connie told me. Fitted sprinklers.’

‘So what?’

‘Ed, it really could have been a bomb, you know.’

Ed shrugged again. ‘Or a gas leak. You can choose whatever you like to believe at this stage, can’t you?’

‘Yes, so can you think of any reason why RECAP would be a target for a terrorist attack?’ Jones persisted.

‘I don’t think it was. Even if some terrorist group was responsible for the blast, then surely it would have been just a matter of hitting another high-profile target. Princeton is a major Ivy League university, after all.’

‘Yes. And RECAP was an obscure half-forgotten research lab tucked away deep in the bowels of the campus.’

‘Sandy, what are you trying to prove?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea. But, look, Ed, I let Connie down. And it wasn’t for the first time.’

‘So that’s what this is all about. Your fucking guilt. Well, you damned well should feel guilty, that’s for sure.’

He spat the words at her. Angry again. She was startled, and recoiled at once.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Me too,’ he responded quickly. ‘I’m just, so, so on edge—’

‘It’s all right. I understand,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t suppose either of us is thinking straight. I’ll go now. Maybe I’ll phone tomorrow, if that’s OK?’

‘OK.’

They both stood up. The dog started to bark again, demanding attention.

‘No, Jasper, it’s not time,’ said Ed, scratching the dog’s head affectionately.

‘Does he want to go out?’ asked Jones, in an effort to make normal conversation.

‘I take him around the block every night, but not yet, or he’ll only want to go again.’

Jones attempted a smile. Ed just looked at her. No smile. No comment.

‘I’ll call tomorrow,’ she repeated.

He nodded curtly. She deserved it, but it still hurt. She felt not only bereft, but a little surprised. She suspected Ed’s anger was rather more because of the way she had treated him, than because of her neglect of Connie and Paul. And that had been twenty-one years ago.

Either way, on that awful day, it was irrelevant. And Ed had said nothing at all to shake her growing conviction that the explosion at RECAP had been neither accident nor random.

Outside a man wearing a hooded anorak, quite unnecessary on such a balmy evening, was walking up the path towards Ed’s apartment block when the front door opened. Ed had escorted Sandy downstairs, possibly to make sure she left the premises, she had thought wryly. He opened the door for her, stepping momentarily outside as she departed. Intent on dodging the shaft of light emitting from the building, the man dived for cover in the shrubbery to one side of the picket-fenced garden area.

Crouching there, he watched Sandy Jones walk down the path, open the white-painted gate and step out into the street.

Jones was at first silhouetted against the lights of the building as she headed almost directly towards the man in the anorak, and then had her back towards him as she proceeded down the street.

The man had been unable to see her face. And he had no idea whether or not he would have recognized her even had he been able to do so.

Once Jones was out of sight the man emerged from the shrubbery, approached the apartment block again, and without hesitation pressed one of the row of doorbells set in a panel on the wall. Very soon the man would know who Ed MacEntee’s mystery caller had been. He would make it his business to do so.

Jones had no idea that anyone had observed her leave Ed’s home. She strolled slowly into what passed for the centre of Princeton. It seemed extraordinary that she had never returned to the place. Not once since 1998. Yet it was still so familiar. Little seemed to have changed, visually at any rate. Nassau Street, the main drag on the edge of campus, continued to house a number of bars and cafes. But as it was now after nine o’clock at night the place seemed pretty much deserted, and Jones didn’t think that necessarily had anything to do with the explosion. Princeton had never been hot on nightlife.

She walked across Palmer Square, past the life-size bronze of a boy sitting reading, until she reached the Nassau Inn, where she had already reserved a room. She checked in, then went straight to her room where she immediately showered and washed her hair, which her boys insisted on calling her ‘Claudia Winkleman’. She still wore it in a long bob, and it was still an exceptionally glossy black. Keeping it that way was probably her biggest vanity. Although she had also developed a liking for designer clothes, albeit favouring a casual look. And she had retained her penchant for jeans and unfussy shirts.

After her shower she ordered wine and sandwiches on room service, and channel-hopped the television for a couple of hours before trying to sleep. However, although she felt bone weary, sleep did not come. She was besieged by unwelcome thoughts, and disorientated by jetlag.

Somewhere around four a.m. local time, and God knows when by her body clock, she gave up trying. She couldn’t lie there any longer. She just had to do something. She dressed swiftly in the black jeans she had worn on her journey, and her black DKNY hoodie, let herself out of the front door of the Inn, as quietly possible, and started to walk towards the campus.

It was a dark night. No moon and no stars. In the dim glow of the streetlights and the occasional lit-up shop window Princeton looked even more unreal than ever. At one point a lone police patrol car drove slowly by, drawing almost to a halt alongside Jones, who became acutely aware of being closely scrutinized. One of the few examples of the power of human consciousness experienced on a regular basis by almost all of us, she reflected. As Connie had always pointed out to her critics, we often know when the eyes of another creature, human or animal, are fixed upon us, even when we cannot see them. How can that be, Connie would ask, if there is no link between our minds?

Jones continued steadily on her way, deliberately letting her arms hang loosely at her sides. Apparently she did not look suspicious because, even though it was so early in the morning and she had yet to see another pedestrian, after a few seconds the police car proceeded on its way, accelerating past her up Nassau Street.

She had half expected to be stopped, walking through the town in the early hours, and less than two days after a fatal explosion. Being a woman had probably helped, she thought, even in this age of almost obsessively applied gender equality.

As she turned right into the Princeton campus, past Nassau Hall, she was further surprised that, apart from the lone patrol car, there appeared to be no visible police presence. This was Princeton though, she reminded herself. The campus blended seamlessly with the town. She knew the authorities had evacuated the university buildings, but it would be virtually impossible to physically shut them off from the town. And the university itself had never been too hot on security, not in her day anyway.

That had been before 9/11, of course, and the various international terrorist attacks which had followed. But only a few weeks after the tragedy of the Twin Towers, Jones had chatted to a colleague, who had just returned from a trip to Princeton, and expressed surprise at the continued lack of security there.

The famous Orange Key Tours still ran several times daily, when not only prospective students but any casual visitor to the town, and indeed any would-be terrorist, could join a small group and be shown around the campus by an eagerly informative student.

Dormitories and lecture rooms were all on the itinerary for a visit as well as the main university libraries, including the cavernous Firestone, the Art Museum, Nassau Hall, and other hallowed places. Those joining the hour-long campus tours underwent no security checks whatsoever. There were no electronic gates to pass through, no bag searches, certainly no body searches, and not even a routine identity check. Indeed visitors weren’t even asked to give their names, let alone show proof of identity.

Jones continued to walk along shadowy paths, which she did not have to be able to see clearly in order to know were immaculate, the buildings around her bringing back even more memories. She crossed the lawn at Nixon’s Nose, and scuffed at the ground with the toe of a shoe. It had been a favourite place for her and Ed. She was reminded again of how badly she had treated him.

The Science Research Building was just around the corner now, but the RECAP lab was at the far end. She assumed the main entrance to the building would be a protected crime scene, and she was right. She stood very still in the shadows by the corner of the block, hoping to see without being seen.

The front of the science building was lit by arc lights, as, being an aficionado of TV detective shows, she had expected. Yellow tape stretched around the building cordoning it off. Four armed men in dark uniforms, flak jackets, and helmets, were standing by the door silhouetted against the stark light of the arc lamps, casting elongated angular shadows across the paved forecourt. She could see quite clearly the bulk of their body armour and the angular shape of their automatic rifles as well as the bulge of their pistol holsters. Jones had no idea whether they were police or military. Either way she didn’t intend to allow herself to be confronted by them.

Instead she backed slowly and quietly off and began to make her way in a big loop around to the right of the affected building in order, she hoped, to arrive unnoticed at the site of the lab at the rear. It was no accident that she had chosen to wear black.

Another set of arc lights illuminated the building which housed the RECAP lab — or rather, she realized with a sudden flash of unpleasant reality, the place where the RECAP lab had once been.

Jones had known what to expect. Or she’d thought she had. The TV news items on the explosion had shown the scene only from a safe, almost discreet, distance; a television reporter standing in the foreground. But, like most people, Jones had over the years seen enough television footage of bombings to feel that such a scenario, however horrific, would hold no surprises for her. However, she’d never before actually been present at the scene of a major explosion, nor indeed of any similar incident involving huge devastation, and she found that she was completely unprepared.

Once again this area of campus was cordoned off and guarded. Once again Jones held back, reluctant to confront those patrolling the site. After all, what would American security forces make of a lone Englishwoman wandering around a designated crime scene at this hour? Particularly when the possibility of an attack by unknown terrorists was still being investigated. American security services, rightly or wrongly, had a reputation for being rather quicker on the trigger than their British counterparts. And even the British police, in the widespread near-panic which had followed the 7/7 London Underground bombings in 2005, had at one point killed an innocent man by mistake.

Jones positioned herself behind a conveniently placed tree, and stood as still as possible while she surveyed the scene. The lab area was partially concealed by a large tarpaulin construction. Nonetheless Jones could see clearly the level of devastation. And even if the presence of security forces had not halted her, she would have been totally stopped in her tracks.

It seemed that a large chunk of the ground floor of the building, and of the first storey above, had been totally demolished. Metal-reinforced concrete girders hung, broken and twisted, at crazy angles. The Science Research Block was four storeys high, and the rest of the structure too had been severely affected to such a degree that it leaned sideways at an angle, giving the curiously shocking impression of being a brick and concrete jaw, gaping wide open.

Jones could only imagine what it must have been like to have been inside the building when the explosion occurred. She realized now, looking at such devastation, just how remarkable it was that so few had been killed and injured, even taking into account the time of the blast.

The three people who had died, including her two old friends, would, she thought, have known absolutely nothing about what had happened. But she couldn’t help thinking about the injured students, at least one of whom, according to news bulletins, had been very seriously hurt. They may well have been aware of the full horror.

Jones shuddered.

Pulling her hood over her head, she took a cautious step forward, trying to guess exactly where a bomb might have been placed in order to cause the devastation she saw before her. It was hard to tell exactly, but there seemed little doubt, she felt, that its location would have been within the RECAP lab.

Jones could feel her brain beginning to work properly again, but, as certain unwelcome thoughts began to race through her mind, she reckoned she would probably prefer to be still wandering around in a jet-lagged fog.

Her vision of the lab the way it had been before was still extraordinarily vivid. She wondered if the bomb had been given to the lab by someone, disguised within one of those famous cuddly toys Connie had always welcomed, or maybe just hidden behind the old sofa. Nobody would have checked. Nobody would have dreamed of it.

Jones moved slightly to her right, trying not to make a noise. She was grateful for the various trees and undergrowth which surrounded this corner of the building, and which, thankfully, were somewhat less manicured than in other areas of the campus.

She noticed that a large piece of tarpaulin had come loose from the building, and that the only two guards she could see were standing together some distance away. Their heads came close, almost touching, brought into sharp relief by a small flash of light. It looked like they were having a smoking break. It was more than likely that they were not the only security operatives present, of course, but Jones still decided to take the opportunity to make her way a little nearer to the building.

She inched further forward. Conveniently the arc light was shining directly through the area from which the tarpaulin had fallen away, so she could see clearly into what remained of the interior.

There was nothing inside at all. Nothing except a pile of ash and twisted rubble. It was horrible. Eerie. Jones might have expected little else. But she was shocked to the core. She could smell the acrid stench of burning. And she thought she could smell the stench of burned flesh. She knew she was probably imagining it, but it still made her want to retch.

As she fought against the urge, she heard a sound directly behind her. The sound of movement. A crunching noise, possibly from gravel or loose soil, or maybe rubble from the blast, beneath an approaching foot. Startled, she turned right around, 180 degrees, and found herself staring almost directly into the glare of the arc lights. For a few seconds she could see nothing. Then she became aware of an approaching human shadow. She could see no features, just a dark shape.

Overcome by fear, she swung around in the other direction, away from where she felt the immediate danger lay, and began to run.

She didn’t get far. The front of her right shin hit an immobile object, a piece of debris from the blast. The pain shot through her leg as her upper body carried on moving whilst the lower part remained locked solid. She catapulted over whatever it was that had tripped her up and crashed heavily to the ground, falling flat on her face.

If her presence had gone unnoticed before, there was no longer any chance of that.

A man’s voice shouted something. Then a second voice joined in. She thought she heard the word ‘stop’, but beyond that had no idea what they were saying.

Heavy footsteps approached. She had fallen just outside the area illuminated by the arc lights. She was aware of being caught in the beam of a torch. She struggled to rise to her feet. Then she heard a gunshot. For a second she froze. There was a second gun shot. Was she being fired at? She had no idea. She reacted instinctively. She tried to run again.

A heavy body cannoned into her. Jones fell to the ground once more, with a bone-crunching thud. The heavy body descended upon her, pinioning her down. Jones kept struggling. But it was hopeless.

She heard swearing, then a burst of some kind of liquid hit her full in the face. The pain was instant. As if her eyes were on fire. Instantly they began to stream water. And it hurt like hell. She realized she must have been sprayed with something highly unpleasant and injurious, possibly toxic. Oh my God, she thought, involuntarily squeezing her eyes shut. Could it have been acid? She continued to struggle and was rewarded with another face-full of noxious spray. She collapsed in agony, desperately trying to get her hands to her face, to wipe her burning eyes.

But a second assailant had now joined the first. Jones’s arms were pulled roughly behind her back and handcuffed together at the wrist. Probing fingers were all over her body, rough and intrusive, presumably searching for a weapon. Then a torch was shone right into her damaged face, and her hood pulled back.

‘It’s a goddammed woman,’ she heard a gruff male voice mutter.

However, the revelation of her gender did not appear to make things any easier for her. Not this time. A knee was pressed into the small of her back, and an arm wrapped around her neck almost choking her. There was no longer a chance of Jones moving or resisting in any way, even if she’d had the slightest intention of so doing. Which she didn’t. Not anymore. Her entire face felt as if it was burning, and the wind had been knocked out of her. She couldn’t see. She could barely breathe. She had been afraid before. Now she was plain terrified.

Then the pressure was abruptly released. Strong hands grabbed her upper body and strong arms hauled her upright.

She felt so weak she could hardly stand. She seemed to have no control over her body at all. She feared that she was about to wet herself.

‘Stand still with your legs apart!’

The order was barked at her. Jones, her breath coming in short sharp gasps, obeyed at once to the best of her ability. Squinting through swollen eyelids, she tried to get a glimpse of the faces of the men holding her. They wore shiny black helmets and goggles, which concealed most of their features, a bit like the headgear she’d seen riot police wear in England. Jones wondered what on earth they were expecting to confront on the campus.

Their appearance alone was quite terrifying. So much so that Jones wondered again if they really were police — or indeed any other security force. Perhaps they were terrorists. She just couldn’t think straight.

Suddenly, and none too gently, a pair of leg irons were fastened around her ankles.

‘Right. Walk. Now. Straight ahead!’

She did her best to comply. But the hard unforgiving metal of the irons bit into the already bruised flesh of her ankles and lower legs, grating against the bone.

Involuntarily she cried out. The only response from her captors was a rough push forwards. She could only shuffle awkwardly in the irons, and would have fallen again were she not still being more or less held upright.

Jones was frightened out of her wits. She had absolutely no idea what she’d thought she was doing wandering around the scene of a major crime at such an hour in the morning. And, as, coughing and spluttering, she was half dragged along the ground by what appeared to be a small regiment of black-clad men, armed to the teeth, she could only hope that she would be allowed to live to regret it.

Seven

They manhandled her towards a parked van and told her to climb in the back. Even without the leg irons she wouldn’t have had the strength, so they more or less picked her up and threw her in.

The doors slammed shut, and the van set off almost at once at considerable speed.

With her hands still cuffed behind her back and her legs still in irons, she lay spread-eagled on the bare metal floor unable to use her arms to raise herself into a sitting or even a kneeling position.

Every time the van swung around a corner, or its speed increased or decreased, she was flung from one extreme of the rear compartment to the other, causing her already bruised and battered body even more damage. To make matters worse her eyes, nose and mouth still burned. And she couldn’t stop coughing.

There were bench seats along each side of the van’s otherwise empty rear compartment. During one particularly violent movement Jones found herself lifted in the air. She smashed into one of the benches with considerable force, the side of her face colliding with the edge.

It felt as if her cheekbone had been crushed. She could taste a salty wetness on her skin. Blood. She was bleeding.

What the hell had she got herself into?

The van suddenly lurched to a halt. Jones gratefully released the tension in her legs. Then she heard the handle which fastened the van’s double doors turn.

She still didn’t know who her captors were. They could well be the people who had caused the dreadful explosion.

The van doors swung open. Jones could feel her bladder involuntarily opening again, and only just managed to restrain it.

Outside the van two of the men, still with their balaclavas pulled down over their faces, were standing to one side. And, framed in the rear doorway, illuminated by bright lights from the building behind them, were two more men, each wearing, without any doubt at all, the uniform of the New Jersey State Police.

Big double gates closed with a loud metallic clunk. Jones looked around. At first she had no idea where she was, except that she, and the vehicle she had travelled in, had now been shut in some kind of enclosed yard. Then she spotted a sign by the door leading into the building. ‘Booking Office Entrance. Princeton Borough Police Station’.

And if chemically-induced tears had not already been tumbling from her eyes, Sandy Jones would probably have wept with relief.

She was led straight into what she assumed must be the booking office, known in the UK, she was aware from that predilection for TV detective shows, as a custody suite. Her head was immediately and unceremoniously dunked into a small washbasin to one side where a kind of customized fountain gushed water upwards into her burning face. At first she wondered what the heck was going on, and was further unnerved. But the relief the water instantly brought made her realize that this must be what the washbasin was for, and that spraying a noxious substance into the face of a suspect was probably common practice in these parts — or certainly when the suspect was dumb enough to appear to be putting up a fight.

Jones’s cuffs and leg irons were removed by the two officers who had arrested her, and she was asked to empty her pockets. All she had on her was a few dollars and her mobile phone, which were duly placed in a brown envelope. She had left everything else in her hotel room. She hadn’t planned to be gone long. Her father’s watch was also removed and bagged. She hated being without it.

She was then told to stand with her legs apart and arms akimbo while she was searched by a third, female, officer.

‘Look, there’s been a dreadful mistake,’ she said, eventually gathering courage. ‘I’m Dr Sandy Jones from Exeter University in England. I just came to see the damage for myself. Two great friends of mine have died. I realize I behaved stupidly, but I wasn’t doing anything wrong...’

Jones wished she hadn’t left her shoulder bag containing her passport, credit cards and all the rest of her documentation in her room at the Nassau Inn. Glumly she realized that she couldn’t even prove her identity. Not immediately anyway. But it seemed to make little difference. Nobody was listening.

‘I want to see the British consul,’ she demanded.

Even as she said the words she was struck by how silly the request sounded. The officers didn’t exactly smile — it was hard to imagine them smiling, actually — but they definitely looked mildly amused.

‘I must speak to someone. I’m entitled to representation. Surely I’m entitled to representation?’ Jones continued.

‘You will be interviewed in due course, ma’am,’ said one of the officers eventually, as he replaced, in spite of her protests, Jones’s cuffs, but mercifully not the leg irons. ‘Meanwhile, please cooperate and you will come to no harm.’

It sounded like a threat. Jones stopped protesting and did as she was told. She had no choice, it seemed.

She was led to a cell by the two officers. One of them, a short skinny man who somehow gave the impression that he was acting extra tough in order to compensate for his lack of height and bulk, pushed her ahead with what Jones felt was unnecessary force. The second officer removed her handcuffs.

The cell was a surprise. Jones had never been in a police cell before, but doubted if many were as smart and clean as this one. A stainless-steel lavatory and wash basin ensemble had been installed behind a slotted wooden bench which ran along one immaculately white wall, and neither would have looked entirely out of place in some kind of ultra-modern, minimalist-designed apartment. Jones was reminded that this was Princeton. And Princeton was not only smarter and richer, but also totally different from anywhere else on earth. There was even a phone on the wall. She glanced enquiringly at the officer.

‘Collect calls only,’ growled the short skinny officer. ‘But it’s out of order, anyway.’

The officer seemed to derive a certain amount of pleasure from that. And it occurred to Jones that the phone being out of order might well be no accident. Even in Princeton, cops will be cops, she thought.

Her arms still ached. She flexed and stretched them, seeking relief. The two officers backed watchfully away, as if she really was some sort of violent criminal. She made one last futile attempt to explain herself.

‘This is a mistake, a complete mistake,’ she began. ‘I’m Dr Sandy Jones, ask anyone. I’m always on TV back home. I’m very well known.’

She couldn’t quite believe she’d said that. It was such a crass remark. But these were desperate circumstances. And it made no difference anyway. Nobody was listening. Nobody cared. The officers retreated into the corridor. The cell door slammed shut.

Without either her phone or her treasured watch, she had little idea of the time. And there was no window.

Jones wasn’t normally claustrophobic, and this cell was far less unpleasant in every way than she might have expected. All the same, she couldn’t quite conquer the feeling that the walls were gradually closing in on her. She felt as if she was suffocating. It took a great effort of will not to panic.

There were actually two cells side by side — their doors iron-barred gates and the division between them also made of iron bars — within one bigger outer room. The second cell was unoccupied. Jones didn’t know whether that was good or bad. Periodically an officer opened the solid door of the outer room and looked in. At first Jones called out every time, demanding to speak to someone in authority, to be allowed to make a phone call from a phone that worked, to be given the chance to explain herself.

After a while she realized she was wasting her time. At some stage a packet of fat cheese sandwiches, wrapped in paper bearing the legend Wa Wa, and a paper carton of luke-warm milky coffee, were pushed through the bars. Princeton Borough Police Station did not, apparently, run to a canteen. But it still fed its prisoners. Jones recognized the Wa Wa logo from her Princeton days, and assumed the food and drink must have come from the store over by the Dinky Train station. She couldn’t eat anything. However, she drank the insipid coffee gratefully.

Soon afterwards the outer door opened again, and two different police officers entered. Jones had absolutely no idea how long she had been in the cell. It seemed like days, but she knew it must only be a few hours at the most.

The officers, in what she regarded as normal uniform, were both reassuringly ordinary looking, one tall and very young, the other shorter, plumpish, and middle-aged. Jones was rather glad not to see the skinny aggressive man she had encountered earlier in the day.

‘Right, let’s go then,’ said the middle-aged officer, unlocking the barred gate to Jones’s cell.

‘Go where?’ asked Jones.

‘There’s somebody wants to talk to you.’

Jones relaxed slightly. She welcomed the opportunity of speaking to almost anybody.

‘’Fraid we’ve got to cuff you again first.’

Jones flinched. She knew well enough this was the way American police did business. Those under suspicion of almost any sort of crime were cuffed all the time when they were not actually under lock and key.

Meekly, she held her hands out.

‘Behind your back, ma’am.’

Resignedly, she thrust her arms behind her back as directed, and the cuffs were locked into place.

They took her to what she assumed was an interview room and directed her to sit at a small table. The room was not equipped with any visible recording equipment. Jones guessed there would be a video system. She glanced upwards. Sure enough, there was a tiny camera in one corner of the ceiling.

The door opened again. A large man of indeterminate years, probably nearing retirement, Jones thought, advanced into the room in a business-like manner. He was wearing a cream jacket rather cleverly tailored so that he looked big rather than fat. and stood with a hand on each hip looking Jones up and down.

Jones began to get up out of her chair. The man gestured for her to stay sitting.

‘I am Detective Ronald Grant of the New Jersey State Police Force, and you, ma’am, are in a great deal of trouble,’ he announced.

Jones opened her mouth to again plead her innocence. Detective Grant, straightening with one hand a tasteful cream-and-brown striped silk tie which did not need to be straightened, didn’t give her the chance.

‘Right. I would like to know who you are, and what you were doing lurking around at a major crime scene?’

Almost gratefully Jones answered the first question, but found she had no proper answer to the second.

‘I just wanted to see it,’ she finished lamely.

‘Any particular reason?’

‘I worked with Constance Pike and Paul Ruders years ago. I... uh... I wanted to see for myself what had happened to them, what had happened to the lab.’

‘You came over from the UK specially?’

Jones considered lying. But she knew she wasn’t thinking clearly enough to successful maintain a lie.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘You were arrested just before five a.m.,’ Grant continued. ‘Funny time to be visiting a crime scene, wasn’t it?’

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Jones replied, acutely aware of just how lame that sounded.

‘I see. So if your attentions were so innocent why did you resist arrest?’

‘I didn’t. Well, I didn’t mean to. I was just frightened. I wasn’t even sure it was police out there.’

‘You weren’t? But the officers identified themselves as police, did they not?’

‘No. I mean, I don’t know. They shouted “stop”. I couldn’t hear properly. Anyway, they weren’t regular cops, were they?’

Detective Grant did not answer that question.

‘Were you alone at the scene, ma’am?’ he asked instead.

‘Yes, I was.’

‘Our boys reported seeing someone else with you. Someone who ran away from the scene, in spite of warning shots being fired over their head.’

‘What?’ Jones was momentarily puzzled. ‘I don’t understand. I was alone.’ She fought to clear her head. ‘I heard the shots. I thought I was being fired at.’

Detective Grant’s ample chins wobbled. He was well over six feet tall and probably weighed getting on for twenty stone, Jones thought obliquely.

‘This is Princeton and we are the New Jersey State Police. It is part of our legislation that we do not shoot suspects, except in self-defence.’ Grant paused. A small smile played around his lips. ‘In any case, if our boys had been shooting at you, ma’am, you would not be sitting here with me. You would be dead.’

Jones’s throat, still sore from the spray, felt dry as dust. She gulped some air down. She was once more on the verge of panic. Her eyes continued to sting.

‘What did they do to me?’ she asked suddenly. ‘What was that stuff they sprayed in my face? I thought I was going to go blind.’

‘Oleoresin Capsicum, ma’am. Pepper spray. That’s all. Standard procedure when a suspect resists arrest. No danger of your sight being permanently harmed.’

Jones grunted. She wondered how Detective Grant would like to have the stuff thrown in his face.

‘Right,’ continued the detective. ‘Let’s get some answers, shall we? How exactly did you come to trip and fall this morning, ma’am? You tried to run, didn’t you? Just like whoever else was out there with you.’

‘No. I mean, yes. I started to run, but nobody was with me. I was startled. No, frightened. I heard footsteps close by, saw a shape. I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t realize it was a police officer.’ She paused. ‘Was it a police officer?’

Detective Grant looked down at his hands, two huge plates of pale pink meat clasped together on the table before him. Again he made no attempt to answer Jones’s question.

‘Ma’am, I have already informed you that it has been reported that someone else was with you when you were confronted. So please will you tell me who that was?’

‘Nobody was with me. I keep telling you. I mean, there was someone there, but I don’t know who the hell it was. Like I said, I was scared. I tried to get away. Only I fell, and the next thing I knew there was a knee in my back.’

‘So you couldn’t identify this other person?’

‘No. Absolutely not. I couldn’t see. I knew there was someone there, but I’ve no idea whether it was a man or a woman, even. Then, after I was arrested, I just assumed it had been another police officer, or somebody from whatever security forces were out there. But you’re telling me you don’t know who that person was either, isn’t that so?’

Jones felt shakier than ever. This interview seemed to be going in all the wrong directions. Detective Grant leaned back in his chair. The cream jacket strained against its central button. Grant undid the button and the jacket fell open, revealing his rotund belly. The chair creaked. Jones wondered if it might collapse under the strain. Grant frowned.

‘I’m not saying anything, ma’am. Just answer the questions please. Did you know anybody else at all who was involved in the explosion?’

‘No. I don’t think so. Not the other scientist who was named, anyway, and almost certainly not either of the injured students. It was a long time ago that I was at Princeton.’

‘So how exactly would you describe your relationship with Connie Pike and Paul Ruders?’

‘We are old friends.’

‘Are old friends?’

Dear God, these people were going to pick her up on everything.

‘Were old friends, I suppose. I haven’t got my head around that yet.’

‘And is that all?’

What on earth was the man getting at? Jones realized she really was going to have to get her act together, shake off her shock at what had happened to her. It was time she asserted herself.

‘Look, I’m a British National and I am also a leading academic and a television personality.’

She felt so stupid taking this line of approach, but she really didn’t know what else to do.

‘I am internationally known,’ she heard herself continue. ‘I really feel—’

‘Unfortunately, ma’am, you appear to have no proof of any of this, do you?’ Detective Grant interrupted. ‘You do not have your passport on you, nor any other identification.’

‘It’s all at the Nassau Inn. I checked in there last night. Nobody’s given me a chance to explain, for God’s sake. Why don’t you just let me go and fetch my stuff?’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere until your presence in Princeton has been fully investigated. I’ll send an officer round to the Nassau. Meanwhile would you please tell me when you arrived at Princeton?’

‘I got here yesterday evening. I only arrived in the States yesterday afternoon. I was on the other side of the Atlantic when the lab exploded, if that’s what you’re getting at. You can check airline records, can’t you? And I can give you the names of all kinds of people in the UK who will vouch for me, at my university and so on. Even the BBC for God’s sake. Surely you can contact them?’

‘We are in the process of making enquiries in the United Kingdom. These things take time. Meanwhile, I would like to know if there is anyone in Princeton who can confirm your identity.’

Jones thought first of all of Thomas Jessop, and straight away suggested him. There couldn’t, surely, be anyone much better to speak for her than the dean of the university.

‘I am afraid the dean isn’t here, ma’am. He was in hospital in New York having a minor operation at the time of the explosion, and I understand will not be discharged until tomorrow.’

Jones groaned. That only left Ed. And Jones was not at all sure she wanted to involve Ed in this, or even if he would allow himself to become involved.

She tried asserting herself again.

‘Now look, it would take only the most elementary of checks to establish who I am, and that the information I have given you is correct. Can’t you check online? I present a television programme back home. My presence here is completely innocent. And I’m not prepared to cooperate with you further until I’m allowed some sort of representation. I should like to contact the British Consulate in New York...’

Suddenly the door of the interview room swung open yet again. A younger man, of average height and build swept into the room. His dark blonde hair was slicked back, and he was wearing a neat black suit, white shirt, black tie, and heavily tinted spectacles. In different circumstance Jones would have found it difficult to take him seriously. He must surely have been sent round directly from Central Casting. He wasn’t just the complete stereotype of some kind of special agent. He was straight out of Men in Black.

Jones stopped speaking. The Man in Black slammed the door shut behind him and advanced swiftly towards her. His walk was a strut, his head jutting forwards and his shoulders pushed back. He smashed his fist down on the table with tremendous force. The noise it made reverberated around the room. His hand must hurt like hell, Jones thought — but the man did not flinch.

He leaned closer to Jones. The tinted glasses made it impossible to see his eyes properly. His breath smelt of garlic.

Jones instinctively backed away.

‘I would advise you to continue to cooperate fully, Miss Jones.’

The Man in Black’s voice was low and full of menace. Jones had little doubt that his use of the prefix ‘miss’ instead of ‘doctor’ was deliberate. It seemed clear that he had been observing the interview through the video system.

‘We are investigating three deaths here, Miss Jones. Several more people have serious injuries. And I don’t give a fuck who you are. You can be a four-times fucking Nobel prize winner for all I care. You will answer all questions put to you, and you should know that we have every damned right to detain you here for as long as we damned well please.’

Jones asked herself for the umpteenth time how she had got herself into such a situation. She knew that the American police force lived by vastly different rules to the police back home, but this was surely especially heavy. And she didn’t even know whether the Man in Black was a police officer or something more sinister. He certainly liked to give the impression of being something more sinister, Jones reckoned.

‘Would you please tell me who you are?’ she plucked up the courage to ask. ‘Are you FBI? Who are you?’

The man’s face was still only inches away from Jones’s. She had never before met an American who smelt so strongly of garlic, as if, almost, he’d been pickled in the stuff rather than had merely eaten it.

‘None of your goddamned business,’ he snarled.

He stared at Jones for several seconds before straightening up and backing off, nodding slightly towards Detective Grant.

‘I will ask you again,’ said Detective Grant, sounding exaggeratedly patient. ‘Apart from the dean, is there anyone in Princeton who can vouch for you?’

Sighing, Jones gave Ed’s name and address.

‘Right then, ma’am. I am now going to arrange for everything you have told us to be checked out. Meanwhile you must remain in custody.’

He turned to the uniformed officer standing by the door.

‘All yours, Dave.’

Dave stepped forward.

‘Stand up and put your hands behind your back,’ he ordered.

Oh God, thought Jones. She was going to be handcuffed again. But she made no further attempt to protest.

The officer called Dave, this time unaccompanied — which made Jones absurdly hopeful that maybe Princeton Plod was finally realizing she presented no threat to anybody — marched her back to her cell.

Once her cuffs had been removed, Jones sat on the wooden bench bed and reflected again on her predicament. How could she have been so stupid as to go alone to a designated crime scene at such a crazy time of day. And in America too, the home of the trigger happy.

She groaned out loud. She hoped the worst might be over, but if the American authorities did start checking her out back home before releasing her, eyebrows were sure to be raised among the hierarchy of both the university which currently employed her and the more exalted one which was about to appoint her chancellor. Not to mention the BBC. And her sons didn’t even know she had left the country. They would be worried sick.

There was what seemed like another interminable wait before they came for her again.

Once more it was Detective Grant, and Dave, carrying Jones’s bag, and the black leather jacket she had worn on her journey over.

‘Your story has checked out and you are free to go now,’ said Grant.

‘I should hope so,’ Jones snapped, in a vague attempt at some kind of bravado. She was relieved, nervous, and angry all at the same time.

Detective Grant and Dave both ignored her. Grant handed her a brown envelope.

‘Your watch and everything that was in your pockets are in there,’ he said. ‘Just sign here for it.’

He held out a clipboard and passed Jones a pen.

Jones signed, tore open the envelope and straight away slipped on the old Longine. Somehow it made her feel less like a victim. She checked the time. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. She had been in police custody for almost seven hours.

‘We’ve looked through your papers and replaced them in your bag,’ Detective Grant continued.

Jones took her bag from Dave, lifted it on to the wooden bench, and quickly made sure that both her laptop and her documents were inside, along with the few clothes she had brought with her for what she had always planned would be a short stay.

‘We’ve checked you out of the Nassau, and your credit card will be debited,’ said Detective Grant. ‘We assume you will have no wish to stay on now.’

He made that sound like an order. Jones picked up her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and wordlessly followed the two police officers out of the cell, along the corridor and up the stairs to the main foyer.

‘So where do you suggest I go?’ she inquired, a certain irony in her voice.

‘That, of course, is entirely up to you, Miss Jones.’

The reply came from behind Jones and slightly to her right. She glanced quickly over her shoulder. The Man in Black was leaning against the wall by the glass box which enclosed the reception area.

‘Dr Jones,’ she corrected.

‘Indeed. I understand you are leaving Princeton now, Dr Jones.’

It was another order. Jones felt an overwhelming urge to protest, to argue. She was being more or less run out of town, it seemed, a bit like a character in a Western B-movie.

On the other hand, if she refused to leave, what exactly would she achieve apart from making her life even more difficult? She still had little real idea why she’d travelled to Princeton in the first place. Except that she had felt compelled. Maybe it was one of those bonds of consciousness which RECAP had been set up to study, she thought wryly.

‘You’re right, I don’t think I do have a reason to remain here,’ she responded.

‘Good.’

The Man in Black straightened up, turned on his heel and disappeared behind reception back into the interior of the station.

Jones was suddenly struck by the feeling that there was something vaguely familiar about him, but she just couldn’t place it. In any case, she couldn’t think when she would ever have been likely to have met him, or indeed, anyone like him.

‘Perhaps we can provide you with transport to Princeton Junction, Dr Jones?’ Detective Grant suggested. ‘As it happens I need to go that way myself, so why don’t you let me give you a ride?’

Jones had no doubt about what lay behind the offer. The police wanted to make sure she really did leave town, even going to the extent of providing an escort, it seemed. Under the circumstances she didn’t feel at all inclined to cooperate.

‘No thank you, detective,’ she replied. ‘I think I have endured quite enough New Jersey police hospitality for one day.’

She also had another reason for declining. She wanted to see Ed again, and not just for old times’ sake. She still felt there had to be something he could tell her that would shed some light on all that had happened, even if he didn’t know it.

Detective Grant seemed about to push the point. Then, as if on cue, into the foyer from the direction of the station interior came Ed. He spotted Jones at once, and a look she could not quite decipher spread across his face.

Was it concern? Or exasperation? Or a bit of both? She wasn’t sure.

‘What are you doing here?’ she blurted out without thinking.

‘What would you think I’m doing here, Sandy?’ He glowered at her. ‘I was brought here, whether I liked it or not, to convince the New Jersey police that you are who you say you are and not some crazy terrorist.’

‘Ah.’

‘What have you done to your face?’

Jones raised a hand to her injured cheek. She assumed that her eyes still looked red and puffy too.

‘I had an argument with a van.’

‘Oh.’

Ed couldn’t have sounded much less concerned. She wondered why he even bothered to make the enquiry.

‘Look,’ she began, ‘I was hoping to have another chat before I leave—’

‘Sandy, my two best friends in all the world have just died in the most horrible violent way. I feel as if my whole life is in ruins. And you want to drop by for a chat?’

‘Well, I just thought we could talk things through...’

‘Talk things through? No, Sandy. Everything those of us who believed in RECAP have worked for all those long years is finished. You left over twenty years ago, and you never looked back. Connie and Paul are dead. It’s over, for God’s sake. I don’t have anything more to say to you. To tell the truth, Sandy, I haven’t had anything to say to you since you walked out on me the way you did.’

He took off then, powering his way through the police station’s big swing doors, his back stiff with anger.

She watched him go with sorrow. She had wondered, when she’d visited him the previous evening, if there might be a chance of at least rebuilding their friendship. It now seemed clear that was out of the question.

Detective Grant stood silently alongside her, his broad fleshy face giving little away.

‘Maybe I’ll take that lift to Princeton Junction after all,’ Jones muttered.

Eight

At Princeton Junction, Detective Grant carried Jones’s bag onto the platform, in spite of her protests, and stayed with her until she was able to board an Amtrak train bound for Penn Station.

Jones really did feel as if she were being drummed out of town. She accepted, however, that it was largely her own fault. She had an IQ of 150. That meant that she was officially a genius, for Christ’s sake. But she had behaved stupidly.

She considered what she would do next. She supposed it lurked in the back of her mind that she wanted to pay her respects to Connie and Paul. Although she didn’t quite know how. There weren’t going to be any funerals. Not yet, anyway. There were, after all, no bodies to bury.

The Man in Black had made no secret of his desire that Jones should not only leave town, but also, preferably, the country.

Indeed, she would have been more likely to accept that the explosion might well have been a tragic accident were it not for the treatment she’d received at the hands of the Princeton police, and in particular the threatening demeanour of the mysterious Man in Black. Nonetheless that possibility remained, and in any case, what more could she do?

She switched on her mobile, for the first time that day. A string of messages awaited. She checked them in cursory fashion. Almost all of them were from various colleagues puzzled by her peremptory absence and the brief notes of vague explanation she had emailed to them. They could wait. Clearly neither her sons nor anybody else back home had been contacted by the American police, which was a relief. And if she were to take the obvious sensible course of action, she would be back in the UK the following morning.

She checked the time. It was three twenty p.m. She should be able to catch the evening’s BA flight to Heathrow easily enough. She called up the phone number for reservations, and then paused.

She hadn’t slept for the best part of forty-eight hours. She was bone tired. Her right shin was still very sore from the bashing it had received outside the RECAP lab. Her eyes were no longer inflamed, and the worst effects of the capsicum spray had worn off, but none the less her entire face felt sore. Her injured cheek was throbbing. She didn’t feel at all like a seven-hour flight.

When Jones had been in New York the previous year, giving the Triple A address, she had stayed for the first time at Soho House, the city’s hotel version of the famous London club.

Stretching her back and shoulders in a vain attempt to ease the tension, Jones found her thoughts focusing on the House’s superior plumbing. Most of the rooms had baths right in the middle of them, so that you could soak yourself while enjoying the state-of-the-art entertainment facilities, including a huge TV screen.

She shut her eyes and dreamed a little. The very idea of one of those baths was quite seductive. And after all, she thought, what was the hurry? She wasn’t being deported, even though the Man in Black probably wished that she was. She would book into the House, indulge herself thoroughly, and hopefully manage a good night’s sleep, before flying home the following evening. She would still be back in time to fulfil her BBC filming obligations and attend that Oxford dinner engagement.

She called the House. There was a room available. She confirmed it at once with her credit card.

The following morning Jones felt considerably better. She had slept like a baby. She felt almost like a human being again, and hoped she looked like one too. There was a mirror on the wall to the right of her big double bed. She turned towards it. Her face had thankfully returned pretty much to normal after the capsicum assault, just as Detective Grant had promised. There was no longer any soreness or swelling. And the injury to her left cheek, although not pretty, had not become as unsightly as she had feared.

Lazily she stretched her long legs beneath the covers, reached out a languid arm, dialled room service, and ordered tea.

It was barely six a.m. In spite of her total weariness, jet lag had caused her to wake early again. At least that meant she would have a full day to enjoy her favourite city after London. But first she switched on the TV, and tuned in to CNN to check the latest on the Princeton explosion, which turned out to have been relegated to fourth on the news list. And the item was certainly not revelatory.

So the police were still hedging their bets. Well, they would, wouldn’t they, thought Jones. Room service had brought two newspapers along with the tea she’d ordered. The New York Times and the tabloid New York Post. She unfolded the Post first. The splash headline jumped off the page at her.

Was that it then? Jones didn’t know what to think. However, since becoming a media personality she had endured considerable attention from the tabloid press, and had learned that, contrary to a widely held belief, they were more often right than wrong when they splashed on an exclusive story.

She had promised herself the previous day that she would move on. And that was what she was going to do. She dressed in the jeans she had worn the day before, which along with her black hoodie, she’d sent to be laundered upon arriving at the House. Like her, she hoped, they appeared to have made a good recovery from any damage suffered at the Princeton crime scene.

It was a pleasantly sunny morning, so she wandered up to the roof terrace for a leisurely breakfast. Afterwards, at around nine a.m., she took the lift to the ground floor and stepped out on to the cobbled street outside the House’s discreet front door on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 13^th Street.

The sun was already surprisingly hot again for mid-September. She squinted into the line of approaching traffic. She had yet to properly work out which cabs were for hire and which weren’t on the streets of New York, and her dilemma was not helped by bright sunshine which made it impossible to tell whether the cabs had their lights on or not.

She’d learned to do what New Yorkers do — just stand on the pavement with your arm held out high in the air in front of you. She knew from her previous visit that the area right outside the House, in the heart of the Meatpacking District, although it didn’t look promising, was a pretty good place for picking up cabs.

All the same, she was mildly surprised that morning by the alacrity with which a yellow cab pulled up right alongside, causing her to take a step backwards in order to avoid being knocked over.

She opened the door of the rear compartment and, having decided to start the day with a little shopping, gave the address of one of her favourite fashion stores.

The driver made no verbal response but took off with an unnerving squeal of tyres. This was, Jones knew, par for the course in New York. She’d long ago discovered that cabbies in the Big Apple were nothing like their London contemporaries, who were inclined to treat their passengers to their views on the weather, the traffic, the cost of living, the latest sporting event, the state of the country if not the world and indeed all aspects of life, at the drop of a hat. They were also obliged to learn The Knowledge, to know every detail of the layout of their city, in order to gain a licence to operate. In New York no such regulations were enforced. Taxi drivers’ Medallions were bought rather than earned.

Jones made herself settle back in the seat and try to enjoy the ride. Vaguely she wondered why the driver was taking the route he was. It seemed obtuse even by the standards of New York cabbies.

She repeated the address of the store.

There was no response at all. The glass panel between the driver’s compartment and the passenger seat was closed. Jones tapped on it and raised her voice.

‘Driver! Hey driver! This isn’t right. We’re going the wrong way.’

Still no response. Jones tapped even louder and then pushed her fingers against the glass panel in an attempt to make it slide open. The panel was either locked or jammed. She tapped yet again, more forcefully.

‘Hey driver!’

‘Just relax, ma’am, I know exactly where I’m taking you.’

Jones was taken by surprise. The voice, pure New York, deep and resonant, was projected through a speaker just above the back seat. She hadn’t known that New York cabs had that sort of sophistication.

‘But we’re going in the wrong direction,’ Jones shouted back.

‘You don’t need to shout, ma’am, I can hear you just fine.’

The glass panel remained closed. Jones glanced around her. There must be a microphone somewhere, she assumed.

‘Then for God’s sake listen to what I’m saying,’ she countered irritably, before repeating the address once more, complete with the obligatory cross street.

‘We’re heading the other way, surely?’

‘I know where I’m taking you, ma’am.’

Jones opened her mouth to say it damned well didn’t look like it to her. Then closed it again. There was something disconcerting about the way the driver had delivered the last remark. Jones was beginning to suspect that if this man was taking her the wrong way, it was not by mistake.

The bile rose in her throat. She fought to remain calm. Perhaps the events of the previous day had been too much for her and she was just being paranoid. She decided to have one last attempt at normal behaviour.

‘Just pull over,’ she commanded. ‘I’ll get out here.’

Jones delivered the remark as if it was an order she expected to be obeyed. But she wasn’t at all surprised when the driver ignored her. Stifling a growing sense of panic, she began to formulate a plan. She was sitting on the left of the cab directly behind the driver. She shuffled along the seat to the right until she could see clearly ahead. There was a set of traffic lights just a couple of hundred yards ahead. To her irritation they remained on green. So did the next three sets. In American cities traffic lights often seemed better synchronized than at home. She waited impatiently, her fingers tight around the door handle, until finally a set of lights turned red as the taxi approached.

The driver braked. And as the cab drew to a halt Jones wrenched at the door, preparing to hit the street at a run. The door didn’t budge. She twisted the handle frantically, pushing and shoving with all her might. It made no difference. The door was locked.

‘Driver,’ she yelled. ‘Driver, will you please unlock the doors. I told you, I want to get out.’

There was again no response. The lights changed. The cab moved forwards, unhurriedly.

‘Driver, will you damned well pull over and unlock these fucking doors!’ Jones shouted even louder, aware that her voice had turned into a kind of shriek.

The driver made no attempt to slow the cab down, but at least he responded.

‘Just calm down, ma’am. You’re not going to come to any harm.’

As he spoke he reached behind his head with one arm, and an enormous black hand adorned with assorted bling appeared directly in Jones’s line of sight. Bracelets around the wrist jangled as ring-laden fingers flicked some kind of switch and slid the glass panel to one side. Then the driver glanced briefly over his shoulder, and Jones was confronted by a smiling face, big and broad-boned. She did not find the smile reassuring. In fact just the opposite.

The man’s domed head was entirely without hair except for a Mohican stripe along the centre. Earrings dangled from both his ears and more bling hung in layers around his neck. His appearance was surreal. For just a fleeting hopeful moment Jones wondered if she might be dreaming.

‘I’m only taking you to someone who wants to spend a little time with you, that’s all.’

The driver’s voice was loud, clear and resonant. This was no dream.

‘My name is Dom, I’m mighty pleased to meet you, Dr Jones, and I want you to know you are absolutely safe with me.’

Jones couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Dom’ had introduced himself as if he were someone Jones had met socially in a bar rather than the driver of a motor vehicle taking her God knows where against her will. And, chillingly, he knew who she was.

Jones reckoned she had never felt less safe in her life, not even the previous day when she’d been clamped in irons by New Jersey’s finest. She made no attempt to reply to ‘Dom’. Instead she slumped back into the seat of the cab feeling as if she’d been hit in the face. Again.

Oh shit, she thought. Oh shit. Oh shit. Not a repeat performance. This really couldn’t be happening. Not for the second time in twenty-four hours. Was she being arrested? Was she being kidnapped? She had absolutely no idea. She just knew that once more she was locked inside a strange vehicle being taken against her will to an unknown destination by someone she’d never seen before in her life. If only she’d flown back to the UK the previous night as she’d originally planned.

She covered her face with her hands. Ultimately she could not stop herself breaking down. And in the back of that yellow cab wending its relentless way through the streets of New York to an unknown and quite probably highly dangerous destination, Sandy Jones wept tears of fear.

Nine

Minutes later the cab turned abruptly off the main drag into what was little more than an alleyway between two tall buildings. They had been driving for almost twenty minutes, but Jones was pretty certain they were still in the Meatpacking District, and had actually travelled in a kind of circle.

Jones became aware that the driver was talking into his mobile phone. Then the man slowed down and swung the cab sharply left, heading straight for a set of big metal doors, their scant coat of pale blue paint peeling away in strips, which opened as if by magic as they approached. The vehicle coasted into a double garage alongside another already parked there.

Jones had regained control and was no longer crying. But she remained in shock. It was a good thing she didn’t have a heart condition — as far as she knew anyway — or she would already probably be dead. She asked herself yet again what the hell she had thought she was doing, flying into the US of A to play amateur detective?

For a few seconds the driver sat unmoving in front of Jones, who was still locked in, and was by then far too afraid to say or do anything. Then she heard a rumbling sound behind the cab, and turned around to see the double doors slowly closing and ultimately shutting with a bang.

There was another noise to the front of the cab. Jones turned to face forwards and saw that a smaller door at the rear of the garage, the sort that normally leads into a house or an apartment, was opening. A figure stepped through the doorway. The lighting at that end of the garage was not very bright. Jones squinted into the dimness. But it was only when the figure approached the cab, moving into the more brightly lit central part of the garage, that Jones could see that it was a woman. A woman in her late fifties or early sixties, Jones guessed, spreading just a little around the waist. She had pretty pale hair, a pleasant-featured face lightly made-up, and was wearing extremely clean pale-blue jeans with sharp creases down the front, a pink silk shirt, and a multi-coloured silk scarf knotted around her neck.

Jesus Christ, thought Jones, who and what was this? The woman was the very epitome of Mrs Middle America. She should have been out the back somewhere making apple pie, taking her grandchildren to school in a four-wheel drive, or attending a suburban cocktail party on the arm of a be-suited, be-spectacled and ever-so-respectable husband.

Jones was completely taken aback. She could not believe that this person was either a terrorist, a police officer, or any kind of security agent. But then, what the hell did she know?

Mrs Middle America approached the cab, stopped adjacent to the driver’s door, and looked in the back at Jones, studying her carefully. There was something about the woman that was vaguely familiar to Jones. She remembered that she had felt much the same about the Man in Black. Perhaps she was now so knocked off kilter by events that every other person she came in contact with looked familiar in some way.

‘Hi,’ said Mrs Middle America, speaking through the glass.

Jones was dumbfounded. She heard herself say ‘Hi’ back. This is absurd, she thought, truly absurd.

There was an electronic whirr as Dom lowered the window on the driver’s side. Once it was fully open Mrs Middle America stuck her head through, and took an even longer look at Jones. Dom raised a bling-laden hand and passed her a piece of paper which seemed to be a page torn from a magazine.

‘I’m pretty sure I’ve got the right gal, but I can always drop her back off,’ remarked Dom conversationally.

Mrs Middle America grinned at him, and glanced down at the piece of paper.

‘No need, this is her for sure,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Norman.’

Norman, thought Jones. What about Dom? This great hulking creature, dripping bling, surely could not be called Norman?

Jones guessed that the piece of paper probably carried a photograph of her. Even in America, where she was not a widely recognized face, she appeared occasionally in specialist science magazines. But who was this woman?

The front door of the cab opened and out stepped Dom. Or was it Norman? It seemed to take him quite some time to stand up. He appeared to be somewhere around six-and-a-half feet tall, Jones reckoned, and built like a brick shit house, as her father would have said. If he really was called Norman it was possible, she thought, that nobody on earth had ever been more inappropriately named. Norman was a giant. Jones was glad she had not had the opportunity to even attempt to quarrel first hand with her hijacker.

‘Any time, Aunt M.’

Aunt M? Things were becoming increasingly bizarre.

‘Just always glad to be of service, Aunt M, honey.’

The big driver’s voice was pure Willard White.

‘Well, you’d better let the lady out then, Norman dear.’

This really was surreal, thought Jones. And for reasons she couldn’t explain, even though she remained locked in a cab within a locked garage somewhere in the bowels of one of the toughest cities in the world, she did not feel quite as frightened as she had only a few minutes earlier.

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 chairs.

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, attracted 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?’

Jones looked at her in amazement. ‘Jesus Connie, I’m amazed. How did you have the presence of mind to do all that? You must have been terrified, groping your way along a dark tunnel, and after what you’d been through?’

She shrugged. ‘I think I was beyond terror. The tunnel didn’t really worry me, though. Don’t forget I’m an old Princeton graduate myself, and I’d been involved in my share of student games in those tunnels. Races. Mock battles. I knew the tunnels like the back of my hand once upon a time. You never went down them then, Sandy?’

Jones shook her head.

‘Not even for a dare?’

Jones was momentarily puzzled. ‘No. Nobody ever dared me.’

‘That figures.’ Connie smiled at her. ‘Anyway, I guess I was operating on auto pilot.’

‘Some auto pilot,’ said Jones. ‘So Marion came to get you and brought you here.’

‘Yes.’

Marion had re-joined them, carrying a tray containing a cafetière of coffee, three mugs, and a plate of biscuits, which she put on the table.

‘I thought of Norman at once. I knew he’d let us stay at his place, and that he wouldn’t ask too many questions. He’s very resourceful too, a man of many parts is Norman.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Jones wryly.

Marion passed her a mug of coffee, and then handed one to Connie. Jones was puzzled by the look that passed between them. She glanced towards Connie enquiringly.

‘Dom is one of the few people who have known about Marion and me for a long time,’ said Connie suddenly. ‘She’s my partner.’

‘Right.’ Jones realized she was allowing her surprise to show and tried, too late, to check it.

‘You seem a tad taken aback, Sandy. What is it? Can’t believe I’m a dyke or can’t believe that I have a partner of either sex?’

Jones pulled a face.

‘You know me too well, Connie, just like you always did,’ she said. ‘I realized when I thought you’d died that I’d never known anything about you, really. About your life. I’m ashamed of myself, but, back in the day, I never even thought about you having a personal life. Away from RECAP.’

Jones turned towards Marion, who still looked vaguely familiar.

‘And yet, I can’t help thinking I’ve maybe met you before, Marion,’ she said.

The woman nodded.

‘Marion Jessop,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t think we ever met, but you may have seen me around with my husband...’

Jessop. Of course. Mother of Thomas, the current dean of Princeton, and wife of Bernard, who had been Princeton’s dean when Jones had been there. Bernard Jessop, who had once privately advised Jones to have nothing more to do with RECAP if she wanted anything like the level of success in the academic world that she’d already seemed destined for.

If this relationship dated back to Jones’s time in Princeton, then Marion would have been very much married to the dean of that most conservative of academic establishments. No wonder she and the others had not been allowed to know anything about it.

‘My goodness,’ Jones remarked lamely.

Connie smiled almost apologetically at her.

‘Poor Sandy, you’ve had an awful lot of shocks haven’t you, old friend?’

‘Yes I have, rather.’

Marion sat down next to Connie and another look passed between them. In just a glance it spoke volumes about their shared history, and left Jones in no doubt, somehow, that theirs was an abiding love.

To her surprise Jones felt a fleeting stab of jealousy. She ignored it. She still had a lot of questions to ask, and could not allow herself to be diverted by the news of Connie and Marion’s relationship.

‘So were you also there yesterday morning, Marion?’ she asked.

‘Sort of. I drove Connie to Princeton from here. That’s my car you saw in the garage. I was parked just around the corner, waiting for her. I didn’t see what happened, but I heard the shots, of course, and the commotion when you fell and the police, or whatever they were, jumped on you. That was a bad bad moment. I thought it was Connie they’d got, at first. Then she came rushing out from behind those trees just outside the quad, badly shaken but OK, and told me about you. We decided that she shouldn’t take any more risks of being seen. I got her to take the car and said I’d try to find you, and follow you.

‘I went straight to the borough police station, found a secluded corner, and waited outside. You could have been taken elsewhere, but I chose the most obvious option and hoped for the best. It was a long wait but there was nothing else to do, and eventually I realized I’d got lucky when you came out. Then you got into a cop car, and I thought at first my luck had run out. I was on foot. I had no way of following you. But of course, Ed MacEntee was there, and he spoke to me as he was leaving. I asked him, as casually as I could, if I’d just spotted who I thought I had from so long ago. He told me, more or less, that you’d come to pay your respects, you’d had a misunderstanding with the police, and you were off to the station on your way back to New York.

‘I got a quick cab to the Junction and just managed to jump aboard the same train as you. I followed you to Soho House. Then Connie and I hatched the plot to get you here, and called in Norman to pick you up.’

‘I never noticed you at all,’ remarked Jones.

‘I think you had other things on your mind,’ said Marion. ‘Doubt you were noticing much.’

‘A pretty impressive piece of surveillance, none the less,’ Jones persisted.

Marion smiled. Her eyes shone much the way Connie’s always had.

‘I actually got to ask a taxi driver to follow the cab in front,’ she said. ‘Extraordinary thing was, he didn’t bat an eyelid.’

‘Yeah, well, that meant he didn’t have to find his way anywhere, didn’t it?’ Jones remarked a touch acidly.

Marion’s smile broadened.

‘Fair comment,’ she said.

Jones thought for a second. ‘So you recognized me straight away then, by the lab, Connie? Even in the dark.’

‘Of course I did. There were lights all over the place, and you weren’t nearly as good at dodging them as you probably thought you were. How you weren’t seen at once by the police or whoever it was out there—’

‘Who did you think was out there, Connie?’ Jones interrupted. ‘Those guys didn’t look like normal state police to me. And they sure as hell didn’t behave like it either.’

‘God knows. Special forces? Since 9/11 we’ve had a thing called The Joint Terrorism Task Force, made up of Feds, secret services, police too, and all kinds of unmentionables, I should imagine. Maybe it was those boys. Anyway, I don’t think you’re cut out for surveillance work, Sandy. At one point you succeeded in positioning yourself in the full glare of an arc lamp. I couldn’t believe it. The armed-to-the-teeth alleged defenders of our liberty, however, managed to be all looking the other way. I was trying to get close enough to speak to you, then you did your startled rabbit act and fell over.’

‘Um. Not one of my finer moments, I must confess.’

‘Well, I somehow or other escaped unseen again, in spite of you. But I’m quite convinced that if it got out that I was still alive, I would be in grave danger again.’

‘You would? The New York Post splashed on a story this morning that the explosion was caused by a gas leak. Surely that would be one heck of a big fib?’

‘Goddamn it, Sandy. If what I believe is halfways right then there would have been an immediate cover-up operation, orchestrated at the highest level.’

Connie gestured towards the assorted pile of newspapers on the table before them.

‘Have you seen the Post? They’ve got no confirmation from anyone. An anonymous FBI source, for Christ’s sake? Story’s been planted if you ask me. RECAP was deliberately blown up, Sandy. Someone put a bomb in the lab. Gas leak, my ass. We’d just had Health and Safety crawling over the place like nits. There was no gas leak. Trust me, somebody out there wanted to destroy our project and get rid of me and Paul at the same time. Thing is they haven’t entirely succeeded, and the trump card we have is that they don’t know that.’

‘But why? I know RECAP has never been the most popular project in certain quarters, we’ve discussed that often enough. But to blow the place up? To deliberately kill and maim? Who on earth would do that?’

‘Now that, Dr Sandy Jones, is the million-dollar question.’

‘And you have no more idea than I do?’

‘I could speculate. There are plenty of candidates. But no, I haven’t a clue.’

‘OK, so we don’t know who. What about why?’

‘Ah, that’s a different one. I think I may know why.’

‘Yes?’

‘Paul thought he’d cracked it.’

‘What?’

‘Paul told me he’d worked out a scientific formula which explained at last what lay behind our work at RECAP. Our REG results, in the lab, and the field tests. And internationally, of course. All the data we have so patiently correlated. The dice. The pinball. The meditation sessions. Every experiment we’ve ever conducted. Paul believed he had found his way to our journey’s end, or to the beginning of our journey’s end, anyway. He believed he’d discovered what the world has been looking for since the beginning of time. And you know what that is, Sandy, don’t you?’

Jones could barely believe what she was hearing. But she certainly knew the answer to Connie’s question. And she understood at once the enormity of it.

‘The mystery of consciousness,’ she murmured, her voice only just above a whisper. ‘Paul believed he’d solved the mystery of consciousness?’

‘Yep.’

‘But that’s huge. Massive.’

‘Yes, massive.’

Connie’s voice was flat.

‘Do you know exactly what Paul had found out? Do you have his formulae?’

‘No.’

‘He didn’t share his discovery with you? But you two always worked together. You conducted your experiments together, shared your results, correlated your data together. That’s how you’ve always worked.’

‘Not this time. I knew he’d been using nanotechnology almost obsessively recently. He’d believed for some time that was how the next step forwards would be achieved.’

Jones nodded. Nanotechnology. Atom-sized mechanics.

‘I remember that Paul was just introducing the concept of nanotechnology into RECAP in my day,’ she said. ‘RECAP and the GCP have always focused primarily on how mind power can change the physical, haven’t they? The level at which the mind can control and operate machines. And if you work in the area of nanotechnology everything is microscopic and any mental intention required is therefore much smaller. That’s the theory, anyway. Paul always said we needed to imagine a microscopic coffee pot, and how little physical effort would be required to induce it to pour.’

Connie smiled.

‘But he didn’t go into any more detail with you?’ Jones persisted.

‘No.’

‘I wonder why not.’

‘He told me he wanted to dot every “i” and cross every “t”. Even before letting me see. He stumbled across it initially, you see, whatever it was...’

Connie’s voice trailed off. Jones suspected she had momentarily moved away from the horrific events of the last couple of days. She’d gone to another place, a place of discovery, of inspired scientific exploration, a place where, to bastardize the words of Arthur C. Clarke, what seemed at first to be magic ultimately became explained as fact, and successive mysteries of the world were systematically explored and sometimes, just sometimes, revealed for what they really were.

‘Is that all Paul said?’ Jones asked.

Connie seemed to almost physically shake herself back to the present.

‘Well, yes. I know he had long since come to the conclusion, as indeed had I, from the work we have done over the years, that the power of human consciousness is much greater than even we had thought initially, and that it is just waiting inside us to be properly developed. Our experiments with REGs all over the world have surely proved irrefutably that global consciousness does exist, that the human race is capable of at least a certain level of shared understanding between minds, not to mention shared communication. You came to believe in that too, Sandy, didn’t you? Even if you have been trying to deny it, or at least ignore it, for the last twenty years and more.’

She paused. Sandy smiled wryly and nodded.

‘But it was the means of explaining it, the proof, the inarguable proof, that Paul claimed he had finally discovered,’ Connie continued.

She sighed and took another cigarette from the packet on the table in front of her.

‘Paul’s thinking, and mine, of course, was that in the early twenty-first century we were working towards discovering something which would seem just as extraordinary, and indeed as shocking, as when it was learned at the dawn of the twentieth century that matter and energy were essentially the same. The laws of quantum physics. The step forwards that we were heading towards, was that mind and matter are also essentially the same.’

‘But you’ve always talked about it just as a remarkable journey, Connie,’ said Jones. ‘You’ve never thought you were even close to that end, have you?’

‘Well, not really. And, as you know, I’ve always been happy with just continuing the journey. Paul wanted an end result. He wanted to prove to the world that we weren’t all barmy at RECAP. Me? I accepted my barmy label long ago. Anyway, I’d noticed that Paul had been behaving differently for several weeks. Out of character. He seemed tense and wound-up all the time. Excited too. I kept pestering him. Finally he told me he believed he’d found the answer, that he was on the verge of explaining what consciousness is, and how it functions. But he asked me to be patient.’

‘Well, if you had such trouble getting him to share that much, it’s not very likely that he told anyone else, is it?’

‘I suppose not. Not before me, anyway. He was planning to go public, of course, in due course...’

‘So again, why would anyone deliberately sabotage the lab?’

‘Maybe somebody else did know. There are other ways of finding out things. Computers, the Internet, email contact, have led to the biggest leakages of information in the history of the world.’

‘Perhaps.’ Jones paused to think for a few seconds. ‘This does seem far-fetched, Connie, I have to say that. But even if the news of Paul’s alleged discovery had fallen into the wrong hands, come to the attention of somebody powerful who also grasped the practical implications, I still don’t necessarily see the connection between that and RECAP being sabotaged. I mean, the lab was destroyed and everything in it. I can understand all sorts of powerful people wanting to get their hands on such a ground-breaking discovery, but not wanting to destroy it.’

‘Ah, but what if they’d managed to get hold of Paul’s data already? What if they just didn’t want anyone else to have the chance to study it and learn from it?’

‘Christ, Connie, you really are going into outlandish territory, you know?’

‘Sandy, Paul and I thought the lab had been broken into the night before the explosion.’

‘Oh my God. Presumably that’s on record then? I mean, you must have reported it to security, if not to the police.’

‘No. We weren’t sure. When we arrived in the morning we couldn’t unlock the door at first. Then something seemed to snap, and it opened. It turned out the lock was broken. Paul studied engineering as a young man. He was very good with anything mechanical, as you know. He built the first REG himself. He was convinced the lock had been tampered with. However, we checked out the lab and nothing seemed to be touched. Certainly nothing was missing. So we didn’t report it. We barely had time actually. We arrived about eight as usual and the bomb went off half an hour later. In any case, the powers that be have always thought us quite dotty enough without our reporting non-existent burglaries.’

‘OK, so that’s when a bomb could have been planted. With a timer set for early the next morning, or perhaps radio activated.’

‘Indeed, yes.’

‘And you think that your computer system could have been hacked? Paul’s theory copied?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t have been easy. The one thing we did have at RECAP was sophisticated user protection software, and everything was password protected. We’ve always been meticulous about that in order to be able to guarantee the integrity of our experiments. But I suppose some hot shot IT geek could have done it.’

‘Ummm.’

‘In any case, Sandy, don’t forget Paul’s reputation. He believed he’d made an extraordinary breakthrough, and he was a quite brilliant scientist. It’s possible that the wrong people simply found that out, and knew enough to want us stopped. It could all be that simple.’

‘Even without having possession of his paper?’

‘You know what I’ve always believed, Sandy. I believe the world is run by people who don’t want it changed. And nothing, absolutely nothing would change the world more than an explanation of global consciousness. Imagine the international importance of people from different nations being intrinsically linked, through the power of their consciousness and nothing more. For a start the control of national governments over their own people could shrink to insignificance.’

Jones was thoughtful.

‘Paul used to liken the power of consciousness to having possession of an exotic spy satellite which is capable of miracles, like seeing through buildings. It doesn’t always work, but it works enough to be useful.’

‘More than useful,’ said Connie. ‘Powerful beyond our dreams.’

‘That’s why I still think any government would rather have that power than destroy it. It’s a riddle, Connie. And, by the way, you still haven’t explained why you got in touch with me before the explosion. I knew you wanted help, but RECAP had always muddled along all right without any help from anyone.’

‘Well, I wanted your influence more than anything. Your power, I suppose. You are a figure of some acclaim not only in the academic world, but also in the media, in the UK anyway. We thought if we had you on our side, if you were prepared to publicly support us, we might look a bit better to the outside world. Not so much like nutters’ corner. As I told you on the phone, we believed we were under threat, that there were people in high places who wanted us closed down once and for all. Lots of things, apparently unconnected, had started to happen, long before the break-in and the explosion. Both Paul and I, quite out of the blue, were being investigated by the Internal Revenue, for a start.’

‘You two? For God’s sake.’

‘I know. And my finances are, or rather were, totally tied up with RECAP. Any kind of threat to me was a direct threat to our work. I wasn’t all that worried by it, not really, because I couldn’t think they had anything on me. I mean, do I have a fortune salted away?’

‘No. But your bookkeeping’s never been all that, has it, Con? Nor Paul’s, as far as I remember. Couldn’t the Revenue’s attentions just have been attracted by bad accounting?’

‘Not for them to come in as heavy as they did. Anyway, there were other things. All niggles really. Paul and I suddenly kept getting tickets for speeding offences allegedly picked up on cameras. And of course the university authorities started bugging us, laying down the law about stuff, introducing rules and regulations, and that in itself was odd. After all they’d spent the best part of the previous forty-something years more or less trying to pretend RECAP didn’t exist. Suddenly we were being asked to log in and log out, told we couldn’t use the lab in the evenings after standard office hours, asked for an inventory of our fixtures and fittings...’

Jones couldn’t stop himself laughing at that. ‘Hope you gave them a list of the cuddly toys, names, manufacturers, descriptions...’

‘That’s what Paul said. Well, we were both cool about it to begin with. But they kept coming at us all ways. We were told we were going to have to move out of the lab we’d been in for so long, and into a smaller work space.’ She paused. ‘There were also rumours that we were going to be the subject of a major FBI investigation.’

Jones knew enough not to react too strongly to that.

‘Well, they’ve investigated before, haven’t they? And other government bodies. Way back in the 1980s, the US army initiated a report on psi. And there have been a succession of government sponsored scientific review committees set up to examine the evidence for psi effects, and the implications for national security, right?’

‘Yes. But nobody at that kind of level has contacted us recently. Actually, we’ve had no official contact with the CIA, the FBI or any government body whatsoever for years.’

‘We’re heading towards a conspiracy theory, aren’t we, Connie? I can feel it coming.’

‘Of course. That explosion wasn’t an accident, nor a random terror attack. Our location was too obscure, for a start.’

‘So again who?’

Connie shrugged.

‘The possibilities are endless. The US establishment has always been suspicious of us. It’s hard to believe the government blew us up, although you never know, but I reckon some maverick government agency might well have done. Governments throughout the world are confused by us. Military and intelligence organizations here in the US, and in many other countries, have used psi consistently over the years, as have various police forces internationally, even though they almost always deny it. Think of the effect on crime and policing if we could take what we do a step forwards, and not only enhance our abilities to use psychic forces in such work, but also be able to explain exactly what these forces are and how they function. Just imagine, Sandy?’

‘I first thought about that twenty-five years ago, Connie.’

She nodded. ‘Of course you did. You were always the one with the practical bent. Well, we’ve moved on since then. And that is frightening for so many. There’s a widespread belief, amongst those who hold the balance of power in this world, that there are some things we shouldn’t be allowed to find out about. All forms of organized religion, including the extremists, obviously, hate RECAP. Then there’s international business chiefs, media moguls, and so on. Almost anyone who relies on the furtherance of the status quo. Man’s mind interconnecting across the world, and governing the machines we use just by the power of thought, a scary concept for all of these. Political leaders and those in charge of security across the world, remain the major threat, in my opinion. But, I wonder how far any of these might go to stop the secret of global consciousness being discovered?’

‘Or if it was, they would want it just for themselves, wouldn’t they?’

Connie nodded again. ‘It could make the atom bomb look like a pretty pathetic weapon, by comparison. And just consider the scientists who invented the atom bomb. Robert Oppenheimer was a genius, but he never came close to realizing the full extent of the effect splitting the atom would have until it was too late. Then he said, “I am become death. The shatterer of worlds.”’

‘I remember. It’s a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, the words of Krishna, actually. And, as a matter of fact, the closest Indian philosophy ever gets to the nature of consciousness.’

‘Whatever, you annoyingly clever person. It’s the cross Oppenheimer had to bear. And the discovery Paul believed he had made could shatter worlds, no doubt about it... Look, I need your help more than ever, Sandy. I need your brain. You do have the gift you know, far more than any of the rest of us, Paul, Ed, or me.’

Jones looked down at the floor.

‘It’s all right,’ continued Connie. ‘I know it was never a gift that you wanted. From the beginning, you were intrigued, captivated even, but I think a half of you always wished that wasn’t so.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Jones protested mildly.

Connie smiled.

‘If anyone has a chance of getting to the bottom of this mystery, and of making it possible for me to return to Princeton and somehow rebuild RECAP, and continue with what must surely have been Paul’s greatest work, it’s you, Sandy,’ she said.

‘I’m flattered,’ replied Jones.

Connie raised her eyebrows in feigned surprise. ‘You shouldn’t attempt modesty, Sandy. You never did do it well.’

‘Fair comment,’ said Jones mildly.

Eleven

Jones concentrated hard on working out a plan.

‘Look Connie, surely Paul would have kept records, not just at the lab, but elsewhere, wouldn’t he?’

‘Yes, undoubtedly. On his laptop, and possibly his computer at home. That’s partly why I went back to Princeton the night you were arrested. I went to Paul’s house first, but it was guarded by armed police. There were people in those white suits all over the place like flies. Forensics officers, I assumed. Every so often they’d come out carrying something wrapped in polythene. I saw someone bringing Paul’s desktop computer out. And that’s what I’d wanted to get at.’

‘So if the police, the security forces, whoever, already have the computer from Paul’s house, they’ll already have gone through it with a toothcomb I should imagine.’

‘Presumably.’

‘Connie, did Paul have his laptop with him on the day of the explosion? Can you remember?’

‘No, Sandy. I don’t remember. He usually did. I can picture him carrying it. But I can’t be sure. I’ve wracked my brains.’

‘Is there anyone else Paul might have talked to, given a copy to even?’

‘If he’d trusted anyone with a copy, I feel pretty sure it would have been me. After Gilda died Paul cut himself off from the world, even more than ever. There was nothing and nobody in his life anymore, apart from his work. Except, well, there was always Ed, of course.’

‘So could he know more than you?’

‘I doubt it. But he might know something different to me, I suppose. He might have a piece of the jigsaw that I don’t.’

‘Well then, we should seek Ed out again, shouldn’t we?’

‘Whaddya mean we? I’m dead, remember?’

Sandy grinned. ‘Of course. You’re dead and I’ve been as near as dammit deported.’

‘Only as near as dammit. The police and whoever the hell else it was who gave you a hard time in Princeton had no power to deport you. You’ve not committed a crime. America is still a free country. Loosely speaking.’

‘Yeah, very loosely speaking. They can still scare the pants off me though. That’s why I was planning to go home tonight. I’m booked on a flight—’

‘You can’t go, Sandy,’ Connie interrupted. ‘You really can’t walk away from this. I need you. RECAP needs you. The legacy of Paul’s work needs you.’

Jones sighed.

‘You could at least call Ed,’ Connie encouraged.

‘What if his call records are being checked? Or the phone bugged, even?’

‘And you accused me of getting carried away with conspiracy theories?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Look, we seem to have an enemy. We do not know for certain who that enemy is, but we believe there are at least some people involved who are part of the very fabric of this country, and quite possibly at the highest level. We don’t know what information they have access to, but we suspect it may be extensive.’

Connie smiled. ‘I like it that you’re saying “we”, Sandy. You’re not going home then?’

Jones grunted. ‘I suppose not. Not today anyway. I must be mad.’

‘You and me both then, but I’m more used to the label. They don’t have CCTV in private cars yet. Marion could drive you back to Princeton.’

‘Simple as that, eh? Well, if Marion’s going to drive me why doesn’t she do the entire thing? Go and see Ed. Talk to him. Pick his brains.’

‘Because she’s not a scientist. It has to be you, you’re the only person who might be able to recognize that missing piece of the jigsaw. Apart from me, of course. And I’m dead. In any case, you’re one of the few people Ed would trust.’

‘Really? You mightn’t say that if you’d witnessed his recent reaction to me.’

‘Ah. He would still trust you, though. With something as important as this anyway.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. But what if his flat is being watched?’

‘How about this. Marion calls on him and sets up a meeting with you. Somewhere anonymous. Marion’s the widow of a former university dean, for goodness sake. No reason why she shouldn’t call on Ed.’

Jones thought for a minute.

‘I’m British and high profile,’ she said. ‘They’ll bully me, but I don’t think they’ll harm me. You know what, if Marion gets involved, apart from her maybe being put in danger too, her involvement could more easily lead to you, I reckon. Then you could really die.’

Connie curled her legs up onto the sofa and narrowed her eyes.

‘I’m a cat,’ she said. ‘I’ve got nine lives.’

‘Yeah, and you’ve just used eight of them, all in one go.’

Jones glanced towards Marion.

‘Look, can I borrow your car?’ she asked.

‘Of course you can. But don’t you think you might be underestimating how dangerous this could be for you, too? If you got picked up again, it mightn’t be as simple as you think.’

‘Everything seems dangerous right now,’ Jones responded. ‘I have one small advantage — I know Princeton like the back of my hand. I think I can contact Ed without being spotted.’

‘Really?’ Marion sounded doubtful.

Connie touched her hand.

‘How long have you two been together, anyway?’ Jones asked suddenly.

‘It depends upon what you mean by together. In our eyes it’s coming up twenty-three years.’

‘Jesus,’ said Jones. ‘So you were an item back when I was at Princeton. How the devil did you manage to keep it a secret?’

‘The way to keep a secret is to tell no one, and that really means no one.’

Connie was still looking at Marion.

‘It hasn’t always been easy,’ she said. ‘But it’s sure been worth it.’

‘Didn’t you ever want to say to hell with it? You of all people, Connie. When have you ever cared a jot about convention, about what other people think?’

‘That wasn’t it, Sandy. You don’t find happiness by walking over other people’s souls, you know.’

‘What?’

Marion interrupted them.

‘Do you remember my husband, Sandy?’

‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘And how well would you say you knew him?’

‘I didn’t know him at all.’

‘Yet you met him many times? Socialized with him sometimes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes. Well that’s pretty much how it was for me, really. Bernard lived and breathed Princeton. I never doubted that he loved me, and loved our children. He was never unkind. He provided and cared for his family. But well, he was twenty years older than me, of course, and he had different values. He had his job, as dean, and mine was to look after the children and our home. In a funny sort of way, we were never really that close.

‘Then, when I started to get to know Connie, well there was so much more. I don’t think I realized what was happening at first. I had never been with a woman before. But in any case, that was irrelevant. Connie’s gender was irrelevant. I just knew she was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with...’

Marion leaned over and refilled Jones’s mug with more coffee.

‘But neither Connie nor I had any wish to hurt Bernard,’ she continued. ‘He didn’t deserve that, really he didn’t. There were young children to consider, and also his position as dean which meant so much to him. So Connie and I decided that our commitment to each other would be a private thing, that we would have our own secret life.’

‘But now? I mean, Bernard died years ago. Your relationship isn’t still a secret, is it?’

‘An open one,’ said Connie. ‘We have friends who know, of course, the remains of what family I have certainly know, and Marion’s children must know now, but—’

‘But they’re like their father — or rather the oldest one is,’ interrupted Marion. ‘Sometimes I think Thomas is more conservative than Bernard ever was. Even in this day and age he couldn’t cope at all with having a mother who is a dyke. Or, rather, a mother who is publicly known to be a dyke. I think he just pretends it isn’t happening. He prefers to think of Connie and me as friends. We’re old ladies, Sandy. I’m sixty-one, and Connie hits sixty-five next year. Well, in the eyes of the world we are pretty old, even if we don’t feel it. But we never expected what the younger generation expects. We still don’t expect to get everything that we want. And we’re not on a crusade. As long as we can be together that’s all we care about.’

‘Two more questions,’ said Jones, changing the subject only slightly. ‘Why does the Dominator call Marion Aunt M? And if he’s so rich why does he drive a yellow cab round New York?’

Connie shrugged. ‘He’s not that rich. Bought his Medallion when he started wrestling so he had a day job. Got himself his own cab. Nowadays he just likes to keep his hand in, I guess. And he calls Marion Aunt M because she took him on as a foster kid when he was a mad bad fifteen-year-old from the Bronx and nobody else would have him. She sorted him out like you wouldn’t believe. Dom was never going to be a college kid, but he sure as hell got his life together thanks to Marion.’

‘Yeah, now he’s a mad bad thirty-five-year-old,’ said Marion, the pride in her voice belying her words.

‘I noticed,’ responded Jones.

‘Right, so now you have our story, Sandy,’ said Connie, smiling. ‘Shall we get back to the matter in hand.’

Jones called Soho House, authorized them to take payment from her credit card, and told them a friend would be along to pick up her bag. Marion had agreed to run the errand. Nobody knew who she was, and if they used Dom it was just remotely possible that someone might be watching, and he might be recognized from his wrestling days, or even just as the cabby who’d picked up Jones outside the House that morning.

Jones left the apartment shortly after six p.m. She preferred to arrive in Princeton under cover of darkness, and in any case the timing suited her plan. First she sought out a cashpoint in central Manhattan. She then took out the maximum cash she could. Even if her bank records were checked all that could be learned was that she was still in Manhattan. That wouldn’t get anyone anywhere much. And she would be able to avoid leaving a trail to Princeton by not using credit cards at gas stations and so on.

Marion’s choice of car was one of the most common in America. The unassuming saloon coasted along comfortably enough but appeared to have absolutely no acceleration. Pulling sharply onto Route One, the main freeway heading for the university town, Jones actually thought the box-like vehicle was going to tip over.

The journey, sticking strictly to all speed limits, took almost two hours, including a stop for fuel and a visit to an electronics store, where Jones bought three untraceable pre-paid phones. Burners. One for her, one for Connie, and one for Marion. She ultimately coasted into Princeton just before eight thirty p.m.

She drove straight to Ed’s apartment block, and parked a little way down the street, tucking in behind another vehicle. She hoped not to be noticed by anyone else who might be watching the building, whilst at the same time having a reasonable view of any comings and goings.

Her intent was to approach Ed without being seen. And her plan was a simple one.

Ed had been a creature of habit, already a man of routine, when she had known him. He’d told her, when she had so spontaneously paid him that not entirely successful visit, that he walked his dog every evening. She didn’t know when exactly, except that it would be some time after nine — he had said nine was too early — and almost certainly well before midnight. Ed had never been a night owl. She just hoped he was still the same person, and that, sooner or later, he would step out into the street with Jasper the little black terrier.

She hunkered down to wait. It was a lovely starlit night. And quiet. Several vehicles passed, two or three turning off the main drag into driveways and parking areas, just one pulling out. A woman strolled by walking a Labrador. That was all.

Then just before ten p.m. her patience was rewarded. Out stepped Ed, with Jasper on a lead. He turned right, walking away from Jones. She waited until he disappeared from sight after turning right at the next junction, then she started her engine and followed, drawing the car to a halt once she was alongside him, and opening the window.

‘Get in, please,’ she instructed.

‘What the fuck?’ said Ed.

‘Please, we need to talk. But not here. It’s possible you may be under surveillance. Please get in.’

For a moment she thought he was going to walk away. But he didn’t. He obediently climbed into the passenger seat, with Jasper jumping swiftly onto his lap.

Jones pulled away at once.

‘Where the fuck are we going?’ asked Ed.

‘Somewhere away from here, with no CCTV,’ replied Jones.

‘Why?’

‘I told you, we have to talk.’

‘Yes? So what is wrong with the telephone, may I ask? Followed by a normal house call perhaps?’

‘I just said. You may be under surveillance. Your phone could be bugged.’

‘Sandy, for Chrissake. What on earth makes you think anyone is likely to be following me?’

‘Look, I don’t think there’s much doubt that the RECAP lab was blown up, deliberately—’

‘You don’t think?’ Ed interrupted. ‘Since when were you any sort of forensics expert? You’ve been interviewed by the police, for a very good reason, and released, like any other suspects there may have been. You’ve seen the news reports, haven’t you? They say it’s a gas explosion.’

Jones spotted an unlit lay-by ahead and pulled in. She stopped the car and turned to face Ed.

‘No they don’t,’ she replied. ‘The New York Post said the explosion was caused by a gas leak, and the authorities have yet to confirm or deny it. But I don’t believe the blast was caused by gas, and, you know what, I don’t think you do, either. I think you’ve got the same gut instinct about this thing that I have.’

‘Do you really have any idea what I think about anything?’

‘I used to have.’

‘That was a very long time ago.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

Jones paused. She had to pick her words carefully. She mustn’t tell Ed that Connie was still alive. The pair of them and Marion had agreed that would be far too risky.

‘Look, I actually talked enough to Connie on the phone, when she called me a few days before the explosion, to realize how worried she was,’ Jones improvised. ‘She said that she thought the lab, and she and Paul in particular, were being targeted in some way.’

She told Ed then about the Internal Revenue checks, the speeding tickets, the threats to the financial future of RECAP, and all the other things Connie had related to her. Including the sudden and intrusive attentions of the state Health and Safety department.

While she was speaking she became aware of Ed’s attitude changing, just a little.

‘You didn’t know about any of that?’ she ventured.

‘No, I didn’t. Why didn’t you tell me the other night?’

‘You didn’t give me much chance,’ said Jones. She actually hadn’t known it all then, of course.

Ed didn’t respond.

‘What are you thinking?’ Jones ventured.

‘Look Sandy, it’s been no secret for years that half the academic establishment, what am I saying, more like ninety-nine per cent of the academic establishment, would like to have seen RECAP closed down,’ Ed said eventually. ‘That doesn’t mean that anyone was going to actually blow the place up, for God’s sake.’

‘No. But, and this is what I wanted to see you about, is it possible after all these years, all these series of experiments, that the RECAP team was on the brink of discovering something the establishment couldn’t cope with. Wanted to destroy?’

‘For God’s sake, Sandy. Conspiracy theories are one thing but—’

‘People have died, Ed,’ she interrupted. ‘Including those you and I loved...’

She was taking poetic licence there, knowing as she did that Connie was still alive. Ed was quickly on to her anyway.

‘People you and I loved? You’ve got a damned cheek, Sandy. You’ve barely been near any of us for more than two decades.’

‘I didn’t think you wanted me near,’ she said, keeping her voice calm. Ed’s comment was fair enough, after all.

‘Maybe not,’ he replied. ‘But they did. Paul and Connie. Particularly Connie.’

‘Yes, well perhaps what I’m trying to do here is honour a debt of love. I’m trying to repay something.’

He sighed. Short, sharp, impatient.

‘What do you want from me, Sandy?’

‘I want to find out if you know anything which could throw light on all of this...’

‘Don’t you think I would have told you straight away.’

Jones repeated Connie’s words.

‘You may have a piece of the jigsaw in your possession, and because it’s just one piece of many, not even realize it.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Look Ed, you and Paul were close, weren’t you?’

He turned away.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, Connie told me in our phone conversation that Paul had indicated that he’d made progress, real progress’ — she paused for dramatic effect — ‘that he may have brought all those years of work to a final conclusion.’

‘So?’ muttered Ed.

Jones did a double take.

‘You knew that?’ she queried.

‘Yes. That’s what he thought, anyway. He told me that much. He wasn’t sure though, he was still working on his theory, finalizing it, and that is why he didn’t want to go public, or even to tell me or Connie exactly what his findings were.’

So Connie had been right. Ed at least knew something — and quite probably more than anyone except Connie.

‘Did you believe him?’

He turned back to face her, but she couldn’t see his features, just the dark shape of him.

‘Did I believe Paul? Do you remember who you are talking about, Sandy? Of course I believed Paul. He was at the top of his field. Had been for decades. He didn’t make mistakes. Not in his work. And he didn’t make statements he couldn’t back up.’

Jones nodded. That was true enough. And it was pretty much the way the entire academic world, and anyone else who had knowledge of Paul Ruders, would regard the man.

‘But you’d no idea exactly what he’d discovered?’ she persisted.

‘He believed he may have found out why all the sometimes quite inexplicable data we had correlated over the years had occurred. Why REGs behaved the way they did, why the behaviour of machines, according to the results of detailed scientific experimentation, really could be affected and sometimes controlled by the power of the human mind.’

For a few seconds Ed sounded just like Connie: evangelical.

‘The secret of consciousness?’ Jones prompted.

‘Maybe. All those years of the GCP, had surely proved beyond any reasonable doubt, to anyone with a mind that wasn’t totally closed, that global consciousness does exist. And yes, Paul finally believed that he had discovered what it really is. How it works. I don’t know how you put that exactly, but...’

His voice tailed off.

‘But, if he’d succeeded, dammit, if he’d halfways succeeded, then in the early part of this millennium we would have the most important scientific discovery since the beginning of the last, since Einstein’s theory of relativity, and since the development of quantum physics,’ said Jones, paraphrasing the way Connie had explained it to her. ‘Maybe greater. I think greater, don’t you?’

‘Maybe.’

Jones was aware that Ed was sitting very still.

‘And now we’ll never know,’ he said quietly. ‘Paul is dead. He won’t be able to tell us. He won’t be able to offer the world what could have been its greatest ever gift. And Connie, oh Connie...’

Ed seemed unable to finish what he was trying to say. Jones thought she could just see his shoulders begin to heave. She reached out a hand and touched his cheek.

‘Don’t be upset, dear Ed,’ she murmured.

Ed knocked her hand away at once.

‘Don’t be upset? You stupid woman. Don’t you realize my whole world has just exploded — literally? I’ve lost the only people left who really cared for me. Apart from my brother, I suppose...’

‘I’m sorry...’

‘You’re always sorry.’

‘I know.’

Ed was audibly sobbing now.

‘You know what, I’m not sure how much I care about RECAP any more. Connie is the greatest loss, the most awful loss to me. I loved her best. You see. From the beginning... After you...’

Jones hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t expected Ed to break down. She certainly hadn’t expected him to mention his feelings for her. She didn’t know quite what to do. His sobbing seemed out of control. Maybe he’d been holding it all in until now. Cautiously she reached out to him again. This time he did not pull away from her, instead moving closer and continuing to sob into her shoulder. It was heartbreaking. She couldn’t let it go on. She had to tell him. She just had to.

‘Ed listen, Connie’s alive,’ she blurted out. ‘She escaped.’

He stopped sobbing at once and immediately pulled away from her.

‘She’s a-alive?’ he stumbled. ‘Oh my God, she’s alive!’

She told him all of it then, everything that she had promised Connie and Marion she wouldn’t tell him or anyone else. And as she spoke she told herself that if she couldn’t trust Ed MacEntee, she couldn’t trust anyone.

When she had finished Ed had just one question.

‘When can I see her, when can I see Connie?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t supposed to tell you she’d survived. For your sake as well as hers. I’ll have to pick my moment to confess—’

‘You really think she’s still in danger, don’t you?’ Ed interrupted suddenly.

‘Yes. We all do. And we think if we had possession of Paul’s thesis we could put a stop to it all. Actually, Connie and I both hoped that he may even have given you a copy of his work, hard copy, USB memory stick, whatever...’

‘Why would he? He had all the normal backup. He would have kept copies himself, on different devices. He wasn’t expecting to be blown up, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’ Jones paused. ‘Paul was a meticulous man. In his work, that is. Though you wouldn’t think it from the way he looked — nor the behaviour he allowed from his dogs.’

She smiled. She thought Ed might be smiling too, but she couldn’t see.

‘Thing is,’ Jones continued, ‘Connie saw the police take Paul’s home computer away. So they, the FBI, the CIA, people in government, any of those could well have a copy now of all his work.’

‘I doubt they’d understand it.’

‘Maybe not. But maybe they don’t need to understand. They just don’t want anybody else to. After all, to understand the meaning of consciousness, for people to be able to communicate in that way, would upset the status quo more than anything else discovered in the name of progress that you could possibly imagine.’

‘Isn’t that a bit fanciful, Sandy?’

‘Is it? Well, the whole concept of RECAP is fanciful, isn’t it. But do you really think it is likely to have been a coincidence that the RECAP lab exploded and Paul was killed just as he was on the brink of going public with a literally earth-shattering discovery?’

‘I don’t know.’

Jones took from her bag a piece of paper, on which she had written the number of her new burner phone, and handed it to Ed.

‘Look, call me tomorrow, on this phone, it’s safe,’ she said. ‘Or any time if you can think of anything that might help. We need to protect Connie as well as Paul’s thesis.’

‘OK,’ said Ed. ‘I certainly can’t think of anything right now. Oh, except... I do have a pal in the police. I could sound him out, if you like. He might at least tell me if the cops really believe the gas explosion theory.’

‘Well, that would be something.’

‘I’ll call you then.’

‘Good, but please don’t use your cell or your home line. Call from a pay phone, and not one too near your apartment, either. Or get yourself a pay-as-you-go. Promise?’

‘Are you sure all this subterfuge is really necessary, Sandy?’

‘I’m sure we shouldn’t take unnecessary risks.’

‘OK. OK. I promise,’ Ed replied.

Jones dropped him off where she had picked him up. Ed walked slowly home around the corner, allowing Jasper some more time for a sniff around and a wee or two.

The man sitting in a black sedan with tinted windows, parked across the street from Ed’s apartment building, watched their arrival. He’d seen them leave about thirty-five minutes previously, on what he knew to be their regular nightly walk. They had been a little longer than usual, but it was a beautiful night.

As Sandy Jones had hoped, the man had taken no notice of her in her commonplace saloon car.

Indeed, as soon as Ed and Jasper had disappeared around the corner he’d taken off down the road in the opposite direction heading for a nearby Mexican takeaway. He didn’t even see Jones pull out. This was not the first time he’d kept watch on Ed MacEntee, mainly to monitor any visitors he might have. And the man was already in the habit of fetching himself some supper during the habitual dog walk. After all, Ed couldn’t receive any visitors if he were out with the dog, could he, the man reasoned. He was perhaps not the cleverest or most diligent of surveillance personnel.

He kept an eye on Ed and Jasper until they’d entered the building, but was actually concentrating rather more on the beef and bean burrito with chilli sauce he had acquired.

Then his cell phone rang. He answered at once.

‘Of course, Mr Johnson,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it straight away.’

He took a final enormous bite of his spicy Mexican sandwich before reaching into the back of the car for an anorak which he pulled on over the black suit, white shirt and black tie he always wore. Glancing longingly at the juicy burrito, now abandoned on the passenger seat, he climbed out of the car, tugging up the hood of his anorak as he crossed the road.

Chilli and garlic sauce dribbled from the corners of his mouth down over his chin. He wiped the stuff away with the back of one hand, as he opened the white painted gate to the apartment block and made his way up the path to the front door.

Twelve

It was well after midnight when Jones arrived back at Dom’s loft. She used the remote control Marion and Connie had given her to operate the doors of the garage. As she switched off the car engine the small door at the back opened and there stood Connie.

‘I thought you’d be in bed by now,’ said Jones.

‘You have to be joking,’ said Connie, as she led the way upstairs.

Marion was sitting on one of the big leather sofas. She gestured for Jones to sit next to her, and poured her a glass of wine from the bottle on the low table in front of them.

‘Right, Sandy, tell us all,’ commanded Connie, as she sat on the other sofa.

‘I’m afraid there’s not a great deal to tell,’ Jones began, nonetheless proceeding to give a fairly full account of her meeting with Ed, without dwelling too much on how upset the man had been. Neither did she mention her indiscretion regarding Connie, which she was already beginning to regret.

‘So unfortunately it seems Ed has little to offer, apart from the vague promise of approaching his police department chum,’ she concluded. ‘Paul had indeed told him about his final thesis, and the remarkable conclusions he had drawn, but Ed certainly doesn’t have a copy of any of Paul’s work. I suppose it was always a long shot...’

Connie and Marion were clearly disappointed — as indeed Jones had been.

There seemed to be little more to say or do that night. The three women finished the open bottle of wine and then retired to bed. The sofa had already been made up for Jones, and her shoulder bag, collected from Soho House by Marion, as promised, stood on the floor alongside. Jones still felt jet lagged and tired, unusually so for her. She supposed stress probably had a lot to do with that. She climbed gratefully beneath the covers, and in spite of her abiding anxiety, fell asleep almost at once.

However, all too soon she was woken by the sound of a spirited rendition of the cancan. She opened her eyes, lying bewildered for just a moment, while struggling to remember where the heck she was and what the heck was going on. She felt as if she’d only been asleep for five minutes. Eventually she realized that the cancan music was the somewhat inappropriate ringing tone plumbed into her burner phone. She struggled onto an elbow, registering as she did so that daylight had arrived, and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was just after seven thirty a.m.

She picked up the phone and squinted at it, bleary eyed. She couldn’t even read the number which had appeared in the display panel. Was it safe to answer? Surely it had to be safe. Nobody could have traced the phone to her that quickly, if indeed they ever could. And only Ed had the number. It must be him calling. It was him.

‘Hi Sandy, how are you?’ he began.

‘Oh, never better,’ she responded ironically. ‘Not quite awake, actually...’

‘Sorry if I woke you. I just wanted to make sure you’d got back to New York OK, and to check that you and Connie were all right.’

Ed sounded cheery. Surprisingly cheery, Jones thought, considering the state he’d been in the previous evening.

‘All’s well,’ she responded obliquely. ‘Don’t know quite what to do next, though.’

‘Maybe you don’t need to do anything.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have you seen the news yet this morning?’

‘No.’

Instinctively Jones looked about her for the remote control to the TV.

‘The police have confirmed that the explosion was caused by a bomb, but they’re blaming animal rights protestors.’

‘They’re doing what?’

Jones tried to clear her head. She wasn’t fully functioning yet.

‘It’s a long story,’ Ed continued. ‘Tune in to a news channel and then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Point is, RECAP wasn’t the target. That seems almost certain.’

‘Well, maybe...’

‘This is an official police statement released to the media, Sandy. Not a tabloid exclusive. And it makes sense. I did think last night that you and Connie were getting a bit carried away with your conspiracy theory, you know.’

‘Perhaps,’ Jones muttered vaguely, aware that her voice sounded hoarse.

‘I also think Connie should tell the authorities exactly what happened and come home to Princeton, I really do. Look, can I speak to her?’

‘Uh no, not yet.’

Jones really wished she’d kept her mouth shut about Connie. Meanwhile she decided to lie. She didn’t have a lot of choice.

‘She was asleep when I got back. I haven’t had a chance yet to tell her you know she’s alive.’

‘Ummm.’

She thought Ed was about to challenge her. He didn’t. Instead he continued with another near instruction.

‘All right. But you can fly home to England now.’

Jones was confused. She felt uneasy. Why was Ed saying this?

‘I, uh, I’m not sure—’ she began hesitantly.

‘There’s no reason for you not to,’ Ed interrupted. ‘I really believe that. After all, you’ve never had any evidence to back up any of what you said last night, have you? Just all that stuff from Connie about the Internal Revenue and the sprinklers, and strangers lurking in shadows. Connie can be a bit fanciful, you know. I mean, you probably have to be a bit fanciful to have run the RECAP project for all those years.’

She knew Ed was right about Connie. Perhaps he was right about the other stuff too. It probably was all getting to be a bit James Bond, in her head at any rate.

Not for the first time since it had all begun she considered the sheer unreality of events since her arrival in America. Everything had happened so fast, she’d just been swept along on the wave. She’d been running around playing spy games. In the cool light of a New York morning, it suddenly seemed all too likely that Ed was right and the whole thing had been nothing more than a misguided fantasy.

As she yawned and stretched her way to complete wakefulness, Jones also realized suddenly just how much she wanted that to be the case.

She remembered what her mother always said about things looking different in the morning. Yesterday had been a crazy, emotional, roller coaster of a day, beginning with what she had assumed to be a kidnapping through being confronted with a still alive Connie, and ending with her thoroughly unsatisfactory meeting with Ed.

Yesterday, Connie’s conspiracy theory had seemed absolutely real. Today, lying in that quiet double-glazed loft, a peaceful hidden-away space in the heart of one of the busiest and noisiest metropolises in the world, Jones found it hard to believe any of it was real.

There had been crazy moments yesterday when she had almost enjoyed playing spy games, buying burner phones, stalking Ed and surreptitiously meeting up with him. Today she just wanted to go back to being plain old Dr Sandy Jones.

‘Look, I’ll talk it all through with Connie again,’ she said. ‘But she seems so sure...’

‘Of course she’s sure. Have you ever known her be uncertain about anything? Even Paul had moments of doubt about RECAP over the years. Not Connie. She doesn’t do doubt.’

Jones laughed.

‘Look,’ Ed continued. ‘You know I told you about my cop pal? Well, I called him after watching the news. He confirmed the reports absolutely. Says the animal rights angle is rock solid. The police have no doubt now that the bomb was planted by extremists protesting against animal experiments at Princeton...’

‘I didn’t know there were animal experiments going on at Princeton.’

‘No. It’s not widely known, and that’s deliberate, apparently. Hardly surprising when you see what happened once certain people did get to know about it.’

‘I’ll talk to Connie,’ said Jones. ‘Ring me again later. And don’t forget to use a call box.’

‘Yes, sure,’ Ed replied.

Just a little absently, Jones thought.

‘Oh, and Ed,’ she added. ‘The rules haven’t changed. I know it must be tempting, but you really mustn’t tell anyone about Connie yet. OK?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Speak later then.’

She ended the call and switched on the TV.

The new revelations about the explosion had made the lead item on every news channel. The ABC breakfast news report seemed unequivocal.

Well, thought Jones, so that was it. Or was it? asked a small voice buried somewhere in her head. Wasn’t it strange that the RECAP lab, where the bomb had unquestionably been planted, had not been named? But perhaps not, if the bomb’s location really had no significance other than its proximity to the animal research department. Jones reminded herself that conspiracy theories had become almost a mainstay of modern life.

The police statement made perfect sense. Jones knew well enough some of the outrages which had occurred in the UK in the name of animal rights. The body of an elderly woman, whose family bred animals for experimentation, had been stolen from her grave. The destruction of property was common place. Violence directed at those involved was certainly not unknown. And this would be far from the first time that explosives had been used. Most animal activists were uncomfortable with the use of violence leading to loss of human lives. But as with any such movement, there were plenty of extremists prepared to go to almost any lengths for their beliefs.

‘Animal rights activists, eh?’ The voice came from behind Jones. ‘Well, I doubt Connie will be convinced.’

Jones turned to see Marion had come into the living room, and had clearly picked up the gist of the news bulletin.

‘I don’t suppose she will, but I may have to try to make her be convinced,’ said Jones thoughtfully. ‘Ed just called. He’s quite certain now that we, I mean I...’ She stopped herself in mid-sentence. She had nearly let slip that she had told Ed about Connie, and she was still not ready to confess her indiscretion.

‘...That I got it all wrong,’ she continued. ‘That there is no conspiracy. It’s not just the news bulletin. He’s talked to his police contact, who confirmed that the cops are absolutely sure about the animal rights thing.’

‘Really?’ Marion’s voice was quizzical. ‘All the same, I hope he didn’t call on your usual cell phone.’

‘No. Absolutely not. It was the new burner.’

Marion headed for the kitchen area without any further comment. There was suddenly the crash of shattering crockery.

‘Goddamn it to hell,’ said Marion loudly.

‘Problem?’ called Jones.

‘Smashed a mug and a plate, that’s all. Norman will not be pleased. He’s terribly house-proud you know.’

In spite of everything Jones felt the corners of her mouth twitch. The very thought of that muscle-bound man-mountain fussing about his crockery was just too much.

‘And that’s not the worst news,’ continued Marion. ‘I can’t find any coffee. Think we must have drunk it all yesterday. No juice either. And no more food. We finished that for supper last night. Or rather I did.’

Jones was just beginning to realize that she’d woken feeling very hungry indeed, in spite of the burger she’d picked up on her drive back from Princeton. The events of the past few days did not appear to have impeded her appetite.

She also knew how serious the lack of coffee would be for Connie, a caffeine addict, and from the tone of her voice suspected it was much the same for Marion. Given a choice, Jones was not a coffee drinker in the morning.

She walked across the room to join Marion.

‘Norman got any tea?’ she enquired hopefully.

‘Never touches the stuff.’

Jones ran her tongue around her fuzzy mouth. At least she had re-acquired her toothbrush and toilet kit, but only tea would ultimately clear that fuzziness. Let alone clear her head.

‘Right, well why don’t we all go out to breakfast?’

‘Why don’t we all do what?’ enquired Connie, as she emerged from the bedroom.

She was wearing a towelling dressing gown which presumably belonged to their host as it was about five sizes too big. Her abundant red hair formed a kind of fuzzy halo around her face.

‘Go out to breakfast,’ Jones repeated. ‘Why don’t we?’

‘How can I go out to breakfast?’ Connie asked. ‘My face has been plastered over every newspaper and every television news bulletin. I’m not exactly indistinctive. I’d be recognized.’

‘Do you think so?’ responded Jones. ‘I never think people take these things in. In any case you’re supposed to be dead. People only see what they expect to see. You said that yourself yesterday.’

‘It would be an unnecessary risk, Sandy. I’m not hungry, anyway. I feel vaguely sick if you must know. I have done ever since the explosion. All I want is coffee.’

‘There isn’t any,’ said Jones.

‘Look Connie, you should know that Ed just called Sandy, and there’s been a development,’ interjected Marion. ‘It was on the news.’

‘Really?’

Connie glanced questioningly at Jones, who gave a quick summary of both Ed’s phone call and the news bulletin she had just watched.

‘Ed has also spoken to his police contact, who confirmed everything,’ Jones continued. ‘He believes the authorities are being totally straight.’

‘That will be the day,’ countered Connie defiantly. ‘This is America you know. Think Watergate. Think Irangate. Think Bill Clinton. We had a president who even tried to reinvent the definition of the sex act, for God’s sake. And I don’t know where to damned well begin with what’s happening in the present day. The powers that be in this country don’t know how to be straight, Sandy. It isn’t in their genetic make-up.’

Jones smiled in spite of everything.

‘I’m not totally convinced yet either, but I’m not entirely convinced by you either, Connie—’

‘Just look back at the long history of lies the people of this country have been fed, for fuck’s sake,’ interrupted Connie.

Jones held up both hands in a soothing motion.

‘Whoa Connie,’ she said. ‘OK. We should go through it all again. Treat it like lab data. Apply some physics. But you don’t function properly in the mornings without your coffee, and I certainly need my tea. So why don’t Marion and I go out for a quick breakfast, and bring some coffee back, and maybe some other provisions? Then we’ll talk. Huh?’

The sense of urgency Jones had felt yesterday had diminished somewhat overnight, particularly following Ed’s phone call. She just wanted to calm Connie down.

Connie looked at Marion. Marion nodded almost imperceptibly.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Off you go to breakfast. But have you seen the weather?’

Jones glanced out of the window. Autumn had suddenly arrived with a vengeance. The sky, which had been so bright and clear the previous day, was leaden. It was raining heavily, and a small gale appeared to be blowing.

‘Have you got a coat, Sandy?’ asked Connie.

She nodded.

‘Of sorts,’ she said, thinking of the thin grey plastic waterproof she carried with her everywhere, which she had stuffed into a corner of her bag. She fetched it, and her newly acquired burner phone, and her wallet. She left her usual mobile in her bag. In spite of what Ed had said, and her own comments to Connie, she wasn’t quite ready to use it yet. Just in case.

Meanwhile Connie produced an oilskin cape, and helped Marion into it.

‘I don’t want you getting wet through,’ she said solicitously. ‘You know how prone you are to bronchitis. This is my best waterproof, I’m so glad I asked you to get it. When it rains in New York, boy, does it pour. Now fasten the zip to the neck, and pull the hood up before you dare take a step outside.’

Marion obediently zipped up. Then she and Jones made their way down the stairs and into the garage. Marion opened the big door at the front, and the two women peered unenthusiastically out onto the wet grey street. The rain was almost horizontal. New York was in the grip of one of the not-infrequent near-tropical rainstorms which Connie had been referring to.

‘Who’s idea was this anyway?’ Marion asked.

‘Just think about eggs and crispy bacon,’ responded Jones.

Cursing loudly, Marion pulled up the hood of the oilskin, as Connie had directed, and, with one hand, tugged it forwards at the front as far as it would go, while reaching with the other for a big black umbrella leaning against the wall.

She studied the flimsy plastic of Jones’s raincoat without enthusiasm.

‘Well that’s not going to do much to protect you, is it? You’d better cuddle up to me, Sandy, it’s your only hope of keeping dry.’

Jones smiled. She could see why Marion had become Connie’s long-time partner. She put her right arm around Marion’s waist. Marion flipped up the umbrella and they stepped out into the street huddled together. Wind and rain instantly whipped around Jones’s legs, and streams of water began almost at once to run down over the inadequate plastic raincoat further drenching her feet and legs.

‘There’s a diner a couple of blocks away,’ said Marion, raising her voice above the noise of rain and wind. ‘We may have to swim there though.’

Jones found herself laughing easily. She no longer felt so tense. She really was coming around to the notion that Paul’s death and the destruction of the RECAP lab had been nothing more than the tragic accidental consequence of an attack on an unconnected target.

Marion positioned the umbrella in front of them, aiming it at the driving rain, so that it gave their faces and upper bodies at least some protection.

‘I hope you can see where you’re going,’ Jones shouted. ‘Because I can’t see a damned thing.’

‘What about your inner consciousness, Sandy?’ Marion asked. ‘You were a RECAP kid. Can’t you use your extra sensory perception in order to guide us?’

Sandy laughed.

‘I think I prefer to hang on to you,’ she said. ‘You’re the New Yorker.’

‘Princetonian,’ Marion corrected. ‘I’m one of the few who was actually born and bred there.’

They were approaching a road junction and were almost at the curb edge.

‘Be careful,’ Marion warned. ‘We need to cross here.’

Jones looked down at her feet and tried to adjust her step to avoid stumbling. But a small river was running in the gutter, rendering the shiny surface of the cobbles, which still formed many of the Meatpacking District’s roads, quite treacherous. Jones was caught off balance. As her left foot landed in the gutter with a squelch, it almost slipped from under her. She fell backwards, the momentum of her body pulling her arm away from Marion, who was already stepping into the road.

Marion looked back over her shoulder in time to see Jones, whose limbs seemed to have turned to jelly, land on her bottom on the pavement.

‘Are you all right, Sandy?’ she asked.

There was a crazy sense of release about Jones that morning. She started to laugh again.

‘I think only my pride is hurt,’ she said.

Marion beamed at her.

Jones was still laughing when the black Chevy pick-up truck appeared out of nowhere.

First she heard the noise, a powerful engine roaring loud and angry above the sound of the weather. Then she saw the front of the vehicle, its metal radiator grid and fender resembling the mouth and teeth of some terrible monster, stretched into a hideous threatening grin. The truck was heading straight for Marion. At speed. And Marion was looking at Sandy Jones, still smiling, still unaware of any danger.

Jones screamed her name at the top of her voice, whilst struggling to scramble to her feet.

‘Marion! Marion! Look out!’

She pointed towards the fast approaching vehicle. Marion’s smile faded. Her eyes followed the line of Jones’s outstretched arm. She tried to leap out of the way, half throwing herself further into the road.

It was hopeless. Marion didn’t stand a chance. The black truck hammered into her, sending her flying into the air like a rag doll. She was propelled forwards several feet, then crashed to the ground directly beneath the truck’s front wheels. She didn’t utter a sound. At first it seemed that all Jones could hear was a dull sickening thud as a couple of tons of hard metal slammed into the soft compliant flesh of Marion’s body.

It happened so quickly, and yet, to Jones, as if in slow motion. Marion’s arms and legs stretched and curved almost balletically. Her head bounced as it met the road’s unyielding resistance, and then Jones heard the crunching sound of breaking bone.

The black truck had run right over Marion’s lower body. Jones could see that her left leg now protruded at an impossible angle, and blood was seeping through her jeans, trickling into the river of water in the gutter, turning it pink. Jones could hear the screech of the pick-up’s tyres on the wet cobbles as it continued, at speed, in her direction. With what felt like the last vestige of her strength, she hurled herself sideways, rolling across the pavement. The truck roared past, missing her extended feet by a whisker.

Jones turned to look at Marion again. A dreadful realization hit her. Marion’s left leg looked to have been almost completely severed above the knee. She could see bits of white bone sticking through the blue denim of her jeans, those same jeans that had had such neat creases down the front, and the blood oozing from her terrible wounds had turned almost black in colour.

Jones felt perilously nauseous. Yet she was curiously mesmerized. For a moment she lay still on the pavement, staring at the dreadful tableau which had unfolded itself before her.

Meanwhile the red brake lights of the Chevy flashed as the truck squealed to a halt just fifty yards or so up the road, then began to reverse, accelerating towards Jones, each wheel kicking up a fine spray of rain water.

She realized that she was the target now, but she was totally unable to do anything about it. She certainly couldn’t move. Both her brain and her body had ceased to function.

She could smell the truck’s diesel fumes. She fancied she could feel the heat from its engine. She prepared herself for the inevitable.

But the blow, when it came, was not at all what she had expected. Her upper body was lifted off the ground and she was propelled into the air so that she almost completed a somersault, landing face down, sprawled in the doorway of the liquor store on the corner. Her entire being felt like one huge bruise. There was a crushing weight on top of her. But it sure as heck wasn’t a Chevy truck. And she was still alive.

‘Right, let’s get the hell out of here, lady,’ said a low growling voice in her ear. The weight lifted from her body. One strong hand grabbed her under one arm, another slotted itself beneath the other arm. She was hauled to her feet, and found herself looking into the eyes of a man-mountain with a Mohican haircut. It was Dom.

‘Can you walk?’ he asked.

Jones was hurting all over. Her left leg, the knee already damaged at Princeton, was sending shooting pains through her whole body. But she could stand on it, just about. At least nothing was broken, it seemed.

‘Yes,’ she said, although she wasn’t entirely sure. ‘I–I think so...’

‘Come on then, the cab’s round the corner.’

Jones grabbed Dom’s arm.

‘But Marion?’ she queried. ‘What about Marion?’

‘There’s nothing we can do for her.’

Dom’s voice was strangely calm. Jones glanced up at him. An isolated tear rolled down the big man’s cheek, but his mouth was set in a hard line and his eyes were expressionless.

Jones looked back. Marion still lay in a crumpled heap in the road. She couldn’t tell whether or not the wheels of the truck had passed over her a second time. But Marion seemed to be in a different place. Jones glanced at Dom again, in amazement. She suddenly realized what must have happened. The big man had either pulled or pushed poor Marion, as much as he could, out of the truck’s path, while, at virtually the same time, cannoning into Jones and almost certainly saving her life. Only someone with rare strength and speed could have achieved it.

‘Come on, before the goddamn cops arrive,’ said Dom.

A small crowd was gathering around Marion. People were speaking into their mobile phones. Probably calling the emergency services.

Jones hesitated. Suddenly a concerned young woman appeared at her side.

‘Weren’t you hurt too?’ she asked in the nasal twang of the Bronx. ‘Are you all right?’

‘She’s fine,’ said Dom.

‘I’m fine,’ Jones repeated, surprised she could even get the words out. The shock was setting in now. Her whole body was trembling. She was controlling her nausea only with great difficulty. And she knew she must look far from fine.

However, the young woman’s attention had been diverted by the wail of the siren of an approaching police car.

‘C’mon,’ said Dom again. ‘You’re still in danger, Dr Jones. And Connie. I’m gonna find a way to keep you both safe, that’s what Marion would want.’

Dom hooked an arm around the small of Jones’s back, propelling her forwards. She leaned against him. He half-carried her along the street. By the time they reached the cab Jones could contain her nausea no longer. She bent over and emptied the contents of her stomach, partly in the gutter and partly down the side of the vehicle.

‘Oh shit!’ said Dom. ‘Just get in.’

He unceremoniously pushed her into the back of the cab before virtually jumping into the driver’s seat.

The tyres screeched on the wet cobbles, just as the tyres of the fearsome Chevy had done, and the cab catapulted forwards as Dom slammed his foot on the accelerator. Jones, still barely in control of her limbs, nearly bounced off the rear seat and was then flung backwards so that her head rocked on her shoulders.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Anywhere that’s the fuck out of here,’ replied Dom.

The cab swung from side to side as they hurtled through the Meatpacking District as if it were Monte Carlo and Dom was determined to win the annual rally.

Jones’s stomach seemed to have transported itself upwards to somewhere around chest level. She feared she was going to be sick again. And this time she would have little choice except to throw up inside the cab.

But thankfully, after just a few minutes, Dom slowed down to a more or less normal speed, presumably confident that he had put enough distance between them and the scene of the incident, and Jones’s stomach descended to very nearly its normal position within her abdomen.

With the release from extreme discomfort, came the full awful realization of what had just occurred. If Dom had not arrived on the scene and manhandled her so dramatically out of the way of the charging truck she would be dead. She had no doubt of it. And she had no idea whether he had managed to save Marion, who, at the very least, had been dreadfully mutilated.

Christ, she thought. How was she going to tell Connie?

Suddenly Dom’s deep voice filled the rear of the cab, the speaker system amplifying its Willard White resonance.

‘Right Dr Jones, what we gotta do first is get Connie to safety. But we can’t just go back to my place and get her. Not if we want to live. Have you got a safe way of contacting her?’

Jones slipped her hand inside her raincoat pocket. Miraculously the burner phone was still there, and, even more miraculously, it did not appear to be damaged.

She opened her mouth to tell Dom. Then shut it again. Her head was beginning to clear. And she didn’t like the thoughts that were filling it. Jones put the phone back in her pocket, and pressed her hands tightly together in a bid to stop them trembling.

‘Did you hear me, lady?’ Dom’s voice boomed.

‘How could I not?’

‘Well, we gotta move. We gotta get Connie outta my place. She’s the target. She gotta be the target. Do you see?’

Jones saw. Connie had almost certainly been right all along. The RECAP lab had been deliberately blown up, just as she’d always believed. And Connie had indeed been the target back there on that street corner. The driver of the Chevy had made a mistake. He’d mown down the wrong woman.

The would-be assassin must have been waiting and watching outside Dom’s apartment. And when Jones had emerged with Marion wearing Connie’s cover-all oilskin, the assumption had been instantly made that she was Connie. Marion was slightly shorter than Connie, but about the same build. She had been bent into the weather, and had pulled the hood of her cape up and forwards over her forehead. The little of her face that could have been seen had been further concealed by the umbrella she’d been holding in front of them both. In addition, the assassin may not even have known that there was a second woman in the apartment along with Connie and Jones.

So persons unknown must already have been aware that Connie had not been killed in the Princeton blast, that she was alive and in hiding in New York. They had then tracked her down and attempted, yet again, to kill her. Or so they had thought.

And who the hell were they, anyway, these murderous bastards? Connie suspected the establishment. The government even. Or at least a government affiliated body. But did the American government really go around arranging for its citizens to be mown down on the streets of New York?

The sequence of events had been such that the attack had to have been orchestrated by someone in a position of considerable authority and power, that was for sure.

Jones studied the back of Dom’s head. Dom, as Marion had said, was a man capable of summoning all manner of unknown resources, and Jones had just seen him act in a way that would have been far beyond the capabilities of most human beings. It seemed bizarre that she was so suspicious of a man who had almost certainly saved her life. And it was highly unlikely that Dom would ever be involved in anything that might harm Marion, whom he adored. But Marion had not been the target. Dom himself had said that. Certainly Jones considered Dom to be too much of an unknown quantity to unreservedly trust. For a start, how exactly had he contrived to arrive so conveniently on the scene right after Marion had been mown down?

No way was she going to hand over her burner phone to him, nor use it herself to contact Connie. Not for as long as she was with him.

‘Come on, ma’am, I need your help,’ boomed Dom from the front.

‘Sure, sure,’ muttered Jones.

Dom eased the cab to a halt at a set of lights. The traffic was a little heavier now. There were vehicles queued in front of them, and behind.

‘I’m just trying to think, that’s all...’ Jones continued.

The lights changed. The line of traffic approaching from the other side of the road junction began to move slowly forwards.

The vehicles in front of Dom’s cab also began to move. Jones yanked at the handle on the roadside door of the cab. She wrenched it open, and leapt, as best her battered body could manage, out into the street. Thankfully Dom had not locked her in this time. Presumably he had either not considered it necessary. or merely been in too much of a hurry to even think about it.

Somehow or other, Jones managed to land on her feet. Or very nearly. She took off at a run, ignoring the shooting pains in her leg. She heard the cab squealing to a halt again, and the big man yelling after her. She didn’t look back. She’d noticed an empty yellow cab in the line of slowly approaching traffic. She hailed it as she ran across the road, and somehow or other managed to open a door and throw herself inside while the cab was still crawling along. Dom moved fast. He came running across the road, still yelling, right on Jones’s heels. There was a lot of hooting going on from the line of vehicles trapped behind his abandoned vehicle.

Jones slammed the cab door shut and flipped down the lock.

‘Grand Central Station,’ she told the driver, not because she wanted to go there but because it was the first place that came into her head, and one of the few that even a New York cabby could find without a full address including cross streets.

Suddenly Dom’s face loomed alarmingly at the window, just as Jones’s new driver accelerated away. Mercifully the traffic had begun to flow quite freely. Equally suddenly the face was gone.

Jones looked back over her shoulder as an irate Dom disappeared into the distance.

The best news was that there was absolutely no chance of Dom getting back into his cab and swinging it around in time to follow Jones and her driver, who thankfully seemed quite oblivious to the fact that anything untoward was happening. He had barely even looked at Jones, which was all for the best, or he might not be driving her anywhere. She breathed a huge sigh of relief and leaned back in her seat.

But she couldn’t believe what she had just done, and her heart was racing. She had to contact Connie. And fast. She had to get her to safety. And if she was right in her suspicions of Dom, then the former wrestler could well be already on his way to the loft apartment.

Jones used her burner to dial the one she’d already given Connie, who answered quite cheerily. Jones steeled herself.

‘It’s me,’ she began lamely, keeping her voice low so that the driver wouldn’t hear.

‘I know it’s you, woman, who else has this number anyway...’

Connie stopped.

Jones’s voice had sounded strange even to her. Connie had picked up on that. As she would.

‘What’s wrong?’ Connie asked sharply.

‘There’s been an accident—’

‘Marion,’ Connie interrupted at once. ‘Oh my God. It’s Marion, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

Jones could still see that broken and bloodied body lying in the street. And she didn’t know how to tell Connie what had happened to the woman she clearly loved so much. But Connie didn’t even give her a chance to start to explain before firing questions at her.

‘What happened? Where is she? What have they done to her? Tell me where Marion is? I must go to her—’

‘No, Connie, no—’

‘What do you mean, no? Is she dead? Is Marion dead? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

‘I don’t know, Connie. The truth is I don’t know whether she’s dead or alive. I really don’t. I had to get away. I was going to be next. Marion’s injured. But I don’t know how badly.’

The last sentence was a total lie, of course. If Marion had survived, if she was alive, Jones knew only too well that she had suffered the most terrible injuries. But she didn’t want Connie to totally fall apart.

‘You’ve left her?’ Connie barked.

‘No. Well... yes. It w-wasn’t like that...’

‘Never mind, just tell me where she,’ Connie repeated, still shouting. ‘I must go to her. What happened? What the hell happened?’

‘Look Connie, you have to listen. And do as I say. Marion was hit by a truck. It wasn’t an accident. T-the thing is, I think she was mistaken for you...’

‘Oh my God.’

Connie spoke flatly, not shouting any more.

‘Somebody knew you were alive, Connie, and that somebody wanted you dead, really dead,’ Jones continued. ‘Right now they may still think they’ve got you, and they may not be watching Dom’s place. But they’ll know they failed soon enough. Leave the loft, straight away. Get out. Just get out...’

‘Yes, yes. But I must go to Marion. Where’ve they taken her? Which hospital?’

‘I don’t know. And even if I did you mustn’t go to her. Not yet. That would be suicide.’

‘Dom could fix it. Dom would know what to do—’

‘No,’ Jones interrupted sharply. ‘I think he might be involved. He was there. When it happened.’

‘Dom would never hurt Marion.’

‘Connie, it was you they were after. Not Marion. Look, will you just go along with me on this for now. Put on a scarf or a hat or something, hide that hair of yours, and get a cab to Grand Central. I’ll meet you by the gate to platform one. OK? Platform one.’

‘OK.’

The shock was strong in Connie’s voice, but Jones also detected resignation. Thankfully, it seemed that she was going to do what Jones said.

‘Good. Now, I need you to bring my bag with you. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. It’s got my laptop in it, my personal mobile, and another burner phone. Can you do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Connie, remember what I said, avoid Dom, do you hear me? He may even be on his way to you. I reckon you could have...’

She checked her watch, trying to visualize the place where she had abandoned Dom’s cab and its proximity to the loft apartment.

‘Ten minutes max before he could be there...’

‘But Sandy, Dom is Marion’s closest, dearest friend, her surrogate son. He’d never hurt either of us, I just can’t believe...’

‘Connie!’

Jones realized she had shouted at her. Aware of the presence of the cab driver, albeit behind a glass screen, she lowered her voice to a kind of urgent hiss.

‘Connie, you’re wasting time. Please, do as I tell you. Get the fuck out of there and come to me. I’ll explain then.’

Connie murmured something indecipherable, which Jones hoped to God was agreement, and ended the call. Jones leaned wearily back in her seat and closed her eyes. She was living a nightmare.

The taxi pulled to a halt with a jolt outside the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance to Grand Central. Jones opened her eyes again. This was a nightmare from which there was no waking up. A bleak terrifying reality the like of which Sandy Jones had never experienced before.

Meanwhile, in the bowels of a warehouse in Chelsea, only a half a mile or so away from Dom’s loft apartment, the man who always wore a black suit, white shirt and black tie, paced anxiously up and down. As usual he was wearing shades, even though he was inside a big cavernous basement which was only poorly lit.

He was, of course, the nameless interrogator at Princeton police station whom Jones had dubbed the Man in Black. Ed MacEntee’s not entirely effective tail. And while he continued to try desperately to look the part of a tough, cool super-agent, the Man in Black was extremely uneasy.

As far as he was concerned the whole operation was spiralling out of control. He’d only begun it as a way of increasing his standing in the organization. He’d wanted to draw attention to himself. Well, he’d certainly done that. He’d wanted to impress. He’d particularly wanted to impress Mr Johnson.

But the man had not thought things through properly. And now it was too late, far too late, to even attempt to put a stop to it all. He liked to project an image of himself to those around him which he could not always live up to. He was inclined to let his imagination run away with him. Yet never in his wildest imaginings had it occurred to him that a situation like this might develop.

The Man in Black was waiting for the Enforcer. The Enforcer and his Apprentice. He didn’t really want anything to do with them. They frightened the life out of him. But he had to be there. He had to know.

He heard them before he saw them, the low rumble of the engine of the Chevy pick-up truck, and the rhythmic squeal of its tyres as it swung round and round the winding ramp which snaked its way down from street level.

The truck coasted to a halt in its allotted parking space. Both the front doors opened. The Enforcer had been driving. He had sandy hair thinning at the front and a small neat moustache. He was wearing a tweed jacket over corduroy trousers bagging slightly at the knee. He looked like a schoolmaster, until you saw his eyes. There was no life in those eyes. The man in the black suit thought they were the most frightening eyes he had ever seen.

The Apprentice was very young and very cocky. He had orange hair and freckles, and he walked with a swagger. He was swaggering now, but the Man in Black could see that he was sweating and his hands, hanging loosely at his sides as if he were John Wayne, were trembling.

The Enforcer strolled casually to the front of the truck and bent down to examine its big chrome over-bumper. He leaned close until his face was just inches away, reaching into the pocket of his trousers to remove a white handkerchief with which he thoroughly wiped the protective metal bars.

Then he straightened up and, still holding the handkerchief in one hand, walked slowly towards the Man in Black. The handkerchief had turned pink, in places bright red.

It was blood, for sure. Blood thick enough to have been still clinging to the undersides of those bars, in spite of the heavy rain.

The Man in Black gulped. His throat was made of sandpaper. He felt sick. He struggled not to let it show, not to let his so carefully orchestrated act drop.

The Chelsea warehouse was the new secret headquarters of the FBI’s anti-terrorism unit, set up after 9/11. And the special agents employed there were a breed apart. They had much in common with their brothers and sisters who represented the public face of the Bureau and who worked out of the FBI’s famous New York headquarters at 26, Federal Plaza, and other openly declared addresses throughout the country. But the Chelsea Feds were there to perform tasks and pursue courses of action that took them much further along an extremely rocky road, in a country still purporting to be a benevolent democracy. They had carte blanche to do whatever was necessary to protect an America which had never quite recovered from the blind panic which followed the deadliest terror attack in human history. They had never played by the rules. They weren’t supposed to.

But word was, that under the auspices of arguably the most maverick and unpredictable president of all time, they had been given an autonomy and a level of operational freedom way beyond anything that had originally been intended.

The Enforcer and his Apprentice were considered to be two of the Chelsea Feds’ finest sons. They did what others neither would nor could do.

The Man in Black sucked his dry lips. He was totally out of his depth. And he knew it.