Lockdown

I

Amy hung up and stared at the head gazing back at her in the dim lamplight of the attic sitting room. Her eye was drawn again to the cleft lip. It was as if the child had been caught on a fisherman’s hook and then thrown back, permanently disfigured, into an ocean in which she would always find herself swimming against the tide.

It could just as easily have been Amy. Some tiny glitch in the genetic code determining the course of a life, separating the smart from the stupid, the beautiful from the ugly. Amy was both smart and beautiful. It wasn’t a genetic glitch which had determined the course of her life, it was a drunk behind the wheel of a car, and five seconds of madness.

They had other things in common, though — Amy and Lyn. A racial inheritance, perhaps even a cultural one. A girl born into poverty in China had little chance. Amy knew it only too well. She had been born in England, not China. She had been born into relative affluence, not poverty. But thousands of years of cultural preference for a son, rather than a daughter, had been hard for her parents to shake off. She had been the first born, but it was her younger brother, when he arrived, who had taken pride of place.

Had she been born in impoverished rural China, she may well have ended up in an orphanage, like millions of her peers. Abandoned by her family on the doorstep of a police station somewhere, so that they might try again for a son. The Chinese government policy of one child per family meant there were no second chances — unless you lived in the city, had money and knew how to buy your way around the system.

For as long as anyone could remember, in Chinese society, when the son married he brought his wife to live with his parents. And when the parents grew old, it was the responsibility of the son and his wife to look after them. But if you had a daughter, she would leave to look after her husband’s parents, and you would have to fend for yourself in your old age. So it was little wonder that boys were prized and girls despised.

Amy wondered if it had been Lyn’s fate to end up in an orphanage somewhere, unloved, unwanted, even by childless Western couples desperate to adopt — her deformity always working against her. And yet, here she was — or had been — living in London, this bastion of Western affluence and privilege. But only to meet a fate worse than any orphanage, murdered and hacked up and dumped in a hole in the ground.

A wwwooo-oop sound turned Amy’s head towards her computer. The window of her most recent conversation with Sam was still up on the screen. And now Sam had sent a new message. Amy manoeuvred her wheelchair over to the desk to see what Sam was saying.

— Amy, are you still around?

The cursor blinked with endless patience, awaiting Amy’s response.

— Hi, Sam. Yeah, I’m still up. It’s late.

— I couldn’t sleep for thinking about your little girl.

— Me neither. She keeps staring at me.

— It’s a terrible thing when you can put a face to someone, but not a name, or a history. I wish I could see her, too.

— I could take a photo of the head and email it to you.

— Maybe in the morning. The cursor blinked for a bit. Then — How is Jack holding up?

— I don’t know. He sounded pretty weird when I spoke to him last. I think he’s throwing himself into this investigation just to stop himself thinking.

— What do you mean, weird?

— I don’t know. Just a bit... spaced, I guess.

— How is the investigation going?

— He seems to be making progress. He thinks he knows where she was killed.

The cursor blinked again for a long time.

— How on earth does he know that?

— I’ve no idea.

— Where does he think it happened?

— He said something about a house out near Wandsworth Common.

— That’s not too specific.

— He wasn’t being very specific.

Their conversation lapsed. More blinking. This time two minutes, maybe three, passed without any further exchange. Amy found her eyes wandering across the room to the child’s head once more. The girl was watching her, almost reproachful in her silence. Why couldn’t Amy do more? How difficult could it be to find her killer?

Then wwwooo-oop.

— Amy, did you ask for a DNA sample in the end?

— Yes, Sam. Might be a day or two, though.

— I wouldn’t get your hopes up for finding a match.

— I’m not. And then Amy remembered about Zoe. — I did ask for a PCR test, though, to see if she’d had the flu.

Another long wait.

— Why did you do that?

— You always tell me every little detail helps when you’re trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle.

The cursor blinked some more.

— So did you get a result?

— Yeah. We’ve got a post-grad molecular genetics student training at the lab. Zoe. She’s a bit of a ladette. But really clever. She’ll be good when she grows up. Stupid girl took so long over the test that she missed the curfew, so she’s stuck at the lab all night. Tom’ll be pleased. He can’t stand her!

— What did she find?

— The little girl did have the flu.

There was a short, cursor-blinking hiatus before Sam replied.

— Which doesn’t really help with anything, does it?

— I suppose not. But here’s something strange — Zoe said it wasn’t H5N1. At least, not the version that’s caused the pandemic.

— How does she know that?

— She said she’d recovered the virus, and the RNA coding. It’s all a bit beyond me, Sam. Something to do with restriction sites and code words that shouldn’t be there. Anyway, she said this virus was genetically engineered.

Their conversation lapsed for so long, Amy began to think that Sam had gone.

— Hello, Sam, are you still there?

— I’m still here, Amy.

— So what do you think? Amy watched the hypnotic blinking of the cursor.

— I think that changes everything.

II

Pinkie watched the drab rows of mustard-harled council flats drift by. It was fun driving about in the deserted city. No traffic, no lights. So much easier to get around. And he hadn’t been stopped once. It was sufficient for him to slow to walking pace as he approached the army checkpoints. Their cameras fed his number into the computer in seconds and they waved him on. VIP. No contact required. Everyone was happy.

At Clapham Common, MacNeil had taken a right turn, and Pinkie was sure he had no idea he was being followed. It was impossible at night to see a vehicle three hundred yards behind you with no lights. As long as Pinkie could see the merest hint of MacNeil’s tail lights he wouldn’t lose him. At least, not while he stuck to the main thoroughfares. The danger would be if he went off-piste and made turns that Pinkie couldn’t see. Then he would have to get closer, and that would become dangerous.

The phone lying on the passenger seat fibrillated in the hushed interior of the car. Pinkie glanced over at the display and then answered the call.

‘Hello, Mr Smith.’

‘Hello, Pinkie. Where are you now?’

‘We’re on Battersea Rise, Mr Smith. Heading towards Wandsworth Common. I think Mr MacNeil is heading for Routh Road.’

‘I’m afraid he is, Pinkie.’

‘We’re in trouble, then.’

‘In more trouble than you think. The stupid cripple asked for PCR on the bone marrow.’

‘And is that bad?’

‘It’s very bad, Pinkie. They found the virus.’

Pinkie shook his head. That stupid little shit, Ronnie Kazinski. He’d got them all into so much trouble. Pinkie almost wished he hadn’t killed him, so that he could be made to see the consequences of his actions. ‘What do you want me to do, Mr Smith?’

‘I think we need to leave Mr MacNeil for the moment, Pinkie. We are required to take other action now.’

III

Routh Road was at the end of a collection of streets they called ‘The Toast Rack’. Not unreasonably, since Baskerville Road, which backed on to Wandsworth Common, and the five streets which ran off it at right angles, made a shape not unlike a toast rack. Although it might just as easily have been called ‘The Comb’. Wandsworth Prison was a stone’s throw away, on the other side of Trinity Road.

David Lloyd George had lived here once, in Routh Road. At number three. These were substantial detached and semi-detached town houses built in red-brick on three floors, nestling darkly behind walls and railings, and screened from the street by trees and hedges in gardens which had taken more than a century to mature. The kerbs were lined with BMWs and Volvos and Mercedes.

MacNeil parked on Trinity Road and walked down to the address on the slip of paper. It stood in darkness behind a black wrought-iron railing. There were no lights in any of the houses, but this one bore an air of sad neglect. The small front garden was overgrown and uncared for. Empty bins lay spilled on their side. Curtains or blinds were drawn on most of the windows. It was in stark contrast to the manicured gardens and well-kept facades of the other properties in the street. In daylight it would have stood out like a sore thumb, a single bad tooth in a dazzling smile.

The house was detached on its left side, but brick bomb shelters built between it and its neighbour during the Second World War meant that there was no way round to the back, except through the house. MacNeil stood in a pool of yellow light beneath a lamp post and looked at it appraisingly. It did not look inhabited. The gate protested loudly in the dark as he opened it and walked the few paces to the steps which led up to the front door. He could see now that this was an original door, recently restored to its former glory. Stained glass panels all around it would splash the hall beyond in coloured light on sunny days. The house itself was not as neglected as the garden. There was no nameplate on the door. There was a bell push to the left of it, and MacNeil pressed it and held it for a long time. He heard an old-fashioned bell ring distantly from somewhere deep within the house. But it elicited no response. He rattled the flap of the brass letter box, and then crouched down to lift the lid and peer inside. Apart from the faint light that seeped through the stained glass from the street lights beyond the trees, it was almost pitch-dark and MacNeil could see very little. There was an unlived-in smell that breathed out through the letter box from the interior of the house, damp and fusty, like bad breath, confirming MacNeil’s earlier impression that the place was empty.

He went back down the steps and walked along the front of the house. The neighbours appeared to have converted their half of the bomb shelter into a walk-through shed with a blue-painted door at the front end. MacNeil reached over the fence and tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. But suddenly the garden was flooded with light, a bright, blinding halogen light. MacNeil’s movement had triggered the neighbour’s security lamp. He took an involuntary step back and tripped over a shrub, landing in the long grass, exposed to the full glare of the halogen. A window on the first floor of the neighbouring house flew up, and an elderly, balding man in a pale blue nightshirt leaned out with a shotgun raised to his shoulder. He pointed it directly at MacNeil. ‘Get out of the garden!’ he shouted. ‘Go!’

MacNeil stood up, brushing the mud from his coat, and shaded his eyes against the light. ‘Or you’ll what, shoot me?’

‘I’m warning you.’

‘Do you have a licence for that thing?’

‘I’ll call the police.’

‘Too late. They’re already here.’

The man let the shotgun slip a little from his shoulder, and he peered down through the leafless branches of a mountain ash at the figure in the adjoining garden. ‘You’re a police officer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let me see some identification.’

‘You’re hardly likely to be able to read it from there, sir.’

‘Climb over the fence and approach the front door. There’s a security camera there. Hold it up to the camera.’

MacNeil did as he was told, snagging his coat as he climbed over the fence. He heard it tear behind him. He approached the security camera which was set just out of reach above one of the twin columns supporting the archway above an open porch. He held his warrant card open towards the lens. The man with the gun had disappeared from the window, but now his voice came from a speaker set somewhere in the porch. ‘Okay, Inspector. Why are you creeping around my house at one o’clock in the morning?’

‘It’s the house next door I’m interested in, Mr Le Saux.’ The name was on a plate on the door.

‘It’s empty.’

‘So I gather. Who was last in it?’

He heard Le Saux’s frustration. ‘It’s a letting concern. There’ve been a succession of people over the years.’

‘But most recently?’

‘A foreign couple. Although I never saw much of her. They were only here about six months, and let the garden go to wrack and ruin. A short-term contract, he said. Setting up a new production line somewhere. But I’ve no idea what business he was in. He wasn’t very talkative.’

It felt odd conducting an interview on a doorstep with a disembodied voice. ‘When did they leave?’

‘Well, that’s the odd thing. There were comings and goings up until just a day or so ago. Although that might have been the agents. The house seems to be empty now, but I don’t know where they would have gone. Not back home, certainly, because no one can leave London right now.’

‘Where was home?’

‘I’m not sure. They might have been French. But his English was so good it was hard to tell.’

‘And the wife?’

‘Never spoke to her. She never seemed to leave the house. They had a young adopted daughter who started at the local school in September.’

MacNeil frowned. ‘How do you know she was adopted? Did they tell you that?’

‘Didn’t have to, Inspector. She was Chinese, and they weren’t. And after the child caught the flu, there was no further contact. Although neither of the parents seemed to catch it.’

‘Did she survive?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ There was a pause. ‘She was a poor soul, though.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘She had a terrible facial deformity, Inspector MacNeil. The ugliest harelip I’ve ever seen.’