Lockdown

I

There were times when it was almost possible to believe that the millions of people who had once lived in this great city had simply packed up and left it. In this darkest of the small hours, when there were no vehicles on the road, no lights in any of the windows amongst the rows of silent houses they drove past, it felt abandoned. Lost.

Dr Castelli had left her car at Wandsworth, opting to stay with MacNeil, somewhere on the wrong side of the law. For his part he was glad of the company. The presence in the passenger seat beside him of this odd little lady, in her sensible housebreaking shoes and tweed suit, was comforting in a peculiar sort of way. Human contact. A voice to drown out the one in his head.

And she did like to talk. Perhaps it was nerves. A need to drive out her own demons.

She was talking now about H5N1. ‘Of course, you’ve heard of antigenic shift?’ she said, as if it might have been a topic of everyday conversation.

‘No.’

‘It’s what we call an abrupt, major change in an influenza-A virus. Doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, it creates a new influenza-A subtype, producing new hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins that infect humans. Most of us have little or no protection again them.’

‘And H5N1 is an A virus?’

‘It is. And it’s probably been around for a very long time, in one form or another.’

‘Before it shifted?’

‘Exactly. And when it did that, it became lethal, not only to birds, but to humans as well. Of course, it still had to find an efficient way of transmitting itself from human to human, while retaining its remarkable propensity for killing us. They’ll do that, you know, viruses. Real little bastards! Almost as though they’re pre-programmed to find the best way of killing everything else. A virus only has one raison d’être, you know. To multiply exponentially. And once it starts, it’s a hell of a hard thing to stop.’

‘So what happened to make it transmit so efficiently from human to human?’

‘Oh, recombination. Almost certainly.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Put simply, one virus meets another, they exchange genetic material, and effectively create a third virus. Pure chance whether or not it turns out to be something worse. A kind of little Frankenstein’s monster of the virus world.’

‘But that’s what happened to the bird flu?’

‘Oh, sure. On its travels, H5N1 probably encountered a human flu virus in one of its victims. They got together, swapped the worst, or best, of each of them, and created the nasty little SOB that’s killing everyone now.’

They cruised past the flower market at the junction of Nine Elms Lane and Wandsworth Road, and MacNeil stared thoughtfully downriver towards the floodlit Houses of Parliament, and the unmistakable tower of Big Ben. ‘Could something like that be done, you know, in a lab?’

‘Well, of course.’ Dr Castelli was warming to her subject. ‘With genetic manipulation you could quite easily create an efficiently transmittable version of H5N1. Swap a human receptor binding domain from a human flu virus into an H5 backbone and you’d improve transmission efficiency enormously. The last couple of years, they’ve been doing that in labs all over the world to try to anticipate what a human transmissible H5N1 would look like.’

‘To create a vaccine.’ MacNeil remembered the Stein-Francks doctor explaining it on television yesterday morning. Was that really only twenty-four hours ago? Less!

‘Except that they all got it wrong, and had to start again from scratch when the real thing came along.’ She sat silently for a moment, before turning towards him, a tiny frown playing around her eyes. ‘What made you ask that?’

He said, ‘A girl at the lab isolated a flu virus in marrow recovered from Choy’s bones.’

He felt Dr Castelli watching him intently. ‘And?’

‘Well, it didn’t mean much to me. But it seems like they were all excited because it wasn’t H5N1. Or at least, not the version of it that we know. They said that it was artificial. That it had been man-made.’

II

Pinkie drove across the square, past Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parliament. Westminster Abbey sat brooding in silent winter darkness, the branches of the trees in the park stark and leafless, brittle black skeletons standing witness to a plague sent, it seemed, from God to punish Man for his wickedness. For some reason they had sealed off Westminster Bridge, and so Pinkie was heading south to cross the river at Lambeth Bridge. Which, in any case, would bring him out almost opposite the laboratories.

Harry was gagged and masked and tied up in the back seat. At first he had struggled and whined, but he had long since given up, and Pinkie had not heard so much as a whimper from him in the last fifteen minutes.

Pinkie was feeling good. He liked it when he had to improvise. It tested his intelligence. It stretched him. It was a challenge. He had detected just a hint of hysteria buried somewhere deep in Mr Smith’s voice. A rising panic that he was trying hard to hide. But Pinkie was still in control. It was what he was paid for. To get the job done. Never start something you can’t finish, his mother had said. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Pinkie always finished the job. And he always did it well. He could hardly be held responsible for the shortcomings of others.

The fact that it was he who had introduced Kazinski to Mr Smith in the first place had niggled for a time. There was a chance that Mr Smith would blame Pinkie for Kazinski’s failure. But Kazinski was gone, and Pinkie was back in charge. Whatever happened now, he would see it through to the end.

Victoria Tower Gardens separated them from the river to their left, St. John’s concert hall just beyond Smith Square on their right. Pinkie could see Lambeth Bridge spanning the Thames ahead of them at the Millbank roundabout.

He slipped into third gear and slowed to make a left turn across the bridge. There was an army roadblock halfway across. A couple of trucks and half a dozen soldiers. Pinkie dropped another gear to slow his approach and give them plenty of time to check out his registration plate.

Roped hands suddenly looped over his head from behind, and he heard Harry grunt from the effort as he pulled back hard, pinning Pinkie to the headrest. The rough fibres of the rope burned Pinkie’s skin, and he felt his windpipe being crushed. Involuntarily, his foot pushed down on the accelerator as he braced himself, and the car lurched forward at speed. Both his hands shot up to grab the rope and try to release the pressure on his throat. Harry head-butted him on the top of his head, and he felt a sickening pain like a vice closing around his skull. Light exploded behind his eyes. Harry was strong. He was not going to let go.

Pinkie could hear the soldiers shouting now, even above the roar of the engine. Panic in their voices. But he was powerless to do anything about it. He could see them through the windscreen, rifles raised, pointed at the car, standing their ground and ready to fire. Harry was growling as he tightened his grip on Pinkie, sensing success in overcoming his abductor.

The first bullets hit the engine block. Pinkie knew that the soldiers were instructed to fire into the engine block of any vehicle that failed to stop. The next rounds would come through the windscreen. He knew he was going to die, and was powerless to do anything about it. But the second wave of bullets never came. He felt the car slewing sideways, saw pale, masked faces flashing past as soldiers scattered across the road. There was the sickening sound of metal tearing like paper, as the car struck one of the trucks and went spinning across the carriageway. Pinkie’s foot was still pushed hard to the floor. The car was stuck in second gear, and the engine was screaming. He saw flames exploding out of the bonnet as Mr Smith’s BMW struck the parapet, and Harry flew past him, narrowly missing Pinkie’s head, and his face burst against the windscreen in a spray of red.

Pinkie smelled petrol, and then his whole world was engulfed by flames.

III

MacNeil was approaching the roundabout at Lambeth Palace when they saw the explosion. Initial flames leapt twenty or thirty feet into the air. MacNeil jammed on his brakes and turned on to the bridge. They could see a vehicle half up on the parapet. It had demolished a lamp post, and all the lights had gone out. But the blaze lit the night sky and sent the shadows of running soldiers flitting across the roadway like fleeing rats.

‘Sonofabitch!’ Dr Castelli shouted. ‘There’s someone in the car. There’s someone alive in that car!’

MacNeil could see an arm flapping behind the flames in the driver’s seat, someone trying desperately to get out. He jumped out of the car and saw soldiers turn their rifles towards him. He waved his warrant card in the air and bellowed above the roar of the flames. ‘Police. I’ve got a doctor with me. Is there anyone hurt?’

‘Two guys in the car,’ one of them shouted. ‘But they’re gone.’

But MacNeil could still see someone moving. He took off his coat and threw it over his head and ran at the car. The heat was intense. He could smell it burning his coat. He daren’t breathe, or he knew he would damage his lungs. He wrapped his hand in the folds of the coat sleeve, felt for the door handle, found it and pulled. The door almost fell off. He could feel his trousers burning, his shoes, his hair. The figure behind the wheel half fell towards him, and he grasped the arm and pulled, dragging the man’s dead weight free of the vehicle.

He could smell burned flesh now, and didn’t know if it was his own. He fell in the roadway and rolled away from the choking, burning smoke, gasping for air, an agonising pain searing his hands and forearms. Two soldiers ran past him and dragged the other man clear of the blaze. ‘Oh, Jesus!’ he heard one of them gasp. ‘Look at the state of this guy.’

Someone else threw a heavy coat over MacNeil and rolled him over several times, clouds of smoke rising from singeing clothes. Then he heard Dr Castelli, her voice full of urgency and concern. She was leaning over him, checking his face and arms and hands. ‘You’re mad, Mr MacNeil. Quite insane. And very lucky you only have first-degree burns.’ She looked up and shouted, ‘I need water fast. And clean dressings.’ And then she said to MacNeil, ‘How bad is it?’

‘My hands,’ he gasped. ‘Hurt like hell.’

‘Be thankful.’ The little doctor grinned at him almost fondly. ‘If it hurts it’s not so bad.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

‘The gentleman you pulled from the car, on the other hand, probably feels no pain.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Not yet. But he will be. All that heroism, I’m afraid, Mr MacNeil, gone to waste.’

A soldier arrived with water in a jerry can, and a green first aid box. He looked at the doctor warily from behind his mask, and then moved away. MacNeil sat upright as the doctor poured water over his outstretched hands. There was instant relief from pain. But it returned again as soon as she stopped.

‘More water!’ she shouted. And then turned back to MacNeil. ‘We really need to get these under running water to stop the burns doing any more damage.’

He glanced down at his hands. They were bright red. Then he looked across the road. Great clouds of white foam smothered the car as two soldiers blasted it with fire extinguishers. Several others were helping the man he had pulled from it to his feet. They half carried, half dragged him to the back of one of the trucks. A radio crackled somewhere in the night, a voice calling for an ambulance.

Dr Castelli was wrapping his forearms and hands in soft dry lint. ‘Just to keep the burns infection-free,’ she said. ‘But you should have them treated properly.’ She looked at his face by the flickering light of the almost burned-out car and shook her head. ‘You even singed your eyelashes. You could have cooked, like your friend.’

MacNeil got to his feet. Shock was setting in now, and he felt his legs shaking. ‘Let’s take a look at him,’ he said, and they crossed to the back of the truck.

Pinkie was lying on a canvas stretcher, bulbous eyes staring up at the roof, his breath rattling and gurgling in airways damaged beyond repair by the heat of the fire. The smell of burned meat, like a barbecue gone wrong, was almost overpowering. He presented such a grotesque vision MacNeil could barely bring himself to look. Much of his clothing had burned away, what was left sticking to charred flesh oozing red and amber fluids. The backs of his trousers and parts of his jacket remained, where they had been protected by the seat of the car. There were still portions of his shoes and socks visible in amongst the soot of burned flesh. The remnants of a collar clung to his neck.

His face was horrific, ears burned to shrivelled nubs, his nose, too, a dried, charred nubbin, the nasal ala pulled back like a bizarre parody of Michael Jackson in his last days. The eyelids were gone, simply burned away, and his eyes wept. His mouth and cheeks were dreadfully distorted, lips contracted around his teeth towards the gums in a hellish grimace, almost as if he were smiling. His hair was reduced to a short, ginger stubble.

MacNeil felt sick. Perhaps it would have been kinder to have left him to die in the car. ‘Can he see?’ he asked the doctor.

‘Probably, although his vision will be impaired. He might only see black and white.’

‘But he doesn’t feel any pain?’

‘No.’

‘How’s that possible?’ MacNeil said. ‘My hands are still hurting like hell.’

Dr Castelli made a sad little shake of her head. ‘Because he’s been burned right down to the subcuticular fat,’ she said. ‘That’s the layer of fat under the skin. Which is deeper than the pain receptors, which are located in the dermis — the layer just under the top layer. So he feels no pain. That golden amber colour you see, charred in crispy highlights like... like a crème brulée...’

‘Jesus, doctor...’

‘That’s the exposed fat. And you can see those red rims around some of the less burned areas. That’s the blood in the remaining skin getting pushed up by the drying out process. If they do anything at all, the surgeons will need to cut through some of the top burned layers to allow circulation in the deep tissues underneath. When the skin or the remnants cool and dry, they contract and choke off the underlying circulation. So the surgeons’ll make deep, lengthwise cuts to allow the tissue to split open and relieve the pressure.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Debriding the burned areas is barbaric,’ she said. ‘The poor guy’ll be unconscious, but the doctors get huge carving knives, and with a few assistants with electro-cautery at the ready, will literally carve off large patches of the burned tissue, down deep until they get to a layer of tissue that is healthy and bleeding. Then the assistants jump in and cauterise off the bleeding vessels. I had to assist in that once in med school.’

‘But you said he wouldn’t survive.’

‘Not a chance. His body’s losing fluid constantly. Let’s face it, there’s no skin left to regulate fluid loss through the pores. I mean, look at him. He’s leaking serum all over the place.’

‘So how long has he got?’

‘With treatment, if he’s lucky — or unlucky, depends how you look at it — maybe a day. Without, he’ll be dead in a couple of hours.’

They walked slowly back towards their car. The blaze was over, the BMW a charred, burned-out skeleton. The remains of its second occupant could be seen, curled up foetally between the front seats. The Thames flowed calmly beneath their feet, reflecting the lights of the deserted city. The tide had turned, and was pushing upriver from the estuary.

‘We need to get those burns of yours treated,’ the doctor said.

‘I’m not going to a hospital,’ MacNeil told her. ‘You never know what you might catch.’

‘Where, then?’

‘Drive me back to the police station. It’s only a few minutes away. We’ve got first aid stuff there.’

IV

Pinkie lay in the back of the truck, every word the doctor had spoken reverberating around his head. Why did doctors always talk about you in your presence as if you weren’t there? Perhaps she had simply dismissed him as dead already. But she was right. He felt no pain. Although she was wrong about his vision. He saw quite well. It just felt strange not being able to blink.

In fact, all things considered, he felt not too bad. His breathing was the worst thing. That was difficult, and painful. He tried moving his arms and legs in turn, and found that they responded quite well. He had to fight against the stiffness caused by muscles contracted in the heat. But he could do it. He had no intention of letting the surgeons — what was it the doctor had called it? — debride his burns. The idea of them wielding large knives to slice away his flesh was more than he could contemplate.

And, besides, he had not yet finished what he had started.

The soldier at the back of the truck who had radioed for the ambulance came forward to see how he was. The young man crouched over him, and Pinkie was glad that his mask hid his horror. He reached up towards the soldier and the trooper reflexively recoiled. Pinkie gurgled and whispered, trying to form words that the boy could hear. The soldier leaned forward, trying to catch what he said, and Pinkie found enough flexibility in his fingers to slip the knife from the sheath strapped to the young man’s belt.

He gurgled again, and the soldier leaned in closer, and Pinkie enjoyed the way the shock and surprise registered in the boy’s eyes as his own blade slid neatly between his ribs.

When his comrades in arms returned to the truck they would find him dead, his SA80 rifle missing, and Pinkie gone without a trace, except for a few charred footprints on the road.