Lockdown

I

She had held his hands and arms under running water for nearly fifteen minutes, breaking every five minutes to ask how he felt, and whether or not his hands were numb. ‘We don’t want you going numb,’ she said, ‘because that can damage the surrounding tissue.’ The pain had eased considerably, to a level MacNeil felt he could bear without being constantly distracted by it.

Now Dr Castelli carefully bandaged his forearm with a fresh dressing, and wrapped fine lint around individual fingers so that he would still have the use of them. ‘A pair of gloves to protect the dressing,’ she said, ‘and you’ll be right as rain.’

His gloved hands felt thick and clumsy, but at least now he no longer felt incapacitated by the burns. From his locker he retrieved jeans and a donkey jacket that he kept for undercover work, and a pair of Doc Martens. Dr Castelli looked at him appraisingly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you were going to a fancy dress party as an undercover cop, you’d probably win first prize.’ Which made him smile, in spite of everything.

DS Dawson said, ‘A fine way to spend your last night, Jack. Were you trying to get yourself killed?’

‘Just thought I’d save them the trouble of paying out on my police pension,’ MacNeil said. Then, ‘See if you can find out who it was I pulled from that car, Ruf. Just out of interest. The army must have to make some kind of report on it.’

‘Sure.’ He picked up a phone, then paused. ‘By the way, that property in Routh Road. It’s owned by a company called Omega 8. The letting agents are based at Clapham. They say they are not currently letting the property. The owners told them it was being used to accommodate company employees.’

‘Omega 8,’ Dr Castelli said. ‘Wasn’t that the name on those letterheads at the house?’

‘You’ve been at the house?’ Dawson said, surprised.

‘You didn’t hear that, Rufus,’ MacNeil told him.

‘Been meaning to get my ears syringed for weeks,’ Dawson said, and he started dialling.

The detectives’ office was almost empty. A couple of clerks were chattering away on keyboards at the far end. The overhead strip lights had been turned off, and desk lamps cast pools of bright white light only at desks where people were still working. A feeble orange glow cast itself across the office from the street lights outside.

‘Have you a computer I could use?’ the doctor asked.

‘Sure.’

‘I can probably find out who Omega 8 are.’

‘Help yourself.’ He waved his hand vaguely towards any of half a dozen terminals, and she sat herself down at the nearest.

MacNeil retrieved the strip of photographs from his fire-damaged jacket. The plastic of the evidence bag had shrivelled from the heat, but the photographs were still intact. He carefully drew them out and laid the strip on his desk, under the glare of his desk lamp. Choy stared back at him through her heavy-rimmed glasses, a strained half-smile betraying her unease. His eyes were drawn to her mouth. Why hadn’t her adoptive parents done something about it? He was certain that in this day and age plastic surgery could have done much to improve it. He felt inestimably saddened by her wistful gaze, almost as if she were appealing for help. Someone, somewhere, someday, surely, would see this picture and know that she needed rescuing. And it had fallen to MacNeil to see it. But it was already too late.

He was about to put the photographs away in a drawer, when something caught his eye and he looked again. It was the first in the series of pictures, the one where she was looking towards someone off-camera. Asking a question, maybe. Or replying to one. In the curve of the lenses was the reflection of that someone. One in each lens. Silhouetted against the light behind it.

MacNeil held the photograph up to the light to try to get a better look. But the image was just too small. He glanced around. ‘Anyone got a magnifying glass?’ he called. No one had.

Dawson hung up and came across. ‘No report filed by the army yet,’ he said. ‘What do you want a magnifying glass for?’

MacNeil showed him the picture. ‘Shit,’ Dawson said. ‘Is that the little girl you found in the park?’

MacNeil nodded. ‘See how there’s someone reflected in the lens of her glasses?’ he said. ‘That could be our Mr Smith. Could be our killer.’

Dawson looked at the photograph thoughtfully. ‘Why don’t we scan it into the computer? We’ve got some pretty sophisticated photographic software in there. We could blow it up, enhance it.’

‘You know how to use that stuff?’

‘Sure.’

MacNeil looked at him. ‘You see, that’s why you’ll never make DI, Rufus. You’re far too smart.’

The scanner hummed, bright light seeped out from around the edges of its lid, and then a jpeg file appeared on the computer screen. Dawson flicked his mouse towards the applications folder and opened up the photographic software. When the programme had booted, he pulled down the File menu and opened up the jpeg on the desktop.

Suddenly the photograph of Choy’s sad little face filled most of the screen. It had scanned at full resolution, and was remarkably sharp. Dawson manipulated the cursor to make a box of flashing dots around the right-hand lens of her glasses, and hit the return key. Now it was just the lens that filled the screen. The definition was seriously reduced, but the image of the man leaning in towards little Choy was hugely enlarged. It was not, however, clear enough to identify his features. Dawson selected just his image, and enlarged it again. Now they had the shape of his head. But the pixels were so large and spaced that it was just a blur. Dawson reduced the brightness and increased the contrast, and features began to emerge. They could see now that he was also wearing glasses. His hair seemed blond, or silver, and was cropped very short.

Dawson pulled down another menu and selected the ‘enhance’ option. Now the software filled in the gaps by cloning the nearest pixels, and suddenly there was a face looking back at them. The face that Choy had seen in that very moment, on the day they had her passport photographs taken. The man looked to be in his forties. He had large, dark eyes, beneath thick black eyebrows. His blond hair was crew-cut, and his spectacles had silver-rimmed oval lenses. MacNeil looked at him with a jarring sense of recognition. And yet he had no idea who he was.

‘Look familiar to you?’ Dawson asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Me, too. Don’t know where from, though.’

‘Me neither.’

Both men stared at it. Dawson said, ‘Damn, I know that face.’

‘You should. It’s been on television every other day.’ Both men were startled by Dr Castelli’s unexpected intervention. She stood behind them, and between them, looking at the screen. ‘Although the mask was a convenient way of keeping it relatively anonymous.’

‘Who is it?’ MacNeil said.

‘Dr Roger Blume. He heads up Stein-Francks’ FluKill Pandemic Task Force.’

MacNeil looked at the face again and cursed softly. That’s why it was so familiar. He had watched him speak at that televised press conference just yesterday morning. He turned back to Dr Castelli. ‘You know him?’

‘Oh, yes. I’ve met him a few times over the years. Very smooth, very charming, and a real little shit. He comes about second in the pecking order at Stein-Francks.’

MacNeil sat trying to come to terms with the implications. Blume was Mr Smith. Blume was Choy’s adoptive father. Blume was a senior executive of a pharmaceutical company which stood to make billions from the pandemic. ‘Oh, my God,’ he whispered.

‘It gets worse,’ said Dr Castelli. ‘Or better. Depends how you look at it. Omega 8 is a small pharmaceutical services laboratory in Sussex. It was privately owned until last year when it was bought over by Stein-Francks.’

MacNeil stood up and said to Dawson, ‘Can you print me off a copy of that?’ He flicked a thumb at the image of Blume on the screen.

‘As many as you like, Jack.’

‘If we can get the neighbour at Routh Road to make a positive ID...’ He turned to Dr Castelli. ‘And if you’re prepared to go before a magistrate and tell him you think Choy is the source of the pandemic, then we can get a warrant to tear that house apart stone by stone.’

II

Amy turned left at the roundabout at Lambeth Palace, into Lambeth Road. She could see that there was activity on the bridge. Military vehicles and a gathering of soldiers next to what looked like a burned-out car half up on the parapet. There was an ambulance, medics standing around idly, and an orange light flashing on a camouflaged jeep.

But she was preoccupied. Still focused on her troubled night, random thoughts rattling around inside her head: the genetically modified virus that Zoe had found in the bone marrow; Sam’s sudden abandonment of their online conversation; the intruder who had cut the hair on Lyn’s head; the call from Tom, his strange insistence that she bring head and skull back to the lab. And MacNeil. Where was he? Why had he not answered her call?

She passed the visitors’ entrance to Fairley House School, and the Archbishop Davidson centre next to the alleyway that led into Archbishop’s Park. She turned right into Pratt Walk and drew up opposite the steps to the lab at 109 Lambeth Road. There were only a handful of lights burning in windows in the four-storey complex. It took several minutes to get herself out of the car and cross the street to the double ramps they had installed especially for her. Glass doors slid open into the foyer. The lobby hummed under the glare of fluorescent lights and was strangely empty. There was no one at the security desk. Amy crossed to the lift, pressed the button and manoeuvred herself into it. It was not until she had turned, and pressed the button for the third floor, that she saw the legs of the security guard poking out from behind the desk. There was blood smeared all over the tiles. She could see his hand lying motionless at the end of an arm extended through a pool of red. Quickly she hit the button to stop the lift, but too late. The doors closed, and with a jerk, it began its rattling ascent.

Amy went rigid with fear, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Her throat swelled up, trying to choke her. What to do? She considered hitting the alarm, but the thought of being trapped in the lift between floors for God knew how long was more than she could bear. So she waited, for what seemed like an eternity, until the lift reached the third floor. The doors slid open, and she could see down the length of the darkened corridor. Light fell out here and there in geometric slabs from open doors to labs and offices.

The whine of the electric motor in her wheelchair seemed deafening as she propelled herself out of the lift and into the corridor. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the doors slid shut behind her, leaving the corridor even darker than before. She sat for a minute, maybe two, just listening. But there was nothing save the hums and murmurs and burrs of heating and ventilation and lights, the sounds a building always makes, but that you never hear.

‘Hello,’ she called out, and her voice seemed feeble in the dark. ‘Is there anyone there?’

As she moved forward a shadowy smudge on the floor caught her attention. She leaned over to take a closer look. It was the smear of a bloody footprint. Her mouth was completely dry. She could barely keep her tongue from sticking to the roof of it. Her hands trembled on the controller as she made herself go forward.

The door of Tom’s office stood wide open. But it was empty. She rolled past a couple of other doors, both closed, before she reached the lab. A light shone through a glass panel in the door. But it was too high for Amy to see in. She pushed it open and propelled herself forward. Tom was standing at a workbench not twenty feet away. She had never seen him so pale. And it was hard to define the expression on his face. Somewhere between abject terror and unbearable guilt. He stood absolutely motionless.

‘Tom, what’s wrong?’

He glanced beyond her, and Amy half-turned as Zoe was pushed into the nearest bench, letting out a yelp as she slipped and fell heavily to the floor.

A movement in her peripheral vision made Amy turn further, and in quite the most involuntary reaction she had ever experienced, a scream tore itself from her throat and reverberated around the lab.

The figure that presented itself to her was like something out of a nightmare. She had seen burn victims before. But this bad, they were usually dead on a slab. Protruding eyes stared at her, lips stretched back in a hellish imitation of a smile. Burned, exposed, subcutaneous fat wept constantly, dripping on the floor. The smell reached her now, of charred meat, sickening, almost overpowering. He was holding a British Army-issue SA80 rifle, and moving with difficulty as the scorched muscles in his arms and legs contracted further. He was freshly burned, she could tell that much, and there was a chance that he was still cooking.

His breath came in short, rasping bursts. He stepped forward and checked that she had the head and the skull, and she pressed herself back in her chair, gripped by revulsion. He stopped, his face close to hers, and stared deeply into her eyes. It was hard to believe that he was human.

He straightened up and turned towards Tom, waving his rifle at the door. Tom lifted the plastic bin bags which Pinkie had forced him to fill with the child’s bones and all the samples they had taken and tests they had made.

Zoe got to her feet and gasped twice before sneezing violently, charred dust in the air inflaming the sensors in her nose. Pinkie turned and shot her three times in the chest. Amy recoiled from each shot, as from a blow, and stared in disbelief as the girl slid to the floor. There was no question that she was dead.

‘I hate people who sneeze,’ Pinkie said. ‘Didn’t her mother ever tell her to cover her mouth?’ But all that Amy and Tom heard was a strange gurgling that issued from somewhere deep in the back of his throat.

III

Sara Castelli’s car was parked where she had left it at the top of Routh Road. MacNeil pulled in behind it, and they got out and walked down to the neighbour’s house. Le Saux had continued to leave his security lights off as MacNeil had advised, and they approached his front door by the light falling in fragments through the trees from the streetlamps beyond. MacNeil pressed the bell push several times and a buzzer sounded somewhere inside the house. He stepped back into the visual field of the CCTV camera above the porch. Le Saux’s annoyance was clear in a voice thick with sleep.

‘What is it now?’

MacNeil held up the print-off that DS Dawson had given him. ‘Can you see that alright?’

‘Yes, I can see it.’

‘Is that Mr Smith, your neighbour?’

Le Saux came back without hesitation. ‘Yes, that’s him.’

‘Thank you, Mr Le Saux.’ MacNeil folded the photograph into his pocket and strode back down the path to the front gate. Dr Castelli hurried after him.

‘So what now, Mr MacNeil?’

‘We go and wake up a magistrate, and you tell him all about Choy.’

‘You know where all this is leading, don’t you?’

‘I don’t even want to think about it, doctor.’

‘Scotland the Brave’ rang out along Routh Road. MacNeil fumbled for his phone. It was Dawson.

‘Jack. Thought you’d want to know straight away. That car. The one you pulled the guy from on Lambeth Bridge... It’s officially registered to Stein-Francks. Designated driver, one Dr Roger Blume.’

MacNeil came to a halt in the middle of the road, staring straight into nowhere, as if he had caught a glimpse of some other world, something beyond the one we know and feel and see. Dr Castelli stopped abruptly beside him. ‘Are you okay?’

MacNeil said to Dawson, ‘That wasn’t Blume I pulled from the car.’

‘I don’t know who it was. And neither do they. Apparently after you’d gone, he killed one of the soldiers and disappeared with his rifle.’

‘Jesus,’ MacNeil whispered. It was hard to imagine that the creature they had seen lying in the back of the truck might even be capable of such a thing. But a Stein-Francks car? It didn’t seem possible. ‘What about the other person in the vehicle? Have they any idea who that was?’

‘Not a clue.’

When they finished their call, MacNeil stared at the road, thrown into confusion. Was Blume the other occupant of the car? What in God’s name was it doing there? And what strange quirk of fate had brought MacNeil to Lambeth Bridge just at that moment?

Dr Castelli was still badgering him for information. But he hardly knew where to begin. He glanced at the display on his mobile phone, still lit from his call with Dawson. It reminded him that there was a message. He had forgotten all about it.

He raised a hand to silence the doctor. ‘Just a minute.’ And he dialled his voicemail.

A pre-recorded female voice said, ‘You have one new message. At two-oh-five a-m today.’ A beep, and then Amy’s voice. Abnormally strained and quivering with fear. ‘Jack, there’s someone here in the house. Please, come quickly. I’m scared.’