The Deceit

49

‘Christ,’ said DS Curtis, staring out of the window at the whitened landscape. ‘It’s like the moon.’

Karen replied tersely. ‘This is a profitable industry. Brings jobs to Cornwall.’

‘But all this white shit — on the roads and the cars.’

DI Sally Pascoe spoke up, from the back seat. ‘It’s China clay, kaolin, it gets everywhere, even inside the houses, people inhale it — but it’s safe.’

Karen let Sally talk on; her mind was very much distracted.

Where was the girl? Zara Parkinson? So far they had made zero progress. They had finally exhausted the entire list of Crowley residences, extant and demolished, fictional and alleged — and found nothing. So their only route to the girl was tracing Rothley; and Rothley was after Herzog.

Which meant Rothley might just come here. To the laboratory in Rescorla. To find Herzog at home.

Karen got out of the car, put her binoculars to her eyes, and gazed down into the white-and-green valley. Either side of the great scoop of the dale were some of the biggest mountains of kaolin spoil in the clay district. At the far end of the valley was a lurid turquoise-green lake: coloured thus by minerals leaching into the groundwater.

This part of the kaolin district had been worked out decades ago. The English China Clay Company were already beginning the process of grassing over the mighty white Himalayas of kaolin tailings. Nonetheless the place still looked moonlike, as Curtis had said, or maybe like a landscape on a different, nastier planet: remote, swept by cold winds, bitterly sterile.

‘So that’s it,’ said Sally.

‘Sorry?’

‘So that building there, that’s Herzog’s lab.’

‘Yep. He has several properties all over the UK. But this place is a laboratory where he does research on stem-cell technology, or so he says.’

‘Why here?’

‘Cornwall is EU Objective One,’ Karen said. ‘High-tech start-ups get subsidies.’

‘He doesn’t need the money?’

‘But he wants it. Billionaires love money.’

Karen lifted her binoculars again. The laboratory was situated bang in the middle of the vast disused claypit: a jumble of modern one-storey buildings. Steel containers stood outside them. Some cars were parked on the surrounding tarmac.

‘It makes sense. The clayzone is remote. No one comes here, yet you’re just ten minutes’ drive from the A30. An hour from the motorway. And just twenty minutes from Newquay Airport. You can leave here after breakfast and be in London for coffee at eleven. Yet here you are, hidden away on the moon.’

‘Maybe it is just a stem-cell lab.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Karen. ‘Yet maybe it isn’t. He’s not going to ask Kerrier Council if he can build a lab to manufacture mind-bending parasites, is he?’

Sally shuddered. ‘What if …’ She gazed down at the apparently innocent buildings. ‘What if he is doing all that shit down there? I mean, imagine, imagine … the horrible stuff.’

‘Karen!’

It was a shout from DS Curtis. Karen ran back to the car, and leaned in. Her hopes rose: had they found Zara?

Her detective sergeant was holding up the radio receiver. ‘Herzog crossed into UK air space thirty minutes ago, seeking permission to land at Newquay. He’s coming here, DCI. He’ll be here in less than two hours.’

Karen got back in the car and shut the door. So, if Herzog was coming it was very likely Rothley would show up, too.

Frowning, and thinking, she said, ‘Let’s wait and try to catch him doing what he does. Pull back a few yards. Make sure we’re totally invisible.’ She thought some more. ‘Sally, call the armed-response team again — at St Austell. And the hazardous chemical people. Get everyone. Get them up here.’

‘Why?’

‘Rothley. I just have a hunch. Rothley.’