“You disobeyed my direct order,” he said, “earlier this evening.”
“Oh, what?” Connor laughed. “You wouldn’t listen! We found the Deinosuchus couple and we came up with how to deal with them. We did exactly what we’re meant to. You only made things harder!”
Becker bit his lip. He’d have been quite happy to acknowledge that perhaps he should have taken their counsel more seriously, but now the accusation stood on the official record. He didn’t like that one bit.
He reached over for the clear plastic bag of items they had confiscated from Connor, and withdrew something that looked like a mobile phone.
“You made this yourself?”
“What? Yeah,” Connor said. “I build a lot of stuff: the ADD, the locking mechanism and all sorts of other equipment we use. You’ve never complained before.”
“What is it?” Becker asked, turning the phone over in his hands.
“I’d rather not say as it’s still at the development stage,” Connor said a little more carefully. “I’ve learnt not to share stuff until it’s properly tested or it gets rushed into the field. And then you’re stuck out there with something that doesn’t work properly.”
“You used this to break into that shop. Where you stole the deodorants.”
“Hey! You went back and paid!”
“Yes, while you were quite happy just to steal.”
“Is that what this is?” Connor said incredulously. “You’ve arrested me for looting? We were up against two giant crocodiles. I took what we needed for the job! Come on, Becker, this is ridiculous.”
“It’s establishing a precedent.” Becker raised the mobile phone. “You’ve been keeping secrets. You’ve been helping yourself to equipment and resources. You’ve disobeyed direct orders that have led to people’s deaths.”
Connor gaped at him. “Who died?” he said. “We just got a bit wet.”
“Jamie Weavers was brought down by the raptors. Left a widow and two kids.” Becker had already dispatched someone to talk to the family. If it weren’t for this business, he would have gone himself.
Connor just shook his head.
“I’m sorry, I really am. He was a great bloke, but you can’t pin that on me. You can’t. I wasn’t even there!”
Becker sighed.
“No, Connor. That’s just the trouble. If you’d been with me, if I could vouch for where you’d been all night... But the very moment the ARC’s broken into, you’re conveniently off on your own.”
“We were broken into? What? When? Is everyone okay?”
“You’d better hope so.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it! I was in Maidenhead with you.”
“Not at the time the break-in occurred.”
“I could never have got back to London in time! You know that doesn’t make sense.”
“You wouldn’t need to be here, Connor. You’d just need to be in contact. A phone call maybe, on a phone you’ve built yourself so we can’t trace the call.”
“If you can’t trace the call it’s ‘cause I didn’t make it. You’ve got to believe me, Becker. There’s got to be some way I can prove it. Please!”
Becker couldn’t look Connor in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s the problem. You know what the security is like round here — you designed a lot of it yourself, after all. I don’t like any of this either, but it can only have been an inside job. And you don’t have an alibi.”
Sarah sat quietly in the canteen, opposite what had once been Cutter’s office and hadn’t yet been fitted out for Danny. Abby and Tom Samuels stood in the doorway. Abby didn’t know quite what to say. Sarah didn’t have any marks on her, but she sat shivering. The tea they’d made her had slopped over the copy of Metro on the table, its cover a full-page shot of flood chaos in London.
“I’ll leave you two together for a moment,” Samuels said. Sarah responded, looking up slowly. Her dark eyes were awful to behold. Samuels swaggered off.
“Hey,” Sarah said, sweeping long black hair out of her face.
“Hey,” Abby replied, joining her at the table. Sarah offered the open packet of chocolate digestives, and Abby took one gratefully.
“You look soggy,” Sarah said.
“It’s raining outside.” Abby munched her biscuit.
“That would explain it,” Sarah said, nodding and fiddling nervously with a strand of hair that reached down past her jaw.
“What happened?” Abby asked her, leaning in.
Sarah smiled awkwardly.
“I don’t know, exactly. I just feel so stupid. I mean, what’s the point of being trained in self-defence if you just go all weak-kneed...”
“It’s not your fault,” Abby assured her. “You against a whole bunch of armed blokes. I would’ve been exactly the same.”
“I should have done something.”
“They could have hurt you. Do you know who they were?”
Sarah hugged her knees.
“Soldiers or something. I’ve given all the descriptions that I could. They injected me with something, and when I woke up they’d gone.”
“Injected you? Are you all right?”
“Yeah, medical says I’m fine. Bit jumpy, though that might be all the tea that this lot made me drink. And I’m just so furious.” She banged the palm of her hand down on the table. “I feel so stupid! I’m not cut out for this stuff, Abby. I’m a researcher. An academic.”
“Don’t. You were outnumbered, and you should have been safe in here, anyway. We’re going to get those guys.”
“Yeah?” Sarah said, doubt in her voice. “They didn’t take anything, Abby.”
“What?”
“They knocked me out for maybe half an hour and they had the place to themselves, but they didn’t take anything. They didn’t even touch the artefact.”
“They could have swapped it!”
“They didn’t. I’ve checked. I checked everything. It’s like they did it as a joke, just to spook me out.”
“They must have done something.”
“No mess, nothing is missing. None of the locked computer files have been gone through, none of our secrets found out.”
“They didn’t even break in,” Samuels said from the door, as if he’d listened to their whole conversation. He walked briskly over to the table, carrying an open laptop. “Which leads one to assume that it must have been an inside job.”
Abby got to her feet.
“You can’t believe Connor had anything to do with this,” she said, glaring at him.
Samuels didn’t even look up, he just worked away at the laptop, as if not quite familiar with its different functions.
“I really hoped you’d cooperate,” he told Abby. “After all, we’ll only have to assume that you were his accomplice.”
Abby gaped at him, struggling to control her anger, but he continued to ignore her, busy on the keyboard.
“Connor and me —” she started.
“Aren’t quite an item, no,” Samuels asked. “Dr Page has already explained that much.”
Sarah avoided Abby’s stare.
“I did say it wasn’t Connor,” she protested.
“Abby, you and Connor have been cohabiting for how long now?” Samuels asked.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but Connor has moved out.”
“A difference of opinion?”
“No, I’ve got my brother staying.”
“So where is Connor living now?”
Abby sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You haven’t asked?”
“He hasn’t told me. I think I hurt his pride. But he wouldn’t do anything. I can vouch for him.”
“I’m sure you can,” Samuels said, nodding. “But perhaps you’re working with him.”
“This is getting ridiculous!” Abby said, red-faced with frustration. “Are we suspects now, as well? I thought Sarah was the victim, not the perpetrator.”
Samuels sighed and lo
oked up at her.
“There has been a major security breach in a top ranking government establishment that’s doing vital work. We are required to proceed with all due caution. Everyone is a suspect. You and Dr Page will consider yourselves under house arrest until further notice.”
Abby realised then that the soldier blocking the doorway was for her and Sarah’s benefit.
“You can’t do this,” she told Samuels, her voice thick with anger.
“I am sincerely sorry for the inconvenience,” he replied. “But you and Dr Page need to understand where your loyalties should lie.”
He tapped a final key and twisted the laptop around so Abby and Sarah could see. The film sequence had been enlarged to fill the screen, so it looked grainy, indistinct. The time code in the bottom corner said it had been recorded a bit after four that afternoon.
They looked down on the pixellated image of Connor, hurrying up to the ADD, looking over his shoulder to make certain no one was around. His jerky movements were due to the low setting of the CCTV camera, which took only a minimal number of frames per second. He began to flutter his fingers quickly over the keyboard of the machine.
“That was 16:11,” Samuels said, reading the time from the bottom of the image. “The bolts on the fire doors on Exit Three are unlocked remotely from inside the building.”
They saw Connor stop, check his watch, and wait. The image twitched, and then he was busy typing again.
“At 16:12, an email is sent from the ADD duty account to an unknown gmail account. The message says, ‘The circle is now complete.’ Apparently it’s a quotation from one of the Star Wars films.”
Abby watched in abject horror, unable to tear her eyes from the screen. She wanted to protest, wanted to laugh at the insanity of it. Again the Connor on the screen paused to check the time on his watch, and then started typing once again.
“At 16:15...” Samuels said, and he paused for effect.
“The ADD goes off,” Sarah said quietly. The image flickered, troubled by the flashing lights of the alarm. They watched Connor step back from the ADD just as Abby, Sarah and Becker came running in to join him.
“You were all going to head out to Maidenhead,” Samuels began.
“No,” Abby said, aghast at what they were trying to tell her.
“We were all going to go,” Sarah continued coldly, meeting Abby’s gaze this time.
“But you thought someone should stay behind,” Samuels added, clicking off the movie and closing the laptop.
“I stayed to watch over the ADD,” Sarah said, “but Connor told me not to.”
FOURTEEN
Danny opened his eyes, suddenly wide-awake. It took him a moment to remember where he was, as he lay gazing up at the pale plaster ceiling of their cramped bedroom.
Lester was curled in a ball on his own bed, looking unnaturally peaceful and content.
Danny checked his watch: not quite half six in the morning, local time. Half four in the UK according to his timepiece and his body clock. He sighed. Surely you weren’t meant to get jet-lag when you were only two hours out of your home time zone.
The timber of the lodge shifted and creaked around him. There were no sounds of human activity but Lester’s breathing. The gamekeepers must have worked late into the night, and deserved to be sleeping now. He closed his eyes and tried to relax, but he couldn’t lie still.
Gingerly, so as not to wake his roommate, he extracted himself from the bed and padded barefoot, in boxer shorts and t-shirt, to the shower room down the corridor.
Either the shower didn’t offer hot water or he was flummoxed by the controls. He held his breath and stepped directly under the frothy cascade. The icy water zinged against his skin, slicing into him like blades. He shivered as he exhaled, his senses tingling and alert.
He counted slowly to ten, forcing himself to endure the cold. But it didn’t look like his body was going to get used to it, so he scrubbed himself down quickly and efficiently and then got out of the water.
His pink skin steamed as he dabbed himself with his towel. Blinding sunlight glimmered through the shutters on the window. If it was hot in this shadowy washroom, what must it be like outside? They were likely to be out under it all day.
The towel they’d given him seemed like more of a hand cloth than the bath sheets he was used to. When he’d dried himself as best he could, it didn’t quite reach all the way round his waist. He held it in place, one hand bridging the gap of his exposed thigh, and made his way back to the bedroom where his clothes were waiting. His damp feet left footprints on the tiles behind him. Just a few steps down the warm corridor and his clean skin was already prickling with sweat.
He reached for the handle on the door to his bedroom, then sensed someone behind him. Further down the corridor, in the kitchen, Sophie stood watching him.
“Hi,” he said in a cheery whisper, adjusting his towel self-consciously. A droplet of water skittered down his chest.
Sophie looked clean, tanned, and healthy in a fresh black vest and camouflage trousers. She didn’t say anything, just gazed at him, her eyes wide in surprise.
“I’ll, uh, just put some clothes on,” he told her. It broke the spell. She shook her head, running her hand through her newly washed blonde hair, and he thought he might even have glimpsed a slightly crooked smile. Then she turned from him and got on with whatever she’d been doing.
Lester still slept as Danny closed the bedroom door behind him. He found his clothes — the same jeans from yesterday, his one change of shorts, a red polo shirt, his leather jacket — and dressed as fast as he could. He wanted to get out there before Sophie put up her defences again. She’d seen him half-naked and been lost for words, which suggested progress. She was a competent, professional and very pretty girl. He might just stand a chance...
A mug of tea awaited him when he entered the kitchen, his leather jacket dangling from one hand. He took the tea through to the mess room, and was surprised to find it empty. The room barely showed any signs of the terrible events of the previous night. Were it not for the crude covering over what had once been a window, he could almost have believed it had never happened.
Danny made his way outside onto the raised platform overlooking the car park. Sophie’s SUV stood alone in the brick-red dust. She stood beside the open hatch. He shielded his eyes from the incredible sun that shone in a vast and spotless blue sky. The colours of the dust and foliage seemed so rich and vivid, it was as if his own sense of colour had been greatly improved. He reminded himself that this landscape, this air, was what human beings had evolved to fit into. This was their territory, too.
He breathed in a great lungful of the warm air.
“You want to come with me?” Sophie asked, busy loading up her car. He tried to detect awkwardness, embarrassment in having been startled before, but she gave nothing away.
“Sure,” Danny replied, sipping his tea. “Got nothing better to do.”
“We had a delivery.” She lifted one of the bags from the back of the car so that he could see. It took him a moment to recognise the package as the handheld anomaly detector they had brought from London which the South African customs officials had impounded.
“They’ve let us have it all back?” he asked, stepping down from the platform to join her. Lester’s angry phone calls must have made an impact on someone. The sun pressed hard against his exposed face and arms. Danny had the sort of complexion that needed time to tan. So he put his tea down and pulled on his jacket. It might be over-dressing for the heat, but it would stop him from burning.
“Some of it,” she said. “Not the guns or the things they thought could have been guns.” That was bad news, but rather than dwell on it, he walked over to assess what they did have.
They’d got a handheld anomaly detector and Lester’s laptop — containing Connor’s purpose-built database for identifying dinosaurs and their epochs.
“Great,” he said, “though the guns would have helped. The Winchester
is all very well...”
“It’s all we’ve got,” Sophie said curtly, cutting him off.
“Of course,” he answered quickly. “After all, what can possibly go wrong?”
Sophie slammed shut the back of the SUV.
“All done. You’d better leave a note, tell Lester where we’re going.”
“Oh,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “Good idea.”
As he made his way back to the lodge again, she called after him, “Don’t want to appear too eager.”
He looked back at her to make a joke, but instead caught her eye. For a moment they just held each other’s gazes, then Sophie quickly looked away. Her long blonde hair fell forward, hiding her face. But not before Danny had seen that she was blushing.
“Be right back,” he said instead, heading into the lodge. He fought back the urge to laugh out loud. Score one for the Quinn charm — Sophie liked him all right.
They found the remains of the theropod a short distance from the lake. Its carcass was ripped open, ribs and bones exposed. A lot of the meat had been eaten away by the night’s many scavengers.
The dead creature lay in a clearing surrounded by shoulder-high grass. Danny felt vulnerable so out in the open, wilderness all around them. The weight of the sun made him move sluggishly, and his clothes felt damp with sweat. Smelly and slow and out of his depth, he thought he presented a pretty good meal.
Wrinkling his nose at the pungent stench, Danny made his way around the other side of the enormous animal, examining the multiple wounds inflicted on the creature the night before, including their own gunshots. And now they’d be going after the Postosuchus with the same Winchester Model 70.
Sophie appraised the tracks around the creature.
“It’s already been visited by scavengers,” she said, indicating the whorls and waves in the dust from lots of different feet. “So we don’t have a trail to follow for the lizard thing.”
Danny had expected this. “Not to worry,” he told her. “There’s something we can do first.”
He worked the handheld detector, but didn’t get any kind of blip. He started walking, waving the thing around him; trying to get a signal.
Fire and Water Page 11