“And Lambourne can have these things up and running how soon?”
“The first’s already been completed,” said Slocock. “Far as I know, it’s ready for use.”
“Completed? But I was led to believe the project was only at the blueprint stage.”
“What you were led to believe, Waxy old pal, and what’s actually the case, are two very different kettles of fish. Nathaniel escalated the project to priority status once it became clear how restless the Sunless are getting in their SRAs. One facility’s been built, there’s a further two well on their way to being finished, and the land’s been surveyed and the materials purchased for at least a dozen more. All the sites are on property Nathaniel owns, so he hasn’t even had to apply for planning permission. The work falls within the category of legitimate change of use.”
“From factories to... to whatever these places are going to be called.”
“That’s right.”
“What are they going to be called?”
“Nathaniel’s publicists are working on that right now. We’ll let you know. The main thing is, you did it, Mo. Well done. Bent the PM’s ear and wormed some sense into him. I knew you had it in you.”
“And I’m safe now? You promise that memory stick isn’t going anywhere?”
“Nowhere except somewhere safe that only I know about.”
“I don’t suppose... I don’t suppose I could have it, could I?”
“What, to watch? For your own personal viewing pleasure? Maurice Wax’s Greatest Hits?”
“No. Not for that. Not at all. Just so that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. To make sure.”
“Oh, Mo. Mo, my foe. Mo the Joe who likes a low blow from a ’ho. That’s not going to happen. No way. The stick stays with me. Something to keep you honest. A stick to beat you with, as it were. Which of course, you being you, I think you’d quite enjoy.”
Wax’s voice turned icy. “You’re an utter turd, Slocock. You know that?”
“Know it, don’t care,” Slocock replied blithely.
“One day you’re going to get your comeuppance.”
“Perhaps. But not, Wax, from you. Never from you.”
“You know what my grandfather would have called you? A putznasher yutz.”
“I do love those Yiddish insults. They’re so expressive, so onomatopoeic. Did your grandpa yell that over this shoulder as he fled from the Nazis? I bet that told them.”
“Fuck you, Slocock.”
“And a very good day to you too, Wax,” Slocock said, and slapped his phone shut.
He re-examined himself in the mirror. The screw of toilet paper was soaked red, but when he tugged it out there was no renewed flow of blood. Triumph was blazing in his reflection’s eyes, but it was nothing next to the triumph Slocock felt inside. He’d done it. He’d moulded the malleable Wax, and Wax in turn had brought the Prime Minister into the fold. All was going swimmingly.
If only Wax knew the full potential of Lambourne’s scheme.
Maurice Wax, whose grandparents had escaped Germany a few weeks before Kristallnacht and who liked to brag how they had instilled a strong sense of fairness and justice in him as a young boy, along with a loathing for intolerance and oppression...
Oh, there was irony. Irony galore.
CHAPTER TEN
It was both dream and memory. A memory within a dream.
The day Leary gave him the crucifix he now wore.
Until then, Redlaw had made do with a small silver cross on a slender chain.
Leary had told him that wasn’t good enough. Too modest. Too restrained.
“What you need,” she’d said, “is something nice and ostentatious and Catholic. Like mine.” She waggled the crucifix she wore, with its carved Christ. The whole thing was the size of the palm of Redlaw’s hand. “Not that piddly little whatnot no bigger than an ant.”
Accordingly, one evening she presented him with a velvet-covered box. Inside lay the wooden crucifix, strung on a strong-looking steel chain that looked like the kind used in making handcuffs—same diameter, same density of links.
“Think of it as an anniversary gift. Celebrating five years, to the day, since we first partnered up.”
“No figure on it like there is on yours,” Redlaw remarked, holding the crucifix up for inspection.
“In deference to your Protestant sensibilities. Didn’t want to go too far. There’s only so much showiness you C of E types can take before your heads explode. We left-footers, by contrast, we love a bit of holy bling. Now, are you going to put it on or what?”
He did as bidden.
“Feels heavy,” he said.
“So it should. Can’t have you mincing around not accepting the full weight of your faith. Christianity’s not simple. It uplifts, but it’s also a millstone round our necks. All the stuff we’re supposed to do and not supposed to do. All the sins we try not to commit but commit anyway.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I forgot, it’s a monk I’m talking to,” said Leary. “Ever thought of getting yourself a tonsure, Redlaw? It’d suit you, and no one would realise you have a bald spot.”
“I don’t have a bald spot.”
“Trust me, you do. But it’s our secret. Ours and your barber’s.”
“Shut up, Leary.”
She just laughed. She never took him seriously, even when he was at his most serious. “So you’re not going to thank me, then?”
“For what? Informing me I’m going thin on top?”
“That and the cross.”
“I haven’t decided if I’m keeping it or not.”
“That’s okay. I know you will. See, the thing is, as with everything where God is concerned, it might not be what you want, but it might just be what you need.”
“Thank you for that insightful little aphorism, sergeant. Now, are we going to stand here all night jabbering, or are we going to get out there and wrangle Sunless?”
“Lead on, boss. To the SHADEmobile! I’m driving, mind.”
A week later Redlaw contracted shingles. Two days after that, Leary was dead.
The crucifix stayed on. He hadn’t removed it since.
Surfacing from sleep, he groped for it now, in his hospital bed. His right arm wouldn’t budge, so he used his left. His fingers closed around the familiar contours, that axis of pity and sorrow.
“Redlaw.”
He opened his eyes. Commodore Macarthur was seated at his bedside. They two, and a host of purring machines, were the only occupants of the small private ward. Venetian blinds ruled the daylight like lines on a sheet of foolscap.
“Marm,” he croaked.
“There you are,” Macarthur said. “You poor thing. Came a real cropper this time, didn’t you? And it’s all my fault. I should never have sent you to check out that nest. Not alone, at any rate.”
“There were dozens of them. You weren’t to know.”
“Still, I should have made you take backup, instead of sending it along afterwards. If we weren’t so stretched right now...”
“I’d never have accepted backup.”
“I’d have insisted. How are you feeling?”
Redlaw glanced at his shoulder, which was tightly and thickly bandaged, his arm in an immobiliser sling. “Sore,” he said.
“What have the docs said?”
“That I’m lucky those officers arrived when they did and that one of them knew how to tie a tourniquet, else the blood loss might have done for me. And that I’ve lost a significant chunk of my deltoid muscle and some of the triceps, but the surgeons did a good repair job and I should still have the use of my arm. They tell me it’ll require weeks of physio, but I reckon if I get back to work as soon as possible, and stay active, then things’ll fix themselves.”
“Oh, no,” said Macarthur, with an emphatic shake of the head. “Not going to happen. Not on my watch. You’re staying put and you’re following doctors’ orders, Redlaw. Those are my orders.”
“Forgi
ve me, marm, but with all that’s going on, we are, as you said, stretched. We need all the resources we can muster. We need feet on the street.”
“We need your backside in bed. I can’t have you going out there with a half-crippled arm. However much I could do with you, I’m going to have to cope without. Until you’re in tip-top condition again, you won’t be an asset, you’ll be a liability—mostly to yourself.”
“Marm—”
“Redlaw.” She thumped the mattress, and a shockwave of pain shivered across his chest from his shoulder, although he tried not to let this show. “Listen to me, you pigheaded... man. You almost died and I’m beating myself up into wee little pieces over that. I’ll not be responsible for you risking your neck again, at least not until I’m certain you’re back to full fitness. Look on this as providence. You’ve a chance now to lie back, take things easy for a while, rest, have some space, get some perspective. Don’t squander it, make the most of it. Think about what you want from life, and from SHADE, and from yourself. Take a good hard look at yourself and try and figure out what you’re about and what you’re after.”
“Are you telling me to think about taking the gold carriage clock?”
“Retirement? No. Not unless it’s something you’re already thinking about. Is it?”
“No.”
“Then just give yourself a break. Call it a sabbatical, if you like.”
“The last time I was stuck in bed, someone I thought highly of died. I can’t let something like that happen again. But also, there’s this to consider.” Redlaw felt it was best to get it out in the open now, while events were still fresh in his mind. “In that industrial unit, those ’Lesses were lying in wait for me.”
Macarthur did a double take. “What?”
“I’m almost sure of it. I was as stealthy as I could be getting inside, and I suppose there’s a chance they heard me and got themselves into ambush positions. But that isn’t how Sunless normally operate. They’re not that organised. More likely, if they’d got wind of me coming, they would have tried to make a run for it, or else headed straight for me and attacked at the first opportunity, like termites defending their mound. The way it went down, it was as if they were expecting me.”
“That’s preposterous, Redlaw.”
“Maybe so, but that’s how it felt,” Redlaw said. “There was something off about the whole thing. So I’m asking you, who else knew about the nest? Who, apart from you, knew I was going there?”
“The possibility it existed was on the wires. Common knowledge. The eyewitness statement was logged earlier in the evening. Anyone with access to the SHADE database could have pulled it up.”
“In other words, just about anyone at HQ.”
“And as for knowing I was sending you there, I mentioned to several people I was doing that.”
“In advance?”
“Yes. Redlaw, you’re not really thinking what I think you’re thinking? That someone inside SHADE set you up? Somehow tipped off the vampires that you were coming?”
“I’m trying not to think that.”
“For heaven’s sake, I’ve never heard anything so insane in all my life!” Macarthur exclaimed. “What could this person hope to gain?”
“My death. Or, failing that, something like this.” He indicated his injury.
“But why?”
“Revenge is the only motive I can come up with.”
“In which case, who? Who at SHADE would be after revenge on you? Granted, you’ve rubbed a few people up the wrong way, but...”
“Did Sergeant Khalid know about the nest?”
“Did Sergeant—? I’m not even going to entertain this idea.”
“Did he? You said you’d thought about sending him instead of me.”
“Redlaw.” Macarthur stood, fists clenched by her sides. “If you didn’t happen to be in hospital already, I’d put you there myself for talk like that. As it is, I’m going to blame whatever medication it is they’ve got you on. That and post-traumatic stress. Do you realise how irrational you sound? A SHADE officer knowingly, deliberately endangering another?”
“Maybe I’ll ask Khalid myself.”
“You will not. You will not be going anywhere near Sergeant Khalid, and that’s because you will not be going anywhere near HQ. Not ’til you’re fully recovered. And it won’t be the medical professionals who’ll decide when that is, it’ll be me. Do you understand? Let me put it a little more bluntly, in case I’m not getting through that thick skull of yours. You are hereby suspended. You are no longer on active duty. I will reinstate you when I, and only I, believe you are ready for reinstatement. Until then, you may consider yourself on indefinite leave. Have I made myself clear?”
“Crystal, marm,” said Redlaw.
“Good.”
Macarthur stomped out, and Redlaw settled back against the pillows.
To be honest, that had gone better than he’d thought it would. At least she hadn’t sacked him. And he now knew that his suspicions about events on the Isle of Dogs weren’t pure paranoia; they carried a grain of possibility.
The fact was, there’d been grief between Redlaw and Ibrahim Khalid for years. Interreligious tensions were not uncommon in SHADE, and officers tended to group according to faith, Christian with Christian, Muslim with Muslim, and so on, which exacerbated matters. With Redlaw and Khalid, however, it was a clash of personalities rather than creeds. The sergeant’s attitude towards the job was a blend of cynicism and bludgeoning overkill that Redlaw found unprofessional and unpalatable.
Added to that, Khalid had really not got on with Róisín Leary. Redlaw had never quite fathomed why, although he reckoned it had a lot to do with Leary’s being a woman, and a forthright, forceful one at that. Khalid did not seem to mind being answerable to Commodore Macarthur, but that was probably because he had no choice in the matter and was, at any rate, in no position to criticise her, at least not openly. For Leary, a fellow sergeant, Khalid had shown little but contempt, and she in turn, who usually had a good word for everyone, could find none for him. Many was the time, indeed, when she had muttered darkly that if Khalid kept pushing and needling her the way he did—going on about how Sunless control and enforcement was not an appropriate occupation for a female and how much he disliked trouser-clad, unwomanly women—one day he’d wind up on the wrong end of a stake.
“Ignore him,” Redlaw would counsel. “It’s just a cultural thing. It’s not personal.”
But it had felt pretty personal to Leary, and that had made it personal to Redlaw. He couldn’t bring himself to be open-minded and even-handed towards Khalid, especially now that Leary was gone. He was defensive of her memory in a way that he hadn’t had to be defensive of her while she was alive, when she’d been perfectly capable of standing up for herself and hadn’t needed or welcomed protection from anyone else. He was jealous of everything she’d been to him and resentful of any person who had ever misjudged or maligned her. Khalid seemed to sense that, and so a vicious circle had developed, a mutual grudge that now and then spilled over into outright hostility.
The question was, just how low would Khalid stoop?
Hours came and went. Nurses came and went. Redlaw dozed and, in between dozes, brooded.
TV news provided some distraction. There was widespread coverage of the aftermath of last night’s rioting, accompanied by dire predictions of what tonight might hold. Politicians pontificated meaninglessly. Maurice Wax was a hyper-cautious wimp and his Conservative nemesis, that Slocock person, a loudmouthed opportunistic grandstander. Neither was offering anything like a practical answer to the problem at hand, doubtless because neither had one. Both seemed to be in a holding pattern, recycling the same old bromides and jibes. Wax did, however, hint at some kind of alternative strategy, making public what he’d already vouchsafed in private to Macarthur. All would be revealed at a press conference tomorrow.
Night fell, and Redlaw was seized by the urge to get up, get dressed, get out into the city. He ma
de it as far as the foot of the bed before dizziness overwhelmed him. It felt as though a hole had opened up inside him and he was tumbling into it. He had to sit for several minutes on the edge of the bed until his vision cleared and the quasi-vertigo passed.
The powerful painkillers he was taking were the cause. The doctors had warned they might have side effects—nausea, disorientation, and the like.
Simple solution, then. Stop taking the painkillers.
When an orderly came to give him his next dosage, Redlaw pouched the pills in a corner of his mouth, pretended to swallow, then spat them out after the man had left and secreted them inside his pillowcase.
Over the next few hours his resolve was tested to the limit as the pain from his shoulder mounted, crescendoed, crested into waves of sheer agony. He gritted his teeth and bore it. The pills in the pillowcase were a terrible temptation—gulp them down and in no time blessed relief would come—but he resisted. Commodore Macarthur had benched him, but that wasn’t going to stop him. He was John Redlaw and there was work to be done. London needed him. The small matter of a suspension was neither here nor there.
The television was not allowed to be on after 10pm—hospital rules—but emergency vehicle sirens in the streets told him all he needed to know. They wailed their song of chaos and alarm until well past midnight.
By then, Redlaw was getting ready to leave. Now was the ideal time, when there was almost no one around to stop him or get in his way. He girded himself to clamber out of bed. Starting—levering his upper half upright—was bad. The slightest jolt added fuel to the blaze in his shoulder. Swinging his legs out from under the covers was worse. And as for standing and detaching the sling... He managed it, but it almost made him faint. He swayed on the spot, clutching the bed frame for support, hospital gown flapping around his bare thighs. He’d never known anything like this—the feeling of being utterly enfeebled, paralysed by pain, his entire body jangling and malfunctioning. The agony was not isolated; it seemed to permeate every nerve he had, even down to the tips of his toes.
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