Redlaw - 01

by James Lovegrove

  As it happened, right now her services were in demand. She had a dead shady on a slab in the next room and four more in drawers in the morgue, all awaiting cause-of-death pronouncements and post mortem neutralisation certificates. She gave this as the reason why she couldn’t carry out a job for Father Dixon, however small he assured her it was.

  “And that’s not counting the sixteen other bodies currently lying in police morgues,” she said. “It was carnage out there last night. I’ve been pulling an all-dayer as it is to clear the backlog. I can’t possibly fit anything extra in.”

  “Please,” said Father Dixon. “It’s not for me. It’s for Captain Redlaw.”

  “Redlaw?” Dr Wing’s hazel eyes widened, filling the lenses of her specs. “Redlaw’s flipped his wig. That’s the rumour that’s going round. Cracked under the strain. He nearly killed some of our boys in a car chase, so I heard. All officers are under a blanket order to bring him in if they see him.”

  “He’s got his back against the wall, that’s certainly true. But I’ve known him long enough to believe that he’ll always do what’s right, no matter the cost, no matter the consequences. He does God’s work. And what I have here in my bag could help settle things in a case he’s involved in. It could even help settle doubts about his sanity. I need you to examine it, find out what you can. Preferably straight away.”

  “Like I said, no can do, Father.”

  “I’m begging you, on Redlaw’s behalf. It shouldn’t take too long, and those dead fellows next door aren’t going anywhere, are they? At least, I hope not.”

  A smile flickered across Dr Wing’s face. She was at home with gallows humour. You needed it in this line of work.

  “The one on the slab, a Sunless took off most of his head,” she said. “Frankly if he gets up and walks it’d be a ruddy miracle.”

  “On a par with Lazarus, I’m sure. And while I may be one of Jesus’s sunbeams, I’m not actually Him, so I think we’re safe on the resurrection front. Come on, Dr Wing. Just a few minutes of your time. If Captain Redlaw’s track record still has any currency here...”

  Dr Wing sucked on the end of one stem of her specs. “He has been SHADE’s star performer ’til now. Perhaps...”

  “Perhaps you will?”

  She put the glasses back on. “I should have my head examined for this. What do you want me to do?”

  Once she got started testing the blood, Dr Wing quickly became absorbed in the work. She ran a sample through a centrifuge to separate cells from serum, then studied both parts under a microscope. She added reagents to other samples and jotted down each result. She took cultures, introduced inoculants into them and placed the phials in an incubator to warm. She filtered some of the blood, set the filter papers in a gel-filled apparatus and ran in a charge through the gel to activate the separation process.

  An hour went by; two. Father Dixon occupied himself by flicking through the magazines that festooned the lab. They ranged from Nature to Hello! and all points between. It was hard to find a periodical these days that didn’t mention the Sunless in one context or other, so here was a recent National Geographic photo spread on the effects of the diaspora as it began to make inroads into the east coast of America, while here was a piece in Empire previewing a hard-hitting Hollywood blockbuster in which a team of A-list actors battled hordes of Sunless in a near-future post-apocalyptic world overrun by the creatures.

  Finally, seated at her computer terminal, Dr Wing uttered a soft “Ah.”

  Father Dixon looked up. “Good ‘ah’?”

  “Well, it’s an ‘ah.’ No idea if it’s good or not.” She took off her spectacles and began massaging her forehead. “I’ve checked for pretty much every organic and inorganic toxin I can think of. I’ve done basic metabolic panel, immunoblotting, protein electrophoresis, cell count, even blood gas analysis. Everything sits well within the normal reference range for cattle blood. The only peculiarity I’ve found is... Well, I’m no farmer. Maybe it’s just what they do to livestock these days to increase milk yields or improve the taste of beef or something.”

  “What do you mean, what they do?”

  “Inject them with hormones.”

  “You’re saying this blood comes from cows that have been mucked about with?” said Father Dixon.

  “No.” Dr Wing’s fingers moved to her cheekbones. “I’m saying there’s an abnormally high concentration of one particular hormone in this particular sample. Statistically that doesn’t mean anything. It’s like looking at a cabbage patch and inferring from that that the entire planet’s landmass is full of cabbages. I’d need to test blood from the whole herd, and several other herds, to be sure this isn’t just a freak one-off.”

  “But you think it might be significant.”

  “Only because the hormone is at a higher level than naturally occurs. I checked with the literature online. So there’s a good chance it has been artificially introduced into the animal. Again, though, I’d be wary of reading too much into this. The agricultural industry will do anything to enhance its product and up profit margins, and cattle farming’s the worst culprit. Only drink organic milk, Father. There’s enough oestrogen in the ordinary stuff to make you grow ovaries.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement. I don’t think my flock are ready to start calling me Mother.”

  “What is curious,” said Dr Wing, “is that the hormone is vasopressin.”

  “Which does what?”

  “Increase aggression. It also boosts sex drive and territoriality. Which isn’t of much pertinence when it comes to cows. Experiments have been done on prairie voles and golden hamsters. Again, I looked this up online. Arginine vasopressin, to give it its full name, is a neuropeptide secreted in mammals by the hypothalamus, principally after mating. Once it’s released into the bloodstream the male voles and hamsters turn vicious, seeing off other males who come sniffing round, sometimes killing them. Basically the vasopressin, while its effects last, transforms cute cuddly rodents into little furry berserkers. You cross one of them at your peril.”

  “Does this happen in humans as well? After... mating?”

  “The men I’ve known tend to roll over and start snoring, not lamp the first virile rival they come across.”

  “I must say I’ve not had much experience in that field myself.”

  “There’s no Mrs Father Dixon?”

  “Are you auditioning?”

  Dr Wing tried not to smile. “No disrespect, Father, but you’re not my type. Not by about twenty years.”

  “Damn, I knew I should have started chatting you up twenty years ago.”

  “You didn’t know me then, and besides, I was eleven, so that’s a bit creepy.”

  “You’re right, it is.” Father Dixon grimaced. “Pretend I never said anything. The reason I enquired about humans is: how would this vasopressin affect Sunless?”

  “That’s anybody’s guess. Their physiology’s still something of a mystery. Difficult to perform necrotomy on one of them because, well, how much can you deduce from a pile of ashes? And using live specimens to find out what makes them tick, that’s a huge ethical no-go area. It’s not as if they volunteer themselves to be examined. I’m sure somewhere some covert black ops agency has a bunch of them chained up in an underground facility, probably in the middle of a desert, and is cutting them up while keeping them alive, all in the name of science and the military-industrial complex. But whatever they’ve learned, they’re not sharing with the wider world.”

  “But drinking blood loaded with the hormone could conceivably drive vampires wild, like the hamsters?”

  “It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. Vampire metabolism must mimic that of humans to some extent. They still have the same underlying architecture as us—the same physiological chassis, just ramped up and customised in ways we don’t and can’t understand. Added to that, they have an extremely limited diet, so if they’ve been receiving nothing but vasopressin-enriched blood for months on end, then t
he hormone will have been accumulating steadily in their systems. They won’t have had time to flush the excess out as waste product when more keeps coming in daily. I’m surprised I haven’t noticed this before, all the ’Less poop I have to sift through. But then hormone concentration is one of the few things I haven’t been checking for. This is what Redlaw’s been looking into?”

  “It is. The blood and the riots.”

  “Oh, this could be big, then.” Dr Wing fetched herself a can of Red Bull and popped the ringpull. She didn’t offer one to Father Dixon, not that he would have accepted. “I’ve been on the go twenty-eight hours straight. Caffeine and glucose are all that’s keeping me sentient.” She polished off half the can at a single gulp, then belched discreetly into her fist. “So what we have to ask ourselves is, is it accident or design? Did the vasopressin get into the blood before it was extracted and put in pouches or after? Who’s to blame, farmers or Big Pharma?”

  “That isn’t up to you or me to establish, fortunately for us,” said Father Dixon. “What I’d like is if you could type up your findings, please. Doesn’t have to be much, just a page or so. Then I’ll have something to bring back to Redlaw. He can decide where things need taking next.”

  “I can do that,” said Dr Wing. “I warn you, it’ll be science only, no conjecture, no insinuations. Hard facts.”

  “The harder, the better. And Dr Wing?”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe you’d best not mention this to anyone else. Should it, you know, turn out to be nothing. Or indeed something.”

  “Don’t worry. Mum’s the word, Father. Unless Redlaw manages to uncover a whole huge sinister conspiracy and becomes superhero of the year, in which case I want everyone to know the part I played. I want my share of the credit, dammit.”

  Father Dixon laughed. “I’ll see that you get it. Thank you, Dr Wing.”

  Father Dixon left the forensics lab with two sheets of A4 printout that stated plainly and disinterestedly everything Dr Wing had discovered about the vasopressin in the blood. He rode the lift up to the lobby suffused with confidence and a sense of grace. He was surer than ever that Redlaw had not, as Dr Wing put it, “flipped his wig.” Redlaw was a troubled soul these days, but at the core of him there was something unshakeable and unbreakable. It wasn’t faith, though faith formed a part of it. It was rock-solid righteousness, which God had put there in His infinite wisdom, knowing there needed to be people on earth with that quality... even if those people often stood alone and rejected and were out of step with the rest of humanity.

  To be the owner of an unerring moral compass was not a gift, not in this topsy-turvy world where crooks and charlatans rose to the top and the good sank without a trace. No, it was most definitely a curse.

  But at least in John Redlaw, God had found a sturdy vessel, one that could withstand the worst that life had to offer.

  As the lift doors opened, Father Dixon made a mental note to remember the ‘sturdy vessel’ metaphor. There was the germ of a Sunday sermon in there.

  The very first person he spotted after stepping out into the lobby was Commodore Macarthur.

  He felt a sudden clenching in his belly, like a snake tightening its coils.

  Macarthur was deep in discussion with a half-dozen men, two of them uniformed shadies and the rest mid-ranking military personnel. Through the windows Father Dixon saw a row of canvas-topped troop transport lorries parked in the street outside, armed soldiers standing guard beside them. He’d been downstairs just a couple of hours, and in the interim everything had turned olive-drab and martial.

  The only thing he could do was try to make it across the lobby and out the front door without attracting attention. Macarthur had her back to him, and she and the men with her were all poring intently over a map. If he moved swiftly and stealthily, chances were she wouldn’t look up. He’d have to be desperately unlucky if she did.

  “God?” he murmured under his breath. “Come on, big chap, don’t fail me now.”

  He was almost at the door—three paces from it, if that—when somebody called to him.

  “Father?”

  It was the duty officer.

  In his head, Father Dixon said a word vicars aren’t supposed to use. Or even know.

  “Yes?” he said, turning, smiling.

  “You were a while.”

  “I know. Well, that’s how it is. The Commodore—busy, just as you warned me. I had a long wait.”

  The duty officer didn’t seem completely convinced by this. “Funny, because she came down not long after you went up and she’s been here ever since.”

  “Did I say we actually met up? I didn’t, did I? We missed each other, you see. Yes. Such a shame. I’ll catch up with her another time, when she’s not snowed under.”

  “She’s just over there, though. Now’s your chance. You can at least say hello.”

  “No, really, she’s doing something important with some important-looking people. Ex-military herself. She looks quite at home with them. So I shan’t bother her. I’ll just—”

  “Father Dixon? Graham?” Commodore Macarthur was looking his way. “Thought I heard a familiar voice.”

  Father Dixon’s pulse pounded in his ears. Keep a grip, he told himself. You can do this. Be innocent. Act like there’s nothing untoward going on. There isn’t. There really isn’t.

  “To what do we owe the honour?” said Macarthur.

  “Been waiting for you upstairs, he has,” said the duty officer. “Two hours.”

  Couldn’t this busybody jobsworth keep his mouth shut, Father Dixon wondered.

  “Have you? What for?”

  “No reason. Just happened to be in the area and passing,” Father Dixon said. “Bad timing, though, obviously, I can see. Mustn’t disturb you. You carry on with your meeting.”

  “If you were waiting for two hours...”

  “Honestly, it doesn’t matter. I had my Bible with me. I didn’t let the time go to waste. Lost myself in a Good Book, as it were.”

  “Commodore?” said one of the military men, tapping his wristwatch. “If we could perhaps get back to finalising the deployment ratios of our men...”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Macarthur nodded to Father Dixon. “Sorry we couldn’t coincide, Graham. I suspect I’d have been very interested in what you had to say to me.”

  “Yes, well, I’ll be sure to come by again soon. Goodbye, Gail.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Father Dixon stepped lively to the door and out into the cool, early evening air.

  Yes!

  He cast a glance up to the sky and winked.

  “You and me,” he whispered, “what a team,” and began the journey back to Ladbroke Grove.

  As he left, a thought struck Commodore Macarthur and she interrupted her strategy meeting again, this time in order to go off to a quiet corner of the lobby and make a quick phone call.

  “Khalid here.”

  “Ibrahim, what are you doing right now?”

  “Routine vehicle patrol to check SRA perimeters, then heading off to help the soldier boys.”

  “Cancel that. I’ve got something else for you. Who’s in the car with you?”

  “Qureshi and Heffernan.”

  “Good. Heffernan’s a bruiser. You might well need that. Do you remember Father Dixon? Used to be a pastor here?”

  “Sort of. I know his face.”

  “He’s just left, and he was behaving... ‘squirrelly’ springs to mind. Not like himself at all. Said he’d come to see me but wouldn’t say why.”

  “So?”

  “‘So, marm?’” she corrected.

  “So, marm?”

  “He’s a friend of Redlaw’s. They still keep in touch.”

  “And?”

  “And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was Redlaw he came to see me about.”

  “Meaning? Aaah, I get it.”

  “Exactly. This is where he lives.” She gave Father Dixon’s home address. “Go round there. I�
��d lay good money that’s where our errant Captain is.”

  “And then?”

  “You know what to do. Arrest and detain.”

  “And if he resists?”

  “Try reasonable force first,” said Macarthur. “Escalate only if that fails. I want him here where I can keep an eye on him, and I want him in one piece.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Sergeant Khalid, but his tone said, No promises.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As dusk gathered and night fell, the streets grew increasingly deserted. It had been business as usual during the day, London dusting itself down, picking up the pieces and carrying on. There’d been inconveniences, like the traffic holdups, but there’d also been a determination in the capital—as everywhere else in the UK—not to let the events of the night before overshadow the day. People had gritted their teeth and forged on, as though battling through a massive collective post-binge hangover.

  Besides, you could afford to be courageous during daylight hours. So long as the sun was up, even when screened by a layer of cloud, there was nothing to worry about. The Sunless were paralysed, unable to venture outside, stuck in whatever dark, cataracted hovel they called home. While a glimmer of solar radiance remained in the sky, you were safe.

  But the sun had now moved on, curtsying over the horizon. The terminator between night and day had passed across Britain.

  And tonight was when the relocations began.

  Shops closed early around Father Dixon as he walked through Bayswater and Notting Hill. twenty-four-hour convenience stores put up apology notices and brought down the steel grilles. Commuters dived into Tube stations or crammed themselves onto buses. Cinemas, pubs and restaurants shut their doors. At the enclaves of the wealthy—and W11 had a fair few of them—the spotlights went on and the ex-servicemen commenced sentry duty. Front doors slammed, latches were locked, bolts shot, blinds drawn.