Sets of keys hung, handily, on a hook-board just inside. Even more handily, each was attached to a fob with a manufacturer’s logo on it. The Lamborghini? The Ferrari? The Bugatti? Redlaw was spoiled for choice.
But not spoiled for time, as a scream emanated from the house, piercingly shrill. Once the housekeeper got over her shock, she’d be straight on to the police. They’d be here in quarter of an hour, maybe sooner.
He plumped for a Mercedes, a C-class saloon; he had no experience with snazzy Italian sports models and would probably crash one if he attempted to drive it. He unlocked the Merc, swiftly familiarised himself with the controls, switched on the ignition, and then was sailing off up the driveway. He felt a momentary pang of regret about the housekeeper. Ought he to have intercepted her before she went into the drawing room? Warned her what she would discover there? The poor woman was probably half out of her wits, finding her employer dead on the floor in a pool of blood.
But wouldn’t it have alarmed her more to come across a stranger in the house? One who, moreover, looked as pitifully ragged and battered as the rearview mirror was telling Redlaw he did?
No, he’d done the right thing.
Now all he had to do was figure out where he was going.
Macarthur was his quarry. Catching up with her, catching her, was his priority. What had got into her? What was motivating her? He’d never thought of Gail Macarthur as the type to flip out and do something insane. She’d always seemed so sturdily reliable.
Then again, she had been busily undermining him throughout his investigation into the bloodlust riots, hadn’t she? And, for all her protestations, the trap she’d set for him on the Isle of Dogs could have proved lethal.
Macarthur had some hidden agenda, some ultimate goal he just wasn’t seeing.
The entrance gate rolled aside of its own accord as the Mercedes approached. Redlaw pulled out onto the lane, skidding slightly as he made the turn. There was more power under the Merc’s bonnet than he was used to, and more sensitivity in the steering wheel too.
She absolutely detests them.
He had had no inkling of Macarthur’s loathing for the Sunless. She’d managed to keep that from him. Disguised it well. Although he had perhaps caught a glimpse of it back there in the observatory, when he’d been bargaining for Illyria’s life...
Illyria.
No. Redlaw tamped that thought down. Now was not the time to dwell on Illyria. Focus on Macarthur. He couldn’t escape the feeling that he was racing against the clock. Macarthur had embarked on something with the murder of Lambourne, some desperate endgame, the culmination of months of quiet, covert plotting.
Detests them. With a vengeance.
She has the code.
All at once it came to him.
God damn it.
God damn her.
Redlaw switched on the car’s sat nav. He wasn’t sure of the precise address of his destination but, as it happened, it was already logged into the sat nav’s memory. Of course. The Merc must have travelled the route before, countless times.
“Keep going straight on,” the computer voice advised, calmly. “You have sixty-one point two miles to go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Solarville One gleamed massively ahead, a hill amongst hills, like some mutant outgrowth of the Chiltern range, cancerously black.
As Redlaw drove in along the approach road, a line of SHADE patrol cars passed the other way, officers clocking off and heading home after a busy night. The Mercedes had tinted windows, so he wasn’t concerned about being spotted and recognised. The gateway in the perimeter fence, however, guarded by both soldiers and shadies, would be a problem.
He was considering putting his foot down and ramming the barrier, but as he came within twenty metres of it he spotted a row of tyre spikes entrenched in the tarmac, bristling like metal porcupine quills. Damn.
Then a wonderful thing happened. Like the Red Sea parting for Moses, the tyre spikes sank into the ground, the barrier lifted of its own accord, and its armed custodians stepped aside. One of them even waved the car through, while another saluted.
Whatever operated the gate to Lambourne’s estate also worked its magic here. Redlaw, in spite of everything, couldn’t suppress a smile. There was even a parking space near the dome, designated Exclusive use of Nathaniel Lambourne.
Sitting close by was a solitary SHADE car, in all likelihood the one Macarthur was using to get about. Redlaw placed a palm on the bonnet. Engine still hot. She’d not been here long. Maybe there was still time; he wasn’t too late.
He recalled, from the schematic he’d seen in the newspaper, that there was a control bunker onsite where environmental conditions within the dome could be monitored and adjusted, and the Sunless residents kept an eye on. A single-story breezeblock structure near the dome’s base, some hundred metres from where he stood, seemed to be the place. Redlaw loped towards it, careful to stay out of line-of-sight from the building’s few, meagrely-proportioned windows.
The door required a swipe card and numeric code for entry; Redlaw’s only available tactic was the brazen, frontal approach. He rapped firmly and authoritatively on the door, at the same time drawing his Cindermaker. The element of surprise, at least, was on his side. As far as Macarthur knew, he was dead, his body mangled and effaced beyond all recognition. She wouldn’t be expecting him.
A SHADE officer opened the door, and as his initial quizzical look turned to one of startlement, Redlaw shoved him inside, putting his gun to the man’s head.
There were three other shadies inside the control bunker, and Macarthur. All turned round as Redlaw bundled his hostage towards them. All four looked perplexed, but none as much as the Commodore.
She was standing in front of a computer console, while the other three sat before a bank of TV screens. Images on the screens presented a montage of life within the dome for its recently installed inmates. Sunless were strolling through the streets of Solarville One, many of them shielding their eyes and blinking up towards the sun. Their postures, their body language, conveyed a mixture of trepidation and amazement. They were like space explorers venturing across the surface of an unknown planet, still not quite assured that the alien atmosphere was not going to kill them. A few of the vampires were obeying their age-old, innermost imperative and trying to find shelter from the light, cowering behind walls and the like. The majority, however, appeared to be coming to terms with the idea that the pale glowing disc peeping through the glass panes overhead need not be feared. The sun’s radiance was no longer fatal to them.
For now.
“Commodore,” said Redlaw. “Please move away from that console.”
Macarthur did not budge. There was text on the display behind her, above an empty box with a cursor flashing. The words were too small for Redlaw to make out, but his guess—no, more than a guess, his conviction—was that this was the command to render the dome clear.
She has the code.
Macarthur had called up the emergency failsafe protocol and had been on the verge of eradicating every vampire inside the dome, all one thousand of them. None of the junior officers would have been aware what she was up to, if she’d gone about it subtly. Nor would any of them have thought to query her actions, because, well, she was the Commodore.
Redlaw had arrived in the very nick of time. Ten seconds later and Macarthur would have pressed Enter and the glass-lightening process would have begun. A mass dusting on an unprecedented scale.
“Move,” he said again, “or I shoot this man.”
“No,” Macarthur replied with confidence. “I don’t think you will, John.”
“She’s trying to wipe them all out,” Redlaw informed the other shadies. “The dome’s fitted with smart glass. It can be made transparent.”
“Preposterous,” said Macarthur.
“What are you doing on that computer, then?”
She was, as he knew now to his cost, a smooth liar. “Diagnostic check. Making sure the
systems are running efficiently and bug-free.”
“Forgive me, but what the hell do you know about computer systems? You’re sabotaging Solarville.”
Redlaw spotted one of the shadies reaching surreptitiously for his Cindermaker.
“Uh-uh,” he warned. “Not unless you want this man’s death on your conscience.”
The hostage whimpered.
“Don’t fret, Aaronovitch,” Macarthur told the frightened man. “It’s a bluff. Redlaw’s never killed a human, and he’s not about to start now.”
“Wrong,” said Redlaw. “How come I’m here, still alive? Because I killed Giles Slocock. And now that I’ve taken one life, another two or three won’t make much difference. When you’ve broken the Sixth Commandment once, you might as well keep on breaking it. You can’t go back, so you might as well go forward.”
“Then you’ve damned yourself.”
Redlaw gave a pain-wracked parody of a shrug. “God and I will sort it out between us when the time comes. I think I’ll be able to make a convincing case for myself. I doubt you’ll be able to do the same, Gail. Not after murdering Nathaniel Lambourne like that.”
Consternation filled the room. Macarthur tried to rise above it, dismissing Redlaw’s statement with a contemptuous sneer. “So Lambourne’s dead, eh? Who’s to say you didn’t kill him yourself, John, and you’re trying to shift the blame? It’s all very well bandying accusations about, but unless you have proof—”
“I don’t need proof,” Redlaw said, overriding her. “He told me exactly who did it, as he lay dying. But your killing him isn’t even that important. Good riddance, I say. The world is lighter without Lambourne. What matters is what you’re about to do, the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of vampires. For the last time: step away from the console. I won’t have you doing this. I won’t allow it.”
Macarthur was debating within herself, he could see. Tallying up all her options. Aaronovitch squirmed in his grasp, but Redlaw put a stop to that by grinding the gun harder into the back of his skull.
Abruptly Macarthur came to a decision and about-faced. Her hands went to the console keyboard. She started to type.
Redlaw swung his Cindermaker away from Aaronovitch and planted a bullet smack dab in the body of the console. Something shattered; sparks flew. The display went blank. Macarthur stabbed Enter, stabbed it again, but the console was dead. There were no sounds, no warning sirens, nothing to indicate that the failsafe command had gone through and the dome was clearing. Redlaw glanced at the TV screens. On none of them was the image growing lighter or a vampire starting to recoil in agony.
“Fuck you.” Macarthur turned round with sheer thwarted hatred blazing in her eyes. “Fuck you, John, you fuck. What did you have to go and do that for? I was so close. I nearly had them!”
“Gail Macarthur,” said Redlaw, “you are under arrest for the attempted unlawful dusting of—”
“You can’t arrest anybody,” she crowed. “You’re not even a shady any more. You’re a sad wee nobody, is what you are. Look at the state of you. A half-dead loser who’s gone soft on vamps, thanks to that shtriga slut you were fooling around with. At least she’s gone now. It was a pleasure to watch the bitch burn.”
Her face took on a wheedling, mock-pitying expression.
“Och, did I hurt your feelings there, reminding you of your undead girlie? Tell me, what’s it like screwing a vampire? Is that the only way you can get it up, that shrivelled old dick of yours, when the lady’s stone-cold and dry as a bone down under?”
“We never—”
But before Redlaw could finish the riposte, Macarthur dived for the SHADE officer nearest her, yanked his Cindermaker out of its holster, and blasted three times at Redlaw. All of the shots missed him but one struck Aaronovitch in the chest, and the impact sent both him and Redlaw crashing to the floor.
In the confusion that followed, as Redlaw lay pinned under Aaronovitch, further shots were fired. There was shouting, screaming, the sound of things breaking. Finally he managed to disentangle himself from the corpse and throw it off him, to discover that another of the SHADE officers was dead, one had a bullet wound to the arm, and the third was crouched behind a chair, face contorted with terror.
There was no sign of Macarthur.
“The Commodore, she’s crazy,” said the injured shady. “She started blasting away, then ran out.” He pointed to a glass-fronted case mounted on the wall. It had been smashed open. “Took that with her.”
A fire axe, which had been hanging on spring-clips in the case.
Redlaw launched himself out of the control bunker, spotting Macarthur immediately; she was sprinting towards the foot of the maintenance ladder, which hugged the contour of the dome from base to apex. She leapt onto it and began clambering up, the fire axe dangling from her belt.
It didn’t take a genius to work out what she proposed to do. Since she couldn’t make the glass panes see-through, the next best thing was simply to smash them individually.
Redlaw ran after her and hauled himself up onto the ladder. The first couple of dozen steps were pretty steep, but thereafter the rising curve shallowed out and the going became easier. It helped that there were safety rails on both sides, affording handholds.
As he climbed, Redlaw noticed switch-boxes positioned at regular intervals along one of the safety rails, each with a green pressure button and a red stop button. The underside of the ladder was fitted with wheels running along grooved tracks encircling the dome. The entire ladder must be able to move, then, swinging around the dome. The switch-boxes enabled maintenance workers to ‘drive’ it.
Halfway up, a good two hundred and fifty metres above ground level, Macarthur glanced over her shoulder. Looking unsurprised that Redlaw was pursuing her, she pulled the Cindermaker from her waistband and fired twice. Redlaw flattened himself against the steps. Both shots missed, but one ricocheted off the safety rail just inches from his head, hair-raisingly close.
When no further shots followed, Redlaw peered up and saw Macarthur cursing in frustration. Out of bullets. She didn’t have a spare clip, so she tossed the Cindermaker away. The gun skittered and clattered down the dome, while Macarthur resumed climbing.
Redlaw followed. He himself had only the one Fraxinus round left. Better make it count.
Within a minute Macarthur was near the summit of Solarville One. The rungs of the ladder were almost level with one another. She tugged the axe out from her belt and leaned over the safety rail. Taking a double-handed grip on the haft, she swung the blade down onto one of the topmost hexagonal panes. The glass was thick and toughened, designed to withstand the worst the elements could bring, and it took her a few blows to penetrate it. Once she did, however, knocking out the rest of the metre-wide pane was relatively easy. She turned her attention to the next pane down and started to repeat the process.
Redlaw had by now made up the gap between them. He halted within a few metres of Macarthur, panting hard. His Cindermaker was out and levelled.
“Enough, Gail,” he said. “That’s enough. Stop right there.”
Macarthur paused, axe poised. “It isn’t enough. I won’t stop until I’ve shattered every single pane. Listen. Hear that?”
Faintly, from below, there were screams. Some of the vampires must have been caught in the shaft of sunlight now lancing down from the glassless aperture in the dome. Beneath his feet, Redlaw saw tiny figures scurrying about, panicked as ants when a small boy focuses a sunbeam on them through a magnifying glass.
“You know what that’s the sound of?” Macarthur said. “A good start.”
“Why?” said Redlaw. “Why do this?”
“Haven’t you figured it out?”
“Apparently not. That’s the reason I’m asking.”
“For her,” Macarthur said. “Róisín.”
“Leary?”
“How many other bloody Róisíns do we know? They killed her. Bastard vampires killed her. Took her from me, and since I can’t get her b
ack, I’m going to get my own back on them. I’m going to dust a thousand of them, because she was worth a thousand of them. Fair exchange.”
“But there’ve been at least a dozen shadies who’ve died on your watch,” said Redlaw. “More. It’s an occupational hazard. Yes, Leary was an exceptional officer, but why her in particular? Why’s she the one who has to be avenged and not any of the others?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, John. It’s something called ‘love.’ It’s what happens between people who have feelings and are capable of expressing them. An alien concept to you, of course.”
“You... and Leary?”
“Ding! The lightbulb pops on above his head.” Sudden tears glistened in Macarthur’s eyes. “I loved that woman. She loved me. Of course, we had to keep it secret. Fraternising within the ranks—frowned on. It would’ve probably cost me my job if anybody had found out, and Róisín’s prospects for promotion would have been shot. I think Khalid knew, or maybe he just had an instinct about us, sensed something that offended his religious sensibilities, tweaked his deviance radar. I think a couple of others might have had their suspicions too. But funnily enough, not Leary’s best friend. You had no idea.”
“I didn’t even know she was a...”
“You can say it. Lesbian. What you’ll find is, some of us are better at hiding it than others. Some of us have to be. Strict Roman Catholic community like the one Róisín grew up in, it didn’t do for a girl to admit she prefers girls. The nuns at her convent school would have tried to flog it out of her if they’d known. So she acted straight, but by God, when we were together, she was anything but. Best sex of my life, John. The love of my life as well.
“We were going to grow old together. Once we’d both done our stint with SHADE and collected our pensions, we were going to buy a cottage near Brighton and become a pair of fat, crotchety old tuppence-lickers with too many cats and a kitchen garden full of veggies. It was all going to be so wonderful.”
Macarthur made no move to wipe the tears from her cheeks, but nor did she sob. Her voice remained steely and even as she said, “I miss her every day. Every minute of every day. Undead scumbags stole my future from me. They have to pay for that.”
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