Vicky driving, Susan laughing. They’d been to a pub. He had got drunk and was singing badly.
Why hadn’t she seen him? Then he spotted her, parked over in the far corner, the passenger door open. He ran towards it. Vicky was in the front, facing forwards.
‘Vicky!’
She didn’t respond.
‘Vicky!’ He moved towards the open door.
Something was wrong. He stopped. ‘Vicky!’
Stich started backing up and then he saw him. Like a jack-in-the-box, the man sprang from behind Vicky’s car. Ramrod straight, and staring directly at Stich. Stich hurled himself to the right and landed belly down as a bullet ricocheted off a car behind him. He was crawling mindlessly now. He crouched up to get his bearings and ran forwards, keeping low, ducking, and criss-crossing, his muscles so bunched with effort and fear he thought they might explode. Maybe he could attract some attention. He searched for someone. Jesus, what about Vicky? He squatted at the end of a row of cars and considered his options. If he stayed here he’d be killed. But if he went back inside the hospital, near other people and made a lot of noise, 77
what then? Would he still be gunned down in a public place?
Stich edged on until he could see the light at the entrance sprayed onto the roadway. There was no choice. He had to get back inside and take his chances from there. He braced himself for yet another run but something stopped him; a shadow blocking the glow from the front of the hospital.
The killer raised the gun and took a couple of steps forward. Stich had nowhere to go, nowhere left to hide. He was about to die, just like Susan.
Exhaustion flooded over him. He closed his eyes and waited. There was a strange feeling of peace.
Then he heard the squeal of tyres.
He opened his eyes just in time to see the man’s body buckle against Vicky’s Peugeot. He flipped mid-air and came down hard. Stich heard the crack as his spine hit the tarmac. The man’s head whipped backwards and smashed into the ground.
The door of Vicky’s car was flung open and she was screaming. Stich ran towards her, leaping over the body to reach the car. The killer was staring upwards, blinking slowly as if trying to work out what had just happened. There was foam at his mouth and a dark pool around his skull. Stich hurled himself into the front seat next to Vicky as she floored it. They screeched out of the car park, skidded onto the main road and roared away from the hospital.
‘What happened?’ Stich asked.
She shook her head, tears streaming down her face. ‘Did I kill that man?’
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Stich didn’t answer. She was hyperventilating.
‘ Did I?’
‘Calm down.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You’ve got to try. Breathe slowly.’
‘God, I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘You’re not going to be sick. Just breathe.’
‘Stich, what have I done?’
‘Saved my life.’
‘He had a gun at my head.’
She was shaking now. Stich began to rub her back. She stared out at the roadway gripping the wheel and sobbing.
‘You okay to drive?’ he asked.
She nodded through the tears.
‘You’re doing well, just keep going,’ he said.
‘Concentrate on the road and your breathing. You have a tissue?’
‘In my bag.’
‘Where?’
‘Back seat.’
He reached in and fished one out.
She wiped her eyes and face with one hand and held the steering wheel with the other. Stich noticed the white knuckles, reached over and prized her fingers open a little. ‘Relax your grip.’
‘Was he dead, Stich? I mean you saw him, right?
How’d he look?’
‘Don’t worry about any of that.’
‘I need to know.’
‘Yes, he’s almost certainly dead, and you know what? I don’t care. That bastard deserves 79
everything he gets.’
‘That was him, wasn’t it? The one who killed …’
She broke off but he knew what she meant.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That was him.’
She turned back to the road and began crying again. ‘I’m so sorry, Stich.’
Stich nodded but didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
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16
Detective Inspector Varcy was in the Moorcroft lobby. He sipped on some lemon tea and thought about Magenta Rosti at her desk in the security room. It’s the middle of the night, nothing happening. She’s made herself a coffee, maybe she checks her watch – only a couple of hours until the shift ends. Then her eye catches something on camera five. A man is being violently attacked. What does she do?
What would most people do?
Call the police and report what was taking place?
No, someone else raised the alarm.
Go to the victim’s aid?
No.
Try and stop the attack?
Obviously not.
So, what happened, then?
Did the power surge come before she got to see anything on camera five or was it something she made up?
He blew his nose into a linen handkerchief and took another sip of tea.
Questions.
* * *
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The car park was almost empty and dappled with freezing mist. It swirled in tandem with the wind.
The hours seemed to merge. How long had it been since it all started? Stich tried to get some clarity on it all. What had he done? They had pulled into this service station twenty minutes ago. Racking up the heater in Vicky’s car, he contemplated his next move.
He pulled out Susan’s mobile. First, he wanted to talk to the man who left the phone message for Susan. At some level Stich felt it was linked to what was happening. The number rang and then went to voicemail. Stich left another message.
There was a knock at the window and he almost jumped out of the seat. It was Vicky. ‘Open the door.’
He unlocked it and she climbed in. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’
She handed over a plastic carrier bag. ‘Here, that’s the best they can do.’
Inside were a sweat shirt, track bottoms, and a pair of trainers. Stich began unpopping the boiler suit.
‘I’ve got nothing on under these,’ he said, pulling at the pyjamas.
Vicky turned away. ‘Well, hurry up then.’
He slipped out of them, and put on the new clothes. Then he pulled out Susan’s phone again and handed it to Vicky. ‘There’s a message on here. Tell me what you think. I’ll be back in a minute.’ He hopped out of the car and jogged over to an ice-powdered waste bin to dump the hospital clothes.
It felt great to be free of them.
When he got back to the car, Vicky had the phone 82
pressed to her ear, frowning. ‘What do you think?’
he mouthed.
She waved her hand. He waited.
‘Well?’ he asked when she had finished.
She breathed in. ‘Interesting.’
‘How interesting?’
‘Very.’
‘You understand what he’s talking about?’
‘Not specifics, but, yes, I got the gist of it.’
‘You know who it is?’
She nodded. ‘Clive Rand is an immunologist from lab fifteen.’
‘So, what does it mean?’
‘The probes he’s talking about are almost certainly genetic probes.’
‘Which means?’
‘Cloned sections of DNA – normally used to detect other identical segments of DNA.’
‘That means nothing to me,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she replied. ‘Point is, in research they’re used all the time.’
‘For what?’
‘For almost anything,’ she shrugged. ‘Gene fishing, DNA amplification, northern blotting, protein synthesis …’
&n
bsp; He held up his palms. ‘Okay, okay. In English, please.’
‘Whichever way he was using them, Susan apparently changed them.’
‘So, what’s got him so upset?’
‘If Susan changed his probe, his result would change.’
83
‘Enough to freak him out like that?’
‘Depends on the result.’
‘Meaning?’
‘A new probe would either find nothing.
Meaning there was no identical match to itself in the sample, or …’
She rubbed her eyes.
‘Or what?’
‘Or it would find something completely different.’
‘But something identical to itself, right?’
She nodded.
Stich thought for a moment. ‘On that message, Clive said he knew about the viral DNA. What does that mean?’
‘I was just wondering that myself.’
‘Could a probe detect viral DNA?’
‘If the probe was designed to find sections of viral DNA, and those sections were present in whatever sample he was using, then, yes, it would find them.’
Stich leaned back into his seat and watched a man come out from the service station. Duvet coat worn high, a No Fear skull-hugger pulled over his ears, icy breath hanging above his head like cigarette smoke. He fiddled with car keys. Stich sighed. ‘Then I’d like to know what was in his sample.’
‘Thought of phoning and asking him?’
He nodded. ‘I tried while you were in the shop.
There was no answer.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘He didn’t show up at the ball tonight, either.’
‘So what?’
84
‘He was expected, that’s all.’
‘Could he still be in the lab?’
She looked at her watch. ‘At ten minutes to midnight?’
He shrugged.
‘I have the number if you want to try,’ she said, and retrieved a diary from her bag. She called it out as Stich punched it in. It rang but there was no answer.
Vicky began tapping the steering wheel. ‘What now?’
‘You know where Clive lives?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s go there.’
85
17
Dr Aaron Grant, Immteck’s principal molecular scientist, watched as Jeff Laskey began the surgery.
The patient had been prepared and sedated. A small incision in the abdominal wall allowed entry of the stainless steel scope. The instrument went in smoothly enough, relaying an image of the gut to a small display panel set into the surgeon’s headset.
Guiding the scope to the target tissue, the surgeon excised a cherry-sized chunk of flesh, pulled it into the body of the scope and immediately cauterised the wound with a burst of laser.
Grant’s gaze swept the room taking it all in: the four other members of the op team preparing to receive the tissue sample, the stark white wall and floor tiles, the patient’s wine red entry wound, and the neat row of chrome instruments laid out on a tray in the foreground.
Whilst not a surgeon himself, Grant understood every aspect of this procedure. Krenthol was very much his baby after all.
The theatre nurse opened a sterile Eppendorf as the last section of the scope emerged from the gash in the patient’s side. Laskey dropped the biopsy inside it, then sealed, labelled and refrigerated the tube. He stood nodding and responding to the quiet 86
banter from his relieved op team, before moving to the clean up area. Grant watched the surgeon leave and then followed him through a warren of corridors connecting the various operating suites.
The surgeon was in an area off the small ops suite, soaping up. Standing in the open doorway, Grant noticed his own reflection in the sheet of glass making up the far wall, his hair a hawthorn of grey and greasy strands falling over his face. He tried to tidy it using his fingers.
‘Were you watching?’ Laskey asked.
Grant nodded.
‘Have you missed any of these biopsies?’
‘No,’ said Grant.
Laskey towelled off and began removing his theatre greens. ‘You’re coming down for the last hour tonight?’
‘Tonight?’
The surgeon let out a sigh. ‘The Cancer Fund?
The Immteck Ball, remember? We might just make last orders if we hurry.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘I won’t hold my breath.’
‘I said, I’ll try.’
Laskey dumped his greens in a plastic bin. ‘Will you be clean and showered?’
Grant half-raised an arm and sniffed. ‘Can you tell?’
‘I take it you spent last night away from home?’
Grant didn’t reply.
‘Let me guess where,’ Laskey said.
‘You know me too well,’ Grant smiled.
87
Laskey pulled on a clean shirt. ‘That’s the problem, Aaron, I don’t know you. Not anymore.
You’re getting worse.’
Grant shifted uneasily. ‘Things have been hectic lately, that’s all. I’m trying to keep on top of it – you know how it is.’
‘Sure I do. But why kill yourself in the process?’
‘When the trials have finished I’ll slow down a bit.’
‘When they’ve finished there’ll be follow-ups, ongoing development and refining. There’ll always be an excuse. It’s not worth it.’
There was a pause as he slipped on a pair of loafers. Grant cleared his throat. ‘Jeff, I need a question answered.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘It’s about one-five-one.’
‘Okay.’
‘Is he a non-responder?’
‘Yes, the lesion has not been reduced by Krenthol.
In fact its size has increased.’
‘Any metastasis?’
‘Doesn’t look like it. We scanned yesterday, and the rest of the body is clear.’
‘Have you checked the drugging regime?’
‘That’s the first thing I did. It’s fine.’
‘What about blood? White cell count okay?’
‘That seems fine too.’
‘Can you operate?’
‘Dangerous. The lesion is set between two main arteries.’
‘Then what are our options?’
88
‘The standard ones – chemo, radiotherapy.’
‘And if that fails?’
Jeff shook his head. ‘Difficult to tell. I’ve scheduled an oncology meeting tomorrow morning to discuss the possibilities. I’ll be able to give you more after that.’
‘Twenty-four hours is too long.’
Laskey put on his jacket. ‘Aaron, it’s under control – there’s nothing we can do right now.’
Grant shook his head. ‘We’ve got a patient in the trial with a non-responsive tumour, Jeff. Not just any trial, either. In my book, scheduling meetings amounts to doing nothing.’
‘It means doing nothing at the moment.’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘Okay, so what would you have me do?’
Grant stared into space. ‘Have you kept him in?’
‘No. I saw him a few days ago and there were no symptoms.’
‘How’s he taking it?’
‘I’ve said nothing – we’re conducting trials, remember? No matter how big Krenthol is, there are no guarantees with clinical trials.’
Grant glanced at his watch. ‘Is his blood sample still in storage?’
‘I imagine so but, Aaron, there’s nothing you can do this evening.’
‘I’m thinking aloud that’s all.’
Laskey followed Grant out into the corridor. ‘So, will I see you, tonight?’
Grant turned and waved. ‘Maybe.’
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18
‘Who’re you phoning?’
‘An old friend of mine, who works on Fleet Street.’
Stich waited for the recipient to pick up. Then,
>
‘Alan, is that you?’
‘Yeah, who’s this?’ The voice was thick with sleep.
‘Stich.’
‘Stich? Jesus, you know what time it is?’
‘I know exactly what time it is.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘No, I’m in trouble.’
‘Stich, you’re breaking up.’
‘I’m in the car. Can you hear me now?’
‘Yes, better.’
‘I said, I’m in trouble.’
‘What kind?’
‘The worst kind.’ Stich told him how the nightmare had unfolded, shocked at how numb it made him feel. It was as if he was talking about someone else.
‘That’s one hell of a story. Give me a second.’
Stich heard Alan adjust the receiver. ‘How you coping?’
‘I’m okay.’
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‘You alone?’
‘No, Vicky’s with me.’
‘Vicky?’
‘Vicky White, no one you know.’
Stich jerked forwards as Vicky hit the brakes.
‘Two lanes into one,’ she said by way of explanation.
‘Sorry about that.’
‘Stich? You still there?’
‘Yeah, I’m here, Alan.’
‘We’ll start with the house – I’ll send someone out to look around.’
‘Too late, it’ll be sealed off by now. The police –
led by a man named Willis – went up there hours ago.’
‘That’s okay. There’s still a lot we can do. You’re definite you won’t go to the police with this yourself?’
‘No way, I wouldn’t stand a chance.’
‘All right, leave it with me.’
‘Thanks, Alan.’
‘Stay in touch, okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Vicky.
‘He’s going to make some enquiries.’
‘Can you trust him?’
‘Yes, I think I can.’
‘You don’t know for sure?’
‘Look, Vick, I don’t know anything for sure anymore. I just want help, that’s all. How are we doing?’
‘Another twenty minutes.’
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* * *
Varcy sat in an unmarked car outside the Keynsham hospital watching rivulets on the windscreen drift downwards towards the wipers. The rain, which had let up briefly about an hour ago, had started to make an impression again. His watch read 3.15AM.
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