by Thomas Emson
She’d said, No, no, darling, and hugged him, but Murray didn’t really know if that was true, and not knowing scared her.
Murray rang her contact before leaving the office, and her contact said to ring after ten and before eleven. So she’d sneaked down to the kitchen fifteen minutes ago to make the call.
Murray said, “What do you mean by that, by ‘unusual’?”
Her contact said, “We found foreign DNA in the bodies.”
Murray said, “Foreign?” and thought, does she mean Albanian or Afghan and might they be illegal immigrants or, better still, foreign criminals?
But then her contact said, “I mean, not human.”
Murray’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.
Her contact said, “Are you all right, Christine?”
“Yes,” said Murray. “Not human. So animal, then?”
“No. Not animal, either. Certainly not any animal that we know of.”
Murray said nothing.
Then her contact said, “There was also elements of methylenedioxy amphetamine, from which ecstasy is derived.”
“The pills,” said Murray. “So the pills killed them?”
“We can’t say that,” said her contact, “but if we can ascertain that the pills did this to their bodies, then we will be able to say that. But not now.”
“What do you think?”
“Christine, I don’t know what to think. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I’ll say in my story that the pills are believed to have been ecstasy – would that be all right?”
“That would be all right, yes,” said her contact, “but I wouldn’t say they killed those people.”
“Okay, but I’ll strongly suggest it. What else is in ecstasy tablets?”
Her contact said, “All kinds of stuff. Street drugs can contain all kinds of shit, even curry powder. What we need is a pill. We could break it down, then, see if it compares to samples we took from the bodies.”
“About this unknown element?” said Murray.
“Yes,” said her contact.
“Can I suggest at all what it might come from?”
Her contact said nothing.
Murray said, “Anything at all?”
“It’s – no, no, you can’t – it’s nothing that’s ever existed before,” said her contact, “and if it has existed, we’ve never come across it.”
Chapter 26
FEEDING TIME.
HUNGER clawing at her belly – that’s what Jenna felt before she was aware of being awake.
She came to, hauled out of whatever blackness she’d been in by a pain in her chest, as if something moved in there, and she gasped. Her gaze darted around the room, and she kept blinking because her vision was coated in red. She could see in the dark. And she could smell too, smell something that caused her to salivate.
She sat up on the trolley and looked around.
Where am I? she thought, watching others come awake. Moans filled the room. Hunger pangs pulling them out of sleep, or unconsciousness.
Jenna’s head filled with her memories, and all she could see was – food.
A man she knew as her father, a woman she knew as her mother, a man she knew as – Jake.
And they were all food.
She’d seen Jake recently. Where had she seen him? What had been her relationship with him? She knew her flesh tingled when she thought of him – but was that because he fulfilled her craving for food, or fulfilled another craving?
She shook her head. She ran her tongue over her teeth. They were sharp, and strangely, she knew what they were for.
They were for feeding.
She became more aware of her surroundings, and the other figures in the room. They hoarded towards the door, and she felt drawn to them, swept up in the feeling that she was one with them.
And she sensed what they were thinking: they were thinking “food”.
It was the only driving force.
Food to survive.
There was a place to go, as well. A nest.
She had a sense of where it was, and this pack of hers was headed there as well. Safety in numbers, protection of the group. She pressed at the rear of the group. They were huddled near the door. The ones at the front craned their necks, sniffing and salivating. Jenna knew what they smelled – she knew it in her head, as if she were sharing their nostrils.
They smelled blood, and it was blood she craved, and when she smelled it she would recognize it.
She licked her lips and thought about drinking its warmth and tasting its thickness, and it drove her wild.
She bared her teeth and hissed and waited for her brothers and sisters to tear open the door so they could feed on whatever lay on the other side.
* * *
Jerry spun on his heels, yelling and flailing with his arms.
He hit something, there was a squeal, and a tray-full of tea and biscuits clattered to the floor. Tea spilled and biscuits crumbled, and PC
Ruby Richards said, “What the hell are you doing, Jerry?”
Jerry came to and he saw Richards stand in a puddle of tea, her hands on her hips.
He said, “I-I thought I heard something move – inside,” and he gestured towards the morgue door with his thumb.
Richards made a face. “I hope they’re not waking up.” She shook her head and said, “I’ll have a look.”
“Be careful,” said Jerry.
She strode past him and said, “What’s the worst that can happen?” and then added: “You stay here,” which made Jerry feel pathetic.
Richards pressed her ear to the door and furrowed her brow. Jerry saw shadows flutter behind the portal window. The shadows could only mean that something was in there, something alive. The light wouldn’t do that on its own, would it?
“PC Richards – there’s – ”
She stared at him and put her finger to her lips. She slipped her baton out of her belt. She’d heard something, obviously. Jerry stiffened and scratched at his chest, his skin tingling with goosepimples.
PC Richards grabbed the handle and started to open the door. Her baton was ready. Jerry swallowed. He couldn’t make spit. His bladder felt heavy. He wanted to run, but what would she think of him?
PC Richards pushed open the door.
Jerry pissed himself. He stood frozen.
PC Richards faced them in the doorway.
Pale faces, evil sneers, and sharp teeth.
She turned towards Jerry, her face stretched in terror.
She screamed, her piercing voice saying, “Jerry! Phone 99 – ” and she made to run towards him.
But they snatched her and pulled her into them and she shrieked, and they surrounded her and fell on her until the only thing of her Jerry could see was a twitching foot.
He called her name and felt the wetness in his pants and the fear in his chest. And all he could do as the things from the morgue burst through the door and hurtled towards him was to fall to his knees and cover his face and scream.
They ploughed into him and their teeth sank into his skin.
Chapter 27
“K”.
LITHGOW ran and he kept running, his eyes wide open, his chest getting tighter and tighter and his legs getting heavier and heavier.
And after he didn’t know how long, he collapsed into an alley. He fell against wheelie bins, knocking them aside. He wheezed, his head spinning, and he threw up on a pile of black sacks that smelled rotten.
Still panting, he raised his head and looked out through the mouth of the alley into the road. He saw cars parked on the other side of the road, and an iron fence and trees. A park lay beyond the trees, but he didn’t know which park. He didn’t know where he was, but he hoped he was far away from that house and the woman who had shot Hammond.
He sat in the shadows of the alley for ten minutes, trying to catch his breath. He could hear his heart drum, and his throat burned like he’d drunk acid. He kept panting and he was thinking, I’ve
got to get fit or they’ll catch me one day.
He stood and grimaced as pain shot through his thighs. They felt like the muscles and the bones had been taken out of them, and they almost gave way under his weight. But he steadied himself against the wall.
A bus shot past the mouth of the alley. Seeing it gave him a spurt of energy, and he hobbled out of the passageway and saw a bus stop and the bus pulling away. He shuffled over to the shelter and checked where he was.
Lithgow huddled in the corner of the stop. His watch said it was 11.15 p.m. A bus came and Lithgow hopped on, making his way upstairs. He plonked himself in the back seat. He was headed for New Cross. With Lawton arrested, and probably in custody overnight, he could break into his flat and plant the pills.
Two break-ins in one night – I’m becoming a burglar, he thought.
He took the jar out of the inside pocket of his Crombie overcoat.
He rested the jar on his lap and he pulled the stopper out and looked inside at the pills. Hundreds of them, he thought. He could’ve tried to pin all this on Lawton by using a few tabs from the batch he already had in his flat.
“But, no,” he said out loud, “you’re far too greedy for that, Fraize.”
He put the stopper back in the jar and held up the container to study it. He turned it this way and that, looking at the picture of the Greek hero-type and the dead bodies around him.
Fraser narrowed his eyes and curled his lip. He wondered if the jar would be worth anything. But he couldn’t take it to an antique shop and say, I found this, how much is it worth?
The householders might have reported it stolen – and then he shook his head, thinking, Not unless they want the cops to find Hammond, dead or alive but probably shot.
“Need to think, need to think,” he said to himself.
He looked at the jar again. He tipped it upside down to look at the base, and the pills rattled.
A letter “K” was scratched into the base.
Chapter 28
SCAPEGOAT.
1.03 a.m., February 8
LAWTON leaned his head against the window of the N171 from the Elephant and Castle to Catford Bus Garage and watched London after dark sweep by. Traffic still busied the roads and the pavements buzzed with club-goers leaving, or looking for, a drinking hole.
Birch had let him go an hour previously. He warned Lawton that he had a right to hold him without charge for twenty-four hours if he wanted to. But he was being nice, he said.
The detective peppered Lawton with questions. He asked about Jenna, and how Lawton felt about Jenna and Lithgow. He asked about rumours that Lawton was involved with drugs. And he asked about that bullshit in Basra that was none of Birch’s business.
And Lawton said he knew what was happening because it happened before, two years before.
Birch said, “What happened before, Mr. Lawton?”
Lawton shut his eyes. The memory flashed, and in Lawton’s head, his commanding officer, Major Hugh Brewer, was saying, “Someone’s got to go, Jake, and it’s cursed bad luck that it’s got to be you. I know what happened, we all know what happened, but – ” He shrugged.
“I’m a scapegoat,” Lawton had said, glaring out of the window of Brewer’s office in the Old State Building in Basra City, where the regiment was based.
Brewer said, “It’s a disgrace. This happened more than a year ago, for fuck’s sake. But the press has got hold of this video. Some red-top splashed it all over their front page and some cow reporter posted it on her website – and now they’re all baying for blood.” The Major shook his head and said, “The war’s fucked up. The politicians and the press are looking for someone to blame. They’re too cowardly to accept responsibility themselves – you know what fucking politicians are like.
And journalists and editors won’t say sorry over their dead bodies.
They’ve been after us ever since the bloody Americans and bloody Abu Ghraib.”
Lawton said, “Don’t they understand that this is war?”
“No, they don’t. Their world is black and white,” said Brewer. “Their world is, Take the car or take the train? Their world is, Do I have chips or jacket potato? Their world is, Have a fling with the secretary or not have a fling with the secretary? They don’t live in the grey like we do; they don’t live in blood and death. They don’t know what war is.”
“So I have to pay the price. With my career.”
“You were pictured killing a civilian – an unarmed civilian.” Brewer rifled through a mess of papers on his desk, found a half-smoked cigarette and lit it.
“He was neither, sir.” Lawton sniffed in the tobacco and felt an itch in his lungs.
Brewer said, “I understand that, your mates understand that – but the papers won’t have it, the anti-war brigade – and they’re growing – won’t have it. The government wants blood, and they’re not willing to put their own heads on the block.”
“I’m fucking outraged, sir, excuse my fucking language.”
“I’m fucking outraged too, Sergeant Lawton – language excused.”
Lawton shook with anger, the red mist falling. He had no problem putting his life on the line, but he expected support from the politicians who sent him here, by the press who said, Yes, go get Saddam and his weapons. But when things start to go shitty, they all turn their backs.
Brewer said, “They’ve fucked up royally in Iraq, I tell you. The Brits are the only ones making any headway, but we’re up against imageconscious politicians and reader-hungry editors.” He tried to get something out of his fag end, but he failed and stumped it out on the desk. He said, “This was a great war, Jake, but it’s been a crap peace.”
* * *
Ten minutes after leaving Brewer’s office, Lawton had rolled a fag outside in the mid-day heat. He looked up at the clear blue sky.
He thought, It’s just like Tenerife, if you look up and ignore the tanks and weapons, the sunburned, bare-chested troops, the RPGs and mortars whizzing overhead, the explosions rattling the compound.
Yeah, he thought – just like fucking Tenerife.
Lawton’s gaze skimmed the compound’s high walls and fixed on the sangar. They were pillbox shelters where troops on guard duty got shot at, got mortared, got RPGd.
“You know that one up there, sarge,” said a voice, “that sangar’s got more hits than anything else in Iraq. Taken everything, and it’s still standing.”
Lawton looked at the man and said, “That’s why we call this place the Alamo, Rabbit.”
Rabbit said, “I been taking pot-shots at insurgents this morning, sarge. Think I got a couple.”
“Two less bastards to help us fuck this war up,” said Lawton.
Rabbit nodded and ran a hand over his ginger razor-cut. His forehead shone with sweat, and blotches of red covered his white torso.
Lawton, fag dangling from between his lips, rolled another one and handed it to Rabbit, Rabbit taking it and lighting it with a Zippo.
Lawton said, “You need to put something on that sunburn, Rabbit. You’ll be on the sick list again with it tomorrow. Medics’ll be up your arse.”
“Can’t be bothered. Girls do sunscreen, sarge.”
“And men burn, yeah?”
Rabbit shrugged. “My dad’d kill me if he thought I was putting that soft southern stuff on my skin.”
“Sun’ll kill you before your dad does.”
They smoked in silence. The skeleton of a Land Rover trundled past, pushed by a trio of soldiers.
“That got IEDed this morning,” said Rabbit, jutting his chin towards the Land Rover.
“We lose any of the lads?” said Lawton.
“They’re okay, thank fuck.”
“Thank fuck,” said Lawton.
“Sarge?”
“Yeah.”
Rabbit looked him in the eye and said, “What’s going on? The lads want to know.”
Lawton smiled. He plucked a piece of tobacco off his tongue. “Sent you, did they?”
/> “Yeah, sent me, sarge.”
Lawton sighed. “You can go back and tell them they’ll be getting a new Section leader.”
“Fuck that. What the fuck have they done?” Rabbit’s voice went high-pitched. “Demoted you? You back with the lads, now?”
“No, Rabbit, they’re sending me home, that’s what they’re doing,” said Lawton, and he tasted the bitterness rising into his mouth as he said the words.
“Home? What? R-and-R?” said Rabbit.
“No,” said Lawton, “not ‘rest and recuperation’, more ‘fuck off and die’.”
“You are fucking larking,” said Rabbit, the tendons in his neck cording, his eyes burning with anger.
Lawton said nothing. He smoked and looked up at the sky again trying to clear his mind of the Alamo, the war, Basra, and Iraq.
Rabbit said, “The lads won’t like it.”
“They’ll have to like it,” said Lawton.
“They’ll mutiny.”
Lawton scowled at Rabbit. “They’ll do nothing of the fucking sort, Rabbit. And you tell them that from me.”
Rabbit bowed his head and stubbed his boot in the dust. He kicked up sand.
“There’s nothing to be done,” said Lawton. “The bastards don’t give a shit about us, Rabbit. You keep your head down, get through this, and do what we always do – fight for your mates. No one fights for us, Rabbit. Just our mates.”
Rabbit’s mouth quivered. He blinked and tears streamed down his cheek, eroding a rivulet through the dust coating his skin. He spat, wiped his face with a tattooed forearm, and said, “Fuckers.”
“They are, Rabbit, they’re all fuckers.”
Lawton dropped his fag in the dust and stepped on it. He nodded at Rabbit, saying he’d see them all before he left. He slapped Rabbit’s shoulder and started to walk away. But Rabbit’s voice, calling his name, halted him.
Lawton turned to face Rabbit.
Rabbit stood to attention. He saluted and said, “It’s been a fucking honour, sarge, a fucking honour.”
Lawton bit his lip and then he said, “Me too, Rabbit.”