“Love ‘em and leave ‘em, ay?”
She grabs his jacket and pulls him close. “I’ll love ‘em later.” She dabs a kiss on his lips.
To Javeen’s relief, Stangton arrives at the station ten minutes after she has made a coffee and started on her ‘to do’ list. His cheeks are ruddier than usual and he seems tense. She resists the urge to ask what’s wrong and instead makes a start on the list of calls she needs to make. First on the list is Nature England and then Lynx UK to ask again for confirmation about the lynx trials. Second is Marta Steward and then Laura Anderson to see if Dr Max Anderson has reappeared. The phone rings. The voice on the other end is clipped, a little breathy, it takes a moment for Javeen to realise that the woman at the other end is holding back her emotion. “It’s Mrs Maybank. I want to report a missing person.”
The ache across the back of Javeen’s head deepens. “What’s the missing person’s name-”
“It’s my daughter, Lois. She didn’t come back last night. Or the one before that. I keep ringing her phone, but it just rings and then goes to the answer phone. Even when we argue she always answers my calls. It’s that, Nate Cruickshank, he’s abducted her or done something.” The words come out in a jumbled rush, some falling over the others. “He’s got a terrible temper, her friend Anita, was-”
“Mrs Maybank, could you slow down, please?” Javeen interrupts the flow of emotion. The woman needs to be calm. “When was the last time you saw Lois?”
“It was after the fracas at the Institute. I was livid and I’m afraid I tore her off a strip when we got home. It’s my fault isn’t it!”
As the conversation progresses, Javeen gleans the information she needs. Lois had been sacked after attacking one of the Institute’s employees - Javeen had spoken to the girl herself - had argued with her mother, then left with her boyfriend who’d muttered something darkly about ‘getting them back’ and ‘putting them out of business’. The man in Dr. Steward’s office with the ill-concealed piece strapped to his side, comes into mind. “Was Lois’ boyfriend staying in your home?”
She’s indignant. “Certainly not!”
Javeen wants to make a quip, but thinks better of it.
“They were stopping at the campsite. Four of her friends from university according to Lois.”
The protestors perhaps? The campsite is closed, if they were staying there, then the owner is turning a blind eye or has given them permission to stop. He’d be the first person on her list of enquiries. “I’ve logged Lois as a missing person, Mrs Maybank. I’ll do my best to find her, but it may be that she’s just gone away for a few days. She’s-”
“She’d asked to borrow five hundred pounds. The money’s still in an envelope propped up next to the kettle. She wouldn’t have left without it. She doesn’t have any other money, and her bags, and all her clothes and make-up, are still in her bedroom.”
That settles it for Javeen. No young adult leaves home without money and toiletries. “I’ll start my enquiries now, Mrs Maybank.”
The phone clicks to dead and Javeen swings to Stangton. “Looks like we have two mysteries to solve now. Lois Maybank is missing, and it’s possible she was at the Institute last night.” Stangton’s face is grim and the scream Javeen had heard in the forest nags in her ears. Something bad was happening in the sleepy village. “I want to talk to Ken Dixon. He owns the campsite, doesn’t he?”
Ten minutes later, and Javeen is standing with Stangton in Ken Dixon’s garden. Flat cap perched on his head, he’s leaning up against his spade, the tines spiked into the rich loam, earthworms wriggling in the newly turned earth. White breath billows dragon-like as he talks.
“Well, I was keeping an eye on them. The campsite’s closed, but they paid me fifty pounds to stay a few nights. I can’t afford to say no to money. There weren’t no leccy nor water.” Javeen listens, enjoying the sound of his ancient pronunciations, water had come through as ‘wahtur’, though it’s not a local dialect. “I told ‘em that, but the leader,” Javeen raises her eyebrows, “lad’s name was Nate, which I reckon must be short for Nathaniel, which if you ask me is a bit noncy for a lad-.”
“Big Daddy’s real name was Shirley,” Stangton butts in.
“Aye, reckon it was. Well-”
“And John Wayne’s was Marion.”
“Aye, so it was. Well, Nate …” he stares at Stangton as though waiting to be interrupted again, “the lad insisted that was fine. He had an edge to him, that one. When he talked, the others just listened, or nodded, like a bunch of brainless sheep. It’s the schools you know, they just spoon-feed ‘em these days. My daughter’s a teacher down in Grimsby and she can turn the air ‘lectric with her rants against the Department of Education.”
A sharp twist in Javeen’s guts had accompanied Ken’s mention of ‘Grimsby’ as the face of Nigel ‘bloody’ Parker, whose name was now forever welded to the expletive, had arisen in her memory.
“Mr Dixon, could you tell me when you last saw them?”
“Aye, it was yesterday morning - real early - not much past dawn.”
The morning after the break-in at the Institute.
“I wake early and—did you hear that ungodly racket in the woods that night?” Javeen nods. “It was unearthly, made my skin crawl and my ring-piece shriv-” He gives Javeen a quick glance, “well, it gave me the willies. I was in the kitchen making a drink. I don’t sleep too well and needing a piss every couple of hours doesn’t help—something for you to look forward to Stuart. You do have your prostrate checked regular, don’t you?”
Stangton mumbles something Javeen can’t quite catch and flits his eyes down the garden and across to Dixon’s greenhouse.
“Mr Dixon,” Javeen continues, “you said you’d seen the students?”
“That’s what they are, is it? Thought as much. Well, I didn’t dare go out when I heard that scream, but when it came light, I drove down to the campsite. They was all packed up and just about to leave. Nate was in a right strop. I would have been too if it had been me.” He looks at Javeen for her reaction.
“What was it, Mr Dixon?” Javeen will give him his moment.
“Well,” he pauses for his dramatic expose, “the van had been battered.”
“Battered? How’d you mean, Mr Dixon?”
“The panels were beaten in like someone had taken a hammer to it and there were scratches down to the bare metal.” He swipes a clawed hand through the air to demonstrate.
“Had the van been broken into?”
“I don’t know. None of the windows were broken. I reminded Nathaniel he’d agreed to park at his own risk, but he didn’t take no notice, he was warbling on about Anita getting it in the neck when he found her.”
Dread drops like a stone in Javeen’s belly. “Anita? How many students were here that morning Mr. Dixon?”
He’s silent for a moment. “Well, when they first turned up there was three lads and two lasses, but that includes Lois, Marjory’s lass.”
“And how many did you see leave, Mr. Dixon?” Stangton.
“Just the three lads.”
Stangton remains tight-lipped as he catches Javeen’s eye. They thank Ken Dixon for his help then take quick steps to the car. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Latimer.” He turns the ignition and the engine hums. “A really bad feeling.”
18
Back at the station, Javeen stirs coffee into two cups, drowns it with milk and boiling water and hands one to Stangton. Neither have taken off their coats or sat down.
“We should go into the woods to search.” Javeen says. Stangton wants to wait, follow procedure. “You heard what Bill Elliot said. They’re undermanned as it is and there’s an Antifa march going on in town.”
Javeen snorts. “Fascists raging against fascists! Too bad the irony is lost on them.”
“There’ll be more officers available to help but not until tomorrow at the earliest, and because the missing persons aren’t children, it’s not a priority.”
She takes a swig of coffee, glad the milk has cooled it. “But there’s something rotten going on, Stangton. Max Anderson, Lois Maybank, and now this Anita girl are missing. The thing that links them all is the Institute.”
“I’m glad you didn’t mention the reports of wolfmen roaming the village. I’m starting to feel like Basil Rathbone in ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’.”
Javeen laughs. “Farmer Burdon’s sheep were possibly killed by a lynx. Maybe that’s what is making the awful noise?”
“Do Lynx howl? I thought they were cats.”
“Maybe that’s why it sounds so odd. It’s not like a dog’s howl-”
“Or a werewolf’s.” He makes a dramatic swipe with a clawed hand through the air.
“Could be a yowl.”
“Doesn’t explain Billy Oldfield’s sighting.”
“Billy was drunk. We can hardly take his word for it. It’s more likely a local playing a prank, or he had some kind of hallucination. I have to admit, though, that damned scream from the woods chilled me.”
“And Mrs Carmichael is old and probably going senile.” Stangton continues. His eyes look beyond Javeen’s shoulder to the window, and beyond that to the small carpark and the thick bank of trees.
“Two girls are missing, Stangton, and I don’t think we should wait for the team to start searching for them.”
“But-”
“I’m going in, Stangton. I’m not waiting for them to send us reinforcements. Max Anderson and those girls could be hurt … or dead. I don’t know what’s going on in those woods, but I’m going to find out.”
Stangton searches her eyes. “Finally found your balls, then?”
She holds her tongue as her eyes search his. He was right. Her attitude had stunk before yesterday; she’d been wallowing in her own self-pity, lost sight of why she’d joined the Force in the first place, and become a victim of her own mistakes. She nods, pulls her lips over her teeth. “Yes, Stangton. Yes, I have.”
His smile broadens. “Good, then let’s go and see if we can find them.”
Her own smile broadens with relief.
“I’ll fill up the travel mugs with coffee,” he continues, “If you check we’ve got torches and plenty of batteries.”
Thank you. “Got it.”
An hour later, with one rucksack packed with equipment, and the other with food and drink. they’re back at the campsite beside the patch of flattened grass left by the tents. She hadn’t noticed before, hadn’t thought to look, but a track is visible in the grass from the tents that disappears into the trees.
“She may have gone into the forest this way.”
“Could be, but I’m not sure how fresh this track is.”
Stangton takes the lead and they step out of the thin morning sunshine and into the dappled light of the forest.
After nearly an hour of walking through the woods, they stop to drink from the flask of coffee. Javeen can’t shake the feeling of being watched. She remembers reading about it; the sense of being watched was an instinct—something about the amygdala in the brain responding to an external gaze that the person wasn’t aware of. The knowledge that she is subconsciously picking up someone watching her is unnerving, and, in the circumstances, deeply worrying. She takes a breath to ease the tension. Perhaps they should have waited until a unit had arrived from the main town. Despite Stangton at her side, a shiver runs down Javeen’s spine. The sun has already begun to dip in the sky. She checks her watch, 2:52 pm.
Stangton catches her eye. “We should turn back soon. It’ll be dark before we get back to the campsite at this rate.”
Javeen agrees with a nod. “Just ten more minutes, I’m coming back tomorrow though.”
“In the afternoon, Latimer. The team should be here by then. We need to make enquiries in the morning. I want to speak to Steward again. I’ve had a few thoughts about the Institute.”
“Agreed. Something’s not right there.”
Ahead the trees thin out and beyond them she can see a clearing with a tree felled by the wind and uprooted. Its trunk stretches out into the open space. A low mist rolls in across the grass.
“It’s the roots and stumps that give me the creeps.” She takes another step forward. “They sit between the trees, rotting away, covered in moss. They look like monsters coming out from the mist.”
Stangton laughs. “It’s the feeling of being watched that’s giving me the shivers.”
Javeen bites her bottom lip. That he feels it too, makes it worse. “Let’s turn back.”
“OK. Let’s get to the clearing and-”
Alerted by his sudden silence, and the jolting stop of his step, Javeen follows his eyes to the forest floor.
“I think we’ve found one of the missing girls.”
Javeen groans. It is the girl from the Institute, the one they’d taken back to the campsite—Anita.
Before this, the only corpse Javeen had seen in the field had been a drug addict overdosed and dead, sprawled on her settee. Apart from the syringe still grasped in her hand, she could have been asleep. This death was completely different. The girl’s blonde plaits are stained red, her clothes tattered across her chest and belly. The girl’s lower body is intact, her paisley patterned harem pants are riding low, showing the jutting bones of her hips, but still tied and undamaged, so they can rule out sexual assault as a motive, but her torso is shredded, a bloody mess of skin, flesh and torn innards. The rib-cage is almost hollow and her throat has been ripped out.
Javeen takes a step back, a hand covering her gasp of horror, and gags. The stench of faeces is strong, no doubt emanating from the entrails that have slithered from the girl’s torn belly. The blood is dark, her skin grey, her death isn’t recent.
“God in heaven!”
“Jesus Christ have Mercy!”
Stangton crosses himself as Javeen does the same.
“Stangton,” Javeen croaks.
“Yes,” is his throaty response.
“She’s been eaten.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe Mrs Carmichael isn’t senile.”
“I hope not.”
She finds his answer strange. “You want it to be a wolfman?”
“No, of course not. It must be an escaped wolf or rabid dog—there’s a problem down in Whitby remember. No, what I mean is, if a human has done this, then we’ve got a maniac loose in the forest, someone utterly depraved.”
Unable to shift the feeling of being watched, and with the grotesque image of the slain girl biting at her, Javeen strides back to the car. Stangton seems spooked too and she can barely keep up with him. A howl pierces the air as they reach the campsite. Stangton picks up his pace, calls ‘Come on!’ and strides towards the car, unlocking it on the approach. Javeen follows his lead and runs to keep up, sliding into her seat with chest heaving.
Stangton locks the doors.
“You too?”
“Yes. Let’s get the hell out of here.” The engine bursts into life as he speaks.
Javeen clicks her seat belt into place as Stangton manoeuvres the car around with swift precision and begins the descent down the track to the main road. Javeen makes no complaint of his driving this time.
“Sorry, Latimer. I had to get out of that forest. The girl … hell, that poor girl.”
“I’ll call it in.” Javeen reaches for the receiver.
“Victor X-ray this is Charlie Foxtrot 3-1. Do you copy.”
White noise returns. She tries again. Nothing. “How the hell can it not be working?”
“Try your mobile.”
She reaches for her phone and waits for the screen to come to life. “No signal.”
“We’ll call it back in at the station.”
They spend the next minutes discussing the girl; what could have taken her into the woods, and what kind of animal, wild, or perhaps even human, could have eviscerated her.
On arrival, Stangton strides into the Station and grabs the landline, listens then replaces the receiver.
“Dead?”
“As a dodo.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I have no idea, but we’ve got to report the girl’s death. We need a forensics team up here pronto.”
“And a search team. Max Anderson and Lois Maybank are still missing.”
“Marksmen too. If a wild animal did that to the poor girl, then it needs tracking down and destroying.”
“Man or beast,” Javeen adds.
Stangton mutters a response, hands on hips, and runs his hands through his thinning hair. His ruddy cheeks are almost florid.
“I’ll drive into town and report it in person.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. The situation here is getting out of hand.” He coughs then turns to the door, car keys in hand.
“I’ll wait for you here.”
“Sure,” he replies. “I should be back before …” he checks his watch, “seven.”
“I’ll be here.”
As the door closes behind him, Javeen strides to the door and locks it.
Max sits at the edge of the clearing, staring across the car park to the tiny building with its spread of green algae on white walls. Inside a woman moves about. He curls up next to a tree, hidden by the undergrowth, and lets sleep take him. When he wakes, twilight offers its purple haze, and the burning need to gnash and tear and bite has returned.
His attention returns to the building. Inside, he can see the woman clearly as she moves about the lit room, goading him as she passes the window, teasing him as she disappears then reappears. Saliva drools into the hairs of his chin, collecting particles of dried blood as it slides among them. Behind him, he can smell the others, and hear the snapping of twigs as they shuffle beside him. Twilight shifts to black and the woman opens the door.
19
Javeen opens the door to the orange haze of the single overhead light. A blast of cold sweeps across her face. She shivers and pulls her jacket tighter as she turns to lock the Station door. She’d waited for Stangton, but he hadn’t returned, and it was now nearly eight o’clock. She’d spent the late afternoon going over the notes she’d made about the break-in at the Institute, the numerous reports of noises, sightings, missing persons, and now the girl savaged in the woods. Everything had kicked off after the break-in at Anderson’s lab. That was the link, it had to be, and she suspects that although Marta Steward was insistent that nothing had escaped from the lab, that it had, and was most likely a rabid dog. Before the phones had gone down, she’d managed to confirm that Kielder Institute was indeed working on behalf of the Department of Health to create a vaccine for the mutated rabies virus that had broken out down in Whitby. It all added up: the dead sheep, the savaged girl, the missing scientist.
The Kielder Strain: A Science Fiction Horror Novel Page 10