“Who’s this fellah?” My dad said as we drove off.
“It’s not a fellah, dad – it’s Cairo, she’s my friend.”
“No.” He said. “Not the Doris, this fellah in the back of the car with me.”
“There is no fellah in the back of the car, dad.”
“There is, actually.” Cheetham slurred, poking a gun into my ear. “Castlefield, lad. Drive to the site.”
Despite the gun in my ear, I experienced a calm detachment that had my brain working in several directions simultaneously. I wished that could have happened an hour or so earlier.
“Sorry about this.” I said to Cairo.
“Hey, what are Friday nights for?”
“Stop talking and drive.” Said Cheetham.
It was probably good advice, any immediate action might well result in serious injury or loss of life, probably mine. Once we’d got to our destination, it would be much easier to establish whether the gun was real and take it from there. Cairo’s hand brushed mine and she nodded, like she knew what I was thinking.
When we got to Castlefield, Cheetham ordered us out of the car and down to the site. It was still difficult to tell whether the gun was real. After dithering about whether to stay near Cheetham or take the ladder first to ensure everyone’s safe descent, I decided on the latter. I grabbed Cairo’s bag and took her shoes off a few rungs down, throwing them on to the floor. My dad proved tricky, his physical condition was good, but he’d obviously forgotten what a ladder was so I went up and down it a couple of times, making encouraging noises and it seemed to do the trick, but I stood at the bottom with arms open wide, just in case. Cheetham ordered us away to offset the vulnerability of his descent. Once we were all at the bottom, he grabbed my arm, which I didn’t take kindly to.
“Now then, come and see it. Tell me how bloody wonderful it is. You know we’ll be here forever now, don’t you? This is going to take me down.”
“Dave, what are you talking about?”
He pulled me along by the sleeve of my jacket. I followed him to the far end of the site. He flicked the work lights on.
“Bloody hell, Dave.”
It was a complete Roman floor mosaic. Thousands of perfectly placed tiles that shaped interweaving flowers and animals, encircling a Roman Goddess. How the hell had it survived intact?
“Oh, this is wonderful.”
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard, spawning visions of the gun going off as it wobbled about.
“I knew it – I bloody knew it. I knew that’s what you’d say, you fucker. I told you, didn’t I? I told you it would swallow us.”
“Dave, you’re not well. You need to calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down? I’ll calm down all right.”
He hit the floor like a conker falling from a tree. Cairo winked at me.
“How the hell did you do that?” I said. “Are you a relative of Mr Spock?”
“The safest way to knock a person out is a quick elbow in the lower rear quadrant halfway between the ear and spine. Which isn’t to say it’s entirely safe, but needs must etcetera.”
“I’ll remember that.” I said.
“He won’t be out for long, though, so we’d better do whatever we need to do and then get him to the hospital.”
I picked up the gun, which looked real and put it in my pocket. Then I took it out again. “Do you have the faintest idea how to unload one of these things?”
She took it from me, pointed it to the floor and flicked the bullets out one by one.
“Is there anything you can’t do?” I said, putting the gun back in my jacket pocket. Cairo Shore wouldn’t have been wrong-footed by the mysterious intruder. She’d have played along and done all the right things. “How did you learn that?”
“Until the age of twelve I lived in a combination of drugs den, knock off warehouse and safe house.”
“Well, that would do it, I suppose.”
Huddled under the awning, accessorised by a sprawling Cheetham at our feet and a drumbeat of rain on the canvas, it seemed a shambolic, pig-eared state of affairs.
“Oh, Cairo, this is my dad. Cairo, meet Joe, Joe, meet Cairo.”
She offered her hand, which was taken and kissed. He always was a charmer. A swathe of mud encircled the hem of her dress.
“I’m sorry… your dress.”
“What’s going on, Gabriel? Apart from the whole gunpoint thing, that is.”
My dad’s hand was drifting towards her right breast. I quickly slapped it down. He was puzzled.
“Dementia.”
“Yeah, I know.” She said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“So, anyway…” I said. She put her shoes back on. “Things have become complicated.”
“One moment.” She said, picking up three of the stacked, plastic chairs that the archaeologists used for their tea breaks. Setting them down in front of me, she asked for my jacket. I assumed that she wanted it to put it around her shoulders and scolded myself for not thinking of it, but she placed it over one of the chairs and led my dad to it.
“All right, Joe, you sit down now.”
My dad took Cairo’s hand in both of his. “Are we having our tea now, Missis?”
“We’ll have our tea very soon, Joe, I promise.”
She pointed at the vacant chair, expectantly. I feasted on the image, an elegant woman in a ruined evening dress sitting on a plastic chair in a building site. I was tempted to take a photograph, but decided against it. “Do you want children?” I said.
“What?”
“Ooh, don’t know why I said that, just sort of popped out. Sorry, stupid of me, really stupid, whole other conversation.”
“You’re not making a lot of sense right now, Gabriel.” She pointed to an imaginary wristwatch, then Cheetham.
I explained about the intruder. I didn’t tell her about the film, even though cold feet at this point might mean hot water later.
“Probably one of the major drug companies. If I’m successful with the pulse program they’ll lose billions. That’s the main reason I was keeping it under the radar – people have been killed for less, but that’s messy, they’d rather stop me or steal it from me. Which is where you’d come in. I think we know how they got on to me so soon, don’t we? The other alternative is that it’s you they really want, your unprecedented brain and so on.”
“Are you afraid, Cairo?”
“Always.”
“What a mess. The question is, what are we going to do about them?”
A groan wandered up from Cheetham’s head.
“You know what’s wrong with him, Gabriel?” My dad said.
“What, Dad?”
“He wants to be you.”
“I’d better pick him up.” I said. “We should get him to the hospital. I guess we could try to unravel things then.”
I bent over, grabbing the soggy dinner jacket to lift him when he nutted me. Knocked senseless, I fell, sprawling across his skinny frame. A radio jabbed me through his lapel pocket as it hissed with dead air, fusing with the ringing in my ears.
“Oh, bloody hell. Gabriel, are you okay?”
The ringing became a crippling pain.
“Gabriel, you’ve just been whacked on the head. Don’t try to get up.”
“Pain, bad.”
“Is it your head? Is the pain just in your head?”
“Yes, head. It really hurts.”
She reached a hand into her bag.
I stretched my arm out as I knelt in the clay like a serf pleading for his life. “For God’s sake, don’t phone an ambulance. Think where we are, about the palaver. It’ll be on the local news and we can’t be on the news, not any of us. I’ve abducted my dad, the pissed-up developer’s kidnapped us at gunpoint, you’re standing here in a muddy evening dress, not to
mention what the shady drug company might be up to. It’ll be a disaster. I can walk, okay. I can walk.”
“All right.” She said. “It’s all right.”
Thirteen
If a person ever had their back to the wall, I hope that Cairo Shore would be by their side. She grabbed a container of water and threw it over Cheetham, rallying him with speed. She took the gun out of my jacket and ordered him to get to the top of the ladder, which he did without objection, having no knowledge of its impotence. As he was climbing it, she led my dad to the bottom rung and pointed upwards, patting him on the back. Fortunately, his journey down seemed to have given him the hang of it. Finally, she led me, placing my hands on the side of the ladder saying, “I will catch you if you fall” which drove me to make sure I didn’t. She handed me the gun with instructions to point it at Cheetham if he gave us any trouble, but there was no need, his remorseful head was already in his hands. With her cargo of the deranged, pained and demented safely in the car, she used the hands free to phone the hospital with all the relevant information. As I drifted in and out of torment I heard her say, “Ambulance – Friday night in Manchester? Trying to get two people out of a massive ditch with all the health and safety regs? We’d have been there all night. Think about it.” She instructed them to clear a path to the MRI. The call ended with, “I don’t care what the bloody procedure is, just do it. If you have a problem with it, take it up with my mother.”
She looked at herself in the mirror. “You are going to be in so much trouble for this, Cairo Shore.” Then she phoned Gizmo with instructions to bring a change of clothes to the hospital. In between, she would ask if we were okay, if we were feeling sick, or dizzy, what day of the week was it, did we know our names, how bad was the pain, had anything changed. And in-between that, I kept asking my dad if he was okay and Cheetham kept asking me if I was okay and apologising profusely in that maudlin way people have when they’re still drunk but it’s wearing off. In the end, I asked Cairo if she was okay and we all started giggling, even my dad, which was probably the best thing that could have happened.
Cheetham and I parted company when we entered the hospital. I was whisked away to a room while he was despatched to an A and E cubicle. The pain had faded and I was feeling much more myself as Cairo chivvied the disgruntled staff through the examinations and torches in the eye and bloods and questions. Gizmo arrived with Vik, who took ownership of my dad as he sat in the corner trying to unscrew a light switch with a ballpoint pen. Cairo pulled the curtain, reappearing about thirty seconds later in skinny jeans and a faded t-shirt; a rebellious version of herself.
“Is this the best you can do, Giz?” She said, slipping her feet into yellow espadrilles. “What are you trying to do, turn me into you?”
“Well, they were in your wardrobe. Did they fly there all by themselves?”
“What did you say?”
“They were in your wardrobe.”
“No, flying, Giz, you said flying.” She drew up to the window, squinting into the distance.
“What are you staring at, missis?” Gizmo said, stuffing the dress into a plastic bag before she followed the direction of Cairo’s attention. “Why are you staring at bloody pigeons?”
“Magnetite.” Cairo said.
“What?”
“Magnetite. It’s how birds find their way home, how they migrate thousands of miles to the same place every year. They have magnetite in their brains that senses the earth’s magnetic fields; they’re a kind of avian road map. We have it too, just not as much. I remember reading a paper about its potential as an agent for improving contrast on MRI’s. The marine parasite effect, as Gabriel calls it, could be magnetite. It enhances sensitivity to electro-magnetic fields which would explain why he’s been interpreting them as songs.”
Gizmo whispered to me, “Don’t interrupt, she’s on a roll. This is how it is with her. Looks like she’s about to ask if there’s anybody there, doesn’t it?”
“But why would he start producing magnetite around his left temporal lobe?”
Gizmo flapped imaginary wings, mouthing, “You’re turning into a bird.”
“Very funny.” I mouthed back.
“What if it’s a side effect? What if it’s not the thing at all? What if the thing was amplified by the lack of electromagnetic fields when he was in the lab? And what is the thing?” She turned from the window without leaving the trance. “Right, let’s get him back to the MRI. If my theory’s right, the glitch will still be there. After that we’ll have to find a way to confirm it is magnetite. When we know the what, we can move on to the why.”
I was reluctantly placed in a wheelchair before we went on our way. “How long will she be like this?” I hissed to Gizmo.
“As long as it takes. Never seen her at full throttle, have you? I hope your brain doesn’t explode, it will take forever to clean up the mess.”
“Oh, thanks for that. What is your real name, anyway?”
“Belinda.” Said Vik. “Her real name is Belinda.”
My dad was tiring fast, which worried me, but Vik took hold of his hand like he knew. I was pleased to leave the room; the mismatched joints on the doorframe were driving me crazy. As we flocked over the covered bridge that connected the main hospital to outpatients and into the corridor, I had the comforting illusion of being part of a family, a feeling not experienced for more years than I cared to remember. Perhaps I’d go to see Cheetham later; he’d probably be my best buddy now there was an event of this magnitude over him. Maybe there were gains to be explored within the loss. All in all, I was beginning to think that there might be light at the end of life’s convoluted tunnels.
The outpatients building that held the MRI was deserted. As we trundled down a corridor flanked by occasional emergency lights, Cairo murmured as she walked, circled by sighing echoes. “I shouldn’t have done the sensory deprivation, how stupid am I? I should have started with normal sensory information and worked my way through. White noise. Cheetham’s radio was pumping it out before… What if the white noise in the lab affected him?”
Gizmo leaned over my wheelchair as she pushed. “Like she’s possessed, isn’t it lovely boy? Like flipping a switch.”
“Yes, Belinda, it is.” I said and was rewarded with a slap on the shoulder, but I could tell she was flattered by the attention. We studied Cairo in joint fascination, hands in her pockets, a talking computer oblivious to everything around her.
“What’s in white noise, then?” She stopped dead. Even in the half-light I saw the colour drain from her face.
“What is it?” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous, woman.” She said, striding forward and knocking on the door to the MRI suite. “Get a grip.”
An obviously displeased Bentley opened it.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I might well ask you the same question, Dr Shore.” He said her name like it was an insult. “I was told to prepare the MRI. I’m not a bloody minion, you know. Do you have the faintest idea how much trouble you’ve just caused me?”
“Oh, yes.” She said. “But that’s nothing compared to the trouble you’ll be in if I grass you up about taking backhanders from drug companies. Just blame it on the mad scientist. I’ll take the rap, but when this is over I’ve got serious questions for you, matey. And don’t even think of telling anyone, or you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
Note to self: Don’t get on the wrong side of Cairo Shore.
Second note to self: Confess about film at earliest opportunity.
My dad squared up to Bentley and growled at him. He was never a fan of the ruling class.
Bentley ushered me in and asked the usual questions.
“I think she’s done a deal with the devil, Gabriel. She seems to be able to get anybody to do anything, anytime. Have you noticed that?”
I didn’t understand
why he saw me as a confidante, but his love and hate and desire for her almost choked me. I wanted to rip his head off with my bare teeth, which seemed appropriate as the others were looking at me through the screen like I was a zoo specimen. Bentley was prompted to join them as the MRI came to life.
I closed my eyes, but heard sounds, like a crowd had entered the room. On opening them, I found myself in the Outpatients department, back on the first day I saw Cairo Shore. I saw myself scurrying down the corridor looking distracted, an irritated spectre winding through the masses. Cairo Shore was watching me until I caught her eye and just like before, I saw Bentley watching her. I was about to solve the mystery of who said ‘hear my song’ when I noticed the look in Bentley’s wicked eyes and it burned through my soul. They overflowed with greed and vengeance, there was no doubt he’d stop at nothing to have her whether she consented or not. She knew how to take care of herself, but if he could drug me, he could sure as hell drug her. Why had I not seen it before? And if that had been missed, what else?
Flipping back to the present, it was the last straw. A quivering that released ancient toxicity, a countenance I couldn’t look upon. “God help me.” I said, which evoked the unsullied childhood notion of God looking like a wise and kindly monkey. A luminescent green figure about six inches high floated in front of my face, a monkey sitting on a throne. I knew it must be a hallucination because it hovered where the top of the scanner should have been. I reached out to touch it and confirm my unsound mind. Cairo’s voice came through the speaker.
“Gabriel, there’s a problem. I’m going to shut it down.”
She must have left the microphone on because the next thing I heard was, “What the hell is that?”
The Cairo Pulse Page 8