I raised my shoulders again.
He leered at me. “Eric Blair.”
For a moment I got caught up on the surname: nasty memories of image-obsessed, terminal governments from the years before the break-up of the UK. Then the juxtaposition of names hit me. Jesus. Eric Blair, that was the real name of one George Orwell. I should have spotted it the second I heard it – I was born in 1984, after all.
“You’re kidding?” I said. “Was it really him?”
Lister 25 nodded solemnly. “Apparently. I eventually found someone in the place who confirmed it. The rest of the morons didn’t even know who Orwell was.”
“So symbolism is alive and well.” I shook my head to bring me back to the real world. “What was the research you were doing out there, Ramsay?”
The toxicologist’s face fell. “Don’t ask, Quint,” he said in a low, unsteady voice. He coughed agonisingly. “Look what it did to me.”
“I’ll get you home,” I said, leaning towards him.
He shook his head. “I’ve seen what happens. Two or three days is all it takes.” He clutched my forearm with surprising strength. “The pollution in the Poison Fields is more severe than anything I’ve ever studied. Apparently it’s been getting even worse in recent months. If it goes on like this, the city will soon be uninhabitable. That’s why they’ve sent every scientist they can find out to the station in Sutt. Unless they can control the toxic gases and counter the effects they have on the immune system, they’re lost.”
Things were coming together. The RED code file I accessed referred to the human immune system, as well as to the Poison Fields. Was this what the case was about? But how did that tie up with the murders and mutilations?
“Ramsay,” I said, my voice no more than a whisper. “Have you ever heard of the Grendels?”
His bloodshot eyes opened so wide that I thought they were going to slip out of their sockets. “The Grendels?” he said hoarsely. “You know about them?”
I shook my head in frustration. “Not enough. What are they like?”
Slowly he closed his eyes, his head twitching. “The Grendels?” he repeated in a weak voice. “Remember what I said about a hellhound on my trail?”
“Aye. And?”
But before the chief toxicologist could say anything more, there was a loud knocking. The door behind me opened.
I let out a groan and turned to face the music.
Except it turned out to be a different genre to the one I’d been expecting – along the lines of a female vocalist singing a cappella rather than a group of howling bulldogs.
“I hope you haven’t been tiring my charge out,” said a thin, middle-aged woman in a green and white striped jacket as she stepped past me. The strong smell of antiseptic came in with her.
I glanced down the corridor. She seemed to be on her own. “Not as much as you just did by flagellating the door.”
She looked round at me from the armchair containing Lister 25. “Flagellating?” she repeated, her voice expressing bewilderment. “What do you mean?” She stood up straight, suddenly more interested in me than the sick man. “Who are you?”
“You know exactly who I am,” I said, moving towards her. “You were sent up here to interrupt us, weren’t you?” I was pretty sure that someone – Connington? Dawkley? Raphael herself? – had been listening to our conversation and had decided to pull the plug before the old chemist said any more. Information in New Oxford seemed to be controlled by drip-feed. But why were they letting me find out anything at all if they were so touchy about the Grendels and the research projects at Sutt?
There was a strangulated sound from Lister 25. The nurse or whatever she was bent over him and loosened his clothes. Then she started speaking urgently, presumably into her nostrum.
“Code nine. Worc Masterman 18/25, top priority,” I heard. She turned to me. “You’ll have to go,” she said, her voice taut. “The paramedics will be here in a few minutes.”
I peered over her shoulder as she put a stethoscope to the chief toxicologist’s chest. He was only semi-conscious, the breath dragging audibly in and out of his ravaged lungs.
“Go!” the woman shouted.
There was nothing more I could do for Lister 25, so I complied.
But I didn’t intend to forget the old toxicologist. Whoever was responsible for what had happened to him was in an abyss of trouble.
Back on ground level I stopped outside the door and watched as a pair of hefty medics pulled up in the ambulance version of a Chariot, red lights flashing. They rushed past without giving me a second glance.
I gave a second glance to Hel Hyslop’s window. This time there was no opportunity to play the voyeur. The blinds and curtains were open but the room’s human contents were no longer in situ. I set off back towards the main college buildings. Although the rain had let up, the grass underfoot was still very soggy. Then a loud scream almost made me lose my footing. It had come from my left. I looked through the trees and across an ornamental lake with Canada geese and other waterfowl standing guard on the bank. I could make out a group of people in dark blue overalls on a large grass-covered area. They seemed to be gathered around someone or something on the ground.
Call it professionalism, call it rabid curiosity, I threw caution to the still air and headed quickly for the trees that ran alongside the path. The new leaves were well advanced and they gave me some cover, but not as much as I’d have liked. Fortunately there was no one else around. I picked my way through the undergrowth, aware that there was a high fence on my left. It presumably marked the boundary of the college’s extensive grounds.
Ahead there was a squat wooden pavilion. It was so rundown that I didn’t bother trying to guess its age. The medieval buildings in the main quad looked more modern. Years of catering for swaggering rugby players and half-cut cricketers had taken their toll. At least the unkempt construction would give me cover.
When I was about twenty yards from it I heard a loud rustling in the bushes to my right. I froze, glancing around for a piece of timber to defend myself with. Shit – there was nothing but twigs. Then I heard a flip-flopping noise that seemed familiar. The leaves parted and out stepped a dodo.
“Christ, you again,” I said under my breath. “Or does every college have its own?”
The formerly extinct bird held its shiny black eyes on me and stood motionless for a few seconds. Its curved beak was levelled at me like a loaded banana. Then the dodo flicked its head at me disdainfully and waddled off through the mud, its tail feathers twitching. I watched it move round the lake. The water birds took one look at it and scattered, the air filling with outraged honks and shrieks. It looked like dodos had pariah status – probably because the other avians knew they were zombies.
I made it to the pavilion and crouched down by the corner. I couldn’t see any sign of surveillance units up above. That proved nothing. Nox cameras weren’t always obvious. Moving my head cautiously round the splintered planking on the corner, I took in the throng on the open ground. Some of them were gazing across the lake, alerted by the birds’ cries.
Then I saw her. Hel Hyslop was grappling with a guy who was at least a foot taller and wider than she was. What was she doing here? I didn’t have her down as an ornithologist, let alone an all-in wrestler.
I was so busy watching Hel that I was taken by surprise. There was a heavy thud a few yards to my left. I pulled my head back and waited, my heart pounding.
“Leave him there,” said a harsh voice. “He’s soft as shit. Fuck knows how he ever made standard bulldog grade.”
Feet squelched across the grass and after a while I risked another look. I wished I hadn’t. The young man who was lying comatose on the steps of the pavilion had pulp instead of a face. His right ear was dangling, attached only by a small piece of flesh. Around his groin the overalls were soaked. Jesus. The auxiliary training programme back home was bad, but at least you got to keep your facial features.
There was a sharp whis
tle blast from out on the field.
“Form up in lines of five!” shouted the guy with the barbed-wire voice.
I watched as the figures in dark blue overalls raced to obey. They seemed to be evenly split between males and females, though there was no segregation. Women had been fighting men before, as Hel had demonstrated. I wondered if she’d been the one who had laid out the poor sod on the steps.
“Now then,” the commander continued, “it’s fun time.” He ran his eyes over the ranks in front of him – I’d counted ten lines. “So you want to be Grendels, do you?”
I pricked my ears up, clutching the edge of the pavilion. Was that what was going on here? An audition for potential hyper-bulldogs? I was in luck. Then I remembered the access code I’d been left by the intruder wearing Grendel-issue boots. Maybe I was meant to find my way here.
“I can’t hear you!” the speaker was yelling.
There was a mixture of loud and more muffled cries in the affirmative. It sounded like some of the recruits might have already lost their appetite.
“Well, this is where we find out if you make the grade, people.” The headbanger swung his head round to take in the whole group. Even though I was about forty yards away I could see the deep scarring on his cheeks and head. There wasn’t much more than a thin fuzz of hair on the latter. “Noke here will issue you all with probes.”
I strained to see what the subordinate was handing out. Each of the candidates got a thin rod that was about two feet long. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the front half was a thin metal blade. They were glinting, even in the weak sunlight.
“Right, people,” the hard man continued. “Same rules as earlier when you were grappling. I want contact only to be made with your opponent’s upper arm. The winner of each bout will be the first to pierce both arms between shoulder and elbow.”
Oh aye? What was so significant about the upper arm? I was thinking of the amputation in Edinburgh and those down here. Another Grendel connection?
“Excuse me, leader,” came an unsteady male voice. “You said pierce. You mean—”
“What do you fucking think I mean?” shouted the leader, squaring up to the tall trainee. “I mean stick your fucking probe as far as you can into your opponent’s flesh. Do you get that?” He grabbed the unfortunate guy’s weapon and, before I could blink, ran it through his bicep. I saw the blade protrude by at least six inches.
To my amazement the victim stood his ground. His face was screwed up in agony, but he kept quiet, his back straight. I reckoned he’d shown he was Grendel material, but what did I know?
“So, numbers one and three,” the leader roared, “get to it.”
A heavily built young woman and a male of medium height came forward and took guard. Then their blades flashed and they went at each other. They separated after a few seconds, the guy dropping to one knee, a hand to his face.
“I said upper arm, number one!” the trainer screamed. “You’ve taken his fucking eye out.”
I rocked back on my heels. This was way beyond a joke. I was trying to think of a way of getting Hel Hyslop out before she lost a vital organ. Then I leaned forward again and saw the avid look on her face as she followed the next bout, her lips parted. Hell’s teeth.
Then I blew it. Without realising, I’d been inching my head further round the pavilion corner. Suddenly one of the dark blue overalls saw me and let out a shout of alarm. After a few seconds of focusing, they all looked towards me. I wondered if Hel had recognised me, but I wasn’t waiting to find out. To the sound of a ragged hue and cry I jerked my head back and got to my feet. The fence was about twenty yards away. It was high and forbidding, sensor posts in regular gaps at the base. At least there wasn’t any barbed wire.
I threw myself towards the barrier, conscious of the yells and pounding feet close behind and even more conscious of what the leader and the fighter had done with their probes. Then I remembered what had happened to Maddy Pitt’s dog.
I just hoped there wasn’t an electric current running through the wire.
It turned out not to be electrified. Or maybe it was and my control card switched the juice off. Anyway, I was over like a mountain goat and sprinting to my left down what must have been a towpath – the stagnant strip of water looked like a disused canal. I fully expected Hyslop and her new friends to come after me, but I was able to reduce my pace when I neared a low bridge because there was no sound behind me. Glancing round, I saw I was in the clear. Sticking each other in the upper arm, or eye, was obviously more important than chasing unauthorised observers. Then it struck me that the training leader might have called up a pack of ordinary bulldogs to track me down. I followed the towpath under the arch of the bridge and squatted down in the dark.
All I could hear was the faint sound of water running from a rusty pipe, interspersed with the squeaking of what I took to be rats. No sirens, no high-speed hissing from gas-powered bulldog Chariots. Just when I’d concluded that I was being left on my own, heavy footsteps began to approach. I drew further under cover beneath the dank stonework, my heart racing. The regular sound grew louder, still louder, then passed me by. I swung my head round and realised that the walker had passed under the bridge on the other side of the water. I looked again and blinked. I recognised him. The large shoulders and long hair were easy to place. It was Pete Pym, the dead cleaner’s brother. He was a long way from Cowley. I wondered where he’d been when Raskolnikov lost his arms and his life.
It was time to activate my own surveillance skills.
It isn’t difficult to follow someone when they’re on the other side of a stretch of water, even one as silent as the stinking canal. You just keep your distance and make use of the natural cover, which in this case was plentiful: overgrown verges, the trunks of long-dead trees, the odd abandoned shopping trolley from the time when the centre of the city was served by supermarkets rather than Nox outlets. This was definitely not one of New Oxford’s well-maintained thoroughfares. I had the impression that I was the first person to go down the towpath on this side for a long time.
The problem I had was that Pete Pym was taking pains to make sure he wasn’t spotted. He kept stopping and looking round, as well as regularly retreating into the bushes on his side. That made my life a lot more difficult. I wondered what he was up to. It was hardly the place for an afternoon stroll. Besides, I was pretty sure that the so-called subs weren’t allowed to wander about the university area without permission. Judging by the way he was behaving, I reckoned Pym didn’t have anything akin to permission.
I let him get further ahead of me and checked my guidebook to see where I was. According to the late twentieth-century map the waterway ran close to what had once been the prison. Well, well. I scrambled up the steep bank on my left and got an eyeful of high, solid walls. Behind them was a tall, square tower that looked like a castle keep. I became aware of high, keening voices. I got the distinct imoression that the buildings were still being used to lock people up. What else would you expect in Raphael’s Oxford?
Pete Pym had almost disappeared so I hurried after him – then dived behind a crumbling concrete litter bin when I saw him stop abruptly. By the time I looked round the rough surface, the bugger had gone.
Shit. I took a chance and ran down the towpath. The stream continued ahead of me but to the left there was an obscured entrance. Looking down, I saw wet footprints on the ground. Large footprints. There were ripples on the previously undisturbed surface of the water. Pete Pym had waded or swum across the foul canal. Why?
I followed the footprints. They went in through a low, arched gateway with no barrier across it and no obvious sensor post. There was a vile, putrescent smell emanating from there. The place was giving me a seriously bad feeling. I thought about giving the tail up, but I was too involved now.
Beyond the gate a long, dim tunnel with a paved floor stretched into the gloom. I held my hand over my eyes to acclimatise them. Then I realised that there was a faint, luminous
strip in the middle of the roof. This place wasn’t as unfrequented as I’d imagined. Apart from the dull pounding of Pete Pym’s feet and the occasional drip of water from the brickwork of the roof, there was no sound. I moved forward as carefully as I could, but after a few minutes I understood that I was wasting my time. Pym was getting further away from me and he’d given up checking behind him. So I quickened my pace. I had no idea where I was. The tunnel had started out straight, but there had been a couple of bends since then.
I was taking frequent and shallow breaths, trying not to inhale too much of the mephitic atmosphere. Maybe that was why I didn’t notice what had happened to the steps more quickly. I suddenly became aware that things had changed. For a start the regular footfall in front of me was louder, meaning that Pym was nearer. But that wasn’t all. The footsteps had doubled. Christ. I wasn’t tailing one man any more. There were two of them.
The tunnel curved to the left and I slowed down as I reached a corner. The double footfall continued, then stopped without warning. I stuck my head round and got a shock. So did Pete Pym. Standing about ten yards behind him was a large figure in dark clothes, arms dangling by its sides in a frighteningly simian way. I couldn’t make out the face or any other features, though I thought there was some kind of covering on the head. But Pym could. He let out a gasp, his heavy features with the bruises he himself had inflicted suddenly transformed into those of a terrified child.
Then the bulky shape behind him leaped forward with surprising speed. Pym tried to run but he was nailed before he got more than five yards. The assailant crawled over his victim’s prone form and clamped a hand on his throat.
I stood in the shadows trying to make up my mind. Did I owe Pete Pym enough to get what I feared was a Grendel off him? Foolishly, insanely, I reckoned I did.
So I sprinted round the bend, past the shadowy recess in the wall where the attacker must have hidden himself, and went for the pair on the ground. Halfway there I remembered that I still had the cosh I’d used on the Edinburgh youth gang member in my jacket pocket.
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