by David Carter
Sam nodded.
‘Why did she do that?’
‘She was worried her work might be taken from her, appropriated by someone else. Eden Leys had a history of it. You know how it works, some brilliant scientist in her twenties or thirties makes a ground breaking discovery, some supervising scientist in his sixties, looking for one last hurrah, jumps in and grabs the credit. She said it happened all the time, been going on for years. She said the senior ones said that that was how things worked. They always looked after the older guys, the younger ones had plenty of time to break new ground, to make their name, and that they, when they were old, would be looked after by the younger ones in their turn.’
‘The world doesn’t work like that,’ said Walter.
‘Damned right it doesn’t!’
‘So what happened?’
Sam pointed at the table.
‘That blood came from animals she’d personally killed. She said she’d retained it for their memory. It kept her grounded. It kept her focused. Normally it would have been disposed of, thrown away, flushed down the drain. She said that wasn’t right. Disrespectful, she said.’
Walter nodded, tried hard to imagine the fate of those poor unfortunate creatures, and especially the chimpanzees.
‘So what happened then?’
‘There was an Australian guy, I forget his name, he was always creeping round her when she was working; looking for hints of what she was up to, where she was going, he knew she was brilliant. She knew he would steal her stuff given the chance. He was all smiles and charm, he’d take her down to the social club they had going on the site, buy her a bottle of wine, and pump her for info. She soon grew wise to that; began feeding him duff stuff; the schmuck was so thick he took it all in and worked on it for weeks. It led nowhere, down a dead end corridor, and you have to laugh at that, you have to admire her cunning. Not only was she pioneering her own work, she was staying up all night setting up faux avenues for pricks like him, theories that looked promising, and all the while they were nothing more than gigantic time-wasting exercises. Futile diversions. He was furious when he found out. Can you imagine? Wouldn’t speak to her for weeks. Started spreading rumours about her, telling tales behind her back, said she was a lesbian, all sorts.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Can you, Walter? Can you?’
‘I think so. I’m on her side. What happened next?’
‘She began bringing data home. Reams and reams of the stuff. Several years’ work. I asked her if it would be missed. She said it was mainly copies she’d had printed. She wanted it in case the originals ever went missing, or were stolen, or destroyed in a fire or accident of some kind, or in case she was ever relieved of her post.’
‘She was worried about that?’
‘Petrified. The place had a history of dumping high fliers who made life uncomfortable for the middle grounders who wielded the power. The brilliant ones put the dull ones firmly in the shade. There was an enormous amount of jealousy and backbiting, you wouldn’t believe some of the stories she told me.’
‘Did she have any trouble getting it out?’
‘Not at the beginning. Security was a joke. She’d wear a long heavy skirt with a big hem on the inside. I modelled it for her, as she did the alterations. There was large false pocket inside, she showed me how she’d slip a file in there like a kangaroo’s joey, and simply walk to her car and drive away. If the guards stopped her it was only to say hello, or maybe to wink at the strikingly dark girl, perhaps ask her for a date, at worst there was a casual glance in the boot of her car. They may have wondered what was beneath her neat skirt, but they would have been amazed to discover what really was.’
Sam giggled in that pretty way of his.
‘And then?’
‘There was a big step up in security. New people were brought in. Everything changed. It was much harder to get anything out. That was about the time she started being followed.’
‘People were following Desi?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘Your lot, of course.’
‘What do you mean; my lot?’
‘Government police, security police, how the hell do I know?’
Walter puffed out his cheeks, breathed out heavily.
‘I can’t see that,’ he said, ‘I certainly knew nothing about it.’
‘Course you wouldn’t. It was MI7.’
Walter zipped a sharp laugh through his nose.
‘Now I know you’re wrong, Sam. MI7 doesn’t exist, except in the minds of spy writers, and in the movies.’
‘No, no, no, you’re wrong! MI7 does exist. They followed and killed Desi, I know it may be unpalatable to you, Wally, but that’s the truth. That’s what happened!’
‘MI7 did exist during World War II,’ said Walter. ‘It dealt with propaganda and stuff like that, but it was disbanded, early sixties, I think it was. It doesn’t exist any more.’
Sam did the same sharp dismissive laugh.
‘Shows how much you know, Wally. Stop living up to your name, shows how out of touch you really are.’
Walter remained quiet for a moment, thinking things through, then said, ‘Tell me everything you know about MI7?’
‘Desiree told me it was reactivated soon after it was decommissioned. They had special responsibility for chemical warfare secrecy, weapons of mass destruction in the modern vernacular, hence their huge interest in Eden Leys. They were interested in everything that went down there, you must know that, and they weren’t happy when the plant was semi-privatised, I can tell you that. For a short while they were replaced with contracted in security. That feeble lot couldn’t detect an ant in an ant hill. Not surprisingly they soon got pushed. Desi became very tense. I couldn’t get her to open up to me. I knew something was wrong. She said the whole place was subject to new American secrecy orders, she was bound to silence. It was too dangerous for me to know anything. She had this spare bedroom full of stuff, data, samples; you name it, a huge amount of gear. She said we had to move it, and quick, so we switched it from her place by the river, down to mine at Iona House. We always kept on both properties and it was a good job we did. It took us three car rides to move everything, that’ll give you some idea how much gear was involved. We did it on the Friday night. On the Saturday night we went out to celebrate, got dressed up, kissing cousins she called us, Desiree and Samantha, took a cab down to that fancy hotel in Cheshire where they do the ballooning, enjoyed a fab meal, danced for hours, curled up in bed together, made love, got up late on the Sunday morning, fab breakfast, cab back to Chester...’
‘And?’
‘Desi’s place had been ransacked. Made a hell of a mess. We called the cops round. It wasn’t you, was it? Don’t answer that, I know it wasn’t. They said there had been a spate of opportunistic burglaries in the area, oh yeah, I’ll bet, the ransackers, whoever they were, made it look realistic too; by breaking in and turning over the two neighbouring gaffs for good measure, but Desi knew immediately that it was MI7. That’s what she said as soon as the regular cops had gone, and I believed her. She also said the Aussie bastard had tipped them off.’
‘Why did they do that? Break in and ransack the place.’
‘Looking for evidence of course!’
‘Evidence of what?’
‘Oh come on, Walter, keep up, man! They were trying to find evidence that she was leaking stuff outside, taking stuff off prem, they thought she was feeding info to a third party, but the only third party was me. If we hadn’t moved everything, Desi would have been arrested. They would have thrown the book at her; thrown the key away. God knows what she would have been charged with. That night she told me if she ever had an accident, ever disappeared without warning, leaving a letter saying that she’d gone away, or ever died suddenly, it would be the work of MI7.’
‘Where’s the stuff now?’
Sam thought about that for a moment.
‘There’s no harm in you knowing.
The knowledge you have will be extinguished when you go,’ and he glanced at his petite, almost girlish wristwatch and said, ‘I’d say, Walter, you have just entered your final hour.’
Walter needed to pee, but didn’t say. He wanted to keep talking. There were still things he didn’t understand.
‘What exactly is going on at Eden Leys?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Course not. You tell me.’
‘They are experimenting on live human beings.’
Walter laughed again.
‘Don’t laugh like that! They are! I’ve got the proof. Some of it is in my spare room, but most of it, the most juicy bits, including photographs and ID’s, are locked away in a solicitor’s office miles from here.’
A picture of the offices of Lambourn, Harcourt and Snapes flooded into Sam’s mind, and their luxurious suite on the sixth floor of the Royal Liver Building, Liverpool. Those fab rooms that stared out across the wide and murky river, and the huge storeroom in the basement that housed the gigantic safe, that was too heavy to be set up anywhere, but on the very ground itself. In that vast safe lay the evidence, Desi’s life work, Desiree’s masterpiece. Proof of what was going on. Proof of why she had been murdered. Sam paused, switched off.
Walter switched him on again.
‘Tell me about the experiments on living human beings?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything you do.’
Sam pursed his lips, sorted his thoughts into some kind of order, and began again.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Karen tossed and turned. She couldn’t sleep. She slipped from the bed and went through to the kitchen. Poured another glass of ice-cold cranberry juice. Sipped and swallowed. Sipped and swallowed. Her throat felt as if a piece of barbed wire was jammed down there. Her eyes hurt and her hands shook. She expected him to return, the killer, maybe tonight. He had tried and failed to murder her, and he now knew it too. He’d tried to kill her for a reason, the seventh death in his reign of terror. Maybe there was some significance to the number seven.
Seven was a very strange number, she knew that well enough. When a group of people are asked to name a number between one and ten a huge majority will say seven. Why is that? Some people say it is a lucky number. Racing car drivers fight to have it on their cars. Others say it is dreadfully unlucky.
Seven days in the week, the seventh day is the Sabbath, the holy day, seven deadly sins, seven sisters, seven dwarfs, seventh son of a seventh son, perhaps Sam was a seventh son of a seventh son, seven wonders of the world, seven sacraments, seven heavenly virtues, seven stations of the cross, seven years bad luck if you break a mirror, seven year itch, seven murders, or at least six killings plus one attempted, and an old rhyme came back to her from when she was a little girl:
One means anger
Two means mirth
Three, a wedding
Four, a birth
Five is heaven
Six is hell
But seven’s the very devil himself.
A strange thing to teach a kid she thought now, and amongst it all were seven murders... but he’d only completed six. He was coming back; of course he was coming back. She went through to the spare bedroom. The door was ajar. Eased it open. Rays of light fed in from the hallway. Gibbons was asleep, lying on his back, snoring gently like a child. He’d said he was dog tired. He certainly looked it. The duvet cover had slipped down revealing his chest. He was surprisingly muscular; she would never have guessed it from the grubby and worn flappy shirts he liked to wear to work. Perhaps they were a fashion statement, like ripped jeans, though she doubted it. She wanted to wake him and talk some more, but he looked serene and peaceful. It would be wicked to wake him, a sin. Never wake a sleeping person, her mother always used to say, it’s a sin, unless it’s an emergency. Was this an emergency? Maybe, maybe not. He’d surely think her crazy, his neurotic female sergeant. She didn’t want that. She pulled the door closed and went back to bed.
Sam took a deep breath, thinking carefully of his words, and then he began again.
‘Desi said she was on the cusp of a breakthrough in the quest to find a cure for dementia and Alzheimer’s, and yes, I know Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia, but some people think of them as separate diseases. She was working on producing a pill that could reverse the process of aging in the human brain. The idea was that it would protect the brain. It had worked on rats and apes and she was sure with more tests it could work on humans. The opportunity to experiment on live human beings was one she could not turn down. She said one final push and she’d crack it. She had been experimenting on apes for at least a year before that. It’s not such a big step up from apes to humans. The people were carefully selected. They all had no known relatives. They were all terminally ill. They were not expected to survive much longer.’
‘So what happened to these people?’
‘They all died, according to Desi. Every single one of them. Cremated on site. She always went to the funeral services. Most times she was the only one there.’
‘And their deaths were covered up?’
‘Well you tell me, Walter. You’re the fucking policeman.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it. Did she make any progress?’
‘Progress yes, a cure? I’m not sure.’
‘How many people are we talking about?’
Sam pulled a face.
‘Don’t know for sure, in total, maybe twelve, maybe twenty.’
Walter’s turn to pull a face. Between twelve and twenty deaths, if the guy was to be believed. Legal deaths? Or Illegal? Murders or mercy killings? He didn’t know, but he wanted to find out more.
Sam was talking again.
‘It wasn’t just experiments on live humans that Desi did. She was obsessed with all aspects of progress in the field. Her father had been struck down with it. That made it personal. She wasn’t interested in much else. She’d developed a theory called Distant Consciousness. It’s an idea that in severe cases memories can be stimulated by documents and items from long ago, every day items, but objects dear to the heart, things associated with beautiful memories, precious events, such as a programme from the 1951 Festival of Britain, an occasion attended with a loved one, a fiancée, a life partner, or maybe an early Elvis Presley record, or tickets to an early Beatles concert when no one outside of Merseyside had ever heard of them, even football programmes from big games like the 1966 World Cup Final, that kind of thing, memory jolters, she called them. These people who’d not shown any sign of recognition of anything for years, recognised those items, she had real success with it. She was communicating with them.’
‘Go on.’
‘She’d visit country nursing homes, study the guys, and bring her research data and techniques back to Eden Leys. Adding that to the secret live experiments she told me she was this close to cracking it,’ and Sam held his forefinger and thumb half an inch apart and jabbed them into the air. ‘This close, Wally! And then you bastards murdered her.’
‘I didn’t murder anyone.’
‘You know what I mean!’
‘Why seven, Sam?’
‘MI7, it was just a number, it seemed fitting at the time, it stuck in my mind, seven times one is seven. You had to pay seven times over. They all had to pay.’ Sam glanced at his watch. ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes left, Wally, fifteen minutes. Said your prayers yet?’
‘There are still things I don’t understand.’
‘Tough luck! Fifteen minutes.’
‘Tell me about the day Desi died.’
‘She was on the way to London to pick up some top scientific award. A train had been cancelled. The station was packed. She was desperate for a seat. She had work to do. Her speech to complete. She was standing right at the front. The train came in. A little nudge from behind. It could even have been accomplished with a muscular chest, thrust forward at an opportune moment; that would have been enough. Over she went, ou
t of this world, out of my life forever, my darling Desiree, my other half, my soul mate, my reason for living... murdered in cold blood in broad daylight in a public place by some government assassin.’
Sam looked away and stared at the wall.
Walter gave him a moment, then asked, ‘How do you know all this?’
‘I studied all the police reports I could lay my hands on, had to bribe one guy in your department, there you are, one juicy titbit of gossip you can take with you. You’ve got a mole who will sell their soul, cost me three hundred nicker, worth every penny. Plus the coroner’s statement, everything I could find. It was obvious your mob were convinced it was suicide from day one. You never really looked at alternatives. You didn’t give Desi a chance. You’d made up your minds.’
‘I was on holiday.’
‘Gee bloody whiz! Well that’s you off the hook, isn’t it! I don’t think so!’
For once Walter didn’t have an answer.
Sam snarled and started again.
‘Along with what Desi told me about unexpected accidents, and how scared she was, I knew she had been murdered. I just knew.’
‘But didn’t you say she was upset about something in her past; that she woke from nightmares. Couldn’t that have had something to do with it? Couldn’t that have been preying on her mind?’
Sam thought a beat and said, ‘She didn’t commit suicide if that’s what you think, but she did once tell me she was hearing voices.’
‘Voices?’
‘Yeah, you know, nasty voices in her head ordering her about. I think it went back to that Toby Malone character. I’d like to have met him. I’d like to have killed him, but thankfully someone else got there before me. Good and bad in everything. Good, that he’s long dead, bad, that I didn’t eradicate the bastard first.’
‘Could Desi have murdered Toby?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘Really? Are you so sure? She was used to death after all, and if he hurt her so much...’
‘She didn’t! But even if she did, he deserved it, and even if she did, it had nothing to do with her own demise.’