A Lovely Way to Burn

by Louise Welsh

  The door opened. Stevie reached for Hope’s gun, but strong hands grabbed her around her waist, pinned her arms behind her back and dragged her into a cocaine-white corridor that smelt of bleach. Stevie kicked and bucked, but her assailant held firm. She barely had time to register that he was dressed in protective overalls, his head and neck helmeted by breathing apparatus, like an investigator in a nuclear disaster zone, before a handkerchief was pressed over her mouth and nose, and a line of darkness sucked her down.

  Stevie jerked awake. Her knees were drawn up to her chin and her eyelids felt as if they had been weighted with pennies. The thought forced her eyes open.

  She was lying on a single bed in a small, white-painted, windowless room. The light was a searing fluorescent bright. Her head was foggy from whatever the stranger had sedated her with and her throat was Sunday-morning dry. Stevie massaged her temples with her fingertips. She looked up, saw a camera peering at her from a high corner, and resolved not to cry.

  The collapsing world had made her think that Buchanan would give up his secrets as readily as Dr Ahumibe had, like a ship dropping its ballast as it neared port, but it seemed that the chemist was as obsessed with keeping his secrets as she was with uncovering the truth. Stevie looked up at the camera and said in a voice creaky from lack of fluids, ‘You win. Let me go and I promise to mind my own business.’ There was no sign that anyone had heard her.

  She swung her feet on to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed until she was sure that she could stand up without falling over. Her legs felt numb and insubstantial, as if she had been on a bumpy long-haul flight that had confined passengers to their seats, but Stevie managed the three steps to the door. It lacked a handle but a small, reinforced window looked out on to a deserted, equally white corridor.

  The only hiding place was beneath the bed, or in the small shower room attached to her cell. Stevie checked them both, but it was clear that her satchel had disappeared. She searched her pockets, but she had already registered the absence of the gun’s comforting weight and was unsurprised to find her mobile gone.

  A second security camera observed her in the shower room. Stevie gave it the finger, then washed her face, used the toilet and drank some water from the tap.

  The madness of the last few days crashed over her. If she had fled the city, as Derek had told her to, she might be holed up somewhere safe, ready to sit out the sweats. The thought brought hot tears to Stevie’s eyes, but she felt the surveillance camera shift and blinked them away. She looked into the lens and repeated her offer: ‘Let me go and I won’t bother you again.’ But the camera maintained its mute, unblinking stare. ‘Okay,’ she muttered. ‘Fuck you.’ Stevie went back into the bedroom, stripped the sheet from the bed and started to fashion it into a noose.

  She had just managed to string her handiwork over the bathroom door when the man in the protective suit entered the cell. He shoved her on to the bed and swept the sheet away. Stevie had left the duvet lying on the floor and he scooped that up too. It was an awkward movement to make in the bulky suit and Stevie grabbed her chance. She kicked the stranger in the stomach, knocking him off balance, and dashed for the door. For a moment she thought she might make it, but her jailer flung out a gloved hand and caught her by the ankle, felling her smack against the floor. The fall knocked the wind from her and Stevie lay there for a long time after he had locked the door behind him.

  The unwavering fluorescence of the overhead lights absorbed all concept of time, and Stevie wasn’t sure how long it was before the man returned. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at the floor to avoid the camera’s stare and the dazzle of the lights, but raised her head when he entered. She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to coax it into some kind of a style. The man threw a tracksuit and some underwear on to the floor and said, ‘Shower and put these on.’

  His voice was muffled by his head mask, but Stevie had felt his strength and knew that he was young. She gave him a modest version of her killer smile.

  ‘I’m not showering beneath a camera.’

  ‘Do it yourself, or I’ll make you.’ The mask made him sound like an asthmatic Dalek. ‘If you’d looked in a mirror lately, you’d realise no one’s interested in your skinny arse.’ He tossed a mobile phone on to the bare mattress. ‘When that rings, answer it.’

  Stevie looked directly at the man’s mask. She could see her reflection in the visor, her head cartoon-large on its curved surface. She kicked her running shoes beneath the bed, pulled off Simon’s battered trousers and T-shirt, and stripped away her underwear. She forced herself to stand there for a second, naked and defiant, goose pimples rising on her flesh, and then scooped the fresh clothes from the floor and went through to the shower. She felt the man’s eyes following her. Her body trembled with fatigue and the uncertainty of whether his interest could be worked to her advantage, or if that would only add to the danger she was in.

  Forty-Two

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come.’ Alexander Buchanan looked like a man who had won the lottery but was worried taxes might decimate his winnings. He stood outside her room, his face framed by the door’s small window, a mobile phone to his ear. ‘I’m sorry for the clumsy welcome, but you didn’t give us many options.’

  Stevie put the phone the man had left her on speaker. She faced the window and said, ‘There’s usually an alternative to chloroforming a girl and locking her up under surveillance.’ She tried to summon the woman she had been on Shop TV: the unflappable dolly, smart but unthreatening. ‘We were both friends of Simon’s. I thought that might make us friends too.’

  Buchanan grinned and shook his head, as if she were incorrigible. The strain of the days since they had first met showed on his face, but his voice remained as smooth as a late-night disc jockey’s.

  ‘So why turn up unannounced, armed with a tyre iron and a gun?’

  ‘It’s chaos out there. I needed to protect myself.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘There’s enough death in the world.’ Stevie paused, to give her words more weight. ‘Dr Ahumibe has committed suicide.’

  ‘John left me a message before he took care of the remaining children. He told me his plans. A great pity.’

  She had hoped the news would be a weakening blow, but the chemist might have been talking about arrangements for a working lunch. She said, ‘Dr Ahumibe told me about the mistake you made with the cerebral palsy treatment, and your decision to carry on.’

  The chemist shook his head. The glass in the door’s small window was strengthened with chequered wire. It gave the illusion that his skin was rippling as he moved.

  ‘John’s weakness for confessing got Simon and me into trouble more than once when we were boys. I hope he also told you that continuing with the treatment was the quickest way to resolve the difficulty we were having with the formula.’

  ‘He told me you persuaded him that it was the best way forward, but that Simon didn’t agree.’

  Buchanan made a face that might have been intended to convey regret.

  ‘Disagreeable is the last word one would apply to Simon, and yet he often did disagree. We always managed to persuade him in the end.’

  ‘But not this time.’ Stevie’s legs were sore, but there was nowhere to sit except for the floor or the bed, and she wanted to be able to see Buchanan’s expression. She leant against the door, putting her face next to its small window. ‘When Simon refused to go along with the cover-up, you killed him. I’m guessing Frei died for similar reasons.’

  Buchanan put his face against the window, close to hers. He lowered his voice, as if they weren’t speaking from opposite sides of wood and glass, and putting their heads together was a prelude to a confidence.

  ‘A neat theory, but not what happened.’

  This time the chemist’s smile was like a closing door. Stevie straightened her spine and looked Buchanan in the eyes. This was not a moment for soft selling or subliminal messages, this was a do-or-die deal.
She put an edge of command into her words, as persuasive as a TV mesmerist.

  ‘Let me out of here so we can talk properly, like human beings.’

  ‘William and I have to be meticulous, if we’re to avoid infection.’

  ‘William?’

  ‘My son, Simon’s godson. You met him earlier.’

  Alexander Buchanan’s grin infuriated her. So many people were dead, some of them at his hands, but the chemist still had a son he could keep close. Stevie touched her throat.

  ‘Was it your son who attacked me outside the TV studio?’

  The chemist’s smile tightened.

  ‘I’m sorry if William frightened you. All he wanted was to save me embarrassment by getting hold of the material on Simon’s laptop. My son is young and lacks finesse, but he wouldn’t have hurt you.’

  ‘Did William tell you that I managed to pull off his balaclava when he attacked me? It meant I recognised him when I saw him running away from Simon’s apartment block, just before I discovered Hope Black’s body. William mistook Hope for me and murdered her. He would have strangled me if he could.’

  ‘Hope’s death was an unfortunate accident.’

  ‘That wasn’t the impression I got.’

  Colour bloomed in Alexander Buchanan’s cheeks and Stevie saw that her jibe had met its mark. There was a dreadful pleasure in baiting the chemist. She felt a surge of adrenalin, the last power of the defenceless.

  He said, ‘You’re hardly the best judge of character …’

  Stevie thought Buchanan had hung up, but then she saw the look of frustration on his face and realised that the phone signal had died. The chemist slipped his useless phone into his pocket and turned away. Stevie banged her fists against the door and shouted, ‘LET ME OUT.’ But the chemist was striding down the corridor, his back straight, footsteps swift and steady, like a man with lots to do.

  Forty-Three

  Stevie slept and dreamt, not of the disintegrating city, or the dead she had known, but of food: steaming pasta rich with pesto; forbidden crusty bread, warm from the oven and dripping with butter; Cornish pasties, swollen and succulent. She woke, hungry and ashamed, to the sound of a key turning in the lock. Buchanan’s son William entered, still clad in his protective suit. The room seemed to shrink around him. He showed her Hope’s gun.

  ‘Any crap, and I’ll shoot you.’

  Stevie sat up in bed and smoothed her hair with her fingertips. Perhaps she was adjusting to the way the mask distorted William’s voice, because this time she could make out his accent, a public-school drawl. His pronunciation should have been at odds with the gangster-speak, but working on the edges of the media had brought Stevie into contact with enough posh people for her to know that the upper classes were not necessarily strangers to an uppercut.

  Stevie swung her feet on to the floor. ‘Let me go, and I promise to walk away. No one cares any more about how or why Simon died, or whether Fibrosyop acted unethically. I’m sure your father had his reasons for what he did.’ She let a tear roll down her cheek. ‘We need to look forwards, not back, if we’re to survive.’

  William Buchanan gestured towards the door with the gun.

  ‘That’s exactly what we are doing.’

  Stevie shifted to the edge of the bed, ready to get to her feet if it looked like William might hit her.

  ‘No, it’s not. I don’t know what your father’s told you, but he’s obsessed with covering up his involvement in Simon’s murder.’

  ‘You’re the only one who’s obsessed with Simon. Everyone else is concentrating on staying alive.’ William paused. ‘Except my dad, I suppose.’

  Stevie leant forward. ‘And what is your father concentrating on?’

  ‘Finding a cure. That’s why he was so keen to get you to come here. I thought you would have worked that out for yourself by now.’

  And in that moment Stevie realised her true worth to the chemist.

  Buchanan’s lab was in a large room punctuated by rows of workbenches. Its windows were high and small, but they offered a glimpse of summer sky, Marian blue and dotted with white clouds so perfect they might have been painted on silk. Stevie thought of the metal railings guarding the building, the unscaleable height of them.

  Buchanan had also donned a protective suit and mask. Panic fluttered in Stevie’s chest. She asked, ‘What are you going to do to me?’

  ‘Just a few tests.’ The mask obscured Buchanan’s face, but she thought that perhaps he was smiling. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  Stevie took a step backwards but William reached out and gripped her by the elbow. Hope’s gun was in his other hand. She wondered if she should make a lunge for it, but the barrel was pointing at her forehead and she caught a glimpse of its tunnelling depths, the blackness waiting for her there.

  The chemist glanced at the expression on her face and said, ‘William, the gun is persuasion enough.’ He turned his attention back to Stevie. ‘It’s been a stressful time.’ He might have been talking about a threatened redundancy that had failed to materialise. ‘I didn’t get the opportunity to ask how you’ve been, healthwise that is, since we last met.’

  Stevie pulled herself free of William’s grip. He let her go, but stayed close enough for her to feel his presence, the heat of his body inside the suit. She said, ‘Can I have a glass of water, please?’ She wasn’t thirsty, but it seemed important to make her jailers do something for her. Buchanan turned on a tap at the sink built into the workstation next to him. He let the water run for a moment, then filled a small paper cone and handed it to her. Stevie took a sip. ‘I’ve been fine.’

  Buchanan nodded. ‘Have you come into contact with many sufferers?’

  The laboratory smelt drily of chemicals. Stevie had imagined that the chemist’s quarters would resemble the labs in cosmetic commercials, shiny and wipe-clean, but the room had been caught up in the chaos of the outside world. Its countertops were littered with the detritus of Buchanan’s work: flasks crusted with mysterious crystals, reams of paper, evil-looking Bunsen burners and abandoned Petri dishes, some of them clouded and staring, like sightless eyes.

  ‘You can’t be out there and not come into contact with people who have the sweats.’ She took a step to the left and looked at William, including him in their conversation. ‘Ask your son.’

  ‘I’m asking you. How close?’

  ‘Close.’

  ‘Close enough to touch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To share a meal?’

  Stevie remembered the tea and biscuits Iqbal had given her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To have sexual intercourse with?’

  She drank the last of the water, crushed the paper cone and dropped it on the floor.

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  William said, ‘Answer the question.’ But Stevie heard the discomfort in his voice, and hugged it to herself, like a prison shank.

  ‘Once, with someone who subsequently died of the sweats.’

  It felt like a betrayal to describe Iqbal’s death so casually.

  ‘How soon afterwards did the other person die?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She let her eyes run over a weird arrangement of glass pipes and beakers, like the skyline of some futuristic city. ‘I left, and when I came back, he was dead. Two days at the most.’

  Buchanan nodded as if she had given the right answer. He slid open a drawer, took something out and started busying himself with it. His heavy gloves hid the object from view.

  ‘I’m grateful to you for seeking us out, Ms Flint. You saved us a lot of effort.’ He looked directly at her. ‘Come here, please.’

  Stevie glanced at William, at the revolver in his hand, and wondered how good a grip his gloves allowed him. She walked towards Buchanan, aware of the gun following her, and saw the camp bed, low on the ground behind the workstation. She saw too what the chemist was holding in his hands: a syringe.

  ‘I’m not the only survivor.’ Her voice wavered.
‘There are lots of people out there.’

  Buchanan said, ‘Perhaps, but you’re the only one who came to us. Don’t worry. I’ve no intention of harming you. I just need to find out what it is that makes you immune. Roll up your sleeve and lie down on the bed, please. It’s a little difficult to be dexterous, gloved up like this, so I’m going to ask you to stay very still.’

  Stevie wrapped her arms around herself.

  ‘What are you planning to do to me?’

  ‘Nothing drastic. I’m going to take a blood sample.’ The pale face inside the helmet smiled. ‘I’m afraid I’m a little rusty at this so you’ll have to bear with me. When we were students, nurses used to joke, “Just a little prick with a needle,” whenever Simon or I attempted to give an injection. I’m not sure I’ve improved much since then.’

  Stevie hugged her body tighter. Instinct warned her that once she was on the bed she would be lost. She said, ‘It was never about the children for you, was it? You wanted the glory of making a medical breakthrough. When you discovered you’d made a mistake and the treatment was no good, instead of coming clean you faked the results.’ She turned to face Buchanan’s son. ‘You must have lost people too, William. We all have. Everyone is grieving, except for your father. He thinks the sweats are an opportunity to turn himself into a god, but he’ll screw this up, just like he screwed up before.’

  ‘You talk too much.’ William pushed Stevie against the workbench and pinned her there with his body. Stevie stamped on his toes but he was wearing heavy work boots and her feet made no impact. William peeled her left arm free and shoved her sleeve up beyond her elbow. A cough rumbled in his chest. Stevie felt it shudder against her spine. She kept her eyes on his father.

  ‘You killed Simon to protect your work.’ William’s weight was forcing the air out of her, and her words came in gasps. ‘But your work was shit, it wasn’t worth protecting.’

  The chemist swabbed the crease on the inside of her elbow, tapped it gently to raise a vein and tightened a tourniquet around her arm.

  ‘You talk about Simon as if he was uncorruptible but he was as flawed as the rest of us. I told you he always came round in the end.’ Buchanan looked up and his eyes met hers, still blue behind the protective visor. ‘This time was no exception.’