by Nicholas Lim
“George told me you’d been hurt. He said your arm?”
The muscles in Garrett's back tightened. She felt his hands on her waist again. The smell of his aftershave filled the car, sweet and floral, its self-regard feminine.
“It’s fine. I’ve sent you a body.”
“George said.”
“It would be good to autopsy as soon as possible.”
“Of course. Christine, about what happened–”
“Have you had any more results from the Analyzer?”
“Not yet. Listen, I just wanted to say I’m–”
“Is anyone working on it?”
“Yes Shani. Christine I’m sorry.”
Garrett watched Cherry light another cigarette.
“It’s alright. You’ve nothing to say sorry for.”
Cherry looked over at her. Garrett turned to stare out of her side window. Approaching motorway signs warned of a fork ahead, an exit in two miles.
“Rheinnalt, I’m going to have to call you back.”
Garrett put the phone down on the dashboard.
Cherry drove in silence. Garrett looked out of the window. The call back came a minute later, the phone’s chirruping ringtone loud in the car. Exit in two hundred yards. No reported delays. Get in lane. Exit in one hundred yards.
The ringing stopped.
The metal and stone of the bridge across the Severn rose up on the road ahead like a strung instrument, graceful in its strength. The estuary shoreline beyond was an unlovely margin of exposed rock pools and mudflats. Over brown water the humps of low Welsh hills gave shape to another country.
The phone began to buzz again.
A lorry tooted its impatience at a delay. Garrett pushed a window button. The fresh summer air that entered the car smelled of grass shavings and diesel exhaust. She picked up the phone.
“Christine–”
“I’m the one who should apologize. I shouldn’t have hit you.”
“It doesn’t matter. Can I see you?”
“Will you make sure Shani looks at that body as soon as it arrives?”
“Of course.”
“I’m fairly certain he’s the index case.”
Garrett listened to the hum of carrier signal.
“How do you know?”
Garrett winced as she searched for change for the toll, trying to work out which was more trouble, her injured arm or being humoured.
“The deceased knew all three of the otherwise unrelated first cases: Lizzie was an ex, Spyder was a friend, and he picked up Fiona Grant at the Brighton festival two weeks ago. My external physical exam showed extreme jaundice and an enlarged liver. That’s physical and circumstantial evidence.”
“Alright. What do the police say?”
“They’re embarrassed by a death in custody.” The car sped through the stone arches of the first bridge tower. Suspension cabling strobed past. Garrett picked at Bryce’s last question. There was nothing for her anger in it. “I'm at a dead end. All we've got is the body.”
“Don't worry about that. We’ll autopsy soon as it arrives.”
Again the deep current of her anger flowed without resistance. Tiredness seeped up her arm. The wind played a continuous note through the bridge’s suspension as they drove under the last tower.
“By the way, one of the chicks has gone missing,” Bryce said.
“What?”
“The curlews? I saw them again today. One of the chicks is missing.”
“Oh,” Garrett said.
“Probably a fox.” There was a silence on the line. Garrett studied the river through her window. The last of the water below the road bridge was pocked with black rocks. “Christine? I would like to see you.”
“I’m visiting Jason.”
“Who?”
“Jason my son.”
“Where are you?”
“I’ve just crossed the River Severn.”
They pulled up at a toll gate. Garrett threw a handful of coins into a plastic sieve. They drove under a rising barrier.
“Into Wales?”
“Yes. That’s where he lives.”
The Welsh hills were close now. Cherry accelerated hard away from the tolls.
“Christine–” In the pause, Garrett heard a man choosing words like stones to step on. When his voice came back it was suddenly loud in her ear. “I’m worried about you.”
“You don’t need to be. I’m with a friend.”
“Okay. I know I don’t. Will you call later, just to say you’re alright?”
Garrett rang off.
“He sounds keen,” Cherry said.
Garrett did not reply. She was glad she had picked up his call. She was still just about part of the team. And if she wanted their results she had to be able to talk to Rheinnalt.
And he had called first. She rubbed at her waist where he had touched her. She remembered her smack – she wasn’t sorry about it. She sucked on the memory like a boiled humbug.
Chapter 26
Kirtananda nosed his van through slow traffic on the approach to the Severn Bridge. A lorry had jack-knifed near Llanfihangel, three miles into Wales. In the whine and growl of the engine he heard his dogs, the low animal noises they gave out when they picked up a scent still warm. It took twenty minutes to get through the tolls and reach a clear road. When the four-stroke diesel pushed him back into his seat it made him smile. He was looking forward to the fun he was going to have killing Christine Garrett.
She would probably reach Asari first but he would not be far behind. Which was good. Skyler had made the call to his mother as instructed, but he was still not sure of the boy. Perhaps he would have to kill them both. Arshu had been clear: this doctor had to be stopped, or absorbed. Skyler really believed he could convert her – but if he failed, so what? They were both disposable.
Ahead, a family saloon was hogging the fast lane. Kirtandanda sucked his front teeth. He flashed his beams and honked until it moved out of his way.
Mind you, that night with the scientist and his family, the lad had reacted well enough, shooting when ordered, cool enough afterwards, thinking the woman and her child had escaped. He had not returned the gun – another good sign. The boy was becoming a man. But he was the silent type; they’d not be sure of him for a while.
The cars streamed away from the bridge towards Cardiff, a flow like blood cells into the veins of Wales. As he floated in the busy stream, another premonition tightened his hands on the wheel. It was like the hesitation he’d had queuing in traffic behind the old lady, watching as she struggled to find a gear. What was it this time? Something else – lighter, brighter than compassion.
Fingers tugged absentmindedly at his rainbow dog collar. It was not unusual for him to feel things he didn’t understand; that never bothered him; he’d realized long ago that feelings didn’t interfere with what you had to do, if you learnt the knack. But as he drove west, he suddenly realised what this exultation was that lit him up like a filament in a bulb, brighter than speed mainlined into an arm above the pulse.
What he was doing mattered. He was leaving a mark, part of something that was going to change the world. In this end of times – was that what Arshu called it? – he was more than part of it. He was helping to make it happen.
Ain’t that the truth.
He drove easily between the cars and coaches and lorries, full of astonishment. He had never expected to feel this. Nothing he had ever done before had mattered to anyone beyond the reach of his fists and arms or on any stage larger than the fall of his own shadow.
As he looked around – at a businessman talking to himself, his jacket hanging creaseless in the back window, at a coach-load of singing students wearing scarves and spilling beer over each other, at children in the back of an estate sticking out their raspberry tongues – the thousand insults of other lives – he knew what he was looking at.
Endings. Beginnings. A new world coming, healed of its pollutions, its hurts. He knew how fragile the civili
zed skin was. He’d seen it torn in war, in business, in the gangland neighbourhoods where he had grown up; he’d torn it himself, many times, out of need, under orders, sometimes just for fun. He knew the savagery that lay beneath. This tissue of manners and laws others called civil society, it had given him little; he cared for it less. It was about to be stripped off the bone.
He accelerated hard, past a border sign. Croeso I Gymru. Welcome to Wales.
Chapter 27
“Shall we stop for more food?” Cherry asked.
“I'd like to get there as quickly as possible.”
“Course. No worries. Might need a short comfort break though.”
Steering one-handed, Cherry unzipped her hip pouch. She dug around inside with her fingers with increasing exasperation.
“Here, let's switch.”
She pulled over onto the hard shoulder. Garrett climbed into the driver’s seat. Cherry stood at the edge of the streaming traffic and searched the contents of her pouch. She began cursing.
“I've lost my stuff!”
A container lorry roared past within inches of her shoulder. Cherry shouted angrily. The slipstream rocked her on her feet.
“Cherry, will you get back in the car? Please.”
Garrett drove for some minutes before Cherry spoke.
“It must have been at the festival.”
“What do you want to do?”
Cherry swore again. “And I've no money! Not enough!”
“What have you lost?”
“My stash!”
“What was it?”
“My drugs, okay?”
“Will you tell me what they were?”
“Oxies.”
They drove in silence for a while.
“OxyContin?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you been using it?”
“I was clean for a year. I started again last week.”
“What do you want to do?”
Cherry stared out of the window for a long while.
When she spoke it was with sudden enthusiasm. “Don’t worry doc. I’m not abandoning you. I might have to make a short stop though, in Aberystwyth.” She curled up on the passenger seat. “I don’t feel so good. I’m gonna have a nap.”
By Swansea five minutes later Cherry was asleep. Glancing over, Garrett saw sweat curling her hair on her forehead. A moment earlier, she had half-expected to be asked to write a prescription. She wondered if Cherry would allow her to introduce her to Dr Chandry, head of the Southwick methadone programme.
She watched over the girl as she drove, seeing the twitches and sweats of starting withdrawal. A few times Cherry shivered in her sleep and called out. Garrett resolved to ask about Dr Chandry as soon as she woke.
The first sign appeared for Aberystwyth. Garrett wondered what Jason was doing. Was he in danger? Was he trying to leave?
She caught a movement in the corner of her eye. She swerved. There was a thump from the nearside front wing. The car lost grip. She steered into the skid. She saw no oncoming traffic and allowed herself to drift into the opposite lane across a bend in the road. The car came to a sliding stop on a grass verge.
Cherry shivered, moaned and turned towards her door. She wrapped arms around her chest, hugging nothing tight to her. Garrett got out of the car. She walked back up the road.
A large badger, over a metre long, lay in a ditch just off the tarmac. It was dead, its head badly smashed on one side. Blood trickled out of its mouth. Garrett stared. She saw Christmas in the cell, and the blood beside his mouth. Garrett realised she was panting. Her hands were shaking.
She glanced up into the sky. Further down the coast, kettles of broad-winged birds wheeled around empty blue. After-images of the smashed, bloody carcass, the red mouth lingered on her sight, as though she had glanced too-directly at the sun. Odd connections formed. Something hard, the stone of an understanding, fell in her mind. Garrett tried to hold herself still and wait.
The first three corpses – two had been drowned, their mouths washed empty; the third – Spyder – his mouth had been full of blood, assumed from biting seizures. Christmas’s saliva had been reddened by blood. She remembered the ookineetes, the rogue parasites they had found in Fletcher’s blood; cell forms occurring in the mosquito vector, able to move from gut to salivary glands.
Garrett returned to the car. She found her mobile. It showed one intermittent signal bar. The first two call attempts failed.
“Shani Zahra, Parasitology.”
“Shani, it’s Christine.”
“Christine! I tried calling you! Are you alright? Rheinnalt told me about your arm.”
“It’s fine.”
“Are you sure? It sounded horrible!”
“I'm fine, honestly. How are you?”
“I'm good. Much better.”
“You sound it.”
“Thank you for the tea. Listen, I can't talk now. Are you coming back in?”
“Yes, there is something I must do first.”
“The body's arrived by the way. I emailed CDSC. They’re tracing the case manager. You’ve put the cat amongst the pigeons.”
“Have you started the autopsy?”
“I’m about to.”
“I’d like you to do detailed sections of the salivary glands.”
There was a moment’s static. “–salivary glands?”
“And check those sections from the first victims.”
“Okay. I only wish the timing…” Zahra’s voice faded, “…why? Surely–”
“Hello? Hello? Shani?” Garrett looked down at her phone. There was no signal.
Sweat trickled down her back. It was a long shot, but at least it was covered. Zahra would do as she asked.
She got back into the car. Cherry had slept through the accident; the back of her shirt was dark with sweat; occasionally she moaned. Garrett drove on. They reached the coast in under half an hour.
Aberystwyth’s crescent of Victorian terraces and retirement bungalows faced out to sea. Surfers, students and pensioners wandered together along the railed promenade. The place rhymed with Brighton. Garrett schooled herself against superstitions. As she drove through, Cherry called out, as if in fear. Garrett remembered her request for a short stop in the coastal town. No time.
The coastal road out of town was badly maintained. Garrett steered around potholes to minimise bumps. Pain from her left arm nibbled at her. She almost missed the narrow gravelled turn-off marked by a multicoloured sign.
Asari Valley.
She guided the car into a rutted track. The stony driveway immediately dipped downward. Garrett leaned over the steering column. She could smell dimethyl sulphide: the sea. High hawthorn hedgerows blocked any side view.
Patience. She would know soon enough.
Garrett slowed as she bumped through a small clearing full of rubbish. Footpaths led off between trees. Beyond the clearing the rutted road switched back sharply then dipped down. After fifty yards the trees opened out onto a beach. The road ended in a dry-stone jetty half-submerged in sand.
Garrett pulled up beside a post stuck into the ground. A wooden finger advertised “Asari Valley”. A sandy path at the base of the cliffs led off a headland. Damn it.
She glanced at Cherry sleeping, the girl’s face was beaded with sweat. She was reluctant to wake her; and reluctant for some reason to move. She checked her phone, not surprised to see no signal still. She would have to wait till they were back in Aberystwyth to call the lab.
Back after what?
She stared out of the windscreen, blind to the facing sea, and admitted she was nervous. Why had Jason invited her down here? Cold drenching memories of their last meeting broke over her like, recriminations over money, accusations about drugs, bitter words…
“I don't like your friends, they’re aggressive, rude and they exploit you. Can't you see that?”
“You want to keep me in a box labelled ‘My child’, like a pet mouse, and I won't let you. Dad would’v
e understood.”
What had happened to Jason? How had he become so lost?
Should she have done more, taught him something more? She was his mother. She had to take some of the responsibility. She dug out of her fear the buried question she had asked Dr Prenderville: had his upbringing somehow set him up for exploitation? Teaching him to believe in the invisible, in the dream of a man perfected. Had she made him vulnerable to those waiting for him?
Maybe it wasn’t too late. Perhaps she could reach him, help him.
She got out of the car and it was cooler at once. The air was fresh, the sun’s touch hot but pleasant.
The tension in her eased. The car engine’s fan whirred on under the sound of the wind. Garrett watched seagulls surf the breeze inshore, coming over the car, around and back out to sea. The sun was beginning to dip, bringing shoals of light to the surfaces of the water. She saw a small child clutching seaside treasure, laying it beside her on the beach. She remembered his questions still. He had demanded such serious explanations. Why did the starfish have six arms? Why were glass pebbles smooth? How did the seaweed learn to swim? Later, he’d brought his own just-so tales, his reasonings and experiments, to lay at their feet for approval, like a cat mice to its owner. They had spent hours mixing the boy’s fantasy with her science and David’s quick humour, and in their shared confidences Jason had grown self-assured, quick and easy with achievement, like a champion that always won. Had they prepared him only for success? He had been so lost when David died. Could they have made him more able to cope?
Curling armfuls of water and light carried far up the sloped sands. Garrett closed her eyes and listened to the withdrawing exhalation of the shingle. The touch of the sun was like a facing fire. The suck and sigh of surf surrounded her.
David. David. I miss you. So much. I need you now. We need to talk about Jason.
She turned back to the car. Cherry was still asleep. Garrett looked along the path by the shore. The faint trail slipped in and out of the trees. She decided to explore the headland while she waited for Cherry to wake.
***
Impatience made the start of the Y incision a little deep. Zahra felt a brief wave of nausea. She ignored it and continued cutting.