The Overlooker

by Fay Sampson

  Tom yelled back. ‘Quick! Jump as far out as you can. Get across the canal. As soon as you’re on the other side, run like hell!’

  A second crash. This time, the tinkle of glass breaking. Tom gave a yelp. Nick heard him kicking the broken glass away and trying again.

  His own hand was already under Suzie’s armpit. He was aware of Harry Redfern doing the same on her other side. Suzie cried out in pain as she tried to run. Together they half pulled, half carried her across the floor. To his relief, he saw the slender, fair-cropped figure of Millie running down the next aisle between the looms. She was making for the second window.

  He and Harry lifted Suzie on to the sill. They had to duck to avoid the loosely hanging grille.

  The scene that met Nick dazzled him after the gloom of the weaving floor. The area around the mill was flooded with artificial light. Away to his right, the side street seemed to be packed with emergency vehicles, their blue lights turning. Police, fire engines. His heart lurched as he saw the ambulances.

  There were figures in white protective suits with respirators. Across the canal, more stood waiting.

  There was no one on the towpath directly under him. The police were keeping a wide distance from Dominic’s mill.

  In a flash, Nick understood what Tom was telling them. On this side of the canal, there was no shelter. The adjacent mills had been demolished, leaving only a vast rubble-strewn waste. No cover there.

  But on the opposite side more mills crowded the canal bank. If only they could get across to it, there would be some shelter behind those towering walls.

  He started as he heard a loud splash. A rapid glance sideways told him that Millie had jumped from the next window. He had no time to search for her blonde head reappearing in the glistening water before Tom jumped too.

  ‘Ready?’ he panted to Suzie.

  She nodded. He heard her gathering her breath.

  There was another moan of pain as the two of them hurled themselves from the mill window. Nick had his arm hooked through Suzie’s, willing his strength to propel them both sufficiently far out across the canal.

  The shock of cold water hit him as he went under. He spluttered to the surface and realized he had let go of Suzie. For frantic moments he spun, searching among the waves of their dive for a sign of her. Then her brown head broke the water ahead of him. She turned, frightened, herself, at losing him, then flashed him a brief smile.

  A heavier splash hit the canal behind him. Harry Redfern.

  Nick struck out for the far bank.

  Suddenly the night exploded in flame. The roar of noise bounded back from the surrounding mills. The water shook violently.

  As Nick turned his head, he saw the far end of the mill blossom with fire. The building opposite stood out in brilliant light. Against the dazzle, he could not see the deadly debris that was flying out from that fire-burst. The next thing he knew, the water around him was bombarded with hurtling fragments of bricks, stone, metal, wood. He heard Harry Redfern cry out in pain.

  Suzie was swimming ahead of him through the churning water. It must be less painful than running. He thought he could see splashes that might be Millie and Tom nearer the opposite bank. But there was so much commotion around him he could not be sure.

  Every instinct wanted to race after Suzie. But that cry behind him had told him Harry was wounded.

  He had to let Suzie go, praying fervently she would make it. He circled back.

  Then something struck him agonisingly on the shoulder. He went under. He was struggling in the sudden blackness, swallowing foul water.

  He surfaced again and bumped a length of splintered wood. It had come within a fraction of striking him on the head.

  The cold was numbing the pain in his shoulder.

  The brilliance of the explosion was dying already. More lurid red of flames made a macabre dance on the heaving water.

  Harry was floating motionless, face down in the water. Nick swam up to him. He thought the dark streak down the side of the minister’s head was blood. He struggled to turn the big man over. Then he caught him under the chin and began to tow him across the water. The terrible noise of destruction was clattering into quiet. Only a rain of lighter fragments showered the surface now.

  Nick’s shoulder ached. He had not thought the canal was so wide. He no longer knew if he was swimming directly across, taking the shortest line.

  He bumped the bank before he realized he had made it. The weight of Harry Redfern’s body was lifted from him. There were hands helping him, hauling him up.

  White-suited figures were all around him. They were solicitous, but urgent.

  A voice came distorted through the respirator.

  ‘Are you all right, sir? Can you run? Let’s get out of here.’

  They rushed him through an alley between two mills. At the other end of this canyon of darkness more lights bloomed.

  Suzie was standing beside an ambulance, wrapped in a red blanket. She lifted her dripping brown head and relief flooded her face. Her eyes flowered into a smile.

  ‘Sorry to have been such a nuisance. Thanks!’

  He hugged her wordlessly.

  Nick saw a stretcher hurried past him, bearing the inert figure of Harry Redfern. He prayed that the minister was still alive.

  His eyes were searching frantically for Millie and Tom. With a stab of both relief and alarm he saw Millie’s slight figure almost lost in an enveloping red blanket. But she was holding her hand to her mouth and in the glare of floodlights he saw that there was scarlet on her skin that was not the blanket. He started to run towards her.

  Someone got there before he did. He – she? – was as anonymous as all the others in a protective chemical suit, but Nick guessed from the green box in the gloved hand that it must be a paramedic. By the time he reached them, Millie’s bloodied hand was being bandaged.

  ‘That will need stitches,’ came the muffled voice.

  ‘Will it leave a scar?’

  Nick was not sure whether this would wound his daughter’s vanity or be a source of pride among her teenage friends. Her face was pale. But then, it usually was. The damp blonde hair was almost hidden under a fold of blanket.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He was reluctant to believe the evidence of his eyes. He needed reassurance.

  ‘Do I look all right? Trust me to choose the window with the broken glass. And I swallowed half a gallon of that foul canal. Besides which, I’ve probably got enough radioactivity to fry an egg. Honestly, Dad!’

  ‘Sorry!’ He put an arm around her thin shoulders, over the blanket. He was afraid to hug her as hard as he wanted to, in case he hurt her more.

  ‘Let’s have you both in the wagon,’ the paramedic ordered. ‘They’ll need to run some checks on you before they let you get any further.’

  Of course. It had been enough for the moment to escape the terrifying aftermath of the explosion relatively unscathed. Except for Harry. But Dominic’s bomb had only been meant as a means to a more frightening end. The scattering of radioactivity over as wide an area as possible. Tom, at eighteen, had seemed to know so much more about it than Nick did. How bad was the contamination they had been exposed to? What would happen to them now? Suddenly, joy at seeing Suzie apparently safe on the further bank, Millie with only a gash in her hand and a stomach full of foul water, drained from him. Words like ‘radiation sickness’ and ‘cancer’ tolled in his mind. Frightening enough for him and Suzie, but Tom and Millie were only on the threshold of their lives.

  What had he done to them, with that obstinate, self-righteous visit to the police?

  On the other hand, how much worse might things have been for his children if he had not?

  Tom. He was jolted back into the immediate danger of that frantic swim away from the mill, with masonry and metal from the explosion crashing down into the water all around him. He had assumed that some of the splashing he had seen ahead was Tom powering his way across the canal.

  Where was he?
r />   Nick spun round. For a moment joy rose in his heart. It took a second to recognize that the second blanketed figure behind him was Suzie. Somewhere along the line, someone had thrown a blanket round Nick too. But there were only the three of them. The ambulance with Harry Redfern was drawing away. Millie was climbing into the next one. He and Suzie were being shepherded after her.

  ‘Where’s Tom?’ he yelled at the paramedic.

  ‘Ahead of you,’ came a cheerful voice from inside the ambulance.

  Tom was sitting on a padded bench. Someone had given him a steaming mug. His bright blue eyes grinned at Nick over the edge of it.

  ‘Something to tell the guys about on Monday. Gerry’s gone rock climbing. Dan’s on an archaeological dig. They’re going to be killing themselves with envy when I tell them what I’ve been doing.’

  ‘Harry’s injured,’ Nick said sternly. He felt unaccountably angry that Tom was, after all, safe and sound. ‘He was hit on the head.’

  ‘Gosh! Sorry.’ The grin was wiped from Tom’s face.

  Suzie was climbing into the ambulance ahead of Nick. He turned for a last look at the floodlit scene behind him.

  The flames were dying down in the mill across the water. The end that had held Dominic’s laboratory was shattered. Jagged stacks of brickwork stood out against the lurid red glow. The other end of the weaving shed was in darkness. But the side streets beyond, where Nick had parked the car, were brighter than they had ever been with street lamps. In the distance were many more emergency vehicles. Behind them, he could make out crowds of people lining the edge of the wasteland that must once have held a dozen mills. Probably the families who still lived in the terraces of millworkers’ cottages, like the ones in Hugh Street. The police must have moved them out into a safer zone.

  How safe was that?

  He was sitting on a bench in the ambulance. Someone was handing him a mug of tea. He curled his cold hands around it as the ambulance began to move.

  It had seemed an eternity that they had waited in the mill, alone with the malevolent presence of Dominic, and Harry Redfern vainly trying to talk sense into him. All that time, Nick had been longing for the blast of police sirens and the sweep of headlights. For pounding feet outside. For armed response. But when he looked back at the army of officers in protective clothing, the fleet of ambulances, the evacuation of the local population, he was astonished at what they had done in so short a time.

  The doors closed. He fastened his seat belt awkwardly over the blanket. The wool was already sopping wet. He felt enormously tired as he let the ambulance carry the Fewings away from the darkening mill with its messages of doom spray-painted across its walls.

  ‘Guess the end of the world has been postponed,’ Tom said cheerfully.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The room was brightly lit. The walls were painted pale yellow. It was bare, clinical.

  The paramedic had left them. Two more figures in white suits were moving Geiger counters over Suzie and Millie. Nick listened to the high-pitched clicking and heard a rise in the rate. His own heartbeat accelerated in panic. What did that change mean? How badly were they contaminated?

  A larger figure came towards Nick. He – Nick assumed from the bulk it must be male – stood out from the others in a blue protective suit. Like the two in white, a respirator masked his face.

  Again, the careful sweeping of the counter over every part of Nick’s body. He felt cold in his wet clothes, without the comfort of the blanket. He guessed that they had not wanted to give the Fewings fresh clothes until they knew how badly they were affected by the fallout from the bomb.

  Weren’t you supposed to shower?

  Canal water dripped on to the bare floor. His shoes were sodden.

  The man was lifting the Geiger counter higher, assessing meticulously every part of Nick’s wet body. Now Nick tried not to listen to the rising of the sound. Across the room, one of the white-suited figures had started on Tom.

  Was the nausea Nick was starting to feel only anxiety and shock? How long did it take for the symptoms of radiation sickness to make themselves felt?

  The big man in the blue suit had finished his task. He let his arm fall away from Nick’s head. He looked across at one of the other figures, who nodded. The man in blue laid the counter aside and pushed away his mask. With a jolt of surprise, Nick recognized the perspiring face of Detective Superintendent Mason. His features looked drawn and weary.

  Mason went over to his colleagues and had a brief muttered consultation. Then he turned back to Nick with the ghost of a grim smile.

  ‘You’re lucky. You must have panicked him into setting off his bomb before he was ready. Ordinarily, a dirty bomb works by mass hysteria, rather than by actual physical harm. Ideally, you’d want to set it off in the open air in a high-density area. Somewhere high up, so you’d get the maximum fallout. That way, you’d immobilize a key area of a city. Have thousands of people mobbing the hospitals to get themselves checked. Transport gridlocked, as people try to escape. Water declared unsafe. As it is, he let it off in a confined space, in a run-down part of town. From what these guys tell me,’ he nodded to his colleagues in white, ‘I’d say you were more at risk from pollution in the canal than from any radioactive fallout.’

  Nick had not realized the enormity of the fear he had been bearing until he felt it slipping away from him. He could almost picture it mingling darkly with the pools of canal water on the floor.

  ‘Well –’ Mason’s voice sounded lighter – ‘I dare say you could do with a change of clothes. If you don’t mind the regulation police issue, we can get you showered and kitted out and on your way home.’

  Home? Nick stood petrified with shock.

  When he could move again, he spun round to Suzie.

  ‘Thelma! When we worked out where you were, I just jumped into the car and we hared straight off after you. None of us thought to tell Thelma where we were going. What time is it?’

  Tom consulted his watch. ‘Sorry, Dad. We’ve been gone at least two hours.’

  Nick reached for his mobile and tried to switch it on. The screen stayed ominously blank. He turned urgently to the detective superintendent. ‘If I could use a phone? And if you’ll get us some clothes as soon as possible, we’ve got an awful lot of explaining to do.’

  ‘We’ll run you back as soon as you’re ready. Was that your Mazda outside the mill? If you’d give me your keys, someone will return it to the house.’

  Nick felt in his trouser pocket for anxious moments. Then his fingers found the familiar bunch of metal in a corner of the wet lining. He held them out.

  As they were led away to the showers, he paused on the threshold. ‘Harry Redfern. The minister. Is he going to be OK?’

  The Baptist chaplain’s face had not been covered when they carried him past on the stretcher, but Nick was afraid of the answer he would hear.

  ‘They’ve taken him to St Mary’s hospital. From what I’ve heard, he was still unconscious. I can’t tell you more than that, I’m afraid. He had a sharper eye for trouble than we did. Dominic Walters was sentenced to three months in prison for sending the Reverend Redfern letters threatening his children. He painted his doomsday graffiti on the Reverend’s church and disrupted his services. I gather he was shouting how Armageddon’s on its way and we’re all heading for damnation. We wrote him off as religious nutter.’

  ‘I’ve been an idiot!’ Nick exclaimed. ‘He told me he knew how I felt. That he’d been on the receiving end of menacing letters too. It never for a moment occurred to me that they might be from the same man.’

  ‘In spite of all that, Mr Redfern visited him in prison and tried to talk sense into him. Didn’t do much good, by the look of it. They let young Dominic out after six weeks. And we missed a trick. None of us picked up on the same graffiti on that mill. But Harry Redfern obviously made the connection. How else did he know where to find him?’

  ‘That’s why he was there before us. Both of them must have got
in by a door at the end where the workshop was. We never saw it. And I thought he was the one on my tail. The one who was making those phone calls.’

  ‘Yes, well. He’s a good man. He’ll have known how you felt. Dominic Walters was spouting hellfire over his children, and they’re younger than yours. So he was willing to put himself in harm’s way to stop it. Should have left it to us.’

  ‘I suppose that’s what you think I should have done.’

  ‘Professionally speaking, yes. But it wasn’t my wife tied under that loom.’

  ‘If we hadn’t burst in, he wouldn’t have set off that bomb.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he would have, sir. But not until he’d got it ready and positioned to have maximum effect. He’d have set it off somewhere a lot different from an old cotton mill.’

  ‘The City of London.’ Tom said. ‘That’s what he was aiming at.’

  ‘Dad!’ Millie’s urgent voice came from the corridor behind him. ‘What about Thelma?’

  Nick saw anger battling with thankfulness in Thelma’s face. But what broke through the surface was bewilderment.

  ‘Whatever are you doing dressed like that?’

  The four Fewings had been kitted out with identical tracksuits, blue and silver-grey.

  ‘Probably regulation issue for prisoners,’ Tom had muttered.

  ‘Or the police athletics team,’ Millie giggled.

  DSI Mason had assured them that their clothes and the contents of their pockets would be cleaned and dried and returned to them before they left on Sunday.

  ‘When forensics have finished with them,’ Tom had suggested.

  There was so much to explain to Thelma, Nick hardly knew where to begin.

  ‘We fell in the canal.’

  ‘All four of you?’ She looked blankly from one to the other. Then pent-up emotion got the better of her.

  ‘I’ve been off my head with worry! That detective sergeant went haring out of the house. Next thing I knew, the lot of you were tearing off down the road in your cars, like the Keystone Cops. And I’m left here with not a clue about what’s going on. I knew you were in danger, or else why would you have the police guarding you? And . . .’