by DS Butler
After trying to free strands of hair and only causing more of a tangle, she grabbed the glasses in one hand and her hair in the other and pulled. Ouch! Still, it was better to lose a few strands of hair now than have a repeat of last week, when she had made it all the way to the bus stop before realising they were still there, perched on top of her head.
She hadn’t noticed anyone giving her funny looks either. Someone might have looked her way, curious as to why she had hideous, plastic glasses sitting on top of her head, but perhaps they had assumed they were a wacky Chinese fashion statement.
She left the troublesome glasses on her desk, buttoned up her coat and walked out into the main corridor that linked the laboratory side of the building with the administrative section. She pulled her access card out of her pocket and swiped it through the card reader. The light on the reader flashed green and she passed through the first of many doors on her way out of the chemical biology department.
On her way out, Ruby saw Jeff, one of the security guards, at the end of the corridor. She raised her hand to wave, and he replied with a mock salute. He always did that. It was “his thing”. Ruby wondered if she did something that people would talk about and say, “Oh, that’s just Ruby’s thing.” Knowing her luck, they would probably remember her for the ugly lab glasses she always forgot to remove.
*
Ted peeled back the plastic bag to reveal canisters of blood red spray paint.
He picked up one of the cans and shook it. Although one of the other tins had leaked all over it and the surface was damp and tacky, it still contained paint.
At first, to avoid getting paint on his fingers, he held the can out at an awkward angle. Squirting the aerosol, he sprayed letters in great, sweeping arcs. Warmth spread through his body, and intent on his task, he ignored the back-splatter of paint.
When he had finished, he took a step back and lifted his head to admire his work, but as he did so, the hood of his sweatshirt slipped backwards. He scrambled to snatch it back up and turned away from the wall.
There was a surveillance camera to his left. Would it have caught his face?
He swore, bundled the paint tin back into the carrier bag and made his way to the nearest exit, across the courtyard, keeping his head down.
He was halfway across the courtyard when the alarm sounded.
Ted swung around, expecting to the see police or, at the very least, the university’s security guards, but it was only the Chinese girl. She had come outside, but now she was running back towards the entrance of the building.
She must have seen him, sounded the alarm and be running for help.
He backed up against the wall.
The girl stopped at the entrance and gave the door a firm tug. Ted heard it click shut, and the alarm stopped after the door was secure.
Ted exhaled and fought an urge to laugh. He realised the alarm must be triggered if the door is left open for longer than a few seconds. That was a surprise. He hadn’t known about the door alarm, but there was no harm done. He watched the girl make her way across the courtyard and shrunk back against the red brick wall, hoping she would not pass him on her way to the exit.
Her head lifted sharply as cries from the protesters got louder. The girl increased her walking speed and passed only a few feet away from where Ted hid in the shadows.
He glanced up at the nearest surveillance camera and cursed himself again for letting his hood slip while he sprayed the paint. He had been so absorbed in the task, he had forgotten about the cameras.
A shout, closer now, ended in a cackling laugh.
Ted felt a flash of anger. He was sure the noise came from the animal rights campaigners and the protest finished hours ago. The people hanging around gave the rest a bad name.
The newspapers would write about these protesters, the troublemakers. They would not write articles about a mother bringing her child to a protest, so that he or she would grow up knowing right from wrong; and he doubted he would see an article on the elderly woman who sat outside the construction site every day, on a hunger strike.
Ted swallowed his anger and watched with relief as the Chinese girl left, walking briskly towards the exit furthest from him.
He smiled.
It was time to finish his work.
3
Jack Mackinnon stifled a yawn as Debra Collins continued her guided tour of the potted plants in her conservatory.
She stroked the spiky leaves of a yucca plant and explained it was a rare species from Mexico. The plant looked exactly like the one his parents used to have, years ago, but he smiled and tried to look interested, or at the very least, still awake.
When she began to pronounce the Latin names of each of the plants in turn, Mackinnon realised his feigned interest may have been too convincing.
Mackinnon snuck a glance at his watch. Ten pm. He and Chloe had arrived at the party two hours ago. In another half an hour or so, they would be able to make their excuses and go home, without appearing rude.
Somehow, Chloe had managed to avoid the detailed plant tour. Although she told him she had given up smoking, he reckoned she had snuck outside for a cigarette. Mackinnon glanced over his shoulder and looked through the conservatory and into the living room.
Only a few guests remained in the living room and most of them seemed to be huddled around DC Brookbank, as he acted the clown and entertained them with gossip from the station. The smokers were in the garden, to avoid dropping ash on the pristine, beige carpet. He could hear laughing and singing coming from the direction of the kitchen that sounded a lot more fun than listening to a lecture on plant life.
He knew most of the people here tonight. Chloe had surprised him by agreeing to come along and even said she didn’t mind driving. He appreciated that because he was sure an evening with his police colleagues wouldn’t be high on her list of fun ways to spend a Friday night.
Now Debra Collins had moved on to explaining the intricacies of photosynthesis. Mackinnon smiled, but he wasn’t really listening. Despite the lecture, he had actually quite enjoyed the evening. The amount of lager he consumed probably helped.
DC Brookbank’s nasal voice interrupted the botany lesson. Mackinnon couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but he did hear his name mentioned. Debra obviously heard it too. She looked up at Mackinnon and raised a hand to her mouth.
Mackinnon stepped out of the conservatory and stood in the doorway to listen.
“At first, I thought Jack had brought his mother along tonight.” Brookbank took a deep slurp from a can of lager, belched and grinned at the circle of people around him. He didn’t notice the horrified expressions of the people gathered around him. They could see Jack Mackinnon standing just a few feet away.
Mackinnon waited for a moment. He had been drinking and thought perhaps he had misunderstood.
DC Webb, one of the crowd surrounding Brookbank, scraped a finger across his neck, in a cut-throat gesture, warning Brookbank to stop, but Brookbank either didn’t see him or decided to ignore him.
“Seriously, she must be what? Fifteen, twenty years older than him?” Brookbank shrugged his shoulders, and Mackinnon could imagine the lecherous look on his face when he said, “Still, you know what they say about the older ladies, don’t you, eh?”
Mackinnon walked over to the group, Debra Collins and her plants now forgotten. He gripped Brookbank’s shoulder.
Brookbank jumped when he felt the weight of Mackinnon’s hand, but he didn’t apologise. “Oh, Jack, don’t look so serious. I am just messing about. I mean...” He glanced back to his audience with a smirk, looking for their approval. “I mean, she could easily pass for your older sister!”
No one else was laughing now. Brookbank’s audience fixed their eyes on the floor and one by one, they shuffled away.
Mackinnon wasted no time with conversation. The first blow was just a push to Brookbank’s shoulder, but it hit him hard enough to knock him into the fireplace, which, thankfully for Brookban
k, was not alight.
Brookbank scrambled to his feet and retreated a few steps until he backed through the doorway into the conservatory.
Mackinnon moved forward, grabbing Brookbank by the collar. His eyes flickered to the audience gathered around them. This time, they had gathered for a different type of entertainment.
Mackinnon heard a few mutters from the crowd. “Leave him alone, Jack.”
“Come on, Jack. It isn’t worth it.”
“Get off me, you stupid bastard,” Brookbank said, struggling to pull Mackinnon’s hands off his neck and shoulders.
Mackinnon did as he asked and pushed Brookbank away from him with a disgusted shove. Brookbank reared backwards, arms circling and tripped over his own feet, which sent him sprawling into the corner of the room where he landed in the middle Debra’s prized plants.
When Brookbank fell onto them, one of the plant pots broke, and the larger pot, containing the yucca plant, fell on top of him. The yucca’s spiky leaves poked Brookbank’s face as he writhed on the floor, driving the spilt soil into the rug beneath him.
Mackinnon decided to leave things like that. He watched, gratified, as Brookbank squirmed on the floor, but his satisfaction only lasted until Brookbank’s foot kicked out, and with more luck than judgement, hit the side of Mackinnon’s knee.
Mackinnon fell forwards, landing with a thud on top of Brookbank and Debra Collins’ prized yucca plant, snapping the plant in two.
Mackinnon tried to restrain Brookbank’s hands, but they ended up exchanging a series of pathetic little slaps.
“What the hell are you two doing? Trying to doggie paddle each other to death? Get up!”
Mackinnon froze at the sound of Detective Superintendent Bob Wright’s voice. He released Brookbank’s hands and slowly got to his feet and looked around. The noise of the scuffle had drawn the attention of the rest of the guests, and Mackinnon found himself surrounded by most of his work colleagues. Some looked amused, but the expression on Detective Superintendent’s face made Mackinnon look down at his feet.
What the hell had he done? In front of the big boss man, too. He felt twelve years old again.
Brookbank groaned on the floor. Mackinnon looked down at him and wished he could give the snivelling bastard another kick.
As he waited for Brookbank to sit up, he noticed the state of the conservatory. He saw two upturned wicker chairs, dark soil sprinkled liberally all over the intricately patterned rug, and the yucca plant, well, he was pretty sure the damage to that was permanent.
Mackinnon turned to Debra Collins, “I’m so sorry. The plant, the rug...”
He bent down and tried to sweep some of the soil from the rug with his palm, but it just seemed to send the dirt deeper into the fibres.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for replacements,” Mackinnon said.
Debra Collins’ face was pale, and her mouth opened and closed a couple of times before she said, “It was from Mexico...”
Detective Superintendent Wright stepped forward and motioned Mackinnon to stand, which he did. “Home time, Mackinnon.”
Mackinnon nodded and kept his eyes down to avoid seeing the disapproving look on Wright’s face.
Wright held Mackinnon’s arm just below the elbow and led him out towards the hallway. It seemed he was going to make sure Mackinnon left without causing any more trouble.
Chloe met them in the hallway as she came in from the garden. “What happened?”
Mackinnon could smell the cold air and cigarette smoke. He closed his eyes for a moment. He was such an idiot. They had only been living together for six months, and he hadn’t exactly been getting on well with her daughters. This was the last thing he needed.
Chloe raised her hand to touch the corner of his mouth and when she lowered it, he saw blood on her fingertips. Her face was full of concern, but that just made him want to go back into that conservatory and punch Brookbank again.
“I think you better get him home,” Wright said.
They walked back to the car in silence. Mackinnon knew Chloe would wait until they got into the car to ask him what had happened.
He tried to think of a way to explain things to her, without making himself sound like a complete muppet, and more importantly, without telling her what DC Brookbank had said.
4
Jeff Marks entered the security office, rubbing his hands together to warm them. He flopped back into the tatty armchair, put his feet up on the coffee table and grabbed the food bag his wife had given him. He peered into the bag and sighed as he looked through its contents.
He pulled out an apple first and laid it on the armrest of the chair – far too healthy. The second item was even worse: a peach-flavoured yogurt. His wife described this sort of stuff as nutritious food, but Jeff needed more than that to see him through the night shift; he needed tasty food.
Sure, he had put on a few pounds since he started the job at Oxford, five years ago, but he wasn’t fat, and the snacks gave him something to look forward to during the night shift. Especially on nights like this, when the icy wind cut through his padded coat.
At the bottom of the bag, he found something that made him smile: a lovely thick slice of iced fruitcake. That was the way Jeff liked to eat his fruit – baked in a cake.
He had only just managed to remove the wrapping covering the cake, when the alert alarm sounded.
The piercing ring of the alarm made Jeff jump and he knocked the apple and yogurt to the floor in his haste to get out of the chair.
The security control panel lined one wall of the security office. It contained monitors displaying images from the surveillance cameras and a central panel that listed the areas of the buildings with small bulbs next to each one. One of the bulbs flashed red next to the words Chemical Biology LG freezer room.
When Jeff realised which alarm had triggered the alert, he swore.
“Bloody students,” he mumbled under his breath. They were always making his life more difficult. Once more, he glanced back at the security cameras as a final check - nothing there.
Jeff believed he spent more of his shifts closing freezer doors than doing any actual security work. The freezers triggered the alarm more times than anything else because the alarm sounded when the freezer temperature got too warm, and the students in this place frequently wandered off, leaving the freezer doors ajar.
Why did they find it impossible to remember they had to shut the doors? Jeff was sure they didn’t leave their freezers at home open, so why these? It happened twice last week; the alarm sounded when the temperature got too high, and Jeff had the job of walking all the way over there to shut the door for them.
Sometimes he wondered just how much intelligence these students had. They may have letters after their names, but that meant nothing if they couldn’t even remember to shut a freezer door.
As he headed outside, he gave the slice of fruitcake, sitting on the table, a look of regret.
It was only a two-minute walk to the Chemistry Research Laboratory, but by the time he got there, the cold had numbed his finger and toes. He stamped his feet to warm them as he walked through the main entrance.
He paused for a moment in the main atrium. The chemistry building stood five storeys high, with the laboratories on the north side and the administrative offices on the south side of the building. In the centre, separating the offices from the laboratories, stood the atrium.
If you were in the atrium and looked up, you could see the glass roof of the building and beyond it, the sky. During the day, it was pleasant, and the building had a light, airy feel. But at night, when darkness wrapped around the building, the black ceiling and walls gave him the creeps.
It made him feel like an object in one of the labs, something to be observed.
Jeff fumbled through the access cards in his pocket. The chemical biology department took up most of the lower ground floor, and the freezers were in the laboratory section so he turned left, with the access card gripped in his han
d. He swiped through two secure doors to get into the department, and walked down the glass-walled corridor, looking into the laboratories he passed.
When he arrived at the freezer room, Jeff looked around in confusion.
Metal, floor-to-ceiling freezers lined two of the walls in this room, and as the freezers took up so much space, there wasn’t much room for anything else. The hum from the freezers sounded like an angry swarm of bees. The steady beep of the alarm penetrated through the mechanical buzzing as Jeff stood in the centre of the room, turned in a circle and tried to take it all in.
When he entered the room, he expected to see one of the freezer doors slightly ajar. He planned to close the door, and once the freezer temperature climbed back to normal, the alarm would stop. Problem solved, and Jeff could go back to his fruitcake.
He looked at the freezer that set off the alarm. The door was not simply ajar. It was wide open and one of the large internal drawers lay overturned on the ground with its contents scattered across the floor.
Jeff’s mouth set in a firm line. This was no accident; it was a deliberate act of vandalism.
Puffing out his chest, he nodded to himself. He’d said enough times, to anyone who would listen, that security should have been increased, far more than it had been, when work on the animal house began.
Jeff cocked his head to one side and listened, trying to pick out any foreign sounds.
Whoever caused the damage might still be here.
A jolt of adrenaline rushed through him. Cautious, he walked back into the corridor and his breath caught as he saw the light was on in one of the labs, just a little further along the corridor.
His right hand, holding his torch, trembled. He hadn’t had this much excitement at work for ages. Not since he caught two undergraduates tying a naked fresher to the bike racks last year.
Biting his lip, he edged forward, trying to be as quiet as possible. These animal rights protesters could be an extreme bunch. He remembered stories Mick had told him, about threats against the construction workers working on the animal house. Not that Jeff was one hundred percent in favour of animal testing, but threatening people’s families was, in his opinion, just wrong.