He pocketed the phone, and peered in through the door.
There was a good chance, he thought, that if he signed up a second time for Sad Crocodile he’d get another free trial.
Saturday night at Breath was conventionally not the busiest, but as every band performing had brought a sizeable following of girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, friends-of-friends, and maybe even a fan or two, it was fuller than usual, and Ben and Molly’s set began a lot later than originally scheduled.
Molly had decided that Crumbs Mrs Ashton were her kind of music, and had vanished into the crowd: Ben had decided that Crumbs Mrs Ashton were reaching somewhat and might become his kind of music when they’d all settled on what tempo they were playing in, and had made for the door in order to unobtrusively poison himself.
His phone rang just as he’d given up on doorway lurking as a terrible idea, and he stepped out into the frost sans jacket to answer it.
“Hello,” said a deep, sonorous voice, and went on at speed, “is that Ben Martin? Sorry it’s so late, I had a metric shitload of messages to get through.”
“That’s me,” said Ben, “and er, that’s fine, this is, this is when I work.”
“In a pub, from the sounds of it,” said Dr Bill, agreeably. “Oh to be a journalist. What’s this about something happening to Dr Yagoda? I assume you mean the Dr Yagoda who developed the triple test?”
Ben tried un-tongue-tie himself, and said, “I, I interviewed her for the Guardian—”
“Oh, you’re that Ben Martin. I got you confused with the one who does the film reviews.”
Ben made a mental note to start using his middle initial in by-lines. “I er. Yeah. The thing is, I called her up after the interview was printed because I wanted to make sure she was okay with it, and she wasn’t around. Then her co-workers called me from the pub because I’d called her, and apparently they couldn’t get hold of her, and then they called me by accident from her house, where she wasn’t.”
“And this,” said Dr Bill, musing, “is directly after she was offered a bribe to shut up about gene patents?”
“Yes,” said Ben, feeling his intestines go cold again and not sure if it was foreboding or the fact that he was standing outside in a shirt in what was getting close to zero degrees.
“I note that everyone has more-or-less shut up about gene patents and KBV,” said Dr Bill in the same thoughtful voice. “Much the same way they all shut up about it being so incredibly difficult to test for, considering how cheap gene sequencing is now. I wondered why there hadn’t been at least a retraction, if this was wrong. Someone should have made hay about it. Instead, howling silence from anyone who isn’t a barking mad conspiracy nut and one interview about a bribe.”
“I’m worried about this,” Benn said, surprising himself. His breath made a wall in front of his face, and he patted himself on the back for having decided on the contact lenses tonight after all.
“I’m not surprised,” said Dr Bill. “It’s extremely suspicious. Who told you to call me?”
“Er,” said Ben, carefully conflating sources in his head. “My co-worker. You’ve, she said you’ve had experience with, well, with people trying to shut you up before.”
“Yes,” said Dr Bill. “Legally, usually. Lawsuits left, right and centre. Irritating distractions intended to waste my time or scare me into being quiet, which is unfortunate, as I’m entirely too pig-headed and big-mouthed to be frightened into shutting up by the prospect of having an argument in public.” This sounded to Ben a little like a prepared speech. Probably one he’d had to use a lot. “But if you think something has actually happened to Dr Yagoda — if she’s missing? Go to the police.”
“Th-thanks,” said Ben, as a car passed slowly through a street full of cold smokers.
He said it with such authority that Ben almost dialled them the minute the phone call was over, but, he reasoned, there was a limited amount he could do without his notes.
The door opened, and Ben grabbed it to let himself back inside.
“THIS IS ‘SHEEP ON CLIFF EDGES’,” announced the apparent Fraggle and John Lennon look-alike fronting Crumbs Mrs Ashton.
Ben opened the door to Breath and went back outside again.
He wedged himself into a tiled corner between the street and the next building along, where the wind wasn’t as obnoxious, and idly brought up his email client.
To: "Khoo, Daniel"
From: "Ben M"
Subj: thanks
I called him, and he thinks I should go to the police. Thanks for your Freemason Science Voodoo contribution.
Ben girded his loins and musical sensibilities, and went back into Breath with his own hanging around him like a fog.
An hour later, in the gap between Colin Oppenheimer and the headliners, Jellybean — if headliners was strictly the right word — around half-past eleven, Ben felt his phone both buzz and blonk against his leg.
“I think we should get them for Gareth’s thing in December,” Molly said, scrolling through her phone.
“I think Gareth should be responsible for signing up his own acts,” said Ben, retrieving his own. “Then he can’t complain about us doing it.”
“But they’re really good,” Molly insisted. “They’ve got edge.”
“Mhm,” said Ben, non-committally. There was a new email from Daniel.
To: "Ben M"
From: "Khoo, Daniel"
Subj: re: thanks
Have you called them yet?
PS: the Admiral is very dreary without you complaining all over it, I’m going to have to abduct someone else to have a bad time here so I can go on having a better one by comparison.
Ben snorted.
To: "Khoo, Daniel"
From: "Ben M"
Subj: re: re: thanks
No, I don’t really know what to say to them yet or who to call.
…are you answering your emails in a club?
“I’ve messaged Gareth,” said Molly. “He can call them, can’t he, and then it’s his idea and I just suggested it.”
“He’s still going to chew you over it if he doesn’t like them,” Ben warned. And if Gareth had functioning ears, he thought, he wasn’t going to be much enamoured of Crumbs Mrs Ashton.
To: "Ben M"
From: "Khoo, Daniel"
Subj: re: re: re: thanks
It’s a very boring club. Listen, hold off until tomorrow lunchtime or something, come out somewhere with me so I can provide you immoral support while you’re doing it. Also, I really, really want to know what’s going to happen with this.
I mean, when the fuck does a virologist go missing here? This isn’t fucking…Iran.
“I’m not going to go to an actual police station,” said Ben, staring through the cakes at a palette of middle-aged art fans in the National’s café. “Might as well call from here.”
“Doesn’t get much more respectable,” said Daniel. “Are you going to put that on speaker phone so I can hear it?”
“No,” said Ben, “I don’t want them knowing I’m calling from a café.”
“People call them from bins,” Daniel exclaimed. “Don’t be so bloody precious.”
“I also don’t want the entire café hearing about it.”
“Fine,” Daniel got up. “I’m getting a croissant, I haven’t eaten anything since Friday and my stomach’s like a coke walnut. Do you want anything?”
Ben shook his head.
Daniel pointed at his face. “Don’t call them until I get back or I’ll stab you with a chair leg.”
Ben saluted and sat staring at his phone while Daniel — resplendent in bright orange jeans and a t-shirt in pillar-box red which bore a Lego diagram of a cell — bounded away to join the queue. Two old women at the very back of the queue gave a startled jump, and Ben snorted to himself as Dani
el set about calming them down.
The numbers 101 flashed on the screen.
“I really hope this is the right one,” Ben said under his breath. He’d spent most of the morning fuzzheadedly Googling police stations, trying to work out if he should call Colindale, because that was where Dr Yagoda lived, or Haggerston, because that was where he told people he lived.
Two small girls raced through the café and out of the door on the other side.
She’s probably fine, Ben thought. I’m going to look like an idiot.
Two tables opposite him, a woman reading her phone began to cry silently. Ben averted his gaze back to the phone screen and willed Daniel to hurry back to the table so he wouldn’t have to catch her eye.
Daniel returned some time after this, with a black coffee that smelled like the inside of the planet, a croissant, a cheese and ham sandwich, and a latte.
“Do the deed,” he said, folding the sandwich in half. “I’m about to gag myself so you needn’t worry about interruptions.”
“Is the latte for me?”
Daniel seized the cup defensively and hid it behind the croissant. “No. You can’t have it until you’ve called them.”
Ben took a deep breath, and hit dial.
“Hello? I’d like to report a missing person.”
“You’ll want police, then,” said the switchboard operator, helpfully. “Hold on.”
Ben held on. Daniel made a valiant attempt to swallow an entire sandwich in one mouthful.
“Police,” said another operator. “You want to report a missing person?”
“Yes — Dr Yagoda, lives in Colindale—”
“You’ll want Colindale station,” said the operator. “Hold, please.”
Ben held. Daniel took a noisy swig of coffee and nearly choked on what remained of his hastily-consumed sandwich.
“Hello?” said a distinctly less operator-sounding voice. “You want to report someone missing, is that it?”
“Yes,” Ben said, uncertainly. “Dr Natalya Yagoda.”
“Dr Natalya Yagoda,” repeated the police officer. “HPA Colindale?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t show up at work yesterday and when her co-workers called on her she wasn’t home,” said the police officer. “She’s already been reported missing.”
“Oh,” said Ben. “Good.”
“Do you have any further information?” the police officer asked politely.
“Ye-uh…she’d been offered a lot of money not to talk about something she’d recently written an article about,” said Ben, hesitantly.
“We know,” the police officer said, with strained patience. “We read the papers. Even the Guardian. We’re not all illiterate thugs, I promise.”
“I mean, I wrote that article,” said Ben.
“Really.” The police officer did not sound in the slightest bit impressed. “I don’t suppose she mentioned who offered her the money? That might be useful.”
“She said they didn’t—”
“Didn’t identify themselves. Which is what her co-workers have already told us,” said the police officer, sounding tired. “Your public spiritedness is appreciated, Mr…but we have this under control.”
“Thank you,” said Ben, but they’d already hung up.
“That could have been worse,” said Daniel, swallowing the last of the sandwich. “At least he didn’t actually call you a cunt to your face.
“She,” said Ben. He put the phone down. “Can I have that latte now?”
Daniel pushed the coffee around the croissant. “Do you want a croissant?” he added. “I’ve gone off it.”
Ben shook his head. “Don’t do pastry.” He sniffed the coffee. “They’ve already reported her missing, so I guess it’s not,” he made a vague gesture with his hand. “Not my responsibility any more.”
“I suppose,” said Daniel, raising his own coffee, “but if you think about it, happening right after you did that interview and sold it…maybe it kind of is your responsibility after all.”
There followed possibly the longest and some of the most stressful three days of Ben’s life, which were compounded by several weeks of intense drunk catching up with him, and laying him low with a lurgy.
“No,” Ben insisted, when he tried to get up the next morning and found that while the spirit was willing, the flesh was exceptionally weak. “No, no, if I miss this class I’m toast.”
“I heard,” said Kingsley, picking up his bike, “that not going in because you’re sick is a thing.”
Ben crawled back under his duvet and composed an apologetic email to Victoria explaining that he’d successfully become an incubator for rhinovirus and couldn’t be relied upon not to distribute it to the entire world if he came in.
She replied that his consideration was gentlemanly, and that if he was lying she would be required to turn him into a human pincushion with such prejudice that he’d wish he had the bubonic plague, which Ben had somewhat been expecting.
He passed two days wandering between the fridge, toilet, and futon in a despairing triangle, and on the third day succeed in putting on all his clothes before realising that, all things considered, it would be a favour to the rest of the world if he had a shower.
In having the shower he missed the tutorial he’d been haphazardly planning to attend, but at least he could breathe through his nose again and didn’t feel so much like microwaved death.
Ben was in the process of preparing another apologetic email about his mucus production levels and probable contagious death plague when his phone rang, and startled both him and Minnie: the cat into puncturing his thigh, and him into squeezing the cat. Neither party were pleased by this result, but Ben managed to answer his phone without swearing or further alarming his feline flatmate into drawing blood.
It was Kingsley, which confused Ben as he’d left an hour earlier and would have remembered by now if he’d forgotten something.
“Did you know your interview’s not up any more,” said Kingsley, in a conversational tone. “Barbara’s calling me a liar. I tried to show it to her and there’s just a wall of film reviews by some other Ben Martin.”
“Do you want the direct link?” Ben asked, wearily accepting that the novelty of having his flatmate in the Guardian hadn’t worn off Kingsley’s office yet and probably wouldn’t for a while. “I’ve got it bookmarked.”
“Yeah, so have I,” said Kingsley. “It’s gone.”
“How gone?”
“Completely gone. ‘Page cannot be found’ gone.”
Ben swung himself off the futon. “Er. Well. They haven’t asked for their money back,” he said, “so…I guess it doesn’t actually matter. Sorry to lose your thunder down the back of a sofa, though.”
“Just thought you’d want to know,” said Kingsley, hanging up with a disgruntled click.
Ben made it another two sentences into his ‘I’m sorry I’m a plague vector and I swear I will come in again soon’ email before his phone rang with another unfamiliar landline number.
“Hello?”
“Ben Martin?” asked a voice which he had, frankly, not been expecting to hear again.
“JESUS,” said Ben, startled.
Dr Yagoda said, “Although there feel like some physical similarities at present, no. It is Natalya calling.”
“I,” Ben gaped at the flat as if he’d never seen it before. “I, I, we thought you were…are you okay?”
“No,” said Natalya, bluntly. “I am very much the opposite. Currently I am bruised and sitting in Colindale police station. You have listened to me before, without judgment, and I would appreciate if you will listen to me again.”
“Of…of course,” said Ben, his head still reeling. “I mean. Do you want me to meet you? Why are you in the police station? What’s happened?”
“That requires more explanation than I currently am allowed time for,” said Natalya. “I will meet you at Parliament Hill. I would like to be away from this station as soon as possibl
e — perhaps in two hours.”
“Right,” said Ben. “Are you sure it’s me you want to talk to?”
“Through you,” said Natalya, “I can speak to several people at once.” She hung up.
Ben stared at his phone.
“What the actual fuck,” he breathed, scrabbling for his shoe with one hand. “What the actual hell and fuck is happening?”
Parliament Hill was desolate and windy: Natalya spotted him from more than a hundred yards away and beckoned him backward, down and out of the park again, towards a parked car. It was not in the best condition, and looked as if it had been constructed out of several other cars, most of which were the grandoffspring of Ladas, but she seemed content with it. When Ben got into the passenger seat and the wind stopped trying to rip a pathway through his skull via the ears, he could see the appeal.
Dr Natalya Yagoda was indeed bruised: dark patches were visible on her neck, and the side of her face, and she assured him that her arms and lower body were in a similar state.
“What the hell happened?” Ben asked.
“Please,” said Natalya, sitting back in the driver’s seat. “Allow me a moment. I have explained myself to the police six times already.”
“Do your co-workers know you’re safe?” Ben asked, still boggling.
“Oh yes,” she said, “I called work before I called the police.”
In this sentence, Ben thought, glancing at the Kapture on his wrist, there was a summary of everything he understood about the virologist so far.
She took a deep breath, put her hands on the steering wheel, and said, “Again. I was approached by someone whose face I could not see, some days ago, on my way home. I was knocked off my feet, had something pulled over my head, and was pulled into a vehicle, I think a van. I was then driven for a long time. When I was realised it was into I think a house — the acoustics were wrong for a shed or warehouse — and told by a man with a London or Essex accent that I was in league with someone, and that in order to make me focus I would be given ‘incentive’. He used the word ‘incentivise’.”
The Next Big One Page 12