An Air That Kills

by Christine Poulson

  Caspar laughed. “We call this the bird landing. The last Benton was a keen ornithologist.”

  Katie took a closer look and recognized a cormorant and a gull of some kind.

  Caspar went on, “Incidentally, the electricity supply isn’t quite as reliable as it might be. Best to make sure you have a torch with you when you come back late in the evening. It’s no fun groping your way along in the pitch dark. And here we are.”

  He produced a set of keys and opened a door at the end of the corridor. “Originally these were servants’ rooms, but a couple have been knocked into one.” He reached in, switched on a light, and gestured for her to go in before him. The door opened into the kitchen area of a large semi-circular room.

  “We’re actually in one of the turrets,” Caspar said, “and over there –” he pointed to a stone staircase set in the wall –”that leads up to a bedroom and bathroom on the floor above.”

  “Oh, wow!”

  “My secretary’s left a few basics for you – tea and that sort of thing.”

  He handed her the keys. “If you want to start getting settled in, I’ll bring up the rest of your stuff.” Before she could protest, he had disappeared down the corridor.

  She climbed the stairs to the next floor. This room, too, was semi-circular with a little bathroom containing a shower, basin, and loo cut out of it. There were three windows with Gothic arches looking out in different directions. This was the north side of the island and she guessed that the view would be fantastic in daylight.

  The place was small and was furnished like a holiday let, a bit chintzy and slightly shabby too, but in a homely way. It was more than adequate, especially compared to some of the rented accommodation she had lived in over the years. She wasn’t paying an awful lot for it either. And then Lyle was insisting on paying her a generous second salary on top of the one she was getting as a technician. After all, she was going to be doing two jobs, he had told her. She’d never earned so much money in her life.

  She went back down just as Caspar was dumping a cardboard box on a work surface. “I think that’s everything. You’re on your own in this bit of the building, but I’m only at the other end of that corridor where we came in. If you need anything, don’t hesitate.”

  He smiled at her. Now that she could see him in the light, he was a good-looking man, with regular features. His hair was prematurely grey – he could only be in his early forties – and it suited him. His eyes were very blue. There was Scandinavian blood there somewhere. Lyle had told her that Caspar Delaney had a reputation for charm, and he’d been absolutely right.

  When she had closed the door behind him, she turned back into the kitchen. There was a loaf of bread on the table, and a note that read: “Welcome, Caitlin. Supplies in the fridge.” It was signed “Siobhan”. In the fridge, she found butter, cheese, eggs, and milk. As a humble technician, she hadn’t expected this kind of reception and she felt a moment of compunction at deceiving these friendly people. And then it occurred to her that maybe they had a reason for being nice to her. They were, after all, losing technicians at a rate of knots. Perhaps they were determined to hang on to this one.

  The cardboard box that Caspar had brought in contained supplies put together by Justin – one of the things she hadn’t had time to do herself. He had put it in the car at the last minute. She didn’t even know what was in it. She unpacked it now. There was fruit and cheese and muesli and ground coffee and chocolate. In an insulated bag there was a fish pie and a bottle of white wine. She looked to see if there was a note. There wasn’t, but then there didn’t need to be. The care that he had taken spoke louder than words. He had thought of everything. Dear Justin! Her eyes filled with tears and she realized how exhausted she was. She’d been running on adrenalin for days. She was too tired to unpack anything but the essentials. She would just eat and go to bed.

  First, though, she had to let Lyle know she had arrived. She was supposed to contact him every day. She had a phone registered to Caitlin that she could carry with her when she was being Caitlin, but she also had a smartphone and an iPad for use in communicating as Katie. Only four people had that phone number: Lyle, of course, Rachel, Katie’s mother, and Justin.

  She sent Lyle a text, and Rachel too. She was sorry that she was missing the first few days of Benjamin’s life. She could at least have taken some of the pressure off by looking after Chloe. She was also aware that Rachel and Daniel would need support if their son didn’t turn out to be a match, and she was very much afraid that he wouldn’t be. The odds weren’t good. She sent up a silent prayer that at the very least he wouldn’t have DBA himself. That would be too cruel.

  Rachel sent a message back: “All well. Let’s Skype later in the week.”

  She looked around for somewhere to keep the smartphone and iPad. There wasn’t anywhere to lock them away, but it wasn’t likely that anyone would be searching the place. She put them in the drawer of the bedside table.

  She switched the oven on and found a bottle opener – how very well equipped the place was – and opened the bottle of wine. She poured herself a glass, and, while she waited for the oven to heat, she wandered to the sitting-room window. Far away a few scattered lights glimmered on the Welsh coast. From where she was standing she could see right along the building. There was a tower at the other end that was the mirror image of hers. It was in darkness.

  The silence was absolute.

  Of course this couldn’t compare with the remoteness of Antarctica. It was only a five-hour drive to London and not much more to Cambridge, and yet, for her, the isolation was in a way even more complete than it had been close to the South Pole. She could not confide in anyone, could not be her true self. She had the strangest feeling that she had come untethered, had somehow slipped her moorings and was drifting away from everything that was stable and secure.

  It was then she noticed that a light had come on in the other tower. She saw a shadowy figure, then a hand drew a curtain across the window. She felt comforted by the thought that there was someone there and she wondered who it was. Perhaps one of her new colleagues?

  CHAPTER 12

  MONDAY

  In the morning Katie’s spirits had revived. She had gone to bed at half past eight and slept for ten straight hours. This was an adventure, after all! At the very least it would be interesting.

  The house stood right on the summit of the promontory. In the daylight the view from her bedroom window across the Bristol Channel was stupendous, and looking down she glimpsed part of a garden.

  She had breakfast and unpacked, and it was still only eight o’clock. She’d received a text message from Siobhan telling her to be at the main office for nine to get her pass and security code. She had plenty of time to explore.

  She found her way out of the house, pausing to examine the birds in their glass cases. Emerging from the shrubbery, she found herself on a terrace at the side of the house. She followed a path down through a series of terraced lawns, past flowerbeds, dug over, with a few slimy brown stalks remaining, and a lily pond, where goldfish darted. The glory days of the garden were long gone. The university maintained it to a reasonable standard, but no more. There was something forlorn about the statues set in their vistas, their faces worn away by erosion, their bodies colonized by green and grey and yellow lichen.

  The garden dropped down to a narrow combe lined by woods that she guessed would be full of bluebells and wild garlic in the spring. Now, in January, the trees – some kind of oak? – were bare, just a few bronze leaves clinging to the branches. There was a choice of path, down into the valley or up along the crest. She chose the latter and after a while she reached a vantage point on the headland, where a telescope had been set up to enable people to look across to the Welsh coast. There was a rather ramshackle fence round the perimeter of the headland. Katie saw that there was a steep drop of a couple of hundred feet straight down into the sea that foamed around the foot of the cliff.

  Further along th
e coast to the west she could see a small cove with a concrete tidal bathing pool and a little jetty. That was probably reached by the path down through the valley. It was like something out of a children’s book, Swallows and Amazons or The Famous Five. She could imagine picnics with ginger beer and sausage rolls. It must be wonderful in the summer. But she probably wouldn’t be here that long.

  She turned and walked back to where the path had forked, and went along the other path, which wound off to the right through the woods. She glimpsed something white through the trees and, curious, she took a detour. It was a Gothic Revival cottage, just one storey high, with arched windows, white-painted woodwork, a thatched roof, and a little garden with a picket fence. It was like a house in a fairy-tale. Someone lived here. There were curtains at the windows and when Katie walked round the side, she saw that a dark blue Jaguar F-type convertible was parked there, its sleek modern lines looking incongruous next to the cottage. She didn’t know much about cars, but she knew enough to know that it must have cost a pretty penny. It was well out of her price range and that of most of her scientist colleagues.

  The grounds had been landscaped to conceal a track that swung round at the back and Katie guessed that this had once been a gate-keeper’s cottage. In one direction the track must lead back up to the house. She decided to follow it the other way and see if it led to the labs. She emerged from the trees to find a lawn on one side and on the other a stone arcade with niches containing life-size crumbling statues. She stopped to examine them. They didn’t seem to be classical figures; more medieval, judging by the costumes. The last niche was empty and there was a notice: “Removed for repair”.

  Sure enough, after a few more twists and turns, the path did lead to the labs, so this would have been her quickest way to work. However, Katie was meeting Siobhan in the admin offices, which were in the old house, so she made her way back up the hill. It turned out to be a short-cut to Katie’s side of the house.

  She decided that she would try to get out for a walk at lunchtimes.

  In some ways the months of perpetual daylight in the Antarctic summer had taken their toll more than the days when the sun never rose. After all, it wasn’t uncommon in the UK to find yourself going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark. Even so it wasn’t a healthy way to live. And Katie would be working in a double basement, deep in the ground. If she wasn’t careful, she might go for days without seeing daylight, and that wasn’t going to help her to re-establish her circadian rhythm.

  * * *

  Siobhan was fiftyish and overweight, with a warm smile and a photo of two small children – grandchildren? – on her desk. Katie recognized her immediately. Not her personally, but as the person who was the linchpin, the one who looked after everyone and who really ran the place. There was always someone and it was usually a woman. She was the first person people would go to if they needed something sorted out.

  They had almost finished dealing with Katie’s security card and her code for the keypads when the office door opened and a young woman came in.

  Siobhan said, “Here’s Maddie. She’s the technician who looks after the insectary in the malaria lab. She’s kindly agreed to show you where your desk is and give you a tour of the lab. Then she’ll introduce you to the biological safety officer, who’ll do the briefing about your Cat 3 lab work. Claudia’s been away for the weekend and won’t be back until lunchtime. She said to let you know that she’ll come and find you in the canteen around two.”

  “Hi there, Caitlin,” the woman said, holding out a hand. “Welcome to Debussy Point, otherwise known as Alcatraz!”

  She was short and dark and rather plump. Katie took an immediate liking to her. Maddie had such a kind, open face. But Katie was also aware that if anyone was likely to suspect that she wasn’t what she seemed, it would be another technician, so she’d better tread warily.

  Luckily Maddie was a talker. As they walked down the hill, she chatted away. She was warm and friendly, but at the same time she was artlessly interested in her own life and asked hardly any questions about Katie’s. Once she’d established where Katie had worked before and that Katie was single, she was satisfied. Julia had been right about that. Katie could relax and let Maddie do the running while Katie lobbed the odd remark back over the net.

  Walking into the lab was like coming home. Even with her eyes closed, Katie would have known where she was. There was the smell – something chemical like formaldehyde and a hint of something yeasty; and the sound – a constant background noise from a container hood as it emitted sterile air – not really a hum, more like the rhythmic swell of the sea. It was like any other lab anywhere in the world. There was something peaceful about it, almost cloister-like, separate from the outside world. Was there perhaps even something a little nun-like about the women, mostly with unmade-up faces, in their uniforms of white lab coats? Caitlin was certainly going to stand out here, she reflected.

  Maddie showed Katie her bench and introduced her to Alan, the biological safety officer. After arranging to meet Katie for lunch in the canteen, she left them to it.

  There was a whole protocol that had to be observed before Katie could be allowed to work unsupervised in the Cat 3 lab. She had been dreading this, afraid that her lack of experience would be exposed. But hopefully any gap in her knowledge would be put down to the fact that standard operating procedures and emergency procedures are specific to individual Cat 3 labs and the kind of work being done in them.

  Fortunately Alan turned out to be a taciturn guy. He was not inclined to ask questions about where Katie had worked before, and was intent only on covering what she needed to know now and making sure that she understood. Then he handed her over to a senior technician, who showed her the layout of the lab and where everything was stored. And finally there was a trial run in the handling of hazardous material in the lab. Alan watched Katie at work and pronounced himself satisfied. There were Health and Safety forms and risk assessments to be read and signed, and then Alan signed her off as fit to work in the Cat 3 influenza lab.

  She had cleared the first hurdle and as she went off to meet Maddie for lunch, she couldn’t help smiling to herself. She had been accepted as the new technician. She had actually got away with it.

  * * *

  As they sat chatting over their coffee, Katie decided that it would surely be natural to ask Maddie about her predecessor’s sudden departure. If Sophie had confided in anyone, it would have been one of the other technicians and, given that Maddie was such a friendly, sympathetic soul...

  Katie said, “I had a walk this morning. What glorious views! I think I’m going to like it here. Though I hear the person before me didn’t stick it very long,” she added, as if it were an afterthought.

  Maddie didn’t exactly stiffen, but it was as if she was suddenly alert.

  After a few moments, she said, “Well, Sophie – she was the most recent one – her partner lives in London. They got tired of the travelling, and before that, Mark got offered a better job somewhere else and, well, I guess it’s not everyone’s cup of tea here.”

  Katie didn’t want to push too hard, or to seem to know more than she ought to know, but in for a penny, in for a pound. “It’s not always easy, is it, working so closely with someone?” she prompted.

  Maddie was vague. “There was a bit of a falling-out between Sophie and Claudia; not quite sure what it was about.”

  Did Maddie really not know, or did she just not want to say?

  Maddie went on, “And then, of course, it’s not for everyone, living out here – it’s so isolated. The place empties at weekends, but I must admit it can get a bit claustrophobic during the week, especially in the winter. Actually I’m often not here at weekends either. My bloke lives in Barnstaple. We met online. We’re both keen walkers and with Exmoor being so close... I’m a country girl at heart and I like it here.”

  It was on the tip of Katie’s tongue to say that the isolation and the claustrophobia couldn’t be wo
rse than they were in Antarctica, but she saw the danger in time. Instead she said, “So what do people get up to here during the week?”

  “Well, there’s karaoke night and quiz night in the pub. That’s good fun. That’s the up side.”

  “What’s the down side?”

  “It’s a bit of a rumour mill.”

  “What kind of rumours?”

  “Oh, the usual. You know – who’s carrying on with who, whether someone’s got a down on someone else, who’s planning to leave for a better job. That kind of stuff.”

  “So who is carrying on with who?”

  “Well,” she leaned over the table, “they do say that Gemma Braithwaite, Claudia’s PI –” She broke off. “I’m wondering if you play cards,” she went on brightly, holding Katie’s gaze with her own.

  Katie understood that someone was coming up behind her: Gemma? Claudia?

  “The guys at the Monday evening poker school are always on the lookout for new blood – so to speak.” Maddie laughed self-consciously. “And why don’t you come to karaoke on Thursday?”

  “Not sure it’s quite my thing. Haven’t really kept up with pop music.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter. It’s a special evening on Thursday – not contemporary stuff. It’s Golden Oldie Karaoke!”

  “Thanks. Maybe I will,” Katie said.

  She looked round and saw Claudia standing beside her.

  She was even more attractive in real life than in her photograph. That was Katie’s first impression. She looked like a woman from a Pre-Raphaelite painting: she had long fiery auburn hair that fell in waves around her shoulders. She had the creamy skin that goes with it and a scattering of freckles on her nose. It was only her eyes, which were too pale, a washed-out blue, that stopped her being one hundred per cent drop-dead gorgeous.