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Karen glanced at the digital clock. It was ten to midnight. She’d enjoyed her chat with Gibbons, but she was tired and weak and began yawning. Gibbons yawned too. ‘I’m going to have to go to bed,’ she said, ‘I’ll show you the spare room.’
‘Great,’ he said, ‘I’ll just slip to the bathroom.’
Five minutes later he was in the spare room, in bed. He was tired out, it had been a long shift; it had been a long month.
In her room Karen lay on her back staring out at the blackness, revisiting the horror of being yanked from the lavatory, being hung out to die. She knew she would never forget it. She wondered what kind of person could do that. To cold bloodedly attempt to murder someone they had never met, in a busy public place, seemingly without any fear of being discovered, and having no qualms about what they were doing. She wondered where he was now, the killer, and what he was doing, and who he was terrifying. Samuel Holloway, she contemptuously spoke the name, and she knew she wouldn’t rest until he was stopped.
––––––––
Walter peered across at the clock. Both the hands were super erect. From outside he could hear the old church bell announcing the new day, chiming across the city, somehow comforting, floating on the night air, and he wondered if this day might be his last.
Think positively! Always engage hostage takers in conversation.
‘Tell me why you think we killed Desiree?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think, I know!’
‘But why?’
‘You know why!’
‘I don’t, Sam, I don’t. Please explain.’
Sam scowled and shifted uneasily in his chair. Thought the black guy was taking the piss, but he could wait a little while longer before he put him to death. Maybe he should recall and replay what happened to Desiree one last time, for her sake, to remind the copper of exactly what they had done, not that he didn’t know already. Yeah, that’s what he’d do. He’d go over it one final time for Desi’s sake, and then he’d kill him. For certain. He’d murder him, sitting in that chair, and he was looking forward to it.
‘Desi began bringing stuff home.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘Information, theories, samples, experimental stuff, top secret stuff, weird stuff, stuff most people wouldn’t want in the house.’
Walter glanced at the table. Saw the bottles. Red, Green, Blue. Rat, great ape, basset hound. Said, ‘Like the stuff on the table?’
Sam nodded.
‘Why did she do that?’
‘She was worried her work might be taken from her, appropriated by someone else. Eden Leys had a history of it. You know how it works, some brilliant scientist in her twenties or thirties makes a ground breaking discovery, some supervising scientist in his sixties, looking for one last hurrah, jumps in and grabs the credit. She said it happened all the time, been going on for years. She said the senior ones said that that was how things worked. They always looked after the older guys, the younger ones had plenty of time to break new ground, to make their name, and that they, when they were old, would be looked after by the younger ones in their turn.’
‘The world doesn’t work like that,’ said Walter.
‘Damned right it doesn’t!’
‘So what happened?’
Sam pointed at the table.
‘That blood came from animals she’d personally killed. She said she’d retained it for their memory. It kept her grounded. It kept her focused. Normally it would have been disposed of, thrown away, flushed down the drain. She said that wasn’t right. Disrespectful, she said.’
Walter nodded, tried hard to imagine the fate of those poor unfortunate creatures, and especially the chimpanzees.
‘So what happened then?’
‘There was an Australian guy, I forget his name, he was always creeping round her when she was working; looking for hints of what she was up to, where she was going, he knew she was brilliant. She knew he would steal her stuff given the chance. He was all smiles and charm, he’d take her down to the social club they had going on the site, buy her a bottle of wine, and pump her for info. She soon grew wise to that; began feeding him duff stuff; the schmuck was so thick he took it all in and worked on it for weeks. It led nowhere, down a dead end corridor, and you have to laugh at that, you have to admire her cunning. Not only was she pioneering her own work, she was staying up all night setting up faux avenues for pricks like him, theories that looked promising, and all the while they were nothing more than gigantic time-wasting exercises. Futile diversions. He was furious when he found out. Can you imagine? Wouldn’t speak to her for weeks. Started spreading rumours about her, telling tales behind her back, said she was a lesbian, all sorts.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Can you, Walter? Can you?’
‘I think so. I’m on her side. What happened next?’
‘She began bringing data home. Reams and reams of the stuff. Several years’ work. I asked her if it would be missed. She said it was mainly copies she’d had printed. She wanted it in case the originals ever went missing, or were stolen, or destroyed in a fire or accident of some kind, or in case she was ever relieved of her post.’
‘She was worried about that?’
‘Petrified. The place had a history of dumping high fliers who made life uncomfortable for the middle grounders who wielded the power. The brilliant ones put the dull ones firmly in the shade. There was an enormous amount of jealousy and backbiting, you wouldn’t believe some of the stories she told me.’
‘Did she have any trouble getting it out?’
‘Not at the beginning. Security was a joke. She’d wear a long heavy skirt with a big hem on the inside. I modelled it for her, as she did the alterations. There was large false pocket inside, she showed me how she’d slip a file in there like a kangaroo’s joey, and simply walk to her car and drive away. If the guards stopped her it was only to say hello, or maybe to wink at the strikingly dark girl, perhaps ask her for a date, at worst there was a casual glance in the boot of her car. They may have wondered what was beneath her neat skirt, but they would have been amazed to discover what really was.’
Sam giggled in that pretty way of his.
‘And then?’
‘There was a big step up in security. New people were brought in. Everything changed. It was much harder to get anything out. That was about the time she started being followed.’
‘People were following Desi?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘Your lot, of course.’
‘What do you mean; my lot?’
‘Government police, security police, how the hell do I know?’
Walter puffed out his cheeks, breathed out heavily.
‘I can’t see that,’ he said, ‘I certainly knew nothing about it.’
‘Course you wouldn’t. It was MI7.’
Walter zipped a sharp laugh through his nose.
‘Now I know you’re wrong, Sam. MI7 doesn’t exist, except in the minds of spy writers, and in the movies.’
‘No, no, no, you’re wrong! MI7 does exist. They followed and killed Desi, I know it may be unpalatable to you, Wally, but that’s the truth. That’s what happened!’
‘MI7 did exist during World War II,’ said Walter. ‘It dealt with propaganda and stuff like that, but it was disbanded, early sixties, I think it was. It doesn’t exist any more.’
Sam did the same sharp dismissive laugh.
‘Shows how much you know, Wally. Stop living up to your name, shows how out of touch you really are.’
Walter remained quiet for a moment, thinking things through, then said, ‘Tell me everything you know about MI7?’
‘Desiree told me it was reactivated soon after it was decommissioned. They had special responsibility for chemical warfare secrecy, weapons of mass destruction in the modern vernacular, hence their huge interest in Eden Leys. They were interested in everything that went down there, you must know that, and they weren’t happy when the plant was semi-privatised, I can tell you that. For a short while they were replaced with contracted in security. That feeble lot couldn’t detect an ant in an ant hill. Not surprisingly they soon got pushed. Desi became very tense. I couldn’t get her to open up to me. I knew something was wrong. She said the whole place was subject to new American secrecy orders, she was bound to silence. It was too dangerous for me to know anything. She had this spare bedroom full of stuff, data, samples; you name it, a huge amount of gear. She said we had to move it, and quick, so we switched it from her place by the river, down to mine at Iona House. We always kept on both properties and it was a good job we did. It took us three car rides to move everything, that’ll give you some idea how much gear was involved. We did it on the Friday night. On the Saturday night we went out to celebrate, got dressed up, kissing cousins she called us, Desiree and Samantha, took a cab down to that fancy hotel in Cheshire where they do the ballooning, enjoyed a fab meal, danced for hours, curled up in bed together, made love, got up late on the Sunday morning, fab breakfast, cab back to Chester...’
‘And?’
‘Desi’s place had been ransacked. Made a hell of a mess. We called the cops round. It wasn’t you, was it? Don’t answer that, I know it wasn’t. They said there had been a spate of opportunistic burglaries in the area, oh yeah, I’ll bet, the ransackers, whoever they were, made it look realistic too; by breaking in and turning over the two neighbouring gaffs for good measure, but Desi knew immediately that it was MI7. That’s what she said as soon as the regular cops had gone, and I believed her. She also said the Aussie bastard had tipped them off.’
‘Why did they do that? Break in and ransack the place.’
‘Looking for evidence of course!’
‘Evidence of what?’
‘Oh come on, Walter, keep up, man! They were trying to find evidence that she was leaking stuff outside, taking stuff off prem, they thought she was feeding info to a third party, but the only third party was me. If we hadn’t moved everything, Desi would have been arrested. They would have thrown the book at her; thrown the key away. God knows what she would have been charged with. That night she told me if she ever had an accident, ever disappeared without warning, leaving a letter saying that she’d gone away, or ever died suddenly, it would be the work of MI7.’
‘Where’s the stuff now?’
Sam thought about that for a moment.
‘There’s no harm in you knowing. The knowledge you have will be extinguished when you go,’ and he glanced at his petite, almost girlish wristwatch and said, ‘I’d say, Walter, you have just entered your final hour.’
Walter needed to pee, but didn’t say. He wanted to keep talking. There were still things he didn’t understand.
‘What exactly is going on at Eden Leys?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Course not. You tell me.’
‘They are experimenting on live human beings.’
Walter laughed again.
‘Don’t laugh like that! They are! I’ve got the proof. Some of it is in my spare room, but most of it, the most juicy bits, including photographs and ID’s, are locked away in a solicitor’s office miles from here.’
A picture of the offices of Lambourn, Harcourt and Snapes flooded into Sam’s mind, and their luxurious suite on the sixth floor of the Royal Liver Building, Liverpool. Those fab rooms that stared out across the wide and murky river, and the huge storeroom in the basement that housed the gigantic safe, that was too heavy to be set up anywhere, but on the very ground itself. In that vast safe lay the evidence, Desi’s life work, Desiree’s masterpiece. Proof of what was going on. Proof of why she had been murdered. Sam paused, switched off.
Walter switched him on again.
‘Tell me about the experiments on living human beings?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything you do.’
Sam pursed his lips, sorted his thoughts into some kind of order, and began again.