She turned blazing eyes on him, and he very nearly flinched.
‘Hey, don’t look at me like that. None of this was my idea.’ He hesitated. Then, ‘Just how well do you know your dad, Karen?’
‘Well enough.’ All her defiance apparent in the set of her jaw.
But Billy just shook his head. ‘I doubt it. You’ve never worked with him. You don’t know him like I do.’ He gazed out over the loch. ‘He’s brilliant, sure. No one’s going to argue with that. But I’ve never known a more difficult man in my life. Obsessive. Relentless. Demanding. You wouldn’t want him on your team, cos he’d never give you the ball. He’d have to be the gaffer, and you’d damn well do it his way or he’d deselect you in a nanosecond. And he’s paranoid, Karen. Paranoid.’
‘About what?’
‘That Ergo might fuck him again.’
‘Well, he must have been pretty desperate to fake his own suicide.’
Billy dragged his eyes away from the loch and turned them on Karen. ‘He didn’t do that for himself.’
‘How do you mean?’
He paused only for a moment. ‘When your dad was forced out of the Geddes, he went around trying to raise finance to privately fund a repeat experiment. And that’s when they told him.’
Karen frowned. ‘Told him what?’
‘That if he didn’t drop it, they’d go after his family.’
Her eyes opened wide in shock. ‘Who? Who told him that?’
Billy snorted and threw his hands loosely in the air. ‘Christ, Karen, who knows? These people never speak to you directly. Threats are never specific. They’re veiled. And, in a way, that almost makes them even more sinister. I don’t know who threatened him, or how, but he was spooked. Man, was he scared. Not for himself. Cos, really, he’s not the kind of guy who’s going to back down from anything, or anyone. I bet he got a few doings at school for standing up to the class bully.’ He looked at Karen’s upturned, wide-eyed face. ‘The only reason he faked his suicide was to protect you. If he was dead, you were safe. That’s why he’s spent the last two years living under an assumed identity in the back of beyond.’
Karen felt like she was wearing lead boots. She could not have moved her feet from that spot if she had tried. Her whole body felt heavy, and stinging as if from an electric shock. And all she could remember were her final words to her dad. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. She felt tears filling her eyes. Those were the words he must have taken with him as he faked his own death and embarked on a life of denial, sacrificing everything to protect her. If anything, her sense of guilt was even greater now than it had been when she learned that he had gone missing. ‘Please.’ Her voice felt very small and quiet. ‘You have to take me to him.’
He turned and put his arms around her, and she let him draw her to him, pushing her face into his chest and trying not to cry in front of this young man she had known for only a matter of hours. ‘Karen, I can’t!’
She pushed away again, suddenly, misery morphing to anger. ‘Billy, you must. You’ve got to.’
He shrugged helplessly. ‘Honestly, Karen. That’s not even a decision I can make on my own.’
‘Well, who can make it, then?’
He sighed. ‘We could ask Sam, okay? That’s as much initiative as I’m prepared to take on my own. And if he says no, then that’s it. No argument.’
‘Who’s Sam?’ There was real aggression in her voice.
‘Sam, your dad and me are the ones who’ve run this whole experiment. Sam Waltman. Your dad knew him from his time at University College, London. They studied cell biology together. One of the few people in the world he trusts. Our funder sponsored him on a two-year sabbatical to do the research.’
‘Well, what? Can you phone him? Email him?’
Billy laughed. ‘Karen, we don’t communicate directly. Mobiles and emails are not secure. Not that I’ve even got a signal here. We’ll have to go and see him.’
‘Now?’
Billy laughed again and shook his head. ‘No, Karen, not now. Tomorrow. We can go and see him tomorrow. He has his hives hidden away on the Waternish Peninsula on the Isle of Skye. It’s just a couple of hours’ drive from here.’
Scattered moonlight somehow made its way down through thick foliage on the trees behind the cottage, to creep in around the edges of the frayed curtain Karen had dragged across the window. She wasn’t sure why she had bothered. She had no intention of undressing, or getting into the bed, and in any case there was nobody out there to peek in at her even if she had.
She lay on top of a soft, damp-smelling quilt, and heard all the old springs of the bed creak beneath her. The room was small and square and cluttered, a dumping ground for anything and everything that had been displaced from the rest of the house, including beekeeping equipment and shelves of honey. The air was infused with the sweet smell of it, and the astringency of cedar wood and smoke. It was cold in here, too, and she understood why Billy preferred the couch in front of the stove. What kind of miserable, lonely existence must it have been, stuck out here on his own for a year and a half, cut off from friends and family, miles distant from the nearest human life? And she realised it could not have been so very different for her father, wherever it was he might be. Had it really all been worth it? To bring the results of some experiment about bees into the public domain? And no sooner had she asked the question in her mind, than she knew the answer.
This wasn’t just some vague, scientific experiment he had sacrificed himself for. This was about the survival of one species, and the future of another. About naked greed versus the very existence of mankind. She got that. She understood what must have driven him, what still drove him. And, yet, there remained a part of her that resented it. Why had she, and her dad, and her family had to suffer? It made her mad at Ergo.
She heard the creak of the bedroom door, and a pencil-thin line of pale light fell across the room, zigzagging across the clutter. She sat bolt upright, heart hammering, and watched as the line of light widened and the door opened.
‘Billy?’ Her voice rang out in the dark, shrill, frightened. ‘It’s okay.’ His voice came reassuringly, and she saw his silhouette as he stepped into the room. ‘Just checking that everything’s alright.’
‘Everything’s fine.’
But he didn’t go away again. Standing hesitantly in the open doorway as if undecided about what to do or say. Then he started easing his way through the debris, towards the bed. ‘I said everything’s fine.’
‘I know, I know...’ He sat down on the edge of the bed, and she moved away until her back was against the wall, and she felt the cold of it seeping through her clothing. ‘Just checking.’
‘You said that.’
There was a long silence, in which all she could hear was her breathing and his. ‘You have no idea how lonely it’s been here, Karen.’
‘Yes, I have. I can imagine it.’ Her voice sounded shrill.
‘I’m mean, I’m just a young guy, you know? It’s not normal to be cooped up on your own all this time. It’s only natural.’
‘Billy, please go.’
More silence. She felt him move in the dark, the squeak of the springs. But he was the merest shadow, and she couldn’t tell if he was moving closer or about to get up. Until she felt his breath on her face, and his hands on her body, clumsy and clawing. His mouth trying to find hers.
She reacted violently, clenched fists flying blindly in the darkness, sometimes striking air, sometimes connecting with flesh and bone. But he was so much stronger than her, and it was only when she bit his lower lip hard that she felt, more than heard, his voice exploding in her face with pain. He recoiled immediately, slipping from the bed on to the floor, then clambering to his feet and staggering to the door. There, he flicked a light switch, and she blinked in the sudden harsh glare of the naked flickering bulb that hung from the ceiling.