She passed the visitors’ entrance to Fairley House School, and the Archbishop Davidson centre next to the alleyway that led into Archbishop’s Park. She turned right into Pratt Walk and drew up opposite the steps to the lab at 109 Lambeth Road. There were only a handful of lights burning in windows in the four-storey complex. It took several minutes to get herself out of the car and cross the street to the double ramps they had installed especially for her. Glass doors slid open into the foyer. The lobby hummed under the glare of fluorescent lights and was strangely empty. There was no one at the security desk. Amy crossed to the lift, pressed the button and manoeuvred herself into it. It was not until she had turned, and pressed the button for the third floor, that she saw the legs of the security guard poking out from behind the desk. There was blood smeared all over the tiles. She could see his hand lying motionless at the end of an arm extended through a pool of red. Quickly she hit the button to stop the lift, but too late. The doors closed, and with a jerk, it began its rattling ascent.
Amy went rigid with fear, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Her throat swelled up, trying to choke her. What to do? She considered hitting the alarm, but the thought of being trapped in the lift between floors for God knew how long was more than she could bear. So she waited, for what seemed like an eternity, until the lift reached the third floor. The doors slid open, and she could see down the length of the darkened corridor. Light fell out here and there in geometric slabs from open doors to labs and offices.
The whine of the electric motor in her wheelchair seemed deafening as she propelled herself out of the lift and into the corridor. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the doors slid shut behind her, leaving the corridor even darker than before. She sat for a minute, maybe two, just listening. But there was nothing save the hums and murmurs and burrs of heating and ventilation and lights, the sounds a building always makes, but that you never hear.
‘Hello,’ she called out, and her voice seemed feeble in the dark. ‘Is there anyone there?’
As she moved forward a shadowy smudge on the floor caught her attention. She leaned over to take a closer look. It was the smear of a bloody footprint. Her mouth was completely dry. She could barely keep her tongue from sticking to the roof of it. Her hands trembled on the controller as she made herself go forward.
The door of Tom’s office stood wide open. But it was empty. She rolled past a couple of other doors, both closed, before she reached the lab. A light shone through a glass panel in the door. But it was too high for Amy to see in. She pushed it open and propelled herself forward. Tom was standing at a workbench not twenty feet away. She had never seen him so pale. And it was hard to define the expression on his face. Somewhere between abject terror and unbearable guilt. He stood absolutely motionless.
‘Tom, what’s wrong?’
He glanced beyond her, and Amy half-turned as Zoe was pushed into the nearest bench, letting out a yelp as she slipped and fell heavily to the floor.
A movement in her peripheral vision made Amy turn further, and in quite the most involuntary reaction she had ever experienced, a scream tore itself from her throat and reverberated around the lab.
The figure that presented itself to her was like something out of a nightmare. She had seen burn victims before. But this bad, they were usually dead on a slab. Protruding eyes stared at her, lips stretched back in a hellish imitation of a smile. Burned, exposed, subcutaneous fat wept constantly, dripping on the floor. The smell reached her now, of charred meat, sickening, almost overpowering. He was holding a British Army-issue SA80 rifle, and moving with difficulty as the scorched muscles in his arms and legs contracted further. He was freshly burned, she could tell that much, and there was a chance that he was still cooking.
His breath came in short, rasping bursts. He stepped forward and checked that she had the head and the skull, and she pressed herself back in her chair, gripped by revulsion. He stopped, his face close to hers, and stared deeply into her eyes. It was hard to believe that he was human.
He straightened up and turned towards Tom, waving his rifle at the door. Tom lifted the plastic bin bags which Pinkie had forced him to fill with the child’s bones and all the samples they had taken and tests they had made.
Zoe got to her feet and gasped twice before sneezing violently, charred dust in the air inflaming the sensors in her nose. Pinkie turned and shot her three times in the chest. Amy recoiled from each shot, as from a blow, and stared in disbelief as the girl slid to the floor. There was no question that she was dead.
‘I hate people who sneeze,’ Pinkie said. ‘Didn’t her mother ever tell her to cover her mouth?’ But all that Amy and Tom heard was a strange gurgling that issued from somewhere deep in the back of his throat.
III
Sara Castelli’s car was parked where she had left it at the top of Routh Road. MacNeil pulled in behind it, and they got out and walked down to the neighbour’s house. Le Saux had continued to leave his security lights off as MacNeil had advised, and they approached his front door by the light falling in fragments through the trees from the streetlamps beyond. MacNeil pressed the bell push several times and a buzzer sounded somewhere inside the house. He stepped back into the visual field of the CCTV camera above the porch. Le Saux’s annoyance was clear in a voice thick with sleep.
‘What is it now?’
MacNeil held up the print-off that DS Dawson had given him. ‘Can you see that alright?’
‘Yes, I can see it.’
‘Is that Mr Smith, your neighbour?’
Le Saux came back without hesitation. ‘Yes, that’s him.’
‘Thank you, Mr Le Saux.’ MacNeil folded the photograph into his pocket and strode back down the path to the front gate. Dr Castelli hurried after him.
‘So what now, Mr MacNeil?’
‘We go and wake up a magistrate, and you tell him all about Choy.’
‘You know where all this is leading, don’t you?’
‘I don’t even want to think about it, doctor.’
‘Scotland the Brave’ rang out along Routh Road. MacNeil fumbled for his phone. It was Dawson.
‘Jack. Thought you’d want to know straight away. That car. The one you pulled the guy from on Lambeth Bridge... It’s officially registered to Stein-Francks. Designated driver, one Dr Roger Blume.’
MacNeil came to a halt in the middle of the road, staring straight into nowhere, as if he had caught a glimpse of some other world, something beyond the one we know and feel and see. Dr Castelli stopped abruptly beside him. ‘Are you okay?’
MacNeil said to Dawson, ‘That wasn’t Blume I pulled from the car.’
‘I don’t know who it was. And neither do they. Apparently after you’d gone, he killed one of the soldiers and disappeared with his rifle.’
‘Jesus,’ MacNeil whispered. It was hard to imagine that the creature they had seen lying in the back of the truck might even be capable of such a thing. But a Stein-Francks car? It didn’t seem possible. ‘What about the other person in the vehicle? Have they any idea who that was?’
‘Not a clue.’
When they finished their call, MacNeil stared at the road, thrown into confusion. Was Blume the other occupant of the car? What in God’s name was it doing there? And what strange quirk of fate had brought MacNeil to Lambeth Bridge just at that moment?
Dr Castelli was still badgering him for information. But he hardly knew where to begin. He glanced at the display on his mobile phone, still lit from his call with Dawson. It reminded him that there was a message. He had forgotten all about it.