He raised a hand to silence the doctor. ‘Just a minute.’ And he dialled his voicemail.
A pre-recorded female voice said, ‘You have one new message. At two-oh-five a-m today.’ A beep, and then Amy’s voice. Abnormally strained and quivering with fear. ‘Jack, there’s someone here in the house. Please, come quickly. I’m scared.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
I
MacNeil drove like a man possessed. Reflected street lights floated across their windscreen like a stream of disembodied yellow heads. They passed Kennington Oval and headed north-east along Kennington Park Road. MacNeil was trying Amy’s number every few minutes. Each time it rang out. He reached for the phone again, but this time Dr Castelli got to it first. ‘I can do that,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s not beyond me. And it’s better than winding up wrapped around a lamp post.’
She made the call and let it ring for thirty seconds or more. Then she shook her head and hung up.
MacNeil had a horrible vision of Amy lying dead on the floor of her apartment. He knew that these people were utterly ruthless. Why wouldn’t they go after Amy, too? She had the skull, after all, and she’d rebuilt the head of the murdered girl. Why in the name of God had he not picked up her message earlier? He knew he could never forgive himself if anything had happened to her. This whole investigation had been about him. About his obsession. About his need to close his mind off from the death of his son. It had made him blind to everything else.
There was an army roadblock at Elephant and Castle. It wasn’t enough to slow down to let them check his number. After the incident on Lambeth Bridge, all checkpoints were under orders to stop every vehicle. A senior officer checked their papers, and took his time about it. MacNeil knew it was pointless to try to hurry him. He gripped the steering wheel with still burning hands and clenched his jaw. The tension in him was greater than his pain. He felt like an elastic band stretched to breaking point. The edges were fraying. It was only a matter of time before he would snap.
Finally the officer stood back and waved them on. MacNeil left rubber and smoke in his wake as he accelerated along New Kent Road to the junction with Tower Bridge Road and turned north. Straight ahead, in the distance, they could see the lights of Tower Bridge itself, and the Tower of London beyond on the far side of the river. MacNeil swung the wheel sharp right, and they careened across the junction into Tooley Street.
In Gainsford Street, he abandoned his car and ran. Dr Castelli chased gamely after him. He punched in the entry code at the gate to Butlers and Colonial and sprinted across the cobbles to Amy’s door. He fumbled infuriatingly with clumsy, bandaged fingers to get his key in the lock. The door flew open, and he immediately saw the stair lift at the foot of the staircase.
He stood looking at it with a mixture of relief and confusion. Dr Castelli caught up with him in the doorway, gasping for breath. ‘I haven’t run that fast since I came in second at the egg-and-spoon race,’ she said. He looked at her, and she said, ‘I know, I’m sorry. I’m renowned for saying the most inappropriate things at the most inopportune moments.’ She looked at the stair lift. ‘So she’s out, huh?’
‘If the lift’s at the foot of the stairs, that’s usually what it means. And her wheelchair’s gone.’ But he wasn’t taking it as read. He ran up the stairs two at a time to the first landing. The other stair lift was there, silently waiting at the foot of the next flight. He searched her bedroom, the bathroom, the coat closet, flicking on lights as he went, and then ran up to the attic. He switched on all the lights at the top of the steps and flooded the roof space with hard, bright light.
‘Amy!’ He called her name, but knew she wouldn’t answer. She wasn’t here. He checked the little metal balcony, but the French windows were locked, and he could see that there was no one out there. And then he noticed that the head of the child had gone. All that was left on the table were clippings from the black wig. As Dr Castelli reached the top landing MacNeil said to her, ‘Wait here.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she called after him. ‘It’ll take me half an hour to get my breath back.’
He was gone less than five minutes, and when he returned he looked troubled. ‘Her car’s gone,’ he said. ‘She has a place in the multi-storey next door. It’s gone.’ He looked at the doctor, who had recovered her breath by now, although her face was still pink. She was sitting at Amy’s computer. ‘Where would she have gone in the middle of the night?’
‘Maybe you should take a look at this,’ Dr Castelli said, and he crossed the room to stand behind her and look at the computer screen. It was Amy’s instant message dialogue window. ‘Who’s Sam?’
‘Sam’s Amy’s mentor in an organisation that specialises in identifying human remains.’ He read the final exchange.
Amy — Here’s something strange — Zoe said it wasn’t H5N1. At least, not the version that’s caused the pandemic.
Sam — How does she know that?
Amy — She said she’d recovered the virus, and the RNA coding. It’s all a bit beyond me, Sam. Something to do with restriction sites and code words that shouldn’t be there. Anyway, she said this virus was genetically engineered.
Amy — Hello, Sam, are you still there?
Sam — I’m still here, Amy.
Amy — So what do you think?
Sam — I think that changes everything.
And then clearly Sam had left the conversation without explanation. There was a sense of confusion and hurt in Amy’s plaintive Sam, are you still there? Hello? Sam? Talk to me!
Dr Castelli said, ‘Seems to me like Sam was taking just a little too much interest in your investigation. And Amy was doing just a little too much talking.’
MacNeil leaned over her shoulder to take the mouse and scroll back through a day’s worth of dialogue. Sam had come back to Amy repeatedly, asking how the investigation was going. Were there any new developments? Had DI MacNeil picked up any new leads? Questions about the head, about the recovery of the bone marrow. Discussions about toxicology, the request for DNA, the discovery of the flu virus.
‘She told him everything,’ MacNeil said, and a red mist of depression and anger descended on him. ‘Every little detail.’ Sam had been able to follow his investigation every step of the way. Every time MacNeil had phoned Amy, she had talked to Sam. There wasn’t anything he had done that Sam hadn’t known about. Amy had been an unwitting conduit, an unknowing spy in his camp. She had trusted Sam with everything. MacNeil had to choke off his anger and think rationally. Why shouldn’t she? Amy and Sam had a history. They discussed stuff all the time. They were on the same side. Weren’t they?
Thoughts crowded MacNeil’s head like a flock of startled pigeons. So who the hell was Sam? This name in the ether who had been looking over his shoulder all day. Watching him all night. He spotted Amy’s address book on the dock at the foot of the screen.
‘Let me in,’ he said to Dr Castelli, and she vacated the seat. He clicked on the address book and its window opened up on the screen in front of him. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why it was Tom Bennet’s address that came up first — the last address to be searched for. He was in too much of a hurry to consider why Amy would need to look it up. He typed Sam in the search window, and the software immediately pulled Sam’s name and address out of its database. Dr Samantha Looker, 42A Consort House, St. Davids Square, Island Gardens, Isle of Dogs. He swore softly.