The Lazarus Strain (8 page)

‘I really hope so,’ said Ryman. ‘And when they do . . . they should melt the key.’

Steven thanked her and turned to leave. As he got to the door, Ryman said, ‘G’night John-boy.’

Steven smiled and turned. ‘G’night Elizabeth.’

‘I wish,’ said Ryman, already back at work inside the chest cavity.

Steven walked slowly back to the car, giving the light breeze that had sprung up time to eliminate any traces of the PM room that might be clinging to his hair and clothes. He hated the smells associated with pathology including that of the bloody awful air freshener they all tended to use. Even after all these years the sickly sweet smell of formaldehyde brought back images of cadavers stored in tanks of the stuff for medical students to hone their skills on.

‘And so farewell, Norfolk . . .’ he murmured as he started heading south, thinking about what he would tell John Macmillan in his report. No cause for alarm; the apparent secrecy surrounding Devon’s work had just been routine bureaucracy. Devon had been working on nothing more sinister than an influenza vaccine . . . unless of course . . . Nick Cleary knew different.

‘Damnation,’ said Steven as the lingering doubt about Cleary came back to haunt him. He tried arguing himself out of the sinister possibility that the animals had been infected with something more dangerous by considering the member of the public who’d been bitten by one of the animals but who had been released from hospital and was safely back home. He was absolutely fine . . . wasn’t he? This last doubt pushed Steven over some inner threshold. He turned the car through 180 degrees at the next roundabout and started heading back into Norfolk. He was on his way to Holt. He had to see for himself.

It was just after seven when Steven slowed the car and came to a halt in the main street of Holt where he rummaged through his briefcase on the passenger seat until he found the page from the file with the Elwoods’ address on it. ‘Bramley Cottage, Holt,’ he muttered out loud. He’d have to ask. It occurred to him that he could kill two birds with one stone by getting directions at the local chip shop while he picked up something to eat. He was starving: he hadn’t eaten since breakfast time.

‘Yes mate, take the third on your right and go straight up the hill. There’s a narrow opening on your left – just opposite the end of speed limit sign. Bramley is the second cottage along it. There are only three.’

Steven thanked the man and returned to the car to eat his fish and chips. They tasted good and he wolfed them down in no time at all, using a handful of moist tissues from the glove box to clean his hands and face when he’d finished and hoping that he wouldn’t smell too much when he got to the Elwoods’ cottage.

Bramley cottage was in darkness when he finally drew up outside it and he thought he saw disappointment on the horizon. He went through the motions however, and walked up the winding path to knock on the door with the heavy brass knocker which, he could see in the light coming from the neighbouring bungalow, was fashioned in the shape of a frog. As he expected, there was no answer but he tried again just to make sure: they might be very early bedders. There was no answer to the second knock but it did however alert the neighbours to his presence and one – a small woman wearing overly large glasses and carpet slippers fashioned as furry rabbits, came out to say, ‘I’m afraid the Elwoods are not at home. David’s been taken ill.’

Steven looked blankly at the woman. ‘David’s been taken ill’ was the last thing he wanted to hear. He wanted to be told that David was down the pub or out playing bingo. He wanted to be told that David had made a complete recovery and was enjoying life to the full. He did not want to hear that David had been taken ill.

‘Did you hear me? I said David’s been taken ill,’ repeated the woman, coming closer and peering up into Steven’s face.

Steven pulled himself together and smiled. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Nothing serious I hope?’

‘I really can’t say,’ said the woman. ‘Mary said she thought it was something to do with that dratted animal that attacked him. Anyway he’s in hospital and Mary went with him.’

Steven swallowed. This was going from bad to worse. ‘The same hospital as before?’ he asked hoarsely.

The woman shook her head. ‘No, I wanted to send him a card but Mary said she didn’t have an address yet. She said they’d been very good about things and that they were going to make sure that David got the best of medical attention. They told her she could stay with him in what they called their guest suite and it was all going to be at their expense.’ The woman drew even closer and added conspiratorially, ‘Somewhere private, I think.’

‘You don’t know who ‘they’ were by any chance?’ asked Steven.

The woman shook her head and said, ‘Didn’t think to ask. The institute, I suppose. I mean, it was their animal and they should take responsibility for it, don’t you think?’

Steven gave a non-committal nod and said, ‘It must have been very alarming for everyone round here.’

‘I’ll say,’ said the woman. ‘You don’t see men with guns running round your garden every day.’

‘Of course,’ said Steven who had been meaning the escaped animals, ‘I’d forgotten about the soldiers.’

‘Soldiers?’ exclaimed the woman. ‘More like spacemen if you ask me. They scared the living daylights out of me and Sam, I can tell you, creeping round the gardens like that.’

‘Spacemen . . .’ repeated Steven, struggling to appear normal when even more alarm bells were going off inside his head.

‘You know . . . these suits they wear . . . makes ‘em look like spacemen.’

‘I don’t think I do,’ said Steven. ‘Can you describe these suits, Mrs . . . ?’

‘Jackson, Molly Jackson.’ She went on to give a reasonable description of something Steven reluctantly recognised as a bio-hazard suit.

‘It all sounds very exciting,’ he said calmly but his pulse rate had risen markedly. No one had mentioned in the report that the soldiers had been wearing bio-hazard gear . . . or more importantly, why.

‘Frankly, I think we’ve had enough excitement round here, thank you very much,’ said Molly. ‘I liked it fine the way it was.’

Steven returned to his car and put his head back on the restraint. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ he murmured. ‘What’s going on?’

* * * * *

Charlene Lyndon made an appeal on the early evening news for information about the murder of her dead son. She came across on screen as an unattractive woman in her forties with a weight problem due to bad diet and a make-up problem due to bad taste. Her hair was dyed jet black which contrasted badly with her pallid white skin and painted scarlet lips. Her cheeks were smudged with mascara runs from her tears.

‘Robert was a good boy,’ she said, reading with difficulty from a card in front of her while her T-shirted husband sat beside her like a stuffed toy, the word ‘love’, tattooed on the fingers of his right hand, clearly visible.

‘He was always helping people . . . He would do anything for anyone . . . Someone must know something about what happened to him last night . . . I’m pleading with you . . . Come forward and tell the police what you know . . . My son didn’t deserve to die like that . . . No one deserves to die like that . . .’ She put down the card and buried her face in her hands.

‘A good boy?’ said Morley when it was over and the Lyndons had been ushered away.

‘They all are to their mothers,’ said Giles. ‘She didn’t see what her little boy and his mates did to Timothy Devon.’

‘You still think Lyndon was part of that?’

‘Lyndon was an ineffectual little prat who couldn’t hold down a job or get a girlfriend. He was a known hunt saboteur who probably didn’t give a shit about animals but found some kind of acceptance - like many of these buggers - in a common cause – basically anything that brings them into conflict with the establishment that’s giving them such a bad time as they see it. He was weakest link material if ever I came across it.’

Morley nodded. ‘So what do we do now, sir?’

‘We wait for the phone to ring and pray we get lucky.’

Thirty minutes after the broadcast went out they got lucky. Morley came into the room. ‘This sounds good. The landlord at the Four Feathers pub in Swaffham thinks he recognised the dead man on the telly as being one of two men drinking in his pub last night. He remembers them arguing.’

‘Bingo! Get your coat.’

Gerald Stanley Morton, the licensee of the Four Feathers pub was a large man without an intellect to match but, in keeping with the undemanding standards of the times, saw his role in helping the police with their inquiries as coming pretty close to stardom and the achievement of celebrity status. Not quite ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here’, more a case of, ‘I’m a Nonentity; get me in front of a Camera,’ as Giles was to put it later. The Press were already in evidence when Giles and Morley arrived.

‘What the fuck are
they
doing here?’ exclaimed Giles as he caught sight of the scrum.

‘Morton must have called them.’

‘Arsehole! . . . Park round the corner.’

Morley parked the unmarked car round the corner from the pub and the two policemen walked back to where Morton was talking to the Press.

‘I’m sorry, gentlemen,’ he was saying. ‘But it would be most inappropriate of me to divulge anything to you at this time without first saying what I have to say to the police. I can however reveal . . .’

‘Fuck me; the bugger must have heard someone say that on the telly once?’ said Giles as they approached. ‘Prat!’

‘Mr Morton! I’d prefer if you revealed absolutely nothing right now, if you don’t mind,’ said Giles, raising his voice. ‘Police,’ he added, holding up his warrant card. He walked purposefully through the reporters as if pausing weren’t an option and they parted like the Red Sea. ‘Let’s leave press conferences until later, shall we, Mr Morton? Much later.’

SIX

Despite his size, Giles ushered Morton inside his pub as if the big man was a schoolgirl being seen over the road. Meanwhile Morley dispersed the reporters by telling them there would be nothing further for them and warning them about obstructing the police in a murder inquiry.

‘Where can we talk?’ asked Giles.

‘Through here,’ said Morton, leading the way through the back.

‘Just what the fuck was that all about?’ demanded Giles.

‘You know what the Press are like,’ replied Morton.

‘
I
might but how the fuck do you know?’ stormed Giles. ‘That lot didn’t just drop in for a pint did they? Somebody rang their bell.’

‘All right . . . my missus thought we should give them a ring,’ said Morton, moving his shoulders uncomfortably as if he had a column of ants marching along them.

‘Why?’

Morton wriggled in embarrassment. ‘Wanted to see our names in the papers I suppose.’

Giles looked incredulous. ‘If any one of these buggers out there prints something that fucks up our inquiry, you’ll get your name in the papers all right because I’ll throw the book at you, along with the shelf it’s sitting on.’

‘You’ve no right to talk to me like that,’ said Morton. ‘I’m a law-abiding citizen doing my duty. Maybe I’ve got nothing more to say to you now . . .’

Giles, a full head shorter than Morton, looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He walked slowly towards the big man and said menacingly. ‘What did God give you instead of a brain?’ He prodded Morton. ‘An extra big belly?’

Morley noticed that Morton had started to sweat.

‘You’ve got one chance my friend and that is to tell us exactly what we need to know to find the man who was in here with Stig Lyndon last night. Otherwise you can start looking out the suit you’re going to wear in court. Dark blue always goes down well with the jury, I’m told.’

‘All right, all right.’ Morton held up his hands in capitulation. ‘I’ll tell you what I know.’

‘And them nothing,’ said Giles, gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb.

Morton nodded. ‘All right, all right. There were two of them, the bloke off the telly and a bigger bloke with longish red hair. The bloke off the telly . . .’

‘Lyndon,’ said Giles.

‘Yeah, Lyndon, right. He seemed to be in a right funk about something and the other one was trying to calm him down, telling him to relax an’ that.’

‘Did you hear any of the conversation?’

‘Bits and pieces; they were sitting over there by the window. I picked up the occasional thing when I was collecting glasses but not much.’

‘Every word you heard,’ said Giles.

‘The bloke Lyndon said something like, “never meant for that to happen”. The other guy said, “Course not”.

‘What else?’

‘Lyndon said something about not being able to live with it.’

Giles looked at Morley and Morley nodded and said, ‘The weakest link.’

‘What?’ asked Morton.

‘Nothing. What else was said?’

The red-haired bloke said, ‘All you have to do is forget it ever happened.’

‘What did Lyndon say?’

‘Just shook his head.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Later on, Lyndon must have said something that upset the red-haired guy because he started threatening Lyndon.’

‘Saying what?’

‘Couldn’t hear,’ said Morton. ‘I was behind the bar then. It was more the way he was behaving and the look on his face. You can tell when someone’s coming the heavy. But I did hear him say there was no fucking way he was going down for something like that.’

‘Anything else?’

Morton shook his head. ‘That’s it.’

‘You’ve been a great help, Mr Morton,’ said Giles as if nothing had ever happened between them. ‘Perhaps you could give Sergeant Morley here a more detailed description of the man with red hair. Every pimple if you please.’

Giles left Morley with Morton and went outside to talk to the waiting reporters. ‘There will be no further statement from either Mr Morton or the police this evening,’ he said. ‘And it would be a great help to us if you would wait until we
are
ready to make a statement. Anything else might jeopardise our inquiries.’