‘How is she tonight?’ she asked.
He came to her side, nuzzled up to her rather too closely, she thought. His arm brushed against hers and she moved away and folded her arms against the barely disguised suggestion. ‘She’s having one of her strops,’ he said. He looked across at the woman lying on the narrow hospital bed, her wrists and ankles firmly strapped down with thick leather belts. Bare arms and legs poked out of a thin, unflattering, green cotton nightgown. ‘We are, aren’t we?’ he said to her, his neck craning forward, his chin thrust out almost contemptuously. He lifted the clipboard that hung at the foot of the bed, the woman staring cold and hard at him. She jerked her legs and caused him to react fractionally. ‘It’s no use fighting against it,’ he said, his grin a whisker away from a sneer. ‘You’d think you’d have learned after all this time that you’re not going anywhere in a hurry.’ He flipped a page or two. ‘She’s due her usual sedative.’ A glance at his watch. ‘Looking at her I’d shove double into her. Take the sting out of her attitude.’
‘We don’t want to harm the babies,’ she reminded him. ‘She’s stressed as it is.’ She nodded to the grey metal box bleeping by the side of the bed.
‘She’s refusing to eat again,’ he remarked casually. ‘We’ll give you a little more time to change your mind, young lady, and if you don’t, well, you know what’s coming.’ He indicated down his throat with his index finger. ‘And remember, you’re eating for three now!’
She yanked hard and furiously at her restraints. The bed shook a little but she gave up, her eyes squeezing shut, tears being pressed from them.
‘Don’t be cruel to her,’ she said to him. ‘Why do you insist on treating her like that?’
She knew why, of course; because he could. Because the woman didn’t even possess a name. She had a number. She was a number. And what’s more she was completely helpless, pegged out like a bug on paper, and the ego of men like him grew fat on helplessness, grew strong on it, relished it. She loathed him and all his kind. But she didn’t let it show. She swallowed down the feeling, though it stuck in her throat.
‘She doesn’t know any better. How can she? She isn’t normal. She’s a freak,’ he said. It didn’t carry any emotion. It was a statement of fact.
‘She’s a human being,’ she defended, yet in even the short time she’d known this man Stephanie Jacobs knew compassion was a quality he didn’t possess, or he kept it pretty much chained up in a dark recess somewhere in that black soul of his. How could that be so, she thought, in a career that was dedicated to the betterment of the human condition? Perhaps that’s where she had gone wrong — or right, depending upon your point of view; perhaps she had allowed compassion to creep in too much, to prise open that cool, clinical reserve of hers. Not so long ago she had considered herself to be immune to such sentiments, for you simply couldn’t do this job and have any deep kind of feeling for the subject. The woman on the bed had to be meat in a clinical trial. Simply that. But it had all changed and she was on the verge of throwing her career into the trashcan because that often-cruel veneer of medical dispassion had been scraped away once and for all.
She took the clipboard from him. ‘She’s stable?’
‘Mother and foetuses doing well,’ he said. He went over to a cabinet on the wall and took out a glass bottle and a syringe. ‘Time for bye-byes, miss,’ he said.
‘I’ll finish that off,’ said Stephanie.
He pumped air out of the needle, a thread of silver liquid arcing upwards. ‘That’s OK, I’ve got it,’ he said, eyeing the syringe carefully.
‘It’s two in the morning. You should have finished hours ago. Go home. You’re supposed to be going out with your wife tomorrow — today — or have you forgotten?’ She held out her hand for the syringe. Beckoned enticingly with her fingers. ‘Come, give it here; it’s past your bed time too.’
He hesitated momentarily then handed it over. ‘Careful, Dr Jacobs, she’s a little wildcat tonight.’ He paused at the door, turned back to her. ‘I’d prefer it if I were going somewhere with you instead, you know.’ He grinned. ‘Come on, give me a sign. Give me some hope.’
‘You’re married,’ she pointed out, tapping the syringe with her fingernail.
‘So?’
‘So go to your wife,’ she said, smiling at him and turning to the woman.
‘You little tease,’ he said, leaving her and closing the door.
‘You little prick,’ she said under her breath, her smile falling away. Stephanie Jacobs moved over to the bed; the restrained woman lifted her head slightly, watched her keenly, the muscle in her smooth jaw working away like a mole beneath sand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, holding aloft the syringe. But she quickly pumped out the contents into the air and tossed the needle into a sharps bin. ‘Sorry that he’s such an arsehole.’ She bent to her haunches, touched the young woman’s forehead. It was very warm and damp with sweat. ‘Listen, I’m going to leave the room for a few minutes. I want you to stay calm, and if anyone comes in I need you to behave as if I’ve given you the sedative. Do you understand? You’ve had the sedative. Now do as I say. I’ve come to help you get out of here.’
‘You bitch!’ snarled the woman hoarsely.
Stephanie gave a shrug. ‘I can’t argue with you there. Remember what I told you, if you want to get out of here.’
She went to the door, opened it fractionally to check the corridor. It was empty. A fluorescent light flickered nervously. She hurried down the corridor, the sound of her footsteps coming back at her hollow and unusually loud, as if they strived to betray her. She felt sick with apprehension, her legs threatening to buckle beneath her, but there was no choice now. She knew she had to go through with this. She had the access. She would go unchallenged.
A part of her wished she had never met them both.
She wished she had never met Pipistrelle or listened to his outlandish ramblings, because that is what she first thought them. The ramblings of a man who went by the name of a bat. How crazy, how outlandish. But now she knew differently. It was she that had been caught up in something twisted, not he. On one level she hated Pipistrelle, because he’d confronted her, held up her dark deeds to the light for her to see in all their corrupt glory, and she did not like what she beheld. But there could be redemption, he said. It did not have to be like this. There could be salvation.
Then there was the other man. A powerful, respected being in his own right. A giant in the pharmaceutical industry. She was in awe of him. They all were, even his peers. How could she resist that? Better people had tried and failed. She realised how easily she had fallen for his flattery and the twin lures of a high financial reward and her name up there with the giants of research, and how easily his honeyed promises had led her to become something cold and vile.
Yes, she had been attracted to the career partly because of the illness that took her mother in old age and scrambled her mind so much that she wasn’t the same woman. Attracted to it because she could make a difference to people’s lives. It was partly why medical research held such allure. Partly. But once there her greed for professional recognition rose quickly like oil in water, to the surface, so that when she had shown startling promise, and had been headhunted for higher and better things, she gorged on the opportunities heaped before her, and entered, almost without question, her darkest phase; a phase when she felt she choked her very humanity in the process.
And in truth that’s why she was here, to atone for her sins. That’s why she must go through with this and accept the consequences, whatever they might be. Pipistrelle had promised safety, for herself and her year-old daughter, and she believed him. Trusted him.
God, she wished she had never heard of Project Gilgamesh.
The ladies’ locker room was empty, as she expected. There were few staff members abroad at this hour, a couple of colleagues hunched over their Petri dishes and agar jellies in a lab down the corridor; a security guard up top, guarding the main entrance to the underground chambers; another guard floating around, patrolling the building somewhere. She unlocked the metal door to her own locker, withdrew a white lab coat. Contrary to popular myth, they rarely wore them all the time, as seen in the movies. Most researchers preferred not to wear them and there was only a rush to put them on when they were being inspected by the bigwigs. This coat was her spare. She groped in the locker for a plastic name badge. This was definitely not hers. Pipistrelle had made a false one based upon her own. She looked closely at it; he’d done a good job and she wondered where he got the expertise. The likeness to the woman in the bed was close enough to fool a quick, disinterested glance, and that, she hoped, was all that was needed.
She took out a pair of flat shoes. They may be a size too big, she thought, but they’d have to do. She put everything into a carrier bag and checked the corridor before dashing out.
‘Evening, Stephanie,’ said a voice at her back. She turned, horrified.
He walked calmly down the corridor towards her, his hands in his pockets.
Randall Tremain was young, ambitious, you could read it in the way he carried himself, she thought. He was the head of security’s number two. Second in charge. His good looks, his warm smile, were masks to a far colder nature. She didn’t trust him, in the same way he trusted no one else. He smiled but she realised he was scrutinising her, digging deep beneath the fragile crust of her outward calm. She hadn’t expected him to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be in the building tonight.
‘Good evening, Mr Tremain.’
‘She is well?’
Stephanie nodded. ‘Well enough.’
‘Have to look after our valuable little investments, don’t we?’
‘Absolutely.’
He stared for a second longer than was comfortable. ‘I’m keeping you from your job, I’m sorry.’ He passed her and disappeared down the corridor.
She breathed a heavy sigh of relief, waited a few seconds and then rushed back to the room.
The woman lay watching her closely as she unloaded the contents of the carrier bag onto the foot of the bed. Stephanie bent down to her. ‘I’m now going to untie the straps from your ankles. I need you to keep calm and keep quiet. Do you understand?’ She placed a hand on the woman’s arm. ‘I promise to get you out of here, so please do as I say. For both of us.’ She drew in a calming breath and untied the first ankle. It left a large red welt. The woman didn’t move. She unbuckled the next, and then moved swiftly around the bed to the strap holding down the woman’s right arm. Finally she paused at the buckle on the last strap. ‘Remember what I told you,’ she said. ‘Keep calm.’
As soon as the strap was released the young woman swiped hard at Stephanie, hitting her in the jaw and sending her reeling backwards. She attempted to get off the bed, rise to her feet, but her feeble legs crumpled beneath her and she fell to the floor. She began to drag herself to the door.
Stephanie caught her by the shoulders. ‘Stop!’ she said. ‘Can’t you see you’re still too weak?’ But the woman shrugged her off, her fist striking out again, this time lending Stephanie a heavy blow on the arm. She had no choice but to hold her down, piling her full weight on her, surprised that even in her weakened state the desire for freedom gave her added strength. She eventually calmed down, the fight knocked from her.
‘You’re trying to trick me,’ she said. ‘It’s all part of playing with my head.’
‘No, no tricks,’ she assured her, releasing her hold on her. ‘I’m going to get you out.’
‘Why should I believe you?’
‘Because you don’t have a choice,’ she returned flatly. She took out a bottle and a syringe from her lab-coat pocket. ‘I’m going to give you a shot of this,’ she said.
‘Like hell you are!’ snarled the woman, using the metal foot of the bed to raise herself to her feet. She put a hand to her head as the room began to spin crazily.
‘You’re still feeling the after-effects of the drugs you’ve been receiving. This will help counter them, give you a burst of energy. You’re going to need it.’
‘You think I’m going to let you shove that thing into me, after I’ve been treated like an animal all this time? You come near me with that and I’ll sink the thing deep into that black heart of yours — if you fucking had one!’ She sank like a lead weight onto the bed, her vision blurring, her head pounding. She knew she was on the verge of blacking out.
‘I’m your only chance of getting out of here,’ said Stephanie calmly. ‘We don’t have much time. I reckon we have half an hour tops before your supervisor for the night comes in. If anyone finds you free were both screwed.’
‘Why? Why are you doing this?’ she asked, pain pumping like lava through her head.
‘I can tell you later. Now, are you going to trust me?’
She nodded, held out her arm. Stephanie swabbed and injected. ‘You should start to feel its effects in a minute or two. Until then, slip this on.’ She handed her the lab-coat.
‘I’ve not seen you before,’ said the woman, doing as she was bid and threading her slim arms into the sleeves of the coat.
‘I work in a different part of the complex ordinarily. I got myself posted here, when I heard about you. When I was told about you.’
‘Came to stare at the freak?’ Her fingers fumbled over the buttons, but she felt strength beginning to seep through her body again.
Stephanie helped pin the name badge on the coat pocket. ‘Not a freak. You’re someone very special. And I don’t agree with any of this,’ she said, her hand flapping dismissively at the room. ‘It’s wrong, it’s vile, and it will end tonight. Hurry, someone is waiting for us outside.’ She could hardly disguise her nervousness.
The young woman slipped her feet into the shoes, bent to tie the laces. She was aware of her swollen midriff pressing against her upper thighs. ‘So who is waiting for us?’ the suspicion strong in her voice.
‘Pipistrelle,’ Stephanie replied.
‘And who is Pipistrelle?’
‘A friend. He knows all about you. All of you. Now please hurry, we must be going.’ She helped the woman to her feet. She tottered uncertainly. ‘Are you able to walk alright? It’s important that if we are stopped you must be taken for one of us.’
‘Yes, I can walk,’ she said.
Stephanie checked the corridor was empty before beckoning the woman follow. They turned immediately right, the hard tiles amplifying their urgent steps. They passed through double doors and into another stretch of corridor. At the head of this stood a security guard.
‘Leave all the talking to me,’ said Stephanie.
The uniformed guard watched them intently as they approached, his cold, boulder-like expression gave the impression he was going to pose a problem, but he hardly glanced at the name badges. He didn’t say a thing as he stepped aside, and did nothing to hide his leering stare at Stephanie’s breasts.
The women passed through the door and halfway down the corridor Stephanie paused and looked back. ‘We need to go this way,’ she said, nodding to a metal door, taking out a bunch of keys and fumbling through them till she found the one she was looking for. She unlocked the door and pushed at it. The hinges gave a high-pitched squeal which caused Stephanie to wince. ‘Quickly, inside,’ she beckoned, and all but dragged the young woman inside with her.
She flicked a switch. A single low-wattage bulb lit the interior of the small room with a cold glow. It was empty, its concrete walls dripping wet, a choking, musty smell hanging in the air. There was a door at the far end, this one coated in a layer of rich red rust.
‘What is this place?’ asked the woman. ‘It’s like a Second World War bunker.’
‘That’s because, after a fashion, that’s what it is,’ Stephanie explained quickly. She found out another key. ‘This entire building is deep underground. It was designed as a chemical warfare research centre during the last war, both secret and bombproof. Very few people know of its existence. There’s more than one entrance to this complex — this is one of those that isn’t used anymore.’ She pushed open the door and removed a flashlight from her coat pocket. The concrete-lined tunnel ahead was pitch-black, the small beam hardly putting a dent in the dark.
‘How do you know about all this?’ the young woman asked.
‘Pipistrelle; he told me.’
‘He knows quite a lot,’ she said.
‘Yes, he does,’ she said. ‘He’s made it his business to know. Without him you’d be in here till you died. You’ve a lot to thank him for.’
With the door closed behind them the darkness appeared to press ever closer, eating away at the feeble torch beam. Stephanie set off with a purpose, the young woman following as close as she could, her legs at times hardly able to support her. She was grateful when they came to a stop beside a metal ladder bolted against the wall. Stephanie shone the light up the narrow, metal lined shaft above their heads.
‘Up here,’ she said. ‘You go first; I’ll help you if you need it. It goes up for fifty feet or more and then there’s a trapdoor. It’s unlocked; you just need to push it open.’
They started to a noise coming from the way they’d come, back down the corridor. Voices, raised in concern. The young woman, her face wreathed in alarm, looked at Stephanie. ‘Are they onto us?’ she asked nervously.
It fell silent. They both strained to listen. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘You must hurry, up the ladder. We’re almost there.’
Her fears were confirmed when she heard at the end of the corridor, from behind the closed metal door. ‘Doctor Jacobs, are you there? Do you have her with you?’ She’d locked the door but it wouldn’t be too long before they sourced another key or realised which exit they were headed for. ‘Open the door, Doctor Jacobs. You know you can’t go far.’
‘We have to get to the top before they send someone to cover the exit,’ she said, pushing against the young woman who’d begun to ascend the ladder.
With every minute stretched taught and long they eventually reached the trapdoor and the young woman heaved her shoulder against it. The metal lid swung open and clanged shrilly against a stone floor. They clambered out of the shaft and into another empty room, a broken window letting in a pale wash of moonlight. In an open doorway stood the silhouetted figure of a man, waiting for them.
‘Pipistrelle!’ said Stephanie breathlessly. ‘She’s here. Take her, quickly. They can’t be far behind us.’
The man stepped forward. His lower face was swathed in a large scarf, all but his eyes visible. He held a blanket, which he draped across the young woman’s shoulders. ‘This way.’ His voice was peculiarly warm and reassuring. ‘We’re here to save you,’ he said. He turned to Stephanie. ‘Make for your car, draw them off if needs be, and we’ll meet at the arranged place.’
‘Do you have my daughter?’ said Stephanie.
‘She’s safe. Don’t worry about her. Now hurry.’
The yard had fallen into disuse many years ago, the tarmac heavily cratered, with weeds forcing up tiny black hillocks so that it looked like a vast volcanic landscape in miniature; the wire fence that encircled it, with connecting concrete posts, was still in place but heavily twisted and rusted, in some areas split open. They rushed towards a gate, the padlocked chain having been cut open. They entered another similar yard, treading over the ghostly outlines of buildings long since demolished. Through another gate at the far end they emerged onto a side road. Waiting for them was an old, pale- green Commer van; sat behind it was a Volkswagen Beetle. Pipistrelle opened the door of the van and Stephanie helped the young woman up into the seat. The engine spluttered into noisy life.
She slammed the door shut as the van drove off, its wheels giving a tiny squeal as they sought purchase on the icy road surface, and she launched herself into her Beetle, her breath pumping out in clouds as she fumbled with the ignition key. She’d avoided the staff car park tonight. Once locked behind those gates it would have been difficult to get out with the girl. She wondered how Pipistrelle knew about this exit. There was much about him she did not know.
She looked through the side window at the rear of the looming, dark hulk of the squat Art Deco building, sitting there like a malevolent behemoth. She turned the key in the ignition and the car refused to start. Her urgent breathing fogged up the windows, which iced up on contact, pasting a thin diaphanous glaze on the glass. At length the engine exploded into motion. She stuck the car’s heater onto full, knowing even on high they were lukewarm at the best of times, when they worked at all. She had not expected such a sharp frost tonight, and she cursed herself for not having placed something over the windscreen to keep it clear. The windscreen wipers scraped a few channels in the frost. She had no choice, she could not hang around.
Through the fogged screen she saw the twin specks of car headlights in the distance and instinctively knew they were headed for her.
She hit her foot hard on the accelerator, the car taking an infuriatingly long period of time to get moving on the ice. When it did eventually get going it slewed dangerously from side to side until she managed to get it back under control. Then she was off, taking the corner ahead, her heart pumping, her temples throbbing, the sound of coursing blood loud in her ears.
It was her fault, she said over and over to herself; her fault she hadn’t gotten out without being discovered. They should have had plenty of time. It shouldn’t have come to this. She swung the car around corners, determined to lose the car before she headed out to the meeting place arranged with Pipistrelle. She had to be doubly sure she wasn’t being followed.
But to her horror she saw the car’s headlights blazing behind her. It was still some way off but the Volkswagen wasn’t built for speed. Ahead of her the bright moonlight made the frosted road appear as if it were silvery, sweating skin.
‘Come on, you old pile of junk!’ she ordered the car, and it ignored her. She felt the rear tyres swing alarmingly as she rounded another corner, narrowly missing a series of parked cars. Panic welled up within her; she saw a one- way sign and took the street, the wrong way. A brief thought flickered in her mind that she was ordinarily such a law-abiding person. Wouldn’t even throw litter on the ground. Never put a step out of line her entire life. That particular Stephanie was long gone. Too many things had happened. Now it was survival at any cost.
On either side of the car was a stretch of waste ground where once there had stood rows of back-to-back houses, the sad reminders of the bombing during the Blitz, land due for development shortly according to the signs on the wooden fence that encircled the area. She checked the rear-view mirror; she was clear of them, lost them somewhere.
Her attention returned to the road a split second too late for her to slow down to take the bend ahead. She yanked the wheel hard, the car hitting a patch of black ice and spinning wildly in the middle of the road. The Volkswagen mounted a curb and ran headlong into a concrete street lamp. Stephanie Jacobs’ head lurched forward as the front of the car crumpled up like tinfoil. With no seatbelt to protect her she smashed into the windscreen, her world engulfed by a deafening blackness.
The Rover came to a halt beside the wrecked Volkswagen. Petrol was leaking onto the road, as if the car bled away its lifeblood. The windscreen was completely shattered. The front of the car a mangled, unrecognisable lump of distorted metal. Two men exited the Rover. One of them glanced nervously around him but there was no one around.
‘Shit!’ he said. ‘What a fucking mess!’ He wasn’t simply referring to the car. He went over to the Volkswagen, peered through the cracked glass of the heavily dented driver’s door. Stephanie’s head was resting against the wheel, a cat’s cradle of deep gashes, her entire face lathered in blood. ‘Christ, she wouldn’t win any beauty competitions now,’ he said.
The other man came to his side. ‘Is she dead?’ he said dispassionately.
‘She’s moving, Mr Tremain. I reckon she’s only just this side of alive.’
Randall Tremain was angry. So fucking angry. Bitch, he thought. For her to escape on his watch was not what he wanted to hear. He was in danger of slipping down the ranks because of this, unless he could put some of it right. He yanked open the door. ‘Pass me your flashlight, quickly,’ he rasped.
He handed him a heavy-duty metal flashlight from the Rover’s glove compartment. ‘What are we gonna do, Mr Tremain?’ he asked. ‘It’s one hell of a shit hole we’re in now.’
Tremain turned on the flashlight, shone it at Stephanie’s bloodied face. He lifted the torch then brought it down hard on her head, three, four, five times. The sound of splintering bone caused the other man to step back, his face screwed up in horror. Tremain calmly handed the torch back, reached in and took Stephanie’s pulse.
‘Now she’s only just this side of dead,’ he said.
The Rover drove away, its exhaust fumes lingering over the Volkswagen like a sad spirit that whirled in the still air and quietly faded into the chill night.