Catch Your Death (30 page)

In these cabinets, below the ground in an English country house, were some of the most dangerous and hazardous organisms on earth. Here was stored the variola virus, which caused smallpox, last seen rampaging through nature in Somalia in 1977. After the initial symptoms – vomiting, fever, delirium – it turned the body into a patchwork of lesions before it destroyed the immune system. There was VEE, Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis, which caused extreme lethargy; very useful for incapacitating people, even if it seldom killed them.

Here too were Ebola and Marburg, and a range of VHFs, viral haemorraghic fevers, like Lassa Fever and Rift Valley Fever from Africa and Machupo from South America. Another favourite was SARS, a coronavirus, the same kind of virus as that which caused the common cold. SARS, of course, came from Asia. This was a truly cosmopolitan collection.

In the corner of the room, to which he made his way now, were the jewels in his crown. The influenza viruses. The 1957 vintage Asian Flu, H2N2. From 1968, here was H3N2, or Hong Kong Flu. There was the lesser-known H9N2 flu, plus H7N7, which hit Holland in 2003, leading to the slaughter of 30 million chickens.

And here was one of the most interesting and exciting viruses, which had cost him many favours and a small fortune to acquire: H1N1, aka the Great Influenza, aka the Spanish Flu, which devastated populations in 1918, killing somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. H1N1 turned people blue as their lungs became clogged and their blood was deprived of oxygen. Their lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated, drowned from the inside. H1N1 made the medieval Black Death look like, well, the common cold. Dr Gaunt stroked the surface of the unit that stored it, wondering what the Americans who had recreated it through reverse engineering only last year would think, if they had known where it would end up.

Finally, Dr Gaunt stopped in front of the furthest cabinet, the one with its own double combination lock, secured by a code only he and his little helper knew. Inside was avian flu, H5N1, plus the virus they had acquired from the young Chinese woman. Here too were the goodies that Sampson, who was on his way now, had taken from the lab in Oxford.

And on the top shelf, like a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafitte – the most expensive wine in the world, the one his father would have killed to own – was the virus that made him want to bow down before it like a serf. The culmination of his, and numerous others’, life’s work. For thirty years he had been moving towards this moment. There had been disasters along the way. Setbacks and many unfortunate but necessary deaths. Many of his closest colleagues and friends had died. He had sacrificed everything – family, mainstream scientific acceptance, wealth – for this. But now he knew that at last, with just one more test to complete and one more obstacle to remove, it was nearly time to unpop the cork.

Here she waited: the Pandora virus.

And when she made herself known, the world of science – no, the entire world – would gasp in awe.

Just before they drew their last breath.

CHAPTER 37

If I pause now, Kate thought, if I try to absorb everything, it will overwhelm me. The sky shifted overhead, clouds that had obscured the sun parted to let the late afternoon rays through. Her stomach was knotted, her head throbbed. And her heart – well, it was beating a new rhythm. She looked up and saw Paul watching her, and they exchanged a smile. His was laced with concern. But there was more than that. The look he gave her was the same one Stephen used to give her. It told her that he loved her, and it made her catch her breath.

But she missed Jack. All of a sudden, she had an urge to hear his sweet voice, a voice that sometimes whined and demanded, but that never failed to make her feel happy when she thought of it – even if occasionally his intonation was horribly reminiscent of Vernon’s.

‘
Can I use your mobile to call Jack?’

‘
Of course.’ He passed it over and she rang Miranda’s number.

When Miranda answered the phone she was crying. ‘You have to come. Now.’ Kate tried to get more information out of her but that was all her sister would say. The line went dead, leaving Miranda’s sob echoing in her ear.

Paul came over and put his hands on her upper arms. ‘What is it?’

Kate broke away and ran towards the car. Every other feeling was swept away by the terror – the overwhelming fear that something had happened to her child.

By the time they got to Churchill the sun had gone down. Paul drove while Kate stared out of the window at the stretching shadows, vivid horrors parading through her imagination. She tried to call Miranda again, to drag sense out of her, but she wouldn’t answer the phone. Paul kept asking her if she was okay, which got really irritating after a while, until she snapped at him and he apologised and she felt guilty. But the guilt didn’t last long, because the fear was too strong, and any guilt she did feel was directed towards herself. Why had she left Jack? How could she have been so selfish?

‘
We don’t know that anything has happened to him,’ Paul said, though he sounded far from confident.

‘
What else could it be?’

‘
I don’t know. Let’s just wait until we get there.’

They pulled up outside Miranda’s house. Kate half-expected to see police cars, ambulances, Miranda standing hollow-eyed on the pavement, draped in a blanket with a policewoman beside her. But the house was dark and silent. There was no-one around.

The front door was ajar. Kate pushed it open and called, ‘Miranda?’

There was no reply.

They looked in the living room, which was empty and dark. Kate called, ‘Miranda? Jack?’ and Paul joined in.

Then they heard a little girl call, ‘Auntie Kate?’

They ran up the stairs, taking two steps at a time.

Miranda and Amelia were sitting in the darkness in one of the bedrooms, huddled together on the floor, Miranda’s arm thrown around her daughter. Kate flicked on the light and Amelia buried her face against her mum’s belly. Kate quickly realised this was George’s room, though there was no sign of George.

‘
Where’s Jack?’

Miranda shook her head and started crying. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Kate knelt down, reached over Amelia and grabbed her sister by the shoulders, shaking her. ‘Where is he?’

When Miranda answered her breath smelled sour, like someone who’d gone to bed without cleaning their teeth after a drinking session. ‘Vernon took him.’

‘
What?’

‘
He just turned up and…and I couldn’t stop him. He was too strong. He pushed me over.’

‘
Shit. What time was this?’

‘
I don’t know. Just before six.’

Kate stood up, her hands in her hair. ‘He’ll be at Heathrow by now; he might even be on a plane back to Boston. Oh…’ She turned back to her sister. ‘Where’s Pete? Couldn’t he have stopped Vernon?’

‘
He went for a drink after work. He’ll still be in the pub.’

Kate was beginning to realise that, as bad as it was that Vernon had turned up and taken Jack, there was something even worse going on here. Something really wrong. ‘And George?’

Miranda burst into tears again. Kate wanted to scream with frustration. Then Amelia said, ‘After Uncle Vernon went off with Jack, the bad man came.’

Kate stared at her.

‘
He came and took George. They were going to look for Jack. He made Mummy tell him that Jack was going to get an aeroplane. He said… he said…he’d kill me if Mummy didn’t tell him…’ Amelia’s lip trembled and she stared wide-eyed back at Kate.

Paul stepped forward. ‘What did this bad man look like, sweetheart?’

Amelia pressed her face against her mother’s breasts. ‘Like a monster.’

Miranda managed to speak. ‘He left your phone. Look.’ She pointed, and Kate saw the astonishing sight of her lost phone lying on the carpet.

And at that exact moment, it rang.

Kate stared at it, frozen. Paul picked it up and was about to answer it when Miranda shrieked, ‘No! Kate has to answer.’

Kate took the phone and pressed the green button. She whispered, ‘Hello?’

‘
Hello Kate. Want to say hello to your son?’

Amelia was right – he was a monster. But in the real world, monsters didn’t have fangs and horns and scales. Some of them, the kind Kate encountered in her work every day, were invisible to the eye. And some monsters were invisible because they seemed so ordinary. Everyday people, with ordinary faces and voices and flesh and blood. The thing that made them different was inside them, in their hearts and their fucked-up minds.

When Sampson spoke, Kate had the sensation of being stroked by cold fingers. She could hear the darkness inside him. All this time she’d been so terrified of Vernon getting Jack, and now someone far, far worse had him. At least Vernon wouldn’t ever put his son’s life in danger – but that was exactly what she herself had done. Oh God. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her.

She couldn’t speak for a few moments.

‘
I’m going to call the police.’

‘
No, Kate. Do that and I’ll kill him.’

‘
No! Please don’t hurt him. If you do anything to him…’ She trailed off. What was the point of making threats? ‘Let me speak to him.’

‘
Mummy?’ Jack’s small voice penetrated her head, and she didn’t realise she was crying until she felt the warm tears drop from her chin. Paul stood beside her, rocking from foot to foot, his face dark, pained by his inability to make everything right.

‘
Jack,’ she said, ‘Jack, sweetheart, it’s me, Mummy. Are you all right?’

‘
The man said you were coming to find me.’

‘
I am, darling. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Where are you?’

‘
I don’t know. I don’t like it.’

‘
Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry. I promise…’

‘
Save it.’ Sampson was back on the line.

‘
You bastard! Why the hell are you doing this? I don’t know what you want from me.’ Except that you want me dead, she thought.

‘
Haven’t you worked it out yet? It’s all in your head.’ He paused and Kate could hear somebody else in the background, a man’s voice. She strained to make out what he was saying. What Sampson had said confirmed her fears: that they were after her because of what she had found out back in 1990. But they didn’t know she had been to see a hypnotherapist, and they didn’t know she couldn’t remember everything. She realised, though, that she was a loose end that needed to be cut away.

For a horrible moment she thought the line had gone dead and that the thread between her and Jack had been broken. ‘Hello? Hello?’

‘
If you want your son back, you and Wilson have to come to us now. Don’t tell the police or the kid will die. Don’t try to be clever. Just get here if you want to see him alive again.’

‘
But where are you?’

‘
I can’t tell you that.’

‘
Then how the hell am I supposed to come to you?’ she shouted into the phone.

He didn’t reply instantly and her heart bungee-jumped into her stomach.

‘
Go to the village of Mayfield in East Sussex. Be there by one a.m. Then wait for more instructions.’

‘
By one a.m? How long does it take to get there?’

But he had hung up.

Paul immediately tried to throw his arms around her but she shrugged him off.

‘
We haven’t got time, we’ve got to get to Mayfield, it’s a village in East Sussex, by one o’clock in the morning, oh God, Jack; they’re going to hurt him, oh God…’

Paul grabbed her. ‘Kate, calm down. Shhh. Come on.’

The tears burst and she pressed her face against his shoulder and let it all out. Jack, oh, Jack, and it was all her fault, if she hadn’t come to England, if she hadn’t been so stupid and selfish, and then leaving him here with Miranda while she swanned off so she could shag her new man. The guilt hit her so hard it nearly knocked her off her feet.

Paul waited for her to stop crying, holding her close and kissing her hair, shushing her and whispering that it would be okay. But she struggled free again.

‘
We have to get going. We have to get to Jack. And to George.’

Miranda was still sitting in the corner, ashen-faced, cuddling Amelia. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, ‘I think, if that man has Jack, then George must be with Vernon. He said he was going to trade them….’ She tailed off, at the expression on Kate’s face.

Kate could see the hope and relief flickering across her sister’s features and, although it was irrational, she felt even more angry with Miranda.

‘
We have to go, Paul,’ she said curtly.

‘
Okay, but first…’

‘
We have to go, now!’

‘
Kate, listen. We need to work out where we’re going. Okay? What was the village called again? Mayfield?’

She nodded mutely.

‘
I’ve never heard of it.’ He turned to Miranda. ‘Do you have GPS in your car?’

‘
No, sorry.’

‘
Let me get online, then. I’ll print off directions. It’ll be quicker than looking through a road atlas.’

‘
The PC’s downstairs. It’s already switched on.’