First Horseman, The (11 page)

Jim looked at the little bottle. It held a watery, slightly opaque liquid. His nose caught the perfume of pears. Appetising. He took the bottle.

‘Only a drop on the tip of the tongue,’ said Cardini.

Jim poured a little into his mouth. It tasted like pear-flavoured olive oil.

Cardini took the vial from him and replaced the cap, watching Jim’s expression.

A wave of heat rolled down Jim’s throat and the flavour, in a sudden rush, seemed to shoot along hidden nerve pathways to his brain. He closed his eyes tightly: he had never tasted anything inside his brain before, only on his tongue. If was as if his mind had suddenly become part of his mouth. ‘This is crazy,’ he gasped. ‘It’s like someone’s baking a cake in my head.’

‘That will soon pass,’ said Cardini.

‘Pity.’ He opened his eyes as the delicious fumes started to die away. He looked down at the board. ‘Ha.’ He laughed. Cardini was screwed. He moved a pawn forward. ‘I think that’s serious “ownage” on your king’s side,’ he said.

Cardini grinned. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Now I have clarity I can see how that has been a risk for some time.’ He laid his king down in defeat.

‘Wait,’ said Jim. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Checkmate in eight moves,’ said Cardini.

Jim sat up straight. ‘Really?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve been too generous. Mental acceleration is a side effect of the tincture.’ He handed the vial to Jim. ‘You may keep this,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’

‘I will, of course, invoice you for ten million.’

‘Dollars?’ asked Jim, looking at the tiny bottle.

‘Pounds. You are British, are you not?’ Cardini burst into thunderous laughter.

‘OK,’ said Jim, ‘fair play.’ His whole body seemed to be warmed from within, as if an internal oven was heating him to the perfect temperature.

‘So, Jim,’ said Cardini, ‘tell me how you came by the rather charismatic scar across the crown of your head.’

Jim put his hand to it. ‘This?’ he said.

Cardini nodded.

‘North Korean ninjas attacked me.’

‘Really?’ said Cardini, jovially. ‘And where was that?’

‘On the Strand,’ said Jim, grinning widely. He laughed a little.

‘The Strand in London?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what were they doing there?’ asked Cardini, beaming.

‘Trying to steal the Japanese Crown Jewels.’

‘Really?’ said Cardini, like an indulgent grandfather to a little kid. ‘And what had you to do with the Japanese Crown Jewels?’

‘I’d bought them by accident,’ said Jim, chuckling. He was finding his own story quite funny.

Cardini sat back. He’d never experienced hallucinations or delusions when taking the serum, and neither had McCloud. The effect on Evans was intriguing. Perhaps it was his age; perhaps it was a normal reaction that the few subjects of the treatment hadn’t experienced.

Jim held his right side. There was an intense heat there. ‘This is getting into all the right places,’ he said.

‘You have an injury there?’ enquired Cardini.

‘Just a few,’ said Jim. ‘Fragmentation grenade. I nearly died. Got a pretty nasty hospital infection too, but that cleared up in the jungle in Congo. Now there’s just a stupid metal box holding my ribs together.’ He was nursing his side and rocking back and forth. ‘I’m pretty much fucked up, really,’ he said, his head dropping, a broad gormless smile on his face as he luxuriated in the fingers of heat that seemed to be massaging him. ‘But, hey,’ he said, ‘you can’t expect to save the world and get out in one piece.’

Cardini let the heavenly heat of the serum take over his own thoughts. Once the effect had run its half-hour he would consider Evans’s reaction, but until then he would let the sensation of healing take him on a wonderful ride.

Jim put the bottle into his pocket. He picked up his glass of beer and drank the last few drops. It was the most amazing beer he had ever tasted. He looked at Cardini. He could see the professor’s face in exquisite detail. Every pore and line was delineated in crisp form and colour. It was how he had seen things when he was little. He had forgotten how everything had been so vivid and startling; now he was remembering. It was as if the TRT had peeled a thick layer of invisible padding from his senses. He remembered looking up with awe at the big blue sky capping the grey tower blocks of east London, the wonder of pulling at tufts of vibrant green grass pushing up by the fences of an empty building site. It was an intense world and it was now back in his mind.

‘This is scary stuff,’ he said, lying back in his seat.

‘There is nothing to be afraid of,’ said Cardini. ‘The initial effects are not long-lasting. However, any ailments you had before your dose will be addressed, not that I imagine you had many. I’m hoping to see signs of optimisation.’

‘Optimisation?’ said Jim, sitting up a little.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Cardini, his deep voice rumbling. ‘It’s just a hypothesis of mine.’

Suddenly Jim felt sleepy, as if someone was putting a warm woollen blanket over him. ‘I think I’m going to …’

Cardini regarded the young man, as his own body healed at an accelerated rate. He recalled how it had felt the first time. That had been a momentous day.

His own minor dose would rob him of a few minutes of his total life expectancy, but he needed to be at his best for McCloud. As Cardini’s patron inexorably approached the point at which he might die before a new treatment could be administered, he was becoming less and less predictable. While he might avoid the final plunge into death for perhaps thirty years, his transit around the tipping point became longer and more unpleasant.

The old man had come late to the fountain and stared death in the face for weeks at a time only to be yanked a few yards from the edge for a month or two by the serum. The stress of his closeness to death seemed to be warping his mind. For McCloud, Cardini’s miracle was no longer enough: as his health became more and more precarious, he demanded more serum, a longer, deeper return to youth. It was a demand that Cardini could not satisfy – yet.

Yet Cardini was sure he would find the answer. The secret lay in the humble jellyfish and he would unravel it, if not in time to save McCloud. He would resolve the mystery of how a humble jellyfish could throw off its old tissue and grow again anew.

Yet that was not the answer. Return to the infantile state would reset the minds of his subjects, blanking all they had learnt. Cardini had to find a physical reset that did not clear the mind of its memories and learning. The goal was an old head on a young body. If he could not achieve this, he would look to transplanting the head. That might take a century of research but it would be a solution and there was time enough for him to find it.

Kate’s alarm was buzzing. She came out of her reverie, shoved her hand into her bag and switched it off. She was a little confused: the time had shot by. She must have been asleep in front of the painting. Thank heavens for her alarm. She might have daydreamed for hours in front of the golden hazy Turner, its dirty white and faded blue sky drawing her into its misty world. She would have been soaring in that featureless sky for ever if electronic reality hadn’t dragged her back to the bench she’d been travelling on. Now she’d better hurry to her meeting with Renton.

She couldn’t abide the thought of being late. Being late told the world you either didn’t give a damn or that you were not in control of yourself, perhaps both. Being on time was a kind of personal hygiene, an action that showed respect to others and likewise yourself.

She walked out into the street. It was a lovely afternoon and she had plenty of time. She looked at a bench as she passed it. If she sat down for ten minutes she would still get to Renton on time, but she walked on. She heard a siren behind her and looked around. A police car was heading up the road, blue lights flashing, then another, and another. A whole load of coppers were going somewhere in a hurry.

A guy dodged out of her path as she nearly walked into him. He pulled a face at her and she pulled an apologetic one back.

She reached her car, with the customary relief that she had found it where she’d left it. It started too, as it always did, but she thanked it each time, as if one day it might get into a huff and refuse to oblige.

She glanced occasionally at the minute hand of the clock on the dash as she trundled down the final stretch to the lab. She was going to be rather early.

The police had been going somewhere in a hurry, and the consequences of the incident stretched back to where she was now. Whatever the blockage, though, it seemed to be clearing quickly. She could see the entrance to the car park only a few metres ahead. There was bound to be no space. She turned in and there was plenty.

She trotted into the building and took out her phone. It was exactly four forty.

A little alarm popped up on Renton’s screen: four forty. Time to finish his preparations. He minimized the window and went back to looking at the image of the woman run over by a bus. The entrails spread over the road were fascinating. He had seen the guts of thousands of animals but there was something especially riveting about a human evisceration. He wondered about adding it to the collection. No, he decided finally. It was too humdrum, just a giant version of a rabbit roadkill. For a start there was no look of horror or agony on the dead woman’s face. It was all a little too normal.

He closed the picture and went to log off, but decided against it. No one ever came down to his office in the basement and he would be back in a few moments with the sample. He hated password codes, having to type them in just to get on with what you had to do. So irritating.

That was why he was going to wedge the door open. All the keypads on all the doors were an illusion of security. Anyone who wanted to get in could do so with little more than a balaclava and a short crowbar.

He opened his office door, jammed it open, and bounced off down the corridor.

Kate found the stairs to the basement unsettling. The environmentally correct illumination didn’t seem to throw enough light to make them feel wholesome. It was gloomy and kind of crypt-like. The basement itself was just as eerie, and each time she had been down there in her short stay on the course it had given her the shivers.

I’m going to see creepy Renton down the creepy stairs in the creepy basement, she thought. She heard distant footsteps, which made her heart race a little, but they faded and were soon gone. She stepped into the main corridor, dimly lit and empty. I’d swap a bit of global warming for a little more light, she thought, looking along the shadowy alley to Renton’s office door. There was something empty about the place, as if there was no living soul on any of the floors.

The office door was held open with a grey rubber wedge that was old and sorely distorted from jamming doors for untold years. She knocked lightly and went in. Renton’s computer was on, and his worn corduroy jacket hung over the chair. A door at the far end of the long, thin office stood open and the light inside showed through.

‘Bob,’ she called, heading for the inner door.

She thought she caught the flicker of a shadow beyond.

She opened the door. ‘Bob?’ She went in. She gasped at the sight of a simple chair and table. She closed her eyes. What was she seeing? What was she thinking? What was she doing?

She opened her eyes. There was a chair, a long examination table and a square metal trolley.

The stainless-steel trolley had things on it: scalpels, silver duct tape, plastic zip-ties. She stepped forward. Was that a bag or a hood? She looked at the plain chair. She looked back at the examination table. She was standing in what looked like some kind of bodged-together operating theatre. The white enamel dish had a pack of what looked like sealed syringes in it. There were surgical instruments in a shiny silver pile. There were bandages, cotton wool and plasters.

What was going on? What kind of surgery could possibly be performed in a cellar? It reminded her of a set from some cheap horror movie. She recoiled. Had she stumbled into some kind of SM dungeon? Was it the scene of real torture? Could it be anything else? Her abdomen pulsed and her stomach churned.

The door slammed behind her. She jolted and swung around, trying to suppress a shriek.

No one was there. Thank God. But was she locked in now? She sprang to the door, turned the handle and pushed. It was locked. She pushed it hard and shook the door.

She stopped, stepped back and took two deep breaths. She grasped the handle again, turned and pulled. The door opened. She let out a groan of relief. She closed it again and went back to the table. Was this meant for her? Her legs turned to jelly and started to shake. It was meant for someone, so why not her?

No one would be around at five p.m., just herself and Renton. She pulled her phone out. Four forty-seven. If she hadn’t been early, she would have been dragged into this room by Renton, a knife to her throat. I must be mad, she thought. That can’t be right. Then she caught sight of a large wheeled canvas holdall in a corner of the room. She could imagine herself inside it, dismembered like a broken doll.

She had to get out of there right away. There was no time to look or think. She just had to run.

There was a clunk. The outer door had closed. She could hear movement. She lunged for the trolley and picked up the scalpel. Her mind was racing. What was the best thing to do? Sit tight and hope that, after she didn’t arrive as expected at five, Renton would give up and go home?

If that happened she could let herself out. The room was bare. She looked back at the bag in the corner. She couldn’t hide in or under it. She should just open the door and walk out, she thought. That would give her the element of surprise and she could escape. If necessary, she could back it up with the scalpel.

That was what she had to do. She had to be the aggressor, not the victim. She looked down at the door handle. She had to turn it and walk out into the next room. She had to go for it.

She tried to summon up the strength.

Call the police, she thought. Just call the police. She pulled her phone out again. One signal bar. She dialled 999, but as she did so the signal bar disappeared. She could have cried.