March (11 page)

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, pulling my hand right back. ‘What is it? Why did you make me come here then?’

‘Look, I don’t want to alarm you—and you’ll probably think I’m completely paranoid—but I had a bad feeling this morning that someone was hanging around my apartment. Now I didn’t even see anyone, or anything,’ she said, shaking her hands and her head simultaneously to stress her point, ‘it was just a feeling. Probably nothing.’

‘What do you mean,
feeling
?’

‘You know that feeling you get when you know someone’s watching you, even though you have your back to them?’

I knew it all too well, I thought to myself.

‘It was kind of like that …’ she continued. ‘I think I probably also felt a little anxious about finally meeting you, so maybe it was nothing at all … Regardless,’ she said, ‘it was enough to make me leave the memory stick behind.’

‘A memory stick? What was on it?’

‘Back in the hospice, when your dad was pretty far along in his illness,’ she sighed, ‘I was clearing out some of his stuff from his wash-bag when the memory stick fell out. He could barely move but I straightaway sensed in his eyes that from his bed, he was trying to tell me that it contained something very important. I’d been experimenting and trying out different techniques of communicating with him, so I held it up and asked him, “What’s this?” and “Who is it for?” Immediately he began trying to point with his eyes to a photograph—the one of you two at the airfield. I said to him, “Tom, it’s OK. I’ll give it to Cal, I promise,” and I could see the rush of relief calm his body.’

I felt a strange mixture of sorrow and joy to hear this.

‘Do you know what’s on it?’

‘Yes, I had a look. My guess is that they’re photographs from Ireland. There are lots of green fields and ruins. I have no idea how they could be important, but maybe you will.’ She stood a moment listening to something, then went back to the lab door.

‘Did you hear something?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘There it is again!’

I came to the door to join her and listened
intently. ‘What did it sound like?’ I asked.

‘I thought I heard footsteps—down the hallway.’

All I could pick up was the low hum of the air-conditioning, and the sound of distant traffic from the main road up the hill.

‘Are you sure the door locked after you came in?’ she asked.

I thought for a second. ‘I’m pretty sure I heard it click behind me. It’s a heavy, air-pressured door, isn’t it? Not the kind you need to close after you.’

‘You’re right. It must have been one of the lab animals,’ Jennifer said, rushing a couple of metres away to peer through a narrow window, high in the wall. I looked around but I couldn’t see any lab animals, let alone hear any. I was worried. I didn’t know any animals that could make sounds like human footsteps. Especially not snakes.

Could someone have followed
me
here after all? I recalled the librarians at Liberty Square and how they’d been whispering together. If they’d reported my location to the authorities, cops could have been watching the surrounding places like bus stops and train stations. I thought of the man in the striped T-shirt at the bus shelter. Had he recognised me and called someone? Was he on the phone to authorities as we pulled away from the curb?

‘I’d better start locking up now,’ Jennifer said, taking a set of keys from a drawer. ‘If you want to come and do the rounds with me, I can tell you what I know and we can find a way to get the memory stick safely to you.’

I followed her down the building as she checked doors and switched off lights. We seemed to be the only people around but I wondered why a building that size didn’t have security.

‘Where are your security people?’ I asked her.

‘Patrolling the grounds out back somewhere,’ she said. ‘This is a huge complex. They’ll probably be back up this way around eleven.’

‘Cal,’ she said as we continued through the maze of corridors and corners, ‘I don’t mean to scare you again but your father was very worried about someone towards the end of his life. Someone other than himself,’ she clarified.

‘Who?’

‘I never found out. He couldn’t speak at that stage, and I hadn’t managed to find just the right way of getting information out of him. He
had been able to manage a few words earlier when he’d asked another nurse to get a book for him—
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson, but that was before I began working closely with him. This other nurse thought it was a strange choice but she found a copy and gave it to him. Instead of being pleased, he just threw it on the floor. She said he seemed utterly despairing, frustrated that she’d failed to correctly interpret his words. She knew he was desperate to communicate something—but he just couldn’t make it happen in a way she understood.’

‘What was that?’ I asked, hearing an odd noise.

‘Could be the door of my office,’ said Jennifer, hurrying along ahead of me and vanishing around a corner.

‘Wait up,’ I said, following her.

But just before turning the corner, my attention was taken by a glass enclosure lower down in the wall and I stopped for a moment to see what was in it. Within seconds, a brown snake swiftly untangled its coils. Despite the glass between us, I jumped back in fright as the snake struck. Two white fangs scraped the glass. Drops of venom slowly trickled down on the other side of the glass.

I backed away and hurried along, trying to catch up with Jennifer.

I couldn’t see her anywhere. Where had she gone? Why did I let myself get distracted when I was supposed to be following her in this warren of corridors? I swore to myself.

‘Jennifer?’ I called out.

She didn’t answer. The corridor she’d turned down branched off into two different directions. ‘Jennifer?’ I called, this time louder.

Why wasn’t she answering me? I recalled the noise we’d heard earlier. I had the feeling we were not alone in this building anymore—and I didn’t think it was the security guards.

I hurried down the left wing, calling her name again.

Still no answer. I didn’t know what to do.

‘Jennifer?’ I called again, louder still, backtracking and checking the right-hand corridor, trying to remember where her office was located.

Lights went out in the distance.

‘Who’s there?’ I called.

By now I was freaking out. I would never be able to find my way out without Jennifer’s help. Plus I was really worried about what had happened to her. Had I put yet another person, who was trying to help me, in danger?

I stopped, wondering what to do next, when I was frozen with fear. At the other end of the corridor, a figure suddenly ducked behind the wall. Despite the speed of the person’s movement, I’d seen the distinct red singlet that I’d come to know and dread so well. Why couldn’t he get a life … and some new clothes?

How on earth could he be here? Somehow, he’d followed me. Maybe the guy in the striped top at the bus shelter had been one of Sligo’s spies …

Silently, I started backing away. If I could just get to the corner, I could take off and run with all I’ve got and he’d have no idea which branch of the T-junction I’d taken.

When I was almost at the junction I turned—and ran straight into another thug! Sligo had sent two of his troops out after me!

I didn’t have time to be frightened. I didn’t have time to think how all this was possible. All I could think of was getting away.

The man grabbed me and flipped me round so that my back was to him. The jolt really killed my leg and the pain made me furious. I kicked backwards with my good leg, using all my strength, and my heel smashed into his shin. He hadn’t seen that coming and he howled in pain, loosening his grip just enough for me
to twist away from him and barrel straight into Red Singlet who’d appeared from another corridor. Without even thinking, I punched out hard between his legs! He screamed and doubled over, and I was away!

I ran like mad, I didn’t know where—I just ran and ran and ran, up and down corridors, up and down flights of stairs, but after a few minutes of thinking I was free of them, the sounds of their thundering feet and shouts returned. I kept running, trying to block out their menacing threats of what they were going to do to me when they caught me.

Their thudding feet skidded closer and closer and I realised I was headed for a dead end!

But there
was
a door! If it was locked, I was a goner. There was nowhere else to go except straight through it. I didn’t even slow down, I just charged at it and thankfully the door flew open wide. I raced inside, kicking the door closed again behind me.

I’d have to find another way out—a window, a vent, a fire escape, anything. But it was as black as night in there. While fumbling in the dark for the light switch, I tripped over a metal
waste paper bin and crashed straight into something hard. Glass shattered and smashed all over the floor around me, as loud as a torrential hailstorm. The pain of the impact on my side shot right through me.

Breathless and probably bleeding, I found the light switch …

To my absolute horror, I saw that I’d smashed open one of the cases; a glass case housing snakes! The floor was alive with them!

The label lay crooked on a shard of glass on the floor: death adders.

Two things happened simultaneously: the lights flashed on and off overhead, and, from somewhere in the building, a piercing alarm sounded. The writhing mass of brown serpents seemed to swarm to me. I froze, not knowing what to do … One snake came dangerously close to my foot … and then it happened … it reared up and struck at my jeans.

I had to get out of there! I knew that death adders were about the most venomous snakes in the world, and the room I was standing in was alive with them. After the lion attack at the zoo, and now this, I was convinced the vicious world of nature had it in for me.

The internal alarm continued to blare through the building, and I ran across the slithering beasts and back to the door, flinging it open. Security would be here any minute. I’d pick security and even Sligo’s thugs over a room full of death adders any day.