Whiteout (14 page)

THE Kremlin looked pretty. Snow clung to its gargoyles and crochets, doorcases and window ledges, outlining the Victorian ornamentation in white. Toni parked and went inside. The place was quiet. Most people had gone home, for fear of getting caught in the snow—not that people needed much of an excuse to leave early on Christmas Eve.

She felt hurt and sensitive. She had been in an emotional car crash. But she had to put thoughts of love firmly out of her mind. Later, perhaps, when she lay alone in bed tonight, she would brood over the things Stanley had said and done; but now she had work to do.

She had scored a triumphant success—that was why Stanley had hugged her—but all the same a worry nagged at her. Stanley's words repeated in her brain:
If we lost another rabbit, we'd be right back in trouble.
It was true. Another incident of the same kind would bring the story back to life but ten times worse. No amount of public-relations work could keep the lid on it.
There will be no more security incidents at the lab,
she had told him.
I'll make sure of that.
Now she had to make her words come true.

She went to her office. The only threat that she could imagine was from the animal rights activists. The death of Michael Ross might inspire others to attempt to “liberate” laboratory animals. Alternatively, Michael might have been working with activists who had another plan. He might even have given them the kind of inside information that could help them defeat the Kremlin's security.

She dialed regional police headquarters in Inverburn and asked for Detective-Superintendent Frank Hackett, her ex. “Got away with it, didn't you?” he said. “Luck of the devil. You should have been crucified.”

“We told the truth, Frank. Honesty is the best policy, you know that.”

“You didn't tell me the truth. A hamster called Fluffy! You made me look a fool.”

“It was unkind, I admit. But you shouldn't have leaked the story to Carl. Shall we call it quits?”

“What do you want?”

“Do you think anyone else was involved with Michael Ross in stealing the rabbit?”

“No opinion.”

“I gave you his address book. I presume you've been checking his contacts. What about the people in Animals Are Free, for example—are they peaceful protestors, or might they do something more dangerous?”

“My investigation is not yet complete.”

“Come on, Frank, I'm just looking for a little guidance. How worried should I be about the possibility of another incident?”

“I'm afraid I can't help you.”

“Frank, we loved one another once. We were partners for eight years. Does it have to be like this?”

“Are you using our past relationship to persuade me to give you confidential information?”

“No. To hell with the information. I can get it elsewhere. I just don't want to be treated as an enemy by someone I used to love. Is there a law that says we can't be nice to one another?”

There was a click, then a dial tone. He had hung up.

She sighed. Would he ever come around? She wished he would get another girlfriend. That might calm him down.

She dialed Odette Cressy, her friend at Scotland Yard. “I saw you on the news,” Odette said.

“How did I look?”

“Authoritative.” Odette giggled. “Like you would
never
go to a nightclub in a see-through dress. But I know better.”

“Just don't tell anyone the truth.”

“Anyway, your Madoba-2 incident appears to have no connections with . . . my kind of interest.”

She meant terrorism. “Good,” Toni said. “But tell me something—speaking purely theoretically.”

“Of course.”

“Terrorists could get samples of a virus such as Ebola relatively easily by going to a hospital somewhere in central Africa where the only security is a nineteen-year-old cop slouching in the lobby smoking cigarettes. So why would they attempt the extraordinarily difficult task of robbing a high-security laboratory?”

“Two reasons. One, they simply don't know how easy it is to get Ebola in Africa. Two, Madoba-2 is not the same as Ebola. It's worse.”

Toni remembered what Stanley had told her, and shuddered. “Zero survival rate.”

“Exactly.”

“What about Animals Are Free? Did you check them out?”

“Of course. They're harmless. The worst they're likely to do is block a road.”

“That's great news. I just want to make sure there's not another incident of the same kind.”

“It looks unlikely from my end.”

“Thanks, Odette. You're a friend, and that's a rare thing.”

“You sound a bit low.”

“Oh, my ex is being difficult.”

“Is that all? You're used to him. Did something happen with the professor?”

Toni could never fool Odette, even over the phone. “He told me his family is the most important thing in the world to him, and he would never do anything to upset them.”

“Bastard.”

“When you find a man who isn't a bastard, ask him if he's got a brother.”

“What are you doing for Christmas?”

“Going to a spa. Massage, facials, manicures, long walks.”

“On your own?”

Toni smiled. “It's nice of you to worry about me, but I'm not that sad.”

“Who are you going with?”

“A whole crowd. Bonnie Grant, an old friend—we were at university together, the only two girls in the engineering faculty. She's recently divorced. Charles and Damien, you know them. And two couples you haven't met.”

“The gay boys will cheer you up.”

“You're right.” When Charlie and Damien let their hair down, they could make Toni laugh until she cried. “What about you?”

“Not sure. You know how I hate to plan ahead.”

“Well, enjoy spontaneity.”

“Happy Christmas.”

They hung up, and Toni summoned Steve Tremlett, the guard supervisor.

She had taken a chance with Steve. He had been a pal of Ronnie Sutherland, the former head of security who had conspired with Kit Oxenford. There was no evidence Steve had known about the fraud. But Toni had feared he might resent her for firing his friend. She had decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and had made him supervisor. He had rewarded her trust with loyalty and efficiency.

He arrived within a minute. He was a small, neat man of thirty-five with receding fair hair cut in the brutally short style that was fashionable. He carried a cardboard folder. Toni pointed to a chair and he sat down.

“The police don't think Michael Ross was working with others,” she said.

“I had him down as a loner.”

“All the same, we have to have this place buttoned up tight tonight.”

“No problem.”

“Let's make doubly sure of that. You have the duty roster there?”

Steve handed over a sheet of paper. Normally there were three security guards on duty overnight and on weekends and holidays. One sat in the gatehouse, one in reception, and one in the control room, watching the
monitors. In case they needed to step away from their stations, they carried phones that were cordless extensions to the house network. Every hour, the guard from reception made a tour of the main building, and the guard from the gatehouse walked around the outside. At first, Toni had thought three was too few for such a high-security operation, but the sophisticated technology was the real security, and the human beings merely backup. All the same, she had doubled the guard for this Christmas holiday, so that there would be two people at each of the three stations, and they would patrol every half hour.

“I see you're working tonight.”

“I need the overtime.”

“All right.” Security guards regularly worked twelve-hour shifts, and it was not very unusual for them to do twenty-four hours, when staff were short or, as tonight, in an emergency. “Let me check your emergency call list.”

Steve passed her a laminated sheet from the folder. It listed the agencies he was to phone in case of fire, flood, power cut, computer crash, phone system faults, and other problems.

Toni said, “I want you to ring each of these in the next hour. Just ask them if the number will be operational over Christmas.”

“Very good.”

She handed back the sheet. “Don't hesitate to call the police at Inverburn if you're the least worried about anything.”

He nodded. “My brother-in-law Jack is on duty tonight, as it happens. My missus has taken the children over to their place for Christmas.”

“How many people will there be at headquarters tonight, do you know?”

“On the night shift? An inspector, two sergeants, and six constables. And there'll be a duty superintendent on call.”

It was a small complement, but there would be nothing much to do once the pubs had closed and the drunks had gone home. “You don't happen to know who the duty super is?”

“Yes. It's your Frank.”

Toni did not comment. “I'll have my mobile phone with me day and night, and I don't expect to be anywhere out of range. I want you to call me the minute anything unusual happens, regardless of the time, okay?”

“Of course.”

“I don't mind being woken up in the middle of the night.” She would be sleeping alone, but she did not say that to Steve, who might have considered it an embarrassing confidence.

“I understand,” he said, and perhaps he did.

“That's all. I'll be leaving in a few minutes.” She checked her watch; it was almost four. “Happy Christmas, Steve.”

“To you, too.”

Steve left. Twilight was falling, and Toni could see her own reflection in the window. She looked rumpled and weary. She closed down her computer and locked her filing cabinet.

She needed to get going. She had to return home and change, then drive to the spa, which was fifty miles away. The sooner she hit the road, the better: the forecast said the weather would not get worse, but forecasts could be wrong.

She was reluctant to leave the Kremlin. Its security was her job. She had taken every precaution she could think of, but she hated to hand over responsibility.

She forced herself to stand up. Her job was facilities director, not security guard. If she had done everything possible to safeguard the place, she could leave. If not, she was incompetent and should resign.

Besides, she knew the real reason she wanted to stay. As soon as she turned her back on the job, she would have to think about Stanley.

She shouldered her bag and left the building.

The snow was falling more heavily.

KIT was furious about the sleeping arrangements.

He sat in the living room with his father, his nephew Tom, his brother-in-law Hugo, and Miranda's fiancé, Ned. Mamma Marta looked down on them from her portrait on the wall. Kit always felt she looked impatient in that picture, as if she could hardly wait to get out of her ball gown, put on an apron, and start making lasagne.

The women of the family were preparing tomorrow's Christmas dinner, and the older children were in the barn. The men were watching a movie on TV. The hero, played by John Wayne, was a narrow-minded bully, a bit like Harry Mac, Kit thought. He found it hard to follow the plot. He was too tense.

He had
specifically
told Miranda he needed to be in the cottage. She had been so sentimental about his joining the family for Christmas, she had practically gone down on her knees to plead with him to come. But, after he had agreed to do what she wanted, she had failed to fulfill the one condition he had made. Typical woman.

The old man was not sentimental, though. He was about as softhearted as a Glasgow policeman on a Saturday night. He had obviously overruled Miranda, with Olga's encouragement. Kit thought his sisters ought to have been called Goneril and Regan, after the predatory daughters of King Lear.

Kit had to leave Steepfall tonight and come back tomorrow morning
without anyone knowing he had been away. If he had been sleeping in the cottage, it would have been easier. He could have pretended to go to bed, turned off the lights, then sneaked away quietly. He had already moved his car to the garage forecourt, away from the house, so that no one would hear the engine starting. He would be back by mid-morning, before anyone would expect him to be up, and could have slipped quietly back into the cottage and gone innocently to bed.

Now it would be much more difficult. His room was in the creaky old part of the main house, next to Olga and Hugo. He would have to wait until everyone had retired. When the house was quiet, he would have to creep out of his room, tiptoe down the stairs, and leave the house in total silence. If someone should open a door—Olga, for instance, crossing the landing to go to the bathroom—what would he say? “I'm just going to get some fresh air.” In the middle of the night, in the snow? And what would he do in the morning? It was almost certain that someone would see him coming in. He would have to say he had been for a walk, or a drive. And then, later, when the police were asking questions, would anyone remember his uncharacteristic early morning stroll?

He tried to put that worry out of his mind. He had a more immediate problem. He had to steal the smart card his father used to enter BSL4.

He could have bought any number of such cards from a security supplier, but smart cards came from the manufacturer embedded with a site code that ensured they would work at only one location. Cards bought from a supplier would have the wrong code for the Kremlin.

Nigel Buchanan had questioned him persistently about stealing the card. “Where does your father keep it?”

“In his jacket pocket, usually.”

“And if it's not there?”

“In his wallet, or his briefcase, I expect.”

“How can you take it without being seen?”

“It's a big house. I'll do it when he's in the bath, or out for a walk.”

“Won't he notice it's gone?”

“Not until he needs to use it, which won't be until Friday at the earliest. By then I'll have put it back.”

“Can you be sure?”

At that point Elton had interrupted. In his broad south London accent he had said, “Bloody hell, Nige! We're counting on Kit to get us into a heavily guarded high-security laboratory. We're in trouble if he can't nick something off his own fuckin' father.”

Stanley's card would have the right site code, but the chip in it would contain Stanley's fingerprint data, not Kit's. However, he had thought of a way around that.

The movie was building to a climax. John Wayne was about to start shooting people. This was a good moment for Kit to make a clandestine move.

He got up, grunted something about the bathroom, and went out. From the hall, he glanced into the kitchen. Olga was stuffing a huge turkey while Miranda cleaned brussels sprouts. Along one wall were two doors, one to the laundry and the other to the dining room. As he looked, Lori came out of the laundry carrying a folded tablecloth and took it into the dining room.

Kit stepped into his father's study and closed the door.

The likeliest place for the smart card was in one of the pockets of his father's suit coat, as he had told Nigel. He had expected to find the jacket either on the hook behind the door or draped over the back of the desk chair; but he saw immediately that it was not in the room.

He decided to check some other possibilities while he was here. It was risky—anyone might come in, and what would he say? But he had to take chances. The alternative was no robbery, no three hundred thousand pounds, no ticket to Lucca—and, worst of all, the debt to Harry Mac unpaid. He remembered what Daisy had done to him that morning, and shuddered.

The old man's briefcase was on the floor beside the desk. Kit went through it quickly. It contained a file of scatter graphs, all meaningless to Kit; today's
Times
with the crossword not quite finished; half a bar of chocolate; and the small leather notebook in which his father made lists of things he had to do. Old people always had lists, Kit had noticed. Why were they so terrified of forgetting something?

The top of the pedestal desk was tidy, and Kit could not see a card or anything that might contain one: just a small stack of files, a pencil jar, and a book entitled
Seventh Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.

He started opening the drawers. His breath came fast and he felt his heartbeat speed up. But if he were caught, what would they do—call the police? He told himself he had nothing to lose, and carried on; but his hands were unsteady.

His father had been using this desk for thirty years, and the accumulation of useless objects was staggering: souvenir key rings, dried-up pens, an old-fashioned printing calculator, stationery with out-of-date phone codes, ink bottles, manuals for obsolete software—how long was it since anyone had used PlanPerfect? But there was no smart card.

Kit left the room. No one had seen him go in, and no one saw him go out.

He went quietly up the stairs. His father was not an untidy man, and rarely lost things: he would not have carelessly left his wallet in some unlikely place such as the boot cupboard. The only remaining possibility was the bedroom.

Kit went inside and closed the door.

His mother's presence was gradually disappearing. Last time he was here, her possessions were still scattered around: a leather writing case, a silver brush set that had belonged to her mother, a photograph of Stanley in an antique frame. Those had gone. But the curtains and the upholstery were the same, done in a bold blue-and-white fabric that was typical of his mother's dramatic taste.

On either side of the bed were a pair of Victorian commode chests made of heavy mahogany, used as bedside tables. His father had always slept on the right of the big double bed. Kit opened the drawers on that side. He found a flashlight, presumably for power cuts, and a volume of Proust, presumably for insomnia. He checked the drawers on his mother's side of the bed, but they were empty.

The suite was arranged as three rooms: first the bedroom, then the dressing room, then the bathroom. Kit went into the dressing room, a
square space lined with closets, some painted white, some with mirrored doors. Outside it was twilight, but he could see well enough for what he needed to do, so he did not switch on the lights.

He opened the door of his father's suit cupboard. There on a hanger was the jacket of the suit Stanley was wearing today. Kit reached into the inside pocket and drew out a large black leather wallet, old and worn. It contained a small wad of banknotes and a row of plastic cards. One was a smart card for the Kremlin.

“Bingo,” Kit said softly.

The bedroom door opened.

Kit had not closed the door to the dressing room, and he was able to look through the doorway and see his sister Miranda step into the bedroom, carrying an orange plastic laundry basket.

Kit was in her line of sight, standing at the open door of the suit cupboard, but she did not immediately spot him in the twilight, and he quickly moved behind the dressing-room door. If he peeked around the side of the door, he could see her reflected in the big mirror on the bedroom wall.

She switched the lights on and began to strip the bed. She and Olga were obviously doing some of Lori's chores. Kit decided he would just have to wait.

He suffered a moment of self-dislike. Here he was, acting like an intruder in the house of his family. He was stealing from his father and hiding from his sister. How had it got like this?

He knew the answer. His father had let him down. Just when he needed help, Stanley had said no. That was the cause of everything.

Well, he would leave them all behind. He would not even tell them where he was going. He would make a new life in a different country. He would disappear into the small-town routine of Lucca, eating tomatoes and pasta, drinking Tuscan wine, playing pinochle for low stakes in the evenings. He would be like a background figure in a big painting, the passerby who does not look at the dying martyr. He would be at peace.

Miranda began to make up the bed with fresh sheets, and at that moment Hugo came in.

He had changed into a red pullover and green corduroy trousers, and he looked like a Christmas elf. He closed the door behind him. Kit frowned. Did Hugo have secrets to discuss with his wife's sister?

Miranda said, “Hugo, what do you want?” She sounded wary.

Hugo gave her a conspiratorial grin, but he said, “I just thought I'd give you a hand.” He went to the opposite side of the bed and started tucking in the sheet.

Kit was standing behind the dressing-room door with his father's wallet in one hand and a smart card for the Kremlin in the other, but he could not move without risking discovery.

Miranda tossed a clean pillowcase across the bed. “Here,” she said.

Hugo stuffed a pillow into it. Together they arranged the bedcover. “It seems ages since we've seen you,” Hugo said. “I miss you.”

“Don't talk rubbish,” Miranda said coolly.

Kit was puzzled but fascinated. What was going on here?

Miranda smoothed the cover. Hugo came around the end of the bed. She picked up her laundry basket and held it in front of her like a shield. Hugo gave his impish grin and said, “How about a kiss, for old times' sake?”

Kit was mystified. What old times was Hugo talking about? He had been married to Olga for nearly twenty years. Had he kissed Miranda when she was fourteen?

“Stop that, right now,” Miranda said firmly.

Hugo grasped the laundry basket and pushed. The backs of Miranda's legs came up against the edge of the bed. Involuntarily, she sat down. She released the basket and used her hands to balance herself. Hugo tossed the basket aside, bent over her, and pushed her back, kneeling on the bed with his legs either side of her. Kit was flabbergasted. He had guessed that Hugo might be something of a Lothario, just from his generally flirtatious manner with attractive women; but he had never imagined him with Miranda.

Hugo pushed up her loose, pleated skirt. She had heavy hips and thighs. She was wearing lacy black knickers and a garter belt, and for Kit this was the most astonishing revelation yet.

“Get off me now,” she said.

Kit did not know what to do. This was none of his business, so he was not inclined to interfere; but he could hardly stand here and watch. Even if he turned away, he could not help hearing what was going on. Could he sneak past them while they were wrestling? No, the room was too small. He remembered the panel at the back of the closet that led to the attic, but he could not get to the closet without risking being seen. In the end he just stood paralyzed, looking on.

“Just a quickie,” Hugo said. “No one will know.”

Miranda drew back her right arm and swung at Hugo's face, hitting him square on the cheek with a mighty slap. Then she lifted her knee sharply, making contact somewhere in the area of his groin. She twisted, threw him off, and jumped to her feet.

Hugo remained lying on the bed. “That hurt!” he protested.

“Good,” she said. “Now listen to me. Never do anything like that again.”

He zipped his fly and stood up. “Why not? What will you do—tell Ned?”

“I ought to tell him, but I haven't got the courage. I slept with you once, when I was lonely and depressed, and I've regretted it bitterly ever since.”

So that was it, Kit thought—Miranda slept with Olga's husband. He was shocked. He was not surprised by Hugo's behavior—shagging the wife's sister on the side was the kind of cozy setup many men would like. But Miranda was prissily moral about such things. Kit would have said that she would not sleep with
anyone's
husband, let alone her sister's.