X the unknown, p.5
X the Unknown, page 5
He pulled her to him and kissed her, holding her tightly.
‘I’ll ring you later,’ he said.
‘No, you won’t,’ she replied. ‘You always say that and you never do. I’ll call you. That way I know I’ll speak to you.’
Royston nodded and smiled, then hurried out of the bedroom. Sandra heard his footfalls on the stairs and then the sound of the front door opening and closing. She crossed to the window and saw him clamber into his car. He started the engine and she watched as the vehicle pulled away down the narrow street.
The sky was heavy with clouds and still coloured with the hues of night and, as she stood at the window for a moment longer, she saw the first droplets of rain spatter the glass.
Ten
THE DRIVE FROM the town of Broughton took Royston less than twenty minutes on roads that were still quiet in the early morning. He passed barely half a dozen other vehicles during the journey before he swung the car off the main road and guided it down the short track that led towards the main entrance of his destination.
A large white-painted sign bore the legend:
BROUGHTON GREEN MILITARY
RESEARCH FACILITY
Royston slowed down as he approached the main gate, fumbling in his jacket pocket for his ID as he saw the soldier emerge from the small brick building beside the gate. The private recognised him and waved him on good-naturedly but Royston lowered his window and presented his credentials anyway. There were certain routines and protocols that had to be followed at all times and this was one of them.
‘Morning, Doctor Royston,’ the private said cheerfully.
‘Good morning,’ Royston replied. ‘How are you today?’
‘I’ll be better when I get relieved in an hour’s time,’ the soldier informed him, glancing perfunctorily at the ID that Royston presented. The young man nodded and stepped back, waving the American scientist through.
Royston took back his ID, raised a hand, then drove through the gate as it swung open.
Away to his left were the red-brick buildings which housed the troops living on the base and to his right the less generic white-painted structures designed for the civilians like him who worked at the facility. Beyond those lay the small research complex itself and the base hospital.
It was towards the hospital that Royston now turned the car.
He pulled up outside the main entrance of the three-storey construction and clambered out, passing through the set of automatic double doors and into the main entryway of the building. There was a desk to his left behind which sat another soldier who also recognised Royston. He nodded in his direction and the scientist returned the gesture.
As he moved beyond the desk and headed towards a bank of lift doors ahead of him his footsteps echoed through the high-ceilinged reception area. One of the lifts bumped to a halt as he reached it and Royston stepped in, jabbing the button marked B. It was to the basement that he needed to go because that was where the morgue was situated.
When the lift came to a halt a moment later he stepped out and made his way along the corridor until he reached the first office on his left. He knocked once, then walked in.
The doctor sitting behind the desk inside the room looked pale and a little confused. He seemed almost grateful when he looked up and saw Royston standing there.
‘What happened?’ Royston asked. ‘Why did you call me? This isn’t exactly my field of expertise.’
The doctor got to his feet and sucked in a deep breath.
‘I know – but I wanted you to see it,’ he announced, picking up a slim Manila file from his desk as he rose. He handed it to Royston who glanced quickly at the sheets of paper within.
Doctor Gordon Briscoe moved past him and into the corridor beyond. Royston followed close behind him.
‘This is impossible,’ he said as the two men walked. ‘It says that when Lansing was brought in he was diagnosed with radiation burns and yet there was no trace of radiation in either his blood or urine tests. Who made a mistake like that?’
‘He was exposed to radiation during an exercise he was on,’ Briscoe said.
‘Then why are there no traces of that in his tests?’
‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me.’
‘He died here at the hospital?’ Royston asked, still scanning the information in the file.
Briscoe nodded. ‘About an hour ago. There was nothing we could do for him.’
‘He must have been exposed to incredible levels of radiation for it to kill him so quickly. Where the hell was he – in the middle of a nuclear reactor?’
‘On an exercise about twenty miles from here.’
Royston was about to say something else when Briscoe pushed open the double doors ahead of them and they moved through. The temperature dropped dramatically as they entered the morgue and Royston glanced around at the three stainless steel tables that occupied the centre of the room. There were what looked like metal filing cabinets on either side of the room and Royston knew this was where bodies were kept before and after autopsy. A storehouse for sightless eyes. He could also see that there was a shape on the closest of the stainless steel slabs, covered by a thin green sheet.
Briscoe crossed to it and gripped one corner.
‘Are you ready for this?’ he asked.
Royston didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed firmly on the sheet which the doctor now pulled back.
What lay beneath had once been a man, Royston knew that much. But it was all he could tell initially from looking at what was left of Private Lansing.
‘Shit,’ he said through clenched teeth, staring fixedly at the remains. He put a hand to his mouth, fearing for a second that he was going to be sick. The feeling passed and he moved a little nearer, his eyes narrowed in disbelief.
Lansing’s body looked as if it had collapsed in upon itself. His flesh – that which wasn’t burned black – was pale grey in colour but it lay on the slab like a shroud with nothing to support it. It was as if the bones within had merely disintegrated, leaving nothing but a husk of flesh. On the corpse’s face, boils and pustules had swollen before bursting, leaving streaks of thick yellowish fluid all over the sickly grey flesh.
‘Can I have some gloves, please?’ Royston asked, taking a latex surgical pair from Briscoe when he handed them over. The American pulled them on, then gently used his index finger to prod the flesh of the corpse. It was pliant but so thin that it threatened to tear with the application of any more pressure. Royston lifted one of the hands that dangled before him like a lilo drained of air.
‘The autopsy is scheduled for later this morning,’ Briscoe said.
Royston merely nodded. ‘These burns do look like radiation ones,’ he conceded. ‘But what caused the rest of the damage I can’t begin to imagine.’
‘It happened after he got to the hospital and it happened quickly.’
‘It’s as if the bones have just disappeared.’
Briscoe nodded.
‘And this happened twenty miles from here?’ Royston asked incredulously.
Again Briscoe nodded.
‘I need to see where,’ Royston snapped, pulling off the gloves and tossing them aside. He was already heading for the door.
Eleven
CLAIRE REECE WAS numb.
There was no other word to describe the way she felt. She had walked back from the hospital to the bus stop a few hundred yards away, barely aware of her own feet making contact with the ground. Like a ghost she had seemed to glide across the pavement, unable to feel anything beneath her feet just as she was presently unable to feel anything within herself except a growing coldness.
She felt as if there was a frozen lump deep inside her belly and the chill was radiating outwards, filling her veins and vital organs. When she brushed hair from her face her fingers and hands were quivering gently. She wondered if she was in shock. Perhaps the shaking and coldness were a legacy of what she’d been told back in the quiet, well-maintained room of the Oncology Specialist at St Mary’s hospital. That was one of the things that had struck her about the specialist’s office: how quiet it was. Claire had felt hemmed in by that stillness, imprisoned by it, and when he had told her the results of her biopsy she had merely let out a gasp. No words had come forth. Just that small, desperate gasp. Then she had begun to shake like a Parkinson’s sufferer. Small tremors at first but they had grown more intense as the impact of what he’d said to her truly struck home.
Malignant.
The word was right up there with ‘inoperable’ and ‘terminal’.
It was one of those words in the language that carried an impact unlike any other. When it was linked to the word ‘cancer’ or ‘tumour’ its emotional force was as unstoppable as an out-of-control train.
Malignant tumour.
The words were stuck inside her head. Stuck there as surely as the tumour was inside her breast. There had been no sign of it spreading, the specialist had said, and that was good news. Claire was sure that it was but every other piece of news had been eclipsed by the newly acquired knowledge that she had something growing inside her that could kill her. He could have told her that she’d just won the Euro Lottery jackpot but that information would not have sunk in. It would have been secondary compared with the knowledge that she had a life-threatening disease.
She could remember the specialist going on about chemotherapy and radiotherapy and mastectomy and other words that she had prayed to God she would never have to hear but what he’d said had barely penetrated her awareness. The only words inside her mind that shone with blinding luminosity were Malignant Tumour. She was sure that he’d also said something about being positive and that they had caught it early and several other things intended to make her feel more upbeat about her condition but, as with everything he’d said after ‘malignant tumour’, the words had faded like early-morning mist when the sun rose.
Claire had tried to prepare herself for the worst before she got her results. She’d tried to persuade herself that if she expected to hear such bad news then she would be somehow braced for such a shock. The reality had been appallingly different. For a brief instant she had thought she might cry. Perhaps the explosion of emotion that accompanied the news that the specialist had given her might help to release the blockage inside her mind.
It’s not going to cure the cancer in your breast, though, is it?
She couldn’t look at the specialist after that. Not that she blamed him for giving her the news but she simply didn’t want to make eye contact with him. She had stared blankly at his desk, listening to him as he rambled on about treatment and prognosis and other things that she no longer cared about. Had he once mentioned the possibility of her not recovering? She couldn’t remember. She sat now on the bus, gazing out of the large window at the countryside and the houses that passed by, watching people out walking or seeing them in their gardens and their cars – and she hated them. She hated every single person she saw, one and all. She hated them because they weren’t suffering with a disease that might kill them. She hated them because they had the happiness she might never feel again. She hated them for so many reasons. Even glancing around at the others on the bus she felt only anger and rage towards them. They were travelling home to their cosy little houses and their families and they would enjoy their evenings and they would look forward to things in the future. She couldn’t. Not any more. Not when she might be dead this time next year or even sooner.
Claire Reece returned to gazing out of the bus window, her whole body now feeling as cold as if she was sitting alone in wet clothes before an open freezer. Her mouth was dry and when she tried to swallow it felt as if someone had filled her throat with chalk.
She felt helpless. Alone. And more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.
Twelve
THEY CALLED IT a folly.
A building constructed at the whim of a rich and sometimes eccentric landowner. A castle, a church or sometimes just a tower that had no architectural purpose or worth at all but was there simply because a wealthy man decided he wanted it to be.
The structure that bore the name Fisher’s Folly was deep in the marshlands about five miles from Broughton itself. Surrounded by trees, it was approachable by a muddy and overgrown path but few ever went near the building. There was no need to. It had served no practical purpose upon its first construction and now it was nothing more than a crumbling testament to one man’s vanity. It was a round tower that poked upwards from the muddy ground like an accusing finger. Surrounded on all four sides by marshland, Fisher’s Folly had been built in 1745 on the orders of the landowner at the time Sir Terence Fisher. He had owned much of the village that Broughton had once been and also a sizeable amount of the land all around it, including the uncultivatable marshland where he had chosen to have the folly built.
Exactly what it had been used for no one knew. Over the years stories had been passed down and there were even records in the vault of one of Broughton’s churches mentioning the folly and its owner. But the real reason for its construction seemed to be little more than Fisher’s vanity. There were the inevitable legends favoured by the children of Broughton that Fisher had been a Satanist and that he’d had the folly built as somewhere in which to act out his vile practices but there was no proof to back up this notion. It remained a fanciful story to be told on dark nights in the company of friends or a tale spun by older children to their younger siblings in the hope of inducing a few nightmares. However, older residents of Broughton had their own stories about the brick edifice and some of the things that had gone on there.
During the Second World War a German fighter plane had crashed less than a mile from the folly. Shot down during the Battle of Britain, the ME 109 had slammed into the ground and exploded but not before its pilot had managed to eject and had landed in the marshy ground close to the tower. He had made his way to the folly, presumably having spied it from the crash site and with a view perhaps to hiding inside it. No one knew. But whatever his motives had been, villagers from Broughton had seen the dogfight that had downed his plane and they had emerged from their houses to search for the invader. First they had discovered the wreckage of the plane and then they had found the footprints of the pilot in the mud around it. A group of about twenty of them had followed these marks through the marshes to the folly.
Stories that had been passed down from generation to generation varied concerning the exact chain of events that had followed. Some said that the German pilot had tried to hide inside Fisher’s Folly to escape the mob. Those same stories told of how he had fired several shots at the men and women gathered outside who had finally managed to heroically subdue him and take him back to the village where they had held him until he was taken into captivity by British soldiers. That was the more acceptable version of the events that had happened that night. However, there were men and women still alive in Broughton who had been living in the village that night and who told a different tale.
They told how the pilot was tracked across the fields and marshes like a fox hunted by a pack of hounds. They told how a man from their village had died at Dunkirk only months earlier and that the villagers saw the German as the embodiment of the Fascist evil that the entire country was facing. A symbol of the enemy troops who had killed one of their own at Dunkirk. And they had sought retribution.
Many of those who had hunted that downed Luftwaffe pilot across the fields and marshes that night had been armed with everything from shotguns to pitchforks, scythes and knives. When they’d set off after him, they’d had no desire to capture him with a view to handing him over to the army. They had only one thought in their collective minds that night.
So they had pursued him to Fisher’s Folly and they had cornered him there and, despite his attempts to surrender, they had butchered him. There had even been talk of a decapitation. Then they had disposed of the body, allowed the black water and mud to swallow it and along with it their guilt. Then they had returned to the village, feeling as if in some small way they had achieved revenge for the one of their number who had been killed at Dunkirk.
That was the story that not so many in Broughton repeated when talk of Fisher’s Folly came up. Younger residents seemed more willing to speak of a more recent tragedy that had happened there. The girl’s name had been Ingrid and she’d become pregnant by a man from a nearby town but, being only fifteen at the time, she hadn’t dared to face her parents and family. Taunted by some who knew and without anyone to turn to for help, she had trekked out to the folly one winter night, broken into the structure, then climbed to the top and hung herself from its summit. The body had hung there for almost a week before it was discovered. Supposedly the ghost of Ingrid still haunted Fisher’s Folly and the woods around it. Some even claimed to have seen the apparition stalking vengefully around the marshes and woods.
So, for most, the tower was the stuff of legend and stories. No one went near it because no one needed to. It belonged to another age and a different set of sensibilities.
The thick wooden door at its base remained closed. All the secrets it held still untold for now.
The helicopters that had passed above it that night on their way to and from Broughton Green Research Facility had picked it out with their spotlights and several of the pilots and occupants of the transports had commented on it. But it had faded quickly from their thoughts. They had more pressing matters on their minds than some decaying old tower. So they flew on above it and paid it no heed.
Why should they?
Thirteen
‘AT LEAST A hundred and fifty feet deep, you say?’
Adam Royston had to raise his voice considerably to make himself heard above the roar of the Lynx’s rotor blades. He peered out of the side window of the chopper once again, his gaze fixed on the giant gash in the ground below.
‘It’s incredible,’ he said, shaking his head.
