The Kielder Experiment (Book 2): The Alaska Strain Page 3

  “OK!” His laugh is forced. “We need a reporter to cover the opening of the new Lidl supermarket on Croxton Street.”

  “What!” The indignation bursts from her mouth before she has a chance to hold it in check. “But ... but that’s junior reporter crap! Sorry, I mean ... that’s a piece that would be covered ... it’s a piece-”

  “Bonds ... as I said, I’ve done my best. I’ve talked them into keeping you on the staff, but ... you can look for a position with another paper, if you prefer. I can give you an ... honest ... you’ve written some great pieces in the past.”

  All efforts at politeness evaporate. “God damn it, Dexter! I’m an investigative journalist. I’ve got an MA in creative writing from Birmingham University, for Christ’s sake! I’ve covered some serious shit. Hell, that paedophile ring-”

  “Just stop right there!” Dexter counters. “There’s no doubt you’re a good ... capable reporter, but you’ve stepped on some big toes this time. We’re just a small-town paper-”

  “The Birmingham Herald is hardly a small-town newspaper!” she butts in.

  Ignoring her outburst, Dexter continues, “... and we don’t have the resources to fight this. Listen, we’ve done our best, but if you want my advice, you’ll take this job and lay low until it all blows over. You’re still on staff, you’ll still get paid, so at least you’ll be able to pay your rent and eat.”

  The heat of mortification rises in her cheeks. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to snap, it’s just-”

  “I know. I get it. Listen, try not to worry, your career’s not over—yet.”

  “How about if I write under another name. I’ve got a lead on the Ashton Baileigh situation. Remember? I sent you an email last week—he’s the MP for Perry Barr.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “Mister Mason ... are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m still here.” Dexter’s voice is firmer now. “I need someone to cover the supermarket opening; a friend is pulling in a favour and, like I said, I’ve done everything I can for you.”

  Rachel recognises the veiled threat, and senses the rising irritation in Dexter’s voice. To date, he has been supportive, avuncular even, he wouldn’t send her on this job just to punish her. Would he? Humiliation stings as she replies. “Sure.”

  “Great. I’ll get Sue to email the details. I wanted to talk to you first ... before I assigned it to you.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  “The opening is at ten. I want the article uploaded by eleven-thirty.”

  “Got it.”

  The line clicks to dead.

  Five hours later Rachel sits across from her mother, the dreary report of the equally dreary supermarket opening uploaded to the newspaper’s cloud file. Yesterday’s alcohol consumption rides her in waves of nausea, and she takes a sip of her drink whilst glancing at the bottles lined up behind the bar. Her mother sniffs and purses her lips as she catches her glance. Rachel’s eyes flit to a woman at the bar and then to the door as she pretends not to notice her mother’s disapproval.

  White-blonde curls sit as an immaculately coiffured halo around her mother’s head and Rachel regrets leaving her hair to dry naturally and then forgetting to brush it through before leaving the house. She coughs to clear her throat.

  “You look tired, darling. Are you getting enough sleep?”

  She replies with a surly ‘sure’ before taking a sip of her diet cola laced with a sneaky vodka shot.

  “You should have had some water, darling. So good for the complexion; you look as though you need a good detox.”

  Rachel huffs. Her mother sitting opposite with her judgemental gaze, has shunted her back into resentful teenager mode.

  “Don’t slouch, darling.”

  Rachel takes another slug of the hidden vodka. Her headache lessens and she shuffles to sit straighter in her chair. Her mother reaches for the menu. Rachel reaches for her phone, scrolls through her Facebook newsfeed for ten seconds, then switches to check her messages.

  “I think I’ll have the salmon. It’s delicious, darling, and not too many calories.”

  The roll of fat around Rachel’s middle, gained in the past month’s comfort eating marathon, feels suddenly thicker. “Sounds good,” she replies without taking her eyes from the mobile’s screen. Her mother is silent as Rachel scrolls through the messages. The silence continues as her finger hovers over Chris Miller’s profile image with its cheesy and celebrity-laser-whitened grin. She might as well read his message now whilst they’re waiting for their meal. She clicks the message. It reads ‘WTF! Our secret. Will call later’. A video is attached and, intrigued, she presses play.

  “If you didn’t want to come ...” Her mother’s voice is laced with emotion. “... then you could have just said!”

  Shit! Looking up, a tear threatens to spill from her mother’s immaculately mascaraed lashes. A band tightens around Rachel’s ribs, and she sets the mobile down and reaches a hand across the table. Covering her mother’s hand with her own, the skin has a thinness she hasn’t noticed before. The youngest of three, there was a large age gap between herself and her older brothers and the sacrifices her mother has made; the promising career, the relentless school run that had eaten up so much of her life, the parenting that had anchored her to the house, the horror of being classified as a geriatric mother, the financial burden of another child when she should have been saving for a pension, had frequently been mentioned during Rachel’s difficult teenage years. Looking at her mother, close to tears because of her rudeness, shame settles on Rachel like a shroud.

  ‘I was so close to getting my life back!’ she’d overheard her mother confide to Aunty Jane, her mother’s older sister, after yet another of Rachel’s ‘juvenile delinquent moments’, as her mother so politely put her angry teenage outbursts, and what her father more crudely, and probably accurately, called ‘being an arsehole’. “Mum, I’m sorry. This last month ...” She stops, unable to tell her mother the truth about her broken career, and just how close it is to total destruction.

  Chris Miller’s voice rises between them in overly dramatic and tinny tones.

  Her mother’s eyes widen in anticipation as she continues to hold Rachel’s gaze.

  “I thought I was going to get a promotion,” she lies.

  Chris Miller shouts ‘Fuck!’.

  Embarrassment stings her cheeks, and Rachel fumbles for the phone as she continues to apologise, “But I didn’t. I’m sorry for taking my bad mood out on you.”

  The light brightens again in her mother’s eyes, and Rachel makes an inward sigh of relief as the tension around her chest releases.

  Chris Miller screams.

  “What on earth is that, darling?”

  “Just a video a friend sent me.”

  Her mother’s response fades as Chris shouts another string of expletives and Rachel focuses on the video’s action. The camerawork is amateurish, jerking and difficult to watch. Chris’s face is central again, his narration dramatic, and then the camera scans the trees behind the curving beach of a rocky inlet. The image blurs to vertical lines of black and green, and Chris’s breath comes hard as he runs. For seconds the image is of pebbles, then splashing water, then the grey and cloud-filled sky. Off camera, Chris grunts with effort, the image swings, and he continues to narrate with excitement.

  “Can’t you turn the sound down, darling? The whole restaurant is listening and Pietro is throwing us dirty looks.”

  Her mother’s request sits at the periphery of Rachel’s awareness, unprocessed as she continues to stare down at the screen, absorbed by the footage. If this is staged, then it is brilliantly done. It ends with the start of the outboard motor then the camera focusing on the beach and an oddly deformed figure in fuchsia rags squatting at the edge of the water. “This is huge!” Chris says, talking once again to camera. “They’re all in on it. They must be. Bloody liars. Goddamned bloody liars.” As the wind catches at straggling blond hair beneath Christopher’s camo
beanie, an unearthly howl pierces through his tumbling words and the outboard’s noisy engine.

  “Bravo, Chris,” Rachel mutters to herself. Whatever Chris Miller is up to, it is genius. “Fucking well done!”

  “Darling!” her mother reprimands.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The band around his neck vibrates as he walks towards the open door. On the floor is a bowl; the stench of the bloody meat is intoxicating, and his stomach growls with the pain of hunger, his mouth watering. Sinking his teeth into the firm flesh, feeling the clotting blood running down his throat, would be an ecstasy. He squats beside the bowl, every instinct urging him to sink incisors into the liver, kidneys, and heart that sit at its centre. He moves away, sitting against the wall, and waits for her to open the panel.

  The scent of blood is an agony as he sits. The panel opens and he meets her eyes again. This time she speaks.

  “You need to eat, Max.”

  The words are indecipherable, but the sympathy in her voice is clear.

  “You’ll starve if you don’t eat,” she croons. “Come on now, Max.”

  Memories of Laura rise; curled in their nest of ferns, sheltered from the wind by the branches he had gathered, her cheek nuzzling the first child that had slipped from between her legs. The second at her swollen breast, its mouth sucking at her nipple. Rage rises. He pushes it down, and instead holds out a hand to the woman.

  This time she holds his gaze. “I’m sorry, Max. I don’t know what you want.”

  He rises, takes a slow step forward, still holding her gaze. She doesn’t slam the panel shut like last time. He forces his tongue to form words, but only low and moaning babble fills the room. Frustrated, he snaps his jaws. Startled, the woman pulls back.

  “Sorry!” He forces his tongue around the words. “Please,” he says, “Please help me.” The cage fills with unformed noise.

  The woman’s eyes glisten. “I can’t stand this,” she whispers.

  “Katarina,” Max tries again. “Help me.”

  “Oh, Max. I am so, so sorry.” She wipes a hand across her cheek, the tears wetting her skin.

  He chances another step closer. Her scent rises above the stench of offal in the bowl. He slips clawed fingers through the mesh. He begs again. “Please ... help!” he repeats as he picks up particles of her breath and sweat. The scent of her fear rides the air between them, and his mouth waters as he notices her pulse throb at the base of her throat. She places a tentative finger on his, and strokes with a downward movement from his knuckle to the tip of his fingernail.

  “Oh, Max. What Marta has done ... it is all wrong.”

  He makes a low mewl. She strokes his fingers. Tears roll freely down her cheek. “You eat the food, Max, then go back to your room.”

  Her scent is overpowering, the need to sink his teeth into her veins as they throb with blood almost overwhelming, but he pulls back and returns to the dark room, leaving his food untouched.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Grimchester Zoo Cafeteria, England

  Palms lukewarm and damp, Dr. Peter Marston wipes them down his green, zoo-issue, trousers as he sits in the cafeteria waiting for her. It has been almost three years since they were last together, and her call had been an unwelcome, sphincter-contracting surprise. He had only agreed to the meeting out of curiosity, and to get out of the office and away from the smell of gorilla, desert fox, lima, iguana, ground squirrel, porcupine, and – the list goes on – wart hog faeces. As fourth zoo veterinarian, a post he is vastly over-qualified for, his main duties are sampling the copious and continual stool samples sent in by the keepers anxious to check on the health of the animals in their care, but at least the job is low-pressure and gives him the head-space to continue his own research. Getting his papers published is the only thing keeping him going after the catastrophic failure at Kielder, and his subsequent inability to gain employment commensurate with his experience.

  Of late, the amount of iguana faeces has increased disproportionately, and he suspects that their keeper, Marlon Briggs, a narrow-shouldered younger man with sandy hair and, it had to be admitted, magnificent ginger beard, had the hots for him. Coupled with Marlon’s stutter when talking to Peter, and the blush rising to his cheeks when he shoved another packet of poo into his waiting hand, Peter had become sure that was the case. Embarrassed by the man’s attentions, but too polite to say anything in case he is wrong, Peter had continued to take the samples and be polite. However, the bunch of flowers that had arrived on his desk this morning with a mysterious card marked merely with ‘M. x’ had made Peter’s hands tremble, and not with excitement. He would have to broach the subject and let Marlon down as gently as he could, telling him that his sexual proclivities were entirely on the straight and narrow. Perhaps, and Peter shudders with fear once more, the meeting with Marta would help to get the message across; her attentions had always been friendly bordering on inappropriate, some would call it sexual harassment, and he’d been relieved when she’d zoned in on Max Anderson as her prey of choice. Sweat beads at his temple as he remembers Max, and the ‘accident’ that had ended their careers, and he wipes at the liquid with his green, zoo-issue, shirtsleeve. After the flowers, Peter has determined that if Marta is as ‘friendly’ as she always had been, then he would reciprocate in the hope that the gossip would get back to Marlon.

  His guts ache, and he wipes damp hands down his trousers once more. In the next second, she’s there, standing in the doorway, pushing dark sunglasses from her face into her hair, the sweep of bright blonde a halo around her head. She looks every inch the high-powered executive in her dark trouser suit with its pinched-in waist. She stands in stark contrast to the mothers with their lumpy middles, saggy breasts, and baggy t-shirts standing in the line choosing which sandwich, ‘jam’ or ‘ham’, little Jace, or Jaycee could have in their picnic box, or the chunky zoo staff in their unflattering polo shirts. They were like nurses, he had often thought, expanding in size to fill their uniforms as the months, then years, wore on.

  The table knocks against his legs as he stands with a start, and the dirty coffee cup slides with its saucer across the melamine surface. Marta zones in on him, raises a hand to wave, then strides forward, an Amazonian among pygmies as she calls ‘Peter!’ with a flash of super-white teeth. Nowhere in the scientific community is there a woman quite like her, at least not to Peter’s knowledge.

  He thrills at the look of genuine pleasure gleaming in her eyes as they meet, and takes her proffered hand, bending to the pressure as she pulls him in, and exchanges ‘air-kisses’ European style. Ease washes over him as his fears dissipate; she is happy to see him, has forgiven him for the mistakes. She pulls back and locks her eyes to his. “Peter! ... It has been too long.”

  “Three years, Doctor Steward.”

  “Now, Peter, you know you can call me Marta!” Her teeth gleam. “Let’s sit.” She continues and pauses slightly before reaching for a chair.

  “Sorry!” Instantly on the backfoot, Peter pulls the chair out, pushing it beneath her as she sits.

  “Such a long drive from the airport. I have been travelling for hours to see you.”

  “Sorry!”

  She coughs as though her throat is dry.

  “Sorry! I should have asked. What can I get you to drink?”

  She glances at the board with its chalked products and prices. Peter follows: ‘... orange squash £0.97; cola £1.25; Fruit Shoot £1.50; pot of tea £2.75 ...’

  “Do they have Perrier here?”

  Peter scans the sign searching for the specific brand of bottled water. “No, sorry, but they do have other makes.”

  “It’s fine,” she replies with an air of martyrdom. “I shall have the tea. You do remember how I like it, don’t you?”

  He searches his memory; remembers an image of her sitting in the orangery at Kielder Institute. On the table is a delicately patterned china tea cup complete with saucer, a slice of lemon floats in the brown liquid. “Yes!” he says with triu
mph. “Black with a slice of lemon.”

  She nods her approval, places her over-large leather bag on the seat beside her, then strokes his hand as he takes a step towards the serving counter. He offers a broad grin, warmth spreading; he’s still one of them, part of the elite, despite his current difficulties.

  Minutes later, black tea sans lemon – ‘we don’t do that kind of tea, here’ – plus a café latte grande for himself carefully balanced on a tray, he manoeuvres back through the tables. Marta is positively glowing as he returns; immaculate, relaxed, completely in control. Before her, flattened on the table, is a stapled sheaf of A4 papers.

  “I printed it off, Peter, so that I could give it the attention it deserves.”

  “Oh?” he glances at the pile as she returns the front page. It’s his latest research paper, the one he’d had published in the Journal of Bioengineering.

  “Your research is outstanding Peter. Congratulations!”

  His shoulders broaden. “Thank you! I had no idea you read that journal.”

  “Ah, Peter, now you know I’ve always been interested in your work; it’s why we were at Kielder together, remember?”

  He catches his breath. Here it is; the accusations. He scans her face; nothing but genuine admiration. His shoulders relax and the sudden tightness across his chest eases. “Well-”

  “Your article on the application of next generation sequencing in mammalian cell engineering via Cbg8 protein transfection is fascinating.”

  A broad smile breaks across his face. “If I had the resources to continue that research, I’m sure I could have the breakthrough that is needed. Here,” he shrugs with a glance around the cafeteria, “my access is extremely limited.”

  She nods as though in complete understanding. “And if I told you that you could have access to all the resources you need?”

  “Well,” he laughs, “then that would be incredible, but obviously-”

  “And what if I told you that I have a laboratory waiting for you, with all the equipment, staff, and raw materials that you require?”