Antman (33 page)

'They're like bloody ants!' muttered Laura.

'Pardon? I didn't quite catch that.'

'Oh nothing. I was just thinking about how similar the children are to Tom's ants when something disturbs the nest. How they all come rushing out when they've been disturbed.'

'But the school hasn't been disturbed.'

'No, it hasn't,' Laura mused half to herself.

'The bell.'

‘
What?'

'It's the bell,' said Helen. 'A signal. They respond to the signal.'

'Yes, the bell. Of course, I see. The bell has gone.'

'Laura, are you sure you're all right.'

Laura came back to the present with a bump, as there was a combined shout of 'Hi, Mum!' and a couple of small bodies cannoned into her.

*  *  *

Graver planned so carefully. On the outside he held his life together quite easily. He put on the disguise which gave him the safety to develop a nodding association with Helen and the children, from the most casual of bases. It was easy to wait until most of the students had gone down in the summer, trawl the agencies without giving a real address, and identify some property available in the locality of the Lovelace household for a reasonably short term let. Although they occupied a large semi-detached Edwardian house in Victoria Avenue, a street of similar houses in the Avenues conservation area of town, an increasing number were divided into flats. The surrounding streets both towards and away from town contained much smaller, terraced houses. After a good deal of hunting around, he found what he was looking for; a tiny, two up two down terrace off Ella Street, literally in the next street from the Lovelaces. Pretending to be an occasional local visitor, away from his family, he paid three months rent in advance for the house. He used it on odd occasions, well disguised so that nobody who knew him in his other life could guess his identity.

From the window of the tiny rear bedroom, the boxroom, he looked out casually. Sarah and Matthew played on the wide strip of grass bordering the ten-foot area to the rear of the houses in the avenue. Nobody was around who would overlook his vantage point and raise suspicions.

Graver took a garden seat and magazines and sat near the thin hedge to one side of the garden. Now he was less than a dozen feet from the two children. He played it slowly. It would take time to build up trust.

*  *  * 

Tom wondered how Chris was progressing with her inquiries. He was browsing through the rows of social insects books on the shelves in his office. It was difficult to envisage, but he supposed there was a precedent. The link with the present circumstances was tenuous. He had tried the memoirs of Bates on his explorations of the Amazon. He had an idea the nineteenth century explorer Paul Du Chaillu referred to army ants being used as a form of execution. The problem was how to source the reference.

Tom was walking down the corridor away from his office when the student buttonholed him. He didn't recognise her at first. He was preoccupied with many things, not least the chief inspector and the police investigation, but despite the fact that he was overdue for another appointment, he gave in to her request for a few minutes of his time.

'I shan't take up more than five minutes of your time, Professor Fortius,' she said.

'I'm all right for a few minutes, go ahead. I'm sorry, I can't place our last meeting.'

'Naomi Waterson. You may recall our meeting some time ago, when I applied to register for a PhD on theoretical aspects of evolution in the social insects.'

Once she started talking, he recalled her distinctive accent – strongly Texas or thereabouts, overlaid on what could be rural East Anglian dialect – and much of the background. She had applied in the first place to do research on debates between adaptationism and structuralism in insect evolution. Tom wasn't keen to take on research students, particularly in areas that diverted him from his main interest, and even more so when there wasn't the obvious prospect of research money trailing behind in addition to the personal bursary or scholarship. He'd referred her to Luis and then lost track of her. That must have been a couple of years ago.

'Since I first contacted you and you referred me to your colleague Dr Deakin, I've been away to the States and back again, for domestic and employment reasons. But all the time I've continued to read round the subject I originally proffered in my application and I’m even more committed to continuing with my PhD. One of the things I've done is to search the literature. Explorers from Darwin onwards, including Henry Walter Bates in the Amazon and Thomas Belt in Nicaragua, through to our contemporaries such as Edward Ilson, have considered ant communication and the question of whether ants have the power to reason. I see this as irrelevant. I'd like to rewrite the history of science of the social insects around the thesis that ants are physiologically programmed and their behaviour, genetically and chemically, is determined by this programming.'

'I'm sure this is interesting,' admitted Tom, 'but it isn't for me at this time. I'm sure there are many fascinating issues to be explored. You might even build your doctorate round it, though I have to say that there would be some formidable barriers to grapple with in the literature, because you'd be writing entirely theoretically. I tend to stick to working with research students who are carrying out experimental work, collecting data empirically and reflecting on that.'

'Look, Dr Fortius, I get the message. If I don't toe the methodological line in your department, no PhD.'

'I didn't say that.'

'You don't have to. All that crap in your publicity for the Research Centre and in your lectures, about encouraging broader and more imaginative ways of looking at research into the social insects. I have to tell you, Dr Fortius that – that – rather than succumb to your authoritarian ways of thought and research, I'd rather terminate my studies in your department and seek a more sympathetic university environment.'

'Anywhere in particular?'

'Professor Apthorpe thinks my work is very interesting.'

'I guess he would.' Tom couldn't keep the acid out of his voice. He and Apthorpe were at polar extremes of most debates about animal and insect communication and behaviour.

She was a free agent and could do what she liked. She sounded as oppressive as she was accusing him of being. As she marched off, Tom was thinking half-heartedly he should have been more positive, but his head was full of other matters. He shrugged as she pushed the swing door open and disappeared from view.

*  *  *

Graver recalled how he'd first been impressed by a tattoo when he saw that big lad who held them all to ransom in the children's home, seeing him so fearless and hard, with the tattooed emblem across his forehead. It was no guarantee, but the chance that a skilfully chosen and well executed design – not like some of those self-inflicted lash-ups you saw on lads' knuckles and arms, and the necklace round their necks – would confer on him some of those qualities of confidence and influence he most envied in boys who were bigger and stronger. It was years later, when he had money in his pocket, that he set out to find a tattooist, not immediately in the vicinity of his job, but a good hour away.

It was easier to decide to go to the tattoo shop than to go in when he arrived. He paced up and down the pavement, like many before him though he did not know it. Of course, that was only the beginning of the problems. When he finally plucked up courage to push open the strange, star-studded and otherwise decorated door, he entered a half-light world with the quality of a cavern, at the far end of which was the little semicircle of chairs where the waiting began. This gave him ample time to ponder and brood over all the options: whether to, where to, what to have, how large to have it, how much it would cost, how to do it the way he'd read in a magazine at the hairdresser's, which was so that each time you could have a bit more added to the motif.

As for the motif, he already knew what it would be, how the six legs would be arranged, the head, the attitude of the head, pointing forward, out of his chest, the jaws opened to their fullest extent, the fearsome mandibles of the soldier ant.

Graver felt tension. He had to relieve it. He had a purpose and was turning the possibilities over in his mind. His target in the present was the University. There were some technical problems he was still grappling with. He wasn't quite ready to cope with the two children, running about outside. The subjects of his experiments – that was how he regarded them at the moment – needed to be contained. But it was time to try two at once. He had enough anger to overcome his other less trustworthy feelings. It was necessary to remain strong once he'd started. So a more emotionally distant, but more accessible target must be taken next, the Dean of Biological Sciences at the University, Hugh Mackintosh, and his wife. An interesting duo. They should prove a suitable test of his resources.

Chapter 22

Janie wasn't in when Hugh arrived home. She had a huge network of people whom she constantly e-mailed, phoned and met up with. 'Probably visiting friends,' said Hugh out loud to himself. He was distracted by the task of pouring himself a whisky. It had been a stressful day at the University.

An hour passed, two hours. Hugh was increasingly concerned. Three hours later, there was still no word from Janie. Hugh was worried. It wasn't like her. He paced about the house for a further hour, at the end of which Tom rang from the office, about a detail of the budget which was niggling him. Hugh was clearly so distracted that Tom asked what the matter was.

Tom drove straight to Hugh's house, where he found Hugh wandering in a daze. After letting Tom in, Hugh tripped over the coal scuttle and nearly measured his length on the hearth; he was within a couple of centimetres of knocking himself out on the marble surround. He balanced precariously on one knee on the hearth, risking sparks landing on his trousers from the spitting log fire on the open grate.

Tom helped him over to the nearest armchair. 'Come and sit down,' said Tom, very concerned. 'I'll make you a cup of tea.'

Thunder prowled over the distant Wolds like a pack of wild dogs, hungry for prey. Tom went off to boil the kettle. The phone rang. Hugh pounced on the receiver.

'Hullo, thank God it's you, Janie. Where have you been?’

Tom stuck his head round the kitchen door and waved to attract Hugh's attention. 'Keep her talking,' he mouthed. 'I'll ring the police from the line in your study. Hopefully they'll trace the number.'

Janie's voice sounded faint. 'Hugh, can you hear me?'

'Janie, darling, are you all right?'

Another voice came onto the line and spoke quietly into Hugh's ear. 'Please, don't let anything happen to her,' Hugh begged.

'I'm giving you five seconds,' said the voice.

'Don't! Wait.'

There was rustling at the other end of the phone.

'Hullo, hullo!'

'Hugh.' The voice was weak. 'Is that you?'

'This is me, Janie.'

'You won't ever leave me, darling.'

'No, of course not.'

The tears flowed silently down his crumpled face.

'Come and take me home.'

'I will.'

'Tell me you're coming now.'

Tom was back in the room. Hugh covered the phone with his hand.

'For God's sake, what can I say?'

'Tell her you'll be there,' said Tom.

He took his hand off the mouthpiece.

'I'm on my way, darling.'

The phone clicked.

'Janie, Janie.'

The line was dead. Hugh's eyes were moist. He bit his lip and turned to Tom.

'What can I do? Did they trace the call?'

Tom shrugged. 'They'll ring and let us know.'

At that moment the phone rang. Tom walked to the hall and picked it up. There was a brief exchange. He replaced the receiver and came back.

'Damn.'

Hugh was beside himself with anxiety. 'Didn't they do it?'

'Not enough time, apparently.'