Birdkill (12 page)

Later on, exhausted and back on the whisky, she found her prisoners. The grim discovery made her smile, but gave her no pleasure beyond confirming when you think the worst of people they always manage to deliver.

Robyn waved her second class off. Five o’clock. She was exhausted and on top of the world. She grabbed her bag and went in search of Simon Archer. She found him in his study. ‘Take me down to the Sloop and buy me a drink now. This second.’

‘I can’t, I need to… Oh, what the hell. Fine. Done. It went well, did it?’

‘Martin Oakley is going to be trouble, but the rest of them are little loves. We had a whale of a time and all my fears are laid to rest like a terracotta army.’

He picked his car keys up from the desk. ‘Vivid symbolism, Ms Shaw.’

‘It’s in the job title, Mr Archer.’

*

Robyn woke at three, screaming. She floundered in the bed, the duvet and pillows soaking wet. She curled foetally to get the images out of her head, but this dream was staying there in glorious technicolour. They usually just left an impression of the Void and feelings of violation and death, but this one was stark fact, clear and shatteringly bright in her memory.

She gasped for breath, grabbed at the sheet for an anchor.

She tried to suppress it, to push it into the Void with the others, but it wouldn’t go. Someone was going down on her, she pumped her hips to bring herself up into the probing tongue flicking her. The lust was gorgeous. He raised his head, his lips gleaming with her moisture. It was Martin. He clambered up onto her, pinning her arms with her knees. He wiped his finger against his lips and ran it under both of her eyes, making tears of her own wetness.

Mariam stood by the ATM outside Sainsbury’s. The car park was busy, the crash and jangle of trolleys being put back into the long line nested in front of her and the shaking of the charity collectors’ money tins joined the sound of engines. A whiff of coffee reached her from the Starbucks and she promised herself a cup when she abandoned her position.

‘You waiting for this, love?’

Mariam shook her head. ‘No, you go ahead.’

‘Cheers. Nippy, innit?’

Rosy-cheeked and hunched up in her jacket, Mariam had to agree. The red bobble hat was pulled down over her ears, but even so she was freezing. She’d give him until quarter two and then that was it. He was ten minutes late already. She hopped from leg to leg.

The mobile buzzed in her pocket. ‘Hello?’ There was nobody there and she didn’t recognise the calling number. Irritated, she slid it back into her pocket. A hand slid around her shoulder and propelled her away from the ATM towards the petrol station. He was wearing Calvin Klein aftershave, a rich woody scent. Before she could even think of struggling or protesting, his low voice was in her ear. ‘Just keep walking with me and that’ll be lovely. Don’t go causing a scene. We’re going to get into my car and you’re going to forget everything your mummy told you about getting into cars with strange men.’

So this was Clive Warren. Secret Squirrel. ‘You’re hardly filling me with confidence here.’

‘Frankly, I couldn’t care about your confidence. Here. Get in.’

It was a black Jaguar. Mariam paused to stare across the roof at Warren. He was handsome, in his early forties. Leather jacket. A strong jaw, clean-cut with a scar above his right eye and short, brown hair. He scanned the car park. ‘Get in.’

She had barely fastened her buckle before they were moving, Warren checking his mirrors constantly. He took them around the roundabout and onto the entry ramp to the A316. Only when they were on the open road did he settle and cease his constant surveillance.

He drove fast, with a casual grace that reminded her of Robyn and her TT. ‘Okay. Start at the beginning.’

‘I’m a journalist. I work for the news website 3shoof. We specialise in the Middle East. Buddy Kovak approached our proprietor with an offer to share an archive of whistleblower material on US covert military operations in the region. We took it. We’re working through it alongside colleagues from the Guardian and Telegraph. It’s pretty hot stuff. One of the folders relates to a battlefield enhancement programme called Odin.’

‘So how does this involve me?’

The car was warm and Mariam unzipped her coat. ‘Buddy gave me your contacts. He said you were involved with Odin.’

‘I was part of the security team when they were based in Cambridge. I requested a transfer. I’ve had nothing to do with Hamilton or his work for years.’

‘A friend of mine is working as a teacher at the Hamilton Institute.’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘It’s a boarding school for gifted children attached to a research facility.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘What’s Hamilton like?’

He glanced at her. ‘Like?’

‘As a person. What drives him?’

‘How would I know? He headed up a military research programme I provided security for. I was in the army. That was what my unit did. I’m sorry I can’t help you further than that, Ms?’

‘Shadid. We didn’t get introduced, did we?’ My name is Mariam Shadid.’

Warren took the exit. They waited at the red light on the roundabout.

‘You’re Lebanese?’

‘Originally. My parents moved to the UK in the seventies. During the civil war.’

‘Lucky.

‘You know Lebanon?’

‘Not really.’

‘Go there with Hamilton, did you?’

‘Look, Ms Shadid, I’ve told you all I know. I’m sorry it wasn’t much, but Kojak or whoever he is was wrong to give you my name. I don’t even know where he got it.’

Warren drove back up onto the road they’d come down. Mariam reckoned she had about three minutes before they were back at Sainsbury’s. Time to get serious.

‘Probably from the archive.’ She dug into her bag and produced a sheet of A4 paper. ‘Who’s the third guy in the photograph?’

Warren glanced across at the image she was holding up to him.

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s you and Hamilton. You look pretty buddy buddy for someone who hardly knew him. The third guy’s a Yank, nobody else would chow down on a cigar like that. Three-star general type.’ She fancied there was a flicker in those cool eyes. ‘This picture was taken in Beirut, my hometown. You can see the Grand Serail in the background.’

‘No comment.’

‘From the archives we have, this image would date to between January 2012 and March 2014.’

‘I told you, I got out.’

‘I have a copy of your transfer request, you know that?’

‘So that proves it.’

‘Why did you ask to leave?’

‘You got the request, you tell me.’

‘It’s been deleted. The reason.’

‘Then no comment. Here we are. It’s been nice talking to you Ms Shadid, but I’m afraid our conversation ends here. If you attempt to contact me again, I shall file a complaint for harassment with the police which, I can assure you, they will take seriously.’

‘Very cool, Mister Warren. Did you get out when they started experimenting on prisoners from over the Syrian border? Is that when you got your cold feet?’

His knuckles on the wheel were like alabaster, but his voice was perfectly controlled, no hint of anger or tension in there. ‘Time to go.’

Mariam unbuckled and opened her door. She turned back to Warren. ‘One last thing. Does the name Tom Parker mean anything to you? General Tom Parker?’

‘He was Elvis Presley’s manager.’

‘No, wrong answer.’ She wagged her finger at him. ‘That was Colonel Tom Parker. General Tom Parker was a three-star general in the good ole US army, Mr Warren, and he played up the whole hard-bitten, crew-cropped cigar chomping tough guy thing like the big old ham he is.’

Warren’s cool regard faltered for an instant. Mariam leaned towards him, the faintest flit of his eye rewarding her for the button she’d thoughtfully undone before leaving the house. ‘He left the army, just like you Mr Warren. Only he went into politics. Did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘He’s a senator. He’s busy, too. He sits on the Joint Armed Services Committee, among other things. Shame you lost touch. You seemed so relaxed together back there in good old Beirut.’

‘Get out.’

EIGHT

Of Mysterious Domes

Robyn’s first week teaching at the Hamilton Institute had flown by, buoyed by glorious sessions in the classroom that were, she had to admit, enlivened for her by Martin Oakley’s marginalisation as he sulked and lashed out vocally in the face of the other kids’ evident enjoyment of her lessons. She had outgunned him twice in vicious verbal sparring matches that had been all the easier because she’d known she enjoyed the room’s sympathy. Beating down a kid would have given her no pleasure in the normal run of things, but Martin was clearly beyond a simple child, was a prodigious intellect with a nasty streak she found perhaps even a little daunting to even try and understand.

Several times she had reached out to him, only to have her overtures smacked aside and upended in her face. Any possible sympathy for him was, she had to admit, now lip service. She would have been happy had he announced he was leaving her class but, far from that, his attendance was punctual to the point of compulsive.

She sensed he had somehow been holding back, had something in reserve or check in the way that a man would put down his gun and offer to duke it out instead. That thought she preferred not to dwell on, because that was about sparrows and feeling her lips had been sewn up and was weird territory she wasn’t going to explore.

If there had been a true low point to the week, it would have to be the dreams. Twice they had left her feeling eviscerated and torn. Last night she had woken up screaming the place down and lay in her cold, damp sweat as the doorbell to her apartment rang.

She had taken to leaving the iPod playing downstairs in case it happened again.

The weekly staff drink at the Sloop was actually something she looked forward to. She wondered if Archer would be there. Two classes today, as every day. Her morning session was due and she sat at her desk in the little temporary classroom and grazed through the Guardian as usual.

They burst in, a clamorous little throng. ‘Morning miss!’

She waved at them. Martin brought up the rear and plonked himself down at the back of the classroom, his face like thunder. There was something feral about him, stripped back and famished.

‘Okay, so yesterday we looked at the conflicts between Islam, the Eastern Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. Anyone managed to get started on Gibbon?’

Jenny Wilson’s hand shot up. Claire Drummond was more hesitant, as usual. She dressed older than her sixteen years, plain jumpers and baggy jeans that disguised a figure that, Robyn suspected, was quite voluptuous. She had thick-rimmed glasses, her hazelnut hair tied back into a bun. A self-made frump with nondescript, flat shoes and yet her mind dazzled when she let it burst out of the brown restraints she tried to lay around it.

‘Claire. You seem unsure.’

‘It’s just that Gibbon’s so, well, racist. He’s the ultimate orientalist, seems all the time to be, well, patronising civilisations that clearly eclipsed the intellectual achievements of his own milieu.’

‘Granted. That’s the Victorians for you. And those attitudes persist today. But cut him some slack, it’s like I said back when we first met at the beginning of the week, you have the opportunity, perhaps the responsibility, to cut the quality of thought and research he represents away from the language and attitudes of our age and try to couch it in the attitudes of his own.’

‘But he’s clearly biased. It’s propagandistic.’

Robyn nodded to acknowledge her point and responded to John Appleby’s raised hand. ‘John.’

‘Was he conscious that he was documenting the perversion of Christ’s teachings by the Catholic Church? The convocation at Nicaea, for instance, was indefensible by any standard, ancient or modern. But as you say, in his time, that criticism would surely have been inflammatory?’

Robyn barely caught Claire’s doubling up, turning in time to see the girl sitting straight again but her skin bone white and her features taut. She glanced at Martin, the thin face focused viciously on Claire. He sensed Robyn’s regard and turned to her and she stared into the predatory little jet eyes down a tunnel. Claire slumped as if released from a strychnine-like tension.

Martin spat at her. ‘Gibbon was a fucking arsehole. A monkey. Gibbon.’

‘Brilliant, Martin. Is that a post-ironic attempt to show that intellect can be turned three hundred and sixty degrees and made to seem like stupidity or just a cry for help?’

‘Help? From what?’

She shrugged, blithe in the face of his spite and the clamp that seemed to be pressing against her mind, squeezing her like a bully would grip a weaker hand to make the other cry out.

Defiance and frustration made her lash out. ‘I don’t know. From your place on the spectrum, perhaps?’

‘Spectrum? That a Sinclair Spectrum, Plectrum?’

She shook her head in bemusement. The class waited it out, every single one of them eyes to the floor. ‘Why would you call me Plectrum?’

‘You’re pulling my strings, trying to make me resonate to your frequency, to play your tune. And it’s not happening. So you can stop picking.’

The pressure was blinding, she felt like her mind was a lump of meat caught in a strong hand, squeezed so blood and gristle squirmed through the great fingers. Pain coursed through her and yet somehow she coasted above it, another Robyn looking down on them realising she had known infinitely greater pain than this. She formed words in her mind, flung the thoughts at him like shards.

You want to hurt me? Really? You’ll have to grow up first, because I know what pain is and you don’t. It’s like everything else, you’re all intellect but there’s no experience there, my love. You can’t inflict pain until you’ve felt it, until you truly understand it. Not mentally. Physical pain is just brutishness. To inflict mental anguish, true pain you have to have been there. In fact, I’d be a bit worried about trying to pick on me, because I have known pain like you’d shit yourself to even comprehend. I’ve been broken like you wouldn’t even start to wrap your imagination around. And you don’t scare me one bit.