Deep Shelter (38 page)

“Why?”

“I need to know.” Belsey glanced around the study as if something might tell him—the old books on anthropology, ritual, nature;
Mankind and Community
,
The Psychology of Survival
. “The argument you were having with him when I was last here—you were asking him about his training. Was it about that period? The eighties?”

“No. Not at all. It was about Otto Brodsky. His Prague seminars. Just that. I don’t—”

“Prague?”

“Yes.”

“What about it?”

“This isn’t to do with me.”

“Tell me about Prague.”

“Joseph always said he was in Paris in the late sixties. But everything he wrote in that period echoes the early work of Otto Brodsky. And then I received evidence that Joseph studied with him, in Prague. He’s never spoken about it.”

“You’ve got that evidence with you?”

“Yes, I thought . . .” Hamilton looked for somewhere to rest his briefcase that wasn’t a corpse. He crouched down again, opened it on his knee and handed Belsey a smudged photocopy.
Akademie Psychoanalýzy
. It was an article written in Czech. Joseph Green’s name sheltered amid cramped columns of thick type, exposed by yellow highlighter.

“It’s a list of speakers from the 1967 Prague Congress,” Hamilton explained, still shaking. He glanced at Green’s corpse, too busy bleeding to contest its biography. “Joseph’s on the list. Guest of the Prague Psychoanalytic Study Group. That’s Joseph delivering a paper, see, followed by Otto Brodsky and Claudio Laks, of the Czechoslovak Institute of Psychiatry.”

“Where did you get this?”

“It was posted to me anonymously.”

“When?”

“About seven weeks ago.” Belsey did the maths. As he expected, seven weeks ago was just after Easton’s return from the Czech Republic. “Evidently someone recognised its value,” Hamilton said.

“What’s its value?”

“The encounter is clearly where he got everything—his whole approach to analysis. And, of course, conveniently for Joseph, very few analysts had the opportunity to study with Brodsky.”

“Because Czechoslovakia was communist.”

“Exactly. He went there and learnt to imitate a new approach. And when he returned, he passed the theory off as his own. Why else would Joseph be so quiet about his visit?”

“Because he was a spy.”

Hamilton adopted an odd smile.

“A spy?”

“He was recruited by the KGB. What did he say exactly when you presented him with this evidence?”

“He was furious,” Hamilton said, quietly.

Belsey looked around. Back from Prague, evidence in hand, Michael starts his sessions. And he knows—he knows from the start he is sitting opposite the man who killed his family. He bides his time, toying with his prey. But still wanting more. He needs to find out exactly what happened. He wants to know what Ferryman did, and how to get back there.

“Do you have any idea where Joseph was working in 1983?”

“Some provincial backwater. Working for the government.” The strange smile returned, like someone discovering they are the object of a joke.

“Working for the government?”

“A survey of welfare. He didn’t talk about it much. He thought it was unglamorous. It was where he met Rebecca.”

Again, lines from the case notes were returning to Belsey.
He begins asking questions about my family, my relationship with my wife, how we met
. Belsey imagined Michael here, session after session, getting closer.
He has been turning up for sessions either early or late. Today I arrive and he is sitting behind my desk
.

Belsey stepped over the corpse and sat in the doctor’s chair. There were the pencils, the files. There was the defensive wall of framed photographs. A girl on a bike, a sepia couple in their wedding clothes. Finally, in faded colour, a very young Rebecca Green. Belsey wiped the blood off the frame with his cuff. Rebecca stood by a gate with fields behind her. Young and beautiful. Stuck in a provincial backwater. The fields behind her were striped with shadows. The sun was low. The shadows stretched from standing stones.

The main stone was tall and thin. The other six were smaller stumps forming a crescent, like teeth in a jawbone. Belsey turned the desk lamp on. He followed the slope of the fields, past the stones, to the slate of the human habitation in the distance. Roofs clustered around a blunt church spire. Woods ran halfway up a hill above the village.

“What is it?” Hamilton asked.

“Piltbury.”

Belsey turned Green’s PC on. Here came the sirens, from the west, from Hampstead. He ignored them. He pulled up a map of Piltbury. There was the church, the high street, the hill with the holiday cottage. There were those blank, white spaces all around it. Belsey clicked to satellite view. From the air they weren’t so blank; you could see large sections of land fenced off, long, thin buildings at right angles to one another. You could also see that something wasn’t right with several houses on the edge of the village. Instead of roofs they had ventilation slats.

He found similar structures to the north, about a mile away. Then he spotted a third group, more than two miles south.

Belsey sat back. He stared at the screen, then the photograph. Michael gets behind the desk, sees the photo. A new theory emerges: his deep memories aren’t subterranean London after all. He locates the standing stones. Decides it’s time for a country break. In Piltbury he must have begun to realise the size of Site 3. That’s when he knows he has to find William Lanzer. He’s going in; he needs to know his way around.

Then it’s just a question of saying goodbye to the man who killed him and he’s off.

4:49 p.m. The front door opened.

“Joseph?”

Rebecca Green. Hamilton looked to the door, then to Belsey. Sirens turned onto the road.

“Joseph? Sweetheart?”

Belsey stepped over the body to the couch. He opened the window and sat on the sill. Hamilton stared at him. The poor bastard was going to have some explaining to do.

“Want to come through the window?” Belsey asked. The disciple shook his head. “Do Rebecca a favour and stop her getting in here. She doesn’t need to see this.”

Hamilton nodded. He didn’t move. Belsey jumped out.

THE POLICE ENTERED 12 WINDMILL DRIVE A FEW SECONDS
after Rebecca. Belsey held back until they were inside then ran to his car. The screaming from the house started as he began to drive.

Warm corpse. Easton had been there less than half an hour before Belsey arrived. There was only one quick route to Piltbury. Belsey kept a look-out for white vans, driving one-handed, ignoring the pain in his immobile right arm. He put his phone on speaker and called Wiltshire police as he swerved onto the M4, giving a description of Easton.

“Consider him armed and dangerous. He’ll be heading for Piltbury if he’s not already there. He has a hostage with him, a young woman. She’s called Jemma Stevens.”

“Piltbury?” They sounded incredulous. “We’re not getting any command-level instructions to that effect.”

“Well, all hell’s about to break loose. Someone should have told you.”

“Who is this?”

There was another call coming in. Belsey switched.

“Nick? It’s me, Kirsty.”

“Don’t tell me where you are.”

“I think I’m safe. Where are you?”

“On the M4. Can you get online?”

“Nick, you need to stop while you’re still alive. It’s a miracle we made it this far. I can get us help.”

“I need you to get a map of Piltbury up. It’s got Site 3 under it.”

“Piltbury?”

“There’s an underground railway from London to Piltbury. Easton had made Freedom of Information requests about the government purchase of rail track—track used for this connection. That’s how they would have got the government out of London. That’s the last resort—the move.”

He managed to open the road map on the passenger seat with one hand.

“I’ve got Piltbury,” Craik said.

“Can you see those fenced-off areas?” Belsey said. “With the long, narrow buildings?”

“The military bases.”

“Bases?”

“If that’s what you’re talking about. There’s a few of them. The closest is called Rudloe Manor. Hang on . . . It’s an RAF Communications and Command headquarters.”

“Where?”

“In Hawthorn. Then there’s Basil Hill Barracks half a mile to the east of that. Something called Piltbury MOD Computer Centre just north of the village. The place has more military business than civilian going on.”

Belsey balanced the map on his knees. He tried to navigate the village in his mind. He reached the pub. The Quarry House. It struck him now as a curious choice of name.

“In the village there’s a pub called the Quarry House. Where’s the quarry?”

“Wait. OK, I’ve got a history of the area. Yeah, it used to be all mining around there. Bath stone, first real rock as you head west from London. The mines are disused now.”

“Where were they?”

“Everywhere, by the looks of it. The core was in Spring Quarry to the south-west of Chippenham.”

“Where else? How far does it extend?”

“Well, there was a mine at Hudswell, one at Monkton Farleigh.”

Belsey pulled up on the hard shoulder, searched the map and found Hudswell and Monkton Farleigh. He got the area on satellite view on his phone. You could trace the mines by the vents. They extended west to Bath, east to Chippenham, down to Melksham in the south. If the bunker occupied the old mines, it was the size of a town. He thought of the blood map and began to adjust his sense of scale.

“How would you get down there, Kirsty?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“If you really felt you had to.”

“A vent.”

There appeared to be only one vent that wasn’t sheltered amid barracks. It was in a field just beyond a house on the outskirts of Piltbury itself. Hill View House.

“I think I know where he’s heading.”

He started the car, cut back onto the motorway.

“And you’re going to do this on your own?”

“No, I’m taking a lot of supportive friends with me. What do you think?”

“I think you’ll be in a great place for people to kill you.”

Belsey was trying to decide if there was anything else he needed to say—something honest, maybe a farewell. He lost reception before he thought of the words. It cut as he passed the sign for Piltbury.

THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE SKY. BELSEY
saw as he approached the village. The portion capping Piltbury was streaked with elaborate cloud formations. He thought, at first glance, that there was a fire somewhere, but the smoke wasn’t black, it was bright orange.

He took the turn-off and Piltbury was gone, lost in spreading orange clouds. Easton must have covered the area fast, setting off those Combat Effect flares. The smoke seemed to have at least five sources. It was expanding, rolling out across fields and narrow country roads, joining other clouds. It hung in trees, confused cattle.

Belsey wound his window down and heard a helicopter. It appeared a few seconds later, grazing the top of the smoke, too streamlined for police. As it got closer he saw it was an army Lynx, low enough for the machine guns to be visible. Welcome to Wiltshire. Michael had been right to take precautions.

A second helicopter joined it from the west, stirring up the smoke trails. Fumes started creeping into the car and Belsey wound the window back up. The orange pall was now swallowing cottages as it drifted southwest.

He drove on. Smoke congealed, smothering the world. Visibility reduced to a foot or so. There was a bellow of horn, then a green Bedford military truck filled his windscreen. Belsey skidded up the grass verge. Ten seconds later he passed a motorbike on the ground, a camper van in a ditch. Then a convoy of armoured personnel carriers tore past. The countryside was releasing its military.

He checked the mirrors. Someone was on his tail. A flatbed truck appeared from the haze. Its khaki-clad driver waved for him to pull over. Troops appeared at the entrance to the village cradling submachine guns. The soldiers started waving too. Someone had a megaphone:

“Stop now. Do not proceed. This village is closed.”

Belsey proceeded. How can you close a village? Objects loomed and vanished: civilian cars, a bus shelter. The police-band radio relayed orders for Wiltshire Police to stay away. Then it cut altogether. They’d jammed the signal. A third helicopter joined the first two, trying to slice through the expanding tangerine fog with a beam of light.

Belsey navigated blind. He aimed for Hill View House. Dogs barked from trees on either side. Red lights flashed on a temporary sign by the roundabout:
ROAD CLOSED
.

He drove past. Two armed men in overalls and respirators tried to block him, then dived out of the way. A bullet ricocheted off the undercarriage of the Skoda and took out his front right wheel. He slid down in his seat as a second smashed a wing mirror. Belsey careered past the church, narrowly missed the phone box and crashed into the woods by Easton’s old holiday home. He scraped to a stop with a branch bent against his windscreen. Ahead of him, wedged deeper into the trees, was a white Vauxhall Vivaro. Belsey grabbed the Webley and his torch.

The Vivaro’s engine was still warm to the touch, back doors open, packaging for detonation cord and explosives on the floor of the hold. Belsey stumbled on towards the cottage, following a trail of broken branches and scuffed ground. He ran past the cottage to the hillside, over the crest of the hill to what Belsey hadn’t seen last time he was here and could barely see through the orange smoke: high chain-link topped with barbed wire. Beyond it, built into the side of the rocky incline, was a small door into the grass.

The fence had been cut. Belsey ran for the gap.

The explosion threw him backwards. He found himself on the ground with soil and stone raining into his face. He covered his head. His ears were ringing. A black dot occupied the centre of his field of vision. Then it faded. As he got to his feet again he realised that some of the ringing was from alarms.

He crawled through the cut fence. Patches of grass smouldered, puddles of flame dotting the field. The hill itself had been torn open to expose concrete and metal. He could feel the heat coming off the fallen bricks. The air was even thicker now, dust mingling with the orange smoke. Broken lengths of wire hung across the newly ripped entrance.