Instinct (2010) (3 page)

Laura leaned back in her chair. ‘I don’t know, Mr
Bishop. The position does sound intriguing, but I’m not sure my part-time involvement would really suit either of us.’

Bishop nodded. ‘I know that what I’m suggesting here is quite an undertaking, but if I may, there is one more thing which I hope can persuade you at least to come over and take a look at our set-up.’ Carefully, he placed his briefcase on his lap, rotated the numbers of the combination lock and eased open the lid. Then he slowly brought out a large specimen jar and handed it to Laura as if it were an unexploded bomb.

At first she didn’t see the significance. The contents looked like a thick twig, slightly distorted by the surrounding formaldehyde. She looked up at Bishop’s encouraging expression and thought she must be missing something, something that deserved another look. She peered closer. The top of whatever it was looked familiar, but it couldn’t be what she thought it was. That would be impossible, but …

What else could it be?

‘Is this real?’

‘Absolutely. I assume I don’t have to tell you what it is.’

‘No, the junction of the coax and trochanter is quite distinctive. But it can’t be a wasp’s leg. The insect would have to be the size of …
a rat
.’

Bishop gave the moment a little room before answering. ‘Dr Trent, we are backed by quite substantial funding and expertise. Are you sure I can’t interest you in a visit to our facility?’

Laura turned the jar around, examining the leg from every angle. The tibia was so clear she could make out the hairs that covered it like thorns on a rose stem. She was momentarily lost in imagining its owner.

‘How big is the body?

‘Big enough that I couldn’t hope to bring it into this country without creating an international incident. A leg wouldn’t be quite so provocative. So can I take that as a yes, you’ll at least pay us a visit?’

Laura placed the jar on her desk. ‘Well, I suppose with enough notice I can leave my experiments in good hands and arrange for Andrew’s grandmother to look after him for a few days. Perhaps I could clear things for the end of next month.’

Bishop’s ingratiating smile flattened.

‘I was hoping you’d join us sooner than that. The sudden departure of our head entomologist has left us in a very difficult position. Is there no way you could come sooner? I’m actually thinking of the next few days.’

‘Oh no, I’m afraid that’s out of the question. I couldn’t possibly find anyone to look after Andrew at that short notice.’

‘Dr Trent’ – Bishop’s tone hardened – ‘we’d be able to arrange for Andrew to be taken care of. We’d make sure you were adequately compensated. We could even make a donation to the budget of this facility. This is very important to us, and speed is of the essence. I’d really rather not leave without some sort of commitment from you.’

Bishop’s change of attitude left Laura feeling as if the temperature in the room had plummeted.

‘I … understand, Mr Bishop, but I just can’t do it. There’s too much to organize, and I don’t think I’d be able to manage it all in time.’ She stood up and handed the leg back.

Bishop stood, too. ‘Please think about it carefully, Dr Trent.’

‘I will. Of course I will. Now, I’m very sorry, but there are a couple of things I have to finish up before I leave for the day. If you’ll excuse me.’ She offered her hand.

Bishop shook it, fixing Laura with a look that left her in no doubt as to the extent of his disappointment.

‘Thank you for your time.’

Laura watched him hurry back down the corridor, a mobile phone pressed to his ear.

In a sweaty clearing eighty miles east of Venezuela’s Yapacana National Park, a matt-black C-27J Spartan cargo airplane squatted like an enormous moth. The surrounding area consisted of thick jungle, too dense to be populated by people but a fine home for some of the more obscure animals of the South American peninsula.

Where the west side of the clearing became trees there was a white building the size of a cottage which looked inadequate for the enormous aircraft it served. It was manned by a soft-bellied twenty-two-year-old African American called Taj, who spent most of his waking day at a white desk just behind the outermost of four security doors.

Three male and two female soldiers were carrying large boxes of equipment back and forth between the plane and the building. The scene was not unusual here, they loaded up the aircraft once or twice a month, but there was a feeling amongst the team that made today’s preparations very different: the incident two days earlier had got to them all, and now every break gave rise to heated conversations which caused any downtime to last much longer than usual.

The process was further lengthened by the absence of Carter and Webster. They missed Carter’s 200 lbs of
muscle; he would shift those crates as if they were eggboxes. They were also without the smoothing effect of Major Webster’s unquestioned leadership. In his absence, the command fell to Captain Van Arenn, and he was still simmering about what had happened.

‘Yo, Cap, you want to get this shit loaded or what? I’m wheels up in two hours twelve minutes, and it don’t look like you’ll even be halfway done by then.’ Gary Madison, a mercenary pilot who was unaware of the two deaths, was growing impatient. He did not know that pressing Captain Van Arenn in this way was unlikely to get the loading done any faster.

‘Madison, talk to me like that again and I’ll wipe your nose across your face,’ said Van Arenn evenly. ‘The job will get done. In the meantime we, meaning the proper soldiers, have shit to discuss, so step back and shut the fuck up.’

Madison knew that, whatever happened, they needed him to pilot the Spartan. ‘Proper soldiers? You mean a bunch of shitcake wash-ups who couldn’t hack it in the real army? Load my fucking plane, dickwad.’

The soldiers turned with menace to face Madison, but this was Van Arenn’s call, so the next move was his. He smiled to himself before walking towards a surprisingly calm Madison.

‘Hey, Van Arenn, you know I’ve got to fly this thing, so best keep your dumb grunt paws off me.’ They all knew, deaths or no deaths, that nothing stopped the mission. Once it was in motion it followed its schedule to the minute or bad things fell from on high.

Van Arenn thought for a moment.

‘When did you say we were flying? Two hours?’

Madison nodded, fear rippling his face.

‘That’ll give you just enough time to recover from this.’ He dropped his right hand to Madison’s khaki shorts, grabbed hold of whatever he could and twisted until Madison screamed, choked and felt every blood vessel in his face bulging through his skin. When Van Arenn loosened his grip, Madison slid down the side of the loading ramp and collapsed on the ground holding his sore, sore balls. The other soldiers laughed in appreciation while Sadie Garrett walked up to high-five her friend and spit on Madison.

‘OK, everybody.’ Van Arenn raised his voice. ‘Fucktard here is right: we do got to load this machine. Let’s get it done quick and meet up in the barracks if anyone else needs to talk things through.’

After an hour lost in pheromone biosynthesis, Laura checked her watch and saw that it was time to pick Andrew up from school. She would take him home, cook his tea and wait for her mother-in-law, Carol, to come to look after him for the evening. Every second Thursday was Laura’s night to play bridge with three old schoolfriends, but they rarely went anywhere near a pack of cards, preferring instead to drink martinis and discuss unsuitable men to set each other up with.

She swapped her white lab coat for her beige mac and headed towards the car park. Reaching the doorway, she finally noticed the rain, which had been growing heavier as the afternoon continued. By now it was coming down hard enough to persuade Laura to cover her head with a couple of pieces of junk mail and half-run across the car park to her seven-year-old Ford Mondeo. Inside, she switched on the heater to drive out the solid cold. She sat for a moment, a long exhale marking the short time when nobody was depending on her to be responsible, then she started the engine and pulled out into the high street.

The heavier the rain, the heavier the traffic, so the ten-minute journey to Andrew’s school took fifteen and was accompanied by the whining mechanics of
her windscreen wipers dragging across the glass. Many of the parents had already been and gone and she was able to park right by the front gates. From there she could see the wide brick shelter that served as assembly point for fire drills and wet-weather outdoor-play area. It was also where children waited for their parents if it was raining or windy.

Laura squinted through the raindrops on the car window and saw that the shelter was empty. She gave a small sigh. Andrew knew this was bridge night, and that it meant that she liked to get home as early as possible. That way she didn’t have to apply make-up and straighten her hair in front of her mother-in-law. There was something about doing that which felt disrespectful and Laura was keen to avoid the guilty mood it put her in before she left her son and went to get tipsy.

After five minutes waiting in the car, Laura looked at her watch for the ninth time and decided to go and look for Andrew.

As a former pupil of the school, it always took her a minute to adjust to the sights and smells that were so evocative of her daily life thirty years ago. Low coat hooks, enthusiastically colourful paintings and the stale odour of mass catering combined in a wave of nostalgia that made her forget for a moment why she was there. Turning a corner, she found herself standing by the open door of her old form room and couldn’t help pausing to look inside as a thousand memories seeped through her. The distraction made it all the more surprising when a hand landed gently on her shoulder.

‘Hello, Mrs Trent. What’s Andrew forgotten this time?’ It was Miss Halliday, Andrew’s form teacher.

‘Oh … er, hello …’ Laura could never remember the teachers’ names. ‘Nothing as far as I’m aware, but he wasn’t by the gates when I came to pick him up so I assumed he was inside somewhere.’

Miss Halliday, sweetly plump and middle-aged, dressed in a twin-set of muted earth tones, with spectacles that lay on the soft shelf created by her large, low bosom, looked confused.

‘That’s odd. I definitely saw him leave around home time. I had to remind him not to run in the hall, so the moment did rather stick with me.’

Laura and Miss Halliday both let the same thought blunder into their minds while simultaneously trying to keep it at bay.

‘Well, I’m sure he’s around somewhere, but just to be certain I’ll alert the other members of staff who are still here and we’ll search the premises. He’s probably in the loo, somewhere like that.’

Laura smiled. It was too soon to be worried. ‘Yes, probably.’

They began to search: Laura, Miss Halliday and several other teachers who broke off from their marking to help. The school was small, so everyone bumped into each other as they checked the same classrooms, toilets, cupboards and outside buildings. When they passed Laura she gave them each a smile of awkward gratitude before continuing down the corridor. The encounters felt like increasing constrictions around
her. She looked forward to each one, hoping it would bring the final good news of Andrew’s discovery, but as it failed to do so she found those smiles shrinking.

The situation perturbed her, but rather than expecting the worst, which she would have done if Andrew had been several years younger, she tried to think of a convincing explanation for what had happened. He was too old to be taken in by a stranger with a bag of sweets, and too bright to be unaware of the consequences of failing to meet his mum when he was supposed to. If something unexpected had come up which meant he couldn’t be there, he had an emergency fifty-pence piece and her mobile number.

Now that twenty minutes had elapsed, Miss Halliday stood by the assembly hall and stopped each member of the search party as they came past. Laura was last to return. From the looks she saw on the teachers’ faces, she decided not to ask the question for fear of having to hear the answer.

‘OK, what do we do now?’ she asked quickly.

‘First, there’s no need to panic,’ said Miss Halliday.

‘I’m not panicking. I just want to know what we need to do to make sure Andrew is OK.’ The tension in Laura’s voice was unmissable, accelerating each word as it crossed her lips.

‘Right, well, we call the police and explain what has happened,’ said Miss Halliday, trying to combine calmness with drive, and kindness with efficient detachment. ‘We have a recent picture of Andrew from the class photos, which we will email to them. You should go
home so we, or the police, know where to contact you. You can also telephone his friends from there.’

‘Right. Yes, thank you.’

Miss Halliday looked gentle but serious as she took Laura’s hand. ‘Something similar to this happens about once a month and we’ve yet to have a significant problem.’ She looked at the other teachers, who helpfully nodded their confirmation.

‘Yes,’ repeated Laura, distracted by the brightness of the powder-blue veins on the hand holding hers. ‘I’m sorry, I just …’ She said a single thank you to all of them, then hurried out of the study and back through the worsening rain to her car.

Driving home, she refused to let herself indulge in morbid speculation or self-pity. To keep her mind clear, she said her driving actions aloud. ‘Change to second gear … slow down approaching junction … indicate right …’ However, when she pulled up at the traffic lights three streets away from her home, she stopped speaking and covered her face with her hands. Even when the lights changed and two cars behind started blaring their horns, she took a little while to stare straight ahead through the formless shapes made by the rain falling on the windscreen, then continued her journey as if nothing had happened.

She concentrated on remembering that Andrew was a clever, confident boy who knew that his absence could cause trouble. There had been that time five years ago when she thought she’d lost him at the boat show in London, but he’d managed to find his way to the
people at the PA desk and got them to call for her within a few minutes. Then again, he was not thoughtless enough to miss her at the school gates and just go home on his own without telling her. The one time she turned up half an hour late and was unable to call the school because the credits in her phone had run out, he had known to go back inside and wait for her there.