Needing (8 page)

A rapid-fire shift of movement caught Oliver’s eye, and he saw the kid inside the cage Langham was working on dart forward. “Langham! Watch it!”

Fuck, that child’s eyes glowed, the pupils black slits in a circle of lurid yellow. Langham jumped back just before the kid crashed against the cage door, mouth open, teeth gnashing where the detective’s hands had so recently been on the padlock.

Langham stepped back, eyes wide. “He was…he was going to
bite
me!”

Oliver’s heart hammered, and his legs went weak. They needed to get the hell out of here—and now. Something else was about to go down if they didn’t leave this place. Them being down here had clearly upset the kids. Who knew, if they were angry enough, whether they could break out of those cages and attack. He wasn’t sure what urged him to grab Langham and propel them up the stairs, but he wasn’t about to hang around down there to analyse it.

Out on the street, breaths shunting from them in staccato bursts, Langham called for back-up. Despite there being kids in that basement, leaving them there didn’t make Oliver feel guilty. They weren’t kids anymore. They were something…else. Something feral, all humanity stripped out of them by experiments he didn’t want to know the ins and outs of. It was all too fucked up to contemplate. The sooner they found Alex, the better, then they could get a warrant to search PrivoLabs and put this hateful case to bed.

Chapter Seven

Shields and other cops had shown up within minutes of Langham making the call. The big, greasy bastard strolled towards them, a smug smile filling his fleshy face as though he thought them a pair of wimps for not remaining in the basement—faggot wimps at that. Yeah, Oliver saw that on his face, too, and he wanted to kick the shit out of the hateful motherfucker for it.

“So there are kids down there, then?” Shields asked.

Stupid of him, really, when Oliver had heard Langham tell him over the phone, but that was just the kind of guy Shields was. Arsehole extraordinaire.

“Kids with glowing eyes,” Shields said, not bothering to hide the disbelief in his voice. He raised his hands and waggled his fingers. “Oooh, glowy-eyed kids that fly at you with intent to bite. Nasty business, that. I’ll have to go down there and give them a good telling off.”

“Be my fucking guest,” Langham snarled, striding towards his car. He shouted back, “And if they chew your damn fingers off, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He got in his car, and Oliver moved to join him.

“Uh, you stay right there, freak.” Shields gripped Oliver’s wrist. “You two fucking each other’s arses?”

Oliver clenched his teeth, cursing the blush of anger that swarmed over his face. Shields would take it as a sign of embarrassment, of Oliver cowering down to the big man. He wasn’t having any of that. “Why? D’you fancy a cock up
your
arse? You asking just in case I’m free with my favours, is that it?”

Shields released Oliver’s wrist as though he’d been tainted by the touch. “Fucking dirty little pervert. Get the fuck away from me.”

“Be damn glad to, you nasty bastard. Oh, and watch those kids down there. They’re poised to attack.”

“Yeah, right. They probably sensed you two are bent. Didn’t like it so went for the kill.”

“Whatever, arsehole.” Oliver walked away, anger at Shields seeping out of him the farther away he got. The moral side of him made Oliver turn to warn the cop again not to go down those stairs, but Shields had already disappeared inside the house. The man wouldn’t listen even if he followed him inside and tried to make him take heed. He continued walking, but instead of heading for Langham’s car, he approached a cop standing guard on the pavement.

“Shields really shouldn’t go down in that basement,” he said. “Those kids…they’re going to hurt him, but he won’t listen to me. Maybe you ought to make sure he doesn’t go down alone, make sure he doesn’t approach them until medical assistance arrives.”

He walked away only when the cop had entered the house. Inside the car, he hooked up his seatbelt and rested his head against the seat.

“Something’s going to happen, isn’t it?” Langham asked.

“Yep, but you warned him, I warned him and I just sent that cop there to warn him.”

“Are we arseholes if we drive away now?”

“Yep, s’pose we would be, but I did all I could, so I refuse to feel bad. He said some nasty shit to me just then. Said some cruel stuff to you on the phone. Okay, he doesn’t deserve what he’ll get if he goes down those stairs, but fuck, he’s so stubborn, so
right
all the damn time, that no amount of pleading from me was going to change his mind.
Especially
pleading from me. He hates my damn guts.”

“So we’ll stay?”

“Yep.”

“Clean up the mess afterwards?”

“Well, I don’t know about cleaning up the mess—it’s going to be pretty bloody down there if they bite his hands off—but yeah, we’ll stay to sort it out.”

Langham sighed. “I’m an utter bastard, and I’d only admit this to you, but I want to drive away.”

“Then drive.”

Langham sped up Saltwater Street, and Oliver refused to think about what could be happening to Shields right then. Sometimes things needed to be left up to fate.

“Where do we go now?” he asked, looking at Langham, who had the facial expression of someone hurt, angry and bewildered all at the same time. “Hey, you okay?”

“I will be once I forget about Shields. He isn’t worth wasting thinking time on, but you know what it’s like. He gets under your damn skin.”

“He does. I wonder if they’ve bitten him yet.”

“Probably.”

“He’ll be cursing us. That we warned him and he didn’t listen.”

“Good. A bit of humility won’t hurt him. Hey, if we’re
really
lucky, the arsehole might even apologise. Act differently towards you.”

“I doubt it.” And if he were honest, Oliver didn’t want Shields admitting he’d been wrong. He didn’t want anything more to do with the guy. That wasn’t an option, though. Even if he told the chief he and Langham were gay, and they weren’t allowed to work together anymore, Oliver would still be called in on cases. Might even be partnered with Shields. He shuddered at the thought. “What will we do if Shields tells?”

“I don’t think he will. He likes having people in the palm of his hand. Likes having something over them. We’ll do as we’re told as long as he keeps threatening us—he knows that.”

They lapsed into silence then, and Oliver eyed the scenery.

“Um, I take it we’re going to Privo, yeah?”

“Yep.”

“To do what?”

“Talk to the manager, the owner, whatever. Tell him we heard rumours, see what he has to say, check out his reaction.”

“But wouldn’t that be alerting him? Letting him know we’re onto him?”

“It’ll be all over the news shortly anyway. No way those kids being found can be contained. Someone will leak it to the press. Better we get to Privo before the owner sees the news and gets his story straight before we get to him.”

“Ah, so you
can
be a detective after all. You don’t really need me.” Oliver smiled, awaiting a sarcastic response.

“Fuck you, man.”

“Tonight?” Oliver flushed at his forwardness. That one word had tumbled out before he’d got his brain into gear.

“Uh, are you serious or fucking me about?”

Bolder now, Oliver said, “I’ll
fuck
you about, if you like. Any time.”
Where the hell did that come from?

Langham momentarily lost control of the car, and it swerved to the middle of the road. “Shit, don’t tell me stuff like that when I’m driving!”

“Sorry.”

“You will be. Especially if we crash and you break another finger.”

Oliver absently rubbed the bandage keeping his broken finger strapped to the one beside it. It ached like a motherfucker, but he hadn’t had much time to feel sorry for himself or wallow in the pain.

“My brother came for lunch.”

“Pardon?” Oliver said, unsure whether he’d heard the voice in his head right.

Langham sighed. “I said you will be if we crash and you break—”

“No, I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Right. Okay, I’ll keep quiet.” Langham gripped the wheel tighter.

Oliver prayed Mark hadn’t just managed to make a connection with one lousy sentence that told him jack shit. He closed his eyes and waited.

“My brother. Alex came to lunch where I work. I’m—I was an accountant. That’s why… Louise, that’s her name… That’s why Louise was filing, why she found the notes. They were in PrivoLabs’ papers. She showed them to me, and I rang Privo, let them know we had something that didn’t belong in their account file.”

“And?”

“I went back to work and did a bit of digging. Asked this lab technician I know at Privo to keep an eye out, see what was going on. Told him what was on the note. He said it was about a new drug he’d been testing. That it wasn’t ready yet.”

“Oh, God.”

“Next day, some guy I hadn’t seen before, from Privo, turned up when I was eating lunch in the courtyard outside my work with Alex. The guy, he said he needed the note, and I gave it to him—had it in my inside pocket, didn’t I. Anyway, after he’d gone, Alex started asking questions. I told him what the note had said, what the lab guy said, and…”

“And what?”

“He wanted to blackmail them. Said he’d make some money out of them. That he’d threaten to go to the papers. So after he left, I went back inside and rang the lab technician again, but…”

“But what? Mark? Mark? Shit. You still there? Tell me what happened then?”

“I guess they got to Alex. Fed him those meds.”

“Yeah, that much is pretty damn obvious. Fuck, I didn’t mean that to sound so nasty. Who’s the technician?”

“Ronan Dougherty, lives in the flats above the corner shop on Kater Road, but I can’t—couldn’t—get hold of him. His phone rang off the hook.”

“Fuck.”

“I think—”

“Yep, me too.”

“Alex…”

“Yep, he’s probably paid the tech a visit already.”

“He wasn’t like that before. Not mean like he is now.”

Oliver shielded his thoughts. If Alex was willing to resort to blackmail, he wasn’t your average kind of guy. Anyone who could hatch a plan pretty damn quick like that and go off to make it happen… Yeah, Alex was a bad lot, no mistaking that—the drugs had just made him worse. Privo had him under their control, offing everyone who knew about what they were doing. It was only a matter of time before Alex got to him and Langham.

“Anything else?” he asked Mark.

Silence.

“Mark?” Oliver waited.

No response.

“Well?” Langham demanded.

“We’re next on the damn list. Got to be.”

“What, Alex’s list?”

“Yeah, and after we’ve been to Privo, we need to go back to Louise’s field. Mark’s body is still there, remember?”

Langham handed Oliver the radio. “Sorry to do this to you, but ask for Shields. If he can’t come to the phone, we know he’s been bitten.”

Oliver stifled a smirk. “So I’m telling him, or whoever, where Mark is?”

“Yeah, make out you’ve only just been told. If they find out about the time lapse, we’re fucked.”

He made the call, was put through to Shields, who never mentioned whether the kids had got to him or not. He wouldn’t want to lose face, but they’d know soon enough. Shields said he’d head over to the field now and asked that Langham report to him once they’d been to Privo.

Oliver put the radio back on its clip and asked Langham, “Why did Shields ask that you report to him? He’s not above you in command, is he, so…?”

“Like I said, he wants people in his pocket. He knows I’ll know exactly what he means by telling me to report to him. It’s a game to him, but for fuck’s sake, it’s our damn
lives
he’s fucking with. Emotions.”

“Doubt he’d know what they even were, emotions. Don’t reckon he has any. Not loving ones anyway.”

“You might be right there. Come on, we’re here. Time to question whoever’s in charge of this fucked-up place.”

Inside the building, Oliver expected to feel some familiarity, but he didn’t. The plants had gone—some soil was still scattered around the base of the pots—and one sofa was missing. He glanced at Langham, who had noted the change too, and they walked up to the desk.

The receptionist looked at them with fear in her eyes, and her mouth worked like she wanted to tell them something but struggled to get the words out. “C-can I help you?”

“We need to speak with the owner, the director. The person in charge here.”

“Mr Jackson isn’t available at the moment. We had a…” She stared ahead at the space where the sofa had been. “An unhappy visitor an hour ago, so Mr Jackson is…indisposed.”

“Indisposed in what way?” Langham asked, producing his badge. “Is he ill? Not here?”

“No, he’s here, but he said—”

“I don’t care what he said. I need to speak to him.”

The receptionist widened her eyes at Langham’s tone and maintained eye contact as she reached out for the phone. She dialled without looking at the keypad and jumped when someone answered. “S-sorry. Yes, I know you said… There are detectives here.” She eyed them keenly. “Yes, that’s them… Oh, right. Well, I’ll send them up, then.”

Oliver’s stomach muscles tautened. He wasn’t stupid. Mr Jackson had described them to her, knew they’d be on their way, that a visit from them was due. This didn’t bode well, and if the push inside his brain was anything to go by, spirits were trying to warn him that something wasn’t right.

“Mr Jackson will see you now,” she said, pasting on a fake smile. “Use the elevator. Top floor, the only office up there.”

“Thank you,” Langham said, striding towards the double silver doors of the elevator. He jabbed the button and tapped his foot.

Oliver smiled at the receptionist before joining the detective, whispering, “He knows.”

“Yep.” Langham flexed his jaw.

“How are we going to play this?”

“Don’t speak.” He stepped inside the elevator and glanced up into the top corner.

Oliver followed him and his gaze. A camera studied them.

“Right,” Langham said, clearing his throat. “We’ll alert Mr Jackson about the ridiculous rumours circulating about his company, then we’ll go to that corner shop where we got those microwave curries from before, you know where I mean?”