The Chosen Seed (31 page)

‘I saw the news,’ Dr Cornell said excitedly. ‘I don’t normally watch and I’m behind with the papers.’ Artie Mullins had laughed at that, looking at the mountains of newsprint filling several rooms of Freeman’s otherwise stylish house.

‘The man, Craven, this Angel of Death.’ Dr Cornell scrabbled around on the desk and pulled out a picture. ‘Is this him?’ He shoved it into Artie’s thick hands.

It was a faded newspaper cutting, the picture grainy and worn. How old was it – fifties? A car in the background certainly suggested so. Two men were standing in front of a skyscraper, smiling as they held up a piece of paper that was obviously the subject of the piece. Dr Cornell punched his finger at a figure behind them whose head was turned slightly away from the camera. ‘Him.’

‘They look similar,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s hard to tell. And it can’t
be
him, can it, because this paper is old. But yeah, the bloke I saw yesterday could be his son or something. Same build, same features – same hair, as it goes.’

‘I told you!’ Dr Cornell’s face had come alive. He grinned and slapped Brian Freeman on the arm. ‘He’s one of them! I told you.’

Artie looked from one man to the other. Whatever was going on here, he didn’t want any part of it. He was happy running his own little empire, living with the small amount of knowledge he had. He was too old for whatever was firing Freeman and the junk collector. It looked too all-consuming for his liking.

‘Well, whoever he is, he wanted to talk to Jones. He also wanted me to give him this.’ He pulled the silver datastick out of his pocket. ‘It’s a token of his goodwill.’ He handed it to Brian Freeman, despite Dr Cornell’s hungry hand reaching out. ‘I haven’t looked at it.’

‘Did he say what he wanted to talk to Cass about?’ Brian
Freeman was already sliding the pen into the side of a MacBook perched on top of a pile of folders.

‘Secrets. He said he had answers for Cass. Some bollocks along those lines.’

Dr Cornell was peering over Freeman’s shoulder and both men frowned simultaneously. ‘What’s happened?’ Dr Cornell asked. ‘Why has the screen gone blank?’

Brian Freeman looked up at Artie. ‘Did he give you any instructions to go with this?’

‘No, mate.’ He paused, suddenly awkward, as they fiddled with the Mac. Was he curious about the datastick? Yes. Could his curiosity wait? Too bloody right it could. Back home, his missus was choosing between three luxury holidays, and once he’d cleared with the coppers that he could leave the country then it would be sangria in the sunshine for him. By the time he got back, all this would have played out, one way or another. He’d get the story then. He didn’t feel any need to be part of this action; he had no desire to get fucked with by the likes of the fabled Mr Bright.

‘Maybe Cass will know what to do with it.’ He sniffed and turned towards the door. ‘Speaking of Jones, I think I’ll be off before he gets back. Just in case.’ He hesitated for a moment. The picture of Craven had thrown him. It had made him think of the few seconds in his office that he’d tried so hard to forget.

‘One more thing,’ he said. Maybe if he gave that moment to these two then he’d be able to bury it completely. He believed in solid earth and blood and grit. He refused to believe in what he’d seen.

‘It’ll probably sound crazy,’ he continued, ‘but Armstrong should have been able to nick him, no problem. He had a gun – Craven shouldn’t have been able to bite him like he did.’ His voice had lowered automatically. This wasn’t
something he wanted to speak out loud. He wondered if Armstrong had left it out of his statement, just as Artie himself had. ‘But something happened in there,’ he continued, ‘something fucking weird. It was like, just for a few seconds, Craven was something else. He
became
something else.’

Both Dr Cornell and Brian Freeman were staring at him, the computer and the datastick completely forgotten for a moment, and it made him feel desperately uncomfortable. He’d hoped that they’d laugh at him, but they weren’t.

‘What?’ Dr Cornell asked quietly. ‘What did he become?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mullins said. It was an honest answer. ‘It was too bright. It made my eyes hurt. But I’m sure I saw metal in there, claws of some kind. And there was a terrible sound, like wings beating.’ A flush ran over his face. It might be the truth, but listening to himself made him feel five kinds of crazy.

‘Anyway, it was probably just my eyes playing tricks.’ He turned to head back out to the hallway and raised a hand in farewell. ‘Give Cass my best. I’m fucking off out of the country for a while. I’ll catch up when I get back.’

He didn’t give them time to ask any more questions. His gut was squirming like a barrel of snakes, and it was telling him to get the fuck out of there. He wasn’t going to ignore it.

Chapter Thirty-Two

T
here were times in life when only brazening something out could get you where you needed to go. As Cass walked towards the main reception desk of the Charing Cross Hospital, head slightly down but a brisk confidence in his step, he was banking on two things: that the receptionist would be too busy to have her mind on more than the one criminal already in their hospital, and second, that most people never looked beyond the badge. He gave the woman a curt smile and held his police ID up, one finger slightly over the name, but with the picture clearly visible.

‘I’m from Paddington Green,’ he said quietly, ‘here to see Toby Armstrong.’

‘Third floor.’ She barely looked up from her computer. ‘If you see the nurse over there,’ she nodded in the direction of a separate counter, ‘she’ll give you a mask and scrubs and gloves. There’s a toilet just before the stairs that you can use. Please make sure you dispose of them in the clearly marked bins when leaving the ward. The scrubs go in one for washing and the gloves and mask are destroyed. Here.’ She handed him a plastic ID holder. ‘Put your ID in it and make sure it’s clearly displayed. We don’t want you mistaken for a member of staff.’

She smiled politely as Cass took it. ‘Thanks.’

The woman at the second desk looked slightly harder at
his ID, but not enough to make Cass think she was in any way suspicious. She smiled tiredly as she gave him the items. ‘Try not to be too loud, will you? The patients are very ill; they really need their rest.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ he said and smiled back. He didn’t feel the need to point out that they’d all be getting plenty of rest soon enough, so surely they’d want to be awake while they could. But then, what did he know of their hell? Maybe sleep was a pleasant respite – but, no, unlikely; he thought the sleep of Strain II victims would be filled with nightmares of death and the nothing that probably came after.

In the toilet he locked himself into a cubicle and pulled the green scrubs on over his clothes. He adjusted the mask over his face before tugging on the cap and tucking up the longer bits of hair. The ID holder stayed in his pocket. He checked himself in the mirror, slumped his shoulders slightly and softened the expression in his eyes. That would do. He stepped back into the hospital and walked with Dr Cromer’s precise gait that he’d practised the previous night before rescuing Luke. Unless anyone looked right into his eyes he was unlikely to be recognised. He hoped.

He’d expected the third floor to be quiet, but the hush he found was so much more than that: this was the silent second before the last breath, the hanging moment between the final inhale and release, the expectant, trembling quiet that fell in the presence of death. There was a respect in that hush, and more than a modicum of fear.

Two officers talked quietly to each other by the doors as they swiftly peeled off their masks and gloves, eager to be away and back out in the freezing December air. Neither glanced at Cass as he passed them. He peered through the glass window of a door on his left. Inside, a man somewhere in his late fifties had his arm around a woman of a similar
age. He was staring vacantly at the wall as she cried quietly into his shoulder. His fingers stroked her arm, but Cass wondered if either of them were aware of the contact. They were lost, facing a future that held no happiness for either of them. Toby Armstrong’s parents looked so very middle class and ordinary that Cass’ heart ached for them. Their son had been delivered a death sentence and they were now caught in that moment between life and death. All they could do was try to find the strength to say their goodbyes. A few seats and a respectful distance away, a young WPC sipped a cup of polystyrene coffee.

Cass left them to their grief. Despite the adrenalin firing through his system he felt slightly numb, and realised that until this moment part of him had been convinced that he wouldn’t find Armstrong in this ward; that the attack launched on him by the Angel of Death hadn’t involved infection. But Armstrong hadn’t been that lucky, had he? An old cynicism gripped him as he moved through the ward. There was no luck. Armstrong’s choices had led him here: his choice to go in without back-up, and a series of choices probably made prior to that. It was always your own choices that fucked you up.

He paused at the end of a bed and pretended to read the chart of the frail man sleeping in it. A nurse passed by without speaking to him and continued to the nurses’ station at the entrance. As he flicked through the paperwork, Cass glanced around. There looked to be more private rooms at the far end of the corridor; he presumed that was where both Armstrong and Craven were being kept.

Two figures in scrubs huddled by a water cooler, though neither looked as if they intended to drink from it, and Cass realised that was likely all the police presence there was. If the Angel of Death had cancer, the ward would be
overcrowded with coppers ensuring no one could get in and harm the suspect, but that really wasn’t necessary: who in their right mind would want to come into a Strain II ward, let alone get too close to the killer himself? It looked like not too many of the police did either, and no DCI or Commissioner could force anyone, not in these circumstances.

Unlike its originator, the more docile HIV, Strain II’s ease of contagion – a sneeze, one drip of saliva inhaled, a droplet of blood – had gained almost mythical status. Cass figured if that were true they’d all be riddled with the bug by now, but he couldn’t deny that underneath his fear of getting caught, his nerves were jangling at being in the presence of so much contagious death.

A door opened ahead of him and two immediately recognisable figures emerged, Tim Hask’s physique was quite singular, his obesity so out of place in the midst of the skeletal figures dozing in the beds around them. The tall man he was talking quietly to was Ramsey, of course. They closed the door behind them and nodded to the two officers by the water cooler before going into a second room.

This was Cass’ chance. In the bed in front of him the sleeping patient – whose features were so sunken he couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman – drew laboured breaths through an oxygen mask. Cass picked up a liver tray and a small paper cup of water from the side-table and walked casually towards the room Hask and Ramsey had just left. His heart was pounding so loudly that he was certain the nurses could hear it from behind their desk, and behind his mask his cheeks were damp from his rushing breath.

He didn’t recognise either of the officers who were so casually guarding the two rooms. He gave them a cursory
nod. One of them glanced down at the items in Cass’ hand, and then carried on with his idle chatter. Though he’d been shocked to see Hask and Ramsey so close, it was turning out to be a blessing; people invariably relaxed their sense of responsibility around their superiors, and these two were apparently no different.

The small private room was dimly lit, but it was as warm as the rest of the ward. Armstrong’s eyes were shut, and there was a tube attached to his arm. What was that, some kind of sedation? Surely it couldn’t be pain relief already? But now he was closer, Cass could see Toby Armstrong looked deathly pale, even in the golden glow of the sidelights. The sergeant had also lost weight – he knew Strain II was more aggressive than HIV, but surely it couldn’t work this fast? Whatever Craven was passing on to his victims, it was carrying an unholy kick. He remembered the way Solomon had died: there had been nothing natural about that. So was Craven the same as Solomon and Bright? Were they all three of them something strange and ageless?

He put the water and dish on the table and then sat by the bed. There was an alarm button on a small pad just next to Armstrong’s resting hand and Cass moved it to one side – well out of reach – before squeezing that cool palm.

‘Armstrong,’ he said softly.

The sergeant’s eyes flew open and his head turned.

‘Shh,’ Cass said, gripping his hand, ‘I just want to talk to you.’

Despite the frantic activity in his eyes, Armstrong’s body had little strength, no doubt in part because of whatever the tube was pumping through his system. Cass pulled his face mask down. For a moment the two men just stared at each other. Cass wasn’t surprised to see hate and resentment in Armstrong’s face.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ the sergeant said eventually. His voice was dry, but when he breathed, phlegm rattled in his chest. ‘Come to watch me die? Apparently it won’t take long. The doctors tell me they’ve never seen anything like it. Not in a good way.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Cass said. He knew the words were redundant, but Armstrong’s bitterness stung, and he couldn’t blame him for it: the young man was trapped in an
if only
moment that he couldn’t escape:
If only I’d waited for back-up. If only I’d shot him when I first got there
.

‘I wish I’d never seen your face. You know that, don’t you?’

If only I’d never been assigned to DI Cass Jones
.

Cass nodded. ‘I can’t blame you for that. I wish you’d never seen my face too.’

Armstrong’s hand relaxed – giving up any attempt to go for the buzzer – and he turned away from Cass and looked up at the ceiling. Silence ticked by. ‘I was looking for you.’

‘I figured as much. You’re a good detective.’