Alchemist (23 page)

Silence.

Nothing was happening.

He repeated the words of the curse again, hissing them even more loudly. Then he listened hard. But there was no sound anywhere in the house.

Daniel remained inside the circle for an age. The grimoire said that the power of the spell kept its strength as long as he remained inside the circle. After a while he began to feel freezing, but made no attempt to leave the circle and put his pyjamas back on. His legs began to ache and his body sagged with tiredness. He sneezed, catching his nose and stifling it as best he could.

Finally, at 2.15 in the morning, he was too tired to stand any longer, so he squatted down inside the circle, tucked his legs under him and, lolling his head forward, lapsed into a doze.

At 3.00, exhausted and frozen, he gave up. Despondently, he blew out the candle and began to tidy away the objects. He would bury the rabbit in the garden tomorrow when his
mother went out to her church coffee morning, and he would put his father's sock into a neighbour's dustbin. The candle and the black cloth he would keep; the candle had taken a lot of work to make and maybe he would try again soon. Perhaps he should have changed the spell? Maybe there was a different one for a man?

But most likely, he knew, as he lapsed into a gloomy and troubled sleep, it had never worked at all, and never would. You had to be a magician to make it work. And now God was really angry at him for what he had done.

He was jolted awake by the sound of his door crashing open and banging against the wall. Bright daylight flooded into the room. Overslept, was his first immediately guilty thought, as he saw his mother's demented face looming over him, her hair loose, hanging long and wiry like a witch's, her eyes bloodshot and blurred with tears.

Something was wrong, but he did not know what. Frightened, he instinctively withdrew his hands from under the bedclothes, clasped them in front of his face to commence his morning prayers and to ward off her first blow. He closed his eyes again, tightly, bracing himself.

But there was no harsh slap across the face. And for a moment no sound either. Then his mother began to scream hysterically.

‘Dead! He's deeaaaadddd! Daniel … Daniel … your father! Oh God! He woke up about midnight with a terrible headache. He took aspirin, just aspirin. I can't move him, can't wake him, he's cold, son. God has taken him. God is punishing us for your sins. Please, Daniel, help me wake him!'

London
.
Wednesday 9 November
,
1994

Conor decided the only way to get through his workload was to start coming into the office much earlier in the mornings, and continue through until late at night.

At a quarter to seven, as he drove bleary-eyed up the Euston Road, listening to Michael Heseltine under attack on a news programme, trying to get a handle on British politics, he saw a blaze of strobing blue lights ahead. As he got nearer, he saw two fire tenders and a saloon car with a blue light outside the Bendix building. A small knot of firemen were standing on the pavement, chatting. Conor could see no sign of any urgency as he turned right and pulled up by one of the security guards' windows in front of the barrier.

He had seen this particular guard, a dour man in his mid-thirties, a good dozen times in the past three weeks, but there was no hint of acknowledgement or greeting as Conor showed him his pass card.

‘What's happened?' Conor asked.

‘Chemical spillage,' he said, as if it were a routine occurrence.

‘Where?'

‘In one of the labs,' the guard added dismissively, opening the barrier and curtly signalling him through.

Conor parked in his space and climbed out. Even in the low grey morning light he could see the grime on the BMW's paintwork and wheels and made a mental note to take it to a wash tonight if possible, mindful of the penalty otherwise. He walked to the front entrance of the building, curious to find out more about what had happened.

The entrance atrium had its normal quiet, early-morning feel in spite of the presence of a uniformed fire officer and a senior-looking police officer in conversation by the security desk. A man carrying a briefcase was stepping into a lift. Conor glanced at the solitary security guard on duty and was pleased to see it was the most friendly of the five regulars.

He was a sickly-looking black man whose face, beneath a grizzle of greying hair, had begun to shrivel, prematurely, into hard walnut-like wrinkles. It was difficult to put an age on him – somewhere between mid-fifties and sixties, Conor guessed. The name on his lapel badge said: ‘W. Smith. Lobby Security.'

As Conor showed him his card, he asked quietly: ‘There's been some kind of accident?'

The guard nodded. Conor noticed a sadness in the man's yellowing eyes. ‘Yes, sir, there's been a chemical spill, sir.' The voice was courteous and servile, but its owner did not look anxious to say any more.

‘What kind of spill?'

‘I don't know that, sir. It's up on the sixth floor, sir.'

‘Anyone hurt?'

A hesitation then a nod. ‘Mr Seals, the Chief Lab Technician. He's very bad – I don't think –' W. Smith halted, uneasily, in mid-sentence. ‘Ambulance took the young lady as well. I don't know how she was. The fumes, they said.'

‘Young lady?'

‘She's very nice. Come here with her father – he's very famous. Dr Bannerman. Won the Nobel.'

Conor felt as if a bucket of cold water had been swilled into his guts. ‘Miss Bannerman? She's hurt? You don't know how bad?'

The guard shook his head. ‘The ambulance men didn't say. She was on a stretcher with oxygen.'

‘Shit! Where's she gone? Which hospital?'

‘I don't know that, sir.'

‘Paddington.'

Conor turned, startled; the fire officer was looking at him. ‘Took 'em both to University College Hospital.'

‘How do I get there from here?'

The fire officer gave him directions. Conor thanked him, then went back outside and ran across to his car.

The Accident and Emergency department of University College Hospital was quiet, with rows of empty seats and only a handful of people waiting. There was a strong, astringent
smell of disinfectant, mingled with coffee that had been stewing for too long.

The window of the reception counter was unattended, and Conor had to wait whilst a woman keyed information into a computer, her back to him. Finally, he called out: ‘Hello?'

She continued to ignore him for some moments, before turning and coming across to the window. ‘Sorry to keep you, dear, we're short-staffed this morning. Can I help you?'

‘You had a casualty brought in by ambulance about an hour ago – Miss Bannerman – could you tell me how she is?'

She glanced down at a list on the counter, then frowned. ‘Are you a relative?'

He heard the wail of a siren approaching outside. ‘I – I – I'm her brother,' he lied, hoping to hell she didn't have a brother who was here already. In the States, unless you were a relative hospitals wouldn't give you any information; he assumed the same was true here.

The woman went to the back of the room and picked up a phone. She spoke briefly into it, then came back to Conor. ‘Someone will be round to see you in a moment. Take a seat.'

Conor wondered how long he was going to have to wait and whether he should bring his briefcase with his laptop in from the car and do some work. But a door opened behind him and a white-coated woman with short streaked hair came through and looked at him.

‘Mr Bannerman?'

He stood up. ‘Yes, hi.' He had no difficulty in saying it quite brazenly.

Her name tag read: ‘Wendy Phillips. A&E Ward Manager.' She had a pleasant, efficient air, in spite of her eyes being red with tiredness. He wondered if she had been on duty all night. ‘You are Miss Montana Bannerman's brother?'

‘Yes.'

‘Would you like to come through and see her?'

‘How is she?'

‘She's on a respirator at the moment.'

‘Suffering from fumes?'

‘We hope it is just fumes and not anything worse – her mouth and throat seem all right but she was frothing from the
lungs which could indicate burn damage. But it's too early to tell yet whether there's any long-term internal effect; I understand it's something highly corrosive she's breathed in.'

‘What chemical was it?'

‘It's not any known substance apparently – something undergoing lab trials.' She walked ahead of him through a wide corridor, lined on one side with trolleys, stretchers and bottles of gas. Two orderlies hurried past them wheeling an empty stretcher.

A pager clipped to Nurse Phillips' breast pocket bleeped, and she raised a hand to Conor, signalling him to wait as she lifted up a wall phone, spoke briefly into it, then replaced it and turned to him. ‘There's a neutralizing agent on its way to us under police escort from the company's lab in Berkshire.'

They had stopped outside a room packed with monitoring equipment. Inside, Conor could make out a woman lying on a trolley with an oxygen mask over her face. From the sprawling frizz of blonde hair he realized it must be Montana. A nurse was standing beside her, reading orange digits off a dial and logging them on a sheet attached to a clipboard.

Conor had seen the expression in the patient's eyes once before in his life, in his own mother's eyes, and had never forgotten it. Shock. Total rejection of reality.

‘Hi,' he said softly.

There was a faint nod in response.

He smiled down, trying to be reassuring. ‘You OK?' It was a dumb remark, he knew, but he could not think of anything better.

There was another nod.

Instinctively he reached down, balled his fist and touched Monty's cheek lightly; its cold, clammy touch startled him, and he tried not to let that show. She wasn't good, definitely wasn't good. Two orderlies came into the room, followed by a serious-looking man in a grey pin-striped suit.

‘Dr Goode, this is the patient's brother,' Wendy Phillips said.

Conor felt a twinge of embarrassment and waited for an awkward question as the doctor studied him briefly, but his manner was polite and gentle. ‘We're going to take your sister
up to X-ray. We are also going to give her an MRI scan which will help us look at the inside of her lungs. I gather it's a pretty invasive substance she's inhaled fumes from, so we need to find out the exact extent of any damage.'

‘Do you think it's serious?' Conor asked quietly.

They had moved a few steps away from Monty. ‘There's no burn damage to the lips or internally in the mouth, nostrils or the upper larynx, which is a good sign, but she was unconscious and barely breathing when the paramedics got to her; as we don't know anything about this chemical we've no way of telling at the moment what internal damage it may have caused.'

Conor looked worriedly back at Monty. ‘How's the other person who was in the lab?'

The doctor stiffened, glanced at the ward manager, then indicated that Conor should follow him out into the corridor. Two nurses walked past them as Dr Goode spoke quietly. ‘I'm afraid there wasn't anything we could do for him.'

‘He's dead?' Conor said, incredulously.

‘He was dead on arrival. Completely covered in this acid. One of the ambulance crew suffered burns and breathing problems from it as well – God knows what the hell they were brewing up there.' The doctor glanced at his watch. ‘The tests are going to take a good couple of hours – I can put you in a room, if you like. I gather someone from the company's on their way and there's a neutralizing agent for this chemical being sent down as well – although I'm told it isn't very effective.'

‘I guess there's nothing much I can do right now. But maybe I can come back later?'

The doctor brightened. ‘I think that would be the best thing. Phone us around lunch time – ask for Nurse Phillips or myself, and we can let you know how things are.'

‘I'd appreciate that.' Conor thanked him and left.

As he drove back to the office, thoughts churned in his mind. He had arrived at a quarter to seven, which was pretty damned early. Miss Bannerman and the technician had already long been taken to the hospital, so they must have been in a good half hour earlier at the very least. That would
have put the time around six to a quarter after six. Six o'clock in the morning was one hell of an hour for anyone to be at work. So what were they doing?

Something they did not want anyone else to know about, for sure. It was further evidence that his instincts about Montana Bannerman were correct. She was going to be of use to him. Very definitely. He hoped to hell she wasn't too badly injured.

Monty's throat felt as if it was on fire, and her eyes were smarting.

‘We're going to take your mask off and see how you feel without oxygen, all right?'

She stared up at a stocky man with a thick-set Neanderthal face and an unkempt tangle of wiry, thinning hair; more hair sprouted from his neck and over the top of his shirt collar. He was flanked on either side by nurses, and there was a cluster of people behind him.

A hand descended, something slid around the back of her head, then she saw a Perspex mask being lifted away and she had a moment of panic as it suddenly became harder to breathe. Her lungs were raw as if she had smoked too many cigarettes, and there was a vile, bitter taste in her mouth.

Something in the doctor's expression worried her. She took several fast breaths, afraid suddenly. Perspiration broke out on her skin as she thought of the damage she might have done to herself; irreparable damage. She remembered vividly Jake Seals' words a couple of days ago in the laboratory.

Dump a gallon of this in a swimming pool and it would strip your hide off in seconds. It's really horrible. Get it on your bare skin and there is
nothing
you can do – there is nothing that will neutralize it
.