Birdkill (13 page)

She couldn’t stop the thoughts once they’d started, didn’t understand where the thought-words were coming from, another Robyn inside of her was speaking, stronger and more certain than she. Martin’s astonishment gave way to bewilderment.

Robyn’s triumph coursed through her veins like liquid gold. She cleared her throat. ‘I didn’t pick you, for a start, babe. And if you don’t like it, the door’s just there. You can walk if you like, but stop picking on the others. They’re just enjoying a conversation.’

It was if a sigh of release passed through them. Martin broke his stare, jumped to his feet and stormed out, his face black fury. The door smashed shut behind him. Robyn stood behind her desk, her hands held together in front of her and her eyes on them as she forced her pumping heart to calm. She breathed deeply, pushed all her questions and alarms to one side to try and give her kids at least a semblance of control to latch on to. She looked up and found them staring at her, waiting for her to react.

She smiled, shakily.

Jenny Wilson piped up. ‘Fucking hell, Miss.’

The relief in the class was clear, a ripple of laughter releasing the tension.

Robyn beamed at them. ‘Okay, fair enough. It’s the weekend, enough drama for now. I’ll see you Sunday. If you get the time, download Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose. It’s a good read and it’ll give you another viewpoint into the whole argument, as well as an introduction to semiotics.’

‘Semiotics, Miss?’ Jenny again.

‘Yes. Google it, smarty pants.’

Mariam had been trying to get hold of Dr Lawrence Hamilton and failing spectacularly. His London practice were efficient, helpful and singularly evasive. The woman Heather at the Hamilton Institute, Mariam knew her name through Robyn, was charming and useless. Clive Warren hadn’t returned her calls and she hadn’t heard back from her contact in Washington about General Tom Parker.

The archive was going cold on her and she didn’t like it one bit. She knocked her screen in exasperation.

Kelly looked up in mild-mannered inquisitiveness. ‘What’s up, love? Jilted again, is it?’

She’d lived with Kelly’s avuncular, sexist banter all week and – against all her instincts –  liked the man despite the constant drawling references to her love life. That and calling her love or, and she swore to God if he did it again she’d fuck him up, on one occasion ‘bird’. The veteran Guardian man was a ferociously good journalist and had been signally more successful in plundering his trove of archive than she had. And somehow she felt he liked her back, was actually on her side. Quite how a sexist pig got to work for the Guardian was a question she was dying to ask him.

‘It’s this Hamilton guy. I can’t get a handle on him. I just can’t get through.’

‘This your battlefield drugs thing? Who’s Hamilton?’

‘The mad professor behind the drug programme. Doctor Lawrence bloody Hamilton.’

Kelly pulled out the pencil he kept habitually stuck behind his ear, a sure sign he was interested. She didn’t even know why he had a bloody pencil, he used a laptop same as her. He tapped his teeth, which to Mariam was a little like a cat scrabbling up a blackboard.

She shuddered and he grinned. ‘Sorry, love, forgot you don’t like that.’

‘The fuck you did.’

‘Did. Serious. Hang on a ticky. I got to use our lone Internet machine here.’

‘I already Googled him to death.’

‘Nah, not Google. The rag’s archive. Hold on there. Dr. Lawrence. Hamilton. Let’s see.’ Kelly scanned the screen, thumbing the notebook’s trackpad. His eyes danced, reflecting the blue light. Eventually he sat back, his arms crossed and grinning.

‘Well?’

‘Patience is a virtue, especially in the young.’

‘You bastard. Spill.’

‘There’s a whiff of sulphur, alright. He was involved in research into genetic predisposition to high achievement. Seems he strayed a little too far into morally dubious territory for some people’s tastes. Surfaces again in a scandal about a hospital in London where pregnant single mums had been subjected to procedures without their consent. Some got sick, lost their babies. Seems to have been hushed up, got political somehow. Archive’s a bit shaky on this one.’

‘When?’

‘Nineties. I’ll order up printouts for you. There’s more. He pops up again in the noughties, more research into building better humans. He’s a bit of a Nazi if you ask me. And then a military problem which seems to have gone away before it started. Oh. And we got some D notices about that one.’

‘D notices?’

‘Relatively rare. It’s where the government tells us to shut up or we’ll piss mummy off. They don’t like doing it because we don’t like them doing it and the public likes to think they don’t do it at all.’

‘Can I see the suppressed stories?’

‘You’re going to have to make daddy happy.’

‘I won’t slice your balls off, that do you?’

‘You’re talking my sort of talk already, darling.’

‘Oh, fuck off, Kelly.’

His low chuckle was an invitation to violence. She flung her mouse at him. He ducked, falling off his chair in the process. His shout of ‘You fucking hellion!’ from beneath the desk cheered her no end.

Lawrence Hamilton grimaced, his concentration on the screen in front of him broken by the knock on his panelled study door. ‘Come.’

It was Simon Archer. Hamilton had come to rely on the young man a great deal. He was sensible and practical in all things, a judgement Hamilton was astute enough to know meant he did as he was told and made difficult things go away. But those were fine attributes that allowed Hamilton to focus undisturbed on his research. Apart from the necessary and tedious distractions of funding and reporting to powerful men who didn’t understand the importance of his work.

‘Come in, Simon. How can I help you? You have a worried air about you.’

‘It’s Robyn Shaw.’

‘She’s settled in marvellously, hasn’t she? The children already seem to think the world of her.’

‘She’s got something about her for sure. But she’s screaming in her sleep. Last night it was so bad I rang her doorbell, I was worried she was being attacked or something, but she didn’t answer. Everything seemed normal, I even checked the windows outside in case someone had broken in. A colleague had mentioned something earlier in the week or I’d have hit the alarm button. It was a spine-chilling racket.’

‘We all dream, Simon.’

‘Another thing. There was an incident in class today. Young Oakley stood up to her and apparently she bludgeoned him into submission in front of the whole class, stripped him down until he stormed out. Emily found him in tears in the corridor. He said she’d bullied him and humiliated him.’

‘Really? That’s at odds with everything else we’ve been hearing, isn’t it? You’ve talked to her, worked with her this past week. Does that seem consistent with the person you know?’

‘She’s a trauma victim, could perhaps be behaving unpredictably? I know it doesn’t map to the Robyn I thought I knew, but Emily was definite the child was in a state of total hysteria.’

Hamilton felt his years pressing on his shoulders for some reason and rubbed his eyes. ‘Martin is also a prime locus, probably the strongest we have ever seen.’

‘All the more worrying, then.’

‘Interesting. Perhaps something to do with her trauma and amnesia. I’m glad she’s here, we can offer her support and care. Leave it for now, Simon. Keep an eye on her and perhaps offer her a helping hand. I’ll have a word with the people in London who’ve been caring for her. Whatever has happened to her is not her fault, but she clearly has ghosts. Mind you, don’t we all?’

Archer nodded, bowing his head. You’re mourning her when I can’t, dear boy, Hamilton thought. He smiled for Archer’s sake. ‘Chin up, Simon. Keep an eye on young Robyn, I think she’ll pull through.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Archer retreated, trying to conceal his relief.

A nice young man, really. But Hamilton’s brow knitted at the idea of Robyn’s dreams tormenting her. He was perhaps a little worried she would start to remember. It would all be so much more convenient if she didn’t.

Robyn resolved to stay up and see what happened on Thursday evenings over the wall at the Research Institute and cased the joint in a series of casual-seeming walks around the grounds. There was a black iron fire escape zig-zagging its way down the red brick back wall of the staff block and it happened to pass just underneath her spare bedroom window. She found a way to get out without attracting the attention of the corridor cameras and plotted the location of the cameras in the grounds.

Down at the Sloop, she stayed on diet Coke and left straight after eating, pleading tiredness at the end of a trying week. Archer was charming company, as always, and she found herself more at ease with her colleagues. He offered to walk her home but she demurred, her hand on his arm. ‘I’m whacked. I’ll be fine. But thanks Simon.’

She resisted the urge to add a low, ‘Next time, perhaps.’

Now she was alone and feeling unsettled, regretting her curiosity and yet committed to trying to find out more about what the hell went on over in what she had come to think of as the forbidden quarter. The teaching staff were all still in the pub and the accommodation block was still. At around ten, she changed her clothes for her dark blue hoodie and jogging pants and slipped out of the window. She stole down the fire escape, taking care not to let it clang with her movement. There was a camera on each corner of the staff car park and so she went wide, striking out across the gardens to find the inky woodland bounding the open ground. The moon was full, bathing the silent gardens in soft grey and making the shadows’ contrast heavier. Nearing the boundary between the school and the institute, she saw the glittering domes through the trees. She heard footsteps, the shuffle and whisper of children moving. Dark figures moved towards the domes. Robin craned to catch a better view of the three glass buildings, the black glass skin glittering in the moonlight.

‘Hi, Robyn.’

She thought she’d had a heart attack. She whirled around to face Simon Archer’s puzzled expression, her knuckles in her mouth to stifle her urge to cry out. Fear turned to fury.

‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ She hissed.

‘I could ask you the same thing. I was walking back from the pub and thought I saw something in the woods. Why are you here?’

She tried to think. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

He took her arm and led her, unresisting, back towards the dormitory block. They passed under the cameras, but it no longer seemed to matter. She shook him off.

Archer was solicitous. ‘I understand you’re curious, it all does have a charming air of mystique about it, but you should really just go and speak to Lawrence rather than creeping around in the woods at night.’

‘It’s not that. I couldn’t sleep and wanted to get some fresh air.’

‘Are the dreams bothering you still?’

How the hell did Archer know about the dreams? She baulked the temptation to flee, simply run away from him. ‘Dreams?’

‘You were crying out last night. I rang your doorbell. I was concerned something had happened.’

‘No, I’m fine.

They reached the accommodation block. Archer had a downstairs apartment. He swiped them in. He stood by the staircase. ‘If you’re sure you’re alright.’

She felt a tremendous weariness. ‘I’m sure I’ll live Simon.’ She hadn’t meant to sound bitter but it came out that way and it was as if she had slapped him.

‘Goodnight Robyn.’

She trudged up the stairs to her room. She stood at the door searching her pockets. She didn’t have her card key. She searched again, stupidly somehow expecting it to materialise from thin air. She turned her back to the door, her eyes squeezed shut and her fists balled. Shit. Shit. Shit.

The front door of the block was card operated. She couldn’t even get out to get up the fire escape. She slid down the door and sat, her head in her hands and her hair forming ribbons down to the burgundy carpet tiles.

She couldn’t stay there for the night. Apart from anything else, she was on camera. She felt like a prisoner. Her only possible course of action was humiliating. The tears came out of nowhere, her throat burned as she gulped and sniffed, turning away from the camera end of the corridor to wipe her eyes. She hauled herself to her feet and went down to Archer’s apartment. She rang the door.

He was wearing a dressing gown. ‘Hullo! Come to see my etchings?’

‘I forgot my card. I need to get out of the front door.’

‘Sorry, old thing, I don’t get you. How will you come back in?’

‘I came out down the fire escape.’

‘Oh, did you? My but you are an intrepid old bird, aren’t you? Hang on a sec.’

He went back into his apartment and returned wearing sandals. He had a hairier chest than she’d thought. She followed him as he padded down the corridor. ‘There. Open sesame. You’ll be okay clambering up the fire escape, will you?’

She wanted to tell him to fuck off, but she just said thank you instead. He stood watching her as she walked around the side of the building. She climbed back into her apartment and closed the window. She stood in the dark hating herself. Archer was bound to tell Hamilton. Let alone the testimony of the camera footage.

Hamilton would think she’d gone nuts. She’d blown it beyond all shadow of a doubt.

Maybe she
was
going nuts. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d feared her mind was shutting down on her entirely. She undressed and went into the bathroom to wash her hands and clean her teeth. It was cold. Shivering, she slid into bed and lay in the darkness. She’d looked back as she rounded the corner and Simon had been there in the glass of the atrium, framed by the lights in his white dressing gown. Waving.

Mariam’s call came just as Robyn, sitting on the wide windowsill overlooking the gardens and basking in the midday sun, had decided on a trip into town.

She had woken that morning after a dreamless sleep, refreshed and feeling optimistic, despite the last night’s disasters. She ran into Simon Archer after breakfast when she went down to reception to pick up a printout of her planning for the next week. His only reference to the whole incident had been to ask if she’d got back okay and slept well.