Fourth Horseman (18 page)

‘And unleashes the apocalypse,’ said Javed.

‘Oh, this is crazy,’ I said. ‘Are you saying it’s up to us to save the world?’

The boys went quiet and we listened to the wind driving rain against the window. Then Javed said, ‘Should we just forget about it then? Pretend it never happened, like your dad does?’

‘We have to focus on Dad,’ said Alex. ‘It’s him they want, after all. And if it’s all down to the last horseman, we have to find the connection.’

‘
Behold a pale horse
,’ I quoted. ‘Why “pale”?’

‘One of the commentaries on the Internet has something about that,’ said Javed. Apparently in the original Hebrew the word means greenish or yellowish, the way someone looks if they’re ill. They said it meant the pale horseman signified disease.’

‘
And his name that sat on him was Death,
’ I quoted.

‘And no one could interpret what that last bit meant, about killing with the beasts of the earth.’

‘But we can,’ I said, an unpleasant realization sending prickles down my spine. ‘This is where Dad comes in, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what I think,’ said Javed. ‘The beasts of the earth used for experimentation with disease.’

‘And then something goes wrong,’ said Alex.

‘It could happen,’ said Javed. ‘If a virus escaped, perhaps.’

I knew how careful Dad was and how thorough his precautions were. I also knew that viruses did sometimes escape from laboratories. In the 1970s a strain of smallpox had got out of the microbiology lab in Birmingham and a woman had died as a result. The security measures were much tighter now and there hadn’t been a case of smallpox since, but anything was possible.

‘But why Dad’s lab?’ I said. ‘There are much more dangerous viruses all over the world. His one is only going to be harmful to squirrels, after all.’

‘That’s as far as we know,’ said Alex. ‘But what if it went wrong? Mutated or something? Like the bird flu, you know? It started off in birds then spread to humans.’

It seemed very plausible to me. I was sure that Alex had put his finger on it and that there was going to be some terrible mistake at the lab. I was wrong, though. There were no mistakes being made at the lab. Everything was working out exactly as Mr Davenport had intended it to.

I
TOLD THE BOYS
that I would talk to Dad about it that night. I was going to let him know that I was ready to start talking. I wasn’t only going to tell Mum, I was going to tell anyone I thought might listen to me. I would even go to the police if I had to, or the mayor of Worcester. I was going to spill the beans on his project because I believed it was dangerous and he ought to close it down, chalet or no chalet. I wasn’t going anywhere and I was prepared to wait up as long as I needed to.

The trouble was, he didn’t come back.

Alex had volunteered to join me, but in the end he had gone home with Javed for the night. I said that was fine and I didn’t need any help, but as the minutes and hours ticked by I began to wish that he had stayed.

I tried to phone the lab but I knew it was useless. Dad took the phone off the hook when he was busy with intricate work, and he couldn’t take the mobile into the inner lab because it couldn’t go through the shower with him. At ten o’clock I tried it anyway, in case he was on his way home. It rang, but there was no answer.

I waited another half-hour then tried both numbers again. What bothered me was that even if he was going to be a bit late he always phoned to let us know, especially if Mum was away. I began to imagine terrible scenes at the lab. What if the virus had mutated and attacked him? What if he was ill and couldn’t get to the phone? Or what if the horsemen had turned up again; all four of them this time?

I rang Alex to see if Dad had called him, but he hadn’t. Alex was alarmed now as well, and he suggested we go over to the lab and find out what was happening. But it was a dark, wild night out there, far too stormy for us to go by bike.

‘What about Attiya?’ I said. ‘Would she take us?’

‘She’s been in bed since nine o’clock,’ said Alex. ‘She always goes to bed early because she gets up at five.’

‘Couldn’t you wake her?’

Alex chatted to Javed for a moment, then came back on the line. ‘Javed says we should get a taxi.’

It was good thinking. I phoned one of the city-based companies and gave them the address of the Maliks’ house. Twenty minutes later the taxi arrived at my door, with the boys in the back.

When we got to the lab we asked the driver to wait, but he wanted the money for the journey so far before he would agree. I don’t blame him. We were outside a gate in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. I gave him a twenty-pound note and told him to hold on to the change until we got back. That surprised him.

‘What you up to anyway?’ he said.

‘Looking for our dad,’ I said.

The driver glanced at Javed and it was clear that he didn’t believe us.

‘We’re not up to mischief,’ I told him.

‘Just wait,’ said Javed, with the assurance of someone who had grown up giving orders.

We didn’t think of checking to see whether Dad’s car was in the barn. A high wind was pelting us with stinging rain, and we just ran straight for the buildings. I let us in and felt Javed shudder at the scurry of rodent feet in the cage room. I turned on the lights and did a quick count of the squirrels in the cages. There were only eleven left.

‘Dad?’ I called through the intercom. There was no answer.

‘He must have gone home,’ said Alex, his voice small and anxious.

‘Then why isn’t he there?’

‘Maybe he went somewhere else. For a pint or something.’

Dad was fond of a glass of wine but he never, as far as I knew, went to the pub.

‘I’m going in,’ I said. ‘Tell the taxi to wait a bit longer, will you?’

Javed ran off and I opened the door into the bug-lock. I should have known the minute I got in that Dad wasn’t there, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d never been through before and I hadn’t got used to the drill. Even when I took my clothes off and hung them on the empty pegs it didn’t cross my mind that if Dad had been inside his clothes would have been hanging there as well. I felt horribly vulnerable as I stepped, naked, into the shower. There were all kinds of disinfectants in there and I scrubbed myself with pretty much everything and washed my hair three times. On the other side of the shower cubicle there were white suits like hospital robes hanging on more pegs. There were new ones in polythene as well, stacked on a shelf, so I opened one of those and dressed myself, and put on one of the surgical masks that I found beside them.

That was when it occurred to me that I could be making a terrible mistake. What if the worst of my imaginings turned out to be reality? What if a virus had somehow mutated and had attacked Dad? The pictures that assailed my mind were almost unbearable. I imagined Dad lying dead on the floor, or shaking in the final stages of a dreadful fever. A new terror struck me as I realized that going in there might be the worst thing I could do. If Dad was ill, or dead, then I might get the virus as well. I might die, and if I didn’t, and I left the lab, then I might give the disease to everyone else, and it might spread across the whole country.

I was in a lather of sweat by now. There was an intercom in the virus room but none in the bug-lock. I couldn’t contact the boys for advice. I was on my own. I looked down at myself, dressed in the crisp new suit. It seemed ridiculous. Dressing like that didn’t make me a doctor or a scientist. I was completely unequipped. This wasn’t a job for me. It was something for the police or the army or the special services. The trouble was, none of those people were here. I could go out and call someone, blow the whistle on the whole project as I had threatened to do. Perhaps I should have done. Perhaps everything would have worked out better if I had.

I don’t know what it was that decided me, in the end. I like to think it was the warrior spirit emerging, but maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe it was just stupidity or recklessness. But I was alone at the crease. The ball was there to be played. I made my decision instinctively, and I played it. I went into the lab.

Dad was neither dead nor dying. He wasn’t there at all. I waited a moment or two to allow the huge sense of relief to sink in, then I looked around. The chaos surprised me. The computer desk was piled high with papers, journals, books, coffee cups. The waste bin was overflowing with printouts and biscuit wrappers. There was a bag of squirrel food overflowing in a corner, but no sign of squirrels.

I went further in. Along the far wall was a row of machines: electron microscopes, incubators, that kind of thing. I knew their names from hearing Dad talk about them, but I didn’t know which was which. There was a steel sink, and above it was a shelf of chemicals, flasks, syringes and other things I didn’t recognize. At the end of the bench were two other doors, side by side. The first one I opened led into a tiny kitchen with another door leading into a toilet cubicle. The whole place had Dad’s familiar ashtray smell about it and I backed out. There was nothing to see in there.

The other door had some kind of seal, soft and strong. It hissed when I pushed it open. There was another small room behind it, only about three metres square. The rest of the squirrels were in there; ten of them, five red and five grey. All the red ones bounded up the mesh walls, delighted to see me coming. But all my little greys, my Garys and Gooches and Gitas, were lying dead and stone-cold in the bottom of their cage.

I was still staring at them, trying to work out the implications of what I was seeing, when I heard the noise of the bug-lock door opening. I jumped, afraid it was Dad, or something worse like a troop of horsemen. But it was the boys, both dressed like me in the surgical suits.

‘What’s happening?’ Alex asked.

‘He’s done it,’ I said. They joined me in the second doorway and stared, like me, at the dead squirrels.

‘My God,’ said Alex. ‘It’s worked.’

Javed looked at us both but said nothing. He turned and began looking around the main lab, reading bits of documents and scrutinizing the machines.

‘Dad’s not here anyway,’ said Alex.

We went out through the bug-lock, one after another. It took ages, and by the time we were all back in our own clothes and had the lab locked up it was nearly midnight. The taxi driver, decent man, had waited all that time. I got him to go to Javed’s house first, and on the way there Alex decided that he’d come home with me to see if we could track down Dad.

His car was outside the house. He was up in bed with the light out. But Alex and I had no qualms about disturbing him.

He wasn’t asleep. ‘Hello, you two,’ he said. ‘Had a good evening?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We haven’t. We’ve just come back from the lab.’

‘From the lab?’ He sat up in bed. ‘What on earth were you doing there?’

‘We were looking for you! Where were you?’

‘I came straight back here. I must have passed you on the road or something. How did you get there?’

I told him, and I told him what we had seen. He couldn’t contain his delight. ‘It worked better than I ever expected,’ he said. ‘Just perfect. I know how you feel about the squirrels, sweetheart, but I promise you they hardly knew what hit them. It was so quick.’

‘It’s not the squirrels. It’s …’

‘What?’

‘The horsemen,’ said Alex. ‘There’s something badly wrong about all this. You can’t go on with it, Dad.’

‘But there’s nowhere else to go with it,’ Dad said. ‘I’m handing it all over to Mr Davenport tomorrow, and he’s going to hand me a big, fat bank draft. And that’ll be the end of it.’

‘You can’t. To hell with the dojo and the chalet. You can’t do this.’

‘Listen,’ said Dad. ‘You know I’ve had reservations about it myself. But I had a long, long chat with Mr Davenport this evening. He told me they have no intention of setting this thing loose all over the country. They’re going to do a controlled trial on an offshore island before they even think about doing anything else. There can’t possibly be any harm in that, can there?’

I couldn’t see how there could be, but I wasn’t about to give up, and nor was Alex. ‘What about the horsemen? You know who they were, don’t you? You know what it means if the last one turns up with them?’

Dad sighed deeply. ‘We’ll talk about that some time. After tomorrow I’ll have all the time in the world. It’s going to be great. Maybe we’ll even go to India with your mum.’

‘I don’t want to go to India,’ I said. ‘I want …’

But I no longer knew what I wanted. The lab was going to be closed down anyway. Nothing could happen that hadn’t already happened, and the fourth horseman hadn’t appeared.

Yet.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Can we talk about this tomorrow morning? I’m tired. And you two should be congratulating me instead of dragging me over the coals. I’ve done what I set out to do. I’ve achieved something that has never been done before.’

Maybe it was churlish, but I said it anyway. ‘Well done. The scientific colossus, bestriding the world.’

It gives me the creeps now, thinking about that. I had no idea what I was saying.

I
WOKE TO THE
sound of Dad’s car driving away from the house. For a moment everything seemed fine. I was just turning over to go back to sleep again when I remembered. I was jolted awake and I jumped straight out of bed.

‘Alex!’

By the time I came out of the bathroom he was standing at his bedroom door in his pyjamas. They were old ones. The trouser legs were too short.

‘What’s up?’

‘Dad’s already gone. To meet Mr Davenport. He didn’t wait for us to get a chance to talk to him.’

Alex swore. ‘We’ll just go after him,’ he said. ‘He’s going to have to listen to us.’

But I was no clearer this morning than I had been the previous night. I wasn’t sure what it was that we had to stop. It was all over, wasn’t it? That’s what Dad had said. So what was there left for us to do? Should we stop him handing over the information and getting his money?

I went downstairs and stood in the middle of the kitchen, trying to work it out. Alex came down, still in his pyjamas, looking similarly bewildered.