Питер Мэй - Lockdown

MacNeil drove on down Charing Cross Road, through Trafalgar Square and into Whitehall. There was more activity here, a Civil Service still functioning after a fashion, government seeking to deal with a disintegrating society. Men and women with masks leaving and entering the corridors of power with the same sense of bleak despair that gripped most of those who lived in the capital.

As he neared the river, he saw black smoke rising into the heavy morning sky from the four chimneys of the old Battersea Power Station. A more potent symbol of human helplessness in the face of an unforgiving Nature he could not imagine. How many dead was it now? Five hundred thousand? Six? More? No one believed the figures anyhow. There was no way to verify them. But even at their most optimistic, those the government put out were barely conceivable.

The eight o’clock news carried the story which had been running all night. But it was MacNeil’s first time hearing it, and it hit him hard. Shortly after midnight, doctors at St. Thomas’ Hospital had announced the death of the Prime Minister. Two of his children were already dead, and his wife was still critically ill. It had been no secret that his condition was serious. But if the most powerful person in the country could be taken so easily, what chance did the rest of them have?

In sonorous tones, the newsreader reported that there was now expected to be a power struggle between the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for control of the party. The Deputy Prime Minister, a toad of a man whom MacNeil had never liked, had the upper hand, since he would automatically fill the Prime Minister’s shoes — at least temporarily. Although MacNeil could not understand why anyone would want to, given the circumstances. The allure of power, it seemed, was irresistible to some. Quietly MacNeil hoped that the Chancellor would win the power struggle. The present incumbent of number 11 Downing Street was, it seemed to him, eminently more sensible, a man of intelligence and conscience.

As he drove across Westminster Bridge, through yet another army checkpoint, he glanced west to see the eleven-storey facade of St. Thomas’ Hospital rising up from the South Bank of the Thames. Somewhere, behind the concrete and glass, the man who had once run the country lay dead. Cold and powerless, infected by his own children. Beyond, the three remaining original wings of the hospital, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, were filled, he knew, with yet more stricken patients. Perhaps if the four other wings had not been destroyed by the Germans during the Blitz, it would not have been necessary to construct emergency overspill in the park across the road.

MacNeil pulled his Ford Focus into the bus stop opposite the accident and emergency department in Lambeth Palace Road, confident in the knowledge that none of the four buses which used to traverse this route would be inconvenienced.

The gates and railings at the entrance to Archbishop’s Park had been torn down to create access for the heavy equipment brought in by the contractors. He recognised the unmarked vans of the Scenes of Crime officers from the FSS laboratories, although they might have been quicker on foot, since the lab was just a short walk away along a narrow path at the south end of the park.

The Forensic Science Service had been forced to draw its resources into one central facility following the lockdown of the Capital, and had established the former Metropolitan Police Forensic Science laboratory in Lambeth Road as the centre for most of the medical and scientific services required by the police. Right now, the officers they had sent were standing around waiting for MacNeil.

MacNeil surveyed the wreck of the park, monstrous machinery standing idle amongst the ripped-up remains of what had once been a tiny oasis of green in a sea of concrete and glass. Hundreds of workers in their distinctive orange jumpsuits stood around in groups, talking and smoking. In the misty early morning light, a group of ghostly figures in white Tyvek suits and masks clustered around a hole in the ground which should by now have been filled with cement. A man in a suit, wearing a calf-length camel coat and a white hard hat, picked his way delicately through the mud as MacNeil approached. He wore a standard-issue white cotton mask, as did MacNeil, but stopped well short of him. ‘DI MacNeil?’

MacNeil kept his distance and eyed him cautiously. ‘Aye. Who’s asking?’

‘Derek James. I’m from the office of the Deputy Prime Minister. You’ll understand if I don’t shake your hand.’

‘What do you want?’ MacNeil had never been slow in getting to the point.

‘I want,’ said James, with a certain edge, ‘to get this site back to work.’

‘Then the sooner we stop talking about it, the sooner I’ll do what I have to do and get out of your hair.’ MacNeil walked past him towards the gathering of ghosts.

James went after him, still concerned to keep his shoes mud-free. ‘I don’t think you understand, Mr MacNeil. This work is being carried out under an emergency decree of Parliament. Millions of pounds are being poured into this project. There is a strict timetable. A delay could cost lives.’

‘Someone’s already dead, Mr James.’

‘Which means they’re beyond help. Others are not.’

MacNeil stopped in his tracks and turned to face the man from the ministry who immediately recoiled, as if afraid MacNeil might breathe on him. ‘Look. Everyone in this country’s entitled to justice. Alive or dead. That’s my job. To see that justice is done. And when I’ve done it, you can do yours. Until then, stay out of my face.’ He turned again and trudged through the mud to the men in Tyvek. ‘What’s the score here?’

‘Bag of bones, Jack,’ one of them said, his voice muffled by his mask. ‘They only excavated yesterday. Someone must have dumped it overnight.’ He glanced around the hundreds of faces that watched them from a distance. ‘And these guys want us out of here toot sweet.’

‘All in good time.’

Another of the Tyvek suits handed MacNeil a pair of plastic shoe covers. ‘Here, you better put these on, mate.’

MacNeil pulled on the plastic and peered into the hole. There was a figure crouched in the bottom of it. ‘Who’s down there?’

‘Your old pal.’

MacNeil rolled his eyes. ‘Aw, shit,’ he said under his breath. ‘Tom Bennet!’

The forensics man grinned behind his mask, stretching it tight across his face.

MacNeil snapped on latex gloves and reached out a hand. ‘Help me down.’

It was an expensive sports holdall with a PUMA logo on the side. Tom was holding it open with gloved hands and looked up as MacNeil dropped down beside him. ‘Don’t come too close to me,’ he said. ‘You never know what you might catch.’

MacNeil ignored him. ‘What’s in it?’ he asked.

‘The bones of a child.’

MacNeil leaned over to peer in. The bones looked very white, as if they’d been left out in the sun, a sad collection of the bits and pieces of what had once been a human being. He recoiled from a stink like meat left in the refrigerator a month past its sell-by. ‘What the hell’s that smell?’

‘The bones.’ A crinkle around the young pathologist’s eyes betrayed his amusement at MacNeil’s disgust.

‘I didn’t know bones smelled.’

‘Oh, yeah. Two, even three months after death.’

‘So this kid was alive quite recently?’

‘Very recently, I’d say, from how much they stink.’

‘So what’s happened to the flesh?’

‘Someone’s stripped it off the bones. Using some pretty sharp cutting gear.’ Tom lifted out a long shanked bone, laying it delicately across both hands. ‘The femur. Thigh bone to you. You can see the scores left in the bone by the knife, or whatever it was he used. They’re quite deep, and broad, so it was a heavy instrument.’