Питер Мэй - Lockdown

‘To create a vaccine.’ MacNeil remembered the Stein-Francks doctor explaining it on television yesterday morning. Was that really only twenty-four hours ago? Less!

‘Except that they all got it wrong, and had to start again from scratch when the real thing came along.’ She sat silently for a moment, before turning towards him, a tiny frown playing around her eyes. ‘What made you ask that?’

He said, ‘A girl at the lab isolated a flu virus in marrow recovered from Choy’s bones.’

He felt Dr Castelli watching him intently. ‘And?’

‘Well, it didn’t mean much to me. But it seems like they were all excited because it wasn’t H5N1. Or at least, not the version of it that we know. They said that it was artificial. That it had been man-made.’

Pinkie drove across the square, past Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parliament. Westminster Abbey sat brooding in silent winter darkness, the branches of the trees in the park stark and leafless, brittle black skeletons standing witness to a plague sent, it seemed, from God to punish Man for his wickedness. For some reason they had sealed off Westminster Bridge, and so Pinkie was heading south to cross the river at Lambeth Bridge. Which, in any case, would bring him out almost opposite the laboratories.

Harry was gagged and masked and tied up in the back seat. At first he had struggled and whined, but he had long since given up, and Pinkie had not heard so much as a whimper from him in the last fifteen minutes.

Pinkie was feeling good. He liked it when he had to improvise. It tested his intelligence. It stretched him. It was a challenge. He had detected just a hint of hysteria buried somewhere deep in Mr Smith’s voice. A rising panic that he was trying hard to hide. But Pinkie was still in control. It was what he was paid for. To get the job done. Never start something you can’t finish , his mother had said. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Pinkie always finished the job. And he always did it well. He could hardly be held responsible for the shortcomings of others.

The fact that it was he who had introduced Kazinski to Mr Smith in the first place had niggled for a time. There was a chance that Mr Smith would blame Pinkie for Kazinski’s failure. But Kazinski was gone, and Pinkie was back in charge. Whatever happened now, he would see it through to the end.

Victoria Tower Gardens separated them from the river to their left, St. John’s concert hall just beyond Smith Square on their right. Pinkie could see Lambeth Bridge spanning the Thames ahead of them at the Millbank roundabout.

He slipped into third gear and slowed to make a left turn across the bridge. There was an army roadblock halfway across. A couple of trucks and half a dozen soldiers. Pinkie dropped another gear to slow his approach and give them plenty of time to check out his registration plate.

Roped hands suddenly looped over his head from behind, and he heard Harry grunt from the effort as he pulled back hard, pinning Pinkie to the headrest. The rough fibres of the rope burned Pinkie’s skin, and he felt his windpipe being crushed. Involuntarily, his foot pushed down on the accelerator as he braced himself, and the car lurched forward at speed. Both his hands shot up to grab the rope and try to release the pressure on his throat. Harry head-butted him on the top of his head, and he felt a sickening pain like a vice closing around his skull. Light exploded behind his eyes. Harry was strong. He was not going to let go.

Pinkie could hear the soldiers shouting now, even above the roar of the engine. Panic in their voices. But he was powerless to do anything about it. He could see them through the windscreen, rifles raised, pointed at the car, standing their ground and ready to fire. Harry was growling as he tightened his grip on Pinkie, sensing success in overcoming his abductor.

The first bullets hit the engine block. Pinkie knew that the soldiers were instructed to fire into the engine block of any vehicle that failed to stop. The next rounds would come through the windscreen. He knew he was going to die, and was powerless to do anything about it. But the second wave of bullets never came. He felt the car slewing sideways, saw pale, masked faces flashing past as soldiers scattered across the road. There was the sickening sound of metal tearing like paper, as the car struck one of the trucks and went spinning across the carriageway. Pinkie’s foot was still pushed hard to the floor. The car was stuck in second gear, and the engine was screaming. He saw flames exploding out of the bonnet as Mr Smith’s BMW struck the parapet, and Harry flew past him, narrowly missing Pinkie’s head, and his face burst against the windscreen in a spray of red.

Pinkie smelled petrol, and then his whole world was engulfed by flames.

MacNeil was approaching the roundabout at Lambeth Palace when they saw the explosion. Initial flames leapt twenty or thirty feet into the air. MacNeil jammed on his brakes and turned on to the bridge. They could see a vehicle half up on the parapet. It had demolished a lamp post, and all the lights had gone out. But the blaze lit the night sky and sent the shadows of running soldiers flitting across the roadway like fleeing rats.

‘Sonofabitch!’ Dr Castelli shouted. ‘There’s someone in the car. There’s someone alive in that car!’

MacNeil could see an arm flapping behind the flames in the driver’s seat, someone trying desperately to get out. He jumped out of the car and saw soldiers turn their rifles towards him. He waved his warrant card in the air and bellowed above the roar of the flames. ‘Police. I’ve got a doctor with me. Is there anyone hurt?’

‘Two guys in the car,’ one of them shouted. ‘But they’re gone.’

But MacNeil could still see someone moving. He took off his coat and threw it over his head and ran at the car. The heat was intense. He could smell it burning his coat. He daren’t breathe, or he knew he would damage his lungs. He wrapped his hand in the folds of the coat sleeve, felt for the door handle, found it and pulled. The door almost fell off. He could feel his trousers burning, his shoes, his hair. The figure behind the wheel half fell towards him, and he grasped the arm and pulled, dragging the man’s dead weight free of the vehicle.

He could smell burned flesh now, and didn’t know if it was his own. He fell in the roadway and rolled away from the choking, burning smoke, gasping for air, an agonising pain searing his hands and forearms. Two soldiers ran past him and dragged the other man clear of the blaze. ‘Oh, Jesus!’ he heard one of them gasp. ‘Look at the state of this guy.’

Someone else threw a heavy coat over MacNeil and rolled him over several times, clouds of smoke rising from singeing clothes. Then he heard Dr Castelli, her voice full of urgency and concern. She was leaning over him, checking his face and arms and hands. ‘You’re mad, Mr MacNeil. Quite insane. And very lucky you only have first-degree burns.’ She looked up and shouted, ‘I need water fast. And clean dressings.’ And then she said to MacNeil, ‘How bad is it?’

‘My hands,’ he gasped. ‘Hurt like hell.’

‘Be thankful.’ The little doctor grinned at him almost fondly. ‘If it hurts it’s not so bad.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

‘The gentleman you pulled from the car, on the other hand, probably feels no pain.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Not yet. But he will be. All that heroism, I’m afraid, Mr MacNeil, gone to waste.’

A soldier arrived with water in a jerry can, and a green first aid box. He looked at the doctor warily from behind his mask, and then moved away. MacNeil sat upright as the doctor poured water over his outstretched hands. There was instant relief from pain. But it returned again as soon as she stopped.