Louise Welsh - A Lovely Way to Burn

Her mobile sat charging on the dashboard. It glowed with calls from Alexander Buchanan, but she left them unanswered. She wanted her visit to be a surprise.

The industrial estate was a series of warehouses, factories and trade outlets housed in ugly low-rise buildings. Stevie dipped her headlamps and slowed the Jaguar to a crawl. The estate looked deserted, like a vision of death: the nothing that followed the pain and convulsions of dying. But she was sure Buchanan was inside his lab, fussing over a cure he would never find, and waiting for her to arrive. The chemist was a poisoner, a creep who killed slyly or got others to do his dirty work for him. She could feel his cowardice in his reluctance to admit his flawed calculations. She would do what she should have done before, point the gun at his head and make him tell her the truth about Simon’s death.

It took her a few circuits of the industrial estate, but finally she found Buchanan’s lab, the name Fibrosyop discretely etched on a sign attached to a locked and bolted gate. The laboratory was guarded by high railings that looked more permanent than the kit-built box they enclosed. A security camera, fixed too high for her to throw a blanket over the lens, was trained on the entrance. Stevie hoped it had succumbed to the power cuts sweeping the city. She got out of the car, walked to the gate and examined the padlock securing it. A heavy bolt cutter might be able to bite through the chain, but she had not thought to arm herself with one. Stevie felt a quick tremor of fear at the thought of all the things she had left undone. The city was falling apart and she was as unprepared as a lamb trotting blithely behind a Judas goat.

Stevie got back into the car and drove to the fence’s perimeter, hoping for a gap to slip through, but she had kept her headlamps off and the fence was just a presence in the blackness. She whispered, ‘Bloody useless,’ her words a hiss in the dark, but even as they escaped her lips, she saw a way in.

A lorry loaded with a shipping container was parked next to the perimeter fence. She drew in beside it and closed the Jaguar’s door quietly behind her. The only tool in the boot was a wheel jack. Stevie shoved it in her bag and climbed on to the car bonnet. The moon was full, the stars visible in a way she had never seen in London before. Stevie looked up at them for a moment, wondering if their sparkle heralded more asteroids, more viruses, and then scrambled on to the car’s roof. It was a stretch, but she managed to hop from there on to the bonnet of the lorry. A man’s head was resting against the steering wheel, his features slack, his mouth and eyes open. Stevie’s balance wavered and for an instant she thought she might fall, but she managed to regain control and clambered on to the top of the cab. She took a deep breath, climbed up on to the shipping container and ran along it, her footsteps ringing against the metal. She was level with the railings now. Their prongs curved away from her, hard enough to bruise, too blunt to impale. It was a long drop on to the tarmac on the other side and once she was over, there was no guarantee that she would be able to escape. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Stevie took it out, saw Buchanan’s number glowing on the display and knew that he was inside, waiting on her. She left the phone unanswered. Let the chemist wait. It was her turn to set the agenda.

Stevie tossed her bag over the fence, took off Simon’s jacket and spread it over the railings. Then she moved back, as far as she dared, to the edge of the lorry’s roof, stepped into a short run and launched herself over the fence in a rolling leap, half recalled from high jump at school. Stevie landed on her feet, staggered and fell flat against the tarmac, skinning her hands and knees. Simon’s jacket was snagged on the railings above. A breeze caught the sleeves and it twisted gently, a broken silhouette, too much like the hanging man on the railway bridge for her to look at it for long. Stevie spat on her palms, trying to get some of the dirt out of her grazed skin. There was no point in regretting things that were beyond reach. She swung the strap of her bag over her shoulder and jogged towards Buchanan’s laboratory.

Stevie had intended to smash one of the building’s rear windows with the wheel jack, but when she got closer she saw that the windows were barred. She cursed and tried the fire escape and then the front entrance, but the doors to Buchanan’s lab were locked, as she had known they would be.

In movies, people picked locks, spun their tumblers home with a credit card, or took out a gun and blasted them into irrelevance. Stevie squatted in the doorway’s shadows, trying to plan her next move. The wheel jack was heavy in her bag, the gun snug beside it, but even if the door gave way, smashing it would take a while and make too much noise, and shooting at the lock was an invitation to a ricochet, a bullet in the face.

Her mobile buzzed with news of a text. Stevie took it out of her pocket and pressed the small speech bubble on the screen: Knock if you want to come in. She cursed. Buchanan must have spotted her on the surveillance cameras but his message gave a surreal, Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole edge to her fear. She tensed, unsure of whether to run, or wait for the chemist to come to her.

The door opened. Stevie reached for Hope’s gun, but strong hands grabbed her around her waist, pinned her arms behind her back and dragged her into a cocaine-white corridor that smelt of bleach. Stevie kicked and bucked, but her assailant held firm. She barely had time to register that he was dressed in protective overalls, his head and neck helmeted by breathing apparatus, like an investigator in a nuclear disaster zone, before a handkerchief was pressed over her mouth and nose, and a line of darkness sucked her down.

Stevie jerked awake. Her knees were drawn up to her chin and her eyelids felt as if they had been weighted with pennies. The thought forced her eyes open.

She was lying on a single bed in a small, white-painted, windowless room. The light was a searing fluorescent bright. Her head was foggy from whatever the stranger had sedated her with and her throat was Sunday-morning dry. Stevie massaged her temples with her fingertips. She looked up, saw a camera peering at her from a high corner, and resolved not to cry.

The collapsing world had made her think that Buchanan would give up his secrets as readily as Dr Ahumibe had, like a ship dropping its ballast as it neared port, but it seemed that the chemist was as obsessed with keeping his secrets as she was with uncovering the truth. Stevie looked up at the camera and said in a voice creaky from lack of fluids, ‘You win. Let me go and I promise to mind my own business.’ There was no sign that anyone had heard her.

She swung her feet on to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed until she was sure that she could stand up without falling over. Her legs felt numb and insubstantial, as if she had been on a bumpy long-haul flight that had confined passengers to their seats, but Stevie managed the three steps to the door. It lacked a handle but a small, reinforced window looked out on to a deserted, equally white corridor.

The only hiding place was beneath the bed, or in the small shower room attached to her cell. Stevie checked them both, but it was clear that her satchel had disappeared. She searched her pockets, but she had already registered the absence of the gun’s comforting weight and was unsurprised to find her mobile gone.

A second security camera observed her in the shower room. Stevie gave it the finger, then washed her face, used the toilet and drank some water from the tap.

The madness of the last few days crashed over her. If she had fled the city, as Derek had told her to, she might be holed up somewhere safe, ready to sit out the sweats. The thought brought hot tears to Stevie’s eyes, but she felt the surveillance camera shift and blinked them away. She looked into the lens and repeated her offer: ‘Let me go and I won’t bother you again.’ But the camera maintained its mute, unblinking stare. ‘Okay,’ she muttered. ‘Fuck you.’ Stevie went back into the bedroom, stripped the sheet from the bed and started to fashion it into a noose.