Department 19: Battle Lines (40 page)

“What is it then?” he asked. “It will stay between us.”

Morton looked down at his hands for a long moment. “Afghanistan,” he said, eventually. “Last summer I was attached to a Recon Marine battalion, working the mountains in Helmand. I saw everything you can imagine, and probably stuff you can’t. Dead kids, men who’d been tortured over hearsay, women who’d been gang-raped for teaching girls to read. We came into this village one morning, where three Taliban fighters were supposed to be holed up. We’d pounded the area all night, drone strikes from twenty miles away. I don’t know how many missiles, maybe fifty, maybe a hundred. I don’t know. We had air surveillance at both ends of the valley and they confirmed that no one had got out, in any direction.

“So, when dawn came, they sent the six of us in. We came over the rise at the head of the valley, and where the village had been there was just rubble and dust. Nothing standing, nothing moving. We just walked right down the middle of the track, because there was no way anything could have lived through what the drones had done, and we found the first body about twenty metres outside the village. It was an old woman, gone below the waist, just a spray of blood. She was face down in the dust. There was a square in the middle of where the village had been, a little patch of dust not much bigger than this room. Two kids were lying on the ground, holding hands. Both dead. In the ruins of the buildings we found more bodies, bits of bodies really, almost all of them children, some women. Maybe two or three men, old and grey, beards down to their knees.

“We finished our sweep on the other side of the village, where we found a dead teenage boy and the only thing that had survived, this mangy little dog. It was eating the dead boy, chewing at a hole in his stomach. One of the Marines, a guy called Brody, shot the dog and we headed back to our extraction point. Thirty-four dead was the final count. Thirteen women, four men, counting the teenager, and seventeen kids. No sign of the fighters, and when we got back to Bastion no one could show us the intelligence that had suggested they were there. So it got written up and the CIA redacted most of it and suppressed what was left, and two days later they gave me a medal and a week later I came home. That was seven months ago.”

“Jesus,” said Jamie. “That’s awful.”

“Right,” said Morton. “I saw other stuff that was almost as bad, but that was the worst. It was like they weren’t people any more, and I don’t just mean because they were dead. They weren’t whole, they were broken. Do you know what I’m trying to say?”

Jamie thought of the terrorised, mutilated monks of the Lindisfarne Priory, the men and women who had been abused and tortured for the entertainment of the membership of
La Fraternité de la Nuit
, and nodded his head. “I know,” he said, softly. “Believe me.”

Morton stared at him for a long moment, then smiled a thin, painful smile. “I do,” he said. “You can tell when people have seen things they can’t forget. It does something to their eyes. Yours have it. I was scared in Afghanistan, and in Iraq before that. If you weren’t scared, you were either an idiot or you were lying. But that wasn’t the problem yesterday. I can’t explain it.”

“Try,” said Jamie.

“The vampires,” said Morton, slowly. “They’re… wrong. That’s the best I can do. I’ve faced people who wanted to kill me, and I’ve been in situations where I could have died, more than I can count. I’m not afraid of dying. But with them… it’s like they’re not real. Or they shouldn’t be. But they are, and it doesn’t seem right. None of this feels right, sir.”

“You just need more time,” said Jamie. “You’ll get your head round it, I know you will.”

“Ellison already has,” said Morton. “She was born to do this, like you. Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe that’s just the truth of it.”

“No one was born to do this,” said Jamie. “You’re being too hard on yourself, John. You missed a shot, you started beating yourself up about it and you overthought everything. It happens. It won’t be the last shot you miss, and that’s not what worries me. What worries me is what you said afterwards. I can’t have someone on my squad who is conflicted about whether destroying vampires is a good idea.”

Morton nodded. “I get that,” he said, his voice low.

The two Operators sat for a long moment. Eventually, Jamie broke the silence. “Do you think you should be on the active roster? Be honest with me.”

Morton looked at him. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“You know what I think.”

“I want to help,” said Morton. “I don’t want to be sat here while everyone else is out there fighting. That’s not me, sir.”

“You’re not helping if I have to worry about you every second we’re out there,” said Jamie. “You can see that, can’t you?”

“I can,” said Morton.

Jamie stared at the rookie, then rubbed his eyes and sighed. “The Director says you stay active,” he said. “So you stay active. That doesn’t mean I won’t leave you in the van if I think it’s necessary.”

“I understand, sir.”

“And I’m sending you down to the Science Division for a psych evaluation. Non-negotiable.”

“When?”

“Right now. As soon as we’re done here. They’re expecting you.”

“OK,” said Morton. “Anything else?”

“No,” said Jamie. “We’ll talk again when the psych results come back. As for right now, you’re still in my squad. Is that what you want?”

“Yes, sir,” said Morton. “Thank you. Sir.”

Jamie was waiting outside the Level A lift when his console vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out, grateful for the distraction from his own thoughts; he had been expecting Morton to get angry, to threaten him, possibly even try to attack him. The rookie’s quiet, uncertain demeanour had somehow been far more troubling.

He saw the message icon glowing on the console’s screen and thumbed the screen into life.

ALL/OPERATIONAL_SQUADS_REACTIVATED/SCHEDULES_TO_FOLLOW

About time
, thought Jamie.
The lockdown already cost us a whole night.

The console beeped again in his hand and a second message appeared. His squad’s updated schedule flashed up and he read through it quickly. The Surveillance Division had identified the second vampire on their list as a middle-aged escapee by the name of Alastair Dempsey, and pinpointed a probable location in Central London. Operational Squad M-3 were scheduled to depart at 1600 hours to continue their mission.

Jamie checked his watch and saw that he had almost five hours to kill. He forwarded the schedule to his squad mates with a note telling them to meet him in the hangar at 1545, thought about reminding Morton that his involvement was conditional on the results of his psych evaluation, and decided against it. The rookie’s confidence was already shaken and he didn’t think any good would come of labouring the point. When the lift arrived, he pressed the button marked H, leant against the wall and closed his eyes.

A minute later Jamie stepped out of the airlock that controlled access to the Blacklight detention block. He nodded to the Operator sitting inside the control station and set off down the long corridor, his boot heels clicking against the smooth surface of the floor.

He fixed his gaze on the wall at the far end of the block as he passed the cells that held Valentin and his valet, Lamberton. Out of the very corner of his eye, he noticed the youngest Rusmanov watching him as he passed, but forced himself to keep going.

Not today. Go and see your mum, for God’s sake.

As he approached the last cell on the left, the sweet smell of raspberry tea floated through the ultraviolet wall and into his nostrils, triggering a wave of nostalgia so sharp it was almost painful; it carried memories of the kitchen in their old house, the table where he had done his homework while he and his mum waited for his dad to come home from a job at the Ministry of Defence that had never actually existed. What his father had actually spent his days doing had been very different, a reality neither he nor his mother had become aware of until long after Julian Carpenter was dead.

Jamie stepped out in front of the UV wall and smiled. His mother was sitting on the sofa, sipping her tea from the cup and saucer he had bought her for Christmas when he was twelve and working on a crossword. She looked up before he said a word and smiled at him.

“Hello, love,” she said. “Come in.”

Jamie stepped through the barrier, feeling the familiar tingle on his skin as he did so. “How are you, Mum?” he asked. He leant down and gave her a hug that she returned in her usual careful manner. “You OK?”

“I’m fine,” she replied, letting go of him and clearing the space beside her on the sofa. “How are you? Is everything all right upstairs?”

“Just about,” said Jamie, flopping down next to her. “I can’t tell you what happened, but I’m fine. So are Kate and Matt.”

“The walls shook,” said Marie. Her face was suddenly pale with worry. “It sounded like a bomb going off.”

“I can’t tell you anything, Mum,” said Jamie, his tone a little sharper than he had intended. “You know that.”

“I do,” replied Marie. “I thought you might have let me know you were all right, though. I was worried.”

Jamie felt heat rise in his cheeks, as shame and guilt fought for position in the pit of his stomach.

The blast shook the entire base
, he thought,
and she’s been down here on her own wondering what happened. I could have been dead for all she knew.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think.”

“You never do,” replied Marie. Her tone was cool, but not angry; it sounded full of disappointment. “I love you Jamie, more than anything in the world, and I know you’re busy and I know how important what you do is. But I’m your mum and I worry about you. I’m sorry if that’s a burden.”

Jamie felt tears threatening to well up in the corners of his eyes. “It’s not,” he said, in a strangled voice. “I really am sorry, Mum. They locked the base down overnight, but I should have come down first thing this morning. I didn’t mean for you to worry.”

She smiled at him, an expression so full of love that his heart felt like it would burst from his chest. “I know you didn’t, Jamie,” she said. “I never think that you don’t care, I promise you I don’t. And I’m
so
proud of you. Just spare me a thought now and again, OK?”

“I will,” replied Jamie. His insides felt like they were on fire, set ablaze by a volatile combination of shame, self-loathing and unconditional love. “I’ll try harder, Mum. I promise.”

“Jesus,” said Lizzy Ellison. “I wish I hadn’t read that.”

The van containing Operational Squad M-3 was cruising south, eating up the miles that lay between it and the capital. Ellison and Morton had both finished scanning through copies of their target’s Broadmoor file, their faces turning increasingly pale as they did so. Jamie was still attempting to process both his conversation with his mother and the results of Morton’s psych evaluation, and had been glad of something to keep his squad mates occupied, even something as grisly as the story of Alastair Dempsey.

Eighteen years earlier, Dempsey’s sister and her husband had taken a two-week holiday on Fuerteventura, leaving their eight-year-old daughter in his care. This was a regular occurrence, and both Sharon and Nick counted themselves lucky to have a relative who was not only willing to babysit Beth, but who was also both a primary school teacher and a St John Ambulance volunteer. They had returned home, rested and relaxed, and picked their daughter up from her uncle’s house. She seemed a little quieter than usual, but Sharon put it down to sadness at being made to come home; Alastair had always been his niece’s favourite.

The following morning, Beth told Sharon that there was a ghost lady living in the walls of her uncle’s house, and that she must be sad, because she cried at night when Beth was in bed. Sharon asked her if she was pretending and Beth swore on the life of her hamster that she wasn’t. She asked her daughter if she had told her uncle about the ghost lady in the walls and Beth said no, because she could only hear her through a crack in the floor beneath her bed and she didn’t think her Uncle Alastair would believe her.

When he got home from work that night, Sharon told her husband, who laughed. Beth had an active imagination, sometimes annoyingly so, and Nick believed this was nothing more than one of her stories. Sharon told him he was probably right, but couldn’t quite put it out of her mind; the image of a woman trapped inside the walls of her brother’s small detached house was such a horrible one. Two days later she had lunch with Alastair and told him what her daughter had said. They laughed about it, and agreed that Beth should be a writer when she grew up. Sharon didn’t give the ghost lady another thought until the following Sunday, when she went to collect Alastair for their monthly visit to the nursing home where their mother lived, and found his house empty.

After twenty-four hours, in which a series of increasingly anxious calls to her brother’s phone went unanswered, and his neighbours, with whom he had been friendly, confirmed that he hadn’t mentioned any upcoming trips away, Sharon rang the police, who broke down the door of the small house he had lived in for almost twenty years. Inside, they found a hidden door standing open in the hallway, a door leading down to a basement that neither Sharon nor Nick had known existed. The small underground space was painted black, lined with cameras and recording equipment, and home to several racks of medical implements and power tools. In the centre of the room, hanging from an intricate arrangement of harnesses and pulleys, they found a young woman.

She was long dead and he was long gone.

Within six hours, Alastair Dempsey was the most wanted man in the country. His photo was plastered across every evening newspaper and television bulletin, and the following morning the tabloids exploded with an avalanche of outrage and fury, demanding that he be caught, warning the public over and over that there was a monster out there, searching for his next victim.

Six days after the hidden basement and its contents were discovered, Dempsey was caught at Dover, trying to board a ferry to France. He ran when he saw the armed police, but cornered against a freight container, with guns pointing at his chest, he gave up and went quietly.