The Man on Hackpen Hill Read online

  ‘I might have to disappear for a while,’ Jim says. He sounds different, focused in a frightening sort of way. ‘Sorry I didn’t call back last night.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Bella asks, getting up from the table. Her legs have turned to jelly but she manages to walk out of the pub into the fresh air. Jim’s in his car and reception is poor.

  ‘There’s a key around the side of my house, under the flowerpot beside the staddle stone,’ he says. ‘It’s for the back door and I want you to go in and take Rocky over to the pub. I know it’s a big ask but I didn’t realise I might not be returning. They always look after him when I’m on holiday. Tell them I’ve had to go away for work. The cat will hang out at the pub too but you can’t make her.’

  ‘Jim, who’s Rocky?’ Bella asks, her mind racing. Did she miss someone at the house? An elderly relative, perhaps?

  ‘Sorry, Rocky’s a young Yemen chameleon. I didn’t show him to you last night. It wasn’t really the time for introductions, was it?’

  ‘OK,’ she says, remembering that she had seen it briefly last night. ‘Why aren’t you coming back, Jim?’

  ‘I can’t explain now. They followed me again to work. The people in the Range Rover. Do not trust the police if they get in touch again, do you understand?’

  ‘I get it.’

  ‘I repeat, the police are not your friend.’ He pauses. ‘Something’s happened, Bella. And I have to stay low for a while. Please listen carefully. Under the stone, in Rocky’s vivarium, there’s a USB stick. It’s encoded but take it. Rocky won’t bite, I promise. He’s more into locusts. I’ll let you know how to decode the USB later. Everything’s on there – the truth about Porton Down, these crop circles. I must go now.’

  ‘Jim, wait,’ Bella says, glancing around the empty car park. The line falls silent but he’s still there.

  ‘I really enjoyed meeting you last night,’ she says. ‘Not just because I’m a journo and you work at Porton Down and all that but, you know, because I felt… we had a real connection.’

  More silence. ‘Me too,’ Jim says, and this time he does hang up.

  35

  Silas

  ‘Any word on the Range Rover’s number plate?’ Silas asks, sitting down next to Strover in the wrong corner of the Parade Room. A bad start to the day has just been made worse by the arrival of a contingent of French police officers on a cultural exchange. Silas loves the French, loves France. He’s just not so keen on the Wiltshire Police liaison officer who told them, in the new spirit of hot-desking at Gablecross, that they could sit in CID’s preferred corner.

  ‘Looks like it’s cloned,’ Strover says.

  ‘Another bloody show plate,’ Silas says, sighing.

  A baffling DVLA loophole that should have been closed years ago. Police are seeing an increasing number of show plates – number plates that are meant for off-road use only and can be bought without documentation or proof of address. As a result, criminals are able to buy the plates for already registered cars and use them on stolen vehicles. Once cloned, the cars appear legit – and the original owner gets all the speeding tickets.

  ‘I checked in with my Cambridge academic this morning,’ Strover says, changing the subject.

  ‘Did you ask her about BZ?’

  ‘She’s still discussing it with the chemistry professor at Imperial,’ Strover says. ‘The molecular structure of BZ certainly contains two hexagons, just like the first crop circle, but the rest of the adjoining shapes are harder to decipher. On the plus side, there are similarities between all three circles. If we can crack the code for one, it should unlock the others. But the patterns are quite crude approximations, done in a hurry.’

  ‘They can’t be the easiest things to make,’ Silas says. ‘I have enough trouble mowing stripes on my lawn.’

  ‘The academic community is taking this very seriously,’ Strover continues, ignoring Silas’s attempt at humour. ‘Sees it as a challenge.’

  ‘Aliens testing our IQ, if you believe the stuff online,’ Silas says, rolling his eyes. ‘Apparently, they need to know that we have sufficient intelligence before deigning to communicate with us.’

  Strover’s not playing ball today. Not in the mood for X Files banter. ‘Have you heard anything from MOD Police at Porton?’ she asks.

  Silas shakes his head. He hasn’t even rung them yet. There are other more important lines of inquiry to pursue. The key has yielded no forensic clues. Silas woke up this morning still convinced that the third victim holds the secret to the other two. It’s just a question of establishing his identity. No match came back from the National DNA Database and forensics have yet to discover anything useful at the scene.

  ‘What about the female victim’s tattoos?’ Silas asks. A small rook has also been discovered behind the victim’s left ear, hidden beneath her hair.

  ‘Seems like the tattoos on her arms are rooks too,’ Strover says. ‘Wing feathers.’

  Nature can be a cruel bastard. It was rooks that had gathered in the field to peck at her body. Feather tattoos are popular but someone must know who this woman is. They’ve drawn a complete blank on her and the man found earlier.

  Silas’s phone rings. It’s Malcolm, the pathologist. Silas left him a long message this morning about their latest discovery.

  ‘I’ve just come off the phone to the consultant at the Great Western looking after your “zombie”, as you call him,’ Malcolm says on speakerphone, clearly disdainful of the term. He’s never one for small talk, likes to get to the point, which suits Silas fine. ‘Actually, it got me thinking. I told him to test for tetrodotoxin.’

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ Silas asks, glancing at Strover, who immediately pulls out her phone. She likes to look up anything that she doesn’t know.

  ‘An extremely dangerous neurotoxin – found in puffer fish and more deadly than cyanide,’ Malcolm says. ‘One of the most potent non-protein poisons known to man, in fact. For many years, it was thought to be an ingredient of a Haitian voodoo preparation used to induce a state of living death – zombieism. The science is dubious, to put it mildly, and I suspect your man was poisoned with something else, but he’s apparently developed fixed dilated pupils and brain stem areflexia – the cardinal hallmarks of brain death. Tetrodotoxin is also often administered through a cut or wound.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ Silas says, recalling the slash on the man’s arm. He glances across at the party of French detectives. One of them has turned around at the mention of Haitian voodoo.

  ‘The victim’s most probably right-handed – there’s a watch mark on his left wrist – so there’s a chance the wound, on the left forearm—’

  ‘Could have been self-inflicted?’ Silas interrupts.

  ‘Exactly,’ Malcolm says, pausing. ‘Unlike the gash on his cheek. Most likely a deer. I’ve run it past an American colleague who works at one of the body farms over there, as we don’t have many cases of flesh-eating Bambis in the UK.’

  Silas knows all about the body farms. Run by forensic anthropologists, they are places where human remains can be studied as they decompose in an outdoor environment. The UK uses dead pigs but human corpses are permitted in the States, scattered around high-security grounds. A few years back, the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility in Texas made the news when a white-tailed deer, considered a herbivore, was photographed chewing on a human rib.

  ‘You said in your message that you think your zombie might have been responsible for the other two bodies,’ Malcolm continues.

  ‘It’s just a hunch,’ Silas says.

  ‘An interesting one.’ Malcolm pauses. ‘It’s almost as if whoever did this was an insider – sending a message from one pathologist to another.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Silas asks.

  ‘The first victim’s brain had been severed after death, and both bodies had been frozen. You could argue that’s our stock-in-trade, what we do.’ He pauses. ‘It’s all a bit cryptic, isn’t it? What with the key and e
verything.’

  ‘Can say that again,’ Silas says, glancing at Strover, who has taken a call on the other line.

  ‘More doosra than off break,’ Malcolm adds, using one of his favourite cricket analogies. If it wasn’t for Conor, who’s back playing for their local cricket club, Silas wouldn’t know what Malcolm is on about.

  He moves to hang up but Malcolm, usually so brusque, stays on the line.

  ‘You can imagine there’s been a fair amount of chat among us pathologists,’ he says. ‘We’re a small community, overworked, underpaid. As a breed, we’re possibly even a little arrogant, but we’re not monsters. Whoever did this might well be a pathologist but they had no respect for the dead.’

  ‘I’ll keep you posted, Malcolm,’ Silas says, looking again at Strover, who is gesturing at him. ‘Got to go.’

  He hangs up and turns to Strover, who has her hand over the receiver.

  ‘Sir, it’s the Control Room. Reports of an RTC coming in near Middle Wallop – involving a Range Rover. Same number plate. Two casualties. They’re being brought in to the Great Western now.’

  36

  Jim

  Jim knows it’s a risk but he needs to see his dad. He can’t help feeling that it might be the last time they meet. It can take him more than two hours to drive to Swanage on the Dorset coast, but that’s on a Friday night and right now the roads are clear. His body is still running on adrenaline after the incident with the tractor as he heads back towards Marlborough. It’s in the opposite direction, but there’s somewhere he needs to visit before he heads south to Swanage.

  Jim glances in the mirror, checking for another tail. The same car has been behind him ever since he doubled back onto the Salisbury road after leaving Palestine. It’s just a mother and daughter. No cause for alarm. He hopes no one died in the Range Rover, but they pushed him too far, asking him to pull over like that. They were definitely MI5, tipped off by MOD Police at Porton Down. DI Hart will have contacted them about his meeting with Bella at the pub last night – it was the first thing the Range Rover driver asked him about on the phone – and all hell will have let loose. Calls will have been made between various Whitehall departments, checking Jim’s Developed Vetting security clearance, his recent computer activity. They won’t find anything.

  Thirty minutes later, he pulls into a lay-by at the top of Hackpen Hill, outside Marlborough, steps out of his car, and walks over to the brow. To his right, a spinney on the ancient Ridgeway trail. Ahead, towards Basset Down, the distinctive shape of the Science Museum’s National Collections Centre at Wroughton, two large Nissen huts where spacecraft, aeroplanes and vehicles are stored. Dad used to take him there for visits when he was a child. An electric car from 1916 was one of his favourites. And below him, a spread of wheat fields, the closest of which is humming with police activity. Tents, CSI officers in white oversuits, a gathering of camper vans in the distance. But Jim’s not come here to gawp, unlike the prurient crowd that has assembled in the car park opposite. He’s here to study the pattern, the representation in flattened wheat of the incapacitating agent BZ: 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate.

  He’s looked at the photos but he wants to see it for himself. Check that he’s right, particularly after what happened with the Range Rover. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he takes in the geometric shapes and a moment of doubt passes through him like a breath of autumn wind. Has he got the molecular structure wrong? Misunderstood the message? Is it something else other than BZ? He squints, looking at the two hexagons and the less distinct symbols beyond them. If it’s not BZ, it’s something very like it.

  A second later, another Range Rover, black and sinister, similar to the one he’d caused to crash, noses around the tight bend below and drives up towards him, slowing as it passes. Jim turns away, hiding his face. Is he just being paranoid?

  Jim gets back into his car as the Range Rover accelerates away towards Marlborough. He starts to text Bella, but his hands are shaking too much. If she’s still sorting Rocky in his house, she needs to get away from there now. He doesn’t want her hurt by these people.

  37

  Bella

  Bella finds the key under the flowerpot at the back of Jim’s cottage and unlocks the door. As far as she knows, no one saw her walking down the drive and she checks both ways before she steps inside. It’s strange being back here again. A risk too. Should she really not trust the police, as Jim says? Bella’s childhood in Homerton was played out against a soundtrack of wailing sirens but she was too focused on her schoolwork to get into trouble. Besides, the local police were more interested in the rival gangs of Tottenham and Wood Green, although her mum occasionally accused them of being heavy-handed with some of the refugees at the migrant centre.

  Bella looks into the sitting room. Everything’s been tidied to within an inch of its life. Ordered, how she imagines Jim to live. It’s as if last night never happened. There’s a row of framed photos on the mantelpiece: a younger Jim in his graduation gown; by the seaside with an elderly man, presumably his dad. And a photo of Jim standing in front of a sign saying ‘Porton Down Science Campus’. Next to it, on the right, are the logos for DSTL, Public Health England and Porton Science Park.

  She glances over at Rocky in his leafy vivarium. The chameleon eyes her with suspicion as she walks across to peer at him through the glass. He’s a weird-looking boy: pastel green with mottled stripes and a strange cone-shaped skull, like an egghead. Maybe he’s a brainy scientist, like Jim. Lifting off the lid, she looks down at Rocky and hesitates. Animals don’t scare her. They had all sorts of pets in Mombasa, including Cadogo, their Alsatian guard dog, and Kasuku, a vicious African grey parrot. And in London one of her neighbours used to keep a ball python, which Helen once dared her to hold. Reaching down, Bella lifts up the stone, removes the USB stick and gives Rocky a little wave.

  Should she have a quick look at the USB now? Jim said it was encoded but something makes her want to try. She’s already checked out of the pub, confirming that they were happy to have Rocky, and she has a small bag with her. Sitting down in the armchair, she pulls out her laptop and inserts the USB. It’s called ‘Modern Maddison’ but when she clicks on it, a password window appears. What happens if she never hears from Jim again? He should have trusted her, given her the password.

  Bella’s phone buzzes with a text. It’s from Jim.

  If you are in my house, you need to get out of there now. Forget all I said and go.

  She stares at the message and reads it again, her mouth drying. Has she triggered a warning by trying to open the USB? She looks around the tidy room. The front doorbell rings and she freezes. Jim said he’d been followed. The Range Rover must be back in the village. Or is it the police? She glances again at her phone. Something about the tone of Jim’s text is not right. Should she leave for her own safety, or does he mean that she should get out of his life? She closes her eyes, tries to calm down. They got on well last night. He’s told her how to enter his home, even where the USB is. After one meeting. He trusts her.

  She walks over to the door. It’s probably someone from the pub, offering to help bring Rocky over. Except that they agreed she could manage on her own. The blurred outline of a figure is visible through the opaque glass panel. The bell rings again. She decides not to answer it and the person walks away. Running through the house, Bella slides the key into the lock of the back door, turning it silently. A moment later, the person reaches the door and tries the handle. Do they have their own key?

  She holds her breath and listens, tensing every muscle in her body. The person raps their knuckles so hard on the door’s glass panel that Bella fears it will break. Is it the same person who struck Jim on the head last night? Her body tenses again. Shit, shit, shit! What’s Jim got himself into? What’s she got herself into? She tries to keep quiet, rechecking her phone. Should she text Jim back, tell him someone’s here already? Ask him what he means?

  The person starts to walk around to the front of the house agai
n. Bella tiptoes upstairs to the bathroom, as quietly as she can, closes the loo seat and stands on it. She can just see down to the drive outside. A man is walking away, about to disappear around the corner, but not before Bella recognises his hunched shoulders and jet-black hair. The same man she confronted in the street outside the newspaper office. Who stepped out of the car near her house in Homerton.

  What’s he doing here? She waits until he is gone, breathing hard, trying to stop a rising panic, before she returns downstairs. Why is this man following her? She needs to get out of this village, back to London, the safety of home, her mum. Perhaps she can sneak down to the train station without being spotted. She looks again at Rocky. He needs to get to the pub. She’ll call them, ask someone to come over and collect him, say the vivarium’s too heavy.

  She jumps as Jim’s landline rings. Is it Jim? Maybe the man who just came to the door? After five rings, the landline goes to answerphone.

  ‘Hi, Jim, just checking to see if you’re coming in to work today?’ The female voice is local, cheery, trying to sound casual. ‘We’re a bit worried you haven’t shown up yet. Give us a call if there’s a problem. Thanks.’

  Bella waits for the answerphone to switch off. Was that Porton Down calling him? It didn’t exactly sound like a secret government facility. There were voices in the background, almost as if the woman was calling from a shop. But what does she know? She goes over to the phone and dials 1471 to see if there’s a record of an incoming number. To her surprise, there is and she takes a note of it, calling the number on her mobile.

  ‘Hello?’ The same breezy voice. ‘Porton Garden Aquatic and Pets, how may I help?’

  38

  Silas

  ‘What do you mean, they’ve discharged themselves?’ Silas asks.

  ‘Welcome to patient autonomy,’ the doctor says. Silas is with the senior registrar in charge of A & E at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon and the doctor is in no mood to chat. Patients are on trolleys queued up along the corridor behind him and earlier Silas saw ambulance crews in a line outside, waiting to sign off their human cargo.