The Man on Hackpen Hill Read online

  ‘Where did he go?’ Silas asks, still trying to make sense of it all.

  ‘Nobody really knows. They were most intrigued when I told them you’d been in contact with him. They’d love to have him back. As I say, a truly gifted scientist.’

  73

  Bella

  Bella hesitates for a split second, wondering what the man means by ‘folie à deux’, and then she runs for her life, slipping away from the men on the beach like a sand eel. She feels a hand on her arm, but she’s too gangly for them to get a proper grip. Running towards the car, she unlocks it remotely with the fob in her hand.

  ‘I said get your fucking hands off me,’ she hears Jim shout behind her. Has he managed to engage both men in a struggle? She hopes that she’ll be able to thank him one day, for staying behind, giving her the chance to escape. Maybe he’s trying to get some of the bystanders to join in? She hears heavy breathing, more shouts, grunts, the sickening thud of skin impacting on skin, but she daren’t look back. She opens the car door and slides behind the wheel.

  Her whole body is shaking as she fumbles with the key, trying to find the ignition. She risks a glance at Jim, who has managed to pin one man down, but his glasses are off, lying on the sand. He looks blind, like a giant mole in daylight. The other man is on his feet, wrestling to shake free from Jim, whose arm is linked around the man’s upper leg. Jim’s doing well, buying her precious time, but he can’t do anything about the other two men now running up from the sand. They were behind them on the beach and are heading towards the car park. Towards her.

  ‘Come on, start,’ she says, turning the key in the ignition. Her mum’s hopeless about the car, doesn’t believe in getting it serviced. Jim’s still stubbornly holding on to both men but the other two are now off the beach and less than twenty yards from Bella. Has she locked the doors? She feels for the key fob and presses it, just as one of the men reaches the car and slaps his hand on the roof to get her attention – as if he needs to. The next moment, he’s trying her door.

  ‘Get out of the car, Bella,’ the man says, his face pressed against the window, contorted like a hideous gargoyle. How does he know her name?

  She tries the ignition again, keeping her eyes averted. This time the car starts.

  ‘And you get out my bloody way,’ she says to herself, reversing into the middle of the car park. The other man throws himself in front of her, smacking the bonnet, but she slips the car into first gear, hits the horn and accelerates away. For a second, the man on the bonnet stares at her pleadingly, somehow hanging on, before he rolls off to one side.

  Bella wants to be sick, but she knows she must keep going. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she sees the man get up from the ground and climb into a Range Rover that’s pulled alongside him. She’s got no chance against a car like that but she owes it to Jim to at least try to escape these people and tell his story. She reaches across and opens the glovebox, checking that the USB is still in there. 15th July 1950. What will happen if they catch up with her before she gets the chance to read it? Will they try to force her off the road, like they did with Jim?

  She joins the main road and races away towards Wareham. A private ambulance passes by in the opposite direction, blue lights flashing. How badly have they hurt Jim? Checking her rearview mirror again, she watches as the ambulance turns down the road she’s driven up and stops when it meets the Range Rover. The drivers start to chat. Bella slows up, still watching until they have disappeared around the bend in the road. Now’s her chance.

  She puts her foot down and drives on, not sure where she’s going. Where can she go? It didn’t feel safe in London. Back to Jim’s house in the village? They will check there. She wipes away a tear and dials her mum’s number on the car audio system. Voicemail.

  ‘Mum, I’m in trouble here,’ she says. ‘I really need to speak to you. Where are you? What’s going on?’

  She hangs up and drives on towards Wareham, checking constantly in the mirror. What would her dad do? Change cars? Switch to another form of transport? She’s got a bit of money in her bank account but not enough to stay on the run for long. She needs to open the USB, read its contents, find out what happened to Erin.

  Jim did well to hold off the two men for as long as he did. She prays he’s not badly hurt. He was kind on the beach, didn’t judge her, listened about Helen. Gentle when he kissed her. They will take him away and charge him under the Official Secrets Act. At least, that’s what Jim said would happen. Will she be charged too? She should ring her editor, tell him what’s happened, ask him to clear the front page, expect a big story.

  The Range Rover has still not shown up by the time she approaches Wareham. She drives over a bridge and up into the town, wondering why she’s managed to escape so easily. It doesn’t feel right. The Range Rover should have caught up with her by now. And then her phone rings. She’d accidentally left the battery in. It’s an anonymous caller but Bella recognises her mum’s voice at once.

  ‘Bel, sweetie, stop the car and pull over,’ she says, her voice barely a whisper. ‘It’s no good trying to escape the people who are following you.’

  She sounds in pain, not herself. ‘Mum, where are you?’ Bella asks, glancing in the mirror. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I can’t talk now,’ she says, her voice breaking with emotion. She’s clearly speaking under duress, each word a struggle to get out.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Bella asks. ‘What’s going on? How do you know I’m being followed?’

  Still no sign of the Range Rover behind her.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Bel, my beautiful flower,’ she says. Is she drunk? She hardly ever drinks. ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Wait, Mum, what do you mean you couldn’t tell me?’ Is she with Dr Haslam? Is that what she means?

  ‘Please Bel, just stop the car and wait for them to arrive. Do exactly as as they say and this will all soon be over.’

  ‘What will be?’ Bella’s angry now. ‘Christ, just tell me what will be over… Mum…? Please?’

  The line has dropped.

  74

  Silas

  ‘He might be covering up for Jim,’ Strover says, as Silas spins restlessly in his chair in the Parade Room. He’s already relayed the basic gist of what Ward said to her: that Jim Matthews apparently didn’t turn up on his first day at Porton Down four years ago and hasn’t been seen or heard of since.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Silas replies. The same thought had crossed his mind. If Ward’s trying to ingratiate himself with Porton Down, he might be doing them a favour by getting Swindon CID to drop an ongoing investigation into one of its employees.

  ‘He definitely went to Warwick,’ Strover says, searching for him again on her screen. ‘And I know he’s got no criminal record or major debts.’ She shakes her head. ‘The only direct refs to Porton Down are on his social media, including the entry on LinkedIn. If he’s not currently an employee, he’s making it all up.’

  ‘Lying,’ Silas says. ‘Why would he do that? Pretend he’s working at a place like Porton Down?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I should have double-checked,’ Strover says, blowing out her cheeks. ‘Never trust social media.’

  ‘And I should have contacted Porton Down,’ Silas says. It’s not Strover’s fault – she’d asked him repeatedly to put in a call.

  ‘I could request to check his PAYE records with HMRC,’ she says. ‘They won’t specify Porton Down, but it will tell us if he’s a government employee.’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ Silas says. Data protection has made it more problematic for HMRC to share personal tax information with other law enforcement agencies, but there are ways to ask – including ones that won’t alert Ward.

  ‘This email might change things,’ Strover says, staring at her screen.

  ‘Tell me,’ Silas says, leaning over to take a look.

  ‘Steven Caldicott.’ She pauses. ‘I did some digging. Seems like he moved to America after he was struck off by
the General Medical Council. Started working for a small pharmaceutical company in Florida.’ She looks up at Silas. ‘Which specialises in antipsychotic meds.’

  Silas leans in closer to Strover’s laptop. ‘We need a picture of him,’ he says.

  He watches as Strover’s fingers move dexterously around the keyboard, typing so much faster than his own two-digit prodding. If she can find a photo of Steven Caldicott, they can match it against the face of the zombie victim. Silas is convinced that he placed the already dead bodies of the man and the woman in the first two crop circles, before taking tetrodotoxin and almost dying himself in the third circle. What he still doesn’t know is who killed the first two victims. And when or why.

  It takes five minutes of searching before they are looking at a thumbnail photograph of Steven Caldicott. It’s an old image, taken while he was still a practising hospital pathologist. His GMC hearing was in the early 1990s – pre-internet – and there appears to be no reference to it, even on archived newspaper sites.

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly bet my mother’s life on it being him,’ Silas says, unable to disguise his disappointment. Maybe Malcolm’s remembered wrongly. It’s hard to compare the grainy image with the half-dead man Silas saw on the hillside and in the hospital. The pathologist in the photo is young and carefree, his smile a world away from the sallow lips of the zombie victim.

  ‘Is there nothing more recent?’ Silas asks.

  ‘It’s weird,’ Strover says, still typing. ‘Looks like he might have erased his online footprint, delisted himself from Google at some point.’

  He and Mel had once tried to do something similar for Conor, after a string of teenage misdemeanours had affected his job prospects. It’s not so easy.

  ‘How did you find out about him moving to America, then?’ Silas asks.

  ‘A combination of Searx, Candle and DuckDuckGo,’ she says, as if Silas should know what she’s talking about. ‘Dark Web search engines – not that it’s really possible to trawl the Dark Web in the way that Google searches the regular internet. That’s the point. I got my friend to do a trawl. Not really advisable for me to use a VPN and onion router in the office. She sent me the email. Said there was more to follow.’

  Strover hasn’t talked about her friend, the computer expert, for a long while. Best not to ask too much – he’ll just enjoy the fruits of her forbidden labour.

  ‘There’s more,’ Strover says, switching windows to her email account, where a new message has landed. She clicks on an attachment and a photo of an older man stares back at them.

  ‘Christ, that’s him,’ Silas says. A thrill of excitement runs through his ageing bones. It’s moments like this that keep him going as a detective. The half-dead man on the hillside is looking alive and well. ‘Do we know – does your friend know – anything else about him?’ he asks, still studying the photo.

  Strover switches to a second attachment. It’s a screenshot of a company website listing small biographies – no photos – of senior members of staff. The third one down – Jed Lando – has been circled in red.

  ‘Who the hell’s Jed Lando?’ Silas asks.

  ‘Seems like Steven Caldicott’s changed his name,’ Strover says, scrolling to the next attachment, where her friend has typed up some brief explanatory notes. She flicks back to the second attachment. ‘And retrained as a psychologist. At least, he says he has. Quite a career pivot – pathology to psychology.’

  ‘What’s the company?’ Silas asks.

  ‘Baylor Bristol Ottoman,’ Strover says, opening up a new window on Google. ‘Based in Florida, it’s part of AP Brigham Inc.’

  ‘Any UK connection?’

  ‘AP Brigham owns a number of big pharma companies – and has recently started to invest in the UK.’

  ‘Pharmaceuticals?’

  Strover nods. ‘And some health service providers too, by the look of it. Privately run, NHS-funded. Low- and medium-secure mental health facilities. Had a few run-ins with the Care Quality Commission over bullying staff behaviour. And it seems our Jed Lando was in charge of UK acquisitions and operations.’

  75

  Bella

  Bella pulls into the train station in Wareham and drives down to the far end of the narrow car park that runs alongside the railway line. She hopes Jim’s OK. A steam train is at the platform, waiting to leave for Swanage, a line of passengers queuing to board. Can she remember when she came here with her dad and Helen? She closes her eyes, calming herself down as she tries to picture the scene. Her hand in his as Helen skipped ahead down the platform. And then the terror of the train as it belched out a huge cloud of steam that engulfed Helen. Bella burst into tears, thinking her sister had been taken away, and hugged her long and hard when she re-emerged.

  She wishes her dad were still alive, able to answer the questions swirling around in her head like the steam that day. What was wrong with her mum when she called just now? What was it that she couldn’t tell her? And how the hell did she know Bella was being followed? It’s still troubling her that the Range Rover seems not to have given pursuit. Is it because they know where she is going? She doesn’t even know herself. And then she sits up, remembering something else about her dad.

  For six months before he was killed, when he was alternating between homes in Mombasa and Mogadishu, he was worried that he was being followed everywhere by those who took exception to his articles on Somalia’s brave human rights campaigners and peace activists. Each morning, before breakfast, he’d check his car for listening bugs and tracking devices, underneath and inside. He never found one, but what if something was attached to Bella’s car in Studland while she and Jim were walking on the beach? It would explain why they’re not in any hurry to follow her. They already know she’s sitting here in the car park at Wareham station.

  She gets out of the car, checks around her and kneels down on the warm tarmac, searching underneath the chassis. Nothing. She does the same around the passenger side and can’t see anything there either. Their interest is scary but it means they are taking her seriously. They must know that she’s been given classified information. But it still doesn’t explain why she saw the man with jet-black hair outside the newspaper office in London and outside her house later. Both times were before she drove down to Wiltshire to meet Jim. What if she’s been party to a sting, played an unwitting role in Jim’s entrapment? In which case, her job is done. Jim’s been caught leaking information to a national newspaper journalist and they don’t need to follow her in a hurry. They’ll just want the USB returned.

  She’s about to get back in the car when she decides to take one final look, underneath the boot. It’s the place where her dad always checked last, before he came back into his flat in Mogadishu, rubbing his hands free of dirt to sit down for a breakfast of canjeero pancake bread and coffee. On the rare occasions the family visited, she used to peer under the car with him but it scared her as a young girl to see the axle and crankshaft and other nether regions of the car, as if they were dirty, out of bounds. And her mum didn’t like it, because she thought that if there was a bomb, they might inadvertently trigger it.

  Bella squats down beside the boot and looks underneath, just as the train lets out an angry hiss of steam. The sound makes her jump but not before her eye is caught by something small and rectangular, near the rear left tyre. She leans under and pulls firmly to release whatever it is. A container, no bigger than a match box, with two magnetic discs on one side, like miniature hot rings. Standing up, she looks around, digging her fingernails into her palms. The search was worth it. It also means she’s a target.

  The guard is signalling for the train to leave. She opens up the box and shakes out a small device nestled inside foam padding. On one side, four small symbols in white next to a row of tiny display lights: Wi-Fi, phone, power and battery life. It’s a tracking device – and the power and phone lights are on.

  The guard shouts for people to stand clear of the platform as the train starts to wheeze and spi
t its way forward, stirring like some ancient behemoth. Bella puts the device back in the box, an idea forming. She runs down through the car park, past the flower displays of bald car tyres brimming with bedding plants and onto the platform. The train has almost left but its last carriages are still in the station.

  ‘Stand away!’ the guard shouts, but Bella ignores him and sprints along the platform, clasping the magnetic box in her hand. And then, as the hissing engine pulls away, Bella is alongside. She smacks the box against the metallic panelling of the final carriage and watches as the train heads off in a plume of smoke.

  76

  Jim

  Jim doesn’t know where he is being taken to or why MI5 has chosen to pick him up from the beach in a private ambulance. The interior is modern with glistening chrome surfaces and the strong smell of antiseptic. No doubt one of the many cover vehicles used by the security services. All he knows is that he can’t move his arms or legs and his head is throbbing. He’s short of breath too, his limbs still shaking with adrenaline after the fight on the beach.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Jim asks, his voice laced with raw fear. He’s strapped into a wheelchair at the far end of the ambulance, its wheels bolted to the floor. His back is to the driver, and he can’t move any part of his body. His ankles are fastened to the wheelchair and his arms have been secured across his chest in a white canvas straitjacket – just like the one he saw being used at Harwell. Without his glasses it’s difficult to see, but two men are sitting on fold-down seats either side of him. He peers towards one and then the other and repeats his question.