Redlaw - 01 (24 page)

“Oh. I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

“Father Dixon. Remember me? Used to work here. May I come in?”

“Um, sure, okay.”

“I won’t shake hands, if you don’t mind.”

Dr Wing closed the door as she had opened it, with her elbow, then peeled off the gloves and tossed them in a hazmat bin.

The lab was sparsely furnished and equipped. Not a high proportion of the SHADE budget went on forensics. In fact, Dr Wing’s specialty was almost bottom of the list of priorities here. Her responsibilities consisted largely of autopsying officers who had been killed in the line of duty and analysing Sunless spoor at the sites of rogue nests to determine if the number of occupants tallied with the number of Sunless dusted. Signs of her lack of full employment were all around, from the countless magazines scattered over the work surfaces to the
World Of Warcraft
game that ran almost nonstop on her computer. When she worked, she worked diligently, but opportunities to do so were infrequent.

As it happened, right now her services were in demand. She had a dead shady on a slab in the next room and four more in drawers in the morgue, all awaiting cause-of-death pronouncements and post mortem neutralisation certificates. She gave this as the reason why she couldn’t carry out a job for Father Dixon, however small he assured her it was.

“And that’s not counting the sixteen other bodies currently lying in police morgues,” she said. “It was carnage out there last night. I’ve been pulling an all-dayer as it is to clear the backlog. I can’t possibly fit anything extra in.”

“Please,” said Father Dixon. “It’s not for me. It’s for Captain Redlaw.”

“Redlaw?” Dr Wing’s hazel eyes widened, filling the lenses of her specs. “Redlaw’s flipped his wig. That’s the rumour that’s going round. Cracked under the strain. He nearly killed some of our boys in a car chase, so I heard. All officers are under a blanket order to bring him in if they see him.”

“He’s got his back against the wall, that’s certainly true. But I’ve known him long enough to believe that he’ll always do what’s right, no matter the cost, no matter the consequences. He does God’s work. And what I have here in my bag could help settle things in a case he’s involved in. It could even help settle doubts about his sanity. I need you to examine it, find out what you can. Preferably straight away.”

“Like I said, no can do, Father.”

“I’m begging you, on Redlaw’s behalf. It shouldn’t take too long, and those dead fellows next door aren’t going anywhere, are they? At least, I hope not.”

A smile flickered across Dr Wing’s face. She was at home with gallows humour. You needed it in this line of work.

“The one on the slab, a Sunless took off most of his head,” she said. “Frankly if he gets up and walks it’d be a ruddy miracle.”

“On a par with Lazarus, I’m sure. And while I may be one of Jesus’s sunbeams, I’m not actually Him, so I think we’re safe on the resurrection front. Come on, Dr Wing. Just a few minutes of your time. If Captain Redlaw’s track record still has any currency here...”

Dr Wing sucked on the end of one stem of her specs. “He has been SHADE’s star performer ’til now. Perhaps...”

“Perhaps you will?”

She put the glasses back on. “I should have my head examined for this. What do you want me to do?”

Once she got started testing the blood, Dr Wing quickly became absorbed in the work. She ran a sample through a centrifuge to separate cells from serum, then studied both parts under a microscope. She added reagents to other samples and jotted down each result. She took cultures, introduced inoculants into them and placed the phials in an incubator to warm. She filtered some of the blood, set the filter papers in a gel-filled apparatus and ran in a charge through the gel to activate the separation process.

An hour went by; two. Father Dixon occupied himself by flicking through the magazines that festooned the lab. They ranged from
Nature
to
Hello!
and all points between. It was hard to find a periodical these days that didn’t mention the Sunless in one context or other, so here was a recent
National Geographic
photo spread on the effects of the diaspora as it began to make inroads into the east coast of America, while here was a piece in
Empire
previewing a hard-hitting Hollywood blockbuster in which a team of A-list actors battled hordes of Sunless in a near-future post-apocalyptic world overrun by the creatures.

Finally, seated at her computer terminal, Dr Wing uttered a soft “Ah.”

Father Dixon looked up. “Good ‘ah’?”

“Well, it’s an ‘ah.’ No idea if it’s good or not.” She took off her spectacles and began massaging her forehead. “I’ve checked for pretty much every organic and inorganic toxin I can think of. I’ve done basic metabolic panel, immunoblotting, protein electrophoresis, cell count, even blood gas analysis. Everything sits well within the normal reference range for cattle blood. The only peculiarity I’ve found is... Well, I’m no farmer. Maybe it’s just what they do to livestock these days to increase milk yields or improve the taste of beef or something.”

“What do you mean, what they do?”

“Inject them with hormones.”

“You’re saying this blood comes from cows that have been mucked about with?” said Father Dixon.

“No.” Dr Wing’s fingers moved to her cheekbones. “I’m saying there’s an abnormally high concentration of one particular hormone in this particular sample. Statistically that doesn’t mean anything. It’s like looking at a cabbage patch and inferring from that that the entire planet’s landmass is full of cabbages. I’d need to test blood from the whole herd, and several other herds, to be sure this isn’t just a freak one-off.”

“But you think it might be significant.”

“Only because the hormone is at a higher level than naturally occurs. I checked with the literature online. So there’s a good chance it has been artificially introduced into the animal. Again, though, I’d be wary of reading too much into this. The agricultural industry will do anything to enhance its product and up profit margins, and cattle farming’s the worst culprit. Only drink organic milk, Father. There’s enough oestrogen in the ordinary stuff to make you grow ovaries.”

“I’ll take that under advisement. I don’t think my flock are ready to start calling me Mother.”

“What is curious,” said Dr Wing, “is that the hormone is vasopressin.”

“Which does what?”

“Increase aggression. It also boosts sex drive and territoriality. Which isn’t of much pertinence when it comes to cows. Experiments have been done on prairie voles and golden hamsters. Again, I looked this up online. Arginine vasopressin, to give it its full name, is a neuropeptide secreted in mammals by the hypothalamus, principally after mating. Once it’s released into the bloodstream the male voles and hamsters turn vicious, seeing off other males who come sniffing round, sometimes killing them. Basically the vasopressin, while its effects last, transforms cute cuddly rodents into little furry berserkers. You cross one of them at your peril.”

“Does this happen in humans as well? After... mating?”

“The men I’ve known tend to roll over and start snoring, not lamp the first virile rival they come across.”

“I must say I’ve not had much experience in that field myself.”

“There’s no Mrs Father Dixon?”

“Are you auditioning?”

Dr Wing tried not to smile. “No disrespect, Father, but you’re not my type. Not by about twenty years.”

“Damn, I knew I should have started chatting you up twenty years ago.”

“You didn’t know me then, and besides, I was eleven, so that’s a bit creepy.”

“You’re right, it is.” Father Dixon grimaced. “Pretend I never said anything. The reason I enquired about humans is: how would this vasopressin affect Sunless?”

“That’s anybody’s guess. Their physiology’s still something of a mystery. Difficult to perform necrotomy on one of them because, well, how much can you deduce from a pile of ashes? And using live specimens to find out what makes them tick, that’s a huge ethical no-go area. It’s not as if they volunteer themselves to be examined. I’m sure somewhere some covert black ops agency has a bunch of them chained up in an underground facility, probably in the middle of a desert, and is cutting them up while keeping them alive, all in the name of science and the military-industrial complex. But whatever they’ve learned, they’re not sharing with the wider world.”

“But drinking blood loaded with the hormone could conceivably drive vampires wild, like the hamsters?”

“It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. Vampire metabolism must mimic that of humans to some extent. They still have the same underlying architecture as us—the same physiological chassis, just ramped up and customised in ways we don’t and can’t understand. Added to that, they have an extremely limited diet, so if they’ve been receiving nothing but vasopressin-enriched blood for months on end, then the hormone will have been accumulating steadily in their systems. They won’t have had time to flush the excess out as waste product when more keeps coming in daily. I’m surprised I haven’t noticed this before, all the ’Less poop I have to sift through. But then hormone concentration is one of the few things I haven’t been checking for. This is what Redlaw’s been looking into?”

“It is. The blood and the riots.”

“Oh, this could be big, then.” Dr Wing fetched herself a can of Red Bull and popped the ringpull. She didn’t offer one to Father Dixon, not that he would have accepted. “I’ve been on the go twenty-eight hours straight. Caffeine and glucose are all that’s keeping me sentient.” She polished off half the can at a single gulp, then belched discreetly into her fist. “So what we have to ask ourselves is, is it accident or design? Did the vasopressin get into the blood before it was extracted and put in pouches or after? Who’s to blame, farmers or Big Pharma?”

“That isn’t up to you or me to establish, fortunately for us,” said Father Dixon. “What I’d like is if you could type up your findings, please. Doesn’t have to be much, just a page or so. Then I’ll have something to bring back to Redlaw. He can decide where things need taking next.”

“I can do that,” said Dr Wing. “I warn you, it’ll be science only, no conjecture, no insinuations. Hard facts.”

“The harder, the better. And Dr Wing?”

“Yes?”

“Maybe you’d best not mention this to anyone else. Should it, you know, turn out to be nothing. Or indeed something.”

“Don’t worry. Mum’s the word, Father. Unless Redlaw manages to uncover a whole huge sinister conspiracy and becomes superhero of the year, in which case I want everyone to know the part I played. I want my share of the credit, dammit.”

Father Dixon laughed. “I’ll see that you get it. Thank you, Dr Wing.”

Father Dixon left the forensics lab with two sheets of A4 printout that stated plainly and disinterestedly everything Dr Wing had discovered about the vasopressin in the blood. He rode the lift up to the lobby suffused with confidence and a sense of grace. He was surer than ever that Redlaw had not, as Dr Wing put it, “flipped his wig.” Redlaw was a troubled soul these days, but at the core of him there was something unshakeable and unbreakable. It wasn’t faith, though faith formed a part of it. It was rock-solid righteousness, which God had put there in His infinite wisdom, knowing there needed to be people on earth with that quality... even if those people often stood alone and rejected and were out of step with the rest of humanity.

To be the owner of an unerring moral compass was not a gift, not in this topsy-turvy world where crooks and charlatans rose to the top and the good sank without a trace. No, it was most definitely a curse.

But at least in John Redlaw, God had found a sturdy vessel, one that could withstand the worst that life had to offer.

As the lift doors opened, Father Dixon made a mental note to remember the ‘sturdy vessel’ metaphor. There was the germ of a Sunday sermon in there.

The very first person he spotted after stepping out into the lobby was Commodore Macarthur.

He felt a sudden clenching in his belly, like a snake tightening its coils.

Macarthur was deep in discussion with a half-dozen men, two of them uniformed shadies and the rest mid-ranking military personnel. Through the windows Father Dixon saw a row of canvas-topped troop transport lorries parked in the street outside, armed soldiers standing guard beside them. He’d been downstairs just a couple of hours, and in the interim everything had turned olive-drab and martial.

The only thing he could do was try to make it across the lobby and out the front door without attracting attention. Macarthur had her back to him, and she and the men with her were all poring intently over a map. If he moved swiftly and stealthily, chances were she wouldn’t look up. He’d have to be desperately unlucky if she did.

“God?” he murmured under his breath. “Come on, big chap, don’t fail me now.”

He was almost at the door—three paces from it, if that—when somebody called to him.

“Father?”

It was the duty officer.

In his head, Father Dixon said a word vicars aren’t supposed to use. Or even know.

“Yes?” he said, turning, smiling.

“You were a while.”