Redlaw - 01 (40 page)

“Yes.”

Lambourne seemed to be seeking some sort of benediction. Reassurance in his final moments. Extreme unction.

“You’ll get what’s coming to you,” Redlaw said.

“I don’t...” Lambourne’s grip on his neck loosened. The blood frothed forth. “You know what this feels like? It feels like... Like falling.”

His hand sank to the floor, limp.

“Falling.”

His jaw slackened and his eyes glazed. His whole body went rigid, and up out of his throat came the gurgle of his last breath, the archetypal death rattle, sounding much like a dispirited groan.

Redlaw stayed with the industrialist’s corpse for a while. In death, Lambourne had ceased to resemble himself. His face had lost its distinguishing features and become just a face, could be almost anyone’s. The human body was merely a vehicle. The soul—and even a rapacious billionaire had one—was what gave it animation and character.

And right now, if there was any justice, Nathaniel Lambourne’s soul was burning.

She absolutely detests them
.

The remark went round and round in Redlaw’s head as he pondered his next move.

Why had Macarthur killed Lambourne? What had possessed her to snatch up the letter opener and slit his neck? It was almost beyond comprehension. Lambourne didn’t appear to have provoked her in any way. It had come seemingly out of the blue. What did she stand to gain from murdering him? Nothing. In fact, she had plenty to lose.

The sound of a car pulling up outside broke in on his deliberations. Through a window Redlaw saw a woman get out of a small Skoda, carrying newspapers under one arm, and walk round the back of the car to fetch groceries from the boot. Her age, dress and general demeanour all said ‘housekeeper.’ As she mounted the front steps, a frown of confusion creased her forehead. The open door.

Redlaw quickly undid the catch on the window and eased up the casement. He slipped over the sill into the flowerbed outside, even as the housekeeper entered the mansion and called out, loudly but tentatively, “Mr Lambourne? Sir?”

His initial thought was to take the housekeeper’s car, but he remembered seeing her pocket the key. Instead, he stole over to the stable block, which had been converted into an open-fronted garage. Where horses had once snorted and whinnied, now a row of costly cars stood, some contemporary, some vintage, all with their front ends facing out and their bodywork gleamingly polished.

Sets of keys hung, handily, on a hook-board just inside. Even more handily, each was attached to a fob with a manufacturer’s logo on it. The Lamborghini? The Ferrari? The Bugatti? Redlaw was spoiled for choice.

But not spoiled for time, as a scream emanated from the house, piercingly shrill. Once the housekeeper got over her shock, she’d be straight on to the police. They’d be here in quarter of an hour, maybe sooner.

He plumped for a Mercedes, a C-class saloon; he had no experience with snazzy Italian sports models and would probably crash one if he attempted to drive it. He unlocked the Merc, swiftly familiarised himself with the controls, switched on the ignition, and then was sailing off up the driveway. He felt a momentary pang of regret about the housekeeper. Ought he to have intercepted her before she went into the drawing room? Warned her what she would discover there? The poor woman was probably half out of her wits, finding her employer dead on the floor in a pool of blood.

But wouldn’t it have alarmed her more to come across a stranger in the house? One who, moreover, looked as pitifully ragged and battered as the rearview mirror was telling Redlaw he did?

No, he’d done the right thing.

Now all he had to do was figure out where he was going.

Macarthur was his quarry. Catching up with her, catching her, was his priority. What had got into her? What was motivating her? He’d never thought of Gail Macarthur as the type to flip out and do something insane. She’d always seemed so sturdily reliable.

Then again, she had been busily undermining him throughout his investigation into the bloodlust riots, hadn’t she? And, for all her protestations, the trap she’d set for him on the Isle of Dogs could have proved lethal.

Macarthur had some hidden agenda, some ultimate goal he just wasn’t seeing.

The entrance gate rolled aside of its own accord as the Mercedes approached. Redlaw pulled out onto the lane, skidding slightly as he made the turn. There was more power under the Merc’s bonnet than he was used to, and more sensitivity in the steering wheel too.

She absolutely detests them
.

He had had no inkling of Macarthur’s loathing for the Sunless. She’d managed to keep that from him. Disguised it well. Although he had perhaps caught a glimpse of it back there in the observatory, when he’d been bargaining for Illyria’s life...

Illyria
.

No. Redlaw tamped that thought down. Now was not the time to dwell on Illyria. Focus on Macarthur. He couldn’t escape the feeling that he was racing against the clock. Macarthur had embarked on something with the murder of Lambourne, some desperate endgame, the culmination of months of quiet, covert plotting.

Detests them. With a vengeance
.

She has the code
.

All at once it came to him.

God damn it.

God damn her.

Redlaw switched on the car’s sat nav. He wasn’t sure of the precise address of his destination but, as it happened, it was already logged into the sat nav’s memory. Of course. The Merc must have travelled the route before, countless times.

“Keep going straight on,” the computer voice advised, calmly. “You have sixty-one point two miles to go.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Solarville One gleamed massively ahead, a hill amongst hills, like some mutant outgrowth of the Chiltern range, cancerously black.

As Redlaw drove in along the approach road, a line of SHADE patrol cars passed the other way, officers clocking off and heading home after a busy night. The Mercedes had tinted windows, so he wasn’t concerned about being spotted and recognised. The gateway in the perimeter fence, however, guarded by both soldiers and shadies, would be a problem.

He was considering putting his foot down and ramming the barrier, but as he came within twenty metres of it he spotted a row of tyre spikes entrenched in the tarmac, bristling like metal porcupine quills.
Damn
.

Then a wonderful thing happened. Like the Red Sea parting for Moses, the tyre spikes sank into the ground, the barrier lifted of its own accord, and its armed custodians stepped aside. One of them even waved the car through, while another saluted.

Whatever operated the gate to Lambourne’s estate also worked its magic here. Redlaw, in spite of everything, couldn’t suppress a smile. There was even a parking space near the dome, designated Exclusive use of Nathaniel Lambourne.

Sitting close by was a solitary SHADE car, in all likelihood the one Macarthur was using to get about. Redlaw placed a palm on the bonnet. Engine still hot. She’d not been here long. Maybe there was still time; he wasn’t too late.

He recalled, from the schematic he’d seen in the newspaper, that there was a control bunker onsite where environmental conditions within the dome could be monitored and adjusted, and the Sunless residents kept an eye on. A single-story breezeblock structure near the dome’s base, some hundred metres from where he stood, seemed to be the place. Redlaw loped towards it, careful to stay out of line-of-sight from the building’s few, meagrely-proportioned windows.

The door required a swipe card and numeric code for entry; Redlaw’s only available tactic was the brazen, frontal approach. He rapped firmly and authoritatively on the door, at the same time drawing his Cindermaker. The element of surprise, at least, was on his side. As far as Macarthur knew, he was dead, his body mangled and effaced beyond all recognition. She wouldn’t be expecting him.

A SHADE officer opened the door, and as his initial quizzical look turned to one of startlement, Redlaw shoved him inside, putting his gun to the man’s head.

There were three other shadies inside the control bunker, and Macarthur. All turned round as Redlaw bundled his hostage towards them. All four looked perplexed, but none as much as the Commodore.

She was standing in front of a computer console, while the other three sat before a bank of TV screens. Images on the screens presented a montage of life within the dome for its recently installed inmates. Sunless were strolling through the streets of Solarville One, many of them shielding their eyes and blinking up towards the sun. Their postures, their body language, conveyed a mixture of trepidation and amazement. They were like space explorers venturing across the surface of an unknown planet, still not quite assured that the alien atmosphere was not going to kill them. A few of the vampires were obeying their age-old, innermost imperative and trying to find shelter from the light, cowering behind walls and the like. The majority, however, appeared to be coming to terms with the idea that the pale glowing disc peeping through the glass panes overhead need not be feared. The sun’s radiance was no longer fatal to them.

For now.

“Commodore,” said Redlaw. “Please move away from that console.”

Macarthur did not budge. There was text on the display behind her, above an empty box with a cursor flashing. The words were too small for Redlaw to make out, but his guess—no, more than a guess, his conviction—was that this was the command to render the dome clear.

She has the code
.

Macarthur had called up the emergency failsafe protocol and had been on the verge of eradicating every vampire inside the dome, all one thousand of them. None of the junior officers would have been aware what she was up to, if she’d gone about it subtly. Nor would any of them have thought to query her actions, because, well, she was the Commodore.

Redlaw had arrived in the very nick of time. Ten seconds later and Macarthur would have pressed Enter and the glass-lightening process would have begun. A mass dusting on an unprecedented scale.

“Move,” he said again, “or I shoot this man.”

“No,” Macarthur replied with confidence. “I don’t think you will, John.”

“She’s trying to wipe them all out,” Redlaw informed the other shadies. “The dome’s fitted with smart glass. It can be made transparent.”

“Preposterous,” said Macarthur.

“What are you doing on that computer, then?”

She was, as he knew now to his cost, a smooth liar. “Diagnostic check. Making sure the systems are running efficiently and bug-free.”

“Forgive me, but what the hell do
you
know about computer systems? You’re sabotaging Solarville.”

Redlaw spotted one of the shadies reaching surreptitiously for his Cindermaker.

“Uh-uh,” he warned. “Not unless you want this man’s death on your conscience.”

The hostage whimpered.

“Don’t fret, Aaronovitch,” Macarthur told the frightened man. “It’s a bluff. Redlaw’s never killed a human, and he’s not about to start now.”

“Wrong,” said Redlaw. “How come I’m here, still alive? Because I killed Giles Slocock. And now that I’ve taken one life, another two or three won’t make much difference. When you’ve broken the Sixth Commandment once, you might as well keep on breaking it. You can’t go back, so you might as well go forward.”

“Then you’ve damned yourself.”

Redlaw gave a pain-wracked parody of a shrug. “God and I will sort it out between us when the time comes. I think I’ll be able to make a convincing case for myself. I doubt you’ll be able to do the same, Gail. Not after murdering Nathaniel Lambourne like that.”

Consternation filled the room. Macarthur tried to rise above it, dismissing Redlaw’s statement with a contemptuous sneer. “So Lambourne’s dead, eh? Who’s to say you didn’t kill him yourself, John, and you’re trying to shift the blame? It’s all very well bandying accusations about, but unless you have proof—”

“I don’t need proof,” Redlaw said, overriding her. “He told me exactly who did it, as he lay dying. But your killing him isn’t even that important. Good riddance, I say. The world is lighter without Lambourne. What matters is what you’re
about
to do, the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of vampires. For the last time: step away from the console. I won’t have you doing this. I won’t allow it.”

Macarthur was debating within herself, he could see. Tallying up all her options. Aaronovitch squirmed in his grasp, but Redlaw put a stop to that by grinding the gun harder into the back of his skull.

Abruptly Macarthur came to a decision and about-faced. Her hands went to the console keyboard. She started to type.

Redlaw swung his Cindermaker away from Aaronovitch and planted a bullet smack dab in the body of the console. Something shattered; sparks flew. The display went blank. Macarthur stabbed Enter, stabbed it again, but the console was dead. There were no sounds, no warning sirens, nothing to indicate that the failsafe command had gone through and the dome was clearing. Redlaw glanced at the TV screens. On none of them was the image growing lighter or a vampire starting to recoil in agony.

“Fuck you.” Macarthur turned round with sheer thwarted hatred blazing in her eyes. “Fuck you, John, you
fuck
. What did you have to go and do that for? I was so close. I nearly had them!”