The Bone Yard (33 page)

“Quint, why don't you call in Hamilton and have him pull the place apart?” Katharine asked in a low voice as we stumbled over the rough ground in the faint light of early dawn.

“I wish I could.” Just after we started walking I'd tripped and landed in a ditch full of half-frozen water. Now my hands and arms were shaking uncontrollably. “But I'm certain that the senior guardian would put a stop to that before we got five yards beyond the gate.”

“So the great Quintilian Dalrymple's going to act the hero.” A smile played across her lips.

“No one's forcing you to be here,” I hissed, peering at the solid mass that was beginning to rear up on the ridge in front of us. The truth was, I wasn't sure what I was going to do, even if we did manage to get inside. I'd spent so much time and effort searching for the mysterious Bone Yard and I was bloody sure it was the key to everything else that was wrong in the city. But I was also in the process of committing the investigator's worst strategic error: getting close to the solution and then hoping that everything will work out for the best. Sometimes it's the only option you have.

The house inside the walls was built by a Victorian mines magnate who had political aspirations. According to the lumberjack, Gladstone had been a frequent visitor. Since the old Liberal's favourite hobby apart from rescuing fallen women was chopping up timber, it was surprising that the forest behind the wall was so thick. I wasn't complaining. The profusion of branches hanging down over the walls made life difficult for the sentries. From behind the ruined chapel outside the compound – no sharing a pew with the peasants in the village kirk for the original owner – Katharine and I took in the lie of the land. The sun was rising but there was a mist so we weren't as obvious as we might have been.

“What next, Quint? If we sling over that rope your friend gave us, we should be able to get on to the wall in that sheltered place.”

I took a quick look at the sentry posts. They were built up on the inside with only a couple of feet of planking cut with slit-holes showing from where we were. I had a feeling that the senior guardian would not be canonising whoever was in charge. Like a lot of top-security facilities in the city its impregnability was a matter of rumour rather than fact.

“Okay, go for it,” I said, squeezing her arm. “I'll be right behind you.”

“You'd better be,” Katharine replied, looking over her shoulder. “After all, you're the one who knows what he's doing here.” She was away towards the wall before I could respond to that crack. Then the rope with the steel hook the lumberjack had given us flew over the wire on the top. It seemed to get a good purchase on something on the other side. I hoped it wasn't a passing guardsman's throat.

Katharine hauled herself up, the long skirts of her coat stuffed into her belt, then signalled to me to follow.

I stepped out and froze. There was a movement in the sentry box to my right. A period that felt like several decades, but in reality couldn't have been more than five seconds, ground by. I couldn't move back into the cover of the chapel wall in case that convinced the sentry that he or she had seen something. Swivelling my eyes, I satisfied myself that the maroon beret had drawn back from the slits in the planking. And ran for the wall like a frightened rabbit. It was only as I was halfway up the rope that the idiocy of the situation struck me. Taking refuge inside the walls of a top-security facility was carrying even my advanced appreciation of the bizarre a bit too far.

“Come on, for God's sake,” Katharine said, holding out her hand as I began to struggle.

I took it without a second thought. I've never been much good at climbing ropes and I'm not proud either. There was a nasty moment when the barbed wire acquainted itself with my thighs, then I was over, pulling the rope up with me. We shinned down the other side and dived into the undergrowth. It was drenched in an icy dew.

“What next?” Katharine asked. “We can't see a thing from here.”

“How do you fancy crawling through this?”

She pulled her coat skirts out. “No problem. I'm properly equipped.” She glanced at my donkey jacket and soaked trousers contemptuously. “Unlike you.”

So we crawled through the bracken and ferns till we reached the inner edge of the wood. In the distance at the far end of the enclosed land stood the main house, a large two-storey edifice in sandstone with enough windows to suggest that the man who built it either had an army of offspring or a lot of fawning friends who came to stay every weekend. Between us and the house was a fenced field where a couple of very sane-looking cows were chewing the cud. Away to the left was a much newer building, a long, low line of breezeblock huts with shuttered windows. Late period Council style without a doubt. And at the far end, a taller building without a single window from which a brick-built chimney rose high above the tops of even the oldest trees. That was where we were headed. Except we got distracted on the way.

The first thing we came across was a clearing in the wood. The surface of the ground seemed to be flat, then I noticed that it was covered by separate slabs of dull grey metal.

“What are those?” Katharine asked, looking around the open space. “There must be over thirty of them.”

We went closer. And I saw a yellow-bordered symbol on each slab that immediately brought Torness to mind.

“Jesus.”

“What is it, Quint?” Katharine asked again.

I went closer. There was no doubt about it. The international warning for radiation danger was on every slab. What's more, you didn't have to be a metallurgist to get the idea that the metal was lead, or an undertaker to recognise the slabs as grave markers.

“Jesus,” I repeated. “This is it. This is the Bone Yard. Literally.”

Katharine stared at me, then glanced away towards a narrow gap in the trees on the other side of the clearing. “Someone's coming,” she said quietly.

I looked across the clearing and saw two figures approaching. The normal reaction would have been to melt back into the undergrowth and I almost did that. Then I realised that the figures weren't looking at us. They were dressed in citizen-issue grey coats that were several sizes too big for them and their heads were covered by the flat caps that absolve the Supply Directorate from providing the population with umbrellas. They were also concentrating so hard on the path in front of them that I began to wonder if there were mantraps under the worn grass. Then the leading one stumbled and the other person put out a hand and supported his or her companion – it was impossible to tell which sex they were from our position. From their slow, unsteady progress, I got the impression they were very old.

Katharine nudged my elbow. “What do you think?” she whispered. “They don't exactly look dangerous.”

We stood still as the figures reached the grave that was nearest to their side of the clearing. The lead slab was surrounded by a rim of fresh earth. The two of them stood staring down at the grave, arms round each other's back. It was then I realised that stooping seemed to be their usual stance. After a while one of them knelt down slowly and placed a small sprig of holly on the surface of the metal. There was a long silence, then a solitary crow cawed from behind us. The two figures raised their heads instinctively and looked straight at us.

I wanted to run across the clearing and reassure them we meant no harm, but that would have meant stepping over the graves and I didn't think that would endear me to them. Then it became obvious that they weren't disturbed by our presence. In fact, the one who was kneeling started carefully repositioning the holly on the slab. Perhaps they hadn't seen us after all.

“Come on,” I said to Katharine under my breath. “They're the best chance we've got of finding out what the hell's been going on around here.”

We circled the clearing and walked towards the figures slowly but without stealth. As we approached they finally seemed to register our presence, but they didn't speak – just turned and lifted their faces when they heard our footsteps.

I heard Katharine draw breath in rapidly. I could see why. The kneeling one was a woman. I knew that from the softness of her skin and the delicate line of her jaw and neck, even though her face was blotched with dark red lesions and her eyebrows had disappeared. Her male companion's face was also heavily marked and his limbs were shaking with rapid movements. But their eyes were what was hardest to look at. If the lumberjack's were clouded, theirs were almost completely opaque, like watered-down milk. That was why they hadn't noticed us for so long.

“What harm are we doing?” the woman asked querulously. “Alec's at peace now. You can't get anything else from him.”

Katharine and I exchanged helpless glances.

“You're not doing any harm,” I said. “We're not on the staff here.”

An expression of what looked like joy flashed across both their faces, to be replaced almost immediately by a terrible sadness. It was as if they'd been waiting for this moment for years, only to realise as soon as it arrived that salvation from what they were going through was an impossible dream.

“Not on the staff?” the man repeated, his ruined features contorting as he struggled to work out who we were.

The woman rose to her feet with difficulty, holding on to her companion's arm tightly. “Surely you haven't come over the wall?” she said, her voice fraught with fear. “You'll never get out again, you know.”

“We'll see about that,” I said, trying to sound more in command of myself than I was. “In the meantime we need your help. Will you be missed for a few more minutes?”

The man laughed. It wasn't a pretty sound, but it raised my spirits. Whatever he'd suffered, at least he could still laugh. I saw that Katharine was smiling.

“They won't miss us. Now that we can't work in the labs or with the cattle, they're just waiting for us to join the others here.” His head started to shake like his arms and legs. The woman drew him gently away from the grave.

“Come on,” she said. “We'd better get into the cover of the bushes.”

Katharine took her arm but she shook it off firmly. We let them move slowly ahead.

In the undergrowth they lowered themselves carefully on to the trunk of a fallen tree and sat hand in hand like a couple of kids who'd strayed away from a school picnic.

“If you're not on the staff, who are you?” the man asked suspiciously. “No one's ever volunteered to enter this place before.”

“I'm Dalrymple,” I said, preparing to launch into a sanitised account of what we were up to. I didn't get the chance.

“Quintilian Dalrymple?” they said in unison. I wasn't aware that my name had become part of a Gregorian chant. “The investigator?”

“Yes,” I replied. “How do you know?”

“We haven't been here all our lives,” the woman said. “Though it often feels like it. We knew about you when we were in the Science and Energy Directorate.” She shook her head slowly. “Your mother was responsible for all this, you know.”

I'd been wondering when my mother, the former senior guardian, would come back to haunt me. The lesions on the couple's faces were a silent reminder of the lupus that had ravaged her. But I suspected that what they were afflicted by was even worse than that.

“Don't worry,” the man said. “We won't hold it against you.” He sighed deeply like a torture victim who's tracked down his abusers but can't find the strength to avenge himself on them. “We're long past that.”

“Tell us,” Katharine said simply, squatting down on the damp bracken in front of them. “Tell us what they did to you.”

“Very well,” the man said. “This is our story. I hope you both find it informative.” His voice broke towards the end of the sentence but I couldn't tell if that was the effect of emotion or his physical condition.

I settled back against the gnarled trunk of an ancient oak and shut out the harsh call of the crow that was still haunting the wood. Maybe it had found a rabbit – or something larger. Then I leaned forward and listened to the old man's soft, uneven tones.

“We're  . . . we were mechanical engineers. Specialising in steam turbines. Before the Enlightenment we worked at Torness. Of course, after the plant was decommissioned, we had to retrain.”

The woman laughed bitterly. “Coal. I hate the bloody stuff. We spent most of our time patching up what passes for a coal-fired power station in this benighted city.”

Her companion nodded. “Until we were called into the Science and Energy Directorate in 2019 and told we were to be part of a top-secret team. They gave us false identities as ordinary citizens.”

“To work on starting up the nuclear plant at Torness,” I said.

They were seriously shocked. “You knew?” the woman exclaimed. “How? No one outside this hell-hole is supposed to have heard about the project we took part in.”

I looked at their devastated faces. “Not quite no one. There were a few others. My mother and the science and energy guardian, for instance.”

“Guardians,” the man said. “Why would they talk?”

I considered defending William McEwan, but time was running out. The longer we were in the compound, the greater the chance we'd be caught.

“We heard your mother died, Quintilian,” the woman said, giving me a surprisingly sympathetic look.

“She did. Last year.” I paused for a moment, amazed that the woman could feel anything for the guardian who was at least partially responsible for what had happened to her.

“It would never have worked,” the man continued. “All our colleagues were agreed on that. But there was great pressure on us to come up with a positive recommendation. The deputy guardian  . . .”

That's what I wanted to hear. Some dirt on the one-time deputy science guardian who was now senior guardian.