Part 15 (1/2)

For a few moments Nicola watched a gangling dog rummage through the rubbish in a side street. It seemed oblivious to the people pa.s.sing by, methodically inspecting each dustbin in turn. Nicola saw its head bob up and down, and could hear an occasional snort of interest above even the rush of the cars and the dance music thumping out from the pub jukebox.

The dog turned to look at Nicola, its jaws flecked with saliva and cardboard shreds. A car turned on to the main road, the headlights briefly illuminating the creature's eyes.

Startled, the dog vanished into the shadows.

Nicola pushed open the door of the pub. The air smelled of cigarettes and sweat, of perfume and salt-and-vinegar crisps.

Some girls, stinking of alcohol, pushed past Nicola and towards the exit.

Nicola found her friends cl.u.s.tered around a small table in an alcove away from the bar. She sat down gratefully, mopping up some spilled drink with a beer mat. 'It's busy tonight,' she said. 'Mine's a vodka and orange. Loads of ice.'

One of the young women grunted and got to her feet, tugging a purse from a jacket pocket.

'You OK?' asked Tina, glancing up from the table with concern. She had known Nicola since school, and recognised the signs of tired anguish in her friend's face.

'Yeah. I'm fine. Just knackered, that's all.'

'Heard your dad on the radio this morning,' said Jane, who'd never been known for her tact.

'Oh, don't,' said Nicola.

'Let's get slaughtered, then,' said another friend, as she downed half a gla.s.s of white wine.

'There's this great place on Lime Street,' offered Jane.

'It's a dive,' said Nicola.

'Oh, go on,' said Jane. 'The lads there are just gagging for it. You could string 'em along, Nicks, get some free bevvies.'

'I don't think so.'

Jane delved into her handbag, pulling out some cheaply printed slips of paper. 'I've got free tickets...'

Nicola sensed that she had already lost the argument.

'Where'd you get them?' she queried in desperation.

'She's just a tart, love, didn't you know?' laughed Tina.

It had been a bad day in the Mother of Parliaments. The opposition had really laid into Defence Minister Hatch as he tried manfully to defend the government's recent relaxation of arms embargoes placed upon a number of unsavoury totalitarian regimes.

'Would the Right Honourable Member,' he asked one former friend and ally, 'like to be the one to tell voters in his own const.i.tuency, working in the s.h.i.+pbuilding industry, that their jobs are to be sacrificed to satisfy his l.u.s.t for political correctness and ideological dogma?' That had set the cat among the pigeons. They came at him from all sides, probing and pus.h.i.+ng and reiterating the same inane points over and over again until he lost his temper. Hands gripping the dispatch box tightly, he bellowed at them that he was a member of a government with a majority of one hundred and twelve, and what the h.e.l.l did they think they were going to do about it?

Even the Speaker's voice had been drowned out by the near riot that ensued.

Now, pus.h.i.+ng his way past television crews and lobby journalists outside the House, Hatch still felt that anger seething within him. It was a relief just to climb into the ministerial limousine and shut the door on the whole d.a.m.n lot of them.

'Thought you were very good today, sir,' said his driver as he pulled away from Westminster and into Pall Mall.

'Thank you, Ian,' replied Hatch wearily. Not that he was particularly interested in what some civil service lowlife thought about anything, anything, but politeness cost nothing. but politeness cost nothing.

'Straight home, sir?'

'No,' said Hatch. 'The Wellton clinic, Ian.'

'Right you are, sir.'

The oncoming twilight seemed to darken Hatch's mood, and they drove in silence towards the motorway. His driver knew well enough when to flatter him, when to ask a few questions, and when to shut the h.e.l.l up.

Hatch had once overheard Ian Slater talking about him to some of the other government chauffeurs. 'Hatch is a twenty-four-carat b.a.s.t.a.r.d who wallows in his own c.r.a.pulence,'

Slater had said, with a straight face. Hatch knew praise when he heard it, and he decided there and then that the man could be trusted.

Ian Slater had been with Hatch when the politician negotiated a major Third World arms deal on behalf of Trevor Winstone. And Slater had accompanied Hatch on Spanish holidays with Shanks, the drugs and p.o.r.n king of Liverpool.

And Ian Slater knew something about the Wellton clinic and the reason for Matthew Hatch's frequent visits to the private medical research facility.

Most importantly of all, Slater knew where the bodies were buried. Literally.

Slater negotiated the M3 to Chertsey, and they reached the Wellton clinic shortly after 9 p.m. The light from the setting sun cast ominous shadows across the path of the car.

'I'll be about twenty minutes,' said Hatch, stepping out of the limousine. 'If my wife should ring, we're stuck in traffic, and I'mon the other line. Understand?'

'Absolutely, sir.'

Hatch strode towards the building, glancing back once to see Slater, cap down over his eyes, already fast asleep. The MP brushed through the reception area without a word, and marched into an office without knocking. A white-coated man smiled briefly as Hatch entered, immediately sweeping paperwork on to the floor to allow the politician to sit. The room was typically cluttered and, it seemed to Hatch, overlit.

'You said you had some news, Nick,' said Hatch.

'Indeed,' said Dr Nicholas Bevan. 'We're close to isolating the D47 gene. The next few days form the most important period in the entire project.' He removed a gla.s.s from a drawer, and poured the politician a whisky. 'Are you feeling all right, Matthew?' he asked.

'I'm fine,' said Hatch, pa.s.sing a hand across his brow. It came away slick with perspiration. 'I'm sweating like a pig, that's all. The weather.'

'Our main concern now,' continued Bevan, 'must be to progress to the next phase of the fertility programme.'

Hatch picked up the whisky gla.s.s, and toyed with it in the harsh glare of the strip lights above his head. 'You know,' he said, 'I can remember when I first came to you, when I told you about the Hexen ”curse”. You said it was a scientific impossibility...' There was an ironic detachment in Hatch's voice.

'I said, if you remember, that the chance of there being a genetic strain that causes sterility in a group of human beings when they leave the area in which they were conceived was...' Bevan paused, searching for a tactful way of putting his conclusion. 'Well, it's unlikely,' he said at last. 'There are parallels in nature of course. The salmon, for instance, must sp.a.w.n in the river where it was born...'