Part 27 (1/2)

'Will Mommy be back when I wake up?' Jack asked sleepily.

'I bet she will be, don't you worry, son,' lied Vernon, gunning the engine and roaring away down the dark quiet country lane.

By the time he found himself on the motorway that led to the airport, Vernon had made up his mind. I'm outta here, he thought. I've done my bit. Now all I got to do is get my boy home again.

He would call the police once he was safely on the plane and no-one could stop him from taking Jack out of the UK. Then, a matter of hours later, they would be far away from Kate and the chaos she surrounded herself with. When they were together he had had always found her straight-laced and kind of boring, if he was honest with himself. And now she was involved with rogue scientists and their henchmen and who knew what else. If only she'd been so interesting when they were together he might never have needed to go to s.h.i.+rl to get his kicks. Not that there was any going back. He had surprised himself that he'd felt no jealousy when he'd met Paul. He actually liked the guy. Good luck to him. As long as he didn't plan on playing step-daddy to Jack.

He glanced over his shoulder at his sleeping son on the back seat.

Why had they made Jack visit 'a sick lady'? What the h.e.l.l were the people who had s.n.a.t.c.hed his son up to?

Oh, Jack's just fine, Vernon thought, trying to convince himself. He just needs to be taken out of this screwed up country and its wacko populace. If he gets a cold, or whatever the h.e.l.l this is all about, he'd get s.h.i.+rley to take Jack down to the Medical Centre in Boston tomorrow afternoon once they were home. One more day wouldn't make any difference, would it?

CHAPTER 44.

Gaunt led Kate back out into the harshly-lit corridor, gripping her wrist hard, breathing his foul halitosis into her hair and face.

Sampson unlocked the door of the room across the corridor, and dragged out a protesting Paul, bending his arm up behind his back to incapacitate him. 'Move it, Wilson, you've got a meeting to go to.'

Paul glanced at Kate, glad she seemed to be unharmed, apart from the fear etched on her face.

The awkward procession halted outside another heavy door, this one with a gla.s.s porthole cut into it. Gaunt poked several of the keys on an alpha-numeric keypad beside the door. A light turned from red to green, and he pushed the door which opened into a large subterranean laboratory, illuminated by long strip lights.

As they shuffled inside, Paul glanced again at Kate's face. Her eyes were gla.s.sy with stress. She looked like she wouldn't mind right now if someone put a gun to her head, just so she wouldn't have to worry any more. He knew that the only thing keeping her going, stopping her from curling up into a ball, was the hope that burned inside her, the hope that she would somehow be able to save her son.

'I love you,' he mouthed, but Kate was in no fit state to respond, or even acknowledge the declaration. She felt as if she was inside the sort of bad dream which just goes on and on, silently unfolding and trans.m.u.ting from one nightmare scenario to another.

A very thin, hunched, bald old man in a white coat was seated at the far end of the room, his back to them, tapping away on a keyboard.

'Who's this?' Kate said in a tired voice. 'Another member of the Gaunt family?'

At the sound of Kate's voice, the old man on the computer turned his head slowly, like a tortoise.

Gaunt laughed. 'Oh no. He's not a member of my family.'

Looking thoroughly pleased with himself, Gaunt gestured to the thin bald man, who was now advancing towards them, an expression of fear and confusion on his deathly white face.

Sampson closed the lab door behind them, released Paul, and leaned back against the wall, his arms folded, as if he was waiting for a show to begin.

It was Paul who realized first.

'Holy s.h.i.+t,' he muttered, grabbing on to the edge of a workbench for support. 'Holy f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t. No...'

Something in the tone of his voice snapped Kate back to reality, back to an acceptance of the full, terrible reality of the situation.

She looked at the ghostly man still advancing like a zombie, and half-gasped, half-sobbed: 'Stephen?'

It was undoubtedly her former lover. He looked like he'd spent the last decade and a half in the grave, and that Gaunt, like some real-life necromancer, had brought him back from the dead, built his very own Frankenstein's monster. But it was definitely him.

Stephen had been alive all these years.

He was motionless, gripping the nearest bench with weak fingers. Kate looked at Paul, who was staring at his brother, a c.o.c.ktail of emotions on his face: shock, pity, horror. It was impossible to believe they were twins. Stephen appeared twice as old as Paul. He had burn marks down one side of his face and on his hands, long-healed scars from the night of the fire.

Without thinking, she stepped towards Stephen, her arms outstretched, wanting to hold him, to fling her arms around him just as she'd fantasised about doing so many times, in dreams and daydreams, all those times she had found herself caught in a reverie in which Stephen was alive. But in all those dreams, he hadn't looked like this. He'd been the same beautiful young man she'd known in the summer of 1990.

She tried to hug him and he made a squeaking noise and cowered away.

'Stephen,' she said, in the voice she used when Jack was upset, 'It's me, Kate. Don't you remember?'

He wouldn't look at her. Couldn't look at her. He kept his eyes fixed on the laboratory floor.

Paul stepped forward. 'What about me, Stephen? Do you remember me? It's Paul. Remember, Stevie? Remember me?'

Stephen looked up, his eyes bloodshot and watery. Kate wanted to know what he was thinking: what was going on inside that head? His eyes spoke of terrible confusion, of pain and incomprehension. But there was something else there, when he looked at Paul. A sign of the old Stephen. Maybe in Paul he could see the man he should have been. Maybe it gave him strength.

But when Paul moved towards him and tried to touch him, he backed away like a dog that has spent its whole life being beaten. Tears filled Paul's eyes. 'Oh Stevie,' he said quietly. 'What have they done to you?'

Kate turned to Gaunt, who couldn't stop grinning.

'Such a beautiful reunion,' Gaunt sneered. 'Brothers and lovers brought together again.'

'You b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' Kate said.

Gaunt raised his hands. 'Now, now. I thought you'd be pleased. Here I am, making your wishes come true, and you're so ungrateful.' He shook his head in a fake demonstration of disappointment. 'You thought Sampson had left Stephen to die in the lab after he'd started the fire. And he very nearly did die. When the fire fighters brought him out of the building, he was burned and unconscious from inhaling so much smoke. But he was still alive.'

Kate remembered it so clearly: seeing them carry Stephen out of the CRU. She had rushed to reach him but Gaunt had stopped her. That was when he had injected her and knocked her out. And when she woke up they told her Stephen was dead.

'We rushed him to hospital. I mean, you really ought to be grateful because we actually did save his life.'

'Which hospital?' Kate asked. 'The same place as me?'

'That's right.'

'You mean, all the time I was there, Stephen was there too?'

'Just down the hall.'

'But why?' Paul asked. His eyes had been fixed on his brother, but now he stared at Gaunt. 'Why did you pretend he was dead?'

'Isn't it obvious? I knew I'd need help to continue my work, and I saw the ideal opportunity. Stephen was bright, a good scientist. Frankly, his talents were wasted at the CRU. I knew that because of his...ethics, he wouldn't willingly join me. So I made everyone believe he had perished in the fire. I sent Sampson out to find a homeless person, who he set on fire, and presented that body as Stephen's.'

'There's somebody else in Stephen's grave? Some other poor soul you murdered?'

'Yes, some...homeless person.'