Birdkill Read online

  And it was there, inside her, the Void. She had been there again but somehow she had managed to get here and she felt totally lost and vulnerable in a way that even the Void didn’t explain or let her understand. She turned away from the tower to face the dark woods, the lights of the Institute visible at the far end of the woodland. She started to walk back, aware of the dank carpet of leaf mould under her feet, twigs digging into her sensitive arches.

  She held on to trees for support, swinging between them, her palms streaked with lichen stains. The moonlight, still strong, picked out the boles as grey pillars. Home was nearby, warmth and a return to the anchor of her apartment, her own smells and environment. She could leave the strangeness behind, tree by tree, swinging like an Orang-utan. It almost became a game before the smell assailed her. She faltered, trying to place it before realising it came from the Void. She knew this smell.

  She stumbled into a tiny clearing. The moonlight beamed down into the centre of it. She approached the bundle of rags in the centre, the stench assaulting her nostrils. Drawn to it, her mind started to protest. Her feet padding on the soft leaves, she fought to hold herself back. It was a corpse.

  Oh God, not that.

  It was a girl, a woman. She lay on her back, the moonlight bathing her face. The eye sockets were black, caved in. The skin was papery, mottled. Things moved, myriad things. Maggots, squirming. The face was Robyn’s, staring sightlessly up into the heavens. She tore her gaze away, already retching. Martin Oakley’s slight figure stood at the edge of the clearing.

  She fled. Twigs slashed at her face. Sightless, she ran into a tree, a glancing blow that tumbled her to the moist earth. She fought the urge to dig her fingers into the leaf mould and let herself be consumed by the soil and enrich it in turn, become one with its warm embrace. She staggered to her feet and finally burst through into the open garden, the grass slippery with the onset of the morning’s dew. She found the fire escape, heaving herself up on the railing. Sure enough, the window was open and Robyn girded herself for the short scramble up into her apartment. She could feel the warmth from it escaping as she was arrested by the glint from the corner above her. Looking up, she stared into the tiny black lens of the newly-installed security camera.

  With a heave, she fell to the floor of her apartment, leaves and dirt streaking the wooden planking. Making a last superhuman effort, she pulled the window towards her and wrenched the catch closed.

  Falling backwards onto the floor, she hunched up and cried until the tears simply stopped coming and merciful darkness claimed her.

  THIRTEEN

  On The Game

  Robyn dragged herself out of bed and showered for a very long time under a very hot shower. She used the Bulgari green tea shampoo she had been saving since stealing it from a ridiculously expensive hotel room during a brief and ill-fated liaison which had taken place in another lifetime and on another continent.

  Thank God she’d been left with her memories from before the Void. She let the water batter down on her shoulders, flexing them to let her muscles tauten. She was out of shape, too. The animal sensations of musculature, joints and her reddened skin brought her back into a physical connection with life, much as her drive around the shabby race track had connected her back to the world she cherished, a world of here and now without the fear and trauma that lay behind her blacked out memories.

  She dressed and went downstairs to make herself coffee. Fridays meant no class, just planning to do and, truth be told, she did little enough planning now she had established the successful format of letting her students’ intellectual journeys guide them in their learning together. She wondered what her two classes would be like on Monday now she had driven a wedge between them by bringing their unresolved pasts into unwelcome scrutiny.

  The stark truth was they had no parents, these kids. And they didn’t even know what that meant, because they’d grown up in this strange environment being hot-housed since they could open their eyes and take milk. She wondered at what stage the infants were transferred from the Mayview Clinic to the Institute. Was there a nursery school?

  It hadn’t occurred to her. There was no evidence of one, and yet if this project was an ongoing concern, surely there were new generations being raised. Better kids, improvements on this first generation of experiments. Smart iKid 2.0.

  She shuddered and tried to put the thought out of her mind; she had promised herself a day of positive thinking, not brooding on the wrong things around her. But sipping her coffee, curled up on the orange cushion, her thoughts wandered back to it. Was the nursery over the fence at the Research Institute? Did the little children get more intense scrutiny and perhaps treatments? It would make sense; the formative years were the most important in the development of the brain. If you were going to embark on an aggressive regime of augmentation therapies, early years was the time to really go for it. You could afford to perhaps relax a little after that, focus on developing the cognitive utilisation of the augmented mind.

  She laughed out loud at herself. Pretentious? Moi? She drained her coffee and pulled on her coat. Time for a walk. She pulled her cigarettes out of the kitchen drawer.

  Fags and lighter in pocket, she went downstairs and flashed her card at the sensor panel, pushed open the door and gasped at the first belt of cold. About to head to the right, through the car park and past reception to strike into the woods and down to the beach, she carried straight ahead on a whim. The guard on the Research Institute gate saw her and was warily polite. ‘Morning miss.’

  ‘I want to go in. I need to see my pupil.’

  ‘You can contact her through reception, Miss. I can’t let you through. You know that.’

  ‘I demand you allow me through.’

  He tried not to laugh at her, but she caught the hint of contempt in his face. She had no more authority to demand access of him than a fly had to demand mercy from the front of a truck. The truth of it stung her and she let her anger rule.

  ‘Get out of my fucking way.’ She elbowed past him. He caught her arm and pulled her back with surprising force. She tried to shove him and he shoved her right back.

  ‘I’ll file a complaint about your brutality.’

  ‘You be my guest. But you’re not going through.’

  She stormed away from him, striking out through the car park and along the path down to the sea. The salty air was fresh, making her blink and avert her face. The waves crashed against the pebbles lining the beach. High tide.

  Robyn sat down on the bank of pebbles between the strand and the downs. She wrenched the rubber bands from her packet and lit a cigarette, cupping her hands to stop the wind blowing out the flame from her lighter.

  Gazing along the beach, the four colours and textures formed a long striation; sea, sand, pebble, grass. Knocking her eyes out of focus turned the scene into four sweeping strokes, the sky grey above and the white tower a quick dab of the skilful brush, another drag of bunched hair against rough canvas perhaps for the cliffs.

  She pulled luxuriantly on her cigarette. The morning had brought a bleak awakening and she had lain curled up in her warm bed for over an hour, turning her life around in her mind and contemplating whether the best thing to do would be just to give up and tumble herself into the Void forever. Give herself up to it. Join it.

  She wondered if turning her back on that course was brave or weak. But turn her back on it she had,

  Now, sitting in peace by the sea, she regretted her flare-up at the guard. He’d almost certainly report her this time, even if he hadn’t last. Robyn pushed the butt of her cigarette deep into the damp sand between the pebbles, getting sand under her fingernail and absently cleaning it out, nail in nail.

  Would they sack her, like they had Emily Gray? In a way, she’d welcome it. The apartment had become something of an anchor for her, but the Hamilton Institute was drawing her back to the place she had come from before London and those trauma counselling group sessions, before meeting Mariam and finding a r
eason to live again.

  She pushed herself to her feet. The realisation surprised her: it was this place was bringing back the dreams, the urge to lash out because her hurt was burrowing deep inside her again and slowly squeezing the life out of her, grinding down her natural optimism and selling her out to the Void.

  Maybe she’d be better off away from here? The thought, so clear now, shocked her. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before?

  Robyn turned back towards the Institute, glancing at the white tower that for some reason occupied her more and more. The grey cloud parted and a beam of light splashed on the headland, making the tower shine against the slate vignette of the cloud coming in from the sea. The prevailing wind brought white caps to the waves and lent a dead greyness to the swell.

  Passing reception, Robyn turned at Archer’s cry ‘Robyn!’ He padded over to meet her. He was quite handsome and she liked him but he really was Hamilton’s lapdog. He wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Hi. We’ve been trying to call you. Lawrence and I would like a word.’

  The anger flared again. ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘No, it can’t. Lawrence’s study. Now.’

  His tone shocked her. She was torn between telling him he couldn’t speak to her like that and fear about quite what was making him so evidently angry. What had she done? She followed him into the warm reception area and through the panelled door which always muffled, but never masked, the ‘Come’.

  Hamilton was staring out of the window, his hands behind his back. He was wearing a brown and green tweed number with elbow patches, brown trousers and an open-necked cream shirt. Archer sat on one of the green leather club chairs. Robyn stood.

  He turned, the beak-like nose casting a shadow across his shrunken cheek like that of a sun dial. His lips were drawn into a thin line.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

  A range of facetious answers came to her. None of them made the grade. What had brought this on? She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you mean, I’m sorry.’

  ‘What I mean? Isn’t my meaning clear to you? Are you truly so blithely unaware of your actions that you feel no guilt or remorse? Or are you perhaps merely irredeemably stupid? Which is it to be Ms Shaw?’

  She stepped back in the face of his advancing fury, the backs of her legs finding the edge of a chair. Recoiling from the jabbing, bony finger, she collapsed into the buttoned leather chair. Leaning over her, Hamilton shook with anger.

  ‘Our security team have filed a complaint that you tried to bully your way past a guard into the Research Institute. There is camera footage of you wandering the grounds at all hours in a semi-naked state. You have been attempting to access secured assets on the school network, in one case actually hacking highly confidential personal files relating to the children in our care. I am finding it hard to think of one single redeeming quality you may possess that should stop me from summarily terminating your employment here, young lady. You’re a liability of almost shocking proportions.’

  He turned on his heel and strode behind his desk. ‘Let alone,’ his voice loudened ‘and this is the one that really baffles me, inviting a journalist and a disgraced ex-serviceman who runs a shady security company into my bloody school.’

  Archer stood. ‘Lawrence, please. I’m sure Robyn can explain.’

  Oh, right. So this was to be good cop, bad cop. The urge to lash out at them dissipated and she waited, an odd, comforting lassitude settling on her. Whatever they did or decided would hardly hurt her. If they sacked her, it would probably actually be for the best. If her decision out there on the beach was correct, she’d be better off away from this place in any case.

  Hamilton sat at his desk and picked up a file. It was a little piece of theatre Robyn admired from a million miles away. Her out of body self gazed at the name on the buff folder, ‘Robyn Shaw’ and admired Lawrence Hamilton. She wondered what a phrenologist would make of the balding skull. A buzzard. He looked like a buzzard.

  ‘I have been in contact with Dr Hass. He admired you greatly. In fact, his glowing recommendation of you was my principal reason for admitting you to the staff at the Hamilton Institute. It was his opinion that you had fully recovered from the breakdown you experienced in Lebanon. I can only tell you of his disappointment.’

  Her other self shrugged, ethereal. Paul Hass ran the trauma counselling centre which Robyn had attended in London. He was a wiry man with short-cropped black hair receding into deep widows’ peaks, a love of polo neck jumpers and fast cars. It was the latter had bonded Robyn to him so quickly. She was always seeking solidity since returning from Zahlé. And then Mariam had come along and Robyn was saved. Paul had encouraged their friendship, had even conducted joint sessions. Was Paul really disappointed in her? Robyn found herself back in the here and now, Hamilton’s bushy-eyed glare on her, Archer looking serious, his mouth pulled down in a glum pout. She moved her hand to find a patch of cool leather, the cold brass studs on the end of the chair’s arm against her fingertips.

  Her lips were dry. ‘What have you told him?’

  ‘I consulted with him, obviously. I am concerned, Robyn, I can make no secret of that concern. We think you have perhaps been working too hard, that it was too soon to subject you to the rigors of the classroom, especially in an environment as demanding as the Hamilton Institute. You need time to consolidate your healing.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’ She heard herself, the surly tone in her voice. The quiver that belied her statement, the dreams that wouldn’t go away, the visions that troubled her in her waking hours now. And yet she didn’t feel mad. Whatever mad felt like.

  ‘You have to admit, wandering around the grounds of a school in the early hours in a dressing gown hardly seems normal.’ Archer shot at her, earning a sharp glance from Hamilton.

  ‘I said, I’m fine.’

  Hamilton laid the file down. ‘We’re not here to make accusations or create confrontation. Paul asked me to help and I am pleased to do so in any way I can. I want you to feel you can come to me if you are finding yourself disturbed or challenged by your circumstances here.’

  Now, Robyn thought. Do it. Be grateful. She rubbed her temple. ‘I appreciate that, Dr Hamilton. I won’t pretend adapting to new circumstances here has had its challenges but I feel both I and the children have benefited enormously. Knowing I can count on your support is a relief, I must say.’

  Archer was frowning but Hamilton was nodding. ‘Let’s keep an eye on things, then Robyn. Don’t keep it all bottled up, just knock on the door and we can work on some solutions and coping strategies. Paul Hass considers you something of a miracle, you know. I’d be pleased to contribute to that miracle.’

  She smiled, the interview clearly at an end, and stood. ‘Thank you, Doctor. Simon.’

  Walking out of Hamilton’s study, she wondered if she perhaps wouldn’t have been better off telling them both to go to hell, but Hamilton had rattled her by bringing Paul Hass into it. On the balance of it, she’d rather not end up being sectioned and there was something about Hamilton’s manner that had hinted at that course, although he had said nothing to indicate it directly.

  Maybe she was going mad after all.

  Mariam hadn’t known what to expect of Pamela Oakley if she were honest with herself, but her ideas had certainly been more along gritty dark streets and the click of high heels on tarmac than the angular corporate interior of the bar at the Northampton Marriott. It was early in the evening, the light outside had faded and the bottles and glasses stacked behind the bar glittered in the lighting. Mariam liked Oakley from the second she and Warren had arrived at the bar, standing in the doorway peering around the room. She was sitting on a bar stool, her crossed legs shapely. She raised a laconic finger to them. She was in her late thirties, short-haired bottle blonde and elegant in a burgundy cocktail dress and Louboutins. Her face was pretty, her nose perhaps a bit too angular for beauty but her eyes were languid and there was a sensuality to he
r made all the more potent by her humour, the laughter lines and mobile glance with its sardonic wit. Warren, Mariam noticed, was like a dog in heat. Pamela’s amused glance at her shared the awareness of Warren’s helpless state and Mariam marvelled in the strength inherent in that cognisance.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to see us.’

  ‘That’s alright, dear. It’s all water under the bridge. I must say, I don’t often look back to those days.’ There was a hint of accent in the well-modulated voice. ‘Shall we get a table?’ She slipped off the bar stool and arranged her skirt.

  Warren caught the barman’s eye. ‘Hi. A pint of Stella, please. Mariam?’

  ‘A coke. No ice, thanks.’

  ‘Pamela?’

  ‘Same again. Vodka dry Martini. No olive. Thank you.’

  They wandered over to a table, leaving Warren to bring the drinks. ‘Have you been together long?’

  ‘We’re not, not in that way. Clive’s in the security business.’

  Pamela darted her amused glance at Mariam. ‘And you need security, do you?’

  ‘Well yes,’ Mariam admitted. ‘I do, rather. It’s a long story. But it’s your story we wanted to hear. Dr Hamilton.’

  ‘I’m not sure there’s much I can tell you, really. I was very hard up back in those days and I had an expensive habit. He paid for me to clean up and then he paid for the clinic for the baby.’

  ‘I couldn’t really work out why he would want to do that, if you don’t mind—’

  ‘No, it’s okay. You know sometimes we’d talk about it, a sort of silly girl’s dream. The benefactor who comes to you one night, the John who turns out to be a gentleman who’ll scoop you away to a life of ease in a lovely flat overlooking Hyde Park or somewhere. And that’s what he was, a perfect gentleman. At least, that’s how it seemed.’