Larissa closed the wardrobe and flew quickly back through the house. The smell of barbecuing meat was intoxicating, and she could hear laughter and the gentle rhythm of Callum’s guitar over the distant sound of the river as it ran along the edge of the place she now called home.
Jamie was pacing impatiently around his quarters when his console beeped on his belt. He thumbed the rectangular screen into life and read the message that appeared.
FROM: Turner, Director Paul (NS303, 36-A)
TO: Carpenter, Lieutenant Jamie (NS303, 67-J)
Five minutes. Come up Now.
Jamie’s eyes flared; a second later he was striding along Level B, resisting the urge to leap into the air and fly down the corridor as fast as he was able.
He had been awake most of the night, turning the Patrol Respond over and over in his mind. His squad had waited for the Security Division to arrive and load the Night Stalkers’ van on to a flatbed truck, only to receive a message informing them that the remainder of their Operation had been cancelled, and they were to return to the Loop immediately. But that had been absolutely fine with Jamie; he had been preoccupied by an awful thought as he wheezed on the ground, one that rattled ceaselessly through his brain as they were driven back to base. He had finally slipped into a fitful sleep in the early hours of the morning, and as soon as his eyes reopened he had typed a message to Paul Turner, telling the Director he needed to see him as soon as possible.
He reached the Level B lift, pressed CALL, and shifted impatiently from one foot to the other as he waited. He had not mentioned the thought to Ellison or Qiang; he trusted them completely, but he wanted to keep it to himself, at least for the time being. It was something that went beyond suspicion or theory and, without proof, it could easily be dismissed as paranoia – or wishful thinking – by those who, like his squad mates, were not in full possession of the facts. And there was something else, something simpler, and more pressing.
It was personal.
The lift arrived. Jamie stepped into it and pressed A. When the doors opened again, barely five seconds later, he walked down the corridor, nodded to a pair of Operators heading in the opposite direction, and stopped at the short corridor that led to the Director’s quarters. The Security Operator on duty stepped forward.
“Lieutenant Carpenter,” she said. “You can go straight in.”
“Thanks,” said Jamie, and strode forward. The heavy door swung open before he reached it, and he heard the Director’s voice emerge through the gap.
“This better be important, Lieutenant. I’ve got about ten free minutes today and I’m giving half of them to you.”
Jamie smiled, and stepped into the room he had come to know so well; he had spent hundreds of hours in it, talking to the men who had sat behind the wide desk on the far side of the room. Paul Turner was the third Director he had served, a turnover that spoke volumes about the turmoil the Department had been through in recent years, and the former Security Officer eyed him carefully as he stopped in front of the desk and stood to attention.
“At ease, for God’s sake,” said the Director. “What’s going on?”
“Morning, sir,” said Jamie. “I don’t know if you’ve seen my Patrol Respond report for last night—”
“There are currently forty-nine Operational Squads in this Department,” said Turner. “Even now, depleted as we are, if I read every report that every squad filed every night, I would quite literally get nothing else done. So assume I haven’t read it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jamie. “We got a 999 intercept on a possible Night Stalker incident in a Nottingham suburb. We checked it out, tracked a vehicle that had been seen in the area, and found them, sir.”
Turner narrowed his eyes. “You found them?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jamie. “We were too late to stop them killing the vampire they’d abducted, and we failed to apprehend them. But I saw them, sir. There were two of them. And I think I might know who one of them was.”
The Director sat back in his chair. “Go on.”
Jamie took a deep breath. “I think it was my dad, sir.”
“Come again?” said Turner.
“My dad, sir. Julian Carpenter.”
“What on earth would make you think that?”
“They were carrying MP5s, just like we used to. And the man I saw had military training, I’d bet my life on it. The way he moved, the way he didn’t panic, even when I went for him. He wasn’t remotely scared of vampires, sir.”
“And you think your father is the only person in the country who fits that description?” asked Turner.
Jamie frowned. “Of course not, sir. But it makes sense. Cal wouldn’t let my dad back into the Department, but even he knew that it was a waste of time telling him to behave himself. There’s no way he would just sit quietly and wait, on the off chance that you decided to reverse Cal’s decision. The Night Stalkers are exactly the sort of thing he’d do.”
“How would you know that, Jamie?” said Turner. “You never knew the Operator side of him.”
“I understand that, sir,” said Jamie, aware that his voice was beginning to rise. “But I do know how stubborn he was, right up to the point where it cost him everything he cared about. I don’t believe he’ll just sit on the sidelines, sir. It’s not in his nature.”
“On that point, you and I are in complete agreement,” said Turner. “And I do see why you reached this conclusion. But the man you saw last night wasn’t your father.”
Jamie frowned. “How can you say that, sir?” he asked. “I was there, and you were behind that desk.”
Turner narrowed his eyes. “Be careful, Lieutenant.”
Heat rose into Jamie’s cheeks, a potent mixture of anger and embarrassment. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I just don’t get how you can be so sure.”
“And I can’t believe that you would be arrogant enough to assume that nobody else has considered this,” said Turner. “It was my first thought too, as soon as the Night Stalker attacks began. Three months ago.”
Jamie stared. “You thought it was him too?”
“Of course I did,” said Turner. “As you said, it would be just like him to find a new and different way to cause trouble.”
“But now you’re sure it’s not him?”
Turner nodded. “Face the screen, Jamie.”
He stared at the Director for a long moment, then did as he was told. He heard fingers tap a keyboard, and a moment later, the Department’s network access prompt appeared. Turner logged in, then navigated to an area that Jamie had never seen. A series of menus opened and closed, until a short list of coded entries appeared; Turner clicked on the link beside HTXB/4532MK0, and brought up a grid of video windows. For several long seconds, Jamie didn’t realise what he was looking at; then he recognised the front door he had knocked on six months earlier, and understood.
“That’s my grandmother’s cottage,” he said.
“Correct,” said Turner. “This is the surveillance web that Julian agreed to as a condition of his release. This is how I know.”
Jamie examined the wide screen. The windows showed the front of the cottage, high angles of seemingly every room, the driveway at the front, and the garden at the rear. As he watched, the door of the shed opened and his father emerged, brushed off his hands, and walked down the garden towards the cottage. Jamie felt his chest constrict momentarily with a sharp jab of grief, before it was burned away by the anger that flooded him whenever he even thought about his father; seeing him live on camera only intensified the emotion.
“We chipped him again before he was released,” said Turner. “It’s moving now, while we’re watching him, and it didn’t move last night, not once in seven hours. After he turned out the lights, the audio sensors picked up the sound of his breathing, and thermal showed a constant heat source in his bed. Surveillance checked on him at 3.12am and saw nothing unusual. He was there all night, Jamie.”