‘It is very clear, sir.’
‘Yes, it is. Now get out. I don’t want to see your face or hear your name for six months. I just hope that when you come back you’ll have learned some sense.’
Joel stormed out of Page’s office and slammed the door behind him with a noise like the crack of a rifle shot. He was halfway down the corridor when the door opened again and Carter came running out after him.
‘Hey, slow down.’
Joel pointed. ‘That stupid bastard has no idea what’s going on here.’
‘And you do?’
‘I think I do, yeah.’
‘So tell me. I’m all ears.’
‘I’m not sure you’d want to know.’
Carter looked at his watch. ‘I have a meeting this afternoon, but I can spare a few minutes. Let’s go for a pint.’
Thirty minutes later they were sitting at a quiet corner table in the Wheatsheaf pub in central Oxford, just up the road from the police station. Talking quietly, Joel spilled out what he knew, what he feared, until there was nothing left to say and he was staring numbly into his beer. His head was still bursting with pain from where Finch had hit him.
Across the table, Sam Carter was quiet for a long time. He picked up his beer, was about to take a sip, then put the glass down again.
‘Vampires,’ he said in a flat tone.
‘This is exactly how I told you you’d react.’
‘Uh, vampires, Joel. The Undead. Human sacrifices.’
Joel shook his head. ‘It’s not a sacrifice. They do it to get the—’
‘The blood. Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’ve seen the movies.’
‘This is not a movie, Sam. This is real.’
‘This is real.’
‘Absolutely real. I saw them. And I’ve seen them before. Years ago.’
‘You’ve seen them before.’
‘You just going to keep repeating everything I say, or are you going to tell me what you think?’
Carter stared at him. ‘You’re completely fucking serious, aren’t you? Do you have any idea what you’re laying on me with this?’
‘You’ve known me a long time. When have I ever bullshitted you?’
‘Yeah, but this—’
‘Okay, you think it’s crazy.’
‘No, I wouldn’t use that word. Floridly insane, maybe — crazy doesn’t quite cover it.’
‘Thanks.’
Carter jabbed a finger at him. ‘Listen to me like you’ve never listened to anyone before. Do not — do not — breathe a single solitary word of this to anyone else. They won’t just put you on suspension. They’ll have you fucking committed, mate.’
‘You think all this doesn’t sound mad to me too?’
‘Be straight with me. Are you drinking? Doing drugs? Happens to the best of us.
Goes with this shitty job. Christ knows I have moments when I’d like to dive in a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and swim around in there the rest of my life, happy as a sandboy.
Except I don’t, Joel. I bounce back, every fucking time, because that’s what you do.’
‘I’m not drinking, and I don’t do drugs. You know that.’
‘Yeah, and I also know Tania walking out hit you a lot harder than you liked to let on.’
Joel sighed. ‘That was nearly seven months ago. I’m over it.’
‘Good. Then here’s my advice. Find yourself a nice young lady. Take a holiday together somewhere that has lots of sun and sand and cocktails. Shag your brains out for a week or two.’
‘I hate beaches,’ Joel said.
‘Right. I forgot you’re one of these nutjobs who gets his jollies hanging off a cliff face or diving into some icy lake in the middle of nowhere. Whatever. All I’m saying is, get out of here and forget about the Super, forget about everything. Most of all, do yourself a favour and forget about fucking vampires. Jesus Christ, Joel.’
Joel shook his head. ‘I can’t do that. I have to go on with it, my own way.’
‘I was afraid you’d say that.’ Carter sighed. ‘Fine. You’re my friend. If you need me, you know where to find me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shit. Got to run.’ He slurped back the last of his beer, got up and clapped Joel on the shoulder. ‘You take care, all right?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Get out of here. You’re going to be late.’ Joel watched Carter muscle his way out of the door, then finished his drink and went to get another. For a few minutes he sat drinking and gazing into the middle distance.
Maybe it was true. Maybe he’d just lost his mind.
With all his heart he yearned to be wrong, to have just concocted all this out of a stress-frazzled brain. More than anything, he wished that he could take advantage of his suspension to relax, take it easy and then wake up one morning and realise that these crazy ideas had simply evaporated from his mind.
But he knew that wasn’t going to happen. This wasn’t just going to go away.
Things could only get worse, and he was going to have to face it, alone. Completely alone.
Or maybe not.
Maybe I could have helped you.
As the words came back to him, he reached for his wallet and dug out the business card Alex Bishop had given him in the hospital.
What had she meant by that? There was only one way to find out. And he couldn’t pretend to himself that he didn’t want to see her again anyway. He dialled her number, but the answering service told him the phone was switched off. He swore.
‘I’ve got to do something,’ he muttered to himself.
Then he knew what that something was.
He left his drink unfinished on the table.
By four in the afternoon, he was hard on the throttle of the Hayabusa, battling against a ninety-mile-an-hour wind as he headed north away from the city to a place he hadn’t seen for eighteen years and had never wanted to see again.
Chapter Forty-Four
90 km from Norilsk, Central Siberian Plateau
6.45 p.m. GMT/1.45 a.m. local time
The journey wasn’t far from double the distance between London and Moscow, and Gabriel Stone had been dormant in his crate for most of the time that Jeremy Lonsdale’s borrowed Gulfstream had been cutting eastwards across Europe.
Many time zones had come and gone, and it was late night by the time the jet reached the small airfield a few kilometres from the remote mining outpost of Norilsk.
Stone emerged from the sanctuary of his container into a world utterly different from the one he’d left behind him. The temperature had dropped to minus fifteen centigrade.
One of only three cities worldwide residing in a continuous permafrost zone, Norilsk lay at the heart of the Russian province known as Krasnoyarsk Krai. More than two million square kilometres of sub-arctic tundra, mountains and lakes, it was one of the most inaccessible and inhospitable wildernesses on the planet. For the
