Lockdown

between Lock and the picture. ‘That’s him all right.’

With everyone’s curiosity satisfied, Lock got out on the fourth floor, thankful that he hadn’t been asked to sign any autographs or pose for a picture. Janice’s room was easy enough to spot. It was the one with a cop standing outside, sipping from a Styrofoam cup.

Once Lock had run through the rigmarole with the newspaper again, and the uniform had spoken to someone at her precinct, who’d then had to speak to someone at Federal Plaza, he was allowed through the door.

The blinds were closed but Janice was awake, her face turned away from the door. The room was full of flowers and cards. A few bereavement cards were scattered among those wishing her a speedy recovery. Hallmark’s market research clearly hadn’t yet unearthed the ‘Glad You Survived and Good Luck with the Terminal Illness’ niche of the greetings card market.

Lock laid the flowers at the bottom of the bed and pulled up a chair. They sat in silence for a moment.

‘How are you feeling?’ Lock asked at last.

‘Terrible. How about you?’ The question was delivered with the hint of a smile.

‘I feel. .’ Lock trailed off, uneasily. ‘I’m good.’

She reached her hand across to his. ‘Thank you.’

The simple humanity of the gesture threw him a little. Because he worked for Nicholas Van Straten, Janice and her father had been the enemy for months.

‘I’m glad you made it,’ he said softly.

She glanced down. ‘For now.’

‘You don’t know that. There could be a breakthrough, some new drug or treatment for your condition.’

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. Even if there was, there was more chance of a Jehovah’s Witness agreeing to a blood transfusion than of Janice taking something that would, in all likelihood, have been tested on animals first.

To her credit, she let it slide. Instead she studied Lock’s face long enough to make him shift uncomfortably in his seat, before asking, ‘Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?’

For a second, he thought of telling her about the six months he’d spent in Sierra Leone, where Charles Taylor and the Revolutionary United Front had embarked on a systematic campaign of amputating the limbs of the civilian population, including babies. At least killing animals to eat them served some purpose, he thought now. Much of what Lock had witnessed over the years was borne out of a darker human impulse.

He sighed, rubbed the back of his head, finding stitches. ‘I’ve seen a lot of death.’

‘Death’s inevitable, though, isn’t it?’ Janice said, her voice rising. ‘I’m talking about murder. The animals know they’re about to be killed. When they’re in the trucks, they know. You can see it in their eyes, hear it in the noise they make.’

Lock leaned forward and touched her arm. ‘Janice, I need to ask you a few questions. You don’t have to answer them but I need to ask them all the same.’

‘Gandhi said that you can judge the morality of a nation by how it treats its animals,’ Janice continued, undeterred.

She was rambling now, her mind on a loop, or so it seemed to Lock. She grasped the bars of the bed frame and pulled herself up into a sitting position. He tried to help her but she waved him away.

‘Janice, this is important. I don’t think whoever killed your father did it by accident. What I mean is, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I can’t help feeling that this wasn’t someone trying to assassinate Nicholas Van Straten and getting it wrong. This was someone trying to kill your father and getting it right.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Janice asked, suddenly focused. ‘We’d already had threats from your side.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Phone calls, letters, saying that if we didn’t stop the protesting we’d be killed.’

‘You tell anyone about this?’

‘And who were we going to tell? The FBI? They were probably the ones doing it.’

‘Come on.’

‘My mom and dad were saving animals twenty years before a bunch of anorexic bimbos took their clothes off for a photo shoot because it was fashionable. I grew up with our phone being tapped and our mail opened. There wasn’t one Christmas went by that I didn’t know what my grandma had gotten me because those assholes opened everything. What’s changed? Apart from the fact that nowadays there’s a hell of a lot more money at stake. For all I know,you could have been the one making those phone calls.’

‘OK, you got me. Must have been the suppressed guilt that got me to risk my ass pulling you out of there,’ Lock fired back, angry now.

Grandma’s presents, gimme a break. Talk about brainwashing. Ma and Pa Stokes had done such a nice job that their only daughter was prepared to die a martyr for the cause, rather than compromise her principles and live, while they’d been only too happy to stand by and watch. And for what? To prove their moral superiority over the rest of us.

‘Thanks for the flowers, but maybe you should go now,’ Janice said, turning away from him.

Lock stood. He took a couple of breaths. ‘OK, I’ll go. But I’ve got one last thing I need to ask you.’

‘Fine, but make it quick, I’m getting tired.’

‘Your father said something to Van Straten when they were outside. Something about him getting his message.’

Janice looked blank. ‘I already told you,we didn’t make threats.’

‘I’m not suggesting it was a threat. But if there’d been some kind of back channel discussions going on-’

‘With Meditech? No way.’

‘So what was the message?’

Janice’s voice shook with emotion. ‘I don’t know. And now I never will. My parents are dead, remember?’

Lock got to his feet, his irritation replaced by remorse. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. .’

But her eyes had already closed, and by the time he reached the door she had fallen fast asleep. The uniformed officer checked on her before allowing Lock to leave. She looked up at Lock as she performed a cursory pat-down, although what he would have wanted to remove from Janice’s hospital room was a mystery.

‘Must feel pretty good,’ she said.

‘What must?’

The rookie smiled up at him. ‘Saving someone’s life like that.’

Lock shrugged his shoulders. He hadn’t saved Janice’s life, merely postponed her death. He turned his back on the cop and walked back to the elevator.

Eleven

Brennans Tavern was about as authentically Irish as a bowl of Lucky Charms, but it was dark, which suited Lock fine. Even with the painkillers he’d picked up from the hospital pharmacy taking the edge off his headache, bright light was still making him wince.

Getting out of hospital had proved almost more time consuming than leaving the military, with about as many hours of form filling involved. Dr Robbins had warned him that in his present condition he was a danger not only to himself but also others. He’d declined to tell her that his commanding officer had said the same thing.

Eyes adjusting slowly to the gloom, he took a sip of beer. The label on the painkillers no doubt contained a warning about not taking them with alcohol but his vision was still a little blurred, and who could read that kind of small print in this light anyway?

The door swung open, and in strode Carrie. Seeing her, Lock felt suddenly buoyant. And even more light- headed. Without stopping to look around she made a beeline for him, throwing down her jacket and bag on the table, all business, like they’d never broken up.

‘Tough day?’ Lock asked her.

‘About average.’

‘How’d you pick me out so quick?’