booksnew/build/incubus/OEBPS/incubus06.xhtml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta name="generator" content=
"HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 14 February 2006), see www.w3.org" />
<title>1</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type=
"application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href=
"page-template.xpgt" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="text">
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
<h2>6</h2>
<p>David pushed the door further, listened to the grinding protest
of a dry hinge, until the door was pushed back against the wall.
The hallway stretched out ahead of them, a depth of shadows.</p>
<p>"Hello?" David called out. His voice boomed hollowly in the
darkness. There was no reply. Somewhere in the dark, a small thing
moved or rustled. There had been a noise. He'd been almost sure.
For an instant he thought he heard a kitten whimper. There was a
scrape, like a chair being moved, but just then a car turned at the
far end of Latta Street, its diesel engine rumbling loud through a
hole in its manifold and momentarily drowned out all sound. The car
moved on and when it had gone, there was a silence in the hallway.
David called out again, louder this time. Now there was no sound at
all. The words echoed back from the narrow walls and he was not
sure that he had heard anything.</p>
<p>He pulled the flashlight from his pocket and swung the beam
ahead of him. "Looks like there's no-one home."</p>
<p>"That's no surprise. Nobody's reported her missing. Even though
it's only been a day, if she had family here I reckon somebody
would have called us."</p>
<p>He motioned ahead of him, put a foot over the doorstep and
slowly walked inside, following the cone of light. There was no
window in the hallway, just the walls, papered in an old fashioned
print. There was a small telephone table bearing a bunch of dried
flowers that looked as if they'd been there since the sixties.
There was no telephone.</p>
<p>"Why don't I just put on the light?" Helen asked. He turned to
face her, seeing only her silhouette against the faint glow of a
street lamp somewhere out there in the frosted night. "After all,
it's not an armed robber we're looking for."</p>
<p>"Go on then," he conceded. She fumbled for the switch, found the
brass plate at shoulder level close to the door, flicked it down.
Nothing happened.</p>
<p>"Maybe she never paid her bill," David said. He moved forward.
The hallway was dry and dusty and even in the dark it gave the
impression of being festooned with cobwebs layered with dust. Off
in the shadows, the darkness seemed to twist with motion. David
pulled back.</p>
<p>"What is it?"</p>
<p>"I thought something moved," he whispered. The dark had seemed
to roll forward, billowing towards him. He knew it was just
imagination, but it was a strange thing to have imagined. He
blinked and as he did so, sparks of colour flashed in front of his
eyes, like the kind of after images he got when the sunlight
reflected off the water on the estuary while he was taking pictures
of the wading birds. But here, he had not been looking into the
light.</p>
<p>He moved further down. Something rustled. Helen gave a
start.</p>
<p>"Police," David called out. "Don't be alarmed."</p>
<p>Nothing moved. He swung the beam up. There was a narrow door
slightly ajar, just a crack. The noise hadn't come from there.</p>
<p>"Maybe not," David answered his silent question. "There's nobody
here." For some reason he was tense and strained, suddenly, wound
up. It was an odd sensation of hyper-alertness. His heart gave a
thud and raised its beat to a higher speed. "Daft bugger," he told
himself. "Settle down."</p>
<p>Yet strangely, in the narrow confines of the hallway, right at
that moment, he sensed danger. It was a completely inexplicable
sensation, and a peculiar one, because it was not a physical
danger. For that brief instant, it was a shudder at the unknown, at
the oddly moving dark in the tiny, dilapidated house.</p>
<p>He got halfway down the hallway, taking each step slow, trying
to avoid making the floorboards creak. Then he walked into the
smell. It came thick in the air, musty and musky, powerful enough
to taste.</p>
<p>"Bloody hell," he coughed.</p>
<p>"God, that's awful," Helen said, gulping as if about to retch,
"What on earth is it? Smells like something's died in here."</p>
<p>For a moment, David considered calling in, to get a team round
to turn over the shabby little apartment. The smell of rot and
decay really was like the reek of a shallow grave, and both of them
had experienced that stench before. This, though, was somehow
different. David pulled a roll of tissues from his pocket, handed
half to Helen. She clamped it over her face and they moved on,
reached the door. He fully expected to find a mouldering corpse
lying in a greasy heap. David pushed the door open, his nerves
twisting with that strange anticipation, and they moved in.</p>
<p>This time the smell took them hard. David took a breath and his
vision blurred as if chemical had been squirted into his eyes.
Helen gave a little cough and then a soft groan that told him she
really was holding back on vomit.</p>
<p>He turned. "Keep quiet, for God's sake."</p>
<p>As soon as the words were out, he wondered why he had spoken
them. They had just blurted out, an angry slash at Helen. He turned
to face her, swinging the beam of the torch low. The shunt of anger
flared and the muscles of his belly clenched. His shoulders and
forearms tensed to trembling tautness as a surge of adrenaline hit
into his veins. In that instant he could have lashed out at
anything.</p>
<p>"What the fu..." he started. He didn't even know what he
intended to say, whether it was a question directed at Helen Lamont
or at himself. The muscles spasmed hard, as if a hand had clenched
his intestines and twisted. The flashlight beam swung and caught
Helen in its periphery. Her eyes were wide, not to compensate for
the dark, but with the same bewilderment that mirrored his own.</p>
<p>"Oh Jesus," she muttered, and sagged back out of the light. "Oh
my...." she started again and faltered once more.</p>
<p>Her own belly was suddenly roiling, but not in anger. She was
reeling within the scent that filled the dark of the room. Her eyes
blurred and swam with blurting tears. A wave of bleak longing
rippled through and within her. Right on its heels came an
appalling sense of empty loss and an utter, un-nameable need. A
flush of heat like a fever's bloom crawled under her skin, infusing
her temples, burning her ears. Her stomach spasmed and her breasts
instantly throbbed, nipples suddenly taut and tender against the
cup of her brassiere. Deep in the basin between her hips the
muscles cramped again and she felt the unmistakable draining
sensation down there.</p>
<p>The thick, sickly sweet smell, underscored by a rotting, rancid
scent, was clogging and cloy in the musty airlessness of the
room.</p>
<p>"Gas," David coughed. His throat was trying to clench in
involuntary twitches. The hairs on the back of his neck felt as if
they were marching in unison. The strange, unbidden rage flared to
a bubbling heat and he felt as if his head was beginning to
inflate. In the dark of the room, pictures flashed and flickered in
the front of his consciousness, and his body was pumped up ready
for fight or flight, every nerve sizzling in readiness. Powerful
anger, the need to hit out, lurched through him and he knew this
was not his own emotion, not a genuine feeling. He had to be
reacting to some chemical agent. His heart thumped a quick drumroll
and he could hear the pulse in his veins.</p>
<p>"Gas." He spat the word out again and without hesitation, he
reached for Helen. In that split second, he could easily have
grabbed her and slammed her against the dark wall. The violence
swelled huge within him. But as soon as his fingers snagged the
corduroy of her jerkin he dragged her towards him. He forced the
fury away from him, mentally punching it out of his head while his
thoughts were still reeling in the dark. It had to be
contamination, some sort of pollution. Rational thought was almost
impossible but he made it to the window, swept the thick curtain
back and got a hand to the catch. Helen came dragging along with
him gagging all the while. Pictures flickered in front of his eyes,
wavering images in splashes of flat and somehow poisonous colours.
Helen's knees were giving way and threatened to spill her to the
floor but he gripped her collar tight, lifting her almost off the
ground. She was blinded by the tears and the bleak sense of
abandonment that emptied her heart.</p>
<p>"I can't," she started to say in a voice that was hardly more
than a whimper.</p>
<p>He opened the window, flinging it wide with one push of his arm
and he pushed her in front of him, right into the cold air. The
breeze from the open door at the other end of the room swept
through in a cold draught that made the ragged curtain billow
outwards. Immediately the smell began to dissipate rapidly. He
scooped in a lungful of air. Little sparks orbited and wheeled in
his vision and the breath was cold and frosted, sharp in his
throat. Helen gagged and sagged again. He could feel her reflex
vomit choking, felt her sides heaving. A back tide of rage surged
up inside him, faded just as quickly and was then swamped by a
secondary wave of dreadful guilt coupled with the explosive
decompression of relief. He could have hit her. He could have
slammed her up against a wall. <em>He could have done something
much worse than that</em>. For a moment, for a dreadful dizzying
few seconds, he had been pure and savage animal. He could have
ripped her coat off, ripped her clothes off and thrown her down on
the ground and spread her wide to slam himself into her again and
again.</p>
<p>"What the fuck's going on?" he rasped.</p>
<p>"Oh David," Helen blurted. "I'm really sick." She heaved in a
huge breath. The wind whistling round the chimneys and rustling in
the dead ivy that crept over the little brick porch came blasting
in the door and blew the stench away. A cat swaggering tail-high by
the scrubby hedge caught the scent and suddenly screeched. Its fur
stood on end, like a caricature of a startled tomcat. Its back
arched and then it snapped into motion. One instant it was a
shuddering ball of fur and the next it was a streak of black. It
crossed the concrete patch in a second and hit the crumbling wall
with such force that it bounced back in a complete somersault.
Without a pause, and with no cessation of its caterwauling, it ran
at the barrier again, went straight up like a rocket, its momentum
taking it two feet higher than the top of the wall, then down the
other side. It went screaming away out of sight.</p>
<p>The pinwheeling lights faded out and the adrenaline surge
emptied out of his blood, leaving him trembling and weak. Helen
started to raise herself up, breathing hard, but not sick now. He
swung the beam round. A small table light with a dark shade was
close by on an old fashioned chest of drawers. He reached and tried
it, surprised when it came on, letting a feeble light swell in the
small room.</p>
<p>"God, I thought I was going to be sick," Helen said. The bleak
and empty sense of loss had vanished, drained away. It was as if it
had never been. With the window open, the smell had faded to barely
a background scent. "What the hell was it?"</p>
<p>"I thought it was gas, but it's not. Maybe come chemical.
Cleaning fluid or something?"</p>
<p>"Did it make you sick?"</p>
<p>"I nearly puked all over you," he lied. He couldn't tell her
how, in that split second he could have clubbed her to the ground.
He could hardly believe it himself. The image of her lying naked,
legs splayed, hovered on the edge of conscious thought and he tried
to close his mind to that, for once planted, the thought had
triggered an excitement he did not want to feel at all. The anger,
however, had burst like a balloon, leaving him deflated and even
the recollection of it was difficult to conjure up again. He
flicked the flashlight off and they stood there, embarrassed by his
reaction and shaken by the strange, surreal experience.</p>
<p>The room was small and narrow. There was an old bed at one end
and a door halfway along the wall that led into a small kitchen.
There were two seats, both unmatched, overstuffed armchairs. In the
corner a mound of children's soft toys were piled in a pyramid,
teddy bears and furry animals. There were teething rings and
rattles. Beside the bed a white plastic baby bath sat in a frame
and a selection of oils and lotions were lined up surprisingly
neatly.</p>
<p>A Moses basket that might have been made before the war, stood
over in the corner, but it was piled with folded sheets in laundry
bags. The bed, low and narrow was covered by a pile of blankets
that were tumbled and twisted into a circular shape, as if whoever
had slept there had eased out so as not to disturb them. To David,
it reminded him of a vole's nest down by the riverbank.</p>
<p>"She said she had a baby," David said.</p>
<p>"Who would let a somebody bring a baby back here?" Helen
sniffed, got an aftertaste of the strange rancid scent on the still
air and the strange sense of longing throbbed subliminally, just a
tickle at the back of her consciousness. She squashed it flat for
she recognised the sudden and completely unbidden sensation of need
within herself. It had taken her by surprise, a sensation she had
never experienced before. She did not welcome it now. Nor did she
welcome the other need she'd felt when he'd grabbed her and hauled
her, flopping and helpless towards the window. As soon as she'd
breathed the fresh air and the nausea had subsided, she had been
suddenly aware of the grip of his hand on her neck. His touch had
tingled through her skin in a sudden sizzle of sensation that had
flared in a burst of heat and another kind of longing that had
flowed over and through the other.</p>
<p>"A baby," David repeated, and she shook her head emphatically,
telling herself not to be such a bloody idiot. His hand was
reaching towards the mantelpiece. For a sizzling instant, she
wanted to feel it on her again. She drew her eyes away, looked up
at him."</p>
<p>"That was what the paramedics said," David continued, "and the
assistant from Rolling Stock. She told me the dead woman had a baby
with her and nobody believed it." He was trying to recall exactly
what he'd been told. "Phil Coulter said she had tried to get away
from them because she had to get to her baby. He thought she was
delirious."</p>
<p>"I thought she was alone," Helen said. "And nobody came to
report her missing, did they?"</p>
<p>He shook his head, eyes narrowed, thinking. "She told them to
find it. But it wasn't on the video."</p>
<p>He scratched his head, taking in the rest of the room. "But we
didn't look at them all." He tried to think back to what he had
seen, Jenny McGill pounding the chest. The expert lift onto the
paramedic's trolley. The woman reaching to snatch the Mothercare
bag. Then he recalled Carrie McFall bending quickly to pick up the
handbag beside the line of trolleys. Something was itching in his
memory, but not yet hard enough.</p>
<p>"There's been a baby here," he said, letting his eyes wander
around the cramped little room. It was not damp, but musty and
unclean. The odd smell that he'd taken for contamination had blown
away now, leaving only the flat and stale odour of dirt and sweat
and lack of hygiene.</p>
<p>The nest of blankets looked as if they'd be crawling with lice.
A strip of wallpaper had peeled away from the wall at the ceiling
and in other places there were signs of dusty mould. "She's been
looking after a baby here," David said. "So she's got relatives, or
she's a child minder."</p>
<p>"If he was a child minder, then whoever gave her a licence
should be shot," Helen said. "It would be a crime to let a child in
here."</p>
<hr />
<p>"We were concerned at first," Simpson Hardingwell said. "But
then, when you get a case as unusual as this, it's always best to
take a step back and be systematic."</p>
<p>Hardingwell was the consultant microbiologist at St Enoch's. He
was tall and gaunt and had an enormous axehead of a nose which made
him look pompous and aristocratic, but he was pretty
straightforward as far as David could make out, and not at all
patronising.</p>
<p>"There are still one or two things that puzzle us greatly.
Professor Hartley, he's the pathologist as you'll know, called me
in almost immediately and we both made a further examination of the
woman."</p>
<p>"This was after the post mortem?"</p>
<p>"No, this <em>was</em> the post mortem. Young Quayle at casualty
got Gordon Hartley in right away. The paramedics had told him she'd
revived <em>en route</em> and then, on arrival, she had shown some
signs of life in the crash unit though there was no heartbeat and
no sign of brain activity whatsoever. Occasionally you observe
reflexes for some time after death, but Quayle said she had spasmed
quite violently and had been foaming at the mouth, gushing saliva.
His first thought was rabies, because these symptoms are quite
characteristic of the virus, though we haven't had a case here in
years."</p>
<p>He leaned back and run his fingers through thick white hair.
"When Hartley looked at her down in the mortuary, there were still
slight tremors in the muscles, though the spasming had stopped. He
was concerned about her physical condition. In many respects she
was emaciated. An elderly woman who seemed to be half-starved. Her
body fat was almost non-existent and her skin colour indicated she
was anaemic. She appeared to be in her sixties, early sixties I
would have said. Now that gave Hartley a problem and he'd already
asked me in for an assessment of bacteriological or viral risk. To
tell you the truth, I've never actually seen a case of rabies, in
the flesh, so to speak and I was quite interested, though I was
sure this would be something else.</p>
<p>"Anyway, to get back to the initial picture, she was in her
sixties, but there were anomalies."</p>
<p>"That's what my boss said."</p>
<p>"Quite. The first difference was in the condition of her
breasts. Quite a contrast with the rest of her appearance really.
They were neither flaccid or lumped with cellulite or fatty
deposits as you might expect in someone of her age. They were
swollen, very full indeed. That could have indicated a number of
pathological causes. Beriberi for instance, but that's hardly
common here. Hartley thought there was an inflammation, perhaps
caused by a blood disorder. There were marks around the nipples,
and the aureole area, abrasions and bruising, some of them quite
severe. Much of the tissue was swollen and it was clear that blood
had seeped from the abrasions. My first reaction was Kaposi's
sarcoma, which is one symptom of the final stages of HIV."</p>
<p>"You mean she had aids?"</p>
<p>"No. The haematoma were different in shape and colour for a
start, and later tests showed she was not HIV positive."</p>
<p>He leaned forward again and put both hands on a pristine blotter
pad. "That was just the initial observation you understand. Once
Gordon went in, we found things were very odd indeed. I took swabs
of all the mucous tissue, blood samples and both muscle and
integument. I waited until Hartley was further in before I got the
fluids from stomach and bowel and nothing at all from the brain
until close to the end.</p>
<p>"What we have is a puzzle. From the pathology point of view,
Gordon's as baffled as I am. Contrary to expectation, the breasts
were fully functional and still lactating. In fact there was still
a slight leakage of milk and that's extremely rare in a woman that
age, almost unheard of. There have been two cases recorded and
third in a woman in her sixties on hormone replacement therapy. Not
full lactation, you understand, but merely a slight resurgence of
glandular activity.</p>
<p>"Our woman, what's her name? Quigley? Her mammary glands were
fully functional. Comparable to a woman in her twenties within two
weeks of birth. The bruises, it transpired, were not the haematoma
common to bruising from a blow, but suck-punctures. The Americans
would call them hickeys. You would say love bites. They had been
worked with some force, enough to rupture minor capillaries and
draw blood through the pores. There were odd abrasions too, shallow
scrape marks with lined striations which were deep enough to break
into deeper capillary vessels."</p>
<p>"And what would that mean?" David asked. So far he was just
curious, and he was aware that Hardingwell was indulging him. The
consultant seemed to be enjoying it too.</p>
<p>"Something had sucked on her. Adult or child, it's hard to say.
I'm not in forensics."</p>
<p>"And there was more?"</p>
<p>"Oh yes. Her ovaries were still fully functioning, though
greatly enlarged, which might explain the superfluity of
progesterone in her blood. She had unusual abrasions on the vaginal
wall and, another surprise, she was still menstruating, which might
account for the anaemia. Hartley ascertained that she'd suffered a
massive rupture of the left ventricle."</p>
<p>David had watched enough hospital scenes on television to get
the picture. "A heart attack?"</p>
<p>"Catastrophic. The wall had ruptured almost completely. It was
paper thin and must have been giving her pain for some time. It was
a wonder she was able to walk. Further examination showed embolisms
in a number of blood vessels in the brain, bubbles in the walls
which could have burst at any time. It was a race between a cardiac
arrest or a stroke. It was clear that she had high blood pressure,
despite the anaemia, but the damage to the heart wall was quite
significant. It was as if the muscle had been leeched away, causing
severe reduction in tissue mass and strength. It was a third of its
normal weight.</p>
<p>"My tissue samples were equally perplexing. That's why I called
Mr Bulloch. Blood showed severe depletion of red cells and a
corresponding increase in white. Pre-leukaemic I would normally
say, but that's academic of course. She had raised levels of
progesterone, well above normal levels one would expect even in a
woman of pre-menopausal age. And then there were the
antibodies."</p>
<p>"She had an infectious disease?"</p>
<p>"Not quite. Antibodies are the body's defence against disease.
They are triggered by contact with viruses or bacteria, any
invasion at all. Current theory is that we have dormant antibodies
for every disease that has ever existed, a sort of biological
overkill. The scanning electron microscope also showed a rather
large compound of proteins and amino acids, long polypeptide
chains, like new genetic material. It is unlike anything I've ever
seen, and my colleagues are equally baffled. All I can surmise that
the antibodies are a reaction to some infection, possibly to those
complex molecules though it will take some time to isolate what the
vector is. If it's viral, it could take months. I don't believe
it's serious, but I would prefer to take no chances. I have to
consider the possibility of a mutation, which happens from time to
time, in the formation of an antibody, or even a new strain of
virus, neither of which might be serious. But we would prefer to be
sure. That's our job."</p>
<p>"So you do think she's had some sort of disease?"</p>
<p>"Oh she had disease all right. Heart disease, embolisms,
distension of the ovaries, over-production of hormones. She was a
sick woman. I'm trying to find out if she had a disease she could
pass on to anyone else and I also want to find out whether the bug
she may be carrying is what caused the other conditions. As I say,
it could be a new strain. I'd like to find out if our Thelma
Quigley had been abroad recently, or if she's been in close contact
with someone who has come from the tropics."</p>
<p>Hardingwell looked across at David and gave a twist of a smile.
"At least we know it's not rabies, and that's a blessing. But we
want to find the source of this new cellular material if we can. It
could be a mutation, which is unlikely, but it could be something
as simple as a parasitic infection, one that is new to us. Apart
from the other questions, it's fairly miraculous that the woman was
walking and talking instead of being hospitalised weeks ago."</p>
<p>"What about the paramedics? They said she was dead, but she came
back to life. Could that be something to do with it?"</p>
<p>"More to do with the heat of the moment. Despite what they tell
you, medicine isn't an exact science. It's most likely that her
pulse had dropped to an extremely low level because of the rupture,
but there was still some brain activity. The heart might still have
been operating on the other side, which wouldn't have made a great
deal of difference, but there is a remote possibility she could
still have been alive then and in crash. The signs would be very
easy to miss."</p>
<p>David drew out his notebook and flipped over the pages. He found
the notes he had made and read them quickly. "The witnesses said
that she spoke about a baby. In her home, we also found evidence
that there might have been a baby at some time. Is it possible she
did have one?"</p>
<p>"She could have looked after one," Hardingwell conceded.</p>
<p>"But the milk thing, and the ovaries. Is it possible that she
had actually given birth?"</p>
<p>Hardingwell laughed, not unkindly, but in real mirth. "If she
had, somebody would be rushing to get a paper out on it even as we
speak. I'd even be tempted to write to the <em>Lancet</em> myself.
But no. She could not have given birth."</p>
<p>"She was too old?"</p>
<p>"Oh, there was that, although those damned Italians are pushing
back the age frontiers faster than you would imagine. It won't be
too long before a woman of that age will actually give birth. She'd
have to be healthier though."</p>
<p>"Maybe looking after a grandchild?"</p>
<p>"Not that either, I'm afraid. She could never have given birth
at all."</p>
<p>"Why?"</p>
<p>"Because she was a virgin. Hartley found her still intact." The
consultant smiled. "She really was an old maid."</p>
<hr />
<p>The search of the flat had not taken long. The drawers of the
dresser had been filled with baby clothes, all of them laid out and
folded neatly and most of them showing no signs of wear at all.
There were tiny cardigans, larger pullovers, as if someone had been
buying for a baby's growth. In the kitchen, there were sterilisers
and plastic bottles, unopened tins of baby food and rusk teething
biscuits on which the cellophane wrapping was still shiny and
tight.</p>
<p>"None of this has been used," Helen said. "Not the bottles and
the clothes. They're all brand new, but some of them are
<em>old.</em>"</p>
<p>"Don't baffle me with logic," David told her. "I didn't
understand a word of that."</p>
<p>"They're new in the sense that they have never been used, but
they are old in the sense that some of them came out of the ark.
Look at that romper suit. That went out with button boots. I used
to wear something like that."</p>
<p>"Not yesterday then?"</p>
<p>"Very funny. No, not yesterday. It looks as if she's just been
collecting baby gear and storing it away."</p>
<p>"A weirdo?"</p>
<p>Helen looked over at him. She was crouched down, careful not to
kneel on the threadbare carpet. In her hands she held a jumper in
knitted pink, with two tiny ribbons as ties.</p>
<p>"Depends on your point of view. Maybe she just <em>wanted</em> a
baby. Like an obsessive. Some women can't have them and it drives
them over the edge, according to the psychology course. They can
even fantasise that they actually have a child. Sometimes it gets
worse than that and they steal one."</p>
<p>She got up from the floor and held up the small garment. "I
think she was a very disturbed old lady. None of this stuff
matches, either in fashion or sex." She half smiled, thinking of
how disturbed she herself had been only half an hour before. David
was rubbing his jaw with his free hand, making the hairs on his
chin rasp. The sound, completely masculine, tingled on her nerves.
She ignored it.</p>
<p>"I wouldn't know," David told her, and she laughed out loud,
hoping it wouldn't sound forced.</p>
<p>"Of course you wouldn't. No offence, but you're a man and I've
never yet met a man who knew that only baby girls wear pink. Some
of these are blue and the rest are pink. It's as if she didn't have
a clue what she was buying. Some is for a child more than a year
old and others are for new-borns."</p>
<p>"You know a lot about it," David observed.</p>
<p>"I'm the youngest of a big family. You know my sisters breed
like rabbits."</p>
<p>"And you?"</p>
<p>The image came back to him, the mental picture of her lying
spread. <em>Breeding like rabbits.</em></p>
<p>"Give me a break. I buy the kids sweets and Christmas presents
and that's where my maternal instincts end. I think there's
something wrong with my hormones." She gave him a lop-sided grin
and tried to shuck away the strange reverberation of the twin aches
that had rippled deep within her. The first powerful compulsion had
drained away almost as quickly as it had swamped her but the memory
still hovered scarily close. The second remained with her,
strangely strong.</p>
<p>David returned the smile, but he too was trying to focus his
mind on the maternal drive. June had been pushing him and he knew
wanted to get engaged. She needed to settle down, start a family.
He wasn't ready for that, he knew. He'd resisted moving in with her
and he was coming to realise that his reluctance was nothing to do
with settling down and having kids. It was to do with him and it
was to do with her. He'd have to do something about that. He looked
at Helen Lamont and wished he'd never brought her here. He could do
without any complications.</p>
<p>The wardrobe at the far end of the small room had more bags of
baby clothes and an old fashioned hatbox that was filled with
newspaper clippings and some tattered exercise books. At the
bottom, there were two old diaries filled with neatly looped
handwriting that at first sight looked similar to the woman's name
on the rent book. He took them with him when they left the house
and went back to the station. David dropped Helen off on South
Street, only half a mile from his own place and then drove
home.</p>
<p>Of the three messages on his answering machine, two were from
June, the second more irate than the first, demanding to know where
he was and telling him he had spoiled her evening. She asked him to
call immediately . The second was from John Barclay at the
Waterside Mall.</p>
<p>"I've had a look at some of the early tapes," John said.
"There's something you maybe want to have a look at."</p>
<p>David called back, but there was no reply and he made a mental
note to call the ex-policeman the following day. He made himself a
cup of strong, sweet coffee which went a long way to taking the
winter chill from his bones. While he sipped he opened up the box
and began to sift through the old cuttings and pieces of paper. He
hefted one of the diaries, opened it and began to read.</p>
<p>He never returned June's call that night.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>