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Copyright © 2013 Will Hill
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN: 978-1-101-60425-0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
MEMORANDUM
PROLOGUE
FIFTY-TWO DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR
THE NEXT GENERATION
LAZARUS REVAMPED
SLOW NEWS DAY
THE DESERT SHOULD BE NO PLACE FOR A VAMPIRE
EVERYTHING HEALS, IN TIME
CIVILIZED MEN
SINK OR SWIM
THE LOST HARKER
THE SHOCK OF THE NEW
IN CONVERSATION
TIME TO GO HOME
READY TO ROLL
SOCIAL NETWORKING
GIRLS VS. BOYS
FIFTY-ONE DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR
ONE OF OUR OWN
CLASSIFIED MEANS CLASSIFIED
OLD SCORES
THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY
THE WAR ON DRUGS, PART ONE
THE SLEEP OF THE JUST
THE WAR ON DRUGS, PART TWO
ON THE TRAIL OF THE DEAD
TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES
THE WAR ON DRUGS, PART THREE
FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
TOO CLOSE TO HOME
DORMANT FOR TOO LONG
WHERE IT HURTS
DROWNING OUT
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
FROM ANCIENT GRUDGE BREAK TO NEW MUTINY
FIFTY DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR
CLOSING THE NET
PLAYING WITH FIRE
THE SUM OF OUR PARTS
GOING UNDERGROUND
SIN CITY
BY A THREAD
CONNECTING THE DOTS
PRIME SUSPECT
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
UNDERCURRENTS
FATHERS4TRUTH
FORTY-NINE DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR
THE DARK HORIZON
THREE MUSKETEERS
FINAL EDITION
IT NEVER RAINS . . .
TIME WAITS FOR NO MAN
BEHIND THE CURTAIN
PIECES OF THE PUZZLE
DEADLINE
. . . IT POURS
HEADLONG
LEAVING ON A JET PLANE
GUILTY PARTIES
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
WE TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN
HOT OFF THE PRESS
AFTER THE HORSE HAS BOLTED
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN LOST
HOMECOMING
TWO DAYS LATER
POSTMORTEM
EPILOGUE: THREE FAREWELLS
EPILOGUE: TWO PRISONERS
For Sarah,
who knew what writers were like but managed to look past it
The earth had a single light afar,
A flickering, human pathetic light,
That was maintained against the night,
It seemed to me, by the people there,
With a Godforsaken brute despair.
Robert Frost
We seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways; into a whole world of dark and dreadful things.
Jonathan Harker
MEMORANDUM
From: Office of the Director of the Joint Intelligence Committee
Subject: Revised classifications of the British governmental departments
Security: TOP SECRET
DEPARTMENT 1
Office of the Prime Minister
DEPARTMENT 2
Cabinet Office
DEPARTMENT 3
Home Office
DEPARTMENT 4
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
DEPARTMENT 5
Ministry of Defense
DEPARTMENT 6
British Army
DEPARTMENT 7
Royal Navy
DEPARTMENT 8
Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service
DEPARTMENT 9
Her Majesty’s Treasury
DEPARTMENT 10
Department for Transport
DEPARTMENT 11
Attorney General’s Office
DEPARTMENT 12
Ministry of Justice
DEPARTMENT 13
Military Intelligence, Section 5 (MI5)
DEPARTMENT 14
Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
DEPARTMENT 15
Royal Air Force
DEPARTMENT 16
Northern Ireland Office
DEPARTMENT 17
Scotland Office
DEPARTMENT 18
Wales Office
DEPARTMENT 19
CLASSIFIED
DEPARTMENT 20
Territorial Police Forces
DEPARTMENT 21
DEPARTMENT of Health
DEPARTMENT 22
Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ)
DEPARTMENT 23
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)
PROLOGUE
Crowthorne, Berkshire
In the village of Crowthorne is an alarm.
A direct copy of a World War II air-raid siren, it is bright red and sits atop a pole six feet above the ground.
The alarm is connected by an underground network of wires to Broadmoor Hospital, the sprawling estate of red brick buildings that sits above the village and is home to almost three hundred of the United Kingdom’s most dangerous, damaged citizens.
It is designed to alert anyone within a twenty-five-mile radius to an escape from the hospital, and has been sounded only five times in earnest in more than fifty years.
* * *
Ben Dawson had been asleep for about forty-five minutes when the siren burst into life. He jerked up from a dream about sleep, the kind of long, deep, uninterrupted sleep that had been impossible in the six weeks since Isla
was born, and felt his wife raise her head slowly from her pillow.
“The baby okay?” she slurred.
“It’s not Isla,” he replied. “It’s the siren.”
“Siren?”
“The bloody Broadmoor siren,” he snapped. It was deafening, a two-tone scream that made his chest tighten with anger.
“What time is it?” asked Maggie, forcing her eyes open and looking at him.
Ben flicked on his bedside lamp, wincing as the light hit his eyes, and checked the clock.
“Quarter to four,” he groaned.
Not fair, he thought. It’s just not fair.
Then he heard a second sound, in between the peals of the alarm: a high, determined crying from the room above theirs. Ben swore and swung his legs out from under the duvet.
“Stay there,” said Maggie, pushing herself to the edge of the bed. “It’s my turn.”
Ben slid his feet into his trainers and pulled a sweatshirt over his head. “You see to Isla. I’m going outside, see if anyone else is awake.”
“Okay,” said Maggie, stumbling through the bedroom door. She was barely awake, moving with the robotic lurch of new parents everywhere. Ben heard her footsteps on the stairs, heard her begin to gently shush their daughter.
Ben felt no fear at the sound of the siren. He had been up to the hospital several times, had seen the electric fences and the gateposts and the sturdy buildings themselves, and was not the slightest bit concerned about the possibility of a breakout. There had been several over the years; the escape in 1952 of John Straffen, who had climbed over the wall while on cleaning duties in the yard and murdered a young girl from Farley Hill, was the reason the siren system had been built. But the last time anyone had made it out had been almost twenty years ago, and security had been increased and expanded since then. Instead, as he stomped down the stairs toward the front door, knowing the baby was already awake so it didn’t matter, what Ben was mainly feeling was frustration.
The last six weeks had been nothing like the parenting books had suggested or like their friends had described. He had expected to be tired, expected to be grumpy and stressed, but nothing had prepared him for how he actually felt.
He was utterly, physically, exhausted.
Isla was beautiful, and he felt things he had never felt before when he looked at her; that part was exactly as advertised, he had been glad to realize. But she cried, loudly and endlessly. He and Maggie took it in turns to go and check on her, to warm bottles or burp her or just rock her in their arms. Eventually, her eyes would flutter closed, and they would place her back in her cot and creep back to their own bed. If they were lucky, they might get two hours of uninterrupted sleep before the crying began again.
Ben shoved open the front door. The night air was warm and still, and the siren was much louder outside. He walked out onto the narrow cobbled street and saw lights on in the majority of his neighbors’ homes. As he lit a cigarette from the pack he kept for emergencies, such as being woken up for the third time before four o’clock, doors began to open and pale figures in pajamas and dressing gowns began to appear.
“What on earth is going on?” demanded one of the figures, a large, broad man with a huge bald dome of a head that gleamed in the light. “Why doesn’t someone turn it off?”
Charlie Walsh lived next door to Ben and Maggie. Ben glanced at him as he made his way over, then returned his gaze to the hill above the village. The hulking shape of the hospital was visible as a distant black outline in the center of a faint yellow glow.
“I don’t think you can,” Ben replied. “I’m pretty sure you can only turn it off at the hospital.”
“Then maybe someone should go up there and see what’s happening?”
“Maybe someone should,” replied Ben.
“All right then,” said Charlie. “I’ll come with you.”
Ben stared at his neighbor. He wanted nothing more than to go back upstairs, wrap his pillow around his head, and wait for the terrible ringing to stop. But that was now no longer an option.
“Fine,” he snapped, and strode back into his house to grab the car keys from the table in the hall.
A minute later the two men were speeding out of what passed for central Crowthorne in Ben’s silver Range Rover, heading up the hill toward the hospital.
* * *
Behind the desk in Crowthorne’s tiny police station, Andy Myers was trying to hear the voice on the other end of the phone over the deafening howl of the siren.
Crowthorne’s police station was rated tier one by the Thames Valley Police, which meant that its front desk was staffed entirely by volunteers. There were twelve of them, mostly retirees, who took turns fielding the small number of inquiries from local residents—everything from minor incidents of graffiti and vandalism to requests for advice on traffic accidents. The station was not manned overnight, but one of the volunteers was always on call. Tonight, Andy Myers had drawn the short straw.
He had dragged himself from the warmth of his bed when the siren burst into life, grumbling, stretching, and feeling every single one of his sixty-eight years. The space in the bed beside him was cold and empty; his wife, Glenda, had occupied it for more than thirty years before cancer had claimed her the previous summer. Since then Andy, who had spent his working years in the brokerage houses of the City of London, had been looking for ways to fill the hole in his life that she had left behind. Volunteering at the police station was just one of them; he was also on the board of the local Rotary Club, an active member of the Village Green Association, and secretary of Crowthorne Cricket Club.
He dressed quickly and made the five-minute walk to the station. He did not hurry; he was no more concerned about the possibility of an escape than Ben Dawson was. But there were protocols to be followed in the event of the siren sounding, and Andy Myers was a great believer in protocol.
The police station was little more than a converted house, sitting at the end of a terrace. Andy walked into the car park, wincing at the bellowing noise from the siren that stood behind the building, unlocked the station door, and went inside. He flopped down into the worn leather chair behind the desk, reached for the phone, and dialed a number.
The official response to a suspected escape from Broadmoor was twofold: It required all local schools to keep children inside and under direct supervision of staff until parents could arrive to take them home, and it called for the establishment of a ring of roadblocks at a ten-mile radius from the hospital. Crowthorne Station had a single police car, an aging Ford Focus that was sitting outside, so Andy’s only duty was to call the Major Incident Response Team in Reading and request instructions.
“Say again, sir?” he shouted, over the din of the siren. “You want me to do what?”
“Drive up there,” yelled the voice on the other end of the phone. “Go and see what the hell is going on. We’re sending units out to set up the roadblocks, but we can call them back if this is a false alarm.”
“What are they saying up on the hill?” shouted Andy.
“No answer,” replied the officer. “We think their system’s crashed, or gone daft, or something. Get up there, talk to the duty nurse, then radio in and tell us what’s happening. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Andy Myers shouted, and hung up the phone.
He swore heartily, the way that had always made Glenda widen her eyes at him in warning, and grabbed the Ford’s keys from the hook above the desk. He locked up the station, climbed into the car, and pulled out of the car park. As he reached the edge of Crowthorne, he flicked on the lights and the siren, even though it would be impossible to hear over the blare of the alarms. Then he pressed down on the accelerator and pointed the little Ford along the same road that Ben Dawson’s Range Rover had taken less than five minutes earlier.
* * *
Charlie Walsh fiddled with the radio as Ben drove, fli
cking from one station to the next until Ben gave him a sharp sideways look and he turned it off. They drove on in silence, climbing the wide, gradual hill that dominated the countryside for miles around, until the Range Rover sped smoothly around the final bend and Broadmoor lay before them.
It had been opened in 1863 as Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, terminology long since considered offensive. In the modern era it had been expanded to the size of a small village, a sprawl of low concrete buildings and trailers, of metal sheds and covered walkways. But the main buildings, where the inmates were housed and treated, were the same now as they had been more than a hundred and fifty years earlier: squat, Gothic structures of orange-red brick and gray tiled roofs that revealed their original purpose. The buildings looked, in every way, like those of a prison.
Ben slowed the car as they approached the outer fence. The tall metal mesh, easily twenty feet high, topped with razor wire and electrified along its entire length, marked the edge of the exclusion zone that surrounded the hospital; inside it, tall brick walls, security patrols, deadlocked doors, and barred windows were designed to make sure that no inmate got anywhere near the fence. If they did, there was a sharp, unpleasant shock waiting for them.
The gate in the middle of the fence was standing open.
It ran on wheels, dividing in the middle, powered by an automated system operated from the security control room. There was a small box beside the gate containing a telephone, but it was rarely needed; very few people arrived at Broadmoor unannounced.
Ben pointed the Range Rover between the open gates and drove slowly forward.