Finally, the personal news: on my second day I got a terse email from Mo, who also has one of these phones. The cat has gone to stay with my parents, she herself is fine but will be moving around a lot, and these are her new contact details. I grind my teeth a bit, but per the README my wife and I aren’t supposed to go to the mattresses together because it would roughly double our likelihood of being apprehended, never mind requiring us to confront all our unresolved baggage in a setting where one of us can’t just walk out if things turn bad. (So it’s going to stay unresolved for now, itching like hell.)
As for the rest of the agency, Persephone, Johnny, and everyone else I can think of are also on the move, because I’m not the only Mahogany Row name to pop up on the Met’s Charge and Book system. We’re not the only people who can root government databases, it seems. Persephone’s on a bogus immigration rap, Johnny is wanted for illegal firearms ownership and is flagged as extremely dangerous, do not approach (which means if they spot him they’ll call in a sniper team). I’ve been upgraded to assaulting a police officer, aiding and abetting a fugitive, impersonating an officer, murder, murder, and more murder—they’ve pinned the unfortunate Captain Marks and his guards on me, along with the headless handmaid and her assistant. Oddly, they haven’t added the tank crew to my rap sheet, and there is no mention whatsoever of Cassie going missing, probably because they don’t want to trigger a national panic.
So all I can do is sit here all on my own, in a rented living room with the curtains shut, surfing the web, swearing at the news, and hating myself.
Isn’t life great?
*
It’s early evening on a Wednesday night in North London. A woman pauses at the corner of Woodside Avenue and glances at her phone, as if checking a message. She’s dressed for the office in a business suit and heels, and carries a briefcase as well as a small handbag: unexceptionable, except for the pallor of her skin and her hair, the glossy blackness of which suggests she might be a weekend goth. The hair is dyed, of course. Mhari Murphy doesn’t know for sure that there’s a warrant out with her name on it, but she doesn’t believe in taking any chances. She’s hungry and impatient, but not so impatient she’s willing to risk watching the final sunrise through the window of a locked police cell.
She checks the time again: 2057. Nearly nine. She starts walking, heading for the driveway and frontage of the hospice. This is London, so although the facility is set back behind a hedge, the grounds are not extensive; however, the red brick inpatient unit is reasonably secluded, with the ground floor rooms facing inwards onto a terrace and courtyard surrounded by flower beds. There are, Mhari thinks, many worse places to die.
The last straggling carers and support staff—administrators, physiotherapists, a chaplain—from the afternoon shift are leaving as she heads towards the hospice. One or two of them climb into cars parked on the street, but most drift towards the nearby bus stops or Woodside Park Tube station. Mhari heads for the front door under the short drop-off driveway opening onto the street. The front door opens onto a quiet reception area, not the bustling receiving unit of a frontline hospital. She walks to the desk and waits until a door nearby opens and a nurse comes out to greet her.
“Hello. Can I help you?”
“Hi, I’m Jill Cantor, from the Wellcome Trust—I’m here to talk to Dr. Gearing, if she’s available?” Mhari smiles stiffly and raises her briefcase slightly, watching the nurse’s eyes track towards it. “I have an appointment.”
“I’ll just check if she’s available.” The nurse picks up the desk phone and dials, then waits. She seems to have swallowed the cover unquestioningly: Mhari can see the precise pigeonhole she’s landed in. The black business suit and briefcase make her look like a drug company saleswoman, but it’s late in the evening and the Wellcome Trust is a charitable research foundation, and Dr. Gearing is the pain management specialist on team, working night shifts this week, so: Ms. Cantor—or maybe Dr. Cantor—is obviously here about some joint research project, going above and beyond her core working hours because death’s handmaidens never sleep. “Dr. Gearing? A Ms. Cantor … yes, I’ll send her on up.” She looks at Mhari. “First floor, ward two, if you ask one of the sisters they’ll point you at Alice.”
“Thank you.” Mhari smiles, showing her some melting ice. Then she turns and heads for the stairs up to the first floor.
It must be a quiet period: half the rooms on ward two stand open, empty and waiting. The others are mostly closed, although through one half-open door Mhari glimpses a bedridden figure, two women sitting in chairs to either side, one holding the sleeper’s shrunken hand. It’s a somber reminder and she finds herself taking more care over her heels, although—unusually for a medical ward—the corridor outside is carpeted to deaden the sound. It must be hell to keep it disinfected, she thinks absentmindedly, although it’s not as if most patients stay here long enough to pick up a bug.
Dr. Gearing is checking a patient’s records on a computer terminal behind the nursing station as Mhari approaches. She’s in her late thirties, wearing the slightly frumpy business attire that seems to be a thing among junior doctors, like an overworked office administrator except for the totemic stethoscope that signals her status. She glances up. “Ms. Cantor…? Can I help you?”
Mhari nods. “Is there somewhere we can talk in private?” she asks, holding her Continuity Ops warrant card just slightly too far away for Dr. Gearing to read the fine print. “It’s about the midnight supply arrangement.”
Gearing meets her eyes for a moment and nods minutely. “Be with you.” She finishes typing, then stands up. “Follow me.”
They end up in one of the empty rooms on the hospice ward, overlooking the patio at the back. Gearing shuts the door and leans against it. “I heard the news,” she says tiredly.
“The agency was abolished, just like that, with no replacement supply arranged for the, the recipients,” Mhari tells her. “They’re in serious trouble.”
“These recipients.” Dr. Gearing looks at her. “I was under the impression your research program would be restarted in a few weeks? Or maybe a couple of months, when the new organization has had time to sort everything out. It is a research project, isn’t it? That’s what I was told.” She focuses on Mhari. “What’s this about, exactly?”
“I can’t tell you; it’s classified. Which is a problem, unfortunately, because I’d like to tell you, but I’m not allowed to. I think I’m allowed to say that the … the cultures that the samples are serving to maintain will be irreparably spoiled if the regular supply is interrupted for more than a few days. It took years to get these cultures established and stabilized, and—”