‘Carry on,’ Dawson advised. He didn’t really want to dwell on that many living things making a home in his stomach.
‘I waited until after the class and approached him about two calculations within his presentation that were incorrect by a decimal place of one hundredth of a—’
‘How did you know that?’ Dawson asked, following the zigzag pattern of the light source. There was no denying the kid’s intelligence.
‘A flaw in that particular software meant that once it reached any calculations using over one trillion it began to round the percentage up from point four of a whole instead of point five.’
Dawson was happy to take his word for it.
‘I offered him a repair patch for the program, and he offered me a job.’
‘Jameel, I’m not kidding about that torch,’ Dawson snapped. The darkness was disorientating, but his senses told him they had to be getting close to where he’d placed the ‘wet floor’ signs to prevent any unsuspecting feet from falling into the shallow grave that held the delightfully rotting corpse of Cher.
‘Sorry, I’m just looking for any clues.’
Dawson got the feeling he’d been landed with the booby prize. Give this guy a grocery bill and he could probably analyse your finances for the next ten years. But had the security guard turned in for work Dawson would have felt just a touch more secure in his partner’s suitability for purpose.
‘So what did Darren say when he called in sick?’ Dawson asked. He had not yet seen Curtis Grant to question him.
‘Said he’d got some kind of stomach bug. Went into a bit of detail, which was gross so I kinda stopped listening. The boss wasn’t very happy and mentioned the contract renewal for the security provision being imminent.’
‘What, he’s going to change provider?’ Dawson asked.
Jameel raised the torch so Dawson could see him shrug. ‘Maybe, but the guy isn’t that bad. He said he’s arranged for the shift to be covered so somebody’s coming, but then you guys arrived, so I just got off the phone.’
‘Mate, shine the torch down,’ Dawson instructed, slowing down. The light seemed to be aiming everywhere except at the ground on which they walked.
He took out his phone to call Stacey and inform her that a replacement security guard was due.
‘You know, you could have bloody mentioned this earlier,’ he said, scrolling to his colleague’s number.
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ Jameel said, as a fork of lightning lit up the dark sky, illuminating a face that didn’t look sorry at all.
Eighty-Six
The lightning lit up the Portakabin and temporarily blinded her like a brief explosion.
For a second the space fell into silence before Stacey realised the lightning strike had caused a surge in the electrics.
She counted to five before the whirring started as the backup generator kicked in. So it was more than a surge. The electrics had been temporarily disabled. The system was instructed to revert to backup only if a delay of five seconds elapsed. A surge was a split second or less.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Stacey whispered to herself and waited for her heart to return to its normal rhythm.
She didn’t mind storms, quite liked to watch them – from the safety of a brick building with all electrical appliances switched off.
One by one the systems began to switch themselves back on. If it resembled any programming she’d ever seen it would be done in order of importance. Lighting, heating, communication equipment, security and then, finally, appliances.
Surprisingly the lighting hadn’t failed, but Stacey knew that lighting was often worked from a separate circuit to everything else.
The heating wasn’t switched on so there was no delay there.
The handheld phone in the charging cradle offered a single beep. The phone was back.
Next, the green light on the side of her radio base station flickered twice and then held. Great, she had radio communication from the base station. The handheld radios carried by the three teams would have continued to work amongst each other with the batteries attached but her own ability to communicate with them and vice versa would have been severed.
That only left the cameras. The screen to her right remained blank.
‘Come on,’ she urged.
It was not the most important of the systems but Stacey liked to know she had every tool at her disposal. Seeing the activity outside the gate and just inside the property was unlikely to assist her colleagues, as they were all at the furthest points away, but having eyes around the building and immediate area offered her comfort.
It suddenly dawned on Stacey that she was the only member of the team who had been left alone. But not for long, she realised, as the intercom beside her sounded. That would be the replacement security guard Kev had just called her about.
She smiled as the screen beside her flickered into life. It had reverted to split-screen display, showing the two camera views. Even before the voice sounded through the tinny speaker she could see the shape of the Aston Martin waiting at the gate.
Curtis Grant announced his arrival, and Stacey buzzed him through the gate.
The camera pointing over the fence to the lane beyond looked exactly as it had before the power failure. Along that lane sat a van with a team of backup officers.
A sound on the gravel outside the door met her ears.
‘Hey Stacey, how’s things?’ Curtis Grant asked as he entered the Portakabin. ‘I’m here to cover Darren’s shift. Tried everyone I could think of but no takers because it was too short notice, and this isn’t the easiest gig to sell, especially at the moment.’
‘But you’re the boss,’ she said.
‘Yeah, and sometimes the boss has to come out late at night and get his hands dirty so we don’t lose a valuable contract.’
He stood with his behind resting against the sink, close to the door. ‘Just tried Darren again to see if he was feeling better, but his phone’s off.’
‘Surely you didn’t need to cover the shift yourself?’ Stacey asked doubtfully.
He shrugged. ‘Probably not, but I would feel even more responsible if the failure to meet the contract is because of Darren… but that’s what you get when you employ family, I suppose.’
Stacey was confused. Throughout her investigation she had not uncovered any familial relationships.
‘You and Darren are related?’
He rolled his eyes upwards. ‘Oh yeah, the irritating little shit is my cousin.’
Stacey wondered how the hell she could have missed such a connection.
Curtis Grant smiled widely and headed towards the kitchen.
‘Now, how about I put the kettle on?’ he asked. ‘It looks like it’s going to be a long night.’
Eighty-Seven
Kim tried to ignore the eerie feeling that was stealing over her.
The sudden lightning fork that had split the sky right in front of them had startled her and Catherine, appearing within minutes of them leaving the safety of the light circle at the top of the site.
She suspected the sensation in her stomach was not helped by the darkness and the knowledge that she was walking amongst dead bodies.
Singly, Kim could deal with either one quite happily, but perhaps it was the combination of both. Yet there was something inside her that wanted to take these bodies home. Not to her home but to Keats, where they would be treated with respect and then buried properly.
‘So how are you doing?’ Kim finally asked of the woman walking beside her.
Catherine held the torch, shining a path of light before them.
It was impossible not to notice the change in the woman since the last time they’d met. Bryant had done a double take and Dawson had looked more than once.