The Gastropoda Imperative by Peter Barns (ebook reader computer TXT) 📖

pole in it with a cardboard notice attached, saying: ‘If you produce a load of shit and don’t clean up after yourself. This is what happens, you bad boy.”

“Fuck,” Conal said, throwing his head back and laughing loudly.

“Fuck indeed,” Drewsbeck agreed.

“A nutcase then. What happened? Did she go to jail?”

“Nearly. If my brief hadn’t worked so hard, she certainly would have done.”

“You kept her out of jail?” Conal couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Hang on a minute. She ruined your Mercedes, stalked you, publicly humiliated you, and you kept her out of jail, then went ahead with her project. Were you and her . . .?” Holding out spread fingers, Conal tipped them back and forth.

Drewsbeck burst into a laugh, which quickly descended into a series of wet coughs in the damp air. “I’m a married man, for God’s sake,” he said. “And anyway, a young girl like that wouldn’t have any romantic leanings towards an old codger like me.”

Given how much power the Old Man wielded and the billions he was worth, Conal seriously doubted that. “So why then?” he said.

Drewsbeck shrugged. “Don’t know really. Something about her caught my attention, I suppose. The tenacity and belief she had in her own work. The amount of time she’d invested into trying to get it off the ground. But mostly, the risks she was willing to take.” Drewsbeck sat silently for a moment, then looked up at Conal, the skin around his eyes crinkling. “It reminded me of myself when I was young and full of fresh energy. Knowing I had the answers to all the worlds problems. Damn it Conal, she made me feel young again!”

Conal leant back with a new respect. He chuckled again. “Sounds to me like you’d fallen for her.”

“No, you don’t understand. We never had children you see. The first wife and I. She was more like a daughter to me than anything else.” His face suddenly dropped and he looked at the deck, seeming old again. “And now she’s gone, and I can’t even bury what’s left of her.”

“We have no choice if you want to survive this,” Conal said. “We can’t chance anyone ever finding out what happened there.”

Drewsbeck nodded sadly. “I know.”

Conal bit back his retort that there hadn’t been much of anything left to bury anyway. “We have no choice,” he repeated.

“So anyway, I got together a small team of top scientists,” Drewsbeck carried on, as though his PA hadn’t spoken, “and got them to look at her idea. Most of them agreed it was impossible. A couple said it was a million to one shot.”

“So you bought the island on a million to one shot.”

Drewsbeck nodded, looking back at Flat Rock Island with a sad expression.

The clouds had blackened and the wind risen. Apart from the lights on the boat, it was a dark night. The grey seas were running higher, and as Conal’s eyes followed Drewsbeck stare, it seemed to him to be a scene out of some drama. All that was missing was the flash of lightning and the roll of thunder to add the final touches.

“But damn me, Conal,” the Old Man said quietly. “She did it. She actually went ahead and did it.”

“Get ready gents,” the boatman called, slowing the engine as the boat pulled alongside the quay.

As it banged and bumped against the brickwork, Conal gave Drewsbeck a helping hand up the ladder. As he reached the top and stepped onto the quayside, a small ball of soil that had compacted between the heel and sole of his shoe when he’d been in The Pit, was knocked free. It fell to the ground, breaking apart, the six eggs nestled in its centre thrown clear. The small eggs rolled towards the edge of the quay.

Five eggs fell into the sea, their embryos shrivelling under the attack of the salty water. But one rolled into a narrow crack on the quayside and wedged there.

Chapter 6

After booking in at a local hotel, Conal spent what was left of the night phoning some contacts he knew in London, arranging for a small team of builders to be sent down to the island as soon as possible the next day.

Conal finally got to bed around two o’clock in the morning, tired but satisfied that he’d made a good start. He found sleep evasive and woke in the morning bleary eyed and thick-headed. Looking at the miniatures lined up on the bedside cabinet, he could see why that might be. He hadn’t drunk so much in years and the alcohol had gone straight to his head. Cleaning his teeth, he decided that now was not a good time to fall back into old habits.

After a hot shower and breakfast, he spent the rest of the day renting a suitable room near to the quay that he could use as an office, bought some office furniture from a local second hand shop, and met his builders off the train.

During the following six weeks, Conal was hardly off the island, only coming back to the mainland to sleep and make telephone calls, as there was no mobile signal on the island. His builders complained about the lack of facilities and had a few Health and Safety concerns, but a hefty bonus soon took care of that nonsense. All in all, Conal thought that things were going really well.

It was essential that Conal stopped anyone venturing below ground into the laboratory before the work had been completed. He couldn’t take the chance of any of his builder’s getting too curious. If anyone discovered what they were burying under the tons of concrete being laid, not only Conal’s, but thousands of other people’s jobs, would be put at risk.

Conal was in two minds about what they were doing. He knew that , if not outright illegal, then what he was doing was certainly flying close to the edge. But it had been a tragic accident, and they was nothing left for the families to bury but a few scattered bones. On the whole, he had to agree with the Old Man’s view of what had happened and how to deal with it.

The first thing Conal did was to build a small floating dock just off the quay. This would act as the staging post for his workers to hose themselves down before coming ashore. The whole deception had to be carried out just right. The picture he was painting had to be believable or the locals would see straight through it.

Conal knew that some of the youngsters occasionally came over and partied on the island’s only beach at night, even though they risked getting a call from the local police force by doing so. It had been impossible to keep them off the island while the laboratory had been in use, but he needed to find a way of doing so now.

To this end Conal put the story about that his team were clearing up after a chemical spill, hoping that information, along with men in white decontamination suits running all over the island, would keep the party goers off the island for the time being. Once they’d finished covering the evidence with concrete it wouldn’t matter so much, but even so he had a plan to keep people away for at least a few years after that.

At first Conal’s builders had raised their eyebrows when he’d asked them to work in decontamination suits but, as usual, a hefty raise in their pay soon had them back at work. Conal wondered just how many more reasons they would find to fleece more cash out of the project.

The boatman had unexpectedly found himself with a new contract to ferry the workmen across to the island and back everyday; the local hotel was fully booked; and the small village shop found itself doubling its usual wholesale order. Everybody seemed happy and Conal worked to keep it that way.

After erecting the small floating dock, Conal had his builders dismantle the glass enclosed entrance building, burying the pieces next to the concrete roof. The original contractors had back-filled the space between the concrete box construction and the rocks with gravel to allow for drainage, so it made disposal of the thick glass panes and aluminium frames easier than shipping them ashore or flying them out by helicopter.

All through the dismantling process, Conal kept a careful eye on his men, making sure that nobody slipped below ground. Before anyone had set foot on the building site, he’d taken the precaution of disconnecting the lift controls and turning off the electrical supplies, but he couldn’t afford to take the smallest chance that somebody might stumble onto the secret they were concealing below the island. Too much was riding on this for the slightest slip-up.

In the last week of the contract, the builders finally filled in the lift shaft, and Conal could relax. As he watched the last load of concrete being levelled over the big recycling chute cover, he gave a sigh of relief. Nobody was going to know what was buried under the island now. There was no way in or out of the laboratory any longer, and the horrors still living down there would soon run out of food and die.

The locals were fascinated by the men dressed in white suits, regularly seen hosing themselves off after every shift on the island. They were the talk of the pub for weeks on end and it wasn’t too long before the most outrageous rumours were circulating in the surrounding villages. But for all the locals imaginings, none of them were prepared for the last stage of Conal’s gigantic con.

After enclosing the shore lines of the island with a tall, barbed wire topped fence, Conal had big signs attached to it at three metre intervals. The notices were big and coloured a brilliant red, and raised eyebrows for miles around - reading, as they did, ‘Danger. Keep Off. Biological Hazard.’

PRESENT DAY

Chapter 7

Scott eased the car along the narrow lanes, squinting into the darkness.

“I’m sure it’s somewhere along here,” he said.

“Maybe we should just forget it and go back to the hotel,” his companion said, totally fed up with her boss for wasting all this time looking for the perfect view.

“No. No, there it is. That’s the road I’m looking for.”

Emilia thought the rutted track looked more like a path than a road, but kept quiet, praying that David didn’t get the car stuck halfway along it.

“You sure it’s up here, Dave?”

“Positive,” he said with a quick nod. “Just a little while longer and we’ll be there.”

David Scott was excited. He’d been chasing his secretary for eighteen months, trying every