'Um h.e.l.lo,' she said. 'I'm really sorry to bother you. I'm looking for Sarah Evergreen's parents? I'm an old friend of hers.'

The woman was silent for a moment, and the look on her face told Kate that she hadn't come to the wrong place after all. She wondered if Sarah and her family might be estranged Sarah had been a stroppy madam when Kate knew her.

'Yes,' she said. 'I am Sarah's mother.' She smiled then, and stuck out her hand. 'Any friends of Sarah's are welcome here. I don't recognise you, do I? Have we met before? I'm Angela.'

'Kate.' Kate shook Angela's hand, and smiled back. 'I knew Sarah from the Cold Research Unit. This is my friend Paul, and my son, Jack.'

Angela flinched at the mention of the CRU. Both Kate and Paul noticed, and Paul raised his eyebrows at Kate when Angela wasn't looking.

'Come in, come in, I'll put the kettle on. h.e.l.lo, Jack, I like your robot, he's rather super, isn't he?'

'He's called Billy,' Jack said, hiding behind Kate's legs.

They processed into the small house, taking up too much room in the cramped living room. There was a huge painting of Sarah, a photograph which had been rendered in oil on canvas, hanging over the fireplace, and Kate recognized her immediately.

'How is Sarah?' Kate asked, thinking how attractive she looked in that picture. 'It's been ages since I saw her. We meant to keep in touch, but ...' Her voice petered out at Angela's expression.

'You don't know? I thought you said you were at the CRU with her?'

Kate glanced at Paul. 'I was. We were roommates. What...?'

'So you were there the night of the fire?'

'Yes.' Kate had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. She reached out and took hold of Paul's hand. Even Jack was quiet, sensing the atmosphere. He'd retreated to an armchair, where he was tinkering with Billy.

Angela swallowed hard, and her eyes filled with tears. 'I'm so sorry to have to tell you this. I a.s.sumed you'd already know. But Sarah she died in the fire.'

'No she didn't!' Kate blurted, without thinking.

'Kate!' Paul squeezed her hand.

'I know this must come as a shock to you, but I'm afraid it's true. She became trapped in the burning building and... didn't manage to escape.'

Kate shook her head. 'No. No.'

Angela thought she was upset at the news, and ushered her over to the sofa, pressing her shoulder gently to make her sit down. 'I'm surprised you didn't read about it in the papers afterwards?'

Paul sidled over to Jack, and began chatting quietly to him about Billy's myriad functions.

'I'm not from Salisbury. Anyway, I was in hospital for some time after the fire, and then I went away to the States. That's why I didn't know.'

'Were you and Sarah very good friends?'

Kate blushed. 'Um. Well. We hadn't known each other long. We had a few laughs together.' She avoided Paul's eye.

'Let me make some tea, and we can have a proper chat,' said Angela. 'Jack, would you like some juice and biscuits?'

Jack nodded. 'And please may can I play soccer in your garden with Paul?'

Angela laughed, in a strained sort of way. 'Of course. I'll show you out there.'

'That's very nice of you,' said Kate, in an equally strained way. She was alarmed to find herself shaking, and wished that Paul wasn't just disappearing out into the back garden with Jack. She felt like she needed someone to hold on to. This was all too weird. Although her memory of the fire was extremely patchy, the two clearest recollections she had were, firstly, of Sarah and herself, collapsing on the gra.s.s outside; and secondly, seeing Stephen being carried out. How could they both have died in the fire? It wasn't possible. Perhaps Stephen might have inhaled too much smoke he'd been too far away for Kate to tell. But not Sarah. Sarah was the one who'd helped her, Kate, get out. Sarah had been coughing and spluttering as much as she had but she'd been OK. She'd got out of the building. Kate remembered it clearly, a patch in the fog that obscured so much of her memory.

After a couple of minutes, Angela came back with a tray of tea things, and a plate of chocolate biscuits.

'I'm really sorry to turn up unannounced like this,' Kate said, declining the offer of a biscuit.

'Not at all. It's actually rather nice to have some company. And to have a child in the house again.' She spoke so wistfully.

'Was Sarah your only child?' Kate asked. 'Tell me to mind my own business if you want.'

'No, it's perfectly all right. Yes, Sarah was our one and only. Now she's gone, I won't be having any grandchildren running around the place either.'

'And your husband?' Kate ventured, feeling awful.

Angela stared at Sarah's portrait, and bit her lip. 'We divorced three years after Sarah died. It just all got to be ... too much, in the end.'

'I'm so sorry.'

Angela nodded. 'So I live here on my own now. I'm all right, I suppose. I have some good friends, and some good memories. But nothing's turned out how I planned it. Things never do, do they?'

'I guess not,' said Kate slowly, thinking about her and Vernon. And her and Stephen. And now her and Paul? How would that turn out?

'What do you remember about Sarah?' Angela asked.

Kate looked her squarely in the eye. 'I don't remember very much at all, about the fire but I'm pretty sure that Sarah helped save my life. I was ill we were both ill we'd been given flu, or something. We both had temperatures, although I'm not sure which of us was worse. I was too unwell myself to really be aware of people around me. But she made me get out of bed when the fire alarm went off, and she helped me down the corridors. I couldn't have walked on my own, I was too weak. I remember her red hair, and her voice, urging me to hurry up. Most of all, I remember seeing her outside, on the gra.s.s, with me.'

'You can't have done,' Angela said, utterly bewildered.

'I did. I know I did.'

'Could she have gone back inside again, to try and save someone else?'

'She must have done, I suppose, although I don't know who she'd have gone back in for. How incredibly brave of her. I was in no fit state to do anything else except lie on the gra.s.s. I think someone gave me a shot of something. Did they um I mean, where was she eventually found?'

Angela's voice trembled. 'In her bedroom at the CRU. Apparently she had become locked in somehow, and couldn't escape.'

'That's impossible. Why would she have gone back into the bedroom, and got locked in? The fire was raging by then. n.o.body could have gone back down that corridor! There was so much urgency to get us out of there; the fire was right behind us. When I think of it, it was like it was chasing us down the corridor. The smoke was everywhere....'

They both reached for their cups of tea, and drank in silence for a moment. Kate wished hers was a large gin and tonic. A rattling sound made her look up again, and to her horror, she saw that Angela's hand was trembling so violently that her cup shook in her saucer, and tea was slopping onto the cream carpet. Kate jumped up and gently took the cup and saucer from Angela, who was now doubled over with sobs, as if she had bad stomach ache.

'I just can't bear to think of my daughter suffering like that!'

Angela's voice was a wail, more agonised than anything Kate had ever heard. Oh G.o.d, she thought, what have we done? We shouldn't have come. Angela had seemed fine just a moment ago.

'I'm so sorry,' Kate repeated, trying to scrub at the tea stain on the floor with a napkin. She felt close to tears herself. Outside, Paul and Jack were kicking the football around, oblivious.

Angela took a deep, long breath and attempted to compose herself. 'No, it's me who ought to apologize,' she said, still crying. 'You'd think it would get easier, but it doesn't. I'm the same with anyone who knew Sarah. When that man, Dr. Bainbridge, came round, a few weeks after it happened, I got so distraught that I had to get a shot of tranquillizers Sarah's dad had to call my GP. I think he really regretted setting foot in here. I had quite a go at him, you see. I just felt I had to blame somebody. I know it wasn't fair of me.'

Kate put the stained napkin back on the tea tray. 'Leonard Bainbridge came to see you? What did he say?'

'He just kept saying how sorry he was. He said that the Cold Centre had been set up to help people and now people were dying. He said something about it all getting out of hand. To be honest, he didn't make much sense, and I was so angry and busy yelling at him that I wasn't really listening. And then he said something that made me so mad that I threw him out. He said that I should be proud that my daughter had died doing something to help others - as if it was worth my daughter dying to stop a few people getting a sore throat and a runny nose! He said that one day he hoped I'd see that it was worth the sacrifice.'

Kate didn't know what to say. Her head was spinning too fast. Sacrifice? What on earth had Leonard been talking about? She followed Angela's gaze towards a picture of Sarah when she was a little girl, framed and fading on the mantelpiece. Like Sarah, Leonard was dead now. What secrets had he taken to the grave with him? Watching a tear roll down Angela's cheek, Kate was more determined than ever to find out.

CHAPTER 20.

Sampson stood outside the hotel beside his car, smoking a cigarette. It helped him think. The trail was warm, but where did it lead? He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath through his nose. He could smell her, sense her echo, feel the way her presence had left a mark on the air of the city. Kate.

He remembered the first time he saw her. He'd been working at the CRU then as a security guard. Not that he was known as a guard as far as the inmates or patients, or whatever the f.u.c.k you called them, were concerned, he was the odd-job man, the mug who carried their suitcases and mended their TVs when they broke down. He painted fences and pulled up weeds. At first he'd found the work humiliating, far beneath his abilities, but after a while he relaxed and realised that it could be advantageous working undercover, pretending to be a harmless sap. He had access to the guests' bedrooms including all those girls' rooms. He could slip in and out of shadows without being noticed, because to most of them he was invisible; just a handyman. A big nothing. Occasionally there would be more interesting stuff to do, when his paymasters sent him to do their dirty work, just like now, but most of the time he was satisfied to live this quiet, almost-Zen life.

Christ, he'd been in danger of going soft, until it all kicked off.

When Kate was there.

He'd known since he was a young teenager that he was different to other boys. Everyone else the whole f.u.c.king world drivelled on about love and joy and happiness. He didn't get it. Every song he heard, every film he saw, the conversations he overheard it was all love and romance and hearts and flowers. He watched the boys in his cla.s.s make fools of themselves chasing after girls. It was pathetic. He didn't give a s.h.i.t about girls. The nearest he got to feeling anything like happiness was when he was causing pain. Making his mother cry, beating his sister's cat's head in with a rock, fighting other boys and making them cry. That was joy.

Ironically, the more distant and disinterested he was, the more the girls liked him. They were all after him, to the disgust of the other boys. The prettiest, most popular girls pursued him, widened their eyes when they talked to him, licked their lips, asked him if he wanted to hang out with them. One girl even wrote him a poem, for f.u.c.k's sake, which made him physically sick. But the girls offered him their bodies too, and he liked that. He liked f.u.c.king. He liked to make girls cry while he f.u.c.ked them. After a while word got around that he wasn't just a bad lad he was really bad. They stayed away from him after that, apart from the really messed up girls, the ones who wanted danger, the girls with problems at home, glue habits and scars on their arms. He felt nothing for them except a vague animal l.u.s.t, often followed by disgust. That was it. And that was the pattern of his early life.

Then Kate turned up at the CRU. Sampson's colleague, Geoffrey (the doddering old t.w.a.t Sampson had disposed of shortly after the fire, because Gaunt had been worried he knew too much), had picked her up and mentioned to Sampson that there was a really pretty girl in room 4C. The next day, they were working in the garden when Geoffrey nudged Sampson. 'There's that la.s.sie I told you about.' Sampson had looked up, disinterested.

It was like being kicked in the b.a.l.l.s. He guessed he must have looked stupid in that moment, a slack-jawed moron, because Geoffrey laughed and said, 'You seem quite taken with her. I told you she was a looker.'

Sampson couldn't speak. He returned to his digging.

He didn't know what it was about her that had this effect on him, that made him feel more at peace yet more violent than ever before, the desire to hug and the need to throttle churning around inside him. She wasn't the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, she didn't have the best body, she didn't move in a particularly alluring way. Put her in a room with a bunch of models and she'd stand out because, well, she didn't look like a model. But she had an extraordinary effect on him.

Tormented, he'd watched her for a fortnight and then she'd gone, just like any volunteer, disappearing once their two weeks was up. He berated himself for not doing something, making an attempt to get closer to her, to overcome his paralysis in the face of the power she had over him.

And then she'd come back. Wonderful, terrible. And he realised why: she was with that doctor, Wilson, that wimpy little s.h.i.t. How the f.u.c.k was she attracted to a gutless t.u.r.d like him? Okay, so he was clever and handsome. He was nice. 'Nice' made Sampson's teeth hurt. 'Nice' needed to be eradicated from the face of the planet.

Sampson soon became aware that Kate was up to something. So he watched her more closely, and kept an eye on Wilson too. His job had started to bore him but now he felt renewed interest. He didn't tell his superiors about his suspicions. If Kate and her doctor were up to something, he wanted to be the one who stopped them. Who made them pay.

Then it all climaxed in a night of flames and smoke, violence and burning flesh. He was there when the firefighters brought Kate and the other girls out. It was madness, utter chaos, the volunteers fleeing their rooms, police and firemen arriving from Salisbury, local residents appearing to ooh and aah at the spectacle. At the same moment he saw Kate and her roommate being brought out, his boss appeared at his side. Instructions were quickly given. To Sampson's immense disappointment, others were to deal with Kate. He was told to deal with her roommate, however he wished.

Sampson found Sarah sitting on the gra.s.s, her head down, her nightdress, which was up around her knees, stained black by smoke. He said her name and she looked up at him. Her eyes were watering, her face, beneath the smudges of ash, was paper-white. She looked like she was at death's door. He felt himself grow aroused.

'I've been asked to help you,' he said. 'Come with me.'

He held out his hand and she took it. He pulled her to her feet and she stumbled. He caught her, putting his arm around her. Through the thin cotton of her nightie her skin was hot. A few feet away, Kate lay on the gra.s.s, unconscious. He looked at her ruefully, then escorted Sarah away.

She kept her head down as they walked, coughing and wheezing as he led her away from the burning building towards the trees. A gate in the perimeter fence led to a copse, just a stone's throw from the building but concealed from view. Patients were allowed to go for walks beyond the grounds as long as they didn't come into contact with anyone else.

She looked up, blearily. 'Where are we going? I thought you were taking me to an ambulance.'

He didn't reply, just pulled her along. They pa.s.sed through the gate and into the copse.

She began to struggle. 'I don't understand... Let go of me.'

He gripped her arm harder, and pinched the skin above her hip.

'Ow. Let go.' She coughed as she protested, and as she doubled over he pushed her to the ground and dropped to his knees beside her, glad that he had been immunized.

Sarah tried to cry out but her lungs were too weakened by the smoke and the disease that had taken root in her body. Sampson pushed her onto her back and pinned her down. It was easy. She was weak and he was strong. She thrashed her head from side to side until he slapped her face and showed her his teeth.

'Please...'

He c.o.c.ked his head, examining her eyes. The fear fascinated him. It was pointless.

'You're going to die anyway,' he said quietly. 'There's no point fighting it.'

She started to cry. How predictable. But her weakness, her sickness, her proximity to death, it excited him. He needed to be quick though. Pinning her with his forearm he unbuckled his trousers, pushed them down and pulled up her nightdress. He spat on his hand and moistened his c.o.c.k. He was even more glad he'd been vaccinated.

She stopped struggling, just carried on crying.

As he approached his o.r.g.a.s.m he held her throat in his hand and squeezed. Her neck was slender, his hand powerful. It didn't take long. As she died, at the moment he came, he looked into her eyes and saw the horror there.

It was the strongest o.r.g.a.s.m he'd ever had.

He needed to hurry. Picking up her lifeless body he strode back through the gate and found himself at the back of the building, where flames still licked at the windows, black smoke vomiting into the night air. The firefighters were round the other side, sending jets of water arcing into the building, fighting a battle that would take them minutes more to win. Sarah had got out of the Unit once. It was unfair really. But as his dad always said, life's not f.u.c.king fair.

One of the windows at the back had blown out, and Sampson was able to step through, carrying Sarah in a fireman's lift. It was like h.e.l.l inside the building and the heat almost knocked him off his feet. They were inside a bedroom. He fought his way into the corridor and realised he was next to the room that Kate and Sarah shared. He staggered inside, dropped Sarah's body to the floor, slammed the door, locked it behind him with his master key and retraced his footsteps, fighting the urge to breathe in before he climbed back out through the window.

The moment he got outside, he collapsed.

Now, standing in the hotel car park, Sampson stepped on his cigarette and savoured the lingering memory of that night.

How much sweeter it would have been if he could have taken Kate into that wood.

He couldn't believe she was back. Now he was going to get his chance, at last, at last. The chance to make her his. The chance to look into her eyes and see what she saw at the moment of death. They would be naked, slick with sweat, his mouth on hers, her tongue clamped between his teeth, his legs between her thighs. And the most delicious idea of all: as he f.u.c.ked her he would pick up a knife and slash her throat and then slit his own. Wouldn't that be the perfect way to go, at the zenith of experience, the apex of feeling. He would press his neck against hers so the blood from their jugulars flowed and mingled together, and the last thing he'd see would be her, dying too.

The fantasy excited and terrified him in equal measure. What the h.e.l.l was wrong with him, imagining himself dying in the arms of some woman? It was obscene, that's what it was. Obscene and confusing. He despised the way she made him feel. He had to put an end to it, to remove this random element, this satellite that stirred the calm, dark surface of his life. He refocused on his fantasy, but this time his own throat stayed intact. Only Kate's jugular gushed. Only she died in pain.

He had to light another cigarette to calm himself, and as he struck the match he realised how stupid he'd been. How could he not have recognised the man with Kate on the CCTV film? He'd been so busy staring at Kate but it was him. The doctor. Stephen Wilson. Except - how could it be? There was absolutely no way that could be Stephen Wilson.

What the f.u.c.k was going on?

He had to find them. And he thought he had an idea where they might be heading, where he would go if he were them. Back to where it all began. He got into his car and headed for Salisbury.