'Yes.'
They had already had the conversation about how it wasn't his fault, about how she must already have caught the virus by the time he met her. Of course, she wouldn't have spent the last days of her life being terrorised by Heather, miles from home but Kate was worried that Paul's guilt was combined with something stronger. That he was secretly grieving for Rosie, that he had been a little bit in love with her. It was a difficult one, and she didn't know exactly how to deal with it, even though she had made Paul deal with far worse her grief for his dead twin, and her uncertainty as to whether she'd been attracted to Paul merely because he resembled Stephen, that it was a way of keeping Stephen in her life.
Why did it all have to be so complicated?
'It's not your fault,' she said, reassuring him, avoiding that other conversation for now. She looked away.
Five minutes later, it was Paul's turn to ask her what was wrong.
'Nothing.'
'Come on you've got that look on your face. Is it about Rosie?'
'Actually, no.' It was true. 'I was thinking about what Mangold said when I met him about how he knew my parents and how my dad was a virologist. My dad wasn't a virologist he was an aid worker. It doesn't make sense.'
'The old bastard was probably lying.'
'I don't know. I realise he wasn't fully compos mentis, but he sounded so convincing, and he knew their names. And Angelica backed it up. She said I don't know anything about my parents.' She looked at Paul. 'What was my dad really doing in Tanzania? And if the local people, the Hadza, knew the cure for Watoto, why didn't they give it to us?'
Paul shook his head. Kate was about to speak again when a blur of movement caught her eye, followed by a man's shout.
She grabbed Paul's arm.
A woman was running through the airport, security guards close behind her. One of them accelerated and grabbed her. As the woman tried to wriggle out of the guard's grasp, she sneezed, hard, and Kate realised why they'd been chasing her. All around, people jumped to their feet and scattered. The woman looked up from her position on the floor and caught Kate's eye, crying with stress and fear. Kate wanted to say, It's OK, even if it's Watoto you've got. You'll live. There's enough antidote for everyone.
'There's our gate,' Paul said, pointing to the departure board. 'Come on.'
The three of them stood up and headed towards the gate, leaving the security guards to haul the woman away, all the people around giving her a wide berth.
Kate stepped on to the travellator that carried them down towards the departure gate. She couldn't stop thinking about Mangold and her father. One day, she knew, she was going to have to search out the truth. But that would have to wait. Right now, as she glided along with Paul and Jack beside her, all she cared about was getting on that plane.
She had beaten Watoto, her personal nemesis. But there were still plenty of other viruses out there, all those potential pandemics, the mutations, and the people in this world who knew how to harness nature and turn it bad.
But she didn't want to think about that right now.
Because she had her boys beside her, and they were going home.
Acknowledgements
Our first thank you goes to Dr Jennifer Rohn who acted as our chief scientific advisor, helped us create our deadly virus and pointed out exactly how many ways there are to kill someone in a lab. If you enjoy science-based fiction, you should visit Dr Rohn's excellent site, Lablit.com. Also, thanks to Professor Julius Weinberg at Kingston University and to Bob Crewley for checking helicopter accuracy!
For reading the manuscript and checking our Americanisms, thanks to Amy Welch mistakes, as with the aforementioned 'science bits' are our own and thanks too to Julie Baugh for being our first (and constant) reader.
This book would be half the book it is though probably twice as long were it not for the editorial perspicacity of Kate Bradley. Huge thanks too to Anne O'Brien for the ruthless copy edit. We extend our thanks to the whole team at HarperCollins including Hannah Gamon and Louise Swannell.
Thanks to our agent Sam Copeland for great support and enthusiasm as ever.
The world of crime fiction and thrillers is a warm and friendly one, especially for a group of people who spend their days dreaming up grisly murders, and it is hard to single out individuals from that community. But special thanks go to the following: Peter James, Elizabeth Haynes, Alex Marwood, Emlyn Rees, Stav Sherez, Claire McGowan, Erin Kelly, Mel Sherratt, Mark Billingham, Rhian Davies, Rachel Abbott, J Carson Black, Keith B Walters, Nikki-Ann Trow, Mari Hannah, Jennifer Hillier and everyone involved in the Harrogate Crime Festival. Also, thanks to everyone at Waterstones Wolverhampton, Kingston, and Mary Kennedy at Teddington Waterstones.
Mark would like to thank an assortment of lovely people who would be first into the bunker should a deadly pandemic ever devastate the planet: the whole Baugh clan, Jo Johnston-Pope, Martin Johnston, Louise and Dominic Compagnone, Jonathan Pye, Mark Nunney, Susan Smith and Darren Biggs, Andrew and Vicky Wallace, Oliver Brann, Charlotte Staunton and the studentbeans.com crew. Last but most importantly, his family, especially his mum for starting all of this by letting him read that James Herbert book at a very young age; and huge amounts of love and gratitude to his lovely children Poppy, Archie and Ellie, and to Sara, who inspires him every day.
Thanks from Louise to her fantastic friends and family, for all the emotional and practical support during the writing of this one, particularly to Louise Green, Roxana Ziolkowski, Liz Lewis, Sarah Freestone, Pete Aves, Julie Lane, Kate Blumgart, Paul Cavin, Jacqui Lofthouse, Stephanie Zia, David Osbon, Alex Evans, Alex McPherson, Richard and Clare Jackson, and Nick Laughland.
Author's Note
Watoto, the virus featured in All Fall Down, is of course made up. However, it does also happen to be the name of an amazing holistic care programme in Uganda set up in 1994 from the Watoto Church in Kampala in response to overwhelming numbers of orphaned children and vulnerable women in the war-torn and AIDS-stricken country. They provide medical treatment, education, housing, counselling and spiritual discipleship. To find out more, or to sponsor a child, please go to www.watoto.com.
Read on for a thrilling extract of
Forward Slash, the terrifying new book
from Louise Voss and Mark Edwards.
Look out for it in summer 2013.
Prologue.
Him Finding women is easy these days. Looking at their photos, finding out all their dirty little secrets, tracking them down. Watching them. It's remarkable how little awareness most people have, of how exposed they are when they go online. I've got this nifty little app on my phone called Girls Near Me. What does it do? Well, let me show you, Piers. Can the camera see this?
All I need to do is tap here and the phone finds my current location. Yep, there we are, on the South Bank. It works just like Google Maps or the GPS in your car. Geo-location.
But this is the clever part: it shows me women who are also in the area. I can put in particular criteria if I want.
What kind of woman would you like?
You're not fussy? Oh, I am. I'm very particular. She's got to be just right. But let's say we want a brunette, aged 21 to 24, relationship status: single. Wait a moment and ... here we go there are 37 women within half a mile who meet my needs. And it shows me where they are right now. Look, this one has checked into Royal Festival Hall. Amelia. Pretty name.
Now this is where it gets really clever. I can go and look at her Facebook status. If she hasn't carefully protected her privacy and so many people have no idea about security settings I can look through her photos. Hmm, look, a few pictures of her on holiday on the beach, in a bikini. Great little body. Skinny, boobs not too big and, most importantly, not fake. I can't bear breast implants. I messed up once and took home a girl with implants. I had to cut them out. Amelia's got a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder. Her friend Jackie comments that she's 'well jel'.
(Laughter) Looks like she's on Twitter too let's have a look. See what she's been tweeting about. Ah, she went to see Foo Fighters in concert yesterday and loved it. Dave Grohl is hot, apparently. So she likes hairy blokes maybe not for me, then. I'm much better looking than Dave Grohl. I'm a clean-cut kind of guy. The kind you can take home to your mother.
Anyway, with this app I can find out everything Amelia likes. I can check out the names of her friends, where she works, what school she goes to, what her poison is. Armed with all this information about her, I can approach her in the bar, offer to buy her favourite drink, casually mention how I went to see Foo Fighters last night 'Oh, you did too? Wow! Weren't they amazing. Grohl is my god!'
It's so easy.
Or if I don't want to do that, it's often not too difficult to find out her address. I can follow her home. Better than that, I can be at her house before she is, waiting for her. Waiting to surprise her.
Easy fucking peasy.
Oh, sorry, I'm not supposed to swear. You can edit that out though, right?
I love technology.
The first woman I killed, though, I met the traditional way. I got chatting to her in a bar. It was late, and most of the really pretty girls had been snapped up already. But this girl, well, she wasn't the most beautiful woman I've ever seen a seven to my ten but she had something about her. The way she licked her lips before she spoke. How she giggled at my jokes. When I was talking to her I got this rush, that excited feeling that makes me want to take a girl home.
Her name was Jennifer. Jenny. Call me Jen, she said. I bought her a few drinks then asked her back to my place. That's one of my rules: never go back to theirs. At my place, I can control everything. Plus there I have all my props. All my tools.
Call-me-Jen hesitated for a moment just a moment then accepted my invitation.
I was so excited all the way home. I'm getting excited thinking about it now. I hope the camera can't see that! The thing is, I was rather over-excited. I wasn't careful like I am these days. I used my best set of knives. Very expensive and very sharp. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Jen. I can picture her now, lying back on the bed, quite drunk. Irritatingly drunk. Her eyes were rolling and she had a sheen of sweat on her body. There were pink marks on her skin where her underwear was too tight. I knew the instant I saw her body that I'd made a mistake.
I had to eliminate her.
There was so much blood. I must have hit an artery or something. It was everywhere. Even my hair was soaked with it. I suppose I was in something of a frenzy, what with it being my first time. I'm much more careful now. More controlled.
Nowadays, I take my time.
Jen screamed a lot too. It was incredibly annoying. When I stuck the knife in her mouth she made this horrible gagging sound and spat blood all over my face. She didn't last long after that. I slashed her throat. She was already dead when I made love to her. It took her a little while to go so cold that I couldn't bear to touch her any more. It's called the algor mortis phase did you know that? The death chill. The body temperature drops until it reaches room temperature. And then ...
Hmm, sorry? I was miles away.
Yes, there have been lots since Jen. Lots of women. Yes, only women don't worry, you have nothing to be afraid of. To be honest with you, I've lost count of exactly how many it is. You'd think that after all these years, and with all the opportunities the internet gives me, I would have found her by now. And, actually, you know what?
I think I might have.
Chapter 1.
Amy did not notice her sister's email straight away. As the Mail program loaded she was idly listening to the soft drip drip of coffee through the filter in her mug, and trying to organize her thoughts into a prioritized list for the day ahead.
It was going to be a scorching hot day again. 7.30 a.m. was the best time to be out in the tiny garden, her laptop resting at an angle on the wobbly rusting table, dew still clutching the tips of the grass stalks and a blessed silence from the houses of the still-slumbering neighbours. The new intake of email scrolled up in bold in the mailbox, one by one, four screens' worth.
Amy scanned a couple of the subject headings: Wool Enquiry Pattern doesn't state Gauge!
Painless Quilting; Idea for Article She was going to have to employ someone soon. The website her baby, her passion had boomed in popularity over recent months and the orders and enquiries kept her busy from dawn till midnight, seven days a week. As someone had once said to her, it was a quality problem.
Then she saw Becky's email address on the list in her inbox. There was no subject heading. Her stomach gave a small flip. Rebecca had not spoken to her in over a week, after the blazing, screaming fight they'd had, a fight that oozed hatred, hitherto-unspoken resentments and lifelong grudges. Amy had wondered if Becky would ever speak to her again.
Dear Amy, I'm going away again and this time I might not come back. Don't try to find me. I'm going to Asia, probably. I've always wanted to visit Vietnam and Cambodia. Sorry about our row. It's not your fault. Tell Mum and Dad not to worry. Look after yourself.
Love B.
Amy tried to make sense of it. Going away to Asia? Becky was two years older than Amy, and had always been more prone to tantrums. She remembered her shouting 'I'm running away!' at their parents, stuffing her make-up and a multi-pack of Mars bars into a bag and storming off, but she never made it much further than the end of the village.
She read the email again. Don't try to find me. That was the line that sent a little shiver up Amy's spine. And there was something else about the email too, a little niggle that she couldn't quite put her finger on.
The time on the email was 11.27 p.m. on Sunday, the previous night, so it had probably been written and sent while drunk. She pictured Becky lying on her sofa with an almost-empty bottle of Merlot on the floor, tapping away at her phone, the TV blaring unwatched in the background. Well, she thought, hangover or not, you can't expect to send an email like that and not get an early-morning call from your sister.
Amy rang Becky's mobile, which went straight to voicemail, then her landline, which rang out, then her mobile again, this time leaving a message: 'Rebecca Ann Coltman, you are a pain in the arse. What the fuck is all this about going to Thailand, eh? Call me as soon as you get this.' o She paused. Don't try to find me. 'I love you, though. And I'm sorry about the row too. Call me, okay?'
She put the phone on the table and returned to her emails.
An hour later Becky hadn't rung or texted back, and Amy couldn't concentrate on her work at all. She made herself another cup of coffee and, while she waited, checked Becky's Facebook page on her phone. It hadn't been updated for a couple of days. She checked Twitter too. Ditto. No tweets since Friday. 'End of term. Whoo-hoo! Six weeks of freedom. #schoolsoutforsummer'
She tried to call both of Becky's numbers again. Still no reply. She was 99% sure that her sister was enjoying the first Monday of the school summer holidays in bed, having a lie-in. That was probably what every childless teacher in the country was doing today. But there was still that 1% niggle.
Sod it, she was going to have to go to round there. Just to set her mind at rest.
Becky's flat was in a small boxy fifties block built in the space left by a German bomb, incongruous in a road of Edwardian semis. It took Amy seven minutes to get there on her Triumph when the traffic lights weren't against her. This morning they were all green, and Amy arrived with the taste of coffee still in her mouth, and the day's To Do list scrolling through her head. This was 'to do' number one: get her sister out of bed, find out why she'd sent such a crazy email and smooth things over between them.
She parked the bike, dragged off her helmet, and buzzed Flat 9. No answer. After a moment's hesitation she tried Flat 8 instead. Thirty seconds later a sleepy male voice came over the intercom: 'Yerrghello?'
'Hi Gary, it's Amy, Becky's sister. Sorry it's early. Can you buzz me in, please?'