The Secret

Despite having gone into the lab after hours many times before, tonight seemed distressingly different for Liam. He felt nervous, he felt anxious, but most of all he felt guilty. The night was full of eyes, watching him and reading the sign up to no good he felt must be tattooed on his forehead. He hated himself for feeling that way — even his palms were sweaty as he inserted his card-key into the lock and stabbed in his code with his index finger. He didn’t realise that this was the way most normal, law-abiding citizens would feel in a situation like this — about to knowingly do wrong with possible serious consequences.

The darkened entrance hall did have lighting but only dim night-lights that seemed to magnify the size and imagined malevolence of the shadows as Liam made his way to the lifts. He was glad he was wearing trainers: they were quiet and didn’t echo. The lift machinery ground into action and a car started its descent, immediately making him wonder why it wasn’t at ground level in the first place. Someone must have recently gone up in it.

So what? said the voice of common sense inside his head. Lots of people came and went at all hours of the day and night in a place like this. It was a research institute for God’s sake. Research wasn’t a nine till five job. He knew that and yet... Someone had been smoking in the lift was his first thought as he stepped inside and pressed the button. Not allowed, definitely not allowed. Mind you, it could have been someone who’d been smoking outside the building and the smell had still been clinging to their clothes. Shit, he’d gone from being 007 to working for Health and Safety.

The lift stopped and, for a moment, Liam considered going right back down again and making a run for home. His flirtation with the world of shadows and adrenalin rushes was over. This really wasn’t his thing; he was a nervous wreck. A life in academia would be just fine. The world of woolly sweaters and bicycles, seminars and blackboards beckoned him back.

He held down the ‘door open’ button for a full five seconds before finally overcoming his angst and stepping out over the threshold. It’s your own lab, man; you’ve every right to be here, said the voice of reason. Don’t be a complete girls’ blouse. He managed a brave but tuneless whistle as he walked along the corridor to the lab. There it was again, a vague smell of tobacco.

As he reached the frosted glass swing doors to the North lab, he imagined a change in the darkness inside, a change that he couldn’t quite put his finger on but had to ascribe to the blue funk he was in. The lights weren’t on inside but the many windows allowed in light from neighbouring buildings and the street lights below. He turned on the lab lights and paused while the fluorescent strips stuttered into life. The lab looked just like it always did.

Liam walked over to his bench and lit the Bunsen burner. He wanted to create the suggestion of a reason for his being here should a security man look in. He perched on his stool, taking comfort for a moment from the sound and warmth of the burner flame and the air of normality it was providing. He shook his head and just couldn’t understand his nerves. What an idiot.

Liam got together a series of bits and pieces of lab glassware and a bottle of culture medium. He really would set up a few cultures before he left just in case anyone should suspect that he’d been in and ask about it. With that done, he took out a pair of latex gloves from the box above his bench and put them on as he walked towards the closed door of the side room where Dan had his desk.

Liam wrinkled his nose as competing smells reached him; one was that damned tobacco smell again and the other was... human vomit. He put his hand to his face — adding latex to the mix — and stopped in his tracks. What the hell was going on? His nerves had returned like a swift incoming tide. Was he really smelling these things or was tension screwing up his senses?

Once again he was tempted to turn and head for home but the office door was only a metre away and his bench alibi looked just fine — as if he’d been working for the past thirty minutes. Five minutes more and he’d be done searching through the drawers. Surely he could hold himself together that long? Of course he could.

Liam opened the office door and light from the main lab entered to reveal a tableau from hell. An Asian man was standing there, pointing a pistol fitted with a silencer at him. Slumped in his desk chair and secured with tape was Dan Hausman. His face, swollen and distorted, spoke of the agony he was clearly in; a pool of vomit where he’d thrown up lay at his feet. Liam felt sickness well up in his own throat.

‘Come inside. Shut the door behind you,’ said Dr Ranjit Khan of Pakistani intelligence.

Liam did as he was told.

‘Sit down in the other chair, back to me.’