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By Root 986 0

himself back down the fissure and later cut his own throat with glass. The little girl had died because of the fog. But she had been heavily subjected to it, as had he, inside the hole, and her young mind had been unable to cope with the effects. His only hope was that Casey had not been exposed to too much. She’d been inside the car most of the time. Did it make any difference though? Was such a short exposure still as lethal? The next few days would tell. His only hope was to get her to a hospital where they could keep her under restraint until she got over it, or – He pushed the thought from his mind. The doctors had told him there was little they had been able to do but keep him on drugs to pacify him while the struggle had gone on inside his brain, an area they could not enter unless they used drastic surgery which may have proved fatal anyway. Would her mind be strong enough to resist whatever was eating into it?

He was still sitting there in the semi-darkness when the police pounded on the door ten minutes later.

Holman went to the door quickly, afraid to leave Casey alone for too long. He was surprised to see the police and immediately assumed a neighbour had been concerned about the sounds of the struggle. There were two, one uniformed, the other in plainclothes. He didn’t know there was yet another guarding the stairs on the ground floor.

‘John Holman?’ the man in plainclothes asked brusquely.

‘Yes. Good thing you came . . .’

He was cut off as the detective pushed his way in, flashing a card in Holman’s face and pocketing it immediately. ‘Detective Inspector Barrow, we’ve been told to pick you up.’

‘What? Oh, Spiers. Look, get an amb . . .’

‘We understand that you were the only witness present at, er, an incident at the Department of the Environment building a short while ago.’ The detective was young and very unlike Holman’s idea of a detective. He wore a polo-neck jumper and a long suede jacket; his hair, though not exactly long, was certainly no ‘short back and sides’. He glanced around the flat, visibly puzzled by the absence of daylight.

‘Yes, that’s right. My boss committed suicide, but . . .’

‘Why did you leave?’ The detective was walking away from him, opening doors and looking in as he went. Holman turned towards the burly policeman standing in the doorway. ‘Look we’ve got to get an ambulance right away,’ he said, ignoring the detective’s question.

‘Christ!’ he heard and turned again to see the plainclothes policeman standing at the door to his bedroom, a look of astonishinent on his face.

‘Hold him, Turner!’ the detective shouted over his shoulder as he disappeared into the room. A heavy hand clamped on to Holman’s upper arm as he made towards the bedroom.

‘You don’t understand,’ Holman said angrily. ‘We’ve got to get her to a hospital immediately.’ He wrenched his arm free and ran down the short passage. He saw the young detective sitting on the bed untying Casey’s hands. ‘No, wait! Don’t release her – she’s not sane!’ The words hurt him to say, but he had to make them understand. A rough hand went around his neck and his right arm was yanked behind him and up.

‘You don’t understand!’ he managed to gasp.

‘Oh, we understand all right,’ said the CID man, turning to eye him coolly. ‘Your colleagues told us you hadn’t been well. Don’t give us any trouble, mate, I’m just in the mood for a bastard like you.’ He spoke quietly, but the menace was unmistakable.

Holman relaxed his muscles, unafraid of the threat, but realizing there was nothing he could do for the moment.

‘All right, let’s take it easy. But you’ve got to get her to a hospital,’ he said, trying to keep his voice calm. ‘I was in the earthquake in Wiltshire last week. There was a gas released, it affects the brain . . .’

‘It certainly affected yours,’ said the detective, helping the girl to her feet. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to her, but look at her, look at those eyes . . .’

‘No, no. It wasn’t me. It was the fog. Spiers was caught up in it too. It affects the brain.’

‘As far as we know, there’ve been no reports of gas during