Hotel Midnight

  I pulled a chair out from the kitchen table. ‘Come on, take the weight off your feet.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She sat down. I chose the chair opposite. ‘OK, if you want to share anything with a big lummox Scotsman, Colette, now’s your chance.’

  The noise she made combined her clearing her throat, a laugh and a single, heart-wrenching sob. ‘OK. I remember crying on your shoulder when I got dumped by Vince at uni so this shouldn’t leave me feeling too weird.’

  My stomach muscles tightened. I suspected her revelation wasn’t going to make for happy listening. ‘Whenever you want, old pal. No hurry.’

  ‘OK.’ She took a swallow of coffee. ‘I rented this house with Lauren three years ago. About the time you first started seeing her.’

  I nodded. Until the break up twelve months ago I’d made the trip south from Scotland every weekend for nigh on two years. The day they moved in I helped them lug their leather sofa of spine-wrenching dimensions up to the first-floor lounge.

  She continued, ‘I’m a numbers woman. I work freelance to assess not only how people behave, but what gender group or age group favours a particular product or activity. Last year, for instance, I sat in a newsagent’s so I could count how many women under the apparent age of thirty bought a particular make of confectionary with their magazines. Then I’d report my findings back to the market research company that had hired me.’ She gave a tired smile. ‘I call myself the Statistic Detective. This year I’ve been studying the age distribution of people visiting York during the evening. It’s to assess whether only a narrow band of people in a particular age group are visiting the pubs and restaurants, or whether there’s a wide range of evening visitors. Of course, this means two things, principally. I work at night. Plus I spend hours watching the public – either arriving at the car-parks, or bus or train station, or those walking into the city.’

  ‘And you can only access the city through the gates in the walls.’

  ‘Precisely. Because there are only a very small number of access points through the walls it channels people into more concentrated streams, which makes life easier for me. So as a people watcher I noticed when they started to change.’

  ‘Change how?’

  ‘I noticed over a period of around six months that whereas before it tended to be mainly groups of young people coming into town now there are more people who arrive by themselves.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, it’s a marked shift in behavioural patterns. I’ve got the facts and figures on file, but just off the top of my head I can remember that during a three-hour period on a Friday evening in April just twenty-eight people arrived by themselves. In September it was a hundred and twenty. More than four times as many sole visitors than six months earlier.’

  ‘The nights were lighter in September?’ The guess was a haphazard one.

  ‘John, come on, you know sunset and sunrise times are virtually the same in September as they are in April.’

  ‘Correction understood. So what do you make of the fact that more people now walk into the city by themselves than in the company of friends?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem much on the surface, but that is a radical change in behaviour. I recognize specific individuals, too, that all through the summer would be rolling into town with their friends, they’re laughing, joking, very outgoing. Now they arrive by themselves and, to put it mildly, they look as miserable as sin.’

  ‘Could be a big employer’s closed down so there’s been mass redundancies. That leads to a big percentage of jobless people; naturally, they are so fed up at being skint they just mooch into the city centre to kill time.’

  ‘Then there’s the other crucial factor.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The stranger on the walls. The one who attacked Lauren a few days ago, and then the girl tonight.’

  ‘Him? What’s he got to do with a change in social behaviour?’

  ‘Quite a lot, in fact.’ She bit her lip. ‘I have to tell you this, John. One night I went out onto the section of wall that overlooks the station. I was filming people leave the station, when I felt someone grab me from behind.’

  ‘Oh, God, Colette.’ I stared at her not knowing what to say next.

  ‘I tried to yell, but he grabbed hold of my mouth and jaw, actually grabbed it to hold it shut. I’ve never felt hands as strong as that.’ Her eyes slipped into a glassy stare as she recalled what happened. ‘It was the same man we saw tonight.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘What if I tell you I could smell this almost overpowering odour of spices? Things like frankincense and cinnamon.’

  I grunted in something close to shock. ‘That’s what I smelled tonight when I saw him on the wall.’

  ‘Try this.’ She held her arm out to me. ‘You can smell spices on my sleeve from when he grabbed hold of me tonight, before trying to throw me off the wall.’

  I didn’t even have to lean forward much further as the sweet smell of exotic spices reached me. Among them was the piquant breath of frankincense that I remembered so well from that Holy Land Christmas card.

  My lips were dry when I licked them. That dryness that comes with nervous tension. ‘It happened to you? You collapsed unconscious?’

  ‘Not bloody likely.’ Colette vented the words with feeling. ‘He was standing behind me. He was whispering: ‘Stand still, be calm’. It was weird. We were standing there in the dark on top of the wall where it overlooks the train station. All these people were flooding toward the pubs. I could see them laughing. A group of girls were dressed as nuns but wearing short skirts and high heels. A hen party I suppose. And coming down the street were two men in sailor uniforms; one was blowing a bugle. Everyone was so carefree, while I was being held on the wall by a man who smelt like the spice counter in a delicatessen. All the time, he kept whispering in this odd, snaky hiss that I should stay calm, not struggle, not call out. When I nodded I felt him loosen his grip on my mouth just a bit. So, you know me, John, like a bull in a china shop at the best of times. Even though I couldn’t see him I jerked my head back as hard as I could. It made my day when I heard something crunch. He gave this massive grunt. It sounded like someone had kicked a buffalo up its backside. Then he shoved me forward so hard against the wall it winded me. By the time I managed to turn round to see who the bastard was, he’d run so far along the wall all I could made out was this shadowy figure. But, my God, I reeked of frankincense and that sharp peppercorn smell, you know? When you smell a pepper mill just after you’ve used it?’

  ‘Good for you.’ Relief washed through me. ‘At least he didn’t knock you out like the others.’

  ‘No, I was wide awake. In fact I felt on fire I was so wide-awake. Next thing, I started yelling down at the crowds of people for help, and that the man who had attacked me was running along the wall.’

  ‘And?’

  She huffed. ‘Those that heard just waved back.’ She shook her head. ‘They thought I was a drunk celebrating losing my drawers or something.’ A tight smile reached her lips. ‘At least I wasn’t hurt. It was anger more than anything.’ She took a swallow of coffee. ‘Then I came home to tell Lauren what happened. Of course she insisted on checking me over to make sure I hadn’t been hurt. She found blood in the back of my hair. At first she thought I’d cut my scalp but she couldn’t find a wound.’

  ‘So it was the attacker’s blood.’

  ‘Yes, and proud of it I was. I was pleased that I’d inflicted some damage on the rat. Anyway, I showered good and hard to make sure I washed the blood out of my hair.’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘No, I talked myself out of reporting it. Too much hassle, the police will never catch him, no real harm done. That kind of reasoning. Ridiculous really, but there you go.’

  ‘So you think this man is preying on young women? That he might have attacked dozens?’

  ‘It’s more than that. He’s infecting them.’

  ‘What?’

&n
bsp; ‘Infecting them. Listen.’ She took a deep breath then locked her eyes on mine. ‘To put it bluntly I’ve got the immune system of a mule. I never get colds. My mother’s the same. She worked as a nurse in India for five years when she left college; she never had so much as a stomach bug. Whenever there’s a flu epidemic I know when I’ve got the virus in my system. The glands come up in my neck like golf balls; my temperature rises, but that’s all. My antibodies kill the bug. Within twenty-four hours I’m back to normal. I don’t even get a cough or a runny nose. It was the same after the man attacked me. The following morning my forehead felt hot. My neck was stiff because the glands were enlarged. I knew I had some bug in my system. Though this was the worst I’ve known. My blood must have been a battleground. But a couple of days later my temperature dropped, the glands were back to normal, I was right as rain.’

  ‘Infected you, Colette? But how? You don’t think it was—’

  ‘Sexually transmitted? No way. During the attack I was conscious all the time. Simple. I head butted him. He bled. His blood matted my hair. The bug got into me that way.’

  I rubbed my face. ‘I follow that you, along with other people, have been attacked by the same man, but this part about him infecting people … are you saying this infection affects the way they behave?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her manner suggested she’d been driving that point home all along only it had taken a while for me to grasp the fact.

  ‘I don’t buy it.’

  ‘Oh …’ Colette pressed her fingers to her temples in frustration. ‘My statistics, my dry and boring statistics, point to this event taking place. They are evidence of a marked behavioural change in many women in this city. For some reason they now prefer to be alone rather than move around in groups of friends. This contradicts normal patterns of behaviour; specifically, that many women are wary about walking into cities alone at night.’

  ‘So this infection reduces their anxiety about walking alone?’

  ‘And many more factors, too, such as a reduced need for social contact, or even an active dislike of their old friends. Also a marked change in personality traits that can only—’

  ‘A virus does this? Colette, a virus makes you feverish and cough and feel crap. It doesn’t alter your preference in friends.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  Colette bit her lip, thinking hard. ‘In a few minutes I’ll take you up to see Lauren.’

  ‘And you think she’ll want to see me?’

  ‘I don’t doubt it for a moment. In fact, she’ll insist.’

  Unease slithered through me. ‘You’re telling me Lauren is infected?’

  ‘Don’t let me impose my conclusions. After you’ve talked to her you decide.’

  This did make me think that bit harder. ‘So what kind of virus can do this?’

  ‘I’m a statistician, not a doctor. My guess is as good as yours. It doesn’t have to be a virus, it could be bacterial – or something else.’

  ‘Something else?’ I winced at my foolish sounding echo of her words. But this had unsettled me now. I shot a glance in the direction of the stairs to Lauren’s bedroom. I fancied I heard the menacing creak of floorboards as she paced back and forth, perhaps sensing my presence down in the kitchen.

  Colette spoke softly, ‘When I found Lauren on the wall after she’d been attacked I was convinced she was dead. There wasn’t a heartbeat. A moment later she recovered consciousness, like that.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘One minute dead. The next minute she stood up insisting she was fine, and that she was going home. I know, I know, I’m no medical expert, so I might have been wrong about her being dead, but you saw how the woman looked tonight when we first found her. I know what your instinct told you.’ She took another swallow of coffee to ease her dry throat. ‘So Lauren comes home. Within an hour she’s feverish, her throat is sore; it’s like she’s coming down with the worst cold imaginable. She tells me her arms and legs ache, that she’s no energy. Soon she begins to suffer cramps to the point she can’t move. Later, I notice these yellowish weals on her skin. You know, like nettle stings? Her skin became lumpy as if it was going to start blistering. It took ages to get her into bed. Even when the cramps passed she could barely move. What she could do without any problem was scream at me that I shouldn’t call a doctor. As you can imagine I was worried sick, but within a few hours the symptoms abated. She seemed a bit odd in the way she moved … as if her muscles were stiff. But she was recovering, so I didn’t call an ambulance as I’d been promising myself.’

  ‘She’s all right now?’

  ‘Well … she’s not displaying those extreme symptoms. All right is debatable.’

  ‘So we call out the doctor. That’s the only solution, isn’t it?’

  ‘See her first, then we’ll decide.’

  ‘Does Kevin know?’

  ‘The husband-to-be?’ She grimaced. ‘I thought it best not to tell him. Don’t look at me like that, John. I’ve been trying to work out what’s the best for everyone. Call me idiotic, but I figured if all this cleared itself up and Lauren is perfectly OK then there’s no need to upset their wedding arrangements.’

  How considerate of you. I thought it but didn’t say it. Maybe she read the response in my face anyway.

  ‘Yes, John. I’m being loyal to my friend even though she wasn’t at all loyal to you. But everything I’ve done is for Lauren and Kevin. Maybe I was insanely optimistic in asking for your help.’ She looked wounded. She’d gone through hell herself. Here I was, not making things one jot better.

  I smiled, and then leaned forward to squeeze her hand in mine. ‘That big Scottish lummox is here. He’ll do what’s for the best, too.’

  My gesture of support, for what it was, moved her. She blinked. A tear rolled down her cheek. When she spoke again I realized she felt she could trust me with something she hadn’t planned to reveal.

  ‘You know, when Lauren was really sick I did some research. That’s a statistician’s training coming to the fore, huh? In times of crisis trawl the internet for a bunch of facts and figures. Well …’ She wiped her eye. ‘I did find something. It’s not definitive proof but it supports one aspect of what I’ve been telling you. Recently, universities in Britain, America and the Czech Republic have been involved in a joint research project into cats.’

  When I raised an eyebrow she leaned forward to grip my hand. ‘Bear with me, John, it is relevant. Listen. There are around nine million domestic cats in Britain. Most of them carry a parasite called toxoplasma gondii – type that into a search engine and you’ll get all the proof you need I’m not making it up.’

  ‘I believe you. Go on.’

  ‘It’s been proved that this parasite has been transferred to the human population on a massive scale. Half of us are infected with it. Don’t worry, normally it doesn’t harm us. But scientists have shown that in certain cases infected people don’t display physical symptoms of the parasite. Instead, it induces changes in their behaviour. Infected men are apt to become aggressive; they have a tendency to be antisocial; they care less about their appearance; add a propensity to become scruffy and you’ve got clear evidence of real change. In women the parasite can induce modification of their personalities that lead them to becoming more warmhearted and easy-going. The downside is they become less trustworthy.’

  ‘And these changes are all down to a parasite?’

  ‘Yes. An emphatic yes! Humans became infected through close contact with cats, which originally became infected by eating rats that carried the bug.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘But as I said, infection with the parasite doesn’t guarantee a behavioural change … only that it can occur in infected humans in certain cases.’

  ‘OK, let me catch up,’ I told her. ‘This stranger tried to infect you. However, for once he didn’t complete the process that involves knocking his victim out in someway. You broke the bastard’s nose with your head, so he got the hell out of there. However, his blood almos
t led to you being infected, but as you say you’ve the immune system of a mule, and this parasite, or virus, couldn’t get its hooks into you.’

  ‘That’s the size of it.’

  ‘Then he has infected other people. Now my question is why? What for? What’s his master plan?’

  ‘Ah,’ she stood up. ‘This is where I made one of those eureka connections.’ Crossing the floor she went to a cork noticeboard where picture postcards, reminders and shopping lists had been pinned. She tugged a piece of photocopied paper from where it had been attached by a pin.

  ‘A eureka connection?’ I tilted my head to one side, inviting elaboration.

  ‘When I was reading about the parasite found in cats’ brains for some reason an article I read years ago came back to me. I dug it out and copied the page. You know when you chip a tooth and keep running your tongue over it? You can’t stop yourself? Well, this quote was like that. I didn’t know why, but I guess it was instinct. Something was telling me that this quote, and the behaviour-altering bug were connected. It’s from a speech made to the Royal Society over a hundred years ago by Darwin’s son, Francis. Listen to this: It is impossible to know whether or not plants are conscious; but it is consistent with the doctrine of continuity that in all living things there is something psychic, and if we accept this point of view we must believe that in plants there exists a faint copy of what we know as consciousness in ourselves. Go on, John tell me I’m nuts for making the connection.’

  I met her gaze. Perhaps part of her wished that I recommended she visit a psychiatrist. Then she wouldn’t be forced to confront the reality of some new form of epidemic.

  ‘I haven’t heard that quotation before,’ I said after a moment’s pause. ‘But I have read that some scientists believe that nature demands, that in order to survive, creatures must develop intelligence. Intelligent plants are debatable. But you only have to take a look at apes and dolphins to know that animals are capable of developing a degree of intelligence.’