Xion Island Carrier Chapter 14

The rain drew slow trails over Nash’s nerves like a jagged fingernail over skin. Barrow was under one of those relentless showers that made everything feel older—houses, history, bones. He stirred hollandaise sauce with one hand and checked his phone with the other, while Kelvin flicked through their wedding folder with academic precision. Colour swatches were splayed in a fan between his forearm and a mug of tea, and a sheet of oyster coloured card titled Blended Ceremony had been underlined twice.

‘How many guests are we up to?’ Nash asked, jolting the silence.

Kelvin grinned. ’Eighty confirmed. Zola wants to bring two of her friends. They’re fascinated by Ghanaian weddings. I think they’re imagining a festival. Or a Nollywood reboot of Bridgerton.’

Nash laughed, but it was edged with nervousness. ‘What about Taraji?’

‘He’s still threatening to do the wedding breakfast.’

‘I like Taraji’s cooking.’

‘You like free food. There’s a difference.’

‘I like your children.’

‘Even Imani?’

‘Hm. I’d like to.’

Kelvin wrote on a printed seating plan, and his voice became guarded. ‘I spoke to her again.’

That dragged Nash’s eyes away from his phone. ‘Has she changed her mind?’

‘No. She’s sticking to the same stance. She thinks it’s a mid-life vanity project and says we’re rewriting marriage to suit our egotistic indulgence. I’m flaunting this stupid idea that I might be gay, it’s obscene, and it’s ruined her life. It’s all your fault, of course.’

‘Of course. I’m a bad, bad man.’

‘You led me astray, love.’ Kelvin glanced up and grinned. ‘It’s all rehearsed, you know. She forgets. I coach people in making rehearsed speeches for the court.  She’s said it the same way three times. It’s her mission statement.’

Nash put the spoon down. ‘She’ll come around.’

Kelvin shook his head. ‘You’re an optimist.’

Nash poured the sauce over their eggs, artfully arranged some asparagus tips, and brought the plates over. ‘I’m just not betting against the wonderful woman who raised her.’ He kissed Kelvin’s head and saw him glance at the photo of his late wife on the mantlepiece. ‘And Zola’s on our side. She’s a diplomatic nuke in stilettoes.’

Kelvin loaded his fork and looked up. ‘You still want the big wedding?’

‘Oh yes. We have the ocean ten feet from our garden gate. Who wouldn’t want a beach wedding in June?’

‘With personal vows—yours will read like an arrest warrant—the whole thing.’

‘Hey,’ Nash said. ‘I can be romantic.’

‘Oh, you can. That’s undeniable. Okay,’ Kelvin said. ‘And we’ll blend in the Ghanaian half. Colours. Drums. Kente. You, wearing a smock.’

Nash smiled. ‘Now that depends. Are you wearing tails?’

Kelvin smiled with an army of straight teeth. ‘I might wear both, and change at half time, if I haven’t been sent off.’

‘Good.’ Nash leaned over to kiss him. ‘Let’s make it a day to remember.’

At the station, the air had a particular tension. Nash recognised it from his siege days—quiet corridors and heads ducked low. Everybody was pretending they weren’t waiting for something worse to happen.

Keeley Norton stood beside her desk, Nash noticed she rarely sat for longer than a few minutes. She sorted through case notes with efficient detachment. She’d handled tougher cases—and showed she wasn’t slacking on this one.

The team gelled well, and even Brown was making an effort to keep her claws retracted. Jay Bowes hovered around like a college kid with a security pass. He held a paper cup out to Norton. ‘They got your name wrong. It says Kelly.’ He blushed and looked about twelve.

Keeley was amused that he couldn’t even get the Costa order right. ‘Do you offer this high-effort service to everyone?’

‘Only black belts who can kill me without spilling their coffee.’

‘Sweetheart, I could kill you with a finger.’ She took the cup while Bowes looked as though he might pass out. ‘What else have you got?’ she asked.

‘A backup biscuit in case the coffee’s shite.’

Her laugh was big and genuine. ‘No, you dick. I mean with the case.’

Bowes was puce as he mumbled any details he could remember from three minutes ago.

‘Just so you know. I’m not going to sleep with you.’

He grinned. ‘Fair enough. But you’re laughing. You know that’s foreplay.’

Nash watched them from the door. Bowes wasn’t subtle—he didn’t have a refined bone in his body—but his humour was good-hearted. There was nothing threatening about him. He noticed that Norton didn’t roll her eyes as quickly. Nash filed that away.

The team gathered in the incident room that afternoon. The sky had darkened to iron, and rain tapped the windows in erratic Morse patterns. It talked over Nash’s briefing. The heavy atmospheric pressure added the weight of too many people trying to stay calm.

Brown leant forward across the table, going through autopsy files, and Woods was compiling everything the team had on the three newest victims.

Nash held the meeting. His arms were folded, and his face looked carved from granite. ‘There are eleven confirmed deaths in Barrow and another twenty-six across the country,’ he said. ‘We have three families, but had no crossover that made sense. They are all from separate households.’

‘Had?’ Bowes asked. He jumped on the past tense about making a connection.

‘Nicely spotted, Bowes, but I’m keeping that one on ice for a few minutes. Well done.’

Bowes beamed at the compliment and looked at Norton, who gave him a thumbs up.  

‘It’s spreading.’ Patel jumped in. ‘Barrow, Dalton, Blackpool, and Partington.’

‘Until this morning, when a new case was reported in Bishop’s Stortford,’ Brown said.

‘Where the hell?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Is it airborne?’ Keeley asked.

Nash shook his head. ‘No. It’s too inconsistent. One child can be infected, yet their sibling is untouched.’

Molly straightened a paperclip and retwisted it, though not into its original form. ‘So we’re back to square one.’

Nash picked up a document wallet and tossed it onto the table.

‘Not quite. As you know, we had the McAlister’s funeral yesterday. Hundreds saw it. People fainted, broke down, and one woman died within hours of the service.’

‘The aunt,’ Woods said. ‘She collapsed right in front of the cameras.’

Nash sat on the edge of the desk and turned to Jackie. ‘Correct, Woods. But think about what you’ve just said. What does it mean?’

‘That everybody saw it?’ She didn’t like being put on the spot, but needed to remember what it was like to be part of the solution. Woods often took a backseat in open discussion, and it was good for her self-esteem to be brought out of the shadows. Brown opened her mouth to speak, and Nash stopped her. ‘Come on, Woods. What’s significant about the aunt being taken ill?’

Jackie focused on her feelings of being singled out and wasn’t concentrating on the case. She was a seasoned officer and should have been more on the ball. Nash wanted to kick her tires just a little bit more. ‘Think. The aunt of the original victims has been infected. What does that tell us?’

‘That it’s a new family link, outside the original household.’

‘Yes. Well done.’ He smiled at her, and she relaxed. ‘So, team, your job today is to liaise with all the other infected boroughs and look into the families. Check out the relatives and request blood work on anybody who is related. Let’s contain this thing.’

He was about to release some serious intel and stood up. ‘What I am going to tell you does not leave this room. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Every member of the team reacted to the seriousness of his voice.  

‘What nobody knows—not the press, or even the family—is that during the funeral yesterday the coffins were empty.’

The room stilled.

Molly straightened and dropped her clip. ‘Empty?’

Nash’s voice was steady. He liked the way they snapped to attention. They were keen and ready to work. ‘MI5 intervened. It was all very quiet. They took the deceased the night before and flew them to Porton Down. The cadavers have been held in Level 4 containment.’

Keeley straightened in her seat. ‘The Porton Down?’

Bowes let out a whistle. ‘That’s like sending your nan’s sausage casserole to Area 51.’

Everybody laughed, but it was awed at the news, rather than raucous.

‘Exactly,’ Nash said. ‘They don’t remove bodies to the Fort Knox of biohazards unless something’s very wrong.’

‘And they didn’t tell us?’ Brown asked.

Bronwyn Lewis had let herself into the meeting and had been listening at the back. She strode up the centre aisle with her heels rapping out an anthem on the floor. Nash smiled at her and moved aside. When the boss was in the room, she commanded instant attention.

‘They don’t have to,’ she said. ‘This is out of our jurisdiction now. But while they’re running blood panels, people are dying on our patch. So we keep working, quietly, but with absolute attention to detail. I want faces matched from the funeral crowd. Every vehicle at that funeral must be traced. Who left in a rush? They’re a person of interest, anyone who didn’t cry, and anyone who did. And especially, look for people who stared at the cameras for too long.’

‘Ma’am,’ they all chanted.

‘So basically, everybody’s a suspect?’ Lawson said.

‘You got it,’ Aiden. ‘Triage, prioritise importance, and let’s attack.’

Keeley leaned back. ‘Do you think someone was watching?’

 Nash answered. ‘I think somebody out there was enjoying it.’ He sat back and let his bomb explode.

After the meeting, Keeley sat on the wall of the break area with an unlit cigarette between her fingers. She hadn’t smoked since her narcotic treatment, but she once told Nash that she liked to hold one to remind her of her lowest point. He enjoyed watching these two grow. It reminded him of being a rookie. Not that he’d ever chased girls, though he’d run from a few. On paper, Bowes was punching, but Norton would do well to make a friend of him. Nash didn’t expect anything more to come of it, but he liked the unlikely alliance that was forming.

Bowes came out with two hot drinks and an expression of cautious optimism. ‘I’m not offering you one of my jelly babies today,’ he said. ‘Not after you laughed at me, yesterday. I thought I’d ramp it up with hot chocolate. No whipped cream though, we’re not animals.’

Keeley winked at him. ‘You speak for yourself. I’m a tiger, mate.’

Bowes shrugged. ‘You’re scary. It’s like armour. You use it to keep people away, but it makes them trust you.’

She laughed. ‘Deep, bro.’

He sat down beside her. ‘You’re like Lara Croft on sarcasm supplements. You know, if you ever want to get out of the station for a bit, I know a place that does a proper Jalfrezi.’

‘You keep bribing me with food.’

‘Is it working?’

She breathed the rain-washed air through her nose, and Nash saw her shoulders soften. ‘Nah. But I can always eat.’

He raised his cup. ‘To winning you over one snack at a time.’

Keeley knocked hers against it, and Nash noticed the rain had stopped.

Xion Island Carrier is book 6 in the DCI Nash series. They're all on KU. Hush Hush Honeysuckle is Book One, and this is the Amazon link.

https://books2read.com/u/4EB0zg