Department 19

“No, Greg, you shouldn’t…”

“Shouldn’t?”

Matt’s mother swallowed hard.

“I mean, don’t go out there. Please?”

“Just shut the hell up, OK, Lynne? Matt, let’s go.”

Greg Browning opened the door to the back garden and stopped in the doorway, listening. Matt walked over and stood behind him, looking over his father’s shoulder into the darkening sky.

The garden was silent; nothing moved in the cool evening air.

Matt’s father took a torch from the shelf beside the back door, turned it on and stepped out on to the narrow strip of patio that ran below the kitchen windows. Matt followed, scanning the dark garden for whatever had fallen past his window. Behind him in the kitchen he could hear his mother trying to explain what had happened to the police.

His dad shone the torch in a wide arc across the flowerbeds that bordered the narrow strip of lawn. At the edge of the grass the beam picked out a flash of white.

“Over there,” said Matt. “In the flowerbed.”

“Stay here.”

Matt stood on the patio as his father walked slowly across the threadbare lawn. He inhaled sharply as he reached the edge of the grass.

“What is it?” Matt asked.

No reply. His father just kept staring down into the dark flowerbed.

“Dad? What is it?”

Finally, his father looked round at him. His eyes were wide.

“It’s a girl,” he said, eventually. “It’s a teenage girl.”

“What?”

“Come and look.”

Matt walked across the lawn and looked down into the weed-strewn flowerbed.

The girl was lying on her back in the dirt, half buried by the force of her landing. Her pale face was smeared with blood, and her eyes and mouth were grotesquely swollen. Black hair fanned out around her head like a dark halo, matted with mud and clumped together in bloody strands. Her left arm was obviously broken, her forearm joining her elbow at an unnatural right angle. Her light grey shirt was soaked black with blood, and Matt realised with horror that there was a wide hole in her stomach, along the line of her abdomen. He saw glistening red and purple, and looked away.

“It looks like someone tried to gut her,” his father said quietly.

“What is it, Greg?” shouted Matt’s mother from the kitchen doorway. “What’s happening?”

“Shut up, Lynne,” Greg Browning replied automatically, but his voice was low, and for once he didn’t sound angry.

He sounds scared, thought Matt, and crouched down beside the girl. Despite the damage to her face, she was beautiful, her skin so pale it was almost translucent, her lips a dark, inviting red.

Behind him his father was muttering to himself, looking from the sky to the ground and back again, searching for an explanation for why this girl had fallen into their garden.

Matt placed his hand on the cool skin of her neck, checking for a pulse, knowing he wouldn’t find one.

Who did this to you? he wondered.

The girl opened her swollen right eye and looked straight at Matt. He screamed.

“She’s alive!” he yelled.

“Don’t be stupid,” shouted Greg Browning. “She’s—”

The girl coughed, a deep spluttering rattle that sent new streams of blood running down her chin. She turned her head towards Matt and said something he couldn’t make out.

“My God,” said Matt’s father.

Matt pushed himself up off the grass and slowly approached his father’s side. He looked down at the stricken girl, who was moving her head slowly from side to side, her lips curled back in a grimace of pain.

“We have to do something, Dad,” said Matt. “We can’t leave her like this.”

His father turned on him, his face full of anger.

“What do you want me to do?” he shouted. “The police are on their way, they can deal with it. We shouldn’t even touch her.”

“But Dad—”

Greg Browning’s face twisted with rage and he raised a fist and took a step towards his son. Matt cried out, covering his face with his forearms and turning away.

“You’ll be quiet if you know what’s good for you,” his dad grunted, lowering the fist.

Matt looked at his father, his cheeks flushed red with shame and impotence, his brain alive with hatred. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, when a deafening roar filled the evening air and a squat black helicopter appeared over the trees that stood at the bottom of their suburban garden.

Matt covered his face and did his best to remain upright as the helicopter’s rotors churned the dust and dirt of the garden. He could see his dad shouting but could hear nothing over the thunder of the engines and the shriek of the wind. He craned his neck, his hands shielding his eyes, and watched the helicopter disappear over the roof of their house.

Matt turned and raced towards the house, past his mother who was standing motionless at the back door, through the kitchen and the narrow corridor and towards the front door.

Behind him he could hear his dad shouting his name, but he didn’t slow his pace. He flung the front door open in time to see the black helicopter lowering itself on to the grey tarmac of the road, its rotors whirring above the parked cars that lined their street.

Matt’s dad appeared behind him in the corridor, grabbed his son’s shoulder and spun him around.

“What the hell do you think you’re…”

Greg Browning’s voice trailed off as he stared out into the street. Matt turned and watched as a door slid open in the side of the helicopter and four figures emerged.

The first two were dressed all in black and looked like riot policemen, their uniforms covered with plates of black body armour, their faces hidden beneath black helmets with purple visors.

Both were carrying submachine guns in their gloved hands.

Behind them followed a man and a woman in white biohazard containment suits, their faces visible behind the thick plastic of their masks. Between them they were carrying a white stretcher.