INCARNATION Read Free

check out, sir?’
    Dennison nodded.
    ‘Go on,’ he said. A voice drifted through the open window, a rough man’s voice complaining about something.
    ‘School?’
    ‘Ushaw College.’
    ‘And after that?’
    'The usual. Cambridge. My father’s college, King’s. I read Chinese.’
    ‘The Keynes’ building was there then, was it?’
    ‘Naturally.’
    ‘It’s next to the chapel, isn’t it?’
    ‘Of course not. It’s on the other side of college, facing on to King’s Parade.’
    Dennison grunted. He was a John’s man, but he knew the Keynes’ building.
    ‘After college?’
    ‘My tutor, Harry Forbes, gave me an address in London. Baker Street. I had a chat with a man there, and the next day I was up for an interview in Carlton Gardens. You know the drill, you’ve been through it yourself.’
    Dennison cleared his throat.
    ‘Who interviewed you?’ he asked.
    ‘Peter Doddswell. Michael Patch. De Coverley - it must have been a couple of months before his retirement. Hugh Creasey looked in.’
    Dennison looked away. Ross reached down for a plastic file he’d left on the floor. Opening it, he extracted a handful of photographs. He took one and passed it to Yongden.
    ‘Can you tell me who this is?’ he asked.
    Yongden glanced at the photograph and handed it back.
    ‘My sister, Juliet.’
    ‘And this?’
    He passed across a second photograph.
    ‘My uncle Ralph.’
    ‘This?’
    Yongden studied the third photograph briefly and shrugged.
    ‘Never seen him before.’
    ‘Well, well,’ said Dennison, smirking for the first time. ‘And who is it, Ross?’
    Ross put the photograph back in the file.
    ‘My uncle James. He lives in Montreal. He’s been there for the past twenty years.’
    The smirk vanished from Dennison’s face.
    ‘Perhaps you can enlighten us all,’ he said, ‘as to what this is all about exactly. Why has Matthew Hyde incarnated himself - if that’s the correct phrase - in the body of a twelve-year-old coolie from - where the hell is it?’
    Ross answered.
    ‘Leh, sir. And he’s not a coolie, he’s -‘
    ‘I’ll call him what I damn well please.’ He looked back at Yongden. ‘Well?’
    ‘I’m in Yongden’s body because we need to talk.’
    ‘Talk?’
    ‘About information I have and you need.’
    ‘What sort of information?’
    ‘About Matthew Hyde’s last operation. Operation Hong Cha.’
    Yongden stopped speaking and looked directly at Dennison. There was total silence in the room. A kind of electricity seemed to have taken hold of it. Dennison looked at the boy, as if suddenly taken unwell. He made to say something to Yongden, then thought better of it. Instead, he turned to Ross.
    ‘Turn off the bloody tape.’
    ‘Sir, I’ve already -‘
    ‘I said turn the tape off. That’s a direct order.’
    He took a gun from his pocket and pointed it at Ross.
    ‘Or would you like me to blow your bloody brains out?’
    Ross’s hand reached out and the tape stopped turning.

CHAPTER FOUR
    London 
    23. June

    T he telephone entered his dreams like a hand reaching into water to bring a drowning man to safety. He’d been dreaming about his mother, something well calculated to cause him the maximum distress. It hadn’t really been his mother, of course, it had been Elizabeth; not that it made a great deal of difference. They’d both betrayed him, they’d both erected statues of themselves on heavy stone plinths in the centre of his psyche. It had been Elizabeth in the dream, but it had been his mother’s eyes glaring at him that he remembered as he swam up to the surface.
    Getting there didn’t make anything much better. Dreams gave way to memories, memories to the bitterness of reality. The phone went on ringing as he tried to readjust himself to where and what he was. He glanced at the alarm clock. It was only half past seven. He groaned aloud. Only some bastard at Vauxhall would be ringing at this time, and if they were ringing early, it meant something was up.
    He lifted