Free March by Gabrielle Lord

about finally meeting you, so maybe it was nothing at all … Regardless,’ she said, ‘it was enough to make me leave the memory stick behind.’
    ‘A memory stick? What was on it?’
    ‘Back in the hospice, when your dad was pretty far along in his illness,’ she sighed, ‘I was clearing out some of his stuff from his wash-bag when the memory stick fell out. He could barely move but I straightaway sensed in his eyes that from his bed, he was trying to tell me that it contained something very important. I’d been experimenting and trying out different techniques of communicating with him, so I held it up and asked him, “What’s this?” and “Who is it for?” Immediately he began trying to point with his eyes to a photograph—the one of you two at the airfield. I said to him, “Tom, it’s OK. I’ll give it to Cal, I promise,” and I could see the rush of relief calm his body.’
    I felt a strange mixture of sorrow and joy to hear this.
    ‘Do you know what’s on it?’
    ‘Yes, I had a look. My guess is that they’re photographs from Ireland. There are lots of green fields and ruins. I have no idea how they could be important, but maybe you will.’ She stood a moment listening to something, then went back to the lab door.
    ‘Did you hear something?’ she said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘There it is again!’
    I came to the door to join her and listenedintently. ‘What did it sound like?’ I asked.
    ‘I thought I heard footsteps—down the hallway.’
    All I could pick up was the low hum of the air-conditioning, and the sound of distant traffic from the main road up the hill.
    ‘Are you sure the door locked after you came in?’ she asked.
    I thought for a second. ‘I’m pretty sure I heard it click behind me. It’s a heavy, air-pressured door, isn’t it? Not the kind you need to close after you.’
    ‘You’re right. It must have been one of the lab animals,’ Jennifer said, rushing a couple of metres away to peer through a narrow window, high in the wall. I looked around but I couldn’t see any lab animals, let alone hear any. I was worried. I didn’t know any animals that could make sounds like human footsteps. Especially not snakes.
    Could someone have followed me here after all? I recalled the librarians at Liberty Square and how they’d been whispering together. If they’d reported my location to the authorities, cops could have been watching the surrounding places like bus stops and train stations. I thought of the man in the striped T-shirt at the bus shelter. Had he recognised me and called someone? Was he on the phone to authorities as we pulled away from the curb?

    ‘I’d better start locking up now,’ Jennifer said, taking a set of keys from a drawer. ‘If you want to come and do the rounds with me, I can tell you what I know and we can find a way to get the memory stick safely to you.’
    I followed her down the building as she checked doors and switched off lights. We seemed to be the only people around but I wondered why a building that size didn’t have security.
    ‘Where are your security people?’ I asked her.
    ‘Patrolling the grounds out back somewhere,’ she said. ‘This is a huge complex. They’ll probably be back up this way around eleven.’

    ‘Cal,’ she said as we continued through the maze of corridors and corners, ‘I don’t mean to scare you again but your father was very worried about someone towards the end of his life. Someone other than himself,’ she clarified.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘I never found out. He couldn’t speak at that stage, and I hadn’t managed to find just the right way of getting information out of him. Hehad been able to manage a few words earlier when he’d asked another nurse to get a book for him— Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, but that was before I began working closely with him. This other nurse thought it was a strange choice but she found a copy and gave it to him. Instead of being pleased, he just threw it on the