Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Eighteen: The Death of Robin Crake

Oxford, 1877:

Sam was determined that, no matter how many people in Oxford seemed to like Jack Cade – no matter how easy he was to like – no matter how much time he spent cheerfully drinking himself into oblivion – he was not going to forget how dangerous the man was.

He called at the Faculty of Demonic Speculation every day, half-hoping to hear stories of violent conduct just so he could be proved right. But Alice Darwin and Dr Petrescu had already started treating the General with all the fond contempt that doctors reserve for their regular patients. 

When Sam called that morning, Dr Petrescu was in the operating theatre – a horrible wooden room laid out like a stadium, with tiers of seats rising around a central platform. It was in the cellar, because it had been used for dissections back in the days when dissections were still illegal. And its walls were padded for soundproofing, because the person on the dissecting table hadn't always been dead.

Nowadays, it was just a laboratory, or a room for conducting medical exams. Jack was usually to be found sitting on the edge of the dissecting table, swinging his legs over the side, and cheerfully enduring some kind of test – whether it was Dr Petrescu tapping his knees with a hammer, or Mrs Darwin taking his pulse in her stern but seductive way. Sam wasn't sure what any of these tests were supposed to prove, but then he treasured his ignorance of what went on in this room.

Jack was not perched merrily on the dissecting table today, however. Today, it was just Dr Petrescu, mixing up a beaker of some caustic-smelling chemical. He ruffled his moustache in greeting when he saw Sam coming down the steps.

"You have come for another report on the innocuous Mr Cade? This morning, his blood pressure was 120 over 80, with a pulse of seventy beats per minute. He rated his desire to kill as 'average', but 'average' for him is not average, so we've seen a marked improvement in the past few weeks."

Sam waved aside all this alarmingly scientific information. He always felt panicky down here, looking at the leather straps on the side of the dissecting table.

And he hadn't felt comfortable in Dr Petrescu's presence ever since that first interview with Jack Cade in the Senior Common Room. He kept staring at him and thinking: Ten thousand. Ten thousand dead new-breeds. He wasn't even sure he could visualize that many people. Ten thousand. 

How many people would fit in this room, he wondered? A hundred? And this cheerful doctor with the large moustache had been responsible for killing a hundred times that number. A hundred versions of this room, packed solid with conscious, feeling life-forms. How were you even supposed to come to terms with it, let alone atone for it?

"Has he been behaving himself?" said Sam, in an effort to cut short his inner monologue.

"Extremely," said Dr Petrescu.

Sam didn't like the sound of that. Perhaps it was just Dr Petrescu's strange way with the English language, but he made it sound as though Jack was straining every fibre of his being to behave himself, and that it wouldn't be long before he snapped.

"And is he--" Sam waved a hand vaguely, "co-operating with your experiments?"

"Oh yes," said Dr Petrescu. "And, I'm bound to say, my compound is a lot gentler than some of the chemicals he freely chooses to imbibe on a daily basis."

Sam gave him a sharp look. "Are you sure it's a good idea to let him have alcohol? And – whatever else he has? It can't be good for him, can it?"

"As a doctor, I would say not," said Dr Petrescu. "As a practical man, however, I would never underestimate the value of distractions. We do not know what other poisons he may be struggling under."