Fourth Horseman by Kate Thompson Read Free Book Online

couldn’t get in through the gates so I cycled on a bit further to see if there was another way in for someone on foot. There wasn’t. An old wall ran along beside the road for about three hundred metres, then turned inland and ran along the side of a cornfield. It was a good two and a half metres high at its lowest point and impossible to see over. On the other side of it was the woodland Alex and I had begun to explore a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t tell from there but I guessed that the wall went all the way round the old farm buildings and their woodlands. The top of it was concrete embedded with chunks of glass, their sharp edges pointing upwards, and it looked to me as if some of it had been recently replaced. The lab was clearly well protected.
    I went back to the gate and phoned Dad on my mobile to get the numbers for the keypad. 7686. I committed them to memory as I punched them in, then cycled through the open gates and round to the back yard. I wondered who had done the conversion, and how they had managed to keep it quiet. There was no sign of them left behind—no piles of rubble or drifts of plastic and polystyrene. No empty milk cartons or crisp packets lying around. Healthy weeds were growing through the gravel of the drive and between the old paving stones of the yards. It was all just a little bit too perfect, and as I passed beneath the overhanging branches at the edge of the yard I got that uneasy feeling again. Something about this was wrong.
    Dad opened the door for me and led the way into the cage room. It was completely silent—no sign of squirrels anywhere. But on the central island where the feed and cleaning tools were kept several square shapes were standing, covered by a dark grey blanket.
    ‘They’re in there,’ said Dad. He lifted the blanket and all hell broke loose. In six small hamster cages three dozen young squirrels burst into frenzied activity, hurling themselves at the sides and tops of the cages with surprising force.
    ‘Look.’ Three of Dad’s fingers had plasters on. He pulled one of them off and showed me a tiny wound. ‘They’re all very cross for some reason.’
    ‘Wouldn’t you be?’ I said. ‘Cooped up like that. Where have they come from?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Dad. ‘Mr Davenport said they were bred in captivity but he didn’t say where.’
    ‘Who would be breeding squirrels in captivity?’ I asked. ‘They’re not normally used in lab experiments, are they?’
    ‘No,’ said Dad. ‘And they don’t behave like lab mice or rats either. Whoever bred these hasn’t tamed them at all.’ He waved his bitten fingers again and I laughed.
    ‘I was going to put them into the big cages,’ he went on.
    ‘We can just pour them in, can’t we?’ I said.
    ‘We could, but how would we ever get them out again?’
    I could see his point. I didn’t have any experience of small animals. Some of my friends kept hamsters or gerbils but I never had.
    ‘I think we should leave them where they are until we can get them used to being handled. There must be a way of doing it.’
    ‘I’ll ask around,’ I said.
    ‘Carefully,’ said Dad.
    ‘Or I might find something on the Internet. Can I use your computer?’
    ‘No,’ said Dad. ‘Wait until you get home. There’s no rush.’
    He tipped some hamster food into each of the cages, setting off the panic reactions again. The little creatures were really cute, even if they did bite.
    ‘Can I do it, Dad?’ I said. ‘Get them used to us, I mean. They’re gorgeous. I wouldn’t mind coming in and playing with them.’
    ‘That’d be perfect,’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Definitely.’
    ‘You have a deal,’ he said. ‘And I might even be able to find a bit of extra pocket money for you.’
    We filled all the little dropper bottles with water and left the baby squirrels to themselves for a while. Dad was staying, but he came out into the yard to have a cigarette as I was leaving, and that was when I