Deja vu, p.7
Deja Vu, page 7
~
The blackness opened like a mouth. She heard Jago say, ‘A friend of mine was paralysed by one of those,’ but he was no longer there. It was a memory. She blinked in the rushing, dry air. She was falling too fast. She would hit the ground
(spin, measure, snip)
fast enough to break into pieces, fragments of a looking glass.
She saw a circle of light. She began to (spin) slow. The decelerator squealed and the harness bit into her pelvis. Her weight returned with a thump and her head whipped forward. Gasping, her eyes opened on smoke and dust. She could (measure) see her shoes dangling centimetres from the ground. She pinched the decelerator. It sprang open and the rope was (snip) released.
She landed on the balls of her feet. A pat confirmed that her gun was still in its holster. She resettled her glasses and tensed as McWhirter stepped towards her. She felt the heat of his face and his spit-smelling breath.
‘Your helmet light has three levels of brightness. Just tap. Understood?’
Though her glasses had zero-light processors, she did not want McWhirter to know. She tapped the helmet three times. The beam became intense and localised. She had landed in the remains of a corridor. It was a long, grey space choked with debris. She could see furniture, computer equipment, filing cabinets and paper. The air tickled her throat.
‘What happened down here?’ she asked.
‘A fire. Don’t be surprised if we suffocate.’
‘Was this damage caused yesterday?’
‘Most of it by the first bomb, twenty years ago.’
‘And you say Proctor was responsible for both?’
‘The origin of the explosion was inside the locked workroom of Proctor’s laboratory. It should have destroyed the equipment in Proctor’s lab, and only that.’
‘But it didn’t.’
‘No. It started a fire, which soon spread. Ceilings collapsed. Eight people were killed. Proctor was evasive during his initial interrogation and evasive again to the inquiry. In their report, the investigators noted their suspicions, but there wasn’t enough evidence. He slipped through the net.’
‘Until now,’ said Saskia, probing. ‘When he slipped through the net again.’
McWhirter turned his light in her direction. ‘Be careful where you step, Detective. I don’t want to lose anyone else.’
He stepped through a rough gap that had once held a door. Puddles splashed as she followed. Inside the room, their torch-beams were thickened by the dust. A huge glass tank loomed. Its broken edges winked.
‘What was in there?’
‘A whole world. A world in a fish tank.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Of course you don’t.’ He gestured to the right. ‘Proctor’s old office. That was where the 2003 bomb went off.’
Saskia removed her glasses and polished them on the hem of her blouse. As she rubbed, she felt his stare, and the revolver was close in her thoughts until the glasses were replaced and McWhirter turned away. She looked slowly over the scene to capture it. Later review of the video would reveal the shadowed corners. She stepped forward and something crunched underfoot. She glanced down and saw the eye of a flattened rat. She moved back and bumped into an overturned chair. Her heart seemed to grow large and hot in her chest.
McWhirter’s light blinded her again. ‘You know, we have a saying in Britain: “The murderer always returns to the scene of the crime.” Shimoda’s body was in that room along with the bomb. He still is. Pieces of him, anyway.’
‘“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all”.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Another British saying. Do you feel guilty, Colonel, that this happened on your watch?’
‘Should I?’
‘It happened twice.’
‘Detective, few people finish the games they start with me.’
Saskia touched rat with the tip of her shoe. She remembered crying in the back of a taxi after the break up with Simon, the boyfriend who never was. The burn: a question mark. Question: What power did McWhirter have over the Angel of Death, the serial killer whose bottled geni could erupt from her brain in an instant?
‘Are you trying to scare me, Colonel?’
‘I’m making you aware of the facts.’
‘Facts I have. What I need is the feel. Where is the interface with the computer?’
‘See for yourself.’
He pointed towards a doorway in the far wall. She moved towards it. The plaintive cries of the rats became louder. The room was small. There was a power here: it was a room in a room in a room, buried deep in the earth. Saskia was struck by the thought that, after she and McWhirter completed their tour, and this place was capped, its silence would return and its power would grow again.
McWhirter breathed in her ear. ‘It has an unpleasant feel, don’t you agree?’
She turned to him. ‘It is certainly dusty.’
‘Got what you wanted?’
‘Please?’
‘You wanted to get into Proctor’s head. Are you close enough? You can almost smell him, can’t you? Smells like…an incinerator. A crematorium, even.’
‘I would like to leave now.’
‘It has atmosphere, doesn’t it? My little Magical Mystery Tour.’
‘I would like to leave.’ Her voice was firmer. Her hand rested on her gun. ‘Now.’
He laughed. ‘I’m only pulling your leg. Come on.’
They retraced their steps. When they reached the corridor, McWhirter was quick to attach his rope. He connected the decelerator and climbed upwards in a caterpillar-like motion, alternately grasping the rope his hands and feet. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Directly. I want to check to something first.’
‘Well, don’t stay too long. I heard some noises just now.’
‘What kind of noises?’
‘Just noises.’
And he was gone. His breath echoed down the shaft and sounded close, but Saskia was alone. She touched the edge of her glasses and a Heads Up Display appeared, overlaying the dark scene with objecting-parsing halos, and a menu. A cross-hair was locked to her eye movements. She blinked at the cartoonish graphic of a filing cabinet and a preview of her recently recorded footage expanded.
What? she thought. What am I looking for?
Myself?
No. Concentrate.
She cued through the footage until she found the moment she had descended into the research centre. Fast forward some seconds. The dark corners were bright. No objects had thermal properties that the glasses identified as statistically warmer or cooler than the ambient. She stopped on the image of the corridor wall. Her breath stopped too. Her astonished eyes saccaded to the magnifier icon, blinked, and the image rushed out.
It showed the corridor – this corridor, right now – in almost perfect brilliance. There was the wreckage, the charcoaled furniture and loose paper. But on the wall immediately to the left of the doorway, someone had written a message.
The words blazed white on the grey surface. She lowered her glasses and looked sternly at the wall. Nothing. She raised the glasses. The graffiti re-appeared. She swallowed. The writer had used a paint that was reflective in the infra-red portion of the spectrum.
The message read:
Das Kribbeln in meinen Fingerspitzen lässt mich ahnen, es scheint ein Unglück sich anzubahnen.
The glasses were produced in America and their default language was English. Uncommanded, a subtitle ran across the base of her vision.
The pricking in my fingertips lets me say that bad luck is on the way.
Her heart tapped at her ribs. The glasses skipped through a Euclidean deep-structure analysis of the sentence and returned a quote that was its nearest neighbour in a multi-dimensional semantic space:
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
Shakespeare, thought Saskia. Macbeth. The play began with three witches, each an analogue of a Fate: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she measures a length. Atropos, she cuts it.
Spin, measure, snip.
Surely the message had been written by Proctor. He must have known, somehow, that she was tracking him and had, somehow again, happened upon a fragment of her past life – a memory that she could not yet fully recall. Plus, he knew she was German.
There was one last element to the graffiti: an arrow that pointed to a slab of masonry. Behind it, she discovered a fist-sized rock and, beneath that, a sealed plastic folder. Inside was a white envelope. It was impossible to tell how long the folder had lain there, waiting.
‘Are you alright, hen?’ called Jago. ‘Sit tight. I’m coming down.’
‘Don’t worry, Scotty. I’m on my way.’
She tucked the folder into her jacket, reattached her decelerator, and began the caterpillar creep upwards. The hairs on her neck rose. Nothing snatched at her ankles. She looked up. A starfield of water droplets fell past her. She looked down. Three metres from the floor. Leaving.
Chapter Fifteen
David pulled into a narrow alleyway. He dug for the kickstand and eased his bike to a stable tilt. The glow of the display faded and the engine faltered and stopped. The suspension sighed.
It was nearly 6:00 pm. That day, he had watched the sun climb. He had ridden through rain, seen a double rainbow, and swerved around road-kill. His shoulders and neck ached from the constant hunch. His kidneys, meanwhile, had been bruised by the vibration. Same story with his wrists.
‘Oi, gormless.’
David looked up. A middle-aged woman was leaning into the alley from her window. Her bosom rested on her white, folded forearms.
‘Aye, you. You can’t park that here.’
He opened his visor. ‘Firstly, I am not gormless. Secondly, this bike will stay here, undisturbed by you, for the entire night. And if I find so much as a scratch in the morning, we can talk about it down the station.’
The woman moved back into silhouette. ‘Wor Barry would -’
David gave her a tired, tired look.
The single-glazed window slammed down. David sagged against the wall and tried to tune out the drumming in his ears. He slid his helmet upwards and ruffled his thinning hair. His neck had lost some movement but he resisted the urge to free the cartilage with a twist.
He emerged from the alley into a dusky street. Across the road was a pub called The Poor Players. Coloured lights pulsed in the windows. The music was a constant thump. Because it was an unlikely destination for a traveller as weary as him, he crossed the road. He reached to push the door when a voice said, ‘Yen’t a coppeh.’
A boy stood in the shadows. He wore a woollen cap, an Eskimo-style jacket with the hood down, jeans, and bright white trainers. He was bird-like in his movements. His eyes, when they caught the light, were red-ringed.
‘Sorry?’
David had no grip on the Northallerton accent. It sounded Geordie, but no doubt the boy would be offended by the comparison.
‘I heard what you said to old Taome. You aren’t a copper. On holiday, then?’
David shrugged as the words came into focus. His hand still hovered at the door. ‘Passing through. Yourself?’
‘Touting for business.’
Something in his voice spoke directly to David’s stomach. He felt nauseous. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘Wannafuckman?’ asked the boy. He was relaxed but poised to run. David knew he had asked that question a thousand times and, with repetition, the meaning had worn out.
David’s hand dropped from the door. He reached for the boy and, with a gloved finger, turned his face. ‘You’re not a boy at all. You’re just a little girl.’
Suddenly he wanted Jennifer.
‘All right, you’ve touched the merchandise. Cash or plastic?’
~
They ate in McCabe’s Fish Palace. David let the girl sit facing the window. The palace was empty but for them and McCabe, a Turkish man who whistled over his glass battlement. The air was heavy with grease, the floor slippery with it. In silence, they unfurled their fish and chips.
‘Eat it before it gets cold,’ David said.
‘I’ll eat it when I fucking want.’
‘Who are you?’
‘What?’
‘Your name.’
‘Janine, like the singer.’ She took a chip. ‘What’s your’s?’
‘David, like the king.’
‘Jew, are we?’
‘Yep.’
‘Hmm.’ She ate some more chips, then lifted the fish with two hands and tore a mouthful from the middle. David watched her. She chewed once, twice and swallowed. ‘You have a daughter, don’t you?’
‘Sort of. I sent her away.’
She took another bite. With her mouth full, she waved him on. ‘Out with it, then. You’re paying me to listen – and paying well – so get your money’s worth.’
‘My daughter is called Jennifer.’
‘Me and her would get on like a house on fire, right?’
‘Actually, I’m not sure if she’s your type.’
‘Why did you send her away?’
‘I could give you facts. She was a real genius. The schools in this country couldn’t do anything for her. I decided to send her to a school in New York for gifted children. Jennifer was twelve. That was eight years ago. I think she works for the American government now.’
‘New York. Fuck, you have money.’
He shrugged and watched, his mind idling, as a customer walked in and asked for battered cod. An old man in faded jeans. ‘Yes, you’re right. I have money.’
‘So what else could you give me?’
‘What?’
‘You said you could give me the facts. But that’s not the whole story. Am I right?’
David ripped a chip from its sticky pile. He pointed it at her. ‘You’re good. You could do this for a living.’
She nodded seriously. ‘Yes. Now what about the rest of the story?’
‘I...’ he began, and Christ if he wasn’t near crying. He felt a tingling in his throat and a juvenile sense of hopelessness. ‘Here we go: I am not a good parent. Some people could spend millions on a psychiatrist before they can say something like that.’
‘Who says you won’t? I’m not cheap.’
David laughed, thrown clear of his self-pity. ‘What about your own parents?’
‘Ah, the psychiatrist cannot talk about herself. It’s a rule.’
‘You have rules?’
‘Of course. Let’s be professional. What happened to her mother? Did she leave you?’
David’s smile folded. ‘Her mother was killed a few months after she was born. There was an accident where we both worked. She died in my arms.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘It’s true.’
She leaned forward. ‘Did she wake up just before she died?’
‘No. She died instantly.’
‘Murder?’
‘It’s not that simple.’ Inside, he was silent. His mind listened to his mouth. ‘She looked asleep. I tried to wake her but she wasn’t breathing. I remember…screaming. Later, someone led me from the building. I regret that she died alone.’
‘Regrets,’ Janine said. Her fish was nearly gone. His was hardly touched. ‘Did you work in the World Trade Center?’
‘So you remember that. No. It was later.’
‘Oh.’
‘You want some more fish?’
‘No, thanks.’
David took his own fish and plonked it on hers. ‘Here.’
‘What’s wrong with you? I don’t want your fucking leftovers.’
He smiled and watched her eat it. ‘Stop fucking smiling,’ she said, spitting fish.
‘Guess what?’ he said.
She stopped mid-chew. ‘Wha’?’
‘I’m on the run from the police. They want me for murder.’
‘They want me for shoplifting. Small fucking world.’
David said mildly, ‘It is.’
Janine resumed her chewing. ‘I don’t really do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Have sex with people for money.’
Something swept through David. Was it relief that he had been talking to the worst example of society’s failure, only to find that she had beaten him at his own game? She had played on his pity and eaten her meal.
And haven’t I done the same to her? Got what I wanted? A dry run at reconciliation?
‘So what do you do?’
‘I lure them in and take them somewhere. Back of The Players. Down to the canal. Or Blackboy Road. Somewhere. Then me mates grab them and we take their cards.’ She stopped eating. ‘Sorry.’
David sighed and tried to push his chair from the table. It was stuck to the floor. He eased out and put on his gloves.
‘Back on the run?’ she asked.
‘I’m going to get some sleep. In the morning I’ll ride on.’ He leaned closer. ‘Janine, you want your money?’
She burped and nodded. ‘Aye. Make it five hundred.’ She said it casually, too casually, ready for David to protest. He did not.
‘Got a card?’
She had it ready and handed it over. He touched the two. ‘Can I ask you something without you getting angry or saying “fuck”?’
‘Maybe.’
He placed a gloved hand on her head. ‘Will you take care of yourself?’
‘That all depends.’
He walked out and felt Janine’s stare all the way.
Chapter Sixteen
In his room on the first floor of The Poor Players, David opened his rucksack and spilled the contents across the bed. Among the travel documents was a stun gun. He read its instructions while the live band, downstairs, played their final song. He continued through the travel documents and found an envelope. Smiled. Inside was a metallic card. The warmth of his fingertips woke it.
‘Hello, Ego.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Professor David Proctor, at your service.’
There was a beep as his voice was identified. ‘No, I am at yours.’
‘Oh, you.’ David removed the pip that had been taped into the back. ‘Switch to earpiece.’
