by Hocking, Ian
From Marseilles she had flown to Paris and caught a connecting flight to Brussels. The proverbial sleepless night in the flat. The so-typical call to her mother. The predictable whisky at four in the morning watching the rain. How stereotypical. How ordinary.
She walked into the second anteroom. It was a small kitchen. There was a refrigerator. It contained cold, still mineral water. She pulled the handle and her secretary fell out. A bottle of water rolled out too. Its label read ‘best served chilled’. As for the secretary, she was dead.
The Return
West Lothian, Scotland
Sunday, 10th September 2023
Around midday, the rain eased. A car arrived at the Park Hotel. The ruin of the West Lothian Research Centre lay beneath its foundations. Its entrances were capped. It lay dormant. No longer were approaching vehicles checked, visitors searched, or the expansive woodlands patrolled. The hotel was open for business as a retreat for writers and anglers.
Inside the car, the arrival gazed out. He had grown in the years since he had cradled the head of his dead wife. On that autumn morning in 2023, David Proctor was an Oxford professor in his early fifties. He looked at the hotel and felt like he was attending a school reunion.
“Destination reached,” said his computer.
“Thank you, Ego.” He opened the door and relished the cool, damp air. It had been a five-hour journey.
“One moment, please. Professor Proctor, you have a phone call.”
“Tell them I’m busy,” he said.
“It is your daughter.”
David paused. He pulled his leg back into the car and closed the door. He steepled his fingers and tried to think. It didn’t work.
“Professor Proctor? Your caller is waiting.”
“Fine. Put her on.”
The computer displayed a little egg-timer and did nothing. “Is there a problem?” he asked.
“The communication appears to be encrypted. I do not know the cipher.”
David smiled. “Find and read the file on Jennifer’s highschool maths project.”
“Understood.”
Immediately, the image of his daughter appeared.
Jennifer. David drew a breath. He had last seen her aged sixteen. She wore thick glasses, no make-up, and she had scraped her hair into a bun. She was pale and stern. She looked like her mother.
“Hello, Jennifer.”
“Hi, dad.”
David laughed. She had an American accent. Jennifer, in contrast, remained calm. His laughter died. “I’m glad you called,” he said.
“Are you?”
“Yes. I wanted to talk to you.”
“Talk, then.”
David watched the rain run down the windscreen. He wasn’t ready for this. Not now. “I – I’m sorry. After you went to New York, I thought maybe you needed some time to yourself.”
“You sent me away. You sent the freak to the freaks then skipped the country.”
“Look, you couldn’t stay in Oxford any more. You would have been shunned because of your – because of the way you were. You wouldn’t have realised your full potential.” David sighed softly, but his heart thumped in his chest. “We’ve been through this.”
Jennifer leaned towards the camera. “I was the one who had to go through it, not you. Do you know what it was like in that school?”
“I got your emails.”
“I didn’t get yours.”
“Jennifer, why did you call?”
“Not to sing happy birthday,” she said. She blinked a few times. “I have a message for you.”
David looked at her. “What is it?”
She paused. “Where are you?”
“Actually I’m at the old research centre, in West Lothian.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I can’t tell you that on the phone.”
“This isn’t a phone, Dad,” she said. She had the trace of a smile.
“I know. It’s a secure server. You’ve encrypted the transmission.”
She nodded. “You remembered it.”
“What’s wrong, Jenny?”
“Just – can you go back? I need you to go back.”
David gazed around him. The hotel looked tearful. “I haven’t passed the point of no-return, I suppose. But why should I go back? Has someone been talking to you?”
Jennifer said softly, “Be careful. Watch your back. Something may happen.”
He was grim. “Something already has happened. And I’m late. Can I call you later?”
Jennifer smiled. It was hollow. But it was an effort. “Sure.”
She cut the connection.
David Proctor removed his personal assistant from the dashboard and put it in his wallet. It would pass for a bank card. He stepped from the car and his jacket flew open. He inhaled the Scottish air. Around him, high firs bowed and produced a sound that, to David, had always been indistinguishable from crashing waves.
He began to walk towards the hotel. He nodded to the doorman. The doorman turned and nodded to someone in the bushes. David glanced at the bushes and saw a suited man with an earpiece nod in yet another direction. Nothing else happened. David went inside.
Ahead of him, across the large foyer, a tall man with steel-grey hair was speaking to an elderly receptionist. It was the inimitable Colonel McWhirter. He turned at the sound of David’s footsteps and smiled. They had met only twice in the past twenty years. “I see they haven’t changed the décor,” David said.
“Hello again, Dr. Proctor,” said McWhirter. They shook hands.
“I’ve had my title changed to ‘professor’,” he replied, deadpan, “so that it doesn’t rhyme.”
McWhirter took one look at him, blinked, and they laughed. The receptionist frowned.
“Professor.”
“David, to you, Colonel.”
“It’s been six years.”
“The robotics conference.”
“Yeah.”
The banter evaporated and McWhirter rubbed his hands. The foyer was cold.
“Can you fill me in?” David asked.
The colonel took his elbow and steered him from the receptionist. “It’s Bruce. He managed to break into the lower levels and get to your old laboratory. Last Wednesday morning, he put New World back on-line.”
David tried to look surprised. “Wow. Where’s he getting the power from?”
“The hotel supply. That’s how we got wind of the whole business,” he added.
“I see. What’s the environmental situation down there?”
“Not good. Near freezing. We’ve got some temporary lighting, nothing else.”
“And Bruce’s physical condition?”
“Well,” the colonel said in a quiet tone, “not good, but stable. I thought maybe you could take a look at him.”
“Medical school was a long time ago. I had long hair then. Christ, I had hair.”
“Ah, you’ll do fine.” McWhirter’s eyes were humourless. “Shall we go?”
“Where?”
“Down below.”
David took a step backward. It was important to play on McWhirter’s expectations. “You want me to go down there?”
“Come on, David. I didn’t invite you here for the fishing. I need an expert to assess the situation.”
The emeritus professor, once a young and irascible scientist, now a cold, meticulous thinker, nodded and said, “You’re right. The old route?”
“The old route.”
They walked through a connecting door to the west wing. A conservatory on their right boasted a view of the hotel’s rear grounds. On their left was a smoking lounge. He imagined old men talking in lowered tones over their broadsheets. But there was nobody. The hotel had been emptied the day before.
They turned left into the cloakroom. It was the size of a snooker table. In the old days, David would stand exactly as he did now, place his thumb on the wall and wait for the computer to recognise his blood. Then the whole room would sink downwar
ds. But there was no longer a computer. Instead there was a splintered hole in the floor with a ladder leaning against its edge.
“What happened to the lift?”
“It was dismantled. All part of the clean-up operation following the bombing.”
David paused. He did not want to the talk about that. The regrets were shards of glass. “Me first?”
“No, me. The guard knows my face.” He cupped his hands and shouted down the hole: “Two coming down!” There was no reply.
The colonel had twenty years on David but he shinnied down the ladder without complaint. David waited until his head was out of sight and then pulled a card from his wallet. It was Ego. He tapped it once and its exterior assumed the contours of a female face.
“Send an email to my daughter,” David said quickly. “Tell her I’ve gone past the point of no return.”
“Unfortunately I cannot get a good signal,” replied the machine. It was already back in his wallet but the voice was clear. David had a microscopic earpiece.
“Alright, just stand by,” he said.
“David,” called a voice from below. “Are you alright?”
“Fine. I have a thing about ladders and heights.” Which was true. “I’ll be right with you.”
The professor stepped gingerly on to the ladder and began to climb down. There was a safety line. After some consideration, he hooked it to his belt buckle. When his head passed below the level of the floor, he looked down and saw a circle of temporary lighting. It was twenty metres below – the lowest floor of the research centre.
One minute later, his feet made contact with the ground and he unhooked the safety line. Four spotlights blazed. They made impenetrable shadows in the corners, which were full of odd-looking shapes. It seemed that nobody had cleared the area before it was sealed. There were broken cabinets, chairs, and computer monitors. There was even an old mattress. Paper was everywhere. In the centre, a space had been made for the lighting rig. Cables snaked away to nowhere, though, in the distance, David could hear the put-put of a diesel generator. Standing motionless in the cramped space, next to the ladder, was an armed man. He wore a builder’s hard-hat and outdoor clothing. He avoided David’s polite nod.
“Going up is more difficult,” said McWhirter.
“I can hardly wait.”
“Shall we?”
“After you.”
They stepped from the chamber into a corridor that was as derelict as the lift shaft. David remembered an air-conditioned expanse with beautifully decorated walls and light muzak. Now there was nothing more than a sense of space in the darkness, and he hugged himself against the cold.
McWhirter threw a relay. Lights erupted along the corridor – perhaps fifty metres – clang after clang. It was much larger than he remembered. The fire doors were gone. The walls were black as charcoal. Doors leading from the corridor were now nothing more than gaping holes, some filled with cabinets and chairs, others with wood and masonry. Like the lift shaft, there was paper everywhere.
“Take this,” said McWhirter. It was a heavy outdoor coat. “It’s a steady five degrees in here.” He also handed David a hard hat, some gloves, a first-aid kit, and a laminated map of the complex. “We’ll need to keep in contact if we get separated. Do you have a computer?”
David thought about Ego. “No,” he lied.
McWhirter nodded. He handed him a walkie-talkie. Then the old colonel paid out a length of climber’s rope and tied himself to David.
“We going potholing too?”
McWhirter tested his torch. “It’s a possibility. We’ve already lost a guard.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No,” said McWhirter. “He was checking out one of the higher levels and the floor gave way.”
There was a long pause as David gave the colonel time to admit that, aye, he was kidding.
“Bloody hell,” David said.
“OK, we’re ready. Step only where I step. Let’s go.”
They crept away. McWhirter went first, sweeping to and fro with his torch and sliding his feet, testing the floor’s integrity with each step.
Deadline
Saskia Brandt watched her secretary. Her secretary did not watch back because she was dead. Saskia was pensive. Somebody wanted to frame her. She walked back to her desk – retrieving her blouse on the way – and asked the computer for a list of her most recent cases. The computer did nothing.
“Computer?”
“Who are you?” it asked. “Your voice print is not identified.”
Saskia was intrigued. “I am Saskia Brandt. This is my office.”
“Update records?”
Saskia blinked. “Yes. Also run an internal systems check.”
“Check complete. No problems found.”
“Can you explain why my voice print was unavailable?”
“Yes, it may have been deleted accidentally, which is unlikely, or by a malicious user, which is likely.”
Was the malicious user the person trying to frame her? Why had the computer been able to recognise her voice before she opened the fridge? “Saskia,” it continued, “your refrigerator reports that it is broken.”
“Yes, I know that. My secretary is inside.”
“I do not understand. Why would your secretary be inside the refrigerator?”
“Do you know why?”
“I do not understand. Why would your secretary be inside the refrigerator?”
“Oh, switch off.”
“Yes, Saskia.”
The call came five minutes later. It was Jobanique. Saskia donned her blouse, though it was too hot to do so. Outside, the air was brown with dust and heat. The window became opaque with the image of her boss, Jobanique, sitting at his desk. He gave the impression of a middle-aged German businessman, but the whole scene was a computer-generated façade. His identity was secret. His name was certainly not Jobanique. Only one thing about the man was true: his voice. He spoke German well but crisply, without the fluency of a native speaker.
“Saskia, my dear. So nice to see you.”
“Thank you. Actually, I’m glad you called. I have a domestic problem. I won’t be able to take the case.”
Jobanique laughed. “My dear Saskia, you are already on the case.”
“This is the case?”
“Yes. I’m turning on high-strength encryption.” His image shimmered. In a more serious tone, he continued: “In the early hours of this morning your computer sent a report to a refrigeration subcontractor concerning your fridge.”
Saskia leaned against her desk. “Go on.”
“I intercepted the email and sent a man around to investigate.”
She began to pace. She looked at the picture of Simon, the blotter, the plant in the corner and the secretary’s little desk. There were no signs that someone had been in the room. “Why did you do that?”
“Instinct.” Jobanique shifted in his chair. “You had a new fridge fitted last year. A simple statistical test indicates that the probability of it failing within five years is less than one in twenty. I don’t like unusual occurrences. I sent the man around as a precaution. Stone.”
Saskia slumped in her chair and threw her feet onto the table, though she really wanted to put her head in her hands. “Stone?”
“He doesn’t talk. I don’t want Internal Affairs on this case before I have all the facts.”
“What are the facts?”
Jobanique played with his pen. “Your secretary was killed two days ago, Friday evening, by a single stab wound just below the ear. It led to a fatal brain haemorrhage.”
“How do you know that?”
“Stone brought a scanner with him. He’s into gadgets. The haemorrhage was effected by an extremely sharp blade more than six centimetres in length. She died almost instantly. What was her name?”
“Mary,” Saskia said.
“Poor Mary.”
Saskia stared at him. “Back to the killer’s movements. Why put her in the fridge?”<
br />
“Simple. She’s in the fridge. She’s a big hot object. The fridge’s gas compressor can’t cope -”
“Even less so with broken air conditioning,” Saskia interrupted.
“Agreed. So the fridge breaks. The computer makes an automatic report to have the fridge repaired. They send around a guy first thing on Monday morning, he discovers the body, presto, you’re framed.”
Saskia nodded. “Yes. I wasn’t due back until Tuesday. But why put the body in the fridge? Why not just call the police?”
Jobanique was silent for a while. “I don’t know.”
“Hang on. I’ve got it. I left the office at about six o’clock on the Friday evening. If the murder demonstrably happened a little later than that – which it probably did, considering that Mary was still in the office when I left – then I would have a cast-iron alibi. Witness statements from the taxi-driver, airline tickets – watertight. But by storing the body in the fridge and having the fridge break, the time of death is unpredictable. It would leave open the possibility I murdered Mary before leaving for Marseilles.”
“Fine so far,” said Jobanique, scratching his chin, “but why would you, as a murderer, put the body in the fridge?”
“Perhaps I wanted to store it temporarily and dispose of it later.”
“And just sneak out of the FIB building with her under your arm?”
Saskia smiled. “The mind of the murderer is not always clear. Take the motive, for example. What could that be?”
“Well, Frank did find something,” said Jobanique. “In Mary’s pockets are a number of...interesting photographs. Lesbian. You and her. Oh, forgeries I’m sure.”
Saskia did not respond to his embarrassment. “I see. Blackmail gone wrong. A lover’s tiff.”
Jobanique looked at his watch. “OK, it’s 1:15 p.m. You have twenty hours.”
Her feet dropped from the desk. “What?”
“Think about it. We can’t cancel the repair man. The murderer is certain to check that we’re on his tail, and that would be a give away. Your only advantage is his belief that he’s got away with it. He might make mistakes. At the very least, he won’t be on guard.”