Déjà Vu: A Technothriller

by Hocking, Ian

  Saskia nodded. There was another smell. Decay.

  “That what you want?” asked Garrel.

  “Please?”

  “You wanted to get into Proctor’s head. Are you close enough? You can almost smell him, can’t you?”

  “I-I would,” she stammered, “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. She saw, despite the darkness, that his expression hardly changed. This man was strange. But what power did he really have? What was he compared to the Angel of Death?

  “Of course,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  They retraced their steps through the debris. When they reached the corridor, Garrel was quick to attach himself to a rope. “Going up is more fun than coming down,” he said. He connected the decelerator and climbed upwards in a caterpillar-like motion, alternately grasping the rope his hands and feet. After a few metres he looked down at her. “Are you coming?”

  “Yes. I just need to check my recorder took those pictures. I don’t want to get to the surface and find there was an error.”

  “Well, don’t stay too long. I heard some noises just now.”

  “What kind of noises?”

  “Just noises.”

  He caterpillared upwards. His breath echoed down the shaft and sounded close. She was alone. She willed herself to picture a summer’s day and her fear withdrew. On with the job. She gazed at the luminous screen on her recorder. The first picture, being the last taken, showed Caroline’s remains. It was monochrome and crisp. It showed every detail and more. The room had contained an upturned filing cabinet, three broken chairs and large chunks of masonry. She had not seen them. In fact, she had imagined that part of the room to be empty. Next, she checked the picture of the main laboratory. Next, the corridor shot.

  The blood fell from her head. She did not collapse quickly. She fought hard. She sank into a curtsey.

  No, she thought. Impossible.

  The picture showed the corridor – this corridor, right now – in almost perfect brilliance. She saw wreckage, charcoaled furniture and loose paper. But on the wall immediately to the left of the doorway, someone had written a message.

  Impossible.

  It had been intended for her. It had been written in German. It had been written on the wall where she took the infra-red photograph, where it appeared white on the grey surface. Carefully, she played her torch over the wall. Nothing. She looked again at the recorder. The text was clearly visible in the picture.

  She swallowed. The writer had used a form of paint that was visible only 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.

  Her heart sucked and pushed. She could hear its valves. She looked back at the text. Translated into English, it would read:

  The pricking in my fingertips lets me say

  (it seems) bad luck is on the way.

  It was a translation of a line from Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. It was horribly familiar. And yet she had no memory of the play itself. Macbeth was a play, wasn’t it? Didn’t it have three witches? The Fates? Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she determines its length. Atropos, she cuts it.

  Spin, measure, snip.

  A tear ran down one cheek. Her mind had bent under two personalities (though she felt whole) and now, like an overloaded bridge, it had snapped.

  “No,” she said firmly. The word echoed. The darkness sent it back. “I am not mad.”

  The message had been written by Proctor. That was certain. He knew, somehow, that she would have been sent on his trail and had, perhaps, picked upon a distant memory of her past life – a memory that she could not yet fully recall. Plus, he knew she was

  German. That was all. That explained it.

  She wiped away the tear.

  There was one more element to the graffiti. A long, white arrow pointing to the bottom right corner of the frame. She held the recorder in her line of sight and tried to match the image with the wall. She looked at the area indicated by the arrow. There was a piece of masonry.

  Leave now, said a voice. It may be a bomb. Or something poisonous. Remember the box that your new secretary carried. Remember the neat little hole it put in the office window.

  Saskia accepted the concerns and dismissed them. She was a detective. It was her wont to detect.

  The masonry turned out to be a blackened piece of foam insulation. It flipped easily. Underneath was a small rock and, underneath that, a plastic folder. Saskia took another picture and placed her recorder a few metres away. If it did explode, her would-be rescuers might know what had happened.

  The rock lifted easily. It was merely a paperweight. The transparent folder was grimy but still sealed. Inside was a single white paper envelope. It was impossible to tell how long the folder had lain there. There some words on the exterior.

  “Saskia!” called a voice. “Are you alright? I’m…I’m coming down.”

  It was Hannah. She remembered his fear of heights.

  “Stay there, Scottie. I am coming now.”

  She concealed the folder inside her jacket and dropped the recorder into another pocket. She reattached her decelerator and began a slow caterpillar creep upwards. The hairs rose on her neck. If something from the blackness wanted to grab her, this was its last chance.

  Nothing touched her. She looked up. Water droplets fell past her. They sparkled. She looked down. Three metres from the floor. She was safe.

  Saskia arrived at the Bed and Breakfast early in the evening. Hannah drove on to Edinburgh. Mrs McMurray, who used to be lawyer, was married to Barry, couldn’t eat such a thing as meat in the morning and who thought Saskia looked very, very tired, gave Saskia her key. Saskia thanked the woman bluntly and walked heavily to her room. She had fantasied about collapsing on the hotel bed and sleeping dreamlessly, but her mind had not spent its momentum. It turned over still, rolling facts around, seeing how they mixed, how they fitted. The death of Caroline Benson. The death of Bruce Shimoda. The bomb. The bomber. The research project. The centre. Back to the beginning: the death of Caroline Benson...

  On the pillow, her notebook was open to her caricature of Garrel. Near her feet, on the edge of the bed, was the dusty envelope in its plastic wallet. On the face of the envelope were the words: ‘Do not open this envelope’. It remained unopened. She rose five minutes later, she needed a cigarette, she couldn’t have one, she wanted to sleep, she swore.

  She thought about the envelope. She turned away from it.

  Saskia slid off the bed and walked to the window in one stride. She gazed into the street. The lighting was white, not yellow. The occasional car drove past on the left, not the right. Were it not for those details, she might have been looking from the window of her Brussels apartment on a quiet, cold night.

  It was not homesickness she felt. Brussels was not home. It was her current residence.

  She felt cast adrift. The dizzy spells were the steady up and down of her raft over each ocean wave. The fear was the threat of drowning. The frustration was the hunger, the thirst for knowledge about herself.

  Murderer, murderer, she thought. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

  The witches, the Fates: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she determines its length. Atropos, she cuts it.

  Spin, measure, snip.

  The window panes were black. They were touched with the white impressions of the scene outside. The impressions merged and snapped into focus. A human face.

  Saskia stepped back. Her calves met the edge of the bed. In that first moment, she did not see the face as a reflection, but a visitation. Something wicked. Her right hand reached over to her l
eft hip and, in the blink of her murdering eyes, the gun was in her hand.

  She stood strongly: her legs slightly apart, the gun in her right hand, her left cupping the handle for stability. She was utterly comfortable. She could turn in any direction with the confidence that her eyes and the barrel of gun would favour the same object. Time would slow. She would react faster than her adversary because she was relaxed.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Saskia screamed and turned in mid air. The door opened and Mrs McMurray, the elderly proprietor who had asked her not to smoke, there’s a dear, dropped her tray of tea and thin British biscuits.

  “Frau McMurray –” Saskia began. The right words were stuck in her throat. “I am...so sorry,” she said finally. She braced herself for hysteria.

  “Why, my dear girl,” Mrs McMurray gasped. Her mouth was clearly on autopilot, because her eyes were glazed with horror and roamed independently. “I’m very sorry. I should’ve knocked, should I not.”

  Saskia was confused. Why was she apologising? “The tea,” she said weakly.

  “Aye. Look at that. I’ll get that away.”

  But she stayed exactly where she was.

  Saskia smiled. It took some effort. “Don’t worry about the gun. It isn’t loaded. I was just oiling it. It needs maintenance like that. From time to time.”

  Ah, but it is loaded, she thought. Fancy a snip, Frau McMurray?

  She put the gun on the bed near the pillow. She said, “Here, then. You clean the mess and I shall make us a fresh pot of tea.”

  Mrs McMurray brightened. Her eyes had never left the gun. “That’s a fine idea. We’ll have a cup of tea.”

  Saskia walked slowly out of the room and down the brightly-carpeted stairs, past the china figurines and plastic ducks flying up the wall. Her heart rate dropped with each step. The noise of a television became louder. She remembered the ghostly reflection and decided that Mrs McMurray had been right. She needed sleep.

  Why was she so nervous? Again, she thought of the envelope on the bed. Again, her mind turned away. Not yet.

  Mrs McMurray. Walking into a room like that she got what she deserved. She marvelled again at the therapeutic powers of British tea. What Mrs McMurray really needed was -

  A bullet?

  She froze on the stairs.

  Is that what she needs, Frau Brandt? Spin, measure, and...snip!

  Saskia cleared her throat and continued walking. That voice was just her conscience. Had to be. But she remembered the words of Frank Stone when he had spoken to her in the park: “Your own pattern is not really destroyed by the new, alien pattern

  – it’s kind’ve knocked sideways.”

  Was it her real mind rising from its subconscious swamp? She could not be sure. One thing was clear, however. If she even suspected that she could lose her new mind to her old one, then that gun would find itself pointed at her temple.

  The final murder, said a voice. Snip.

  Breaking the Code

  Saturday, 16th September 2023

  At 9 a.m. on Saturday morning, one week into her career, Saskia found herself being driven across Edinburgh with Hannah. Their driver had the radio on. She didn’t recognise a single song. Hannah started his report. There had been a sighting the night before. Proctor had checked into a hotel in Northallerton, two-hundred and thirty kilometres from Edinburgh and one-hundred and sixty kilometres from the downed glider in Belford. Hannah had been keen to go there, but not Saskia. Her instinct told her that she should not waste time driving to Belford. Hannah shrugged. Local police and some officers from the Edinburgh team were on the case. They were competent.

  Hannah continued his report. As Saskia had suspected, there was little useful evidence at the scene. The glider had been discovered by a farmer. It was near an isolated, empty equipment shed. The remains of a laptop computer had been found: a generic Korean model, available from hundreds of outlets nationwide. It had self-destructed. A wider search revealed motorbike tracks. A forensic SOCO, Scene of Crime Officer, had reported that there were four bikes. The farmer had no clue. They were not his. He owned two trail bikes and they were kept in a garage at the main farm. They were untouched.

  “What about the hotel?”

  “Well, late last night, a constable in Northallerton reported the flight of a man who matched Proctor’s description. He had checked into the hotel under the name Harrison. He was moments from being arrested when the constable was called away on a rape-in-progress, which was found to be a false alarm. The constable had abandoned the scene and, when he returned some twenty minutes later, following a cup of tea at a place called McCabe’s –”

  “Donner Wetter,” Saskia exclaimed. “The English and their narcotic tea.”

  “– following that,” continued Hannah, “he found that Proctor had vanished. He had used a legitimate credit card to pay for the accommodation. The name was David Harrison. The number was traced to a Mr David Anthony Pearson, formerly of Fife and life. He’s dead.”

  “What else?”

  Hannah frowned at his handheld computer’s screen. “It’s so much easier to read paper.” He cleared his throat. “House-tohouse enquiries turned up Mrs Taome Gallagher. Tay to her friends. Bit of a wind-bag by the sounds of it. She spoke to a man matching Proctor’s description around the time he checked in. According to the credit card people, that was 6:02 p.m. Said he was riding a shiny, chrome motorbike and wanted to park in her alleyway. We have an APB on him.”

  “Ay pee bee?”

  “All Points Bulletin. The description is released nationally.”

  Saskia stared at the shops flashing by her window. They were approaching some traffic lights. “I thought the investigation was intended to be more secret.”

  “It was.” He shrugged. “But we all agreed and the guv said he was fed up working with one hand tied behind his back. Anyway, they can’t fire all of us.”

  “English has some nice expressions,” Saskia said, partly to herself. “Does Proctor’s bike fit with the tracks found next to the glider?”

  “Yes, but what about the other tracks? My guess would be that he was met by a group of people. His team. They gave him some supplies and then rode away.”

  Saskia shook her head. “No. I think that would be a waste of effort. According to the abducted minister, the glider was computer controlled. Proctor’s benefactor knew it would land there. Why not put all the supplies in the shed?”

  Hannah consulted his notes. “Dunno. About the glider being computer controlled, I’m not convinced. How reliable is the minister’s statement? She got thumped on the head. You should have interviewed her. Checked her out.”

  She waved her hand. They pulled away from the traffic lights. “No. I will get my information from you. I want to concentrate on Proctor’s destination. We will find him that way. The other information is...it makes my reasoning cloudy. But I do think that the glider was computer controlled. The sudden increase in its weight when Proctor was pulled into the air would have made flight very difficult. I do not think we should search for a pilot.”

  “Well, you’re the expert.”

  Saskia looked at him to see if he was joking. His eyes were fixed on the computer screen. He was trying not to smile. She flicked his thigh with the back of her hand.

  “Ow!”

  “How many churches in Scotland have a female minister?”

  “Not sure. Not many.”

  “Yes. Therefore, not many churches from which the fake minister could choose. She was constrained again by the proximity to research centre. Anything further away would have aroused suspicion”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  Saskia paused. Again, she gazed through the window. The banality of Edinburgh’s streets settled her mind. Think. What are the important questions? “Where else was the card used?”

  “Two filling stations between Belford and Northallerton.”

  She drummed his fingers on her knees. “Do they have cameras?”

/>   Hannah shook his head. “We checked. He chose little one-pump jobs. Those are quiet places. He must be using minor roads. One or two lads remember seeing him, but they can’t give a good description. They say his bike was chrome. Maybe some kind of trail bike.”

  “So. The trail bike. Probably the same bike he used to ride away from the glider.”

  “Yes.”

  “OK. Back to last night. You said there was an accusation of rape? Subsequently falsified?”

  “I came over the radio just as the officer was about to interview Proctor.”

  “That is convenient. In Germany we say somebody has ‘cried wolf’.”

  “Here too.”

  “Who was the woman? Do we have any information about her?”

  “No. She wouldn’t give her name. Anyway, she was just a kid. Truscott – the reporting officer – said she looked to be on the wrong side of ten.”

  Saskia nodded slowly. Hannah said nothing and Saskia remained silent. Just before they reached the Special Incident Unit, Saskia said to him, “Scottie, if you had heard about this escape from a friend, what would you think? If you heard that this man had been pulled away from a hillside attached to a glider?”

  “Me? Och, I’d say it was something out of a cartoon.”

  Saskia felt a memory move, like a baby’s kick. “Me too.”

  They had arrived.

  David had reached the M1 and ridden steadily until Northallerton was far behind him. He had turned off and entered the countryside, a maze of lanes and high hedgerows. The lights of Sheffield coloured the western sky. He located a quiet ditch and rolled the bike to the bottom. He let it tip into the high nettles. He collapsed and lay against it with his head against the muffler for warmth. He opened his visor a fraction but did not remove the helmet. It was nearly 9 p.m. He closed his eyes and awoke eight hours later. The night had stolen his heat, his neck was stiff and he couldn’t look left. Morning mist rolled into the ditch. The sky was grey and close. Small birds sang. He lifted his helmet and shivered.