All three of us start smoking again, and with a nod of his head the farmer indicates an old box, by the door. I rummage through it, through the dust and debris and find an ancient bottle of vodka; we pass it around ourselves, and he takes a long drink before wiping his mouth and, I think, finding the strength to carry on. I find myself with the bottle still, and carry on taking sips as he begins to talk again.
“And then there was the horse. They thought it was my horse, they came round to tell me they were sorry it was dead. But it wasn’t my horse. I don’t have a horse. I don’t have any animals anymore, but I never had a horse. I know though, I saw it, I know they thought it was mine, and they were sorry that you killed it. But you didn’t kill it, did you? You didn’t. You saw it but you didn’t kill it. I saw it too, and I also know, I know it wasn’t a horse. I know it wasn’t what they think it was.”
My breath catches and I take a long drink. “What was it?”
“It was... I don’t know. It was just. But I remember you. I remember your look. I thought I was afraid, with the rope round my neck. But I saw your eyes, your eyes when you saw it. And you know what I thought?”
“I thought that whatever happens, even if I just sit in this chair for the rest of my life, smoke cigarettes and drink myself to death, it can’t be worse than that. So I took the noose off my neck, stepped back down and then threw it in the fire. I watched it burn, I saw your face in the flames.”
“What was it?” I ask again, my voice catching in my throat. “Tell me what it was.”
“What was it? You know what it was. You know. I don’t know but you do. You know what it was.”
He hauls himself up, eventually, and he starts coughing. A loud, metallic rasping, he puts his hand out and leans on me and I let him, as the shit and the blood comes onto my white silk shirt. He steadies himself for a second and wheezes out his words, “thank you, thank you for coming” and then the coughing takes him again, harder and more vicious this time and he falls to his knees, struggling to control himself. I nod to her and we start to head out when he calls me back. He’s holding something in his hand, I don’t know where it came from, but he’s offering it to me.”From my wife”, he whispers. I take it and we walk out of them, leaving him to suffer in his old and broken house, the noise following us as we get back in the car.
Sitting in the car, I unwrap it carefully, and take out a thin tablet. It feels like stone but it’s not, it’s very black, very smooth.
“What is it?” she asks.
“A black mirror” I whisper.
Chapter 19
“OK” starts Simon, “why is she here?”
Everyone’s silent, till eventually I realise that it’s me he’s asking the question to
“Erm, well you invited her” I start, “I mean, look at everyone in my apartment, even him...”, I point to the strange guy, in the corner, dressed in black, hitting his head with an axe.
“No, not her, her” he’s looking frustrated now and that’s a bad place for him to be. I nod apologetically at Jenny and follow his gaze to Ruth, who’s sitting quietly, sipping coffee and gazing at me.
“Well, erm, she’s with me...” Now I nod apologetically at Ruth and help myself to more gin.
“We don’t even know who she is. Remember Tim Bateman, what a disaster. I know she’s been vetted, but...”
“Well I didn’t get the MRI scan” Ruth interrupts.
He looks at her blankly for a second. “Well exactly” he continues, “she didn’t even get the MRI scan. I mean, I know she looks, nice, if a bit, well, wrinkled and old, but we can’t discuss this stuff in front of her.”
“OK, you’re right, you do have a point about the way she looks,” I concede. “So, erm, Ruth...would you mind” I trail off.
“No, it’s fine,” starts Jenny, “we are going to meet in the office, we’re getting picked up in a minute. Beryl, our Head of Strategy, is joining us”
“We have a Head of Strategy?” I ask.
“Don’t worry” says Ruth, “I will find a bar and drink myself to death there, give me a call when you’re done”.
“Yes, of course” says Jenny
“Great idea,” replies Simon, “try the Death Bar, it’s round the corner, I’ll join you there later.”
“Who’s Beryl?” I ask, “do you have a cigarette?”
“Beryl, you know Beryl, Beryl. Everyone knows Beryl” says Simon impatiently, “here, take this card, they will give you a discount, ask for the Destruction Cocktail, if you can handle that I'll buy you a car."
“The only Beryl I know is Beryl.”
“Exactly,” says Jenny, “Beryl.” She gives me a cigarette, but it’s a girl’s cigarette, too long and too thin. I break it in two and pour the tobacco into my mouth.
“Beryl the cleaner? That Beryl?” I say between chews. Hmm. Tobacco chewing isn’t everything I thought it would be.
“Yes” smiles Jenny, “turns out she was really good at strategy."
“Bye, darling” says Ruth, as she gets up, brushing her lips against my hair, though I notice she exchanges a mischievous glance with Simon as she leaves.
“Right, come on everyone” says Simon, loudly, and we all troop out to the waiting stretch limo.
***
An outside catering company is doing our coffee. The beans have been flown in that morning, and they’re now being crushed, by hand, by a tall blond girl with incredible legs. She’s almost naked except for the flimsiest of bikini bottoms, and I wonder if that adds to the taste of the coffee.
“OK”, starts Simon, “we have a lot to cover. Beryl, would you take us through the agenda please?”
Beryl must be at least one hundred years old, she’s still wearing cleaners’ clothes and has a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth that looks like it’s been there forever. She’s changed her hairstyle though, to be fair, it looks like it’s been bleached and is now in small, clumpy spikes around her head, a little like a bamboo forest. “Right,” she clears her throat and wipes her hand across her mouth, then moves slowly past all of us to where the coffee has just been served into ivory cups. She reaches into her back pocket, pulls out a half bottle of blended and pours it all in the cup which she grabs in her fist. After a long drink she turns and faces us.
“First” – her accent is thick, heavy, “we have the sacrifice. I'm referring, of course, to the sacrifice that was reported to John by this Carver person. We've used our sources, checked it out. Very strange. Very weird. Definitely, I mean no question, this was the real deal, professionally carried out. And I can also add," she stops, clears her throat, spitting on the table, and throws back another huge gulp of whisky, "I can also add that it's known, it's straight out of the manual. Interesting, because of course, it means that someone definitely had knowledge. Jenny, as our head of research, has done some work into this and – “
“Right,” starts Jenny, “and – “
Beryl swipes her, not viciously, but hard enough to draw blood, and Jenny stops, allowing Beryl to continue, “and it seems that this is erm, something special. The way her face was cut, the way the blood was drawn, the way the entrails were left out in a very specific way. A very specific shape. Look -" and she turned, panting, to point at the screen, where some photos came up. Pretty impressive, they drew gasps from the table as Beryl skilfully navigated the projector. Then the was silence as she stood, still, her hands clasped in front of her, waiting.
"You see," she whispered eventually, "all of this done to an extreme level of skill, even down to the finest detail, right according to the references. And all of it points to one thing."
"What?" I whispered.
She stepped towards me, her bulk brushing up against me, and leant close, letting me smell the nicotine on her breath. "An Elvira Ten.” Silence around the room. I’m thinking three things; first, I had never heard Beryl speak before. In fact, I had thought that she couldn’t speak, given the fact that she only grunted when she used to clean my
office, on her hands and knees by my desk. Second, I hadn’t realised that Jenny was our head of research, but then again I had no idea what Jenny did. Third, I had no idea what Beryl was talking about.
But looking around the room, everyone else seemed to get something. I don’t go for these things, but it really did seem that the temperature had dropped in the room. No one, for a few seconds, looked at anyone else, even Simon was put out and stared down at his coffee.
Then he started. “Yes, that’s right, an Elvira Ten. Of course, we all know what that is, especially John. But before I let him speak, let me just give you my own thoughts on the matter. The only other time, and I mean the only other time, we came across Elvira, it was a three, and that, as some of you remember, caused us years of rework, not to mention the destruction. Not to mention the shit that we had to clear up”
“Are we sure it’s an Elvira 10?” Shaun asks, and Simon turns to him.
“Good question. Well, no we can’t, of course not, be completely certain. No one in our network actually has experience of that, very few in fact have any experience of anything like it. But we can project, we can extrapolate, we can use the references, and it looks very much like that. And you can just imagine how hard it is, how much effort they must have gone to in order to create it. So that’s what we must be prepared for.” He lets the words hang.
“But what does it mean?” asks Jenny. All eyes, for some reason, turn to me. I smile and shrug, so Simon continues. “Well of course, it depends on the level of power, the level of usage, how it’s channelled and where it’s directed, of course it does, but it potentially creates a very grave and very unpredictable problem. So the key questions are, first, who, and second, what do they want. Critically, is that anything to do with us?”
Jenny gasps. “You think” and she whispers the last bit, “it could be Bateman?”
Simon looks at her, I can see that look on his face, the redness coming through. I think he’s going to shout at her, but he tenses his hands, controls it, and drinks his coffee. “It could be, Jenny, it really could. That’s what we have been thinking. If it is, and if he’s used our technology to get it, then this time, I will want his blood!”
“I could always kill him,” suggests Beryl helpfully.
Simon raises his hand. “OK, well let’s just hold back on that for the moment. We’re going to put together a task team, a focus group, an implementation squad to deal with this and answer those two questions. Jenny, I want you to lead it, draw on any resources that you want, OK, but get me results in two weeks. You understand, all, of course, how important this is, how we cannot afford to let them have this.”
Jenny nods and sips at her coffee. I notice that the semi naked, blonde, long legged coffee grinder has finished and is now sitting at the boardroom table with the rest of us. She has had to move the glasses, coffee and papers out of the way otherwise her breasts would keep hitting them.
Simon’s holding his hand to his head, looking pensive. He turns to Jenny. “Final thought?”
“Final thought,” she answers, “is that the Elvira 10 is probably 25 times more powerful than the Starman, which we used for John’s last project. Look what that achieved.” Again, everyone’s staring at me, so I nod, sagely and light another cigarette.
Beryl coughs again, spitting more phlegm onto the table. “Now, this brings us on to, of course, the farmer, and John’s quite enlightening encounter with him. Now John, “ she slaps me on the back and I almost choke, “has sent you all a report on what happened with the farmer.” She pauses, but I’m not going to say anything after what I saw she did to Jenny, so she continues. “The farmer seems to know much more than he should, he seems, from what we can gather, although of course it will take some time and persuasion to share this, a quite detailed knowledge of the actual event itself. By this, of course, I mean the sacrifice. Quite unusual. I have come to the conclusion that this constitutes reality refraction syndrome.” As she turns, the lights dim and the screen comes alive; three letters appear in the middle – “RRS”; they are flashing in different colours.
“Most of you will of course be aware of, even familiar with, RRS, but if you’re not, please let me explain. It’s the ability to perceive something that happened whilst you weren’t there, or that should have happened whilst you were there, but in fact, didn’t. It’s a reflex syndrome and therefore could happen to anyone, in theory, but in practice it is influenced heavily by the use of certain drugs. We’ve used RRS in our research many times to try and predict the outcome of certain conflicts, as it taps into the subconscious of the subject, and projects a, kind of mirage, of the perceived consciousness.
“It’s unusual for it to happen without intervention, though, very unusual, so either this is a rare subject we have, or there is outside interference. I would say, in this situation, we are talking about the latter. Now – “ and for emphasis she leans forward across the table to us, her bulk causing the table to shudder but not fall – “now, of course, the key to this is his wife.”
“Do we know who his wife is?” asks Jenny.
Beryl walks towards her, and for a second I think Jenny’s about to get swiped again, but this time Beryl just puts her huge arm across Jenny’s tiny shoulders. “No, dear, we don’t. Not yet. But we need to find out. And urgently. I think it is totally related to the Elvira situation.”
“Agreed” says Simon. “We need to find out who the wife is. And what she’s done. And whether she has anything to do with Elvira, or the sacrifice. And don’t forget, we also need to ensure that the farmer is kept under control. The police already know about him, they haven’t made the connection yet, but they will.”
“I could always kill him,” suggests Beryl helpfully.
“Er, no, not yet Beryl. What I want to do is set up another task force, to deal with this. I’ve appointed a new Head of Investigations to lead this,” he nods his head and we all turn to look at the bare breasted, inconceivably long legged, blond coffee crushing temptress at the end of the table. “Shala McMartin is an expert in these things. She’ll lead this one, and she’ll get me results in two weeks.”
Shala nods, and smiles, but says nothing. Probably a good idea.
“Do we know who the girl is?” I ask. Everyone stops shuffling and stares at me. Great question, I must ask it again. “Do we know who the girl is, you know, the one who was..." I tail off, seeing them all staring at me.
Shaun scratches his head and replies, “John, you’re saying you don’t know who the girl is?”
I look at him. “I should, right?”
“The girl who was sacrificed? That girl, the girl on the stone table?”
“Yeah...” I say slowly. “the one Detective Carver couldn’t identify. I’d assumed she was some kind of tramp or something.” There’s an uncomfortable silence and I get the feeling now that my questions have turned from extremely clever to extremely stupid. That and the dark clouds, I think, mean that I quite urgently need another happy pill.
It’s Simon who speaks next, slowly and deliberately. “The reason, John, that she couldn’t be identified, is the same reason none of us can be identified.”
“Right, “ I reply, nodding my head. “Right. Er, and that is?”
Simon sighs, “and that is because we are all ex-portfolio, as I, erm, think you know." he waits, looking at me, and I think I must look quite stupid right now. "Erm..." I manage.
Another deep sigh from Simon. "Whenever anyone joins our organisation, John, all of their records, anywhere are wiped.” He pauses. “Which you, as secondary partner have to actually authorise, right?” He’s given up on me saying anything sensible now, I think, so he just continues. “And the reason that Detective Carver couldn’t identify the girl, is because she used to work for us. In fact, she used to work for you. In fact, John, since you obviously seem to have forgotten, you were actually married to her for three years.”
Even Beryl looks a little embarrassed now, if I judge by the kind of p
urple hue of her face. But I feel strangely comforted by this revelation, at least it explains why all the stuff in my apartment seemed to have been chosen by someone with appalling taste. And on top of that, if you look past all the blood and cuts, she was actually very good looking; and young. Of course I realise that everyone is looking at me, maybe they're jealous. "And we got divorced, right?"
Shaun's actually sniggering now, but Simon puts his hand on his arm and Shaun strips, suddenly. "John", I turn and see Jenny talking in a very soft, very gentle voice. "John, she ran away, remember, ran away after you..."
"That's enough!" snaps Simon, and Beryl smacks Jenny on the head again, quite hard this time.
"John-" says Simon.
"Er - yes?"
"Why did you give the authorities your details?"
"What?"
"When you crashed, why did you hand over your actual name? Instead of your standard one?"
"What about my wife? What was her name?"
"What?"
"Why did she leave me?"
"Forget your wife!" Simon snaps, he holds his hand up quickly to stop Beryl from swiping me. "She's dead! Very dead, in fact. Move on. Look, when you crashed, you gave your actual name and details to the police, instead of the standard ones you were supposed to give. None of us are really sure why you did that...?”
"Erm, that was stupid, right?" I smile, shrug and light a cigarette. Simon stares at me, shaking his head. "Oh," he mutters, "let's just move on."
“Now” continues Beryl, “next we have the policeman.”
“Ah, the policeman”, smiles Jenny. This time, Beryl’s smack is so hard that it creates a vibe around the room; Jenny’s beautiful head falls onto the desk, a slow trickle of blood staining the paper beneath her. Simon sighs, and people scurry in to attend to her.
“The policeman,” sighs Beryl, “is someone we can find nothing out about at all. Absolutely nothing. The only thing we can say about him is that he is legit, but beyond that we have no idea where he works, what he does, how he has any connection to us, or to anything to do with us. We have some theories, though, that I have been working on, the first is that...”
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