by Colin Wade
KRYPTO:
Super LOL. Will do one day. Nuff respect though. This worm is a legend.
SNAPDEVIL:
You is welcome. Update me on the juicy stuff.
KRYPTO:
Will do. Laters.
He grabbed another coffee and rubbed his hands in glee.
Time to party.
The configuration had been pretty basic and he now had the algorithms to allow him to move freely in Dr Normandy and George Walker’s emails. The first curious step, as he tapped away, was the redirecting of his access from the local UK server to another discreet server, in a different physical location. He pinged the IP address.
Holy shit. The Cayman Islands. Why have a server in a different country, especially one renowned for offshore secrets?
Clark didn’t really need to answer his own question. Crime. Greed. Secrets. Conspiracy.
He could feel the adrenalin coursing through his body. His mouth was drying up.
A few minutes trawling through Dr Normandy’s emails and he found what he was looking for. A three-year-old email from Dr Normandy to George Walker.
‘The five patients are: Rachel Hermitage, Lisa Benbridge, Charlotte Kay, Marjit Ahmed, Anya Novak. It will be £200k for each medical procedure. The clear up is your domain. I don’t want to know what you do after our deal is completed.’
Clark stared and stared at the screen. He had hit ‘pay dirt’.
He took another gulp of his now cooling coffee, awestruck but trying to focus on his next step.
He found the medical records system. All the girls mentioned in the email had been treated as drug addicts between 2013 and 2015 at Fairport Medical’s main centre. A place called the Loughborough Clinic in Warwickshire. They had all stayed in the clinic for well over a year and often up to two.
Clark started to look at their wider lives and to his horror, but no great surprise, he found another pattern. Four of these girls were now dead, all killed in ‘accidents’ within a few months of leaving the clinic. Anya Novak was the only one still alive and although she had been discharged from the clinic almost two years ago, Clark was convinced her life was in danger. He had to find her.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to take it all in. He looked at his dad’s picture.
This could be it Dad. My own conspiracy. Our revenge.
He started closing down the various browsing sessions he had opened. As he was about to close down the one with the email, he suddenly spotted something he had missed.
He literally gasped. There was a name in the CC box of the email.
Oh, my holy mother of God. This can’t be.
He stood up and jumped around like some five-year-old on too many E numbers. This has suddenly moved to DEFCON 1.
9
The doctor sat opposite the two new girls that had been delivered as promised. Bianca Mavroudis and Sam Clarke stared vacantly at him, searching for some relief from their agitated state. They were both drug addicts but had the genetics that would suit the main reason they were here.
The doctor started explaining what he was going to do, although he doubted they understood half of what he was saying to them.
“Bianca, Sam, I am going to be your doctor whilst you are here. You are both drug addicts and by the time you leave here you will be fully cured of your addiction. I will put you through an extended methadone programme that will gradually wean you off the drugs. You cannot leave or have contact with anyone from the outside during your treatment. We will control your diet, exercise and withdrawal. If you get violent, the staff will restrain you and we may need to put you into induced comas to treat the worst of your withdrawal phases. You will get better but you have to trust me and follow my instructions. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Bianca and Sam stared at him blankly. He took that as the best consent he was going to get and, anyway, he was way past the point where consent meant anything to him and the people that were bankrolling his ‘other work’.
He got them settled and started the girls on their ‘methadone programmes’. He had lied to them. The first of many lies. The programme he had devised would get them well within a few months, not the extended period he had suggested. It was all part of the deception.
“Well ladies,” he said, as they both lay on their beds in a state of mild sedation, “time for the magic to start.”
They drifted in to full unconsciousness. He could leave them now. They would be out for a long while.
He went back to his suite, turned on his private computer. More images had been uploaded.
He opened them one by one.
He breathed deeply. He was getting hard.
Two ten-year-olds together. Naked. Just what I like.
10
The nightmares came again. The third night. The demons would not let go.
*
Anya tried to duck the fist, but it landed on the left side of her head. She was dazed. She stumbled and fell hard against the coffee table. More cuts and bruises to add to the many that were all over her body.
“Get up you bitch.”
“L… L… Leave me alone.”
“Leave you alone. I thought you wanted this.”
Anya grabbed for the little white bag of powder.
“Ah, ha, ha. I don’t think so. You owe me money and I won’t stop hurting you until you give it to me.”
Anya pulled herself up, fumbled in her bag. She had got £200 out of the bank earlier in the day. For food or something, but nothing could stop her urges. She had to get a fix. She thrust it at him like a grumpy child.
“Now that is better.” He slapped her and threw the packet on her crumpled body.
*
Anya woke. Darkness. Another disturbed night. She couldn’t look at Rob. Had she disturbed him again?
No. “Thank God,” she whispered to herself.
Anya got out of bed as quietly as she could and looked out of the window. The street was dark and quiet. She was shaking.
“You don’t need it. You don’t need it. You don’t need it.”
She kept chanting it to herself. Where would she get some? At this time of night. In Goring. That wasn’t the kind of thing you did in Goring.
She willed herself through it and gradually the shakes subsided.
She got back into bed and tried to get some undisturbed sleep.
When Anya came downstairs for breakfast, Rob seemed back to his old cheery self.
“Hello sexy, a better night last night?”
The lies were now coming easily.
“Oh, yes, great thanks. I’ll ring the GP surgery after breakfast and then we can go into the gallery.”
“Cool, my little precious.”
OK, now he was acting weird. Weird but happy. Anya would take that for now.
Anya made the call. “So 12.30 p.m. on Friday. We can shut the gallery for a couple of hours, can’t we?”
“Yes, of course. I look forward to discussing how my pecker is working.”
They both smiled. Rob’s sense of humour had always been cheesy but she loved him for it. At the moment, Anya would take any happiness she could get.
11
Clark was still reeling from what he had found. He was convinced he had finally found his own juicy conspiracy.
The list of girls’ names. Four dead. The money and that name. On the email. As the kids would say, “OM fucking G”.
He had to contact Anya Novak.
Clark prided himself on ‘walking the walk’ when it came to cyber security. He was a supreme hacker and with his cyber mates’ help he knew that no one was safe in the digital world. Your secrets could always be found by someone.
His first golden rule… be paranoid.
He walked around his man cave. Watched the news. Played FIFA 18 on the Xbox. His brain constantly racing, trying to find the right words.
He finally sat down and wrote out the following, freehand:
Dear Miss Novak,
I know you don’t know me but I am going to be blunt and get to the point. I believe your life is in danger. I have uncovered what I believe to be a conspiracy which you are unwittingly involved in. We need to meet and I will tell you more. Please write to me at the address below stating when and where you want to meet. Do not try to contact me by any other means.
Regards
Clark Kent
Flat 13, Windrush Plaza, Reading, RG1 4EP
He looked up her address on the Fairport Medical records; she was registered to a flat in the centre of Oxford. He guessed this was her address when she was at university. A quick trawl of various public records soon found her current address as 23 Willow Close, Goring, Oxford. He popped the letter in an envelope and slapped a first-class stamp on it.
I think this deserves a first-class stamp.
He would post it on the way to work tomorrow.
Clark’s mind settled. That was done, but what next?
He thought about all the conspiracies he had read and researched. His father’s sorry story. The greed. His second golden rule… follow the money.
He hacked back into the Fairport Medical network and hopped onto the remote Cayman Island server. He went beyond the emails, trying to find files, documents, evidence… follow the money.
He found a folder under George Walker’s private profile, simply marked ‘Bank’.
“Well, lame arse, I guess this might just be what I am looking for,” quipped Clark to himself.
He opened up the most recent file. A bank report, from a Cayman Island bank.
What have we got here? Five transactions paying money out of this account in 2013 and 2014, each of £200,000. Jesus, that matches the email.
He scrolled down the report.
Four payments before these, paying in £550,000 each time and one of £375,000. Holy crap. This is some heavy shit. What the hell is this money for?
There were more transactions going out.
Five sets of transaction for £50k, five for £125k and four for £175k. Hold on.
The symmetry hit him. He checked the maths.
£2.575m in. £2.575m out. This was big. Multi-million pound big.
Follow the money.
12
They would not let go. The fourth night. Worse and worse.
*
LEX. Those letters again. She could see them over a person’s shoulder, the rest of the word obscured. Someone was hovering over her. That wiry little man. She was lying down. Tubes, machines beeping, cannulas in her arm.
What was this? Like some nightmare smear test but not pleasant. Not right. She was being violated, down there.
Please stop. Please stop. Please stop.
*
She came to. The darkness enveloped her. She was cold. Sweating, but cold. Rob was snoring. Thank God for small mercies.
He was her soulmate but she just couldn’t tell him the truth. She didn’t understand the nightmares, the dreams, the years she had lost with no proper memories. She had to process them before she could reach out to him.
She lay in the darkness staring at the blackness, trying to orientate her eyes to make out the shapes in the room. The wiry old man in her dreams kept disturbing her thoughts. It was the doctor from that place.
“What was his name?” she whispered to herself. “Dr… Dr… French. That was it. Dr French.”
Her memories of him were limited. She began to think about the few memories she had. At the end of her time in that awful place.
*
“Miss Novak. I am pleased to say you are cured of your addiction. You have been with us a long time but I hope you see that it has been worth it.”
Anya had seen herself in the mirror that morning. Worth it! She looked a shocker. Her beautiful hair was lank and lifeless. The sharp, attractive facial features crafted from her Czech father and English Rose mother were somehow collapsed, battered and bruised. Sunken.
“What have you done to me?” she shouted at him with a firm, accusatory tone.
“What have I done to you? Miss Novak, you are a drug addict and for nearly two years I have been curing you of your addiction. You were one of the most addicted people I have seen in recent times.”
She didn’t trust him. She had no memories of her time in the clinic.
“Look at me. Battered, cuts and bruises all over my body. I have no memory of what has gone on in here.”
“You had violent withdrawal rages. I am afraid we had no choice but to restrain you. This did mean some cuts and bruises. As for the memories, the addiction affects your short-term memory and we did have to put you into induced comas at times to manage your withdrawal and recovery. You may never fully recover your memories from this period of your life. I suggest you go home and focus on the next stage of your life. The gift I have given you.”
The gift! Anya hated him. He was a horrible, creepy little man. She didn’t believe anything he said. There was something wrong about this place, about him. Nothing felt right. She had to get out. Go home.
*
She snapped back to where she was. In the cold and dark. Safe but petrified. The same thoughts went over and over in her mind. Meeting Rob had all been about the future. Looking forward and forgetting the past. But, the past would not let go, pulling her back like some naughty child wanting just one more go on the swings. She would have to confront this. Go back to the clinic? Get answers from Dr French?
She fell back into a troubled sleep.
13
James Hardacre sat in his office at 10 Downing Street, a few minutes away from his first full Cabinet meeting.
He had finally done it. Got the top job. Six years an MP, the last three as Environment Secretary. He mused to himself.
“Thank you, Dad. I think.”
He was worried. His dad was one of the most powerful men in the country. Part of the so-called Deep State. The Establishment. The king-makers with the billionaire lifestyles and influence to match. He had undoubtedly helped James get the top job, but there was always a price to pay.
God, what have I done? How can I lead the country when he is still pulling my strings?
“Daddy.”
His inner turmoil was broken by his daughter Sophie, bounding into the room like the Duracell bunny.
“Hello Princess. How are you?”
“Err, good. Can I have ice cream?”
“Not for breakfast! Go and find Mummy. Daddy has got to go to an important meeting.”
“O… kkkkkkk.”
Sophie bounced out and went down the corridor back to their personal apartment.
He thanked God for Sophie. Their little miracle from so much despair.
14
Anya and Rob went to their GP appointment. As they sat in reception they did one of their favourite things. People watching.
It seemed all the clichés were there. The frazzled mum with the kid that wouldn’t sit down, must be ADHD, the heavily pregnant woman who looked ready to pop at any second, the two old ladies talking loudly to each other about how they were getting new hearing aids… go figure… the young woman clutching a blood test bag looking like she wanted to be anywhere else but about to have a needle put in her arm and a long line of people queueing at reception behind an old geezer who was taking all the receptionist’s time trying to book a doctor’s appointment for some time next week and constantly changing his mind about when he should have
it. The terribly British thing of people in the queue muttering to themselves and mildly seething, but without saying anything, was playing out for all to see. Anya wondered what people made of her and Rob.
Fifteen minutes after their scheduled appointment time their GP, Dr Isabel Fleming, called them in. Anya explained their desire to have a baby and the lack of birth control over the time they had been having sex.
The doctor was sympathetic, discussed their family backgrounds and health history. Anya was tense. Her drug addiction was not on her records. She was not going to tell them. Not now.
Dr Fleming was satisfied that there was no obvious reason why either of them could not produce a child. She said all the usual things about it taking time with some couples and if they just relaxed and forgot about it they would probably fall eventually. She agreed to do some blood tests for Anya to make sure the right hormones were being produced, as her cycle seemed regular enough for that not to be a factor.
She handed Rob a little pot for his ‘tadpole deposits’ so that some poor lab technician could watch whether they were all swimming fast enough and in the right direction. Rob smiled at the prospect of working with Anya to fill it up.
The doctor sent them on their way and said the test results would be back the next day. She would call them.
They went out for a late lunch in the local pub and then reopened the gallery for the afternoon. Later they cooked up a quick evening meal of stir-fried chicken and vegetables with soy sauce and then gorged on an apple crumble for afters.
It was now late September and the weather was unseasonably cold for early autumn. They decided to light up their lovely open fire for the first time in a while and soon the reassuring crackle of burning wood and smell of fire and smoke was soon filling the cottage.
Rob seemed happy. Anya was relieved that she had not woken him for the last two nights. She needed his love, not the drama. They cuddled up on the sofa.