by T. G. Haynes
‘Who?’
‘Richard.’
‘How? Wins what? I don’t understand.’ It was too late though, Dexter was no longer in any fit state to explain; he had lost consciousness. Kate stared at herself in the rear view mirror. Admonishing herself she said, ‘You had better be right about this, girl.’
As she yanked her car door shut a police car drew level with her. The officer nearest to her gestured for her to lower her window. Kate did so.
‘Is there a problem, Miss?’ he asked.
‘No Officer.’
‘It’s just that you’re on CCTV here and it shows that you’ve sat through half a dozen changes of lights.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ her mind raced to try and come up with a feasible explanation and one which would also prevent the police officer from taking matters any further, ‘only I received an emergency phone call from a friend of mine.’
‘Anything we can help with?’
‘No, it’s fine, thank you. Everything’s under control.’
‘OK,’ the policeman said, then raised his window and indicated for his colleague to drive off.
The police car pulled away so slowly when Kate drove off she couldn’t help but tail them given the speed they were going. At the next crossroads, when the police car turned along the road that Kate needed to go, she refrained from following them. Though continuing straight on took her a couple of miles out of the way, the last thing she wanted was for them to see where she lived, just in case they opted to pursue their line of enquiry further.
Pulling up in her driveway, ten minutes later, Kate checked around to make sure none of her neighbours were curtain twitching, then she helped Dexter out of the car. Thankfully, he had regained consciousness, which made the task much easier. They stumbled into the front hall then she slammed the door shut behind them. Slowly, painfully, she helped him up the stairs and into the bathroom. It was the best place to tend to his injury. As he peeled off his top and T-shirt she filled the sink with warm water and broke out what little medication she had. The small pile of plasters, bandages, cotton wool, ibuprofen, sports gel and Savlon didn’t amount to much. Trying her best to recall what they had told her on the first aid course she had attended back at College she dampened a cotton wool ball, instructed him to sit on the side of the bath and started to clean his wound.
She grimaced as she tended to him. She had never been very good with blood. The injury was a strange one. It was as if something had torn a two inch long strip out of his left flank. Could it have been caused by a bullet? Mercifully, the wound was only surface deep. As soon as she had finished cleaning him up she was going to demand an explanation.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you everything.’
His comment stopped her in her tracks. ‘Stop doing that.’
‘What?’
‘Reading my mind,’ she said. ‘It’s bad enough when you do it in my dreams, but anticipating what I’m thinking in the real world is just plain spooky.’
‘Right. Sorry.’
‘And keep still,’ she said.
‘Sorry.’
‘And stop saying sorry.’
‘Sor...’
Kate glared at him. Dexter broke into a weak smile. ‘Only kidding.’
She took it as a sign that he couldn’t be that badly injured if he was able to crack bad jokes. Besides the main injury, Dexter was covered in minor cuts and grazes and there was a rather nasty large swelling just above his left ear, which she guessed was the injury that had caused him to pass out. As she fingered it, he flinched.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t you start.’
She threw the used cotton wool balls into the bin. ‘Right, get your trousers off.’
‘But I don’t know you that well,’ he protested.
‘I need to take a look at your legs.’
‘I’m not that kind of guy,’ he insisted.
Kate was trying her best not to laugh, but it wasn’t easy in the face of his flippancy. Doing her best to look annoyed with him she put her hands on her hips, cocked her head to one side and said, ‘Are you going to take them off, mister, are am I going to have to do it for you?’
‘Did we get up to something that I should know about in those dreams of yours?’
‘No,’ she denied, a touch too quickly to sound entirely convincing.
‘It’s just that you’re very forward,’ he said.
‘I’m trying to play nurse here,’ she countered.
‘So you like a bit of role play then?’
‘Can you be serious for a minute.’
‘Do I have to be?’
Kate folded her arms. ‘I can leave the room if it’ll make it easier for you.’
‘No, it’s OK, I’ll strip.’
As he removed his trousers Kate couldn’t help but note that his physique was just as impressive as that of his dream counterpart. It wasn’t the only thing she noted. His legs were covered in large, ugly bruises.
‘God, Dexter, what did they do to you?’
‘Most of these are from rugby,’ he said.
‘Honestly?’
‘The guys I was recently up against play a rough game.’
Suspecting he wasn’t going to give her a straight answer she began to run the bath.
‘What’s with the cold water?’ he asked.
‘It’ll help bring out the bruises,’ she explained.
‘Call me old fashioned, but I prefer hot.’
‘If you play sport you should know that ice baths help the body to recover quicker after physical exercise.’
‘Whatever you say, nurse Phillips,’ although he didn’t sound overly convinced.
‘I’ll just pop downstairs and see if we’ve got anything in the ice box.’
‘Great.’
‘Then you can... you know.’
‘I know.’
They both paused and stared at the cold water filling the bath, for want of something better to do.
‘Right, I’ll leave you to it,’ she said.
She was already half way out of the door when he said, ‘Hey, Kate.’
‘Yes?’ she said, popping her head back into the bathroom.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘No, seriously, I mean it. Thanks.’
She mumbled an incoherent reply before closing the door and hastening downstairs. It was all very well exchanging a bit of banter with a semi-naked man in her bathroom, what she did not need was for the conversation to turn serious. Who knew where that might lead.
There was plenty of ice in the freezer. Before running it up to the bathroom though, Kate put the kettle on. She needed a moment or two in which to pause and think. Her heart hadn’t stopped racing since she had discovered Dexter in the back of her car. The longer she considered matters the more concerned she became. Exactly what did she know about this chap who she had invited into her home? Just because she had spent some time with his dream alter ego, that was hardly the sound basis for a trusting relationship. And those injuries he had sustained. Clearly they were the result of some kind of violent act. What if Dexter wasn’t the innocent party he made himself out to be? What if he was the aggressor and his bruises were the result of someone having successfully fought him off?
Her mind raced through half a dozen more ‘what if’ scenarios, none of them pleasant. Only when the kettle came to the boil and automatically clicked off did she snap out of it. She upbraided herself. How foolish she had been not to let the police handle the situation when the perfect opportunity had presented itself back at the traffic lights. Glancing at the phone that hung on the wall next to the refrigerator she thought about calling them.
‘Go ahead if it’ll mak
e you feel more comfortable.’
Kate swivelled around to find Dexter behind her. He was shivering and dripping cold water onto her carpet. Her eyes latched on to the knife rack which rested on the kitchen work surface less than three feet from where he was standing. He noted the look.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I could use a sandwich right about now.’
Kate’s temper flared. ‘Will you stop it. I’m trying to have a serious panic attack here and I’m not going to manage to do so if you keep cracking bad jokes.’
‘I didn’t think they were that bad.’
‘Six out of ten, could do better.’
‘You give jokes marks?’ He shook his head. ‘That’s harsh.’
‘Let’s face it, most of them are more like casual flippant comments than jokes.’
‘Even harsher.’
‘Do you do serious?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Like when?’
‘Like now.’
‘This doesn’t sound very serious to me.’
‘Is fainting serious enough for you?’
‘What! Don’t you dare...’ Kate never got to finish the sentence because Dexter stumbled forwards and keeled over. She reached out and grabbed him just in time to stop him hitting the unforgiving kitchen floor. She knew all those hours she had put in down at the squash centre would pay dividends one day.
Dexter was having a nightmare. He had experienced far too many recently. This one was no different to the last. He was running across the top wall of a dam. The masonry was crumbling all around him as if the dam was cracking. To make matters worse, Richard and Nadia were chasing him, but that couldn’t be right, surely? They were his friends. He lost his footing, slipped and fell. Stretching out with his right hand he grabbed the ledge and clung on for dear life. As his body swung in the air he knew that he daren’t look down at the drop below, so he gazed up instead. Richard stood above him.
‘Help me,’ Dexter pleaded.
‘Gladly,’ Richard replied, then lifted his left leg.
‘Why?’ Dexter asked.
Richard declined to answer. Instead he brought his foot down hard on Dexter’s hand. Dexter tried to hold on but the pain was too much. He let go and found himself falling, falling, falling...
Dexter woke with a start and glanced around. The bedroom he found himself in was unfamiliar, as was the beautiful girl who was kneeling on the duvet next to him. He tried a name, experimentally. ‘Kate?’
She nodded.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘You flaked out.’
‘Damn. Did I miss anything?’
‘Me dragging you upstairs.’
‘That must have been fun.’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘Anything else?’
‘The bit where you thank me.’
‘Oh, yes, of course, thanks.’ He tried to sit up. He didn’t get very far. His head felt like it weighed about a hundred tonnes. She mopped at his temples with a slightly damp cloth.
‘Hey, I remember now,’ he said. ‘You were torturing me.’
‘No I wasn’t,’ she said.
‘Yes you were. You forced me to strip, then you made me take an ice bath and,’ he sniffed at the cup that lay on the bedside cabinet, ‘now it smells like you’re trying to poison me.’
‘It’s herb tea.’
‘I knew it. Foul stuff.’ He sniffed again. ‘What flavour?’
‘Raspberry and ginseng.’
He pulled a face. ‘Uuurgh. The worst.’
‘You really don’t know how to be serious, do you?’
‘It seems a waste when I’m in the company of such a beautiful woman.’
‘Compliments will get you nowhere.’
‘So what will?’
‘An explanation.’
‘You won’t believe me.’
‘Try me.’
Dexter struggled up into a sitting position, leant back against the headboard and, taking her at her word, tried her. ‘What do you know about the history of Dream World?’
‘Not much,’ she admitted.
‘Doesn’t it surprise you how few details there are out there in the public domain with regards to how Richard came up with the idea in the first place?’
‘I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about it before.’
‘Do you want to know why?’
Kate shrugged.
Dexter took a deep breath. ‘It’s because he didn’t come up with the idea. I did.’
Kate laughed.
‘I’m being serious,’ he said.
‘By your own admission, you don’t how to be.’
‘Well I am being serious now and if you don’t believe me then I guess that’s my own fault.’
‘Alright, prove it,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘If you came up with the idea for Dream World, prove it to me.’
‘I can do that easily if I can get hold of my legal documents.’
‘Where are they?’
‘In a safe.’
‘Where’s the safe?’
‘Inside a dream.’
Kate laughed even louder this time. ‘You must think I was born yesterday.’
‘No, I think you were born back in the Cold War and that’s why you sub-consciously tapped into the Russian dream scenario in which you confronted Nadia.’
‘I’ve told you before, don’t do that,’ she said, sharply.
‘What?’
‘Read my dreams.’
‘So you don’t want to talk about Paris either?’
The colour rose in her cheeks. ‘That’s none of your business.’
‘Oh, so it’s OK for you to use me for your naughty little fantasies, but not for us to discuss them.’
‘I didn’t know you were real back then,’ she protested.
‘Yes you did. We bumped into one another in the car park beforehand, remember?’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Perhaps because I’ve studied peoples dreams for years. Perhaps because I’ve learnt how to read them. Perhaps because I put all this knowledge into creating Dream World in the first place. Or, alternatively...’
‘What?’
‘I could just be very good at guessing.’
She took a moment to consider all that he had said then asked, ‘How did Richard steal the idea?’
‘Being my old partner he was in the perfect position to do so.’
‘Do you really expect me to believe any of this?’
‘No,’ he admitted.
‘Good.’
‘So what are you going to do with me then?’
Kate took a moment to consider. ‘The sensible thing would be to call the police.’
‘But you’re not going to,’ he said, hopefully.
She hesitated momentarily before replying. ‘No.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Why don’t you challenge him, legally, through the courts?’
‘Because legal is what Richard is good at. I was the ideas man, he was the business half of the partnership. I developed Dream World, he took care of all the legal stuff and security.’
‘Security?’
‘Yes. He wrote the programmes that police Dream World. For instance, Comrade Nadia.’
‘Nadia is a programme?’
‘She patrols the dreams, ensuring that criminals and deviants don’t take advantage of the centre, which is fine, someone needs to do that. But Richard has corrupted her from what she was originally designed to do and these days her main task is to keep me away from the safe that guards the original documents that prove I’m the real inventor of D
ream World.’
‘That’s crazy. You can’t store hard copy documents inside a dream.’
‘No, not hard copy. But you can store the information digitally and encrypt it within a programme.’
Realisation dawned on her. ‘That’s what you were doing in the dream, trying to steal it back.’
‘Yes.’
Kate’s head was starting to swim. ‘There’s still one thing I don’t understand. How did I get involved in all of this?’
‘By accident. I’ve waited several months for someone like you to come along.’
‘What do you mean, someone like me?’
‘Someone who Richard finds irresistible, therefore distracts him.’
‘Don’t try and flatter me.’
‘It’s true. I could tell how badly he wanted you that first night he took you to Sydney.’
‘You were watching?’
‘Monitoring.’
‘You pervert.’ She slapped him.
‘Sorry. You’re right, I deserved that. But I didn’t know you back then, I thought you were just as bad as that other woman I thought Richard fancied.’
‘Sylvia?’
‘Yes, Sylvia.’
She slapped him again.
He rubbed his cheek. ‘I’m not sure I deserved that.’
‘She’s my best friend,’ Kate said.
‘OK, maybe I did,’ he admitted. ‘Did you know that she...’
‘Don’t tell me!’ Kate cried.
‘OK, I won’t. But, boy, is she one naughty lady.’
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ she mumbled.
‘I think I probably do.’
In spite of everything, Kate found herself giggling.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.
‘You are,’ she replied.
‘But only six out of ten funny?’
‘Seven.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m improving then?’
Ignoring his comment she tried to get back to the more serious matter at hand. ‘So what went wrong?’
‘An unexpected eventuality arose.’
‘Which was?’
‘You,’ he said.
‘Come again?’
‘I managed to reach the plans when you distracted Nadia in that café in Red Square, only...’ he trailed off.
‘Only what?’