The Winter Man

by Perry Bhandal

  The package from Rainer sat, like an unexploded bomb on the coffee table. She knew what was in it. It was the same package that was sent to everyone who wanted to join the Serious Crimes Squad. It was, or variants of it were responsible for the vast majority of the withdrawn applications. What she didn’t yet know was what it was about the contents that was so devastating that it could change people’s lives forever. The package had reduced in size over the years. Now it was small, just big enough to contain a physical dongle that would enable her, in conjunction with her temporarily raised security clearance, remote access to the file that Rainer had compiled for her.

  Josie knew what he was trying to do. But he was not going to succeed. Out there in the electronic ether was a tiny space on a physical hard drive. On it were many series of little ones and zeros. They were meaningless until they were processed through the programs designed to translate them into sounds and images; words and images had been chosen to break her resolve. She walked past the package and opened the door.

  ‘Hey, Gorgeous.’

  She smiled taking the proffered bottle of wine and the kiss. John was wearing faded jeans and a tight white t-shirt that showed off his lean physique to its best advantage. She felt her heart jump. He smelled as gorgeous as he looked. She was glad she hadn’t cancelled on him, it would be nice to have someone familiar around. He pulled her to him and all other thoughts left her mind.

  A few hours later as John was asleep Josie slid out from underneath the covers, careful not to wake him. She still tingled between her legs. The sex had been wonderful; John had been as enduring and as considerate as ever. Lying entwined as he fell asleep she found it hard to fathom why they had grown so far apart. She loved him, more than she let him know. More than she probably knew herself. It had felt so good to be close to him tonight. The only blip had been when he brought up the subject of kids yet again. She thought he had understood. Implicit in them seeing one another again was that they didn’t discuss children. She didn’t want them, he did. The reason they’d split was that he had tried to pressurize her. But she knew she wasn’t ready. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she crept from the bedroom. Not bad for thirty two. Still trim in all the right places. According to John she had the sexiest behind in the world. She had never had any problem attracting men. She was pretty and she knew it but it was a late blooming. As a youngster she had been geeky and awkward. Her character had always been testy and combative.

  She had been the first of her family to go to university, where she had studied psychology. Her father had lived long enough to see her graduate but thankfully not long enough to see her join the police force he had come to loathe. During the miner’s strike the police had been forced to become the oppressors and there were many in the mining communities of the time who would never be able to forgive them for what they did. Her choice of career had baffled her family and for a time it had baffled her, but she had learned to trust her instincts, a skill she had honed in the three years of freedom at university. There she suddenly grew and developed in ways she could not have imagined when she had been living in the confines of a mining community. By her third year she had her pick of the sports jocks but in true testament to her uncompromising character it was a rather slight science student a year her junior who she took to her graduation ball.

  Once in the police force her instinct and gift for psychology meant she had been fast tracked into psyche profiling. It was an area where she excelled. She gained a reputation for accurate and insightful profiling on very little information. She had a natural instinct for the motivations and desires of the criminal mind; something which she found a little disturbing in herself. A number of high profile arrests based in large part on her work had brought her to the Serious Crimes Squad’s attention. And it was Charlie who had prodded her in the direction of Rainer’s team.

  She hadn’t heard much about Rainer’s team, but she soon found out that their low profile was by design. Charlie had briefed her on the modus operandi that Rainer had developed over the years.

  ‘He came to understand that effectiveness lies hand in hand with secrecy,’ he told her. ‘The wolves have to remain hidden from their prey until the moment when they pounce for them to be effective. The bright lights of publicity would have rendered their teams useless had they taken credit for any of the high profile arrests and convictions that they were responsible for.’

  So instead they farmed the glory out to other, lower level teams who got the credit and appeared on the news. It was their faces on the fronts of newspapers and online. So, it was no surprise that Josie had not heard of Rainer. But once she was on the inside she had begun to understand the full extent of his hidden accomplishments.

  Leaving John asleep she padded into the lounge, clicked on a lamp and picked up the package, tipping the memory stick out onto the table. A small handwritten note fell out with it. She unfolded it.

  ‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. For if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.’ Reconsider this. Rainer.

  Josie recognised the quote. It was Nietzsche. If Rainer was going to quote anyone it would be him.

  Flipping open her laptop she slid the stick in and pulled on earphones. The contents of the stick appeared on her desktop. Josie took a deep breath and double clicked.

  The light from the images on her laptop flickered over her face. Slowly her eyes began to well up and she put her hand to her mouth to stifle a low moan of horror.

  The progress bar on the video got to about a third of the way along before Josie closed the laptop lid.

  Behind her the rustle of bedsheets and the soft padding of feet.

  ‘Hey babe,’ mumbled John sleepily as he placed his arms around her.

  ‘Hey.’

  You’re freezing,’ Josie slipped out of his embrace. ‘How long have you been up?’ he asked fully awake now and rubbing his eyes.

  Josie looked at her watch. It was 3.24 am. ‘Oh not long.’

  John looked at her in the darkness.

  ‘Are you ok?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t sound fine.’

  ‘Well I am. Just go back to sleep.’

  ‘Look what is it? What’s wrong now? Hey? I thought we were getting on ok? Now I go to sleep for a couple of hours and when I wake up you’ve…’

  ‘I’ve what?’ said Josie, turning back to him.

  In the darkness her face glistened.

  ‘Oh God.’ John pulled her toward him. ‘Why are you crying?’

  Josie let herself be pulled, even though she did not want him to touch her. She did not want anyone to touch her.

  But she was so cold. So bloody cold.

  Rainer had returned to the anonymous brownstone that was his team’s offices and poured a measure of Scotch and scrolled down Josie’s profile.

  Graduated from Hendon top of her class and rose quickly through the ranks. Her degree meant specialising in Psyche was a natural step and she had shown an aptitude for it. She had been doing it for seven years and the list of the guilty that she had been instrumental in bringing to justice was impressive.

  And now this sudden change. This urge to join him and his team. Seemed like a natural step but something nagged at him. Something didn’t fit. Rainer had come to trust his instincts, rely on them. His intuition had saved his life many times and his intuition told that there was something not quite right about her. Ordinarily he would have dismissed her. Come up with an excuse not to have her in his team

  But her resemblance to Dina had thrown him. Not physically. There was much to differentiate between the two. No, it was something that only became apparent when he met her for the first time this afternoon. She reminded him of the same graceful, feline and quite unreadable manner. She was also obviously completely unawed by him.

  Dina’s death had hit him hard. It was her sex that had ultimately been the reason for her being singled out in his tea
m. The things they had done to her. He could not imagine the suffering that she had had to endure at the hands of those men.

  He still remembered the night they finally found her. The image of her being ripped open had been etched in his memory.

  Rainer had thrown all the resources at his disposal in the hunt for her kidnapper, called in every favour, squeezed every informant. But he had evaded him. His one failure.

  He believed it was that that finally killed her. The knowledge that the man that had plucked her from the streets at will was still out there. He had failed. He had failed her.

  He had vowed never to let it happen to him again. He couldn’t stop the applications from his female police colleagues. Nor could he ignore them. Instead he found a way of talking them out of joining him.

  She was no different from the others, he was sure of it. She would see what he had sent her and in the morning he would have a message waiting for him, telling him that she too would be withdrawing her application and it would no longer be a problem.

  The waning light marked the end of another day. It was at times like these that his thoughts turned to his own mortality. How many sunsets had he left? When would he become physically ineffective? He had built a formidable team. But he had yet to find the one that could take over for him.

  Life, death, the living, the deceased. A cycle that would continue for an eternity. He too would be forgotten. And the memories, all that he held dear, all that he had seen would dissipate. Like a mote in wind.

  Rainer shivered despite the warmth of the office. The last of the sun’s light dipped behind the top of the tall building opposite his window. He felt sad for the young lady he had met today. If she insisted on joining him her life was about to change in a way she could not begin to imagine.

  CHAPTER 11

  make me a list...drink to death...toy demon...i wish to be like you...

  It was a bright, busy commuter morning, traffic jostling and shunting along the wide road but Josie was oblivious to it all as she walked along the street, her eyes fixed ahead of her. She stopped outside an anonymous brown brick building, dwarfed between two mighty glass skyscrapers which reflected its dowdy walls back and forth between the windows of their lower floors, and squinted upwards. The harsh sun seemed to burn unusually bright, boring into her tired, heavily made-up eyes. It sat unchallenged in a cloudless sky of brilliant blue, mocking the coldness that filled her. It should have raised her spirits but instead it seemed to be trying to beat her into submission.

  The shadows of the tall buildings cut sharply and confusingly across each other on the sidewalks. Her head still felt thick despite the coffee and Co-codamol she had taken when trying to get rid of the pain in her head. John had left during the half hour when she had finally managed to fall asleep. He hadn’t left a note and she hadn’t heard from him yet. She debated whether or not to send him a text but dismissed it when she realised she had nothing to say.

  The images and sounds from the previous night crushed all other thoughts in her mind, somehow becoming entwined with violent memories of her father. She had twisted and turned all night between innumerable decisions and courses of action, between burning gut fear and cool, objective intellectualisation. Several times she had decided that the life Rainer had shown her was not a life she would be able to live. That she would stay instead in the safety of conventional psyche analysis, rebuild her relationship with John and have kids just like he wanted. She had tried to sleep as a panic rose steadily inside her at the thought of that life and all it meant, telling herself that once she was rested she would be able to think more clearly and make better decisions. Then she decided she would do the opposite, she would join Rainer, no matter how much horror he threw at her, and she would stand with him and the others, lending her strength and skills to the defence of the defenceless. Then the thought of losing John and the chance for children and the safety of her little bubble reared and the sleepless cycle would continue. When the beeping alarm had finally pulled her painfully back to consciousness she was greeted with the most beautiful bright sunlight, which made her cry uncontrollably.

  She swiped her security card. The door clicked and she stepped into Rainer’s domain. It looked like an empty office floor. She hadn’t expected it to look so ordinary and so worn. Wooden desks trailing haphazard cabling that would have given the health and safety officer a cardiac arrest. Filing cabinets with doors that didn’t quite fit flush, dusty ceiling fans, a small kitchen area stacked with unwashed mugs and an overflowing bin all atop hideous brown carpet tiling. In the corner, Rainer’s office, a flimsy glass and wood fabrication that was half the size of her own office across town.

  It was like walking onto the stage of a nineteen seventies police series. The only things missing were typewriters. Thankfully there weren’t any. In their place were some fairly heavy spec server racks and a myriad of tiny flashing lights busy with activity.

  She knew, contrary to Police National Computer rules, that Rainer now operated his own ring-fenced information store; data that was kept isolated and could not be accessed from the PNC. Sure he kept the PNC up to date with information he felt he could release but Rainer was the gatekeeper. It had been like that for a long time and it had worked very well and no-one had complained. It was only when the external compliance consultants came on board to analyse and update the information systems that it had become an issue.

  Information silos were a big no-no. Rainer had resisted but he really didn’t have a choice. He was in breach of the PNC rules and any concerns he had regarding security of his information and restriction of access were more than addressed by the authentication and partitioning capabilities of the system.

  Nobody could have foreseen the events that lead to a DOJ breach of the system and unknowingly searching all of Rainer’s files.

  No-one dared raise any objections when Rainer quietly unplugged his secure network from the PNC.

  He was seated in his office, hunched over his laptop. Fingers massaging his temple.

  He looked up and beckoned her over.

  ‘Quiet today,’ she said alluding to the empty floor.

  ‘If my men are not on the street making moves they’re no use to me,’ replied Rainer. Josie dismissed the emphasis on the word ‘men’ as her own sensitivity.

  ‘I don’t suppose you were expecting to see me,’ she said, pulling up a chair opposite him and sitting down heavily.

  ‘I had hoped,’ he said, looking up at her.

  She placed the memory stick on the desk.

  ‘I haven’t been able to get those images out of my mind,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard screams before, screams of honest hardworking people being beaten to death by policemen who were nothing more than hired killers. But not like this. It’s a world I knew existed but it was an intellectual exercise until last night. But you knew that didn’t you? It wasn’t a test of my drive or my ambition or of my will to do the right thing. Anyone seeing those images, those films, reading the descriptions of what was done to those children, how some of them died, could not help but want to take down those responsible. It’s not that at all. You were testing my strength; my ability to stand in front. To step into the dark myself instead of hoping someone else will. That’s what you are asking.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I already gave you my answer.’

  She held Rainer’s stare for what seemed like an eternity. Then without ceremony he shook his head, pulled open his desk drawer, took out a slim file and slid it across to her.

  Josie opened the file. A single picture dominated the page. A photograph of Caldwell found on the phone of one of the now dead guests from the polo club.

  ‘Paul Caldwell. We still have no idea who he really is so we’ll stick with calling him Caldwell for the time being. Based on what we have, which isn’t much, I want you to put together a list of most likely associates. From that list I want the top four. Then we put them under surveillance and see what pops up.’

  Josie took
the file and got up and left.

  Blake stood at the floor to ceiling window looking out over the river and city beyond. His fingers went to the warped eternity pendant now at his neck.

  After the morgue Blake could not bear to go back to the house. He had checked into a managed apartment. He knew he had to go home at some point but not now.

  Clutching a bottle, his eyes lidded and lined, wandering from room to room, feet slapping softly on the wooden floor. The place was empty.

  It was as devoid of things as a home could be. There was nothing here that he could connect to his former life, nothing to remind him of his dead family. He drained the bottle and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

  He was tired. A part of him wanted to quit, to take to his bed and sleep forever.

  He had nothing and no-one in his life now. He had considered turning to Ray but the shame and failure of that afternoon weighed too heavily. He knew Ray and Serena would be searching for him. Part of the reason he was holed up here was to avoid that. He could not face the man. He could not see him surviving that encounter preferring the absolution of death instead. He had considered suicide, even bought the pills. But he could not bring himself to take them. Something had uncoiled deep inside him at the thought of that being his end.

  Other times it was rage. A rage so explosive that it threatened to tear his arms from his sockets, his heart from his chest and his mind from him.

  So it was one rain sodden afternoon, when the last of alcohol had turned to bile in his stomach he stood, dressed unsteadily and returned home.

  The demon watched the man through the roof of the building. Its gaze followed him as he moved from room to room, as he emptied the contents of vessel after vessel into his veins and then bled the same from his mouth screaming for a god that both knew would not come.

  The demon watched the man’s spirit separate and prepared itself to take it. Perhaps it had been wrong about him. One night when the soft wailing had become like song, a slow rising and falling, interrupted by small pitiful sobs like water on stone the demon saw the spirit almost in its entirety, only connected to the man by a single thread. Then the man had fallen asleep. And the demon waited for the last threads to disentangle. But to its surprise they did not. And as the man turned this way and that the spirit drew further and further in. If the demon had brows it would have furrowed them. Most unusual. By the morning, when the man woke coughing and retching both him and his spirit was one. The demon stretched its wings. It had been right about this one.