Panic Room

by Robert Goddard

  Zlenko let out a wild cry and tugged at his collar. ‘I am burning.’ His face was bathed in sweat. His hands were shaking.

  ‘You’re imagining it.’

  ‘That’s what I told myself when I couldn’t use my right hand properly,’ said Don. ‘But I still couldn’t use it.’

  Suddenly, Zlenko flung the door open and half climbed, half fell out into the road. He blundered across to the opposite verge and threw up.

  ‘Both of you stay where you are,’ said French. ‘I’ll shoot either of you if you get out of the car.’

  ‘We’re going nowhere,’ said Harkness, soothingly. ‘Isn’t that right, Don?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Don.

  Zlenko staggered back to the car and clambered in, though he left the door open, even when a van blared its horn as it pulled out round them.

  ‘Close the fucking door, Gennady,’ growled French.

  Zlenko made no move. Don stretched cautiously past him and pulled the door to. He caught Zlenko’s eye as he did so and saw in it all the fear ancient superstition could inspire. An idea came suddenly to him and he knew at once he was going to act on it.

  ‘There’s a way to neutralize her power over you,’ he said, looking at Zlenko.

  ‘Shto?’ the Russian mumbled.

  ‘Another witch told me about it. You need a piece of clothing she wore next to her skin.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Don,’ French cut in. ‘We don’t need your ten cents’ worth.’

  ‘You shut up,’ Zlenko growled. He prodded Don. ‘Finish what you say.’

  ‘Well, you have to take a piece of clothing she wore next to her skin to the place where she was born and—’

  ‘Hold on, Don,’ said Harkness, twisting round in the driving seat. ‘Where—’

  ‘Close your mouth,’ Zlenko shouted, pushing the barrel of the gun against the back of Harkness’s neck. ‘Now finish what you say, Don. What you do at place where she born?’

  ‘You burn the piece of clothing.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then you’re free of her.’

  ‘We’re not—’ French began. But his words were swallowed by Zlenko’s.

  ‘You know where she born?’

  ‘Yes. Tredarvas Farm. It’s a ruin near Mullion. Jack knows where it is. He can take us there.’

  ‘Is true?’ Zlenko demanded, still pressing the gun into Harkness’s neck.

  ‘I could take you there, yes. But—’

  ‘We’re not going anywhere except Wortalleth West,’ said French, with fractionally less confidence than before.

  ‘We go Wortalleth West after,’ said Zlenko with flat finality.

  ‘For fuck’s sake—’

  ‘We go back for piece of clothing now.’

  ‘That’s crazy. It’s only a matter of time before the cops show up there looking for their buddy.’

  ‘We go back. We get what we need.’

  ‘What you need – or are stupid enough to believe you need.’

  ‘Then we go to …’

  ‘Tredarvas Farm,’ said Don.

  ‘You think you’re being clever, don’t you, Don?’ rasped French. ‘You’ll change your mind about that before we’re done. You’ve got my personal guarantee on that.’

  ‘Turn round car,’ said Zlenko.

  ‘We shouldn’t go back to Chybargos,’ Harkness said, glancing cautiously towards French.

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that.’

  ‘Who was the other witch you spoke to, Don?’

  ‘She never gave me her name. Maris Hemsley put me in touch with her.’

  ‘Is that really true?’

  ‘Why would I lie?’

  There was an obvious answer to that question, but Harkness never got the chance to supply it. ‘Turn round car now, Harkness,’ shouted Zlenko. ‘Or I blow off your fucking head.’

  French pressed his hand to his forehead. ‘You better do as he says.’

  And Harkness nodded glumly. ‘OK. We go back.’

  The taxi dumps us in the forecourt of some massive corporate complex on the outskirts of Zug. It’s Harkness Pharmaceuticals HQ, a little city of its own built of blue steel and grey glass, with lots of water to reflect its towered roofline and lots of trees to soften its image.

  There’s a fountain out front. The water’s playing on a statue of a pair of serpents wrapped round a staff with wings on it. I recognize the thing as some kind of medical symbol. It should mean the company’s dedicated to keeping people well, I guess. But it could mean they’re only joking about that.

  ‘What’s that?’ I ask Jane as we hurry past the statue towards the building’s main entrance.

  ‘The Caduceus,’ she says quietly. ‘The wand carried by Mercury, messenger of the Gods.’

  ‘And what’s the message?’

  ‘The message for you is that you can still turn and walk away and we won’t try to stop you.’

  ‘I’m not going to do that.’

  ‘I know. But you should.’

  Two sets of doors slide open to admit us. Filippo speeds to the reception desk – a long slab of dark blue guarded over by a poker-faced guy in a matching suit. He recognizes Filippo, but he’s not quite sure about Jane and he’s definitely not sure about me. There’s some chit-chat in German. Filippo and Jane press their palms against some kind of reader and get issued with passes to hang round their necks. I catch myself wondering if Jane ever had her fingerprints taken when she was still Jane Glasson.

  There’s no palm-printing for me, just a picture. I dodge eye contact with the camera lens and get a pass stamped GAST. We’re in.

  We go up several floors in a virtually silent lift. I can hear Filippo breathing like a guy who’s just been jogging. Jane, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be breathing at all.

  ‘What are you planning to do in Harkness’s office, Filippo?’ I ask.

  He glares at me. ‘Talk to Astrid, not me. I don’t want you here.’

  ‘We’re not going to tell you what we’re doing until we’ve done it,’ says Jane.

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘It’s all you’re getting.’

  The lift doors swish open, which is the only sign we’ve reached the floor Filippo pressed the button for. I never noticed any deceleration at all. We step out and move along a wide, gleaming corridor. The floor’s … sprung, I guess. It gives slightly, or seems to. Sound is faintly muffled. Light is bright, but mellow – golden, you could say.It feels more like a top-class sanatorium than a corporate office.

  ‘I can tell Ingrid Denner a load of stuff you don’t want her knowing, Jane,’ I say, quietly, but with a lot of emphasis.

  ‘She won’t be here yet.’

  ‘But she’ll be arriving soon.’

  ‘Not soon enough.’

  We cross a bridge between two blocks of the building. Down below, a car is moving slowly in the vast, L-shaped car park, while a guy on a mower cuts dead-straight stripes on a lawn big enough to graze a herd of cattle on.

  Then we’re back inside the steel and glass body of Harkness HQ. One turn of the corridor. Two sets of double doors. By the third, there’s a security man, built like an Alp, with a face like a cliff that Filippo’s twitchy little smile slides straight off. They talk in German, the volume dialling up steadily as the Alp doesn’t do what Filippo wants. I guess Harkness’s personal office is on the other side of the door. And I guess Filippo isn’t getting the instantaneous access he reckons he’s entitled to.

  Jane says something. She speaks slowly and softly. She sounds … in control. The Alp blinks and talks into a microphone on his lapel.

  A second later, the door opens. A short, slim, grey-brown-haired woman looks out at us. She’s wearing a dark blue (naturally) trouser suit. She has a face like a no longer young pixie – round, lined, eager.

  ‘Hertha,’ says Filippo, making her Hertha Rietz, mentioned in Ingrid’s last email. He goes on in German.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Hertha respon
ds in English. ‘You also, Astrid.’

  ‘We have a meeting later,’ says Jane, oh-so-smoothly.

  ‘In symposium room B4, ja.’ Hertha’s voice is brittle and polished, like expensive glass. The message is clear. Symposium room B4 isn’t here. It’s probably not even close.

  ‘We need to check a few things before we sit down with Ms Denner,’ says Filippo. ‘We’re cleared for access to the Chairman’s suite.’

  ‘By the Chairman, ja. Not by the Board.’

  ‘Chairman’s clearance is good enough,’ says Jane.

  ‘That’s, ah …’

  ‘Arguable.’ The door is pulled wider open. Ingrid Denner steps into view. She’s kitted up for battle, sleek-tailored, hair just so, eyes piercing, even before they land on me. ‘What in hell is she doing here?’

  ‘Hi, Ingrid,’ I greet her casually.

  ‘Signor Crosetti, Ms Townsend.’ The politeness is choking Ingrid, but she gets the words out. ‘This young woman participated in placing an illegal spying device on my laptop while I was in London. She’s a serious threat to the security of Harkness Pharmaceuticals and certainly shouldn’t have been brought on to the premises.’

  ‘We don’t know anything about that,’ says Jane.

  ‘Well, you do now. You—’ Ingrid flaps a hand at the Alp. I get the feeling she’s about to have me escorted somewhere I don’t want to go.

  ‘I’ve got evidence about these two you need to hear, Ingrid.’ I fire out the words and get her to meet my gaze. ‘You came here for answers, didn’t you? Well, I’ve got some for you.’

  ‘Don’t listen to her,’ says Filippo. He launches a volley of German at Hertha, maybe aimed at undermining Ingrid. Harkness’s personal computer is through this door somewhere. And that’s where he wants to be. Without Ingrid or me hanging on his shoulder.

  Hertha replies in German at first. Then she switches to English. ‘We are required to give Ingrid full cooperation. It is a Board decision.’

  ‘That includes giving her the run of Jack’s private office, does it?’ asks Jane, accusingly.

  ‘Ja. I am sorry. I personally regret, Astrid … where we have come to.’

  ‘I’m authorized to do whatever I need to do to get to the truth concerning your duties for the company, Signor Crosetti, Ms Townsend,’ Ingrid says in her crispest won’t-take-any-nonsense style. ‘That’s why we’ll be meeting later.’

  ‘Why wait?’ Jane looks at Ingrid with a cool, open expression. ‘Why don’t we just go in there, sit down and talk it through – all of us?’

  ‘No, no,’ says Filippo. ‘That’s not—’

  Jane cuts him off with ‘We have nothing to hide.’ That’s obviously untrue. It’s so untrue it goes beyond a lie. It’s more a kind of … dare. ‘Well, Ms Denner? Will that suit you?’

  Ingrid frowns at her. ‘I guess you know Harkness has his private system locked up tight, don’t you? That’s why you feel you can get away with a show of confidence like this.’

  ‘I – we – don’t aim to get away with anything. Do you want to talk – here, now – or not?’

  ‘What about her?’ Ingrid points at me.

  ‘She seems to think she has something to contribute.’ You bet I do.

  Ingrid’s face is a picture of confusion. She doesn’t know who or what to believe. Filippo mutters something to Jane in Italian. She doesn’t respond. He mutters some more, runs his fingers through his hair and adds one other Italian word I do understand. ‘Merda.’

  ‘Well?’ prompts Jane.

  Ingrid gives way. You can see it before she says it. Logically, she has nothing to lose. But she’s not sure. She’s stopped trusting logic. Even so … ‘All right,’ she says. ‘You’d better all come in here.’

  Don had hoped the police would be waiting for them at Chybargos, spelling the end of the whole horrific episode. But there were no police, except the dead officer in the garage. French kept saying how crazy it was to have returned there. ‘Fucking superstitious bullshit,’ he complained. But Zlenko paid no attention. He was acting within a belief system in which French counted for less than nothing.

  ‘Give me key,’ he told Harkness when they had come to a halt in the yard. Harkness pulled it out of the ignition and handed it over. ‘You stay here.’ He meant Harkness and French. And he obviously did not trust French to wait for him. ‘We do this.’ By we he meant himself and Don.

  They got out of the car and headed for the garage. Don had not thought till now about the ghastly practicality of the idea he had planted in Zlenko’s mind. He already had an item of Wynsum Fry’s underclothing, but he had left it at Wortalleth West and he was doing everything he could to delay their arrival at the house. Besides, Zlenko might not believe it was genuine. As to that, there was only one way he could be certain.

  Zlenko flung the garage door open and gestured with the gun for Don to go in. He made his way along the side of the police car, with Zlenko breathing like a bellows behind him. Rounding the bonnet, they reached the spot where Don and Harkness had dumped the bodies. Don tried not to look at them directly. There was a smell rising from them, of blood and death and the brink of decay. He felt sick to his stomach.

  ‘Do it,’ said Zlenko.

  Don dropped to his knees beside Fry. He fumblingly undid the laces of her grubby grey trainers and pulled them off, then tugged the brown socks off her feet. They were damp with her sweat. He swallowed hard and looked up at Zlenko to check he was content they had what they needed.

  But Zlenko shook his head. The feet were evidently not close enough to the essence of a witch’s being for his purposes. He pointed towards Fry’s waist. ‘Trusiki,’ he growled.

  Don had a queasy feeling he knew what trusiki meant. He could only hope he was wrong. The hope did not last long. Zlenko hitched up the hem of Fry’s skirt with the toe of his shoe. ‘Trusiki,’ he repeated.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Don murmured.

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘OK.’ Don took a deep breath and held it. He pulled Fry’s coat out of the way and yanked her skirt up above her thighs. She was wearing large white knickers. There was a tide of dampness on them and he felt sure he would smell urine as soon as he took another breath.

  ‘Do it quick,’ said Zlenko.

  Don reached up under the skirt and grasped the waistband of the knickers. He tried to pull them straight off, but they caught between her legs. He had to roll her first one way, then the other, to get them down over her knees. By then, he had to refill his lungs. The smell was just as bad as he had feared. He thought for a second he would throw up, but as he held his breath again and pulled the skirt down over her knees the sensation passed.

  Part of a plastic bag was protruding from Fry’s coat pocket. Don pulled it out, thinking to store the socks and knickers inside it. A pack of cards, bound in a pair of rubber bands, one black, one red, came with it and fell to the floor. It was surely the pack she had tempted Don with at the Blue Anchor.

  ‘Put back cards,’ said Zlenko.

  Don picked up the pack and stuffed it back into Fry’s pocket, exposing a card on the bottom of the pack as he did so. The nine of spades. He heard Zlenko suck in his breath. It evidently meant something to him, though not to Don. He looked up questioningly.

  It was immediately obvious Zlenko was a frightened man. The gun was shaking slightly in his hand. ‘We go now,’ he said.

  Don stuffed the socks and knickers into the bag and tied a loose knot in it. Then he stood up. Zlenko had retreated to the door and was gesturing for Don to follow.

  ‘We go.’

  There was no arguing with that. Don hurried out into the yard. Zlenko closed the door and gestured for him to head back to the car.

  French’s greeting was predictably sour. ‘Can we get the fuck out of here now?’

  Zlenko nodded. ‘Da.’ He turned to Don and signalled for him to hand over the bag. Now he had what he had come for, he did not want to be separated from it. ‘We go.’

  As we walk into Har
kness’s office, I realize we’re in a slender block isolated from the rest of the complex. We’re looking across and down at a lot of windows, but not up at any. Above is just the grey sky.

  There’s a conference table and beyond that a desk set in an island of space, with a couple of PCs on a side-table. There are tall metal-doored cupboards with ventilation panels through which I can see lights blinking, on back-up hard drives, maybe, to power whatever Filippo meant by a relay – an override for his override in Locarno, as he called it.

  There’s something else I notice as well. Another Lanyon, hanging on the wall nearest the desk, where it catches the morning light: red and green and blue, with narrow strips of black plastic laid across the canvas.

  No one else gives the art a second glance. Ingrid sits herself at the head of the table, with her back to the desk. Hertha sits to her left, Jane to her right. I plant myself next to Jane. Filippo hovers on the other side of the table, a tormented look on his face, hands locked together. His eyes keep darting towards Harkness’s PC, about four metres away.

  ‘Are you going to join us, Signor Crosetti?’ Ingrid asks.

  Filippo doesn’t answer. But he does sit down.

  ‘Mind if I call you Filippo?’

  He doesn’t respond to that either.

  ‘Astrid?’

  Jane smiles faintly. ‘First names are fine.’ Maybe she’s amused by the irony that Astrid isn’t her real name anyway.

  ‘Like Hertha says, the Board requires you both to give me all and any information I require.’

  ‘I could argue my contract imposes no such obligation on me,’ says Jane.

  ‘And are you going to argue that?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, your consultancy is under Filippo’s direct supervision, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you, Filippo, are an employee of Harkness Pharmaceuticals, not a consultant, also correct?’

  Filippo nods dumbly.

  ‘So, you’ll be able to tell me why you’ve resourced so much apparently irrelevant work in nanotechnology and bioelectronics, as detailed in my email of the twelfth.’

  ‘It’s not irrelevant,’ Filippo says in a voice not much above a whisper.