by P. R. Black
‘Okay. You’re shy. I follow. That makes two of us. So, what can I do for you?’
‘I have a number of jobs I need looking into. This could be spread out over a long period of time.’
‘If you’ve got the money, we’ve got the time.’
‘It’s going to involve the police, and maybe one or two politicians.’
He chuckled. ‘Politicians? Man, that’s a piece of cake. Police might be a bit more difficult.’
‘But not impossible?’
Rupert drummed his fingers on his desk, as if typing. ‘If it’s online, nothing is impossible.’
‘Okay.
‘What’s first?’ Becky took a breath. ‘Let’s take it from the top. I’m investigating a very serious crime, which I think was hushed up at a fairly high level. It’s a hunch, but it adds up. I need hard evidence. My idea is that there is a well-connected conspiracy involving crimes committed right across Europe which have never been solved. That sort of conspiracy means highly-connected people. In particular, I want to know about… people of influence in politics. The police and politicians. The higher up the chain, the better. I want to find people who could cover things up.’
It was difficult to read anything into the bubbling mass in the centre of the face, but she imagined two eyebrows raised in the centre. ‘Whoa there! I’ll need a little bit more information, Elizabeth. Did you say “across Europe”?’
‘I did. Don’t worry. I’ll go into specifics.’
He began to write on a notepad. ‘What kind of crimes do you mean?’
‘I’m looking for something that you can only find under the radar. Dark net stuff.’
‘Again… you’ll have to be specific. If you want an idea of how much data this involves, type the word “sex” into Google.’
‘I’m aware of that. That’s why I hired you.’
‘When you say “dark net stuff” …?’
‘I’m talking about murder. Ritual abuse. Teenage girls. Families.’
He grunted. ‘You a paedo hunter?’
‘I don’t think our arrangement entitles you to ask me personal questions.’
‘I’m just curious. We’ve had a few of those before. A couple of our previous clients worked for the British press.’
She barely paused. ‘I want to find out if there is a ring of people interested in that sort of activity. Any group, however loosely organised. If you can cross-check it with dark net searches or people who regularly watch videos featuring that kind of material, fact or fiction, it would be a starting point. If they exist.’
‘Oh, they exist, all right. If you’ve thought about it, someone’s into it.’
‘Then you have something to go on.’
‘Well, the thing about these establishments – like drug dealing, or weapons, or anything else on the dark net – the organisers aren’t ignorant about the risks they run by advertising themselves online. That’s why they don’t do it openly. Things are still word of mouth, usually, localised industries. And if they do have an online presence, it’ll be vanilla. Something respectable-seeming. Nothing you could ever stumble upon. You would have to know precisely what you were looking for.’
‘I understand that. This is just a starting point. It’s worth a try. See what turns up. Anything at all, based anywhere – I want to know about it. I’m particularly interested in anything linked to the South of France, as well as Eastern Europe and Russia.’
‘Okay.’
‘And after that, I want you to take a sidestep. People who are into wife-swapping, hook-ups, sex clubs – kinky, but nothing illegal. So long as it’s organised. Then I want you to cross-reference it with anyone who is, or has been, a serving politician.’
Rupert burst out laughing. ‘Again, we could be talking about a wide field here. I understand your Houses of Parliament have some interesting characters.’
‘“Interesting” is a loaded term there.’
‘This will take some time. And it’s dangerous. There may be an extra payment required.’
‘You’ve been paid plenty. Hacking is dangerous, full stop.’
‘That’s cool. We can discuss it nearer the time.’
She let this pass. ‘I’m looking for anyone at all – but anyone based in Brussels would be a close fit. Someone who might be able to shut something down before it spreads across Europe. A person of influence who can make investigations disappear. Someone who can set up a dead end.’
Rupert scratched where his skin met the stretched neck of his bleached-out black T-shirt. ‘You know, at the expense of mansplaining… when it comes to that kind of stuff, you’d be surprised how much of it goes on. I’m bound to turn up a few results.’
‘I’m not looking for a big, obvious thing. I’m not even looking for a particularly big fish. I want a starting point. I’m looking for a guy who might know a guy.’
‘Someone you can blackmail easily, you mean?’
She frowned. ‘I’m trying not to make any assumptions about you, Rupert. Try to do the same for me.’
‘Noted. You mentioned police, too?’
Becky nodded. ‘Anyone involved on a personal level would be a start. Later, I’ll be looking for criminal records. Names of detectives, signatures. Photos.’
‘Any specific investigation?’
Becky paused. ‘We can come to that later. Let’s start at the top. Ritual murders. Families. Go from there.’
‘Timeframe?’
‘Go back thirty years, but focus on the last twenty.’
‘Okay. I’ll see what turns up for now.’
‘When’s the soonest you can get back to me?’
‘Let’s give it a week. I’m busy at the moment.’
‘A week’s ideal. That’ll let me make some arrangements. Shall I use the same password?’
Rupert’s pixelated face shook from side to side. ‘Absolutely not. Check your mobile. I’m going to assume it’s a burner phone?’
‘I’m not a complete amateur.’
‘Great. We’ll instruct you from there.’
Becky nodded. ‘See you around.’
‘With a face like this, you couldn’t mistake me for anyone else.’ She got the impression he smiled. ‘Nice to meet you, Elizabeth.’
10
Becky stared into the maelstrom.
It was her term, not Dr Fullerton’s; in reality, it was just a flat laminated disc comprising concentric circles, black, then white. The curves were treacherous to the eye, blending into one another in exactly the wrong places. It was an optical illusion, like something posted onto social media that made you feel uneasy the longer you tried to focus on it.
The disc was set up on a vertical stand on Dr Fullerton’s desk, with the lights turned low all round them. Becky sank into his armchair. Many times, she had wanted to ask him where he got the seat. It seemed to want to swallow her, but the feeling was not unpleasant. She could see herself curling up in its lap for a sleep on lazy afternoons.
Fullerton’s voice had a slightly camp air to it at these points. Becky thought he sounded a little bit like a Glaswegian Vincent Price. ‘Just look at the centre of the circles, Becky. Clear your mind. There is nothing here that can harm you, nothing to cause you alarm. Your fears are locked out, barred, and they can’t make a sound.’
Eventually she became drowsy, thanks mainly to Fullarton’s soothing drone, allied to the lights, the world-class chair, and the circles. She had no idea if she actually was ‘an ideal subject’, as he had claimed, or if her trance state was simply a cumulative effect of soft tones, sound and ambience.
Presently, her eyes wanted to cross over; the circles wanted to converge.
He droned on: ‘You know what it means; beans means Heinz, or cleans means beans’ dream.’
Nonsense phrases, of course, a means of lulling you into the dream zone, that slightly giddy place where nothing made sense except the poetry, or maybe just the cadence.
‘And I’m going to count back. With every number you hear,
you are growing more and more relaxed… five… you feel like you could just close your eyes and drift off, so let’s do that, Becky… eyes closed… four… your head feels very heavy, just let it relax back into the chair… three…’
On ‘one’ he allowed a few seconds of quiet, filled only with her deep, calm breathing.
‘Now, Becky. Let’s go back to the day with the crooked tree.’
‘… Crooked tree…’
‘The crooked tree, flat enough to lie down on…’
*
Then
Howie clambered over an immense fallen tree trunk, shrieking to himself, lost in his own daydreams of war and heroism. The dead tree’s husked bark, bleached in the sunlight, reminded Becky of an elephant’s skin. She lay against an ash tree, head resting against its smoother surface. A knot pressed against the back of her head, but the feeling was not unpleasant, like the trance sensation she sometimes got by touching the space at the crossroads of eyes and nose. She closed her eyes, visualising the bee that murmured through her auditory field from right to left.
‘That thing will be a haven for mini-beasts,’ Clara said. She was closer than Becky had supposed, startling her younger sister.
‘What? The tree?’
‘That, and everything else round here. The ground you’re sitting on, for example.’
Becky opened her eyes. Clara was scratching at her arm. For no reason she could articulate, the older girl’s tiny twist of bellybutton, poking out above her stonewashed jeans beneath the cut-off Mötley Crüe T-shirt, offended her.
‘I’m thinking Howie’s more likely to fall off than be attacked by insects,’ Becky said.
As if in direct response, Howie leapt off the trunk, crouching low on the ground as though to avoid gunfire, then hurled an imaginary grenade into the air. After supplying his own explosive sound effects, he sprinted back to the far end of the trunk, scampered on top of it, and returned fire at the top of his voice.
‘No… he’s annoyingly robust,’ Clara said. ‘Besides, he’ll be fine if he falls off – so long as he lands on his head.’ She pulled something shiny from her pocket and jabbed it into the tree where Becky lay. The younger girl cocked an eyebrow at her sister as she blocked out the light.
‘What are you doing?’
Clara flicked a splinter from the blade on her penknife and hacked at the bark again. ‘Have you heard of patrins?’
‘No. I’ve heard of vandalism, though.’
Clara sniffed, disdainfully. ‘Patrins are signs left for people to follow. Gypsies use them all the time.’
‘Who are you leaving a sign for?’
‘Monsieur Fabrice, of course.’
‘Who?’
‘Fabrice. My pen-pal. Goodness, do you mean to say you haven’t been reading my diary?’
Becky shrugged.
‘Keep up with current events, dear sister. Fabrice is going to be my boyfriend.’
‘How did you meet Fabrice?’ Becky said the name in a silly accent she’d heard on Monty Python.
‘Pen-pals’ column, in a quality newspaper. Not the type of thing you’d read, I imagine.’ Clara jabbed the penknife hard into the bark, gritting her teeth as it met resistance. ‘We’ve been corresponding for months, Fabrice and I. His English is perfect.’
‘What about the boy at school? The guitar player?’
‘He’s just for now. Fabrice could be for life. He plays rugby, you know. Says he is more than six feet tall already. He wants to captain the French national side.’
‘Rugby? Ugh, rugby players are horrible.’ Becky mimicked thrusting two fingers down her throat. ‘All hairy legs and muddy shorts. Their ears look like cabbage and they brag about having noses turned ninety degrees.’
‘Only on the field of play,’ Clara replied, after some thought. ‘Off it, they’re perfect gentlemen. Besides, Fabrice is handsome. French men are just so damned sophisticated.’
The blade stuck fast. Clara braced one hand against the bark, then pulled hard on the silver handle with another. Becky felt the tree shiver as the knife jerked free.
‘There.’
On the bark, she had gouged out a rough pentagram, like the one printed on Clara’s T-shirt.
‘Great. Fabrice is a devil freak.’ Becky began to giggle.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Clara said, clasping the knife and returning it to her pocket. ‘It’s not about devil worship. It’s actually an ancient symbol. It can ward off evil.’
‘Why do all your silly devil bands have it on their album covers, then?’
‘It also looks cool.’
Becky smiled mischievously. ‘And Fabrice is all the way out here, is he? Coming to meet you? And you’re using that tiny little sign, in the middle of the forest, to communicate?’
‘That’s right.’
Becky clapped her hands. ‘This is brilliant! You actually think it’s going to happen. Are you going to wait here all day for him to show up? Maybe the whole week?’
Clara rubbed her chin, suppressing a smile of her own. As ever, it was difficult to tell if she was making it all up or not. ‘If Fabrice says he’ll be here, he’ll be here.’
It was then that Becky noticed the break in hostilities. She wouldn’t have called it a silence. The forest was always full of sounds, if one listened carefully. Birds, trees, running water… the absence of these noises frightened her.
‘Hey… where’s Howie?’
They called out, checking round and underneath the fallen tree. They split up, shouting, calling out into the forest, but only the birds answered them.
‘We’re going to have to go get Dad,’ Becky said, querulously.
‘Nonsense. He’s hiding somewhere. He’s done this before.’ But Clara didn’t look too sure. Her face was pale.
‘What if he went back to the lake? What if he fell in?’
Clara swallowed. ‘He wouldn’t have.’
‘I’m going back,’ Becky said.
And in that moment, the boy sprung from the long grass, levelling his imaginary rifle.
‘Ha ha! You got a fright! Got you, got you, got you!’
‘You little bugger!’ Clara yelled. She ran after the boy, and he shrieked, sprinting off into the trees, delighted. Reluctantly, Becky trotted after them.
Once they were gone, a dark figure emerged from his hiding place in the bushes, not quite twelve feet from where the boy had lain in the scrub.
His fingertips traced the edges of the pentagram on the tree, its edges oozing sap.
*
Now
‘And let’s count back now, from twenty… nineteen… eighteen… you can feel yourself slowly coming back to normal… seventeen… you’re very close to the surface…’
Was I out, or not? Becky thought. She was never totally sure. Perhaps that deep sense of relaxation was enough. Maybe that was all a trance was, a step or two up from being asleep.
One way of proving the trance state existed at all would be to simply get up and walk out of the door in the middle of a session. She wondered if she was in fact stuck to the chair, as Fullerton had insisted she was, earlier.
What if he dropped dead? What if the fire alarm went? Would he have to talk her back out of it, with his Lancaster bomber-burr voice, even as smoke seeped through the crack in the door?
‘Five… four… coming fully alert now, eyes open… eyes open, Becky… three, two, and one, and you’re back.’
She blinked, perhaps for form’s sake.
‘Welcome back. How do you feel?’
‘Not bad. Relaxed.’
‘I’m glad. You’re such a good subject.’
‘And you’re a little bit cheaper than a spa day.’
‘How do you feel about reliving these memories?’
‘Same as before. No difference. It’s no better or worse. What’s happened is what happened. I’m beyond trying to change my responses to that.’
Fullerton got up, laid the disc flat and dimmed the desk lamp. ‘I used to worr
y that you’d react badly to hypnosis.’
‘I’m paying the bills though, right?’
He grunted. ‘Quite. It’s your call. I’m doing what you’ve asked. Even so, I wouldn’t recommend that treatment to someone like you, right away. Not for any fear something bad will happen, or get dislodged. I just think in your case that the therapy should be about moving forward, not back.’
Becky scratched her chin. ‘If I was the psychologist, and you were the patient… I’d say you were worried about what we just did.’
‘Not worried,’ he said, carefully. ‘Curious, if I’m being honest. Why do you want to retrace your steps?’
‘Practical reasons.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Now I’m even more curious.’
‘I’m looking for details, in a nutshell.’ Becky yawned and stretched. ‘The fine grain. Something that might have been missed.’
‘A detail… about the case?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Like the crooked tree? You keep mentioning it.’
‘The tiniest thing could be relevant. You never know.’
‘It seems that every conceivable angle has been explored there, Becky.’
‘I would disagree.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘They haven’t fucking caught him, have they?’ She exhaled, the truth of her anger appearing for only a moment, before she stowed it away again. ‘Sorry.’
‘You never have to apologise to me.’
‘I know. But it was unfair and uncalled for. Listen, thanks for being around. I don’t think I’ll see you for a few weeks.’
‘Oh?’ He sat back down in his seat, resting the notepad on his lap.
‘Yes. I’m going away for a bit.’
‘Ah… I had hoped we’d have another few sessions, to guide you through the TV show. And how you might react to the case being in the public eye again.’
‘We can pick that up when I get back.’ Becky stood up and began to gather her things.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘On holiday, Dr Fullerton. You’d be the first to say that R’n’R is important.’
11
Becky grinned at herself in the hotel room mirror. She didn’t quite recognise the person she saw. Her hair was different – restyled that morning, before she took the Eurostar; she’d asked for something to ‘impress at an interview’ – and she wore far more make-up than she was used to. She was unsure of how she looked, but had that fugitive feeling that she was in disguise.