“Hiya … Can I come in?” The small plastic door opened without a knock.
Abigail turned to the woman standing before them. The Scottish voice, the shape of her figure, the flowing skirt and red hair and craggy freckled face: this was Nieve, reborn. She felt herself letting go, becoming wee Abi, just eight years old, wee Abi who didn’t have to be a robot, who could cry when she was upset knowing that Nieve would listen to her and comfort her. She opened her arms to Nieve—but it couldn’t be Nieve—and sobbed into her shoulder.
I’m delirious. I’ve hit my head and I’m delirious.
“I’m sorry,” Abigail said. “It’s just, you just remind me of someone.” She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes.
The woman patted her shoulder. “How’s that noggin?”
That’s right: Bren’s mum is from Scotland.
“I’m fine but, please, we have to go back.” Abigail peered past her through the open door: a tiny kitchenette on one side, bench and table opposite—and at the front, a driver with a head of grey hair. The woman handed her a glass of water.
“Thanks Mrs …” Abigail couldn’t remember Bren’s last name. Did she even know it?
“Gracie, call me Gracie. Drink some water first,” she said. “That was some wallop you got, hen.”
“There’s no time …” Abigail slurred her words. She felt woozy.
“How is she back there, eh?” the male driver at the front yelled. “She okay?” His accent was Canadian, like Bren’s.
“She’s gonna be just fine!” Gracie yelled back, handing Abigail two white tablets. Her eye twinkled. “I know Bren is relieved. Though I’m not sure I approve yet.”
“Mom, please,” Bren growled. “Let’s not start.”
Abigail swallowed the pills. “What do you mean?”
“You’re still in high school. When Bren told us about you …”
“Wait. What are you talking about?”
Gracie glanced at Bren, who shook his head. “Oh, God. It’s happening again, isn’t it? Please don’t tell me you think I’m gay.”
“You’re not?” Abigail cried.
His mother sighed, a wistful grin playing her lips.
“We need to go back and find Stick,” Abigail gasped, clinging to the one truth she thought she understood. But she could no longer keep her eyes open. She fell asleep almost immediately.
WHEN SHE WOKE, THE Winnebago was still. The small bedroom area was dark. She sat up carefully, her head still sore, but the pain had receded. She glanced out the window. They had stopped in an empty car park next to a beach. She could hear the waves crashing at the foot of the cliff. Hunger gnawed at her stomach. Her jaw tightened.
She shouldn’t have fallen asleep. She should have been trying to get an answer about Stick. Was he dead? How much time had she wasted? She had to get her head together, make a plan, and act. Fast. She threw open the door.
Bren and his mom sat across from each other at a tiny plastic kitchen table, Gracie at a laptop. Bren’s dad stood at the opposite wall, a marker in hand. They turned to her. Abigail opened her mouth, and closed it. Several large sheets of flip-chart paper had been pasted to every available space: arrows, maps, and photos. The grey Nike backpack, the letter from Nieve, the social work file, Becky’s iPhone, and the yogurt drink Abigail had stolen from her father’s warehouse … all were lined up on the table between Bren and his mum.
Bren’s father was the only one who moved. With his long hair and AC/DC T-shirt, he looked more like an aging rock star than an ex-homicide detective. He capped his felt-tip pen and held out his hand to shake hers. “I’m Craig McDowell.”
She shook his hand. “Listen … thanks for everything, but these are my things.”
“We’re just trying to work out what’s going on,” he said.
“Have you called the police?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
Abigail felt herself slipping back into robot mode. She trusted Bren. And okay: his family had rescued her. And okay: so Gracie seemed to have something of the lovely Nieve about her. But she didn’t know them and they shouldn’t have been rifling through her things. “Right. Well if you don’t mind, I’ll just gather all this up and head off to the police station.”
“I’m sorry,” Gracie said. “We didn’t mean to upset you. But we think we should wait before doing that. You know, in case it’s not safe.”
“Why wouldn’t it be safe? Weren’t you cops?”
“That’s right,” Craig stated. His voice was far more authoritative and strident than his son’s. “I was a cop. And three men just attempted to kill our son. We want Bren, and you, to be safe. We want to help. We need your trust.”
“They are the good guys,” Bren said.
Abigail didn’t answer. Did she even believe in good guys anymore? Not really, except for Bren himself. But she needed all the help she could get. Yet again, she’d landed in an unfamiliar place with a new set of strangers to negotiate. She pulled her short fringe back with her hand, sighed, and studied the sheets of flip-chart paper stuck on the walls. Gracie slid over and patted the bench beside her. Abigail remained standing.
“The best ammunition is information,” Craig said. “Whatever happened to Stick has already happened. Another half an hour won’t change that. Before we do anything, read over all of this carefully,” Craig instructed. “Maybe you’ll see something we haven’t.”
She first noticed the photo of the Granoch Group. Abigail examined the picture. That was Grahame Johnstone, right enough. Much younger, but just as uptight and stern. The only difference was that his hair was natural brown, rather than dyed. She then read the entire document on the Granoch Group, focusing, taking her time, remembering the key points:
* Granoch Group – committed to addressing deviant teenage behavior.
* In 1996 they launched the Granoch Project, which involved adding a drug called PA23 to the routine shots given to fourteen-year-olds in the Granoch area. PA23 immunized against discontent, curing urges that cause individual unhappiness and contribute to social decay.
Abigail picked up the bottle of Prebiotics she’d stolen from the warehouse and studied it. The four digit code on the front was … PA23. She must have buried this deep in her unconscious too. It was the Dunoon and Granoch postcode.
It wasn’t a Prebiotics drink. It was a drug.
“PA23. I lived with Nieve in that postcode,” Abigail heard herself say. “Holy Loch, in Argyll.” She opened the bottle and examined the liquid. There was a tiny capsule inside. They must have developed it to make it so small it would be undetectable. So small it could be ingested along with the innocuous liquid.
Next, Abigail looked at some information Bren’s family had collated onto a table about Granoch, using information from social networking sites like Friends Reunited and Facebook.
GRANOCH 1996
PA23 (Human Group A) What was the sample group like?
Aged 14
Serious trouble-makers–drugs, car theft, violence, gangs.
GRANOCH PRESENT DAY
Human Group A What are they like now?
Aged 31
Electricians, plumbers, nursing assistants, etc., married with kids, on Neighborhood Watch. All law-abiding citizens
GRANOCH 1996
Non-Sample Group
(Not given PA23) What were they like?
One year older – 15 years old Serious trouble-makers – drugs, car theft, violence, gangs
GRANOCH PRESENT DAY
Non-Sample Group What are they like now?
In prison, gang wars, murder, overdose, suicide One rags-to-riches story Teenage pregnancies
“But … is that bad?” Abigail said, after taking in the information on the table. “Who’d want to end up stabbed or in prison?” From what she’d seen so far, she couldn’t help think that some of it made sense.
“Of course it’s a bad thing!” Gracie snapped, outraged. “Abigail, you’d have been a prime candidate. The bright, passionate,
angry girl next to me—gone! This is about poverty and nothing else. Should only the rich take risks, have fire in their bellies?”
Abigail stared down at her feet. “Becky wrote something about fire in bellies once,” she murmured. She could almost see her sister now: sitting at her desk the night before she died, intense and purposeful, tapping away at the keyboard. It was all too much. Abigail needed time alone to focus. “Can you give me some time alone with all this, just ten minutes or so?”
“Of course,” Bren said. He led his parents out the narrow trailer door.
She started with the familiar orange social work file: #50837. She flipped to the back, leafing through the small pieces of paper with names and numbers on them.
GP appointment. Boring. Education Board. Boring. It angered her that she’d been deprived of all that, especially in all the insanity surrounding her departure from Scotland, but the worst by far was the last scrap of paper she found.
For: Abigail Thom
From: (Refused to give name. Male.)
Tel: (Not given, but did 1471 to retrieve – 555 78450234)
Message: Mother gravely ill, requests Abigail visit at Western Infirmary. Urgent.
So it wasn’t the hospital who’d phoned. It was someone else. And Unqualified Asshole hadn’t told her about this message. Useless prick. Without pausing to think, she used Becky’s phone to dial the UK telephone number.
An interminable buzz-buzz followed with a dull: “Hullo?”
“This is Abigail Thom,” she said. “I’m ringing because someone left a message for me using this telephone number.”
She waited through the long pause. Perhaps the person didn’t live there anymore. Perhaps the message was from someone at the hospital after all.
“Abigail?” a man’s voice finally said. “Is that really you?”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name’s Harry. Harry Belwood. You don’t know me, but oh, I know you. Sophie’s little Abi. Where are you? Are you okay?”
“How do you know me?” she pressed.
“I’m …” He hesitated. “Your mother was the love of my life.”
With that, he started jabbering, revelation after revelation, each more confessional than the last. But it wasn’t that her mother had been in a long-term, loving relationship that shattered Abigail’s view of her past. It wasn’t that the couple had lived a quiet life together on a disused quarry in the Scottish Borders for fifteen years. Or that this man was the “Next of Kin” who had requested Sophie’s ashes, and scattered them in the Holy Loch. Or that he was the blond man she’d seen at the funeral. It was how he finished: “She thought about nothing but you and Becky, all her life.”
Abigail couldn’t answer. She squeezed her eyes shut. Then she breathed. “Yeah, well how was I supposed to know that, Harry?”
“She was consumed with grief and worry. She was in danger. She knew she couldn’t make contact with either of you, for your own safety. It killed her, every day.”
“Well, why didn’t you get in touch?”
“Sophie begged me not to,” Harry said.
Abigail nodded. Her throat was too tight to speak.
“Sophie never misled me, so I promised,” Harry said. He was crying, too, now.
“I have to go.” Abigail was desperate to find out more, but the clock was ticking. She just couldn’t stay on the phone. “But before I do, I have to tell you something. Something really awful … Becky died. Suicide, they say, but I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“What! Oh, God, no.” His voice quavered. “I’m coming over.”
“No, don’t come, not yet,” she warned. “But tell me something, did Sophie say why we might be in danger?”
“No. I knew better than to press her.”
“So you haven’t heard of the Granoch Group?”
“The what?”
“Have you ever heard of PA23?”
“Is it a postcode?”
“Okay, forget I said anything,” Abigail muttered. Sophie had shielded Harry as she had her daughters. He knew nothing. Sophie protected those she’d loved from certain danger.
“Tell me, what’s going on?” he insisted.
“I don’t know. Not yet. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. It’s not safe now. Don’t tell anyone you spoke to me. Don’t try and call me. Delete all records of this call.”
God, she sounded just like Stick did last time they’d spoken on the phone.
IT TOOK A FEW moments to compose herself, but she managed. She had to. For Stick and for Becky, so their lives wouldn’t be lost in vain, like all the wasted lives at No Life and every other nightmare hellhole she’d endured. After a few deep breaths, she sat down and stared at the evidence before her. Many years ago, back at the Glasgow library where she’d hidden from life, Abigail had taken a “Visual Illusions” book—and spent a day staring at the shapes on the pages until the face or the shape or the light-change jumped out at her. She used the same skill here, staring at the information on the flip charts …
At the letter from her mother.
At the table about the sample group in Granoch.
At the PA23 drink, at Joe’s face, at the MMR shot he received much too late in life.
At the Graffiti Tease paintings.
At her iPhone.
At The Book of Remembrance.
She thought about everything that had happened since she came to LA: Becky, Stick, Grahame, Melanie. Joe. She stared. She detached herself, as Joe had been detached. She focused.
Then, quite suddenly, the pieces came together. The shape she’d waited for had formed. It was obvious and clear, as clear as the sunlight pouring through the Winnebago windows.
IN ONLY A FEW minutes, Abigail had assumed head cop in this investigation. Even Bren’s father seemed okay with it. She stood before the McDowell family, pointing to the flip charts.
“Okay, so this is what I think: my father and Stick’s father are part of Granoch. They tested PA23 on young people in Scotland in 1996. My mum knew and disapproved. It was illegal, so they had to shut her up. They must have threatened to hurt her, and me and Becky, and made up the paranoid schizophrenia story. They waited years to be sure the drug worked. The sample group turned out to be law-abiding and conformist adults, just as they hoped. Seventeen years later, they decided to roll it out in the United States. Stick and Becky cottoned on. They were going to tell the world, to stop it. Graffiti Tease was their way of doing it …”
Abigail’s voice caught. Idiot kids, she thought. Stupid, beautiful, spoiled, misguided idiot kids. No idea about how cold and ugly the world really is.
She grabbed a barbeque fork from the tiny Winnebago sink and waved it at the papers stuck to the wall. “But Granoch found out about what they were up to. Grahame was monitoring her. They killed Becky so she wouldn’t interfere. They already had a plan to give it out to the Juvies. They disguised it with an MMR shot. One of the Graffiti Tease kids, a good friend of Becky’s, Joe Dixon, was one of the first to have it. He was behind the art, behind the whole campaign. He was a genius with his graffiti. And I saw him after. He was like a zombie. All that talent and drive, it was gone.”
She paused and put the barbecue fork down. “That’s all I know.” She took the breath she desperately needed, paused, and looked at Bren. His mouth was half open. Grace was sickly white. Craig’s temple was twitching.
“Does it make sense?” she asked, as much of herself as of Bren’s family. “I mean, does it make sense Grahame would kill his own child? Who would do that?”
“Somebody who doesn’t love their own child,” Bren answered.
“My God,” his mother and father whispered at the same time.
“So what are we going to do?” Bren asked.
Abigail lifted the Book of Remembrance and turned to the page where she’d glued the deathbed letter her mother had written at the Western Infirmary. She touched the signature at the bottom, which she thought her mother had misspelled. Moving
her finger gently over the two words, she whispered, “Stophie Them.” It was only when she spoke the words out loud that she allowed herself to accept their message.
She looked up, no longer afraid or angry, but fiercely determined.
“We’re going to do what my mother wanted all along.”
ABIGAIL COULDN’T HAVE ASKED for better allies than Gracie and Craig. She decided that she wouldn’t think about her misinterpretation of Bren and what he thought that their relationship might be or could be. Bren wanted to protect her; that was all that mattered. Craig eventually even convinced her that calling the police was a bad idea. If Grahame had connections in Immigration at LAX, he might have connections with the LAPD, too.
Craig dialed an old university pal at Interpol whom he trusted implicitly. Within minutes, they had traced the number plate of the black car that had chased Abigail and Stick: 4DMSP38. As suspected, it turned out to be a company car, registered to GJ Prebiotics. Abigail waited for Craig to add any word of Stick—news of seventeen-year-old Matthew Howard being pulled from the Venice canals, dead or alive. But there was no word, not among the news or the authorities. Craig hung up the phone with a sigh.
“We have to find a way to stop Granoch,” Abigail said.
“How are we going to do that?” Bren asked in a dry voice. “You do realize that you might as well have said, ‘We should establish world peace.’ ”
She couldn’t tell if Bren were more frightened than the rest of them, or just annoyed that Abigail’s priority was Stick. But it didn’t matter. The last thing she wanted to do was put another friend in danger. And that’s what Bren was above all else: a friend.
“Maybe we should drop you somewhere safe,” Gracie suggested, as if reading Abigail’s mind. “Like Uncle Jamie’s.”
“Why, you don’t think I’m tough enough?” Bren demanded.
“Of course not,” Craig said. “But this is dangerous.”
“I know.” Bren crossed his arms in front of him.
Abigail felt a twinge of guilt. She’d incorrectly assumed he was gay; now she assumed he’d be scared.
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