by SE Moorhead
‘I can’t believe that I was so desperate to build the tech that I would work with anyone, even you.’ She leaned over and, through her teeth, said, ‘If I’d have known what an arsehole you were, I wouldn’t have taken your money.’
His ego wouldn’t cope with that. She might as well have slapped his face. Some of her anger subsided into anxiety. Had she gone too far this time? She wasn’t going to back down now.
‘You’re totally out of order,’ Carter growled. ‘I’ve warned you before that your behaviour was going to cost you your job if you went against me again—’
‘Against you? We’re partners, you arrogant—’
But he ignored her. ‘You were the best we’ve ever had here, but your obsession and your pig-headedness mean that we can no longer sustain a working relationship.’ His expression was aggrieved, betrayed. ‘If you could only have stuck to the rules, toed the line. But this …’ He shook his head. ‘Such a shame. Get your stuff. Get out.’
Moments later, Kyra stood outside the door, bag in hand, coat over her arm.
What the hell had she just done?
Chapter Three
THURSDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2035
6.56 p.m.
Driving home through the rain-washed streets of London was like moving in a vivarium, the temperature rose slightly as the tall buildings trapped the warmth. The last time Kyra had seen frost in the city had been before she lost Emma fourteen years ago. A cold February seemed to be a thing of the past. Even at this time of year, the damp and the warmth gave rise to mossy bricks and pavement-crack weeds, life forcing its way out of every crevice like sweat from pores.
Eco-auto-drives and push-bikes moved up and down the street. There were fewer cars, as public transport had been heavily invested in and was made free to workers to reduce higher living costs, but also to minimise impact on the environment. Her electric car was a luxury she was prepared to pay for, and one that her work afforded her.
Kyra parked up and walked along the high street, the stink from the drains in the gutter giving way to the delicious aromas wafting from the open door of the deli. The sky was dark, but bright salespops shone out of every shop window – short, snappy 3D commercials projected out onto the street. Sometimes they included Personalised Targeted Adverts – PTAs triggered by identity smartcards in bags and pockets. A pair of brown leather ankle boots, her favourite brand, presented themselves right in front of her, mid-air, and spun around slowly so that she could see them from all angles. This time yesterday she might have been tempted, but right now all she could think about was how angry she was with Carter. She’d have to wait until she got a new job before another shopping spree.
Bloody Carter! Just when everything had seemed to be going her way. She had her life the way she wanted, didn’t she? She could afford her own place, a nice car, decent wine – the little luxuries. Even Molly, her niece, seemed quite settled lately. Kyra thought about the last time Molly had run off – after the argument about college. Now that she was nearly eighteen she might start to act more maturely, find some balance. There were other screens stationed intermittently down the street, so cheap they were everywhere these days, on walls, or standing upright from the pavement at the bus stops. They displayed mainly adverts or newspops – short news videos. The one currently showing was about the recent crime wave associated with the Chinese drug Lè. Along with the influx of Chinese trade and brain-power came the inevitable dark side too; the sex workers and the highly addictive Lè.
Kyra rummaged in her bag for her purse as she walked along, swerving stationary viewers who were staring at screens. It was one of life’s little irritations when trying to get around town. Did you enjoy your last holiday to France, Kyra? Have you thought about travelling further afield? Leave all your problems behind for a little while … suggested one screen. From the corner of her eye Kyra noticed a man moving in time with her down the street. She turned around to look. He was wearing an army uniform. When he saw her turn around, he stopped to look in a shop window. Outside the pharmacy, a scanner turned in her direction and a salespop asked her if she was stressed and suggested she should try Vitamix Energy Boost. She swatted it away like an annoying insect and went into the convenience shop next door and bought two bottles of wine. It was only British Sauvignon Blanc, grown somewhere along the Thames Estuary, but expensive enough. She might as well whilst there was still money in her pocket and it would take the sting out of Carter’s betrayal, for tonight anyhow.
She put the bottles in her bag and went back out into the street. Tomorrow she would think about a new job. She would relax and take it easy tonight. God, what if she ended up in one of those awful genetic research labs? For a brief moment, she thought back to her time with the police. Yes, the pay had been amazing, and her work in the profiling department had been fascinating, but she didn’t have the guts for it anymore. It had all been so uncertain, guesswork – educated, possibly; informed, definitely – but guesswork nonetheless.
She pushed the idea out of her mind and made her way back to the car, the two bottles chinking together softly in her bag. She checked her Commswatch to see if there were any messages from her mum or Molly. Instead there was one from Jimmy:
You okay?
She ignored it, unwilling to think about what had happened, and moved further down the street. She reached the car and, out of the corner of her eye, noticed the soldier again, hanging back a little, and her blood boiled.
She pulled her Commset out of her bag, deliberately using it and not her hidden earpiece. ‘Dial Carter.’
The line connected but switched straight to answer machine.
‘It’s Kyra. Look, you can tell your mate Brownrigg,’ she said loudly, ‘that I’m no threat to national security, so he can call his spies off.’
She turned to face the soldier, hoping to embarrass him, but he was gone. She looked up and down the street. He was nowhere to be seen.
She threw her Commset back into her bag, furious that Carter had put her in such a position. She reached the car and put her hand out for the handle, only to stop halfway as the nearby screen attracted her attention with a newspops:
URGENT – HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?
Kyra froze and caught her breath. Her guts immediately knotted into a small, tight ball, her ribcage became a hive of bees buzzing in the space where her heart should have been. She recoiled from the image, stepping back into the path of a big woman who pushed her roughly aside and called her a vulgar name.
Kyra’s mouth dried as she gaped at a face she hadn’t seen for fourteen years, a face she had prayed never to see again – the soulless dark brown eyes, set beneath heavy brows, the face puffy and angry, lips pressed together in a thin, cruel line.
Police have launched a nationwide manhunt for an escaped criminal – David Lomax.
How could the newsreader sound so calm? Did she know what sort of man this was? The people passing by were getting on with their everyday lives, no hint or suggestion of fear or distress.
Lomax, 58, nicknamed the Mizpah Murderer, was convicted of the death of six women fourteen years ago. This afternoon he managed to evade police when granted permission to attend his mother’s funeral at City Necroplex. Despite an intensive effort, Lomax has not been apprehended. Police have warned the public not to approach him but to contact them immediately if …
This was the man convicted for the death of six women, one of whom had been her beautiful, funny, rebellious sister Emma. Her heart ached, a grief she kept so well hidden suddenly rearing.
She had worked on Lomax’s case and it had almost destroyed her. She had been the psychologist who had built a profile and made suggestions to the police, but it hadn’t been enough. She should have been able to find something definite that would have led the police to the killer before he took his next victim. Before he had taken Emma.
The image of the names and dates scratched into the back of her notebook as the case progressed came to her mind. Two women each February for thr
ee years in a row.
2019 – Unknown woman and Skylar Lowndry
2020 – Madelyn Cooper and Jennifer Bosanquet
2021 – Emma Sullivan and Amelia Brigham
It had been an unusual case, an unusual modus operandi. The first woman each year – described by the police as Type A – Unknown, Madelyn and Emma – had been mutilated and dumped in a horrible place. Then, within a week, another woman – Type B – Skylar, Jennifer and Amelia had been abducted and killed, but left whole and posed in water. Each of the Type B victims wore a necklace – a Mizpah pendant which had given rise to the killer’s moniker in the press.
After Emma’s death, Kyra had eventually pulled her life together again. When she had helped to get her mum and Molly through the worst, she had left her old life behind; her job with the police, her apartment, her relationship, tried shedding her grief along with everything else, and gone to work in the department of Neuro-psychopathy at the university. It had kept her busy, given her a focus other than sorrow and regret. Her work in the safe place behind the white walls of her lab became almost a mission, trying to locate the problem in the criminal brain, and in some cases, even, to some degree, fix it. It had been whilst she was trying to work in this particular area that she had designed CASNDRA. Then Carter had made her an offer and she had moved to CarterTech.
An image of Lomax’s first victim came up on the screen – a woman, but only a pencil sketch, there had been no identity and therefore no family to provide a photograph of her alive. Kyra remembered the empty chapel at the Necroplex. The grey pencil lines made the woman look transparent, a ghost, as though she had hardly ever existed in real life.
The next photograph showed Madelyn Cooper in her school uniform, fifteen years old, thin, mousey hair, watery blue eyes and a reluctant smile. Kyra had advised Tom – the detective in charge of the case – to show this image, as opposed to any other, probably the last one of Madelyn before her hectic lifestyle took over. The public would be more inclined to help if they could see the person behind the dishevelled mess that she had become in the last two years of her life.
Kyra moved rapidly to another screen at a nearby bus stop, not wanting to be in the presence of others when the inevitable appeared. And then there she was, Emma, never to age, long dark, shiny hair, in a crimson dress, taken from a social media posting of a night out, the arms of friends still visible around her shoulders on the periphery of the image.
Kyra cried out in the street, unable to repress the swell of anguish as she was immediately taken back to the moment that they had found Emma’s body; Tom restraining her as she screamed and wrestled against him to get to her sister’s body.
She had resented him for it at the time, even though she later understood why.
And suddenly she was back in the nightmare.
She ran back to the car, the image of her sister still on the screen, looking after her with judgement. If only her last words to Emma had been kinder. She placed her hand on the palm-reader lock, the door clicked open and she threw herself in, shut the door and put her forehead onto the steering wheel, her hands gripping the rubber, feeling as though the world outside was spinning.
Her first instinct was to ring Tom. He would know what was going on. He would reassure her, wouldn’t he, that they were going to catch Lomax, that he wouldn’t be waiting somewhere in the shadows to do to another woman what he had done to Emma?
She immediately hated herself for looking to him. Tom had been so much more to her than just the senior investigating officer. That had been another thing that the Mizpah Murderer had taken from her.
But as the sweat cooled on her brow she remembered the relief that she had felt; cutting ties with the police all those years ago and cutting ties with Tom. What choice had she had but to walk away? She had needed to draw a line under that time of her life and, sadly, that had meant Tom too. How could they have stayed together, enjoyed any happiness at all, in the face of all that grief, that guilt?
Lomax was out!
A rising bile burned her throat. She opened the car door and vomited into the gutter.
An elderly couple walking past moved away in disgust.
Kyra spat the bitterness from her mouth and sat back up in the driver seat, pulling the door shut. ‘Doors locked,’ she said, not feeling the usual satisfaction at the click when the car complied. ‘Search hypernet, contact number Tom Morgan, detective,’ she commanded and, seconds later, a number appeared on her Commset watch.
She took a deep breath. This was opening up old wounds.
But she needed to know.
‘Dial.’
A brief beep and then, ‘Tom Morgan.’
She cleared her throat and steeled herself.
‘It’s Kyra.’
A pause on the other end.
‘Kyra. Hi. I wondered if I might hear from you. Are you alright?’
She was tongue-tied for a moment, not sure how to start.
‘Look, I should have called you,’ Tom began, filling the awkward silence. ‘I was hoping to have better news by the time I called.’
‘You mean he’s still out?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
The hive in her chest started buzzing again, the bees travelling through her bloodstream, into her limbs, making them feel weak.
‘Tom, he killed Emma,’ she said. Her voice sounded small and far away.
As if he didn’t know. As if he hadn’t been the one holding her back so she didn’t have to see the destruction.
‘We’re going to find him, Kyra.’
The words brought back bitter memories. So much had changed in the last fourteen years but hearing Tom’s voice somehow brought the two points of time together.
‘He followed me back then … the box outside my house … who else would have left that?’ Over a decade ago, but she still remembered the pretty box, the satin ribbon, her heart-stopping fear as she opened it …
… her relief when she had found it was empty.
But it had been a warning.
She peered out at the people moving along the street past her car. Was he out there, watching her, hidden in the shadows?
‘He doesn’t know where you live. You’ve moved since then, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’ How could she have stayed at her old place with those memories surrounding her like ghosts?
‘I’ve got your number now. I’ve got to go. It’s intense here.’ He paused. ‘I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.’
As the call ended, it occurred to her that she had moved, but her mother had lived in the same house since before Kyra was born. If the killer had followed Kyra to her apartment back then, might he have also followed her to her mother’s house? Might he know where to find them?
‘Call Mum,’ Kyra commanded. Through the Commset at her ear, she could hear her mother’s staggered breath down the line.
She already knew.
‘You okay, Mum?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t let Molly know yet.’ Kyra put her thumb to the ignition and the engine fired up. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
She pulled away from the pavement, knowing her only passenger on the drive would be the awful memories of what the Mizpah Murderer had done.
Chapter Four
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Life extinct.
Two drones buzzed overhead, illuminated by the blue police car lights that flashed aggressively in the dark. The peripatetic medical officer, or peri-med as they were known, sat in the ambulance, he had pulled over to let Kyra in through the narrow gates. As she drove past, his face was briefly lit up by his mini-screen, presumably receiving another emergency call. The windscreen appeared smeared, making his face look smudged. He gave her a brief nod as she drove through the gates.
There was no need for an ambulance now.
As she parked up, she could see Tom and the team working at the far end of the concourse. Her boot heels clattered across the concrete as she mad
e her way over towards the steep dunes of plastic and metal scraps, mid-way through being sorted and crushed into bales. The nearby machines had been disabled by the human managers in central control and now stood like huge metal skeletons casting angular shadows across the forecourt.
The Organic Waste Recycling and Energy Recovery Centre was usually run by automated systems. It was a large factory-like complex built around a concourse, the roofs covered in solar panels and ecological green thatch, thriving even though it was a cold winter. At the centre of the site sat eight swimming pool-sized vats of soil and sand where the smell was strongest. The frothy scum on top glittered with a layer of silver frost.
There was a platoon of police here; a number of uniformed officers controlling the gate, a crime scene photographer, and a few detectives. Nearby, the Crime Scene Investigation team had set up lamps which cut shards of light into the late evening gloom. The CSIs dipped in and out of the surrounding darkness looking like ghosts in their white overalls.
Kyra could see Doctor Helen Wilson, the medical examiner, at the heart of the action in front of her. Tom, illuminated by the lamps, rested on his haunches over where Kyra assumed the body lay. They had worked together this time last year, in 2019, when the first two victims of the Mizpah Murderer had been found. She assumed he wanted her opinion as to whether or not this was the same killer.
Drawing closer, bracing herself against more than the cold February breeze, Kyra could see what he was looking at. All that studying at university – the Psychiatry and Neuro-psychopathy, the theory, even the photographs, couldn’t have prepared her for the desecrated bundle that lay at her feet. At first glance, it appeared as though the woman had curled up to sleep in a foetal position, her back to them, the buttons of her spine visible through her thin, pale skin.
Helen turned to greet Kyra, putting her gloved hands on her ample hips as she stood up straight. Tom gave a gruff hello, eyes still on the corpse. He’d asked for Kyra specifically. Did he want her opinion? The least he could do was to look at her.