by J. S. Monroe
We used transgenic mice in the lab, because of their ability to mimic human illness, but it’s not so easy to get hold of them when you are on the outside, so I have to settle for what I can find on the dark web. Amazing what you can buy with bitcoins.
Rosa, the one beside me now, has been in the water for four hours twenty minutes. Five minutes is the normal permitted time for a forced swim, but I prefer to let things develop into a ‘terminal exhaustion test’ – when you keep them in the water until they die. It tends to yield more interesting data. Given the right medication, a mouse can stay alive in the water – and remain more mobile – for three times longer than a control. My PB is 840 minutes – fourteen hours.
Sadly, I don’t think Rosa’s going to survive for much longer. Her legs have stopped moving now. She is sinking beneath the water, her sodden body giving one final twitch before falling still for the last time.
72
My guard comes at two o’clock every afternoon. I know this because I count the seconds, from the moment I’m woken up by a plane passing over, high in the sky. The flight might not be regular, of course, what with wind speed and air-traffic-control delays, but it marks the beginning of my day: 6 a.m. Rosa Time. And then I count every second: 28,800 until he arrives.
Sometimes he comes with another guard, but he was on his own today and late, which is unusual. Or maybe the plane this morning was ahead of schedule.
It’s quiet here now, but I know the cries will start soon. I’ve been counting them in too, from the moment he leaves. The first minute is hard, because I am in such pain after the session, but I’ve managed it all week now. During the day it’s silent out there. Perhaps the other prisoners get moved out.
If I am right, the cries will begin any minute now, 240 seconds after he left. (I have learnt to count in the background, while I write this. Multitasking – that’s me.) A low moan followed by banging against bars. Six bangs, every time. Then, two minutes and thirty-five seconds later, a scream followed by sobbing and more bar banging, communal this time: a show of support, cut short by abuse from a guard – American, I think.
237
238
239
240
I pause from the counting, listen to the silence. A few seconds either side will not matter.
And then it begins: a long, slow moan followed by banging.
It’s too routine, even for a prison.
73
‘I thought I was close to finishing the article, sending it over to a paper, but we’re missing something.’
Jar listens to Max as they both look out of his office window down on to the concourse. This low-key reception from Max isn’t what he expected, given that he texted Max the photo earlier. Miles Cato hasn’t responded either, though Jar sent the photo to his mobile, too. Christ, what more proof does everyone need that Rosa is alive, that he was with her on the cliffs in Cornwall three days ago?
Far below them, commuters are swarming towards Canary Wharf Underground station, past the bank of clocks that stand sentinel, measuring out their daily lives in seconds: the ones, like Jar, who arrive late for work, and the bath-dodgers, as Max calls them, who leave work just late enough to miss their young children’s evening ablutions. ‘Never missed bath time in six years,’ Max boasted to him.
Five minutes earlier, Jar had walked by the clocks on a far more urgent schedule. Rosa managed to escape once, but whoever is holding her won’t let it happen again. They will have punished her, if she’s not dead already.
‘We’ve got the photo, stamped with time and place,’ he says. ‘What else are we missing?’
‘There’s definitely no college counsellor. No American called Karen has ever worked at St Matthew’s. I’ve been back to Dr Lance, finally got through to him on the phone.’
‘He would say that. If he’s recruiting for the intelligence services.’
‘I’m not sure if that’s true either.’
‘Ask anyone.’ Jar is annoyed now. ‘Everyone knows Dr Lance is on their books.’
‘I’ve also looked into Sejal. They found her body.’
‘What? Sejal was part of the programme. She—’
‘Six months later.’
‘They must have made a mistake, found someone else’s body.’
‘Not so easy with DNA testing.’
Something’s got to Max, Jar thinks. His enthusiasm has gone. ‘Is it still OK to use your computer?’ he asks, keen to steer the conversation on to more neutral ground. He doesn’t like Max’s mood. ‘I can find an internet café if it’s easier.’
‘Of course. Plenty of space, as you can see. Make yourself at home.’ At least he’s making an effort to sound positive, Jar thinks, but he’s not his usual ebullient, shambolic self.
Earlier, Jar had rung him and asked if he could do some research online in his office, explaining that he no longer even had a work computer to use – or a job. He didn’t go into details, omitted to tell Max that he planned to use his computer to dive the dark web in search of Rosa’s captors, but Max couldn’t have been more welcoming. He’d had to let two colleagues go yesterday, after losing more banking clients, and Jar sensed he wanted the company.
‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe we are missing something,’ Jar says, hoping to sound conciliatory. He settles down at an empty desk and pulls out his phone, opens the photo of Rosa and props it next to the computer like a family snap. He can’t get over the emptiness in Rosa’s eyes.
‘A part of me thinks that this might all have nothing to do with the intelligence services, or the police,’ Max says.
Jar looks up at him. ‘What about the confidential memo? Eutychus?’
‘I don’t know what to think any more, Jar. If someone faked the emails, maybe the memo is fake too, and the diary—’
‘Rosa writes about events that only I know happened, Max,’ Jar says, raising his voice. ‘Swimming in the Cam, staying over in my room.’
‘And she writes about things that didn’t happen, too. There was never any counsellor at St Matthew’s called Karen. What if there wasn’t a programme called Eutychus?’
Jar looks out the window, watches a plane take off from City Airport and arc across the London sky. He doesn’t want to argue. Max is right. The similarities between Rosa’s diary and the article, the elements of it that Max made up, are too striking to ignore. He needs to revisit the spy site where the article was published, dig around the dark web. He picks up his phone, glancing at the photo of him and Rosa together, and calls Carl. If Jar found Rosa once, he can find her again.
74
Cromer, 2012
Kirsten and I were on our own in the sitting room and, it’s fair to say, we’d both had a lot to drink. I had planned to serve a regulation claret this evening but, when Kirsten walked in through the front door, from America, I decided on impulse to break open the champagne. Tonight’s other guests – a pair of retired History of Art lecturers – hung around for a bit after supper and then left, leaving A to take a long call in the kitchen and me on my own with Kirsten.
The last time I saw Kirsten was when A was FaceTiming her in bed a few weeks back. Computer cameras are never flattering, but Kirsten, with her blonde bob and high cheekbones, caught my eye. I even wrote a brief character sketch in my Moleskine, hoping to use her in the book. Now that she’s here, in the flesh, I’m keen to observe her more closely.
Tonight, she looked radiant, stunning even. What’s more, she likes to flirt – a raised eyebrow here, a napkin-suppressed giggle there. As we talked on the sofa in the sitting room, our knees closer together than strictly necessary, my mind was already fast-forwarding to later.
Her manner – a touch on the arm, lingering glances – is so intoxicating that I found myself wondering if I’d taken anything earlier, but I was clean. I was even prepared to overlook her choice of profession and enter into the sort of toe-curling conversation that she no doubt holds with her clients. She plans to move over to London in a couple of years, open up a practice on H
arley Street. It’s enough to make me sign up for some sessions.
I’m joking. As I was explaining to A yesterday, if counselling really was as good as she claimed, we wouldn’t be living in this big house and an entire antidepressant industry would be out of business.
‘How would you characterise your relationship with women, Martin?’ Kirsten asked, preceding her brazen interrogation with that same odd intake of breath that I’d noted when she was FaceTiming A.
‘That’s a very personal question.’
‘Habit, I’m sorry. Let’s talk about the weather. That’s what you guys do in England, right? Way more interesting.’
‘My parents left me when I was three,’ I offered, drinking deeply from my glass. I had no idea why I’d told her that, why I was even having the conversation. Maybe it was some weird defence of our national character, proving that we can talk about something other than rain. The only other person I’ve spoken to about my parents is A, and that was when we first met, when I was trying to impress her with my emotional openness. (Ha!)
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Were you taken into care?’
I laughed, with more derision than I intended. ‘They divorced and I was sent to stay with my grandparents.’
‘You’ve talked to Amy about all this?’
‘And she’s asked if you can get me to talk a bit more about it.’
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘She says I’m too closed, but I’m not sure that this is the time or place to “open up”. A bit unprofessional, isn’t it?’
A voice in my head was telling me to get up, walk away and do the dishes, but I stayed where I was. Deep down, I’ve always known I need to talk to someone. And why not to the foxy Kirsten, a choice seemingly endorsed by my wife? If only my motives were so pure.
‘I hoped I might be able to talk to you informally, as a family friend, but you’re right. It’s unprofessional. Let’s leave it.’
‘I thought Amy would be a substitute mother – is that the kind of thing you want me to say?’
‘I don’t want you to say anything, Martin.’
‘Perhaps she was looking for a father figure. I am seven years older than her.’
Sheesh, are you really? You don’t look it. Must be all that hill work on the bike, she replied, but only in my head.
‘Did your parents ever get back in touch?’
‘I tracked down my mother when I was at Cambridge. She told me never to contact her again. My father drank himself to death a few years after the divorce.’
‘And were you close to your grandparents?’
‘My grandfather was a POW in Japan. He married my grandmother just before the war. When he didn’t come back, she presumed he was dead, so she had an affair with an American here in the UK. My grandfather then returned and never forgave her. Spent the rest of his life punishing her and the daughter she was pregnant with – my mother.’
‘Was the American the father?’
‘My grandfather never let anyone forget it. Consumed with anger until the day he died.’
‘Was he angry with you?’
‘He used to lock me under the stairs.’ I was now in uncharted waters. I haven’t even told A about the cupboard that smelt of Traffic Wax and was so small that I had to sit with my knees pulled up to my chest (I was a tall child). How I feared the stairs would collapse above me as my grandfather stormed up to his bedroom. Dust used to fall from the cupboard ceiling and I had to suppress my sneezes. Any noise and he would drag me out to beat me with a wooden brush. One time he kept me in there for sixteen hours.
‘That’s criminally abusive behaviour, Martin.’
‘It’s fair to say my presence in the house was resented. I hate to think what the Japanese must have done to him in the war. My grandmother was too frightened to intervene.’
‘How did you survive?’
‘I had hope.’ I know I shouldn’t have told her, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘And hope’s an extraordinary thing.’ I paused again, thinking through the implications of what I was about to say. ‘There was once this scientist called Curt Richter, you might have heard of him. He did a lot of groundbreaking research in the 1950s, not least about the biological clock.’
‘Mine’s ticking so damn loud it keeps me awake at night.’ She laughed.
I held her gaze for a moment.
‘But Richter’s most important findings concerned hope – what came to be known as his “hope experiments”. He once put some wild rats in a high-sided container filled with circulating water – there was a current on the surface to stop them floating – and recorded how long they swam for before they died.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘They were all dead within fifteen minutes, drowning after an initial period of struggle. But then he did the test again with a second group of rats, and when these rats were just at the point of exhaustion he scooped them out of the water – he saved them – and dried off their fur. Then, after a few minutes’ rest, he put them back in the circulating water. This time, the rats kept swimming – for sixty hours. Sixty. That’s 240 times longer than the first group. These rats had hope – hope that they might be rescued again. Doesn’t that tell us something? They could visualise an end to their suffering and that thought kept them going.’
‘And you had hope under the stairs?’
‘One time my grandfather let me out after I’d been in there for barely an hour. Full of remorse, contrite, he cradled me in his arms as he sobbed his heart out. After that, I always thought he would do the same again and let me out early.’
‘But he never did?’
I shook my head and took another large sip of champagne, wondering where our conversation was going, why I’d confided in her. I’ve studiously avoided talking about animal testing with A, at least the details.
‘Do you regret not having had children?’ Kirsten asked.
Her direct question finally pulled the plug on our charade. My drink tasted sour, her bright eyes faded.
‘I didn’t realise we were here to talk about family planning.’
‘People respond in different ways to childhood traumas. Some don’t want to see their own experiences repeated; others continue the cycle, abuse their offspring.’
‘Amy always wanted a child. I’m sure we both know that.’
‘She’s been enjoying having her niece here to stay.’
‘Sometimes I think she’s using Rosa to punish me.’
‘Does her presence in the house make you uncomfortable?’
‘Let’s talk about the weather,’ I said.
And that’s how we left it. She went back to find A in the kitchen, I retreated down here to my shed. And now Kirsten’s bedroom door has finally opened. She’s coming to bed.
75
The moon is bright tonight. The stars must be out, too. Ursa Major, Orion’s Belt, the North Star…
I can’t remember all their names any more. Jar once taught me how to use the Plough’s pointer stars to locate Solaris. We were lying on our backs on the grass in Christ’s Pieces in Cambridge, after necking too much Belgian beer. The small pub where we’d been drinking was candlelit in the evenings – we were there when the barman lit them and when he blew them out at closing time, snuggled into a corner playing Scrabble. It was one of the happiest nights of my life.
I can’t remember Jar’s face, either. Or Amy’s.
The other prisoners are crying out tonight again. Same time, same routine. It gives me hope.
76
It’s late and Jar is sitting at the window desk in Max’s office. Max has gone out in search of food and Carl is at Jar’s shoulder, helping him navigate the dark web. Jar had hoped to be able to do this on his own, after Carl had talked him through the basics over the phone, but he lost his nerve early on, when he found himself looking at a directory page that read like a summation of every twisted depravity known to man.
‘Tor directories are always pointing you towards Torch, claim
ing it’s a great way to search onions, but it never works, not in my experience anyway,’ Carl says, leaning over to type on Jar’s keyboard. ‘You can reach Torch’s homepage easily enough, but have you tried doing an individual search? They time out. Always.’
Jar has no idea what his friend is talking about, but he watches as he scrolls down and opens what he recognises as Max’s old article on the spy junkie website: a long series of numbers followed by the .onion suffix.
Carl had been reluctant at first to come over to Canary Wharf, still moaning about Max and his corporate PR work, but when the two of them actually met, they got on fine, particularly when Max revealed an encyclopaedic knowledge of London’s nineties reggae scene and an unlikely fondness for UK Dub.
‘I’ll be all right from here,’ Jar says, looking at the spy site.
Carl hesitates for a moment, unconvinced, and then retreats to the third desk in the office, across from Jar’s, where he’s conducting his own searches.
Diving the dark web scares the hell out of Jar. It’s the thought of making a wrong turn, a wrong click, and finding himself in a paedophile chatroom, or unintentionally buying heroin with bitcoins in an FBI sting, even though he knows the Tor software he’s using is meant to ensure anonymity. He tells himself he’s doing this for Rosa.
‘We never accessed the comments on Max’s story,’ Jar says, twenty minutes later. It’s good to be back in an office with Carl, even if the plush Canary Wharf surrounds are a far cry from the website offices. ‘It’s attracted quite a lot of interest over the years. See here?’
Carl comes over to Jar’s screen again. ‘The bandwidth in this building is exceptional, I’ll give you that,’ he says. ‘Must be for all those bankers live-streaming their HD porn.’
‘This guy,’ Jar continues, ignoring him, ‘ChristiansInAction—’
‘That’s the CIA, a common nickname,’ Carl says.
How does Carl know that? ‘He comments on other stories on the site, too,’ Jar continues. ‘Look what he says here: “Nothing about my old firm surprises me. When I was working clandestine in Europe, I heard rumours about a programme called Eutychus. Never got to the bottom of it – way past my pay grade. All I know is that it was some sort of recruitment project, targeting bright British kids at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Clean skins given new IDs, faked deaths, that kind of thing. Sounds like donkey dust, but you never know with this shit.”’