Kelly glanced away, unable to look back at him while explaining this part of the story: “We have an office on Old Street, and in that office, there’s a book. You need the book to open the way and guide what comes through. I usually have a perfect memory, but I can never remember the words…” She trailed off for a moment. “Because I destroyed the book, after the creature is done with your colleagues, there shouldn’t be any more victims. There was an ‘accident’ in our server room, and I’m afraid that it and the thankfully empty room above it were completely destroyed.” Kelly heard a scraping noise across from her and looked up to see Julian pushing back his chair hastily and struggling to his feet.
“Badger.” The word seemed entirely nonsensical, and Kelly was on the verge of asking what in the hell he was on about at a moment like this when she felt a heavy hand on her shoulder.
“Kelly MacDonnell, I’m arresting you on a charge of arson.” Kelly’s stomach turned to ice as she slowly swiveled her head, coming face-to-face with a fat white man with a small nose and thick glasses. He wore a ridiculous-looking trench coat in the oppressive heat and held up a wallet displaying a warrant card that read Detective Inspector—James Badger. Oh.
CHAPTER 27 1630–2230, Monday, August 3, 2015
***Julian***
I watched as Detective Inspector Badger beckoned to two uniformed PCs that had been lurking around the corner. They paced professionally forward and slapped handcuffs on Kelly while they recited her rights. While I was relieved to see that they weren’t the same pair from the office, I was burning to get more information out of Kelly: Were Janice and Richard safe with the book destroyed? How sure was she that it was gone? How might the others try to get back at me? Why was this deal so important? However, with the police around, I clearly couldn’t start asking those sorts of questions.
“Mr. Adler, is that you?” Badger turned his attention to me, and I had to admit to being slightly impressed that he could recall me from our short meeting.
“If you have any questions for me, please contact my solicitor,” I bluffed, remembering that I needed to think about getting one.
He harrumphed explosively, clearly unhappy at getting no free information out of me. “I’ve just picked up the security recordings from your office, and I’m sure that once I’ve reviewed those, we’ll be seeing each other again. I’ll get to the bottom of what’s going on here, Mr. Adler,” he said. With that, the officious little man turned on his heel and headed back toward the officers detaining Kelly.
Seeing that nothing more could be accomplished here, I took one final look at Kelly. The young woman’s face was slack with shock, and her eyes darted back and forth like a trapped animal’s. If she hadn’t been partly responsible for putting my colleagues at risk and potentially murdering dozens of people, I might have felt a bit worse for her. As things stood, I felt no guilt at shrugging my shoulders and turning away, although I still didn’t have the answers I needed.
I considered again trying to follow the other women from OMG to confront them, but there was no chance I could catch them before they got back to their office, so I dragged myself toward the self-service ticket machines, considered the events of the day, paid, and headed toward platform twelve to catch the westbound branch line train to Greenford.
When I was almost at the platform, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flash of khaki material. I dodged behind a staircase and watched as the man who I’d seen outside of Burger King and who had collected OMG from the office passed by, and my heart thumped like a runaway train (the metaphor seemed a little too obvious, but hey—concussion).
I broke cover with a flurry of quick strides and swiftly caught sight of my pursuer, who had stopped a few dozen feet away in a spot that completely blocked my path to the train. My head swiveled left and right as I tried to spot a route past him. There wasn’t anything obvious, so I backtracked to the stairs and, lungs heaving, I hobbled at top speed to put distance between myself and the man who had been dogging my heels for the last couple of days. It didn’t work.
“Adler! Stop!” he yelled. I didn’t. Surprise.
When I was directly under the staircase and out of his line of sight, I stopped and looped around the base of the stairs, hoping to come up behind him. After I’d scanned the crowd without spotting him, I mentally congratulated myself, but just as I tensed for a sprint to the train, I felt a restraining hand on my shoulder. Again.
“What do you want?” I said resignedly. My last twenty-four hours had been exhausting, and with this latest obstacle, I realized that I just needed to get home to my family and get some sleep, of course, considering that I'd ignored Dana's demand to come straight home, I'd probably be sleeping in the garden shed.
“You need to leave this alone. Go home. Don’t get involved,” the man said. His voice was dry, like sand blowing over glass, and I wondered what kind of injury he’d sustained to earn it.
Still not turning around, I replied in a monotone, “I’m going home as soon as you let go of me.” I was tempted to add “or else” but realistically, this guy could probably beat me to a pulp one-handed, at least in my current shape. Or any shape.
“That’s a good answer, Julian. You have a lovely home and a pretty wife, and Olivia’s just the sweetest little thing. You really should forget this whole mess and spend some time with them. It would be a shame if something were to break up your—” The man never got to finish his sentence, and I imagined that he’d never whistle again after my head pistoned backward, there was a crunch, and the detective cursed. I stumbled forward onto my knees and finally got a good look at him just as he spit out a couple chunks of broken teeth. Don’t threaten my family.
“That was a mistake, Mr. Adler.” The man got to his feet well before I could regain my own, his khaki outfit spattered in blood and his upper lip split. I’d seen him from a distance or out of the corner of my eye several times but up close, I realized that he had fifty pounds on me and not an ounce of fat. He contemptuously took one long stride forward and planted a size-twelve shoe into my right side. Waves of breath-stealing pain rolled through my body, and I’d have stayed down for a long time if the man hadn’t grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me to my feet.
“Mr. Adler, my clients instructed me to give you a warning, so that’s all I’m doing. There’s no reason for you to make this uncivil. I’ll chalk this up as an accident, and hopefully we won’t see each other again and have any more accidents. Now run along home.” With those words, he gave me a gentle shove backward, throwing a contemptuous wave over his shoulder. I wanted to throw back a witty retort, but being unable to breathe forced me to take my pleasure in the slight lisp in his final words.
As I took the train home, the sudden rage that the man’s threat against my family had awoken cooled to suspicion. He had to have guessed that I’d be frozen out of any further official participation in the bid process, so this threat must have been about something else. I didn’t know yet if there was any way that I could help either Richard or Janice, as they were already marked, and I frankly couldn’t care less about helping Kelly, so what else could the threat have been about? I spent my short journey home absorbed in thought on that topic without reaching a satisfactory conclusion.
As I took the bus home, I realized that I probably should have spent more time thinking about what I was going to say to Dana, and I ended up pausing just outside my front door. A banging sound caused me to look up, and I jerked backward, expecting someone or something else to attack me. For once, my pessimism was unwarranted, and a smile spread across my face; I saw Olivia grinning broadly and banging on the upstairs bedroom windows, where Dana was holding her up to greet me. That was the best moment of my day.
Unfortunately, it only lasted five seconds before I looked slightly farther up and saw the expression on Dana’s face. It was blank except for the lines around her mouth, which were tight and pinched. I let myself in and was even more concerned when I didn’t smell any fresh bread, which c
ould only mean that she’d done so much baking that she’d run out of ingredients. This wasn’t going to be good.
My girls came down the stairs together, and while one of them ran forward and wrapped her arms around my knees and squealed, “Daddy!” the other stopped a dozen feet away and just stared. I tried to think of what to say but instead scooped Olivia up in my arms and held her tight. Oblivious to the tears of relief that threatened to roll down my cheeks, the sweet little girl in my arms simply pointed at the kitchen and asked for a cookie. I was happy to oblige.
Dana didn’t say anything to me for the rest of the evening. I decided to tell her that I had gotten caught up in the riots at Leicester Square, been hurt, and then had to get to an important meeting. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t listen to a word that I said and simply walked away every time I tried to talk. I put Olivia to bed after reading her a My Little Pony story and kissing her goodnight, and that was when the fireworks started.
I’m not going to share the details, but the gist of it was that she didn’t care what had happened and she didn’t care if I needed to do something at work; when she was worried enough to order me to come home, I should come home. Somewhere in there, she told me that she wasn’t sure that she necessarily wanted me along when we went on vacation, and she made it abundantly clear that I wouldn’t be welcome in bed that night. By the end of the evening, I was happy that I was still allowed on the couch and not packed off to a hotel.
Exhausted and defeated, I hauled a pile of blankets to the sofa and collapsed into sleep. I hadn’t managed to explain to her that I’d been put on administrative leave. I didn’t even have enough energy to worry about what tonight’s dreamwatching might bring. I wish I would have.
***Kelly***
Kelly sat in the holding cell, awaiting the duty solicitor’s arrival. The air in the room was stale and hot and stank of piss. She had been in the station for nearly five hours already and was anxious to get out, though that was a relatively recent emotion.
During the first hour of shocked numbness following her arrest, she had only had her guilt for company, and that had slowly eaten into her. She’d spent several hours weeping for all the people that she had hurt, and the other women present had mostly left her alone in the corner of the cell. When the police had told her that the solicitor she had requested wouldn’t be coming, due to a conflict of interest, and that she’d have to make do with public legal aid, it occurred that this arrest was more than a coincidence—it must have been orchestrated by her former partners. At that point, anger had cut through her self-pity, bringing her to her current anxious, foot-tapping state.
After another half hour, the station solicitor showed up and silently led her to a room where they could talk. The solicitor, a small Welsh woman with brown hair and a pantsuit, introduced herself as Angie. Kelly’s hopes of getting out any time soon diminished as the woman spent a couple of minutes rummaging in a satchel before coming out with a handful of rumpled-looking paperwork. Given that her file could only be a few hours old, it was in amazingly poor shape already. Kelly wondered if that was a ketchup stain on the back.
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you much, Ms. MacDonnell. This file says that you confessed to the crime in a public place, where the in-station surveillance system clearly recorded your conversation, and you were within earshot of a detective inspector,” the woman said with a sickly smile and a weak shoulder shrug. Put that way, it really didn’t sound very good.
“If I plead guilty right away, could I avoid jail? I do have considerable assets,” Kelly asked, wishing that she had Tara’s training or Ena’s way with words. The solicitor rummaged in her bag, pulled out some mints, and shrugged her shoulders again. The Irishwoman really wanted to shake the silly cow.
“A prompt guilty plea is always helpful, but sentencing guidelines prescribe imprisonment for most types of arson. They also require a psychiatric evaluation. If you want to plead guilty at the first magistrate’s hearing, you’ll get a 33 percent reduction in your sentence, and I’ll guess that you might get eighteen months,” the solicitor finally said as she zipped up her handbag.
Kelly’s heart sank, but then she thought about all of the crimes that she’d committed and not been sentenced for; if this was the only punishment for them, she was getting off lightly.
“But I’ll be free on bail until my court date?” she asked. It would be great just to get out of custody and have a chance to start putting her affairs in order, not to mention getting into some air conditioning. Unbidden, she thought of eighteen months spent without any men, and she shuddered and squirmed at the possibility. Maybe a trip to the club would be a good idea tonight as well. Her pleasant, albeit inappropriate, fantasy was dashed as she noticed Angie shaking her head sadly.
“I inquired on my way here, and you’ve been designated a flight risk. As you’ve said yourself, you have substantial assets, which is a strong indicator of a poor-quality outcome to a bail application.” The woman paused for a second, and Kelly thought that she spotted a slight smile on her face before she continued, “You’ll be held here until morning and then remanded into custody at Her Majesty’s convenience until your trial date. If you don’t have any further questions, I’ll be going now.” Following this statement, the small woman clomped ungraciously out of the room.
The sergeant who had shown Kelly into the room led her back to the holding cell without a word, but Kelly looked across the station toward the freedom of the front doors; her heart sank into the bottom of her feet as she noticed Ena’s personal Redderton detective, Derrick, loitering by the desk. He winked, and she knew that it was no coincidence that her solicitor had a conflict of interest and that the legal aid that she’d received hadn’t even tried to help her get out on bail. It would be interesting to know just how much that had cost her former partners. They wanted her out of the way.
She realized just how out of the way they wanted her when Derrick, dressed in a ridiculous colonial outfit, held up one hand and languorously waived a small object in the air. To any other person this would have seemed merely odd but to Kelly, the pen was a deadly threat. A few heartbeats later, she realized that it also sent another message; all of her sacrifices had been in vain.
“Sergeant, you know that I have considerable assets,” Kelly said. The pug-faced, balding man instantly glanced down at her chest and shrugged. Asshole. Kelly thought fast as he started shoving her forward. “Money, I have lots of money. That’s why they aren’t letting me out on bail, isn’t it?” She could see the gleam of avarice light up in the man’s eyes, so she decided to go for broke. “If you let me borrow your phone for five minutes, just while I go to the ladies’, I’ll transfer a thousand pounds to your account.” The man didn’t even slow down; he led Kelly wordlessly to the toilet block before slipping her his phone. She thanked whoever had made mobile banking transfers possible; otherwise, she’d have been scuppered.
“I know people. Make sure the money gets there. Five minutes,” the guard said.
Kelly hurried into the first stall that she could find and realized that, yes, there was somewhere with loos worse than a motorway service station. She stayed standing, first making the transfer and then thinking about who could help her. There really was only one person who might believe her and get here in time. She thought back to an e-mail she’d read this morning. She pictured it in her mind and read off the mobile number in the signature at the bottom, punching it into the phone and furiously typing out a text message. She reread the message, nodded, and hit send.
CHAPTER 28 2130–2230, Monday, August 3, 2015
***Julian***
I appeared with trench coat on and gladius in hand. The hallway that I found myself in was dim and lined with rooms on either side. The institutional linoleum and faint smell of bleach in the warm evening air told me, even before I saw a nurse round the corner, clipboard in hand, that this had to be a hospital. She didn’t react to a shady-looking guy with a sword striding down the ha
llway, so I knew that she wasn’t the dreamer whose mind I was inhabiting tonight.
I rolled my shoulders and reveled in the sensation of moving muscles and flesh not covered in a layer of bruises though, puzzlingly, I could still feel the sting of the small scratches that the shadow-thing had left on my back. I couldn’t hear or sense any immediate threats, so I jogged along at a deliberate pace, my footsteps echoing off the walls.
I realized within a minute or so of roaming the halls, as I spotted a familiar pub just outside the window, that this must be Saint Mary’s Hospital. Only a one-minute walk from Paddington station and with my office just around the corner, the neoclassical arches of the building had caught my eye the first time I’d walked past. It had been built in 1845, and heroin, penicillin, and a future monarch had been born within its walls, proving once again that nobody (or in this case, nowhere) is perfect.
Hospitals are a frequent setting for my oneironautic escapades. A combination of bad horror movies and genuinely understandable trepidation about the setting was my explanation for the number of times that I’d found myself wandering their halls. I kept ambling quietly for a few more minutes until, impatient, I popped my head into open rooms. Each one was occupied by sleeping people and beeping machines, with nurses bustling in and out of the rooms on a regular basis.
An old and well-used building like this seemed to anchor the Dreamscape, and I wasn’t surprised by the amount of detail that I discerned in my surroundings. I was surprised a moment later when, growing concerned by my inability to discern the threat, I reached out mentally, trying to feel the mind of the dreamer, and came up blank. The amount that I can pick up when I try to do this varies wildly. Sometimes, I can pinpoint a person’s location, what they are thinking, and the name of their dog and sometimes, I just get a general impression of where they are and what they’re feeling. I don’t know what causes the difference; I suspect it might be the related to the lucidity of the dreamer, but what I did know was that I could always detect something.
Dream Job (The Dreamwalker Chronicles Book 1) Page 16