POV

by Chris Brosnahan

  ‘I can see you’ll be a hard sell, Detective,’ I said, smiling in what I hoped was a charming manner.

  He surprised me by laughing. ‘I’ve been told that before,’ he said. ‘I’m something of a hard-ass, but I’m not a bastard.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  ‘I’ve got your details, so if I have any questions, I’ll be in touch.’

  I opened the door and he walked through it. He turned back around and held his hand out to me. I almost went to shake it until I realised that he was offering me a card.

  ‘I’m going to ask you to keep this quiet, but I want you to keep your technologically enhanced eye out for me,’ he said.

  ‘Anything I can do,’ I said, taking the card.

  ‘She isn’t the first person to be killed,’ he said. ‘She’s the fourth. Not all in this area, though. Across the country. But the same method each time. Stabbed and eyes removed. And each person had the IDRoPS.’

  ‘Christ,’ I said.

  ‘So we’re taking this very seriously. We reckon we have a serial killer on our hands. And they’re preying on people who’ve had these enhancements. So do me a favour and keep an eye on your list of patients, and if you hear anything, let me know.’

  ‘I will do, Detective,’ I said. ‘And if there’s anything further that I can do …’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mister MacFarlane,’ he said. ‘I know where you are.’

  Chapter Five

  I went home, considering my own actions and reactions while Detective Byrne had been there. His presence had made me feel anxious, stressed and it dredged up old, repressed guilt.

  Part of my therapy had been cognitive and was about learning to be aware of my own reactions and trying to understand them. While I cringed to look back at the afternoon, I knew I needed to respond to my emotional reaction and analyze it in order to stand any chance of understanding it.

  I was embarrassed by my attempt to foist IDRoPS on him but I could easily understand that. I had someone in my place of work who was (intentionally or unintentionally) criticizing what I did. And that was something that I couldn’t help but take somewhat personally and respond to. I could either respond, knowing my own reactions, by being aggressive and competitive or I could respond by trying to convince him that my point of view had some validity.

  Time was I would have reacted far worse, and I would have started into a serious guilt spiral, or – even worse – an anger one. I was trying to avoid that now. That was the way I would have reacted before I met Rachel.

  Before then, I’d been consumed with anger and paranoia. I got into fights regularly and arguments more regularly. I trolled people online and I acted aggressively for reasons that I no longer understood, even looking back. I could remember doing the actions, but I couldn’t understand why.

  I was raised Irish Catholic, which involves levels of guilt all of its own. It’s only when you meet someone else who was raised that way that you know what that means. Some people talk about Jewish guilt and the way it impacts on their lives. It may be worse, I don’t know. But I know the levels of guilt that I had to deal with were enormous and devious and snuck into your life and wrapped themselves around your heart and lungs until you couldn’t breathe for anxiety because you were obviously doing something wrong even if you didn’t know what it was.

  I reacted by acting out and I reacted to that by fighting back. Almost as if I felt the need to create a level of actual definable guilt that matched the feelings that were already there.

  The testing led to the therapy and the therapy led to a procedure which involved cutting off certain aspects of my personality that I couldn’t deal with. They were removed almost surgically.

  Once that happened I was freed to become the person I needed to become. The person I wanted to become. I sloughed off my previous life as if it were an ill-fitting and heavy coat.

  I went back to my training and excelled in optometry. I was one of the first test-subjects for the IDRoPS procedures that I helped create, giving me physically amended eyes to go along with my new outlook. Of course I saw it as a positive. It signified a time when my entire life viewpoint changed and I associated it with being a better person.

  And that was why I’d reacted to Byrne. I knew it now, and I could feel the anxiety dripping away from me as I thought about it. It felt right and it felt true. It wasn’t just that I was taking his attack on the work that I did as an attack on me as an optometrist. I took it as an attack on me as my own personality and the person that I chose to become rather than the person I was born as.

  I felt that I was being told that the version of me before that happened was better. And that wasn’t something that I could just accept so I had to react to it. And I reacted by digging up feelings of anxiety and guilt and stress and trying to combat it by sweet-talking the attacker.

  I still cringed somewhat but I didn’t feel as bad about it. Behaving a little bit embarrassingly was something I could take. I could deal with that. I knew why I’d done it and that was the main thing.

  As I pulled into my garage, I felt more comfortable and confident.

  That night, Rachel put Natalie to bed and then we stayed up and had that bottle of wine we’d been meaning to have the other night and then we got a little drunk together and then we went to bed.

  We both had a little frustration to take out with each other and we agreed to play around a little with personal reality making each other look like we did when we first met, and we made love with the passion and vigour that we had when we first met.

  We did everything we could. Energetic, sweaty, filthy, sexy. We verged on brutality at times and balanced it out with a slow tenderness and looking straight into each other’s eyes.

  Sweaty and exhausted (and aching in various areas over each other’s bodies where bites, scratches and bruises had been inflicted), we both fell asleep.

  Life wasn’t perfect, but it was good.

  For now.

  Chapter Six

  The day had been busy. I’d been dealing with a number of patients for the procedure and it had consistently proved to be interesting work.

  Having something pushed into your eye is a pretty basic fear and everybody deals with it in a subtly different way. All these little differences in the way that people react. From the point of view of someone who has an interest in reactions, it’s a constant stream of examples.

  Some people in this line of work find that they get no further than just the fact that people are afraid. That’s just one aspect of it though.

  At lunchtime, I checked my messages. Natalie was poorly at home, and I had a very sorry sounding text from her. Entirely in block capitals but with perfect spelling.

  In the afternoon, I spotted a headline in the media that was connected with the murder of Sarah Simone.

  Tony Kirby, a forty-one-year-old man had been killed. Stabbed and his eyes removed.

  Tony Kirby had been a patient of mine days before.

  Someone had broken into his house and this time they didn’t just kill him.

  They killed his wife and son as well. His eight-year-old-son. I thought about Natalie, ill at home and I repressed my own fear. It wouldn’t serve any purpose right now.

  The coincidence of two of my patients being killed was just too much. I was beginning to feel involved in a way that frightened me.

  And that was before I noticed a detail that really began to scare me.

  His wife had used the procedure as well in the past. Their son hadn’t, of course – far too young.

  But she had.

  Her eyes hadn’t been removed.

  Only Tony Kirby’s.

  Only my patient. Although since I hadn’t had a call from Detective Byrne, that meant nobody else knew just yet.

  A sickening feeling rose up within me as I started searching for further information. I widened the search out by locality and specified murder victims that involved stabbings and removed eyes.

  I found three m
ore of them. I knew that Byrne had mentioned four, but I couldn’t find the fourth.

  I cross-referenced them with my own data records, to see if I’d had any dealings with them. This wasn’t information that I looked at often, but it was information I kept in my optometrist app – my personal case notes for each procedure I performed.

  Two of the three had been patients of mine in the past.

  Steve Millar and Betsy Moore. Both of them had been killed six months previously. I’d performed the procedure for both of them, but years ago.

  Why hadn’t they investigated me before? That question scalded itself into my brain and I tried to think why they might not have made the connection. A third victim with not just the procedure in common, but with the same person performing the procedure? It was a huge, glaring connection.

  They’d obviously looked for it with Sarah, and had deemed it worthy of investigation. Why not previously?

  Ah. Of course.

  They’d been performed when I was working for a company rather than being in business for myself and under my own name. It was only the name of the company that was recorded, rather than the name of the individual optometrist. Some companies did make sure that each one was specifically recorded, in the event of the procedure going wrong, but with that happening so infrequently now it was something that was no longer common practice.

  Part of my brain whispered to me. The scared bit. The bit that just wanted all of this to go away and not get involved.

  They don’t know. You recognise them, but they don’t. How many people went through that company? Thousands. Thousands of them. You remember the ones you dealt with, but you don’t remember who everyone else in the company dealt with.

  I didn’t have to rush into this. Nobody was connecting me with it. No need for me to do anything.

  And then I decided to do what I always did in situations where I didn’t know what the right thing was.

  I’d talk to Rachel about it. Even if she wouldn’t tell me what to do, just talking to her about it would help. Calm me down a bit, at least.

  I cancelled my remaining procedures for the day and closed down the surgery. I then got into my car and made my way home as fast as I could. While I kept my eyes on the road, I was also using my display to scan for as much information as possible.

  I pulled into the garage and walked into the house.

  I opened the door.

  The house was quiet. Far more quiet than I’d expected. I could feel the panic rising.

  Round and round the mulberry bush …

  I ran to the living room, but there was no sign of either of them.

  I shouted for Rachel. Once and then twice.

  I was just about to bolt up the stairs when Rachel interrupted me by emerging from the bedroom at the top with a groggy, ‘What’s wrong?’

  Thank God.

  I took her in my arms and held her. ‘Where’s Natalie?’

  ‘She’s asleep. I went for a nap as well.’

  ‘Good,’ I calmed down a little bit. ‘Good.’ I could almost feel tears springing to my eyes in relief.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if I should tell her, out of a sense of wanting to protect her. Of not wanting to scare her. Of not wanting her to panic.

  But then, if I’d done that, we wouldn’t be the couple we were. I told her the entire story. She went white and then the two of us sat on the bed in silence for a little while.

  It was confusing. It was frightening and it seemed too much to work through in words for the moment.

  ‘You should call the police.’ Rachel said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘For all of us. We could be in danger.’

  That somehow crystallised it more than it had when I’d been thinking it through myself. Hearing her say it. That made it seem that bit more real.

  ‘I’ve got his card. I’ll do it now. I just wanted to see you two first. Make sure you were okay.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But let’s not wait any longer.’

  I sorted through my jacket and retrieved the card the Detective had given me earlier. My hands shook while I made the call, but I put it through.

  ‘Hello?’ he answered.

  ‘Detective Byrne?’

  ‘Yes. Is that MacFarlane?’

  ‘Yes, it is. I have some information for you. Could we meet?’

  There was a strange silence for a few moments. ‘Where are you, Mister MacFarlane?’

  ‘At home. The address is —’

  ‘I already know the address, Mister MacFarlane. Just stay tight.’

  He hung up.

  I stared at the phone for a moment, and then put it down. I looked at Rachel. ‘That was strange.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘It sounded like he was on his way here.’

  She frowned. ‘Why would …’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Could you be a suspect?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ she said, although her voice wavered.

  ‘I … yeah. It’ll be fine,’ I said, trying to sound more convincing than I felt. ‘I’m just going to check in on Natalie.’

  I felt dizzy as I walked, and everything felt disconnected and unreal. I opened the door, but it felt like it opened on its own. Natalie was asleep with her back to me, her reader clutched tightly in her hand.

  I went in and sat next to her for a little while. Just looking at her. It felt important to commit every part of her to my memory. I stroked her hair quietly while she slept, and then got up and went back downstairs.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Rachel asked.

  I felt like I was falling, but I didn’t tell her that. ‘I’m okay.’

  The doorbell went.

  We looked at it and almost immediately it went again.

  I went towards it and began to open it.

  The second I unlocked it, it was pushed open and two large, armed police officers burst through it and wrestled me to the ground. I shouted in surprise and Rachel screamed with fright.

  ‘What the hell?’ I shouted at them, as I saw Byrne walking through the door and standing over me.

  ‘Mister MacFarlane, I am arresting you under suspicion —’

  ‘Daddy?’ Natalie appeared at the top of the stairs, peeking her head out and looking frightened.

  ‘It’s okay, darling!’ I shouted, and Rachel ran up to comfort her.

  ‘I am arresting you under susp —’

  ‘Not in front of my daughter, please!’ I pleaded with Byrne, who had taken some handcuffs out while he was talking. ‘Please, not in front of her. I’m not resisting, please.’

  He stopped talking and glanced upwards and then back down at me. The two officers looked back at him.

  ‘I’ll read you your rights outside, Mister MacFarlane. These two men are going to let you up, and the second you’re outside, they’ll be restraining you. Do you understand?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Boys,’ he said to the two officers and they carefully stood up.

  I got to my feet awkwardly and looked up the stairs. ‘Natalie, darling, this is just a big misunderstanding, okay?’

  She nodded, confused and terrified.

  ‘Rachel, call our lawyer and come and get me as soon as you can?’

  ‘Oh, I will,’ she said, staring daggers at Byrne.

  ‘Come along, Mister MacFarlane,’ Byrne said.

  I walked between the two officers and looked up the stairs the entire time, trying to keep eye contact with Natalie, doing everything I could to reassure her.

  ‘I’ll be back soon, Nat-Mac, okay? I’m just going with these men to help them.’

  She looked at Rachel, who nodded. ‘Okay, Daddy-Mac,’ she said, unsure, looking back at me.

  I was escorted through the door and one of the policemen closed it behind me.

  ‘Thank you for not doing that in front of my daughter,’ I said to Byrne. ‘I appr
eciate that.’

  ‘Put your hands out,’ he said.

  I did so and he snapped large, bulky handcuffs around my wrists and read me my rights.

  ‘Mister MacFarlane, I am arresting you under the suspicion of multiple counts of homicide. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do is being recorded by the officer to your right and may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning, if you wish. If you decide to answer any questions now, without an attorney present, you will still have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to one. Do you understand these rights?

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I’m innocent and I’m only looking to cooperate.’

  ‘I’m going to need to switch off your IDRoPS.’ He said. ‘We can’t have you in open communication with anyone just now.’

  I thought that was coming. I nodded. One of the officers reached to the back of my wrist to the touch pad, and used it to switch off the IDRoPS before removing the unit completely.

  All the signals stopped and everything suddenly felt very quiet. I was just looking at everything normally for the first time in years.

  My eyes felt very heavy.

  Chapter Seven

  Emma Yu was my lawyer and she’s an impressive person. She’s a large half-Canadian, half-Chinese woman and can shout just about anybody down if she has a mind to. Although she often doesn’t need to, as her ability to softly intimidate anyone she needs to is phenomenal.

  She certainly put Byrne on his guard as she sat in on my interview. ‘Mister Byrne —’

  ‘Detective, Ms Yu.’

  ‘Noted. Mister Byrne, I’m confused. You received a phone call from my client expressing a desire to meet with you, and then you used force to arrest him. Would you care to explain that?’

  We were sat in a grey room, with a white table and black chairs. The cameras were out of sight but obviously there. Detective Byrne sat opposite us, looking about as angry at the world as he had when I’d first met him. I couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d had me under suspicion at that point.’