“Do you want me to leave the lamp on?” he asks, indicating the bedside light.
“Maybe for a bit,” I admit, and he nods. I stare at the ceiling trying to slow down my heart rate. I risk a glance across at him after a minute or two, and his eyes are closed. But he seems to sense my eyes on him, and heaves a sigh.
“Do you want a cuddle?” he asks quietly, eyes still closed. I realise it means I have the option of not replying, and could pretend to be asleep myself. But as I study his face, considering more honest communication, I catch sight of a tiny pulse in his temple, racing as badly as mine. Self-control on overtime, I think, reaching up with the back of my fingers - and stop short of touching him, wanting to soothe it, but more worried about making things worse.
I start to withdraw my hand, but he catches it in his, on the pillow between us.
He opens his eyes and looks at me.
“Is that a yes?” he asks.
‘Yes’ I say, but the sound doesn’t come out.
It doesn’t need to. He turns over to face me, and reaches his arms around, one arm under the covers and one above, scooping me against him gently so that we’re tucked together like a cocoon in the duvet, his upper hand brushing my hair aside and settling down to stroking my arm, idly and comfortingly.
“Better?” he asks, and I nod. He kisses me lightly on the ear. “Good. I said the other day in the kitchen, that you owed me a spoon.”
It makes me smile, and after a few moments he only moves his arm temporarily, to turn the bedside lamp off.
I drift awake once or twice, aware of unfamiliar proximity to someone keeping me in a state of hypersensitivity, but his body heat is soothing, and feels more secure than threatening. So I barely open my eyes each time, and doze off just as quickly.
The third time I’m dreaming, unable to get Terry Dyer into an ambulance in time, and wake with an involuntary small jump. I feel Connor react, and he takes his upper arm off the outside of the covers and slides it underneath, around my waist, locking me against him more securely.
“It’s all right,” he whispers. “Go back to sleep.”
I’m sure there’s something sedative about passive human contact, because I don’t wake up again until I feel Connor move away from me. Daylight is edging in around the curtains. I turn onto my back carefully in case he’s still asleep, but when I look over, he’s just resting up on one elbow and starting to rub the sleep out of his eyes.
“I didn’t jump you in the night, did I?” he asks.
I do a mental stock-take. The t-shirt and underwear are still on.
“No,” I reply.
“Must have dreamt it.” He finishes cleaning up around his eyes. “You’d definitely have remembered.”
I wonder what I missed out on, while dreaming about ambulances instead.
“You could tell me the P.G. version,” I suggest.
“That WAS the P.G. version,” he insists, and leans over to kiss me briefly. “That’s the P.G. version. If you want to know the rest, I’ll have to check your I.D. first. And I’d probably insist on written consent as well.”
I like his sense of humour about the situation, and as I smile he strokes my cheek, and I feel his fingertip trace a line where I was crying yesterday. He gives me another quick kiss before he gets up, picks up the empty tea mugs, and heads out of the room.
I stretch and wiggle my fingers and toes, feeling my muscles wake up in my limbs. I notice my pulse feels normal too. That wasn’t too scary, then.
“Your car’s in the garage.” Connor hands me a cup of tea as I enter the kitchen. He’s already in jeans and a skull-print t-shirt, and I’m back in last night’s uniform. “Turned up on the driveway by itself. Yuri said he GPS’d your phone signal, and they drove it over by remote. He reckons they’re going to get a map-reader out of an old Scud missile and install it next.”
“Fun,” I concede. “Is it true? They only make this stuff to test out and compare theories about what all the criminals and terrorists are making elsewhere, out of scrap and iBay parts and spares? Or is there another legitimate application for it?”
“You’d be surprised what people arm themselves against at the moment,” he comments. “Some of the stuff I’ve seen in Forensics already… I blame substance abuse. Delusional on a scale that you’ve probably only seen a splinter of. Especially with the amount of crap feeding their imagination on the internet.”
“Yeah, I imagine it starts with lucky rabbit’s foot and horseshoe, and works its way up through Voodoo dolls to fatwahs,” I remark.
“Something like that,” he nods. “Got to go over more stuff there today. Should be fun. Someone dumped our tramp’s body in the river, that we left behind 21 Black’s. Must have thought it would upset the Health & Safety inspectors.”
“Yeah, you hope it’s that straightforward,” I agree. “Perhaps they thought he died eating leftovers out of their bins.”
“I’ll mention that at work, sounds like it could be a motive.” He switches off the oven, and takes out a small round pan. “Speaking of leftovers, this is meant to be breakfast. I do the Spanish thing and put all leftovers in an omelette next day. You can try it if you want.”
“Frittata,” I say.
“No need to be rude.” He grins at me over his shoulder, and winks. “Want some?”
“Sure.”
“Yuri said on the phone that they want to see you and the car later, so I’d give them a ring when you’re finished if I were you,” he suggests, pushing a plate and fork towards me, and sitting down opposite. “Then you and me have got our fake date tonight. Half Moon Inn. Remember?”
“Yeah.” I nod, and take a bite of Spanish omelette. It’s potato, green beans, peas and bacon. “This is nice.”
“You sound surprised,” he jokes. “Reckon you and me are ready to take on a fake date stakeout? Or do you think someone will clock us?”
“What, as, undercover police?” I ask. “Or escaped mental patients?”
“Either,” he replies. “What with you jumping out of your skin every time I so much as breathe on you, I reckon we’ll last about five minutes.”
“I thought the idea was to look out for targets,” I remark. “Not play Celebrity Mr. & Mrs.”
“Just that the two of us out sober, trying to look like loved-up Blues fans, with you yelling ‘What?!’ every look I give you isn’t going to stop us standing out a mile.”
“Sounds normal to me,” I shrug. “I think you’ll find that’s why most couples who go out socializing together in the evenings in public usually get drunk. To act more relaxed together.”
Connor smiles and sips his tea.
“How good is your aim drunk?” he queries.
“Depends,” I say thoughtfully. “How far do I have to throw the snooker table?”
“You’ve been getting drunk with entirely the wrong crowd, by the sound of things,” he chuckles.
“That’s why I don’t drink anymore,” I agree.
“You’d be safe with me.”
“On a fake date, maybe,” I muse. “I’ve never drunk alcohol on a real date.”
“Good,” he says. “Tonight can be your test run for the real thing.”
I ring Warren while Connor clears away and loads the dishwasher.
“Morning, Trouble,” Warren greets me. “Pleased to hear your car got back all right. Took a few signal boosters, but it did the trick. Yuri refers to it as The Tank now. At least it’s better than the espionage Citroen 2CV’s we’ve been watching in Moscow. Like trying to navigate shopping trolleys around B&Q.”
“I was worried you were going to turn it into an anti-congestion slot street car,” I remark. “Where you stick your money in and destination, and it drives you there by sat-nav at three miles an hour.”
“No, that’s what these cars do when they retire,” Warren laughs. “Moscow has a bit of a problem already with tourists, trying to get into the 2CV’s thinking they’re city tour taxis, while they’re really out on surve
illance. Twelve o’clock today, Britten Airfield for some road tests. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t be late.” He disconnects the call.
“I gotta go,” says Connor, wiping his hands on a tea-towel. “Stupid Forensics lab to go to.”
He reaches out to me as I put my phone in my pocket, and pulls me into his arms. He smiles as I try to suppress my reaction to being caught by surprise, which is mixed with a somewhat traitorous feeling of disappointment that he’s already leaving for work.
“If Warren asks you to hold anything out of his toolkit for him, say no,” he warns me.
“Still picturing a Taser,” I nod.
Connor kisses me, with more intimacy than earlier - maybe because the risk of being in bed already is no longer an issue. But it does feel nice. When he stops I really am sorry that he’s going. He rubs my back and lets go.
“Think we might get away with our fake date stakeout later,” he admits, picking up his jacket and keys. “Just about.”
He heads out through the utility room, grinning over his shoulder.
“You can have a play in the office if you want,” he says. “Might find something you like on the computer.”
The door to the garage slams behind him. I hear a click at hip height, and realise I’m leaning on the dishwasher as it starts, having heated up the water already. I hear Connor’s car start just after, and move away from the worktop back into the living-room, where I can see him disappearing down the long drive, through the glass doors on the far side.
I switch on the TV. Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin is on, and a 50” plasma screen close-up of Chris O’Donnell gives me a mild start.
“How are we supposed to work together if you don’t trust me?” O’Donnell’s ‘Dick Grayson’ rants, before storming off.
That’s who Connor reminds me of. Only ginger. Taller, and sort of better-looking - to me, anyway. It’s kind of eerie. My psychosis imagines Connor, still in the room, watching me through the TV. That would be quite a neat trick.
It’s like having a simultaneous interpreter parallel to reality, instantly translating the world into something that makes sense somewhere else, in some other psychotic Universe populated by justifiably paranoid schizophrenics. But it’s not currently powerful enough over me to make me switch off the TV. I leave Batman & Robin, and wander into the study. Connor’s desktop PC is idling, with a rotating text screensaver that says KARMACHANIC in chrome 3-D lettering.
I touch the pad, and it disappears, replaced with an aerial photograph of the Blue Mountain region that he’s mentioned once before. Looks quite pretty. I click on his hard drive icon, and skim through recent files. There’s nothing much there. He doesn’t seem to use it. There’s very little history on his internet either, just online encyclopaedias, medical websites, science, and National Geographic. When I trace recent pages I find a few on supernatural sightings, headlines on group hysteria, suicide cults, and research pages into OCD, psychosis and eating disorders.
I don’t know what I expected of Connor. Definitely not porn. Wildlife and Pest Control statistics. NLP, hypnosis, psychodynamics counselling techniques, with (hopefully not, in my opinion) their application in getting women into bed. I wasn’t expecting urban social psychology and medical case studies. It seems to indicate he’s preoccupied with things entirely different to either his work, or anything else I had suspected - or worried myself about. Instead of devious and manipulative, what’s on here looks like the working mind of someone somewhat more logical, straightforward and down-to-Earth.
I sit down in the leather-backed chair, and swivel thoughtfully. Presently the screensaver reappears, and KARMACHANIC tumbles slowly around the screen.
I wonder what that means.
There’s a big spherical amber paperweight on his desktop next to the monitor, with a half-opened chrysalis inside it. Must be worth quite a bit. I pick it up to take a closer look, and see that the chrysalis and what’s partially emerged from it isn’t alone. It has some sort of parasitic infection or mould growth. Meaning that whatever was meant to be developing originally is mutated, and probably wouldn’t have survived anyway, acting as a host or surrogate to something else. Like a living hermit-crab-shell donor.
Like the computer and its content, I’m not sure if it belongs to this Connor, or the other one.
Chapter 24: Undercarriage Of Events
“So you’re looking for where the cracks might start to appear before they do?” Warren asks. “That suggests you’re normal now, anyway.”
“I’m just cautious,” I shrug.
Warren is going over the bodywork of my car with a scanner, in one of the old RAF hangars. They’ve got a small piece of the destroyed grey FTO scanned into a computer, and are analysing the differences between the two.
It’s a coincidence that we’re discussing cracks. What I actually just asked him, finally, is if there’s a psychological profile on Connor. Not because I’m concerned, like before - but because I’m interested.
“There was no detectable chitosan in the grey paintwork, or undercoat, on the FTO,” Warren muses, preoccupied. “That’s a biological crab-shell derivative in the paint on yours which reacts to sunlight, and stabilizes minor fractures before they can become vulnerable. It looks like lack of this element meant the FTO had hairline scratches from normal driving, which exposed enough of the compounds in the undercoat eventually, to make it go ballistic.”
“Cool,” I say, the logical side of my brain turned on by science.
“Plus it looks like it was washed frequently, which wore away the food-grade shellac in the varnish which was its only stability otherwise, and waxed with something which got into the hairline fractures, and reacted with or fuelled something else in the undercoat, acting as an accelerant,” he continues. “You’re better off as you do just waiting for it to rain, and only adding a bit of pH-neutral soap.”
“I’ll put it on my shopping list,” I agree, trying to remember what the pH-balance of Xiannu Liquid is, which is what my car usually sees every few months if it’s lucky.
“The way you’re being cautious now, anyone would think you’d had a relationship before. So it’s a good enough illusion of being normal,” he admits. “Obviously, everyone gets monitored carefully. But some of you need less watching than others. Jason Green, they’d like to keep him on because he’s a privacy freak and a diligent sort, which is good, but has more women after him than Elvis, which is not good. Plus he’s still overawed by money in the world that he doesn’t have yet, making him immature and likely to be fickle - but money that he does have, from his regular income, house, bills, insurances etc, are all up-to-date and secure, meaning that in the real world he can handle responsibility. So he needs watching all the time, because you don’t know when he’s going to be weakened - by the prospect of any of his fantasies coming true getting in the way of the common sense that he does have. Adam Grayson researched us first and dropped a lot of creative hints on the internet. He stalked you on a number of occasions and kept a diary of how he would have done things differently, and covered his tracks better. So he pretty much walked into the job. How he knew you were doing it, is still a mystery. It’s possible he went to a police psychic once in the United States, because he also wrote his dreams down and had a small reading list on the subject of remote viewing and psychometry, and was interested in spiritualism and Tarot etc. Head office are going to be interested in any suggestions he has about work in the future, because although he seems to start with pure theory and inspiration instead of facts or evidence, he’s got a good instinct and his speculations were all accurate. Also his attitude fits the job. Exorcizing personal demons in his family background aside, he feels it’s vocational. But he still needs watching, because a guy who does what his dreams suggest to him can also be unpredictable, unless he’s got a very strong moral base. Which is what you and Connor have in common. Both of you can at times be aggressive, volatile, prejudiced and split personality
. But both of you are morally secure meaning you don’t act without proper facts, research, evidence and information. That’s why Connor’s being promoted to Forensics, and they want you moved into Psychological Profiling. Which I know to you feels the same as old school stuff.”
It’s quite a list of revelations, but I don’t find any of it surprising. Even hearing that Adam followed me. I guess he just considered that he owed me a bit of stalking. I just feel relieved that he didn’t try to interfere.
“For one thing, you’re still asking questions about the guy, before deciding whether it’s safe to get more involved with him,” Warren continues, and grins at me across the car roof. “So you’re doing most of the psychological profiling for yourself already.”
“Yeah, when head office want it done, though, they expect to get the answers from five minutes’ observation of someone across a crowded room,” I grumble.
“Yes, but that’s because you’re the best,” he remarks. “Don’t add any stickers or vinyl decals to your car. Sunlight, remember.”
“What about heat transfer from the engine and electrics?” I ask. “Any concerns about the bodywork heating up and cooking the paint from the inside?”
“Could have happened in the FTO,” he agrees, giving me a slightly surprised glance. He picks up the piece of rogue FTO, and passes it to me to have a look. I get the impression he’s a little impressed by my input, and isn’t above deferring a conclusion or two. “That’s a cross-section of your paintwork magnified on the screen now. Microscopic crystalline cultured metallic rods in the primer and topcoat speed up heat dissipation to the surface, plus you’ve got a sort of Kevlar mesh skin bonded on underneath the paint which increases proportional internal to external bodywork surface area for heat transfer and hugs the car like a body stocking, increasing overall stability.”
Death & the City Book Two Page 6