Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  Ellie studied the screen shot results that Ashley had given her moments earlier. They were easy to understand. She didn't need the computers at Fin-Sen to analyse them for her. She had a nasty suspicion that after the computers at Fin-Sen had 'interpreted' the results they would have read quite differently.

  One line that stood out from all the others:

  “0.90% w/v NaCl”

  So that was it. Normal Saline solution. A Placebo. A nothingness of salt. No wonder the treatment wasn’t working. It had no active ingredients of chemotherapy. What was it Ashley had said? That results from medications were sent directly for interpretation to De-Barr’s offices. The blood drained from her face. She could feel her hands getting cold. She was thinking about the conversations that she had had with Irene: the things that she had over-heard and her own suspicions. All the little pieces were coming together to build the edges of the jigsaw puzzle and it wasn’t a pretty picture at all. The realisation that someone had orchestrated a plan, hit her mind like a block of ice. She froze.

  They were letting patients die.

  She asked herself questions. Could this have been the reason why Irene was murdered? Had Irene stumbled onto something when she was trawling through ISIAH’S systems? Why was Nicholas Oggwell’s case file marked as ACCESS DENIED? Why was he sent to Blair Ridge at all? What did he know? Did he ever really go to Blair Ridge?

  Ellie felt a coldness that penetrated right through her very core, even in the heat of the glass-house. The music stopped, as if triggered by a sense of the fear she was emanating. The bushy plants behind her moved and Eric was standing right behind her with a pair of shears in his hand. He was grinning broadly. He looked insane and she jumped up from the seat. Her heart stopped for a micro-second and then he suddenly started chanting.

  ‘Amadeus, Amadeus, King of Kings

  Eyes wide open, you see all things

  Where have they gone, the ones that knew

  Follow the key and you will have the clue.’

  Then he melted back into the bushes and disappeared.

  ‘What?’ Ellie said, not realising that she had actually spoken the words.

  Christ sake, that Eric’s well and truly bonkers. What the hell? Keys! I must be imagining things. She looked down to the boiler room where Eric lived. He was bending down, petting Amadeus as though nothing unusual had happened. Then he went back into his boiler room. Ellie put her hand to her chest. Her heart was hammering and she was shaking.

  The young lovers had left and the glass-house was empty. Eric had put some more music on and this time she recognised it: not just recognised it: but knew it well. He was playing Beethoven’s 9th symphony Ode to Joy. Why that piece? The last time she had heard that particular symphony it was being played at the grand opening of Phoenix Palace when everything in Coney City was glittery and gold. But everything that glittered was definitely not gold in Coney City - was it? she thought.

  Ellie tapped nervously on the wooden door of Eric’s boiler room.

  Amadeus had gone inside.

  ‘Come in Dr Rutherford.’

  She took a deep breath, as though one might, if they were about to jump off a high diving board. Her fingers grasped the results sheet in her pocket.

  ‘Eric,’ she said pushing the door open further.

  ‘Come in. I’ve been expecting you,’ he said.

  Ellie hesitated, ‘You have?’

  ‘Things. Things. King of Things,’ he repeated, and then added ‘Tea.’

  Ellie jumped. Mad. I’m wasting my time here, she thought.

  Amadeus jumped up onto one of the little rickety chairs and Ellie got the distinct impression of the Mad Hatters Tea Party with her as Alice. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  She started to say, ‘About my friend Irene. You know the one with red hair and the man with dark glasses you told me about. You know she was found dead don’t you Eric? The night…’

  Eric was holding the tea pot with the dancing rabbits close to his chest, in both hands. He was looking straight at her when he started reciting words from the famous poem Ode to Joy. It was the inspiration for Beethoven’s 9th symphony. It was the same music that was now playing in the glass-house. The wheels of her mind were spinning at a velocity faster than she could get the words out.

  ‘Eric what are you trying to tell me? Has this got something to do with Irene?’ she prompted, sounding upset.

  Eric fixed her with an intense stare, and said solemnly, ‘They have been here all along – for centuries.’

  His eyes looked even bigger than usual through his bottle rimmed spectacles.

  She forced a nervous smile. The twitch in her eye had returned with vengeance.

  ‘Please, Eric. Please help me to find out what happened to Irene. She was my best friend. Just like Amadeus is your best friend. You know something don’t you, Eric? You tried to warn me,’ she pleaded.

  Eric started to get agitated, desperately trying to find the right words to explain.

  ‘Not wearing dark glasses’ he paused, ‘The people with dark glasses.’

  He stood up and shouted, ‘WATCH OUT.’

  He looked mad and scared and his frog-like eyes bulged. Ellie almost jumped out of her skin. Then Eric started chanting jumbled bits of the poem.

  ‘Close the circle tighter. Wine. Must keep true to the Oath.’

  Ellie experienced a sudden leap of comprehension. She gasped and put her hands to her mouth.

  ‘The Masons – you mean the Masons Eric don’t you?’ she said in a whisper.

  Eric was tapping the front of his neck with a bony arthritic finger. She could hear bone, tapping on bone in the silence of the moment.

  ‘The key, the key, they wear it. Here,’ he spluttered.

  Ellie was astounded. She could feel the heat of fear rising up through her core and flushing her pale cheeks. Eric was telling her that it was the masons who were involved. He would have seen a lot of things in his many years working in Plastic Paradise and in his jumbled autistic, mind he knew something. No one was ever going to listen to his weird recitals, or take any notice of him. Why would they? Ellie realised her intuition was being confirmed (by a nutcase) but nonetheless confirmed. The ‘They’, Eric kept referring to were the masons, and they were somehow involved in the murders of Irene and Audrey and the subsequent cover up. Her panic levels were rising faster than an erupting geyser. She assembled the pieces of the puzzle in her distraught mind.

  Closure of the kidney dialysis ward

  Clients being drip fed placebos

  Clients sent home to die

  The abrupt transfer of Nicolas Oggwell, and sudden changes at Blair Ridge

  Irene’s departure with the man from the glasshouse

  The doctored autopsy report

  The attribution of Irene’s murder to the Slash-Knife Killer

  What was it she had seen on the Info-Com? Oh Yes, very impressive six months - costs down – better care for all patients of Utopia – brilliant doctors and nurses – we should be proud of all our achievements.

  Suddenly an image flashed through her mind of Jon Li and her at the Masquerade Ball on the grand opening of Phoenix Palace. They were toasting the night with crystal glasses filled with La Vie Sang – dark red wine.

  People with dark glasses.

  Ellie started to shake. Jon Li was Mason Royale’s closest associate. The treacherous thoughts were too much. Not my Jon Li. My love, my Mr Right.

  Eric looked very scared, like a small boy in a playground full of bullies. It made her feel suddenly responsible and, despite the fear she was feeling within herself having realised the awful truth, she found the strength to comfort him.

  ‘It’s okay Eric. I won’t tell anyone. I promise Eric.’

  Amadeus had jumped down from the table and was purring around her legs. Eric sat back down at the table and put his bony hand on hers.

  ‘He likes you. I like you. I liked Irene. She was good,’ Eric said in a small voice.

  She
thought about how light his thin fingers felt, and how few years of his life he would have left, and for some strange reason, his vulnerability gave her a renewed strength.

  ‘I know. She was good,’ she said. Ellie wanted to cry, but all her tears were dried up, and all that was left was heartache and fear.

  ‘They are bad people. Amadeus told me so,’ he started up again.

  ‘I don’t doubt that for a minute. I wouldn’t tell anyone about my visit, Eric,’ she added, and put a hand on the door to go.

  Eric put his hand on her arm (and looking at her as though he could see right into her soul) he quoted the last verse of Ode to Joy.

  She looked back at him, feeling cold and numb.

  There was nothing more to say so she closed the door and left.

  Chapter 22: Brotherly Love

  Alpha Block: C.U.R.E Prison North: Vigilance

  Monday 23rd July

  A loud buzzer announced the arrival of Governor Taskin and Warden Clarke into the corridor where Max and the others were being held. Two neat columns of prisoners followed them. Each pair was chained together by their wrists. The procession looked like a twisted school outing, with two lines of children holding hands. They looked miserable, confused and pissed off. Two lines of guards (wielding stun batons) flanked them.

  Max looked up, confused. It was approaching 11.00am. It should have been recreation time. He didn’t have a clock, but the fact that his legs had gone stiff, told him roughly what time it was. After a few weeks his body had learned the routine.

  Marko and Victor hung off their respective bars, trying to get a better look at what was going on.

  It didn’t look good.

  The parade halted outside their cell doors and Taskin looked at the three of them. Warden Clarke loomed up behind him. She was tapping her baton up and down in her palm. Her face was unreadable. Taskin cleared his throat and began his announcement. Max thought that he sounded almost apologetic. It made him wary.

  ‘Benson. Marseilles. Smith,’ Taskin said and looked back at Victor Smith in cell 2D, then at Marko in the next cell, and back to Max who’s cell was opposite before continuing his address. This time he did sound apologetic and almost disappointed.

  ‘It’s my duty to inform you that you will not be continuing in Alpha Wing’s rehabilitation programme.’

  The three men waited for the inevitable bad news.

  ‘You’re all going to be transferred to Beta Wing,’ Taskin announced.

  Warden Clarke smirked.

  Marko and Victor burst out into protests. Max shrank back considering.

  ‘Is bullshit mon! Yuh got nuthin’ on mi!’ Marko stormed.

  He was shaking the bars back and forth and he reminded Max of an angry caged gorilla.

  ‘You can’t send me in there! All I’ve done is love, don’t you love?’ came Victor’s mewling protests and he looked so scared that he might wet himself at any moment.

  Warden Clarke’s lip turned up at the corner and her expression became one of a tortured sneer. The three of them could see the grotesque pleasure that she was extracting from their fear. Taskin paused, and waited for the protests to end. Behind him Clarke hit the charge switch on her stun baton. Its shrill whine silenced the two men. She smiled cynically at them. Taskin looked genuinely apologetic.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘It’s out of my hands. You’re being transferred today.’

  Max thought that Taskin looked very small standing alongside Warden Clarke.

  Taskin gestured to the guards.

  ‘Open Cells 3F, 2D and 2E,’ one of the guards said into his radio microphone.

  Behind them, the two other guards ignited their stun weapons. Max, Marko and Victor’s cell doors slid backwards into the walls, with a resounding series of “clunks”. Clarke’s crackling stun weapon, kept their heads low as they were brought out into the corridor. One of the guards stepped forward to handcuff Marko to Victor. Marko stepped back in disgust as the cuffs came towards him.

  ‘Yuck! 'ell nuh mon! Yu ain’t tying mi fi naa fuckin' kiddy fiddle! Mi fuckin' cat someting!’ he cried.

  Victor looked terrified.

  Clarke came up behind Marko and held him still as the locks were clicked into place.

  ‘Told you you’d never leave. You’re going to rot here and don’t think I won’t still be able to get to you, you pathetic nigger,’ she whispered coldly in his ear.

  Max thought that he saw Marko shudder.

  Max was chained to another prisoner who headed up the column. Up until now he hadn’t had a partner. The man was huge and dwarfed even Max’s considerable frame. The handcuffs barely fitted around his wrist. The giant grinned down at his new partner. He was missing most of his teeth and the odd ones remaining were yellowed like the keys on an old piano. Max looked up at him nervously.

  ‘Gordon,’ he said, in an accent that was thick and heavy.

  Max gave a short nod back.

  Gordon had a tattoo on his shoulder. It was a snorting bull. It suited him. Gordon clearly made the guards nervous. He was the only one among them who measured up to Clarke in stature. Max silently prayed that Gordon would not be his new cell-mate for the next twenty years. He imagined that Gordon might be as well-endowed as a horse, and was a bit too friendly for his liking. He missed Boris.

  Marko headed up the prisoner column with his ‘chain’ partner, Victor. Max and Gordon were behind them, with the others falling in behind. There were sixteen of them in total. Near the back someone was crying.

  “Fraud. It’s only fraud. Life? This isn’t right! You can’t do this to me!” came the distant whimpering.

  The cells locked again and the parade got moving. Taskin was leading and he was followed by Clarke. Alv shrank silently back in his cell: following the dismal parade with his eyes. Taskin talked as they marched towards the recreation grounds and their ‘new’ home.

  ‘Beta operations will be taken over by TALOS. You’ll be under their jurisdiction from here on in,’ he lectured, as they continued down the passage.

  Clarke’s expression hardened, although they couldn’t see it from where they marched. Max’s mind raced. TALOS? Shit. They’re taking over the prisons? This isn’t good. He recalled what TALOS were like down in the docking station. They passed the time there intimidating the new arrivals and asserting their authority. In a prison (behind closed doors) they would be even worse. Max was not surprised that he was being thrown in for life, he had half expected it. He was thinking that nothing about the ‘half-baked society’ that he lived in would surprise him anymore. He had always believed that if your face didn’t fit, then it was out, or put somewhere where it couldn’t infect anyone else with different ideas. That was the view through his eyes. Everything they did confirmed it for him. Max missed the remainder of Governor Taskin’s words. He already knew all he needed to.

  The double doors of Alpha Wing opened to let the party out into the heat of the day. They lurched out into the recreation ground. Aside from them, it was empty. Recreation had been cancelled for the transfer to go ahead. Clarke took charge of the party. She began to march them across the parade ground. Three guards took up positions around them. Taskin and the remaining guards disappeared back into Alpha Wing. Taskin was shaking his head as he dropped back behind them. Up above, the wall-guards watched the column walk out into the daylight. They kept their rifles trained on the prisoners: the gun sights keeping them in line. One of the wall guards lowered his rifle to wipe the sweat from his brow. In his mouth he chewed a toothpick.

  ‘Jesus it’s hot. This summer’s going to be a scorcher,’ he said to the man next to him (who was tracking Clarke with his rifle).

  ‘Man, that bitch’s arse just keeps getting fatter,’ the man looking down the scope of the rifle replied. ‘I hear tomorrow TALOS will be in, and they ain’t letting the Beta lot out again…whole block will be off limits - Should make our jobs a lot easier,’ he whistled.

  ‘Yeah. Except it just might make us obsolete,’
the guard sniffed in response, as he munched his toothpick.

  The guard looking down the scope didn’t respond. He was concentrating on tracking the party that was now crossing the parade ground through his rifle scope. They were almost half way across when he checked his watch.

  It was exactly 11:00 a.m.

  ‘Right on schedule…Sixteen less to worry about,’ he said and eyed the party from down the barrel of his rifle.

  A distant growl of a mechanical beast came from behind them: along with a crashing, bumping noise. The guard’s toothpick dropped onto the wall and went over the edge as it fell from the man’s open mouth.

  ‘JESUS CHRIST!’ he yelled.

  The guard who had been looking down the scope whipped around to look over the wall. He barely had time to take in the scene. A huge, articulated truck, was heading straight for the wall at speed. It had left the road, and was ploughing its way straight across an open field: churning up mud: dirt and grass as it thundered forwards. Smoke belched from the twin exhausts as the eighteen-wheeler roared towards them. A monstrous blast from its air horn signalled the charge. Behind it, two petrol driven cars raced along bouncing crazily over the uneven terrain. The driver of the articulated truck jumped from the cab and rolled on the grass. The two men froze in position. It was far too late to do anything else.

  CRAAAASSSSHHH!

  The massive truck slammed into the brick wall. Ten tonnes of hard metal, punched its way through the hole exploding chunks of stone in all directions. Wire, wound around its wheels and ruptured the rubber tyres. It bounced over a mountain of debris and hammered its way through the inner fence of the prison yard. The noise was deafening: screeching metal: high octane engines, and frantic yelling.

  Clarke, and the prisoner column, hit the floor instinctively. A cloud of brown dust erupted into the air and the prisons’ sirens blared around them. Armed men, leapt from the back of the truck, and jumped down into the compound. They sprayed the ramparts with a shower of bullets: felling the stunned guards. The back doors of the truck flew open, and more men scrambled over the piles of rubble, and into the clouds of dust that had filled the compound. They wore a rag-tag collection of brightly coloured shirts and jackets depicting tropical scenes. Some of them had shaved heads, others a collection of dreadlocks and other exotic hairstyles. In their hands, they brandished a dizzying array of weapons. Indiscriminate rattles of gunfire, broke out between the remaining wall-guards and the dark skinned invaders below. The prisoner column broke in all directions, as the fire fight broke out. The chained men fell over each other, in a frantic panic to escape the massacre. They tried to run in all directions at once – stumbling and falling as they went.