(Kate will need to leave the apartment soon. She will have to collect Charlie from school. Like the pigs in the slaughter house smelling death, she may already be expecting the worst.)
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Kate
INSTEAD OF PICKING UP THE NOTE, KATE WALKED into the bedroom and took a pair of protective gloves, along with an evidence bag, from Adam’s locker. She returned to the hall, bagging the note before reading it. This time it was on plain white paper, and the message, although short, had been typed.
Her breathing was still heavy, but a rage was building inside her, a rage that wanted to know who the hell was sending the notes and why.
She read it quickly, jumping over the words, knowing she would reread them again and again. Before she had read it a second time, her mobile phone rang. Adam. Answering it, although she had washed her hands, she saw some hardened speckles engrained in her skin, tiny flecks she must have missed in her panic.
‘I’ll have to phone you back,’ she said, not giving him the opportunity to say anything more. Rushing to the bathroom, she thought about the bird, her eagerness to get away from it, and how afterwards, when she arrived back at the apartment, even before she saw the note, she hadn’t felt safe. It was after that that the anger had come, and now, scrubbing off the remaining blood, it was as if that action might take away the fear.
She turned the hot tap on full throttle, the water almost boiling, and continued to scrub her hands with soap, checking and rechecking that all the blood was gone. When she turned off the tap and examined her hands, her palms and fingertips were bright red, raw and shrivelled from the heat.
Ringing Adam’s number, she told herself to calm down. When he answered, all she said was, ‘I’ve got another note.’
‘Is it the same as before?’
‘No.’ Her words were coming out faster. ‘As soon as I realised it was hand-delivered, I put protective gloves on. I got an evidence bag from the bedroom.’
‘Good.’
‘This time, it was typed.’
‘Read it out loud.’
‘Okay.’ But as she sat down, the image of the dead blackbird came back to her. She felt like vomiting. ‘Hold on a second, Adam. I don’t feel well.’
‘Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘The note is short,’ she added. Her hands were shaking. ‘It says, “I hope you liked my present. Did the bird bring back fond memories? I’m keeping an eye on you, but then again, you know that already. It’s good to be close, Kate, isn’t it? I’ll be in touch again real soon.”’
‘What bird? Is it the dead raven?’
‘No, it was earlier today. I decided to go to the spot where I had originally gone missing.’
‘And?’
‘I thought someone was watching me. At first, I put it down to my heightened stress level, but then …’
‘What?’
‘I was about to leave the woods when I saw it, a dead blackbird. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, so I stepped closer, and when I picked it up, the bird was still warm. Someone had slit its throat, and had pulled back both wings. It felt like a message. Then when I got back here and saw the note, I knew, even before I read it, that the two were linked. Whoever was watching me must have doubled back here after I’d found the bird. My car wouldn’t start, at least, not at first. It would have delayed me a few minutes, but maybe that was enough.’
‘Calm down, Kate. Think. Have you any idea who could have sent it? What’s the relevance of the bird?’
For a few seconds she didn’t say anything, but then she remembered. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘It can’t be that.’
‘What?’
‘It happened when I was a child.’ She paused. ‘I found a near-dead blackbird at the side of the road. It was a female, the same as the one I picked up today. I hoped it would survive, but it didn’t. My father buried it. I remember crying. I thought my father could fix everything. That he could make the bird better, but he couldn’t. I guess it was the first time I really thought about death.’
‘Who else have you told about it?’
‘No one … I may have said it to Malcolm, but I can’t be sure.’
‘I’m going to pull that guy in again. He’s tied into this somehow.’
‘What do you think the note means?’
‘At the very least it’s intimidation, although at face value, there’s nothing particularly threatening about it.’
‘Whoever it is, they want to rattle me.’
‘I know that. Let’s hope the tech guys can pull something concrete from this one.’
‘Something tells me they won’t.’
The Game Changer
CENTRE OF LIGHTNESS
20 Steps to Self-enlightenment Programme
Confidential Record: 143
PSYCHOPATHIC ANALYSIS – THE GAME CHANGER
There are reasons why each of us do the things we do. Psychopaths are no different. Put 3,000 people in a room: 30–35 of them will be absolute psychopaths. A much larger number will demonstrate psychopathic traits.
The top five things that identify a psychopath are:
1. Lack of remorse.
2. Nothing is ever their fault.
3. Switching charm on and off, like a light.
4. Being completely and utterly self-focused, rarely, if ever, doing anything that isn’t beneficial to them.
5. They are game players – they like playing tricks, telling lies.
Many psychopaths are found in banking. Surgeons, lawyers, sales and media people are close contenders, but finance offers a great attraction. Why? The same reason paedophiles are found in schools: that is where the children are.
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CENTRE OF LIGHTNESS
20 Steps to Self-enlightenment Programme
Confidential Record: 143 – cont.
The Game Changer is prepared to kill and to destroy others merely to achieve power – a versatile parasitic predator. If they choose to kill you, or to destroy you, or both, you will be the last person to see it coming.
The human mind is delicate. You need to be patient with it. Some will put up a harder fight but, ultimately, they will all arrive at the same fate. On the island, most have sworn the oath of secrecy. The oath is seen as a form of protection, and one of the key cornerstones of the 20 Steps to Self-enlightenment: without group fortification, weaker members may perish, and no one believes they want that.
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Kate
AFTER TALKING TO ADAM, KATE KNEW, IF SHE WAS going to manage this, panic and anxiety weren’t her friends. Adam was sending over a courier to pick up the note, so before he or she arrived, she copied the wording into one of her journals.
With at least an hour to go before she had to pick up Charlie from school, she decided to record aspects of Michael O’Neill’s death, and how, if at all, she fitted into the picture.
Pressing the record button, she began: ‘Michael O’Neill’s death can be interpreted in two ways, either as a suicide or as a death staged to look like one. If the death was caused by someone else, what do the crime-scene factors tell us? First, it is likely that there was a relationship between the killer and the victim. The exact details of the relationship are still unclear. However, to carry out this act successfully, assuming it was murder, the killer would have had to be familiar with the routine of the deceased. Access to the house would also have been a requirement. With no forced entry, the most likely means of access was via permission of the victim.’
She paused, thinking about the large sums of money withdrawn. She pressed the record button again. ‘Assuming the cash withdrawals are connected to the victim’s death, the perpetrator of the crime and the beneficiary of the funds are possibly one and the same. The missing money has prompted a suspicion of blackmail, which is backed up in a number of ways. First, the victim’s profile indicates financial prudence and sensibility. Second, all of the money was withdrawn in cash, in amounts of five thousand euro
s, totalling the O’Neills’ life savings. Third, the victim displayed signs of stress in the weeks preceding his death, despite his mood improving in the later stages. Fourth, the victim was retired, and although investment couldn’t be ruled out, no records of this have been found. To date, the police have been unable to locate the missing funds.
‘Another disturbing aspect of Michael O’Neill’s death is the planting of DNA at a crime scene in New York. The victim, Tom Mason, was killed in May of this year.’
Kate stopped the recording again, and considered what Malcolm Madden had said about her father, and the two dead men, Michael O’Neill and Tom Mason, all being part of the elite group. At best, it would seem they used questionable means to study cognitive processes among minors. She leaned back in the chair, making a mental note to ask Adam if the Manhattan detective, Lee Fisher, had information about this so-called academic circle. Two dead men, she thought, of similar age, one of whom had obviously been murdered. Money unaccounted for, the planting of DNA, historical rumours about her father, a closed and suspect grouping, Kevin’s death, which had had similarities to O’Neill’s, the degradation of the garage and the missing items. Someone had been there after Kate and Ethel O’Neill had left, removing the notebooks, the hair samples and the reference to the Cronly murder case – death, secrecy, money, rumour, and a lot of question marks. Adam and Malcolm had both alluded to her inadvertently slotting things together, things that might or might not be connected. Were the notes part of all this? Whether they were or not, someone had sent them, and someone had killed that bird.
She looked up at the mind maps on the wall, including the ones she had recently created. ‘Michael O’Neill, DEAD. Subset A: cause of death – carbon monoxide poisoning. Subset B: treated as suspicious – suicide/foul play. Subset C: large amount of money missing. Subset B1: suspected blackmail.’ She added another strand: ‘Kevin, foster son, similar MO, death 1988.’ Taking a red marker from her desk, she stood up, circling ‘1988’, then creating another subset: ‘VICTIM: Michael O’Neill. Previous accusations of paedophilia.’ Then, reluctantly, she created another subset, this time with her father’s name in it: Valentine Pearson. It was a different time, Malcolm had said. It was common knowledge that reported sex-abuse cases were handled badly in the eighties.
She went to the subset marked ‘Known Associates’, looking particularly at Malcolm Madden, making another link outwards, writing, ‘LIED to the police.’ Her gut told her to believe him, but the mind map told her to doubt. With the red marker, she underlined each element where potentially the investigation mind maps and her memory mind maps held common factors: O’Neill; his foster son, Kevin; entries about Kate in the teacher’s notebooks, Malcolm; 1988. She created a subset under the title ‘Commonality’. She noted similar-type scissors used in both the newspaper-clipping note and the pages removed from O’Neill’s notebook.
Before adding more details to the mind maps, she thought again about the newspaper article she’d found in the back of the 1988 notebook, the one about her and Adam and the Cronly trial. That had to be intentional. Was someone trying to create a mystery where none existed? She added another subset, this time including the Cronly murder investigation. Both victims were female, both pre-adolescent, the same age as Kate was when she was abducted. If someone was playing games, what did they want?
She pressed the record button. ‘Missing newspaper clipping found at the lock-up garage rented by the O’Neills, related to the Cronly trial. It depicted DI O’Connor and myself. Possible reasons why? Michael O’Neill, or someone else with access to the garage, maintained an interest in me, DI O’Connor, the murder trial, or all three. Content of article was general information about the prospective length of trial, overview of victims, the witnesses called that day, including myself and DI O’Connor.’ She hadn’t a copy of the article, but she could easily find it on the Internet. One line in it kept repeating itself in her mind. It was about the age of the victims. Going back to the mind maps, Kate made a list of items noted in the news report, underlining the age of the victims, twelve, in red, then doing the same with her mind map.
All of a sudden, the air in the room felt sparse. She stepped back, taking in the mind maps in front of her. One range had the late Michael O’Neill at the centre, the other had herself. From the short distance, another thought crossed her mind. What if neither of them was at the centre? What if she had been looking at this all wrong? What if both were merely part of a bigger picture? And if the centre was different, what was it?
Sarah
SARAH HADN’T THOUGHT SHE LOOKED ON SEX AS A taboo. Since Lily’s birth, she and John hadn’t had sex. He’d made numerous approaches but had accepted her rebuttals. She’d told him she wasn’t ready. And then how could she think about sex with the loss of their daughter? Soon he’d stopped asking altogether, and not long after that, they hadn’t always slept in the same bed. The double bed they used to share felt large, cold and closer to the world Sarah knew she was creating for herself. She missed his warmth, missed knowing someone was there beside her.
Now, on the island, everything seemed brighter. She didn’t crave darkness and despair any more. Since coming here, she realised her life was no longer about having John in it. Over the last few days, she had even found it difficult to remember his face. At other times, she would wonder if he existed at all. Had she imagined him? Made him up? But she could hear his voice inside her head, telling her he wanted her to come home. She wasn’t going to do that. She was told she could send a letter, and someone would bring it to the mainland. The mobile signal was bad. It was impossible to make a call. She had tried a couple of times, and failed.
She heard a word repeating in her head. The word was taboo. It felt out of context. Another girl, called Amanda, was partnered with her that day. She was nice, if not particularly good-looking. She wore heavy glasses, and when she took them off, her eyes looked smaller, like tiny beads. Sarah felt bad about being so shallow and scolded herself. She tried to make a bigger effort to listen to what Amanda had to say.
The medication meant her concentration kept drifting, and she found herself doing more looking than listening. Sarah figured Amanda had been talking for a very long time. She must have stopped paying attention ages ago. Amanda was talking about relationships, saying how ever since she’d come to the island, she was less hung up about them. She was telling Sarah that love was for sharing. Sarah nodded. It hadn’t crossed Sarah’s mind to seek out relationships. Being a mother was all-consuming, but she had heard the other women talk.
They said the medication had helped them to loosen up; they were less highly strung and intimidated. She didn’t pay much attention to them. They had their lives and she had hers. She knew that was wrong of her because things were different on the island. Everyone was family. Everyone cared. During her last session in front of the camera, she realised she was still clinging to old habits, and no one can move forward by carrying on the same as before.
Sarah had stopped listening to Amanda again, although she hadn’t seemed to notice. Amanda was talking about sex, and when she repeated the word taboo, it jolted Sarah out of her thoughts.
Amanda looked down at Lily, asking if Sarah ever thought about having another baby, a brother or a sister for her little girl. ‘What would be so bad,’ she continued, ‘about giving Lily a sister or a brother?’
Sarah didn’t know the answer to that, but it was okay, because Amanda filled the silence by talking even more. Sarah nodded every now and again to keep looking interested. The medication made things like that easier, and part of her didn’t mind that her brain was slowing down. It was a relief at times to be free of those constant aching questions.
She stared at Amanda, and she noticed that Amanda’s voice was separating from her face. They were cutting out shapes from old newspaper. Amanda was cutting out diamond shapes that were linked together. Sarah was cutting out shapes to make paper boats. She remembered making them when she was younger. Her mother w
ould bring her to the park, and they would float them in the pond. Amanda was talking about Japan now. How it used to be customary to give young people what they called a pillow book. Sarah raised her eyebrows, unsure how they’d got on to the subject of Japan. Amanda didn’t notice, telling her that the pillow books were small volumes of coloured woodblock prints showing the details of sexual intercourse.
‘A picture paints a thousand words,’ she said, as if it wasn’t a cliché. Sarah tried to remember other clichés, but she couldn’t. Not one. Her mind was stuck.
‘The pillow book,’ Amanda said, ‘saved the parents the embarrassment of explaining intimate sexual details.’
Sarah nodded again.
‘Now things are different,’ Amanda continued. ‘People can find out anything they want from any number of sources. Sex is no longer a taboo.’
Sarah registered the word. Amanda must like it because she kept saying it. Sarah repeated the word inside her head, taboo, taboo, taboo, boo, boo, boo, and she started to laugh, and Amanda asked her why she was laughing, and for no good reason, Sarah said, ‘Boo,’ out loud, and then she said it again, and it sounded like the funniest thing she had ever heard, so she laughed some more, and Amanda laughed too, and after a few minutes, Sarah apologised for laughing, saying she didn’t know why she had.
The Game Changer Page 17