The Game Changer

by Louise Phillips

  ‘I have to take that risk.’ But he hesitated, knowing Donal had a point. If he woke Sarah, even if she didn’t scream the place down, she was clearly too weak to go anywhere, and they still needed to find Chloë. He wasn’t sure what to do next, but then he realised Donal was waiting on his lead, so he finally said, ‘Sarah, it’s Addy.’

  At first, she didn’t respond, but then her eyes blinked open and closed, and although she didn’t speak straight away, she looked at him warmly, as if he was an old friend. ‘Is that you, John? Have you come for me?’

  ‘It’s Addy. Remember? The boy on the boat?’

  ‘I want my John.’ Her voice was croaky. ‘I need him to come here.’

  ‘It’s all right, Sarah,’ Addy replied, even though he knew it wasn’t.

  Donal gave him a dig in the ribs, and he turned sharply. ‘What?’

  The boy pointed to the locker with the mobile phone, and Addy immediately twigged what he meant. With his hands, he signalled to Donal to fetch it, and the boy swiftly moved to the other side of the bed.

  Holding the phone, Donal kept his voice low when he said, ‘It’s been turned off.’

  ‘Sarah,’ Addy whispered, close to her ear, ‘can you remember the code for your phone?’

  She nodded.

  ‘If you tell me, we can phone John.’

  ‘I tried to find his number,’ again her voice was croaky, ‘but I couldn’t.’ Her face went tense, and for a moment Addy thought she was about to become hysterical, but she said, ‘My fingers kept messing up.’

  ‘I understand, Sarah, but the code?’ Addy knew it was a long shot. If the woman wasn’t able to find a number in the phone, how was she going to remember a code?

  ‘All zeros,’ she said, her voice so low that Addy could barely make it out.

  ‘Did you say zeros, Sarah?’

  She nodded again, and Addy looked at Donal. ‘Put in four zeros.’

  The boy did as he was told, then smiled. ‘It has 50 per cent battery.’

  ‘Good. Now switch it off because we’ll need it.’

  Sarah closed her eyes.

  ‘Sarah,’ Addy whispered again, ‘I’m not sure if you can hear me, but we need to find someone else. I promise you we’ll be back.’

  ∞

  In the last room, they found Chloë. This time it was Donal who stood closest to the bed. He leaned over, his face near her mouth, checking her breathing. ‘She’s still alive,’ he said, excited.

  ‘Shush! Not so loud.’

  ‘I was worried she wouldn’t be.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s been here for too long. They only give you a certain amount of time. Then if the drugs and the one-to-one sessions with Jessica don’t work, the person disappears.’

  Addy didn’t need any more things spelled out for him. They had to get help. Otherwise how would they get Sarah and Chloë out of there? He thought about Aoife. Would she help them? Could he trust her?

  Think, Addy, think. Use the resources you have. They had two mobile phones and some battery strength on both. It might be enough. Donal said they’d get a signal at the old church, once they went up high enough in the spire. It all felt too crazy, but if someone on the island was operating a blocker system, the church on higher ground, close to the mainland, and away from the commune buildings, would be outside its influence. He had to take a chance. He tugged Donal’s arm, and the boy turned away from Chloë.

  ‘Listen, Donal, if you don’t want to leave her, I can find my own way to the old church.’

  ‘Can we not take her with us?’

  ‘She’s too weak to go anywhere, and so is Sarah. Neither of them could make a trip on a boat, even if we could get them away. We need to get the help to come to us.’

  ‘I’ll stay with her.’

  ‘Promise me, Donal, if you hear anyone coming, you’ll get back into that shaft as quick as you can, even if it means leaving Chloë behind.’

  Addy saw he was fighting back tears, but he nodded. ‘In a little while, get back into that shaft. See if you can find out anything about what’s going on. It’ll take me a couple of hours, going back the way we came, to get to the church, but we don’t have any other choice.’

  Again the boy nodded, and again, Addy thought about Charlie and a life that seemed a million miles away.

  Adam

  ADAM FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO THINK STRAIGHT ON the way to the hospital. They said Kate wasn’t in danger, but there were complications. He had tried to get answers, but all he was told was that the consultant would talk to him when he arrived.

  Almost on autopilot, he phoned Fitzsimons. ‘Listen, I have a problem. Kate’s been taken into hospital. I don’t have any details yet, but I need you to get a few things organised.’

  ‘Sure, boss, fire away.’

  ‘That detective from Manhattan, Lee Fisher, he’s on his way into Harcourt Street by taxi.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I want the two of you to work together. Keep digging on Clarence Webb, and change the search from Jessica Fraser to Jessica Baxter.’

  ‘Baxter?’

  ‘She’s Kevin Baxter’s sister.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Exactly. I want to know what she’s been doing up until now, any previous offences, anything at all out of the ordinary, but there must be something on him too.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Also, get on to that forensic writing specialist. I need to know if he’s completed his analysis of the notes sent to Kate and the copy transcript from PIU. Apply any pressure that you can, and let the chief super know. Tell him there may be a link between O’Neill’s death and the woman’s statement. If he can get PIU talking, we might have enough to move this further.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah. I had to cut short my visit to Malcolm Madden. He’s supposed to be on his way to Harcourt Street to give a formal statement. Take the statement with Fisher, and push Madden any way you can, specifically around Valentine Pearson, Kate’s late father. Turn the bastard upside down if you have to.’

  With that, he hung up, remembering Kate had been due to meet Aoife earlier that day. He tried both Addy’s and Aoife’s numbers, but he got the usual ‘out of coverage’ reply. The last number he dialled was the Coplands’. Aoife’s mother answered. After the usual pleasantries, he asked to talk to Aoife. When he heard she wasn’t at home, he decided it could mean only one thing. She hadn’t told her parents she was back.

  Driving into the car park at St James’s Hospital, he looked like a man possessed. First things first, he told himself. He needed to be sure that Kate was okay, and for now, everyone and everything else had to wait.

  The Game Changer

  CENTRE OF LIGHTNESS

  20 Steps to Self-enlightenment Programme

  Convincing Aoife to make that phone call to Kate wasn’t difficult. The lie she was told is irrelevant too. What matters is that she did it. It was the reason the Game Changer chose her in the first place. Kate has never been able to refuse a lame duck.

  Now she is exactly where the Game Changer wants her to be. Stephen did well, but allowing someone else to kill Kate was never on the cards. It seems she will lose the baby too – how utterly tragic.

  Kate has always been the precious and sheltered one. Valentine Pearson used to be the Game Changer, but not any more. The irreverence with which he treated others, while protecting his one and only princess, must be atoned for, and when Kate is no more, this Game Changer will be gone, sipping café macchiato in warmer climates, with plenty of other people’s money in the bank.

  Everyone makes promises to themselves over time. The promises are like map points. The map points changed when the Game Changer caught up with Malcolm Madden. Everything became clearer, and the interest in Kate intensified from curiosity to the ultimate prize, worth far more than money could offer.

  The death of the two remaining helpers in the fire caused unease, but death is death, and there is nothing that bri
ngs the do-gooders and inspiration seekers together like human loss.

  (Page 1 of 1)

  Kate

  DAYLIGHT WAS CREEPING IN AROUND THE WINDOW blinds, and as Kate came in and out of sleep, everything in the room was out of focus. She could hear the ‘bleep, bleep’ of the monitors behind her, her body too sore to move. What had she been dreaming about?

  Distant sounds, car horns, motorbikes, barely audible, came in from outside, everything seeming muffled or cast away to another time and space. She could remember only part of her dream. She had been in that room again, the one in the Portakabin. She could hear a dog barking. She was cold, and more frightened than she had ever been. Then the dream skipped. She saw her father’s face. It wasn’t angry, it was reassuring, telling her everything would be okay. Where was her mother? Why wasn’t she in the dream? Then, she was back in her old bedroom, and Kevin was outside the window. He was with that man and the girl. She wanted the girl to turn around, but no matter how much she wanted it, the girl wouldn’t turn.

  There was something else. When she looked down at the girl’s hands, she was holding a bird, a jackdaw with an ugly mottled beak and closed eyelids. Kate felt something heavy in her hands. She was holding the jackdaw now. It kept getting heavier and heavier, as if she was carrying a baby, not a bird.

  The bird was dead, and in the dream, she was trying to tell Adam about the baby, but all the time she felt weighed down, and the heaviness of the dead jackdaw became onerous, like a stone boulder. Her hands wanted to let go, but she couldn’t.

  Her dream skipped again. She was in front of the secondary school. The one Charlie would go to when he was older. He was there with his little sister. They were holding hands. He looked so protective of her. He loved his little sister so much. Somebody was calling her name. They were saying it over and over. The voice was familiar, caring.

  ‘Kate,’ the voice said, ‘can you hear me? It’s Adam.’

  Special Detective Unit,

  Harcourt Street

  AS LEE ENTERED HARCOURT STREET STATION, HE thought of 7th Precinct on the Lower East Side, where he spent most of his working life. The precinct wasn’t unlike many others within the NYPD, unremarkable apart from the investigations they handled, with the best part of ten homicides a month. From the array of whiteboards within the Special Detective Unit, the number of investigations wasn’t quite so high, but the place had more in common with a New York precinct than it was different.

  Passing through the public section at the front of the building, he noticed a young girl sitting alone, staring at her mobile phone. She glanced at him, and he nodded, but her glare said, Back off. Not everyone is friendly here. He thought about Adam O’Connor, and his hurried departure to see Kate Pearson. He wanted to reverse roles. He wanted it to be him visiting Marjorie, but she was dead, and as he entered the incident room, and took in the photographs of Ethel and Michael O’Neill’s bodies from various angles on the incident-room boards, sentiment, he knew, had no place there.

  He was keen to get his teeth into Malcolm Madden again, and Fitzsimons had set up Interview Room 9A, which he mentioned was a favourite with O’Connor. Lee felt as if he was slipping into the detective’s shoes, but he was comfortable there, even if there were a few thousand miles between Dublin and Manhattan.

  Malcolm Madden took a seat opposite him, a small square wooden table between them. Fitzsimons stood to the side, leaning against the wall. The well-groomed psychologist seemed taller in the interview room, but less at ease, which was exactly where Fisher wanted him.

  ‘Malcolm, you were telling us about your re-acquaintance with Jessica Baxter.’

  ‘She was a client and a friend.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘I say it because it’s true.’

  ‘You’re a believer in truth, are you, Malcolm?’

  He didn’t respond. ‘You told us earlier that you harboured guilt about events from the past, namely the abuse of Jessica Baxter and her brother.’

  ‘Yes, but I believe there may have been others too. I can’t be sure.’

  ‘And your relationship with Kate’s father was complicated? You felt he didn’t appreciate your gifts?’ Rattle the cage, he thought.

  ‘He appreciated enough to ask me to do his dirty work for him.’

  ‘Was he involved in the abuse?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t like O’Neill, or some of the others, but he wasn’t without sin.’

  ‘Are you religious?’

  ‘No. What I mean is Valentine often lived up to his romantic name.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  Malcolm let out a long sigh.

  Lee allowed the silence to hover for a while, then said, ‘Come on, Malcolm. There’s no client-privilege argument here.’

  ‘It all happened a long time ago.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘Valentine had a reputation.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘He was a complicated man. As I said earlier, he liked to be at the centre of things.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He was also prone to bouts of anger.’

  ‘Beating up his wife? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘I used to look up to him as a mentor. At the beginning he helped me a great deal.’

  ‘Financially?’

  ‘Yes, when I was studying, and in the early days of my practice.’

  ‘So, you owed him?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘And you would have helped him if he’d found himself in some kind of trouble?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did he find himself in some kind of trouble?’

  ‘More than once.’

  ‘How?’ Lee raised his eyebrows.

  ‘He had an eye for the ladies. It fed into his need to be at the centre of things, admired.’

  ‘I sense you’re holding something back, Malcolm.’

  ‘He wanted me to give someone money for him.’

  ‘Are we talking blackmail?’

  ‘Not quite, but close.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘1988.’

  ‘Which would have been around the time of those so-called experimental studies being stopped?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, the blackmail and the experiments are connected?’

  ‘It wasn’t anything to do with that – not directly.’

  Adam

  SITTING BY KATE’S HOSPITAL BED ADAM THOUGHT she might have heard him, after he’d said her name the last time: her eyelids had fluttered, but then nothing.

  The consultant, Professor Bradshaw, had already told him about the baby. It was early days, he said, but there was no doubt that the survival of the foetus had been compromised by the accident. It would be touch and go for a while. The collision had fractured Kate’s ribs, which had punctured one of her lungs. This had caused internal bleeding. If the damage had been any lower down, the foetus wouldn’t have had a chance. The consultant was optimistic that Kate would regain consciousness; it was a question of time. They had carried out a computerised axial tomography scan of the brain, and it had come up clear. The brain, he told Adam, like the rest of the human body, had a way of knowing what was best for its survival. Right now, it was telling Kate it needed rest.

  Adam had made contact with Declan. He and Charlie were getting the next flight over. It felt weird, telling your partner’s ex-husband about something like this. There was no training manual for such things. Part of him was relieved that Declan would be there. It meant he could keep up to speed with the investigation, and where Kate fitted into it. Another part of him didn’t want Declan to be at her bedside, especially if Kate regained consciousness while Adam was away. At least he had been able to arrange for a continual police presence outside her door.

  Slouching in the armchair, he knew Fisher and Fitzsimons were still interviewing Malcolm Madden, but he needed to think about the information Fitzsimons had been able to feed through to him.

  PIU h
ad confirmed Jessica Fraser, née Baxter, was the abuse victim who had supplied the statements to the unit. Her past, and that of her brother, hadn’t been happy. Their mother, Sharon, had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, characterised by episodes of mania and depression, fifteen years before her death. During her manic phases, she would break away from reality, ignoring her children. Those with the condition, like Sharon, used alcohol or mood-adjusting drugs during the manic phases to slow things down, and afterwards to lift them when the depression came. During the mania, their self-esteem was inflated to the point of grandiosity. Typical behaviour included obsessive spending sprees, doing things to the extreme, and exhibiting unusual sexual behaviour.

  Some of this had come to light when they had looked at the connection to Kevin’s suspicious death. Adam already knew that the boy’s mother had died shortly after her son. He didn’t yet know how Jessica fitted in. The feedback from the writing analysis would take more time, but if Jessica had sent the anonymous notes, he needed to know why. Surely both she and Kate had been victims. Could it be payback for Kate, who had not suffered the same fate, or was there more to it? Jessica Baxter had gone from one foster home to another, but she could hardly blame Kate for that.

  Clarence Webb had an equally depressing past. He and Jessica had first crossed paths in their late teens, when they were fostered by the same family. He had a number of minor convictions, but nothing recent. Apparently that part of what Madden had said was true. Webb was involved with setting up a meditative group at one point, but it had fizzled out a number of months before. From what Fitzsimons could gather, Webb wasn’t the brightest spark.

  Adam thought about Kate, how much he cared for her, and the two of them having a child together. He had made a mess of it the first time around with Addy, running away from his responsibilities and deservedly paying the price. There had still been no contact from Addy or Aoife. Marion was going up the walls. If he could have got hold of his son at that moment, he’d have given him an almighty talking-to. He gazed at Kate, wondering what she would do in his place.