The Remnant Vault (Tombs Rising Book 2)

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Jack nodded. “Yeah. I can do that.”

  “Well, let's get on with it.”

  The woman who answered the door was young, mid-twenties and had a small child hanging from her leg. She had a short blonde haircut that whipped around the back of her neck as she moved. Impatiently, she tried to brush aside the boy. “Charlie. Go and watch cartoons.” Charlie wandered from the room, looking back at the newcomers with suspicion etched on his face.

  “Mrs Maguire?”

  “Coleman now, but you can call me Helen.” She stepped to one side, opening the door wide so the men could enter and then led them through the hallway to a modest kitchen at the back of the house. Although the house was large, there was no sign of ego. Everything was decorated smartly, with the minimum of fuss. Grey walls, beige carpets, pine furniture. The kitchen had a dining room table that could sit a dozen and had a bowl of nicely green apples resting in the centre.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” she said, heading for the hot water tap and taking three cups out from the cupboard. “Your sergeant told me he’d got himself into trouble.”

  Jack exchanged a look with Burnfield. For a terrible moment, Jack wondered whether Chloe had even mentioned that Helen’s husband was dead.

  She pulled a canister from the shelf and starting making cups of coffee without waiting for her guests to ask.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Jack said. The words spilt out, sounding as clumsy and clichéd in the air as they had in his head.

  Burnfield glanced at him, then shook his head discretely. “You spoke to Sergeant Moselli on network?”

  “Yes,” she responded.

  “Then, you know that your husband is dead.”

  Jack was surprised by how blunt he was being with the woman.

  “Of course. She explained it all very clearly to me.”

  “To be frank, Mrs Coleman, you don’t seem terribly concerned about this.”

  She finished making the coffees and put them down before the pair of them on the dining room table. “What’s to be concerned about? I haven’t seen him for the last twelve months. I’m surprised you actually came round to see me in person. I thought Sergeant Moselli had said all that needed saying on network earlier. Please take a seat,” she added as an afterthought.

  Helen looked at Jack, noted the tattoo and smiled. She put her hand out to shake his and after a moment’s hesitation, he took it. Her grip was cool, her manicured fingernails brushed against his palm and he caught a whiff of her perfume. Floral and sweet. Like brushing your nose against a rose. He expected her to pull her hand away, but she didn’t. In fact, she seemed to be inviting him to attempt to scan her.

  “What do you see?” she asked, staring into his eyes.

  “I don’t think this is entirely appropriate, Mrs Coleman.”

  “I told you, call me Helen. Ssshh.” She squeezed his hand.

  Burnfield didn’t interfere. Jack let his mind drift. Felt beyond the warm skin and sought out the lines that would draw his consciousness to hers. The path was even, straight, uncomplicated.

  The blast of pain caught him unawares, and he yanked his hand away from her’s so violently that he fell from his chair and landed on the floor.

  Burnfield stood, towering over the seated Mrs Coleman. “What the hell?”

  The woman smiled and slowly withdraw her hand from where it had been left hanging. The smile that appeared on her face was thin and cruel. The painted lips looking like a cut in her face. Jack got to his feet. The initial blast of pain had gone now, but the light hurt his eyes and he realised his left eye was watering. He dabbed it with a finger, then noticed the look of shock on Burnfield’s face, then realised the wetness on his cheek wasn’t tears. He grabbed a tissue from his pocket and dabbed at the blood.

  “She’s had a telepathic block inserted. A good one as well. Must have cost a lot.” He glared at the woman and hoped that she was at least feeling some discomfort from the triggering of the trap.

  “Six month’s salary. I wanted to make sure I got my money’s worth. You can never tell with these back-street traders. Someone’s always out to screw you over.”

  Charlie came running back into the room, a toy plane in his hand, flying through the air. Tiny jet streams in rainbow colours sprayed from the engines, and the boy smiled as he flew his jet through the rings and corkscrews he was making in the air.

  “Charlie, I asked you to go and watch cartoons.”

  A man entered. Over six foot, and groomed to perfection, he wore a sharp grey suit with a neck tie and blue handkerchief in the jacket pocket. “Sorry, I had to take a call from the office. Little bugger managed to get away from me, didn’t you?” The newcomer came and hoisted the boy up from the floor and spun him through the air. The boy held his arms out and continued flying his own plane around in front of him. “Don’t let me disturb you.”

  “Not at all, Mr—”

  A smile. But a hint of mischief. “Henry Coleman.”

  “And you are?”

  Mrs Coleman sipped at her own coffee. “We’re married, Detective. When Booth stopped keeping in touch, I divorced him. Moved on with my life.”

  Burnfield shook the man’s hand. Jack kept his by his side.

  “I hear our old friend Booth has met a sticky end.”

  “He’s dead if that’s what you mean.” Burnfield looked quizzical. “I take it neither of you particularly liked the man.”

  “That’s why she divorced him, Detective. Booth was a liability. Pure and simple.” Henry smiled and ruffled the little boy’s head. “Hey, Charlie do you want to go and play upstairs? I’ll be up in a minute.”

  The boy looked from the detective to Jack, then to Henry, and then he lifted his jet into the air and began flying it from the room, this time making all the plane noises he could think of. When he’d left, Jack addressed Henry. “Is he yours?”

  “No,” Helen said, irritation in her voice. “He’s Booth’s. We only divorced last year.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t think.”

  “No. Common problem with you teeps isn’t it.”

  Burnfield jumped in. “Enough of the animosity. We’re not the enemy. We’re here to find out more about Booth. Understand why someone might have wanted him dead.”

  Helen’s red fingernails danced around the rim of her coffee cup. “Booth managed to rile most people up.”

  “But you haven’t seen him for a while?”

  “Not for a whole year. Thankfully, he’s kept away.”

  “You were having trouble?”

  “You could put it like that. Ever since his diagnosis he became paranoid about what he was getting into. Worried that he was going to be caged like a freak.”

  “What was he like before his diagnosis?”

  Her face relaxed. “We had a good life. Simple, but good. We’d managed to get into one of the old terraces and were saving up for the future. We finally got a pregnancy licence and then we had Charlie. I thought we’d be together forever really.

  “OsMiTech wanted him onsite for six weeks whilst they calibrated and tested him. He was given a grade and sent back home. There wasn’t a lot of demand for a class one at the time, regulations were still in flux as to what they could and couldn’t do. But then he did get a job. Admin work in one of OsMiTech’s offices. It paid much better than his engineering and he could still live at home. He seemed OK. Nervous, but OK.

  “I supported him, but the adjustment was hard for all of us. I’m from a colourful family and I’ve learnt to roll with the punches, and I did my best to help him stay sane. But then something changed. He told me he was up for a promotion, although I wasn’t supposed to know about it. The job was better paid, fewer hours. Would put his talents to better use. I wanted him to be happy.”

  She wiped at the edge of an eye. Henry put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. She patted the back of his hand, and his fingers sought out hers and he kept her there.

  “Do you know what office he worked at?”
Jack asked.

  She shook her head. “Only that it wasn’t at OsMiTech headquarters. He let slip that much.”

  Burnfield twisted his neck to look at Jack. His eyes narrowed. A crease appeared on his forehead. “That happen much?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. If it was important enough to be classified why not just keep the office at OsMiTech itself? Why have it somewhere else?”

  “And why tell you it’s classified? Why say anything?” Burnfield directed this at Helen, who looked up at her husband with a glance like this was the dumbest question she’d ever heard.

  “I’m not stupid, Detective. He told me that to put me off the scent. Thought I was too stupid to work things out for myself.”

  “And what did you work out?”

  “He was working for someone dodgy. I know teeps get paid a lot more money on the black market than they do through official channels. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was his employer who eventually decided to get rid of him.”

  Jack wondered if there was any truth in it. The canary he’d seen working for Frazier Growden outside the Plaza on the night of his anti-telepath meeting was a case in point. The criminal underworld paid far more than the officially sanctioned employment paths. For many, that was enough of a draw. And if you were ever unlucky enough to be approached by a crime boss, you ended up with little choice but to agree to their terms. Telepaths were kept on a tight leash and whilst well paid, had all the risks of being employed by crooks.

  “There could be other reasons for his change in behaviour. Did he ever complain about his condition?” Jack asked, keeping his eyes on Helen’s.

  “I noticed he had more bottles in the medicine cabinet than usual. When I asked him about them, he’d try to pick a fight about me poking into his business. One night I got home, and he’d hidden all trace of them. It was only when he left that I finally found them hidden in his belongings.”

  “Have you still got the pills? I’d like to take a look at them.”

  “Sure. They’re in the cupboard upstairs with the rest of his stuff. Henry, can you go and fetch them?”

  Henry looked unsure, then gave a final squeeze of his wife’s hand before letting go and heading out of the room.

  “He changed,” Helen began. “I don’t know whether it was the work he was doing, or the people he was hanging with—he wasn’t the same man I’d married. He’d lose his temper over the stupidest things. He’d find any reason at all to shout at Charlie. I was getting scared of him.”

  “Why do you have a teep trap?” Jack asked.

  “He’d been acting weird for weeks, and I was feeling dreadful. I thought it was just the tension of living with him, being on edge you know? Plus, there was the general tiredness of running around after a four-year-old. I wasn’t getting enough sleep, or time to myself and Booth would be in and out of the house at strange times of day. My friends told me to leave him, but where else was I going to go? My family live in District 28 and I can’t uproot and run back to them. I was fighting to keep hold of what little dignity I had left. One night I woke to find him scanning me. He’d been rooting around in here,” she tapped the side of her head, “for god knows how long. That was why I was so tired. I confronted him about it, but he denied it. Claimed he’d heard me moaning in my sleep and thought I was having a nightmare. But, he was in here all right. I wouldn’t sleep in the same room as him after that.”

  “So, you bought yourself some protection?” Burnfield asked gently.

  “No,” she sighed. “Not at first. I didn’t know such things like this existed. I only got this after getting together with Henry. He thought it would help me sleep better.”

  “Tell us about when he left.”

  “We’d been fighting. He hadn’t been in my room for weeks. I’d started locking the bedroom door to stop him coming in. But I heard a noise. Something woke me. I went looking round the house and I found him, stood over Charlie’s bed, hand on his face, reading him. He denied what he was doing, but I lost it and started punching him, dragging him out the room and downstairs. I threw him out then. I couldn’t have him in the house any longer.”

  Jack was shocked. Scanning without permission was illegal, but what Booth was doing, was inconceivable. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She smiled but when she looked up it was at Burnfield. “I’m not glad he’s dead. But, I think I might sleep better.”

  “That night you threw him out, that was the last you saw of him?”

  She shook her head. “Oh no. That first month alone after kicking him out I must have seen him half a dozen times.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside,” she said, grinning wryly at the thought. “Standing in the garden looking up at the bedroom window. Usually about three in the morning.”

  “Seriously?” Jack asked.

  She looked directly at him. “It scared the crap out of me the first time I caught him. Still wearing the same clothes I’d kicked him out in a week earlier, looking up at the house. He’d always run away as soon as I opened the door to confront him though. I reported it, but you never seemed that interested.”

  Burnfield shifted in his chair and nodded. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

  “OsMiTech seemed more interested. They sent people round. He didn’t come to the house again after that.”

  “So, that was the last you saw him?”

  She shook her head again. A small desperate laugh. “No. I’ve seen him since.” She leaned back in her chair. “About five weeks ago, in the city centre. I’m working in Henry’s company now. His office is in town and it was the end of my first week. I’d agreed to go for a drink with the girls, but I had to leave early to come and pick up Charlie from his after-school club.

  “I thought I was going crazy. I hadn’t seen Booth for weeks. I guessed he’d moved back into OsMiTech dorms or to another district. He hadn’t tried to make any contact with me about access to Charlie so I thought it had to be pretty serious. Before all of this, he loved that boy. Wouldn’t have done a thing to hurt him. When we got the licence, he was overjoyed, ecstatic. He wouldn’t let me do anything whilst I was pregnant. Charlie was his life. So, to think that he wasn’t even trying to see him, or ask me about him—well I could only imagine he’d had some kind of breakdown and was being worked on by OsMiTech.

  “It was in Liverpool centre, after five, and I’d had a crappy day at work but the drink with friends had set me right. Henry and I were happy. Charlie needed a father figure and Henry’s perfect. The last thing I thought I’d see would be Booth. He hadn’t seen me, and he looked like he was walking with a purpose.

  “I was going to go back to the bar and grab the girls, but he was moving so fast and there were crowds. I didn’t want to lose him, although I wasn’t sure what I’d do with him should I catch up with him. Ask him what he’d been doing probably. A part of me, just wanted to know that he was safe.

  “I needn’t have worried about him spotting me. He walked like he was, I don’t know—somewhere else, not really paying attention. A couple of times, people bumped into him, and apologised, but he didn’t notice. I was past scared now, but I wanted to know what he was doing. We walked all the way around a block, ended up back where we’d started only to head off in a different direction.

  “The only time I got scared was when he stopped in the middle of the road. A car was coming towards him whilst he was crossing, and hit his horn, but Booth didn’t react. I thought I was going to have to go and drag him back to the curb, but then he turned completely about and headed straight back towards me. I panicked but there weren’t many people at that junction and he was coming right at me. But he walked past me, close enough for me to reach out and touch him if I’d tried—but, I didn’t. He wasn’t even looking at me. There was no way he could have missed me. I was looking right at him, but he didn’t react.”

  Helen looked at Jack and Burnfield, her eyes moist. The hard smile that had been fixed on her face a distant memory. To Jack, she looked
vulnerable. A woman who’d been fighting for too long to stay in control and keep her sanity intact, but who’d opened that trap door she’d kept all her feelings buried in. Jack had a crazy impulse to put his hand out to hers, to let her know that everything was going to be OK, but he wasn’t ready to lie to her.

  “Did you keep following him?” Burnfield asked.

  “I wasn’t going to stop after that. It felt like we’d walked half of Liverpool’s streets. My feet ached and we kept turning corners and finding myself back where we’d been minutes earlier. I considered grabbing him and trying to get a reaction from him.” She laughed. “Do you know, he was still wearing the same clothes I’d seen him wearing that night in the garden? His suit jacket and trousers. I thought maybe he’d been sleeping rough, but he’d been shaving. His hair looked as groomed as ever. From looking at him, you wouldn’t think there was anything unusual about him. Well, apart from the sleepwalking thing.

  “I was going to give up, and go home, hell, I even thought of contacting you lot. But we began to head back into the town centre and that was the way I’d make my way home anyway. And then I lost him.” She looked up at Jack, and then to Burnfield. “I don’t know how, but I did.”

  Burnfield shifted in his chair and pointed his HALO down at the table top. An interface appeared, and he swiped his way through a couple of screens. In seconds, a light projection of the city centre appeared on the table. He kept his hand angled steady, and the map focused in on the main shopping area. “Can you show me where you were when you lost him?”

  Helen pointed to a street at the top edge of the map. Jack recognised it as being close to the main bus route into the shopping area. “It was around there. I’d started following him over here,” she said, moving her finger a few streets away to an area where Jack knew was full of bars and pubs.

  Burnfield dismissed the map. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Do you remember what day it was?”