MEMORIES UNSPEAKABLE free sample
1
They were running out of time.
So was the little girl.
If she wasn’t already dead.
Professor Torbing wanted to scream. Not at anyone in particular, not even at Stephen Foot, the monster who’d kidnapped eight-year-old Dani Sharmer.
She just wanted to scream out her frustration at the system.
Because it should be better than this.
She waited as the memory pod uploaded the files from the last reading onto its servers. Tense as a tightrope walker with a hangover. Tap-tap-tapping the metal terminal with one finger.
Time slipping away with every moment.
Come on. Come on!
Meanwhile the doctor finished replacing the electrode patches on the machine. He was balding, old, slow. Infuriating in his patience. He looked up at Professor Torbing for confirmation. She nodded once, and he crossed to the door and said into the mouthpiece, “We’re ready for him.”
About time. Two hours later than it should have been.
Two policemen brought Stephen Foot into the room. Handcuffed. The old shirt he’d been wearing when they’d caught him ripped from a scuffle. Stephen had a bloodied nose and two black eyes.
Bastard deserved them. She’d have liked to have given them herself.
“Can we hurry this up?” said one of the cops. “We’ve been waiting since six-thirty.”
“I know,” said the doctor. “Sorry, we had another reading.”
They undid Foot’s handcuffs. Forced him into the chair in the centre of the room and strapped his arms and legs into the restraints. He mumbled and whipped his head this way and that.
“This was supposed to be an emergency appointment,” said the other policeman.
“It was. You were put to the front of the queue as soon as you arrived.”
“Then why have we been waiting two bloody hours?”
The doctor hesitated. “There were other high-priority readings before yours. I’m sure you understand.”
Professor Torbing bit her lip. Sure you understand. She said nothing.
The policemen said nothing.
None of them understood. Certainly not Dani Sharmer’s parents.
What would they tell them if the girl died?
Professor Torbing reset the computer on the memory pod terminal as Foot thrashed in his restraints.
“You’ll never find her,” he hissed. “You’ll be too late. Just like the others.”
Foot had been caught on CCTV pulling Dani Sharmer into his van. A search of his home during the early hours of the morning had found no sign of the missing girl, but turned up three other bodies. Two girls, one boy.
No sign of Dani.
The police had made an emergency appointment at the Memory Exchange and driven Foot through the night from Lancashire to London.
Two and a half wasted hours. And another waiting around whilst the previous reading took place. Some neo-fascist skinhead suspected of plotting terrorism. High priority, yes, okay. Could have been a ticking bomb. But even so. Nothing in his head but dreams and delusions.
And meanwhile Dani Sharmer remained missing.
The problem was, this memory pod was the only one in the country available to the Ministry of Justice. Suspected terrorists and other criminals would have their memories forcibly probed, extracting information and evidence to be used by the Criminal Justice System or by the Security Service.
It had been fitted with leg and arm straps, and Professor Torbing thought it looked like one of those old electric chairs the Americans had used to fry people in. Old Sparky, they’d called it.
This specific memory pod was known as the Pink Elephant.
It wasn’t pink. And it wasn’t an elephant.
It was so-called, because if someone asked you not to think of a pink elephant, you couldn’t help but think of a pink elephant. In the same way, even though criminals and terrorists wanted to conceal their memories from the machine, all you had to do was bombard them with questions regarding the events. And they couldn’t help but remember them.
The memory pod would digitise the memory, allowing it to be played back on a screen like a movie. You could watch the events happen as seen through the suspect’s eyes, as heard through his ears.
The Mex had nineteen others, but they were constantly booked up by private customers. The British government had bought exclusive access to this one pod, but it wasn’t enough.
If the Lancashire police had had their own memory pod Dani would have been found hours ago.
Professor Torbing thought every police force in the country should have one of the machines, instead of having to cart criminals to the Chiltern Hills and queue for access like people waiting to ride Armageddon at Alton Towers.
The policemen were agitated. Fingers flexing. Hardly surprising. They’d been emotionally invested in the search for Dani Sharmer for almost a week. Torbing knew how they felt. The kidnapping had made the national news, as had the arrest of Stephen Foot.
“Foot’s in the chair now,” said one of the cops into his radio.
“About time,” replied the controller, broadcast to the room.
The Mex doctor lowered the cylindrical helmet over Foot’s head and attached the electrode patches.
Professor Torbing ran the software. The memory pod hummed. Blue light bathed her face.
“Where is Dani Sharmer?” She watched the monitor as she spoke, watched Foot’s brain waves oscillate and the machine’s code flood the screen.
Normally, memory extractions could be performed by a single Mex doctor. The patient would think about the events willingly. But sometimes memories were repressed or intentionally hidden, and it took a more qualified professor to make sense of the code and identify the memory.
Foot was trying not to think about the last place he’d left Dani Sharmer, but he couldn’t hide it for long. The cycles took on a familiar shape when the brain concentrated on a memory. It was Torbing’s job to identify and reveal the tell-tale leaps and squiggles in the code.
She was getting flashes, and circled them on the touchscreen with her finger before they disappeared, a skill honed and perfected over the years. Those snatches of neuro-proteins, snatches of memories, appeared as visual representations in a window in the top right of the screen. Glimpses of darkness and shadow.
The doctor watched over her shoulder as she worked, watching the shapes and colours, the manifestations conjured by the machine.
Torbing only saw them out of the corner of her eye. She was too focused on catching and circling the bursts and pops in the brainwave oscillation.
Sometimes there were audio fragments. Ultra-mp3 files represented with spiky wave crests. She wouldn’t know what they contained until after the extraction, when she could listen to them.
“Is the…”
“Quiet.” The doctor silenced the policeman who’d spoken.
Foot was muttering to himself, but Torbing had zoned him out, focusing on her task.
Another minute went by. Two.
The brainwave function looped up and down, up and down across the screen. Then the jagged peaks and troughs. Professor Torbing pulled them out of the quagmire until she’d collected more than two dozen.
You need to check them now. We don’t have time for this.
“Let’s see what we have.” Torbing abandoned the brainwave function and double tapped the visualisation window. A lot of fragments had been collected. She hoped they’d have something. If not she’d have to go back to the source and probe some more.
You don’t have time for that. You don’t have time for any of this.
The memory pod technology sorted and organised the various fragments, collated them, tried to find some sort of coherence.
Then played it back through the monitor in a succession of film clips.
She watched it all through Foot’s eyes,
Dani Sharmer, coaxed over to the van with a puppy. Foot’s one-year-old chocolate Labrador, now with the Goddamn RSPCA.
Snippets of audio. Foot’s voice. Dani’s screams. Cries.
They cut through Professor Torbing like a band saw.
This was always the worst. Having to watch horrible crimes unfold through the eyes of the perpetrator.
A lock-up.
Foot’s lock-up. Its address, dredged up from Foot’s mind and spoken aloud in his voice.
Dani was there, tied up.
The policemen jumped on their radios. They had an address, a lock-up leased under a false name. No tracing it back to Foot. Until now.
Dani had been left there.
Left there, still alive.
2
The emergency services got to the scene in eight minutes. Eight minutes that stretched an eternity for Professor Torbing.
“We’re at the lock-up now,” came the crackle through the policeman’s radio. The policeman paced. Up and down. Foot followed him with his eyes, not saying anything, his mouth half open.
The other cop leant against a wall and didn’t move a single muscle.
Professor Torbing clenched and unclenched her hands. She couldn’t get the image of the girl out of her mind. Dark hair pulled, cheeks wet with tears, eyes wide, teeth clenched against the gag, her chest rising and falling.
Dani hadn’t been struggling or wriggling against the rope binding her. She’d been frozen, staring at Foot as he exited the lock-up and closed the shutter door on her.
That was the last time anyone had seen her.
Until now.
“We’re in,” said the radio. Then a confusion of voices.
“She’s here!”
“Is she responsive?”
“She’s unconscious. Get her out of the chair.”
A pause of a couple of hour-long seconds.
“There’s no pulse.”
“She’s not breathing.”
“Commencing resuscitation now.”
Professor Torbing closed her eyes against the hum of the portable resuscitator.
“Air.”
“Oh Jesus.” The pacing cop put his hands to his head.
“Clear.”
A succession of twenty resuscitator clunks. One and two and three and...
Professor Torbing pictured Dani jolting with each one.
Please. Don’t let it end like this.
“Nothing.”
“We have no brain activity.”
“Try again.”
More resuscitator clunks. Someone said, “Come on, Sweetheart.”
“Increase the force.”
“She’s too small. It will do permanent damage to her heart.”
“We don’t have any choice.”
The hum increased pitch. The clunks got louder. Ribs cracked.
“Again.”
Again. And again.
Nothing.
She was dead. Torbing knew it. But even so, she hoped. Because they had to bring her round. It wasn’t fair. Not after all this.
The waiting. The delay.
That’s what had done it.
Foot had been caught hours ago. Back then Dani would have been alive. If the police had had access to a memory pod… If they hadn’t had to wait all these hours…
“We’re too late,” one of the policemen said. And then he looked directly at Professor Torbing. “It’s too late.”
It was too late.
One of the paramedics called it. Time of death: 8.12am. Over five hours after they’d first found Foot in his van.
“Shit,” said the Mex doctor.
Professor Torbing pressed her eyes shut. She felt tears well up, and when she opened her eyes again they spilled down her cheeks like the first sad raindrops on a battlefield.
One of the policemen punched Foot hard in the face. His head thunked back in the metal helmet. One of the electrode patches popped off his forehead. His nose popped too and started bleeding.
Foot still didn’t make a sound.
The policeman said, “He got that resisting being put in the chair, alright?”
That was alright.
Torbing wanted to punch him herself. In fact, she wanted to kill him. And who could honestly say he didn’t deserve it?
She could do it as well. Turn up the frequency on the memory pod to max. Focus the beam off his hippocampus onto his frontal lobes and cook them until they dripped out his nose.
But the doctor was already detaching him from the machine. And Professor Torbing couldn’t move. Shame anchored her to the ground, because this was their fault.
Mex Industries was responsible.
Their technology allowed the deletion, extraction and insertion of memories. It could have revolutionised the criminal justice system. For the entire world. No need for long trials or juries or (and wouldn’t this be a welcome thought) lawyers.
Just the historic truth.
But instead the technology had been patented and turned into a business. People could buy memories, digitally encoded and inserted directly into the brain using the latest electrography techniques. And there they would become your own.
You could ride elephants, or see tigers on safari or giant pandas in a zoo even though elephants, tigers and pandas were extinct. You could visit the equatorial paradise islands, now underwater, or the African jungles now ravaged by the encroaching deserts.
Memories bought from those old enough to remember. Before mankind brought Earth to the tipping point, and then beyond.
And in the meantime innocent people were put in jail, and master criminals were escaping justice, and little girls were suffocating on their gags because the priority of Mex Industries was money.
And Professor Torbing was sick of it.
She went home after her shift in tears to an empty house, too sick to eat. Too sick to sleep. The image of little Dani Sharmer going round and round her head. And when she finally did drift off she awoke in a cold sweat.
In dreams Dani had asked her, “Why did you let me die?”
It was 11pm.
Professor Torbing’s stomach felt like a cold, clenched ball of wool. No one in the bed beside her. She checked her phone, and found her husband had text to say he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. The office was sending him up to Coventry for the night, couldn’t be helped.
Oh, that fucking no good chicken shit lying small-dicked little man.
Professor Torbing had a PHd in Neurological Engineering and degrees in Neurology and Biomedical Robotics from Oxford. Yet she’d married a lazy, undereducated and most importantly unfaithful man.
Was there anything that made people behave more irrationally than love?
She watched the tracking software she’d inserted onto Mark’s phone when he’d first started acting strangely. Like she had done many times before.
Coventry. Jesus Christ.
He was only a few miles away, at that woman’s house. The one he was having an affair with.
Professor Torbing had known for a long time.
She hated her husband. She hated her life and her job and the company she worked for.
And she couldn’t put up with it any more. Things had to change. And if the Mex wouldn’t change willingly, she’d have to make it change. It didn’t matter that Mex Industries had a protection agreement with the British government.
It didn’t matter that what she wanted to achieve would mean committing treason.
She’d be long gone before they realised.
She was a clever and resourceful woman.
And she knew what to do.
3
Three months later
Les Edwardson felt his phone vibrate in his pocket two minutes from home.
He wouldn’t answer it when he was driving. He’d written too many newspaper stories about drivers killing people - or themselves – whilst pissed, or high, or holding the latest iPhone to their ear.
Irresponsible. And everyone had a responsibility. That’s why Les didn’t go even one kilometre-per-hour above forty on the main road to his house, despite the arsehole tailgating him.
His phone stopped vibrating, and then after a moment buzzed twice. Whoever had called had left a voicemail.
Les parked outside his house, got out and headed for his front door. Held his wallet to the keypad and went inside.
He got out his phone. Listened to the voicemail.
Went suddenly very very hot.
“Les, it’s Lila… Look, I think we’re in trouble… I heard them say they’d send someone to ‘sort’ you. Les, look, don’t go home. Please don’t go home!”
4
Two hours earlier, Lila Gordon had been drinking mocha before work, as always. Her morning pick-me-up. Because drinking red wine before noon was not acceptable but drinking coffee was.
Eight-thirty. The same cafe, every day. Ten minute walk from the office. Table by the window, back to the door, as always.
Alone. As always.
Then the man came in.
He sat down opposite her without asking permission. Just sat across the table and said, “I hope you don’t mind me joining you.”
Lila felt a kick in her stomach. The man was a little older than her, mid-to-late thirties she guessed. But he was good-looking, and his eyes were kind, and besides, it wasn’t like anyone else was queuing up for her attention. “N-no, I... Not at all…”
“I’ve wanted to come over and talk to you a few times,” the man said. “But I was scared.”
Oh Jesus, she felt the blooming of a blush. Lila gave a nervous laugh and groped for something funny to say. Well, it’s not like she got chatted up in bars or cafes very often. Or ever.
“I’m, er, not that scary, am I?” she said. That was funny, right?
The man didn’t crack his face. “I don’t mean scared of you, Lila.”
Her stomach dropped. The smile died on her lips. How did he know her name?
The man cast a quick look round, put an A4 envelope on the table and withdrew a large photograph from it. He shoved it in her direction. “Do you recognise that man?”
Her eyes flicked down to the photo for only a moment, and she knew what this was all about.
The man wasn’t hitting on her. Of course he wasn’t. How could she be so stupid?
She knew who this man was. “You’re Les Edwardson.”
A crackpot freelance journalist. A conspiracy theorist who had called her office a few times before they’d blocked him. He’d even got her personal mobile number and left her voicemails asking to meet, until she’d found out how to block his number too.
She scraped her chair back and he grabbed her wrist. “Please don’t leave,” Les said. “I have proof.”
“Let go.”
“Just look at the photo. Do you recognise the man? And I don’t mean your boss. I mean the person he’s speaking to.”
Lila looked again at the photograph. She couldn’t help it, it was right there on the table.
And her heart missed a beat.
The two men were talking, seated at a restaurant table and photographed through the window from outside, presumably with an optical zoom. The older man was Arnold Forrester, Lila’s boss.
And she recognised the other man too. And it scared the crap out of her.
“Oh heck...” she mumbled to herself. And then to the journalist, “This photo is a fake. It must be.”
“It’s not. I have the original JPEG. This hasn’t been doctored in any way. Look at the timestamp.”
She’d already looked. “But… It can’t be… He wouldn’t…”
“But he did, Lila. This photo is proof that Arnold Forrester, your boss, met with one of the Namibian terrorists before they carried out the London Hotel Bombing.”
She tried not to look. Tried not to listen. But it was too late now. She couldn’t unsee the photograph.
The Namibian terrorist was Nile Ouseb. One of three men who had plotted and carried out an attack on one of Kensington’s most exclusive hotels nearly two years ago. A bomb in a packed restaurant and ballroom. Two hundred and eighteen dead. Another eighty-seven injured.
And Arnold Forrester had eaten with him only a couple of weeks before the attack.
Lila felt sweat trickling down the back of the neck, and the room felt about forty degrees as if someone had cranked up the heating to max.
None of this made any sense.
“He... he couldn’t have had anything to do with it…” she stammered.
“Lila…”
“I’m his personal assistant. I’d know.” Speaking quietly, trying to convince herself.
And failing.
“Lila, there’s more. A photo of the two of them shaking hands. CCTV images of Forrester heading to and from the restaurant, making telephone calls.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“He wouldn’t…”
“It’s all in here.” Edwardson tapped the envelope. “Proof.”
“Oh Jesus…”
Lila cast a look around the cafe to make sure they weren’t being overheard, but no one was paying them any attention. She found her hands shaking in her lap and clamped them tight together and then between her knees, but then her whole body began to shake until she resembled a human jelly and thought she might wobble right out of her chair.
It couldn’t be true. She was his PA – had worked for him for five years. He couldn’t be responsible for hundreds of deaths.
She could still remember the news footage as if it had only happened last week. Flames like daffodils. The boom like thunder. The rubble. People screaming.
“W-why have you shown me this?” she asked. “What exactly am I supposed to do?”
She wanted Les Edwardson to leave, to just pick up the envelope and go. Leave her alone to curl up into a ball with her coffee.
“You have access to his office,” the journalist said.
Lila clammed up in her chair, twisting her arms and legs together like a plait. “No,” she said.
Whatever it was, no.
“You have access to his computer.”
“No I don’t! I schedule his appointments. I organise his diary. His emails get forwarded to my computer and I sort through them...”
“Not all of them. Pretty sure you didn’t schedule this meeting.” And Edwardson tapped the photo.
She blustered a bit, and then put her head in her hands. Crapola. “No. I didn’t.”
“No. And Lila, what happens if he’s planning something else?”
Her gut gave a little kick. She hadn’t thought of that. “Something else? You mean…”
“Another attack. Wouldn’t you want to stop it?”
She groaned. Oh that manipulative bastard. “But I can’t do anything…”
“You can check his computer.”
Lila couldn’t have felt more fear and horror if he’d just suggested she stick her head in a lion’s mouth. “I can’t…”
“You can. Lila, please...” and he leant forward and peered into her eyes. “I know he’s in a meeting first thing this morning. You’ll have the office to yourself.”
She didn’t wonder how Edwardson had found that out. But it was true. Arnold Forrester wouldn’t be back until after 10am. She’d have the office to herself for more than an hour. But still. “There’s no way…”
“You’re working for a terrorist. And what if Matilda Brant knew about it?”
Another jolt in her stomach. Matilda Brant. The woman at the very top. Lila hadn’t thought of that either. “But... but it’s not like we even know what Mr Forrester and Ouseb were talking about.”
Edwardson stared at her, completely aghast, as if she were the stupidest person he’d ever met.
Lila squirmed. “W-well, we don’t. They could have been just, er...”
“Could have been what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Discussing the weather? Discussing football? Jesus Christ, Lila.”
She folded up even more. “I… I’m going to be late for work…”
“No, don’t…” He sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to have a go at you. It’s just... this is big. And I don’t want...” He waved a hand. “Never mind. Stay and finish your drink. I’ll go. But take the envelope and look through it.” He nudged it closer. Got up out of his seat. “Please.”
Lila looked down at the envelope, making a half-gasp half-sigh in the back of her throat.
Edwardson took it as an affirmation. “Thank you,” he said, and hurried out of the shop.
Lila found she couldn’t finish her coffee, not with her stomach broiling like a cauldron. She stared at the brown envelope for a long while, then eventually put the photograph inside, picked it up and took it with her.
5
He watched them from across the street.
He’d followed Les Edwardson to the coffee shop. Was supposed to follow him home.
The ticker in his head had started counting down. Alexander could feel it, tiny pulses in his brain - tick tick tick. And the ticking would get faster and louder like it always did. Afterwards it would settle down again, until the next time.
But now this. This was unexpected.
Edwardson had met with a young blonde woman and handed over an envelope. Alexander hadn’t seen what was in it, but he could take a damn good guess.
“Shit.” They couldn’t afford this to get out. He called his employer.
Arnold Forrester answered after seven rings. “Is it done?”
“No. Not yet.”
“I’ve just had to excuse myself from a meeting, Alexander. What’s the problem?”
“There’s a new player. Edwardson has just passed some information on to a young woman in a coffee shop. I’m watching them now.”
Forrester paused a beat, and then snarled, “Shit. Who’s the woman?”
“I don’t know. Wait… Edwardson is leaving. Do you want me to stay on the woman?”
“Yes. Follow her. Find out who she is and what she knows. You’ll have to deal with Edwardson later.”
“Understood.” Alexander hung up. The ticking in his head reminded him of a bomb about to explode. It intensified as he watched the journalist disappear up the street.
Tick Tick Tick.
Less than a minute later the blonde woman came out of the cafe. She was holding the brown envelope tight to her chest.
Alexander followed her, blending in with the early morning commuters. She was obviously heading to work, and when she got there it would be easy enough to find out who she was.
Easy enough to take the envelope and slit her throat.
Fifteen minutes later he realised it wouldn’t be easy at all. The woman had just walked up to the security gate of the office building and shown her ID to the guard, who nodded her through.
Alexander stopped and watched her disappear inside as the ticker began pounding against the inside of his skull. He had no choice but to call Arnold Forrester again.
Ten rings this time. “This better be important. They’re going to wonder what’s going on.”
Alexander said, “Tell them there’s a personal emergency. It’s the truth.”
“Have you found out who the woman is?”
“No. But I followed her. Sir, she works in your building.”
6
Lila walked through the office corridors clutching the envelope like she would a baby, hoping no one would try and engage her in conversation because there was a good chance she would puke all over the carpet.
She passed closed doors, all old wood and heavy with tarnished brass handles like in a country manor. Normally the traditional feel of the offices made her feel cosy. But not now. Right then Lila felt as if the very walls were closing in on her, crushing her chest.
The office she shared with Arnold Forrester was empty.
Of course it was. Her boss was in a meeting. But still she let out a sigh of relief.
Lila rounded her desk and sank into her chair. Just in time, because her legs were beginning to give up on her.
“Oh God. Oh Jesus. Crap crap... crappin hell.”
She dropped the envelope on the desk, her fingers leaving dark sweat marks where she’d touched it. She didn’t want to look inside. Didn’t want to know.
Lila booted up her computer, tapping her fingers as she waited for the desktop to load.
The envelope kept staring at her, as if it had eyes.
Arnold Forrester, your boss, met with one of the Namibian terrorists before they carried out the London Hotel Bombing...
She tried to ignore the voice in her head, Les Edwardson’s voice, and opened her emails as if she could pretend everything was completely normal.
It’s all in here. Proof.
It was no good. She had to open the envelope.
The evidence inside was pretty damn persuasive. Arnold Forrester was in a whole world of crapola, and now she was too. Les Edwardson had seen to that.
The photograph was bad enough. Lila studied it harder now she was alone, but there really was no doubt. It was Arnold Forrester, and he was sharing a table with Nile Ouseb just weeks before the Namibian blew up the London Hotel.
There were more photographs in the envelope. Forrester and Ouseb shaking hands, and Jesus Christ, Forrester’s expression reminded her of a man who had just plotted to take over the world.
There were CCTV stills of the two men arriving and leaving separately. The latest timestamp showed Arnold Forrester on his phone, after his meeting with Ouseb. Who had he been calling?
There were no phone transcripts, which surprised her. Under the most recent Freedom of Information Act Edwardson would have been able to obtain any of Arnold Forrester’s phone conversations, including those with Matilda Brant.
Yet there were none, which meant Edwardson had found nothing incriminating or he would have surely included them. But Lila wasn’t naive, not when it came to foreign affairs. She knew Forrester sold heavy weaponry all over the world, including to despots and dictators and autocracies and other totalitarian regimes. Only last month she’d seen paperwork of a deal involving the sale of ten top-of-the-range Spider missiles to the Congo. The press didn’t know about that and never would, because it had never officially even happened.
So Arnold Forrester knew how to clean up after himself. Except this time he hadn’t done a good enough job.
Things were starting to come together, and yet everything was falling apart.
She looked over at Forrester’s vacated desk. Neat. Organised. A stack of folders. A paper file. A framed photograph of him standing on a Spanish beach with his late wife.
His computer. Turned off and silent. And, no doubt, full of secrets.
Lila, for God’s sake, are you crazy?
Possibly. She found herself standing up and heading over there all the same. Sat in her boss’s chair, stared at the blank monitor screen.
She pressed the computer’s power button.
7
They’d had to adjourn the meeting. Couldn’t be helped.
After hanging up on Alexander, Forrester had gone back into the meeting room and called Matilda Brant away. He wasn’t happy, she wasn’t happy, no one was happy, but that was just tough shit. One of their employees had been passed potentially incriminating information, and it needed dealing with right away.
“But what could this woman even have on us?” Matilda asked as they strode side-by-side through the corridors.
“As I said, I have no idea. Could be nothing.”
“Could be?”
“Yes, could be. Could be a complete disaster, Matilda, I don’t know.”
“I thought you said you were handling this.”
Forrester gritted his teeth. “I am. Right now.” They were heading for security. They’d be able to identify the woman on CCTV, and also from the time she signed in.
That’s when his phone buzzed, and he stopped dead when he woke it up and saw the picture message.
“Holy fucking Christ.”
Someone had tried to turn on his computer, but the power button hadn’t recognised their fingerprint. So the monitor’s camera had snapped a picture and sent him an alert.
“It’s Lila Gordon...” he muttered, staring at her permanently confused face. “My secretary just tried to turn on my computer.”
8
For some reason the computer wouldn’t turn on.
Lila tried the power button again, but the tower remained quiet and dead, the monitor screen black. Nothing lit up, nothing whirred to life.
“Oh come on, please.”
Pleading with it didn’t help, either.
She slid out of the chair to her knees and followed the snaking power cables to the extension lead they were plugged into, and then to the wall socket. It was turned on. And in fact the extension lead’s power light was glowing red to show it had electricity.
So why the hell wasn’t the computer working?
Most days Arnold Forrester would arrive before her, and he’d already be working at his computer when she entered the office. But she’d still seen him turn the blasted thing on plenty of times, when he’d arrived after her from a meeting or something.
It wasn’t rocket science. He pressed the power button and on it turned.
Lila pressed the power button again, just in case. Nothing.
What the hell was the crappy thing doing?
She felt round the back of the tower for the on/off rocker switch. Flicked it, tried the power button again. Still nothing. Flicked the rocker back up, tried the power, and then gave the tower a sharp slap in frustration when still nothing happened.
Oh well, you tried.
What more did Edwardson expect her to do?
She returned to her own desk and was about to shove the envelope in her bag when something on the screen caught her eye.
Arnold Forrester’s emails came to her first so she could sort through them, flagging the most important, deleting those he didn’t need to bother about.
In the past five minutes she’d received seven Microsoft security alerts. The subject for all seven read: An unauthorised attempt to access your computer.
She opened the top one, feeling panic slither up inside her like ice water.
“Oh CRAP.”
Only a lifetime of habit stopped her from saying the F-word.
There was a picture, but only of the top of her head. She’d been kneeling down the last time she’d tried to turn on Forrester’s computer.
But the first few security alerts, my God, they showed her whole face. She didn’t enjoy having her picture taken at the best of times, and certainly not when trying to sneak a look at her boss’s computer.
And at the bottom of the email: Text alerts are ON.
“Oh no… Jesus, no...”
Arnold Forrester would be sat in his meeting, phone buzzing with pictures of Lila’s washed-out and guilty face, and when he saw them...
Lila froze. Voices in the corridor outside. She knew they were coming for her, and about a million thoughts raced through her mind in an instant.
Any moment Arnold Forrester would burst through the door, probably with a dozen guards, and arrest her. There was no other way out apart from the windows, and the office was on the third floor.
Hide! A voice spoke inside her head, and for a crazy moment she thought maybe she could hide under her desk. But that’s where they’d start, and she didn’t want them to find her cowering there like a dog.
So she sprang up and headed for the wall cupboard. The only thing in the room that caught her eye apart from the filing cabinet, and she couldn’t exactly fold herself up into one of the drawers.
She could hear them now just outside the door, and without giving it another thought Lila threw open the cupboard, squashed herself amongst the books and old computer equipment and shut herself inside.
Oh Jesus Christ, oh sweet Jesus Christ…
The cupboard doors didn’t touch. Lila put her eye to the thin crack of light so she could see out into the room.
Arnold Forrester burst in a moment later. Matilda Brant, the lady herself, was with him.
“Oh holy shit,” said Matilda. “She’s not here.”
Arnold pressed his lips together, inflated his chest and gave a huge sigh. He was a big man, and with his white hair and trimmed beard looked a bit like Santa Claus, if Santa was perpetually red-faced and angry and wore suits.
He went straight to his computer and crouched by the tower as if inspecting it, completely missing the brown envelope on Lila’s desk.
But Matilda saw it. She frowned, her thin eyebrows knitting together until they almost touched.
Lila had to stifle a gasp as Matilda Brant picked up the envelope and withdrew its contents.
Brant was forty-two - still fairly young given her position - but she seemed to age ten years as she looked through the photographs.
“Arn...” Matilda whispered.
Forrester looked up. “Yes?” Blanched at what she had in her hands.
“What the hell are these?” She turned the photos to him. Cycled through them, then clutched them against her temples and looked as if she might try to rip out her hair with her hands.
Forrester faltered. “Oh shit...” he managed, using his desk to help himself to his feet. “Are they...”
“You were seen, Arn! You were photographed!” She marched over and flung the evidence at him. “Jesus... that’s one of the terrorists, isn’t it.”
Forrester looked at the photo of himself and Nile Ouseb. “Y-yes. Shit.”
“You fucking idiot.”
“I... I don’t know how it happened…”
Matilda had begun pacing, her hands clasped atop her short brunette bob as if she were holding down a wig. “You assured me you’d be careful. You said there was no way anyone could link it back to us.”
And Lila thought, Us?
Matilda Brant had been involved as well. She’d just admitted it.
Les Edwardson had been right.
She was working for two terrorists.
9
Lila had to press herself against the wood to avoid falling out of the cupboard.
Arnold Forrester and Matilda Brant, both involved in the worst terrorist attack on British soil for decades. The London Hotel Bombing. But what did they have to do with it?
You said there was no way anyone could link it back to us.
That’s what Matilda had said, as if they’d been behind it, as if they’d organised it and covered it up.
“Oh God...” Matilda rubbed her face furiously, as if washing it, or dry-cleaning it. As if she could rub away the panic obviously building inside her. “Arn, Jesus. You idiot. You fucking idiot.”
“That’s not helping, Matilda.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to call her, what do you think?” And Arnold pulled out his mobile and began messing with it.
It took Lila a second to realise what was happening, and what was going to happen. She felt a jolt like a bucket of ice water, remembering that her own phone was in her pocket, realising it was about to start ringing and that she wouldn’t stay hidden for long if Arnold and Matilda heard the cupboard singing at them.
Lila pulled it out and held the power button just as Forrester put his own phone to his ear.
Lila’s phone shutdown before it could start ringing, and she afforded herself a sigh of relief.
“Her phone’s off,” said Forrester. “Where is she?”
“Probably running. Look.” Matilda had noticed the security alerts open on Lila’s computer and pointed them out. “She tries to get into your computer, fails, then realises you will have been alerted. She knows you’re on to her, so she runs.”
“Why would the stupid girl try to get into my computer?”
Matilda’s mouth puckered up, and she pointed at the photos in Forrester’s arms and snarled, “Because of those, Arn. Because you were photographed. She meets Edwardson, he shows her the photos, she goes digging.”
“Lila Gordon is not the type of person to go digging.”
Matilda stared at him, as if he were mad. She pointed at the security alert email open on screen. “Well, that’s her fucking face, Arnold, trying to log on to your computer.”
Forrester couldn’t argue with that. “Well, she didn’t manage it. And she’s left the photographs here... and it’s not like she knows you were involved…”
“If they catch you they catch me, simple as that. They’ll pull your memories apart.” She began heading for the door. “We need to stop Lila from leaving the building.”
Forrester followed. “I will sort this, Matilda, I promise.”
“No. Leave your secretary to me. You need to deal with Les Edwardson.”
“I’ve already sorted that. I have a guy on him as we speak.”
“Good. Now for God’s sake get rid of those.” Matilda nodded at the photos he was carrying.
Lila couldn’t quite see the door but she heard it open and slam shut, and their voices died away.
Les Edwardson.
I’ve already sorted that. I have a guy on him as we speak.
That wasn’t good. She was pretty sure ‘the guy’ would be having more than a strong word.
They were going to kill Les, and then they were going to kill her.
They can’t do that, she tried to assure herself. I mean, they couldn’t…
But what did she know about it? Mr Forrester and Mrs Brant were involved in a terrorist attack on the nation’s capital. Why they would do that she had no idea, it made no sense, but she’d heard it from the woman’s own mouth.
“They’re going to kill me.”
She knew it, and it made her head swim so badly for a moment she thought she would faint.
She was only twenty-nine. Too young. And yes, she didn’t have many people who would miss her. No family in London, few friends. No social life. No boyfriend. She lived alone in a one-bedroom flat that had started to go mouldy, and her days were spent in a melancholy daze, counting the hours between antidepressants and red wine.
But the thought of someone - anyone - wanting her dead seemed so alien.
She didn’t want to get out of the cupboard. Perhaps she could stay there and eventually they’d forget all about her.
Yeah right. She was as likely to win the lottery. And she never bought a ticket.
She thought about Les Edwardson again. About how Mr Forrester had said he was sorting him. And even though she didn’t want to leave the safety of the cupboard, she could at least make a phone call. So she turned her phone back on, ignoring the missed call alert, and scrolled through her contacts until she found Edwardson’s number.
She dialled. It rang and rang.
Oh crap, why wasn’t he answering?
It went straight through to voicemail. She hoped he was just driving and that’s why he hadn’t answered. The alternative didn’t bare thinking about.
The tone beeped.
“Les, it’s Lila,” she garbled. “Look, I think we’re in trouble… I heard them say they’d send someone to ‘sort’ you. Les, look, don’t go home. Please don’t go home!”
They were running out of time.
So was the little girl.
If she wasn’t already dead.
Professor Torbing wanted to scream. Not at anyone in particular, not even at Stephen Foot, the monster who’d kidnapped eight-year-old Dani Sharmer.
She just wanted to scream out her frustration at the system.
Because it should be better than this.
She waited as the memory pod uploaded the files from the last reading onto its servers. Tense as a tightrope walker with a hangover. Tap-tap-tapping the metal terminal with one finger.
Time slipping away with every moment.
Come on. Come on!
Meanwhile the doctor finished replacing the electrode patches on the machine. He was balding, old, slow. Infuriating in his patience. He looked up at Professor Torbing for confirmation. She nodded once, and he crossed to the door and said into the mouthpiece, “We’re ready for him.”
About time. Two hours later than it should have been.
Two policemen brought Stephen Foot into the room. Handcuffed. The old shirt he’d been wearing when they’d caught him ripped from a scuffle. Stephen had a bloodied nose and two black eyes.
Bastard deserved them. She’d have liked to have given them herself.
“Can we hurry this up?” said one of the cops. “We’ve been waiting since six-thirty.”
“I know,” said the doctor. “Sorry, we had another reading.”
They undid Foot’s handcuffs. Forced him into the chair in the centre of the room and strapped his arms and legs into the restraints. He mumbled and whipped his head this way and that.
“This was supposed to be an emergency appointment,” said the other policeman.
“It was. You were put to the front of the queue as soon as you arrived.”
“Then why have we been waiting two bloody hours?”
The doctor hesitated. “There were other high-priority readings before yours. I’m sure you understand.”
Professor Torbing bit her lip. Sure you understand. She said nothing.
The policemen said nothing.
None of them understood. Certainly not Dani Sharmer’s parents.
What would they tell them if the girl died?
Professor Torbing reset the computer on the memory pod terminal as Foot thrashed in his restraints.
“You’ll never find her,” he hissed. “You’ll be too late. Just like the others.”
Foot had been caught on CCTV pulling Dani Sharmer into his van. A search of his home during the early hours of the morning had found no sign of the missing girl, but turned up three other bodies. Two girls, one boy.
No sign of Dani.
The police had made an emergency appointment at the Memory Exchange and driven Foot through the night from Lancashire to London.
Two and a half wasted hours. And another waiting around whilst the previous reading took place. Some neo-fascist skinhead suspected of plotting terrorism. High priority, yes, okay. Could have been a ticking bomb. But even so. Nothing in his head but dreams and delusions.
And meanwhile Dani Sharmer remained missing.
The problem was, this memory pod was the only one in the country available to the Ministry of Justice. Suspected terrorists and other criminals would have their memories forcibly probed, extracting information and evidence to be used by the Criminal Justice System or by the Security Service.
It had been fitted with leg and arm straps, and Professor Torbing thought it looked like one of those old electric chairs the Americans had used to fry people in. Old Sparky, they’d called it.
This specific memory pod was known as the Pink Elephant.
It wasn’t pink. And it wasn’t an elephant.
It was so-called, because if someone asked you not to think of a pink elephant, you couldn’t help but think of a pink elephant. In the same way, even though criminals and terrorists wanted to conceal their memories from the machine, all you had to do was bombard them with questions regarding the events. And they couldn’t help but remember them.
The memory pod would digitise the memory, allowing it to be played back on a screen like a movie. You could watch the events happen as seen through the suspect’s eyes, as heard through his ears.
The Mex had nineteen others, but they were constantly booked up by private customers. The British government had bought exclusive access to this one pod, but it wasn’t enough.
If the Lancashire police had had their own memory pod Dani would have been found hours ago.
Professor Torbing thought every police force in the country should have one of the machines, instead of having to cart criminals to the Chiltern Hills and queue for access like people waiting to ride Armageddon at Alton Towers.
The policemen were agitated. Fingers flexing. Hardly surprising. They’d been emotionally invested in the search for Dani Sharmer for almost a week. Torbing knew how they felt. The kidnapping had made the national news, as had the arrest of Stephen Foot.
“Foot’s in the chair now,” said one of the cops into his radio.
“About time,” replied the controller, broadcast to the room.
The Mex doctor lowered the cylindrical helmet over Foot’s head and attached the electrode patches.
Professor Torbing ran the software. The memory pod hummed. Blue light bathed her face.
“Where is Dani Sharmer?” She watched the monitor as she spoke, watched Foot’s brain waves oscillate and the machine’s code flood the screen.
Normally, memory extractions could be performed by a single Mex doctor. The patient would think about the events willingly. But sometimes memories were repressed or intentionally hidden, and it took a more qualified professor to make sense of the code and identify the memory.
Foot was trying not to think about the last place he’d left Dani Sharmer, but he couldn’t hide it for long. The cycles took on a familiar shape when the brain concentrated on a memory. It was Torbing’s job to identify and reveal the tell-tale leaps and squiggles in the code.
She was getting flashes, and circled them on the touchscreen with her finger before they disappeared, a skill honed and perfected over the years. Those snatches of neuro-proteins, snatches of memories, appeared as visual representations in a window in the top right of the screen. Glimpses of darkness and shadow.
The doctor watched over her shoulder as she worked, watching the shapes and colours, the manifestations conjured by the machine.
Torbing only saw them out of the corner of her eye. She was too focused on catching and circling the bursts and pops in the brainwave oscillation.
Sometimes there were audio fragments. Ultra-mp3 files represented with spiky wave crests. She wouldn’t know what they contained until after the extraction, when she could listen to them.
“Is the…”
“Quiet.” The doctor silenced the policeman who’d spoken.
Foot was muttering to himself, but Torbing had zoned him out, focusing on her task.
Another minute went by. Two.
The brainwave function looped up and down, up and down across the screen. Then the jagged peaks and troughs. Professor Torbing pulled them out of the quagmire until she’d collected more than two dozen.
You need to check them now. We don’t have time for this.
“Let’s see what we have.” Torbing abandoned the brainwave function and double tapped the visualisation window. A lot of fragments had been collected. She hoped they’d have something. If not she’d have to go back to the source and probe some more.
You don’t have time for that. You don’t have time for any of this.
The memory pod technology sorted and organised the various fragments, collated them, tried to find some sort of coherence.
Then played it back through the monitor in a succession of film clips.
She watched it all through Foot’s eyes,
Dani Sharmer, coaxed over to the van with a puppy. Foot’s one-year-old chocolate Labrador, now with the Goddamn RSPCA.
Snippets of audio. Foot’s voice. Dani’s screams. Cries.
They cut through Professor Torbing like a band saw.
This was always the worst. Having to watch horrible crimes unfold through the eyes of the perpetrator.
A lock-up.
Foot’s lock-up. Its address, dredged up from Foot’s mind and spoken aloud in his voice.
Dani was there, tied up.
The policemen jumped on their radios. They had an address, a lock-up leased under a false name. No tracing it back to Foot. Until now.
Dani had been left there.
Left there, still alive.
2
The emergency services got to the scene in eight minutes. Eight minutes that stretched an eternity for Professor Torbing.
“We’re at the lock-up now,” came the crackle through the policeman’s radio. The policeman paced. Up and down. Foot followed him with his eyes, not saying anything, his mouth half open.
The other cop leant against a wall and didn’t move a single muscle.
Professor Torbing clenched and unclenched her hands. She couldn’t get the image of the girl out of her mind. Dark hair pulled, cheeks wet with tears, eyes wide, teeth clenched against the gag, her chest rising and falling.
Dani hadn’t been struggling or wriggling against the rope binding her. She’d been frozen, staring at Foot as he exited the lock-up and closed the shutter door on her.
That was the last time anyone had seen her.
Until now.
“We’re in,” said the radio. Then a confusion of voices.
“She’s here!”
“Is she responsive?”
“She’s unconscious. Get her out of the chair.”
A pause of a couple of hour-long seconds.
“There’s no pulse.”
“She’s not breathing.”
“Commencing resuscitation now.”
Professor Torbing closed her eyes against the hum of the portable resuscitator.
“Air.”
“Oh Jesus.” The pacing cop put his hands to his head.
“Clear.”
A succession of twenty resuscitator clunks. One and two and three and...
Professor Torbing pictured Dani jolting with each one.
Please. Don’t let it end like this.
“Nothing.”
“We have no brain activity.”
“Try again.”
More resuscitator clunks. Someone said, “Come on, Sweetheart.”
“Increase the force.”
“She’s too small. It will do permanent damage to her heart.”
“We don’t have any choice.”
The hum increased pitch. The clunks got louder. Ribs cracked.
“Again.”
Again. And again.
Nothing.
She was dead. Torbing knew it. But even so, she hoped. Because they had to bring her round. It wasn’t fair. Not after all this.
The waiting. The delay.
That’s what had done it.
Foot had been caught hours ago. Back then Dani would have been alive. If the police had had access to a memory pod… If they hadn’t had to wait all these hours…
“We’re too late,” one of the policemen said. And then he looked directly at Professor Torbing. “It’s too late.”
It was too late.
One of the paramedics called it. Time of death: 8.12am. Over five hours after they’d first found Foot in his van.
“Shit,” said the Mex doctor.
Professor Torbing pressed her eyes shut. She felt tears well up, and when she opened her eyes again they spilled down her cheeks like the first sad raindrops on a battlefield.
One of the policemen punched Foot hard in the face. His head thunked back in the metal helmet. One of the electrode patches popped off his forehead. His nose popped too and started bleeding.
Foot still didn’t make a sound.
The policeman said, “He got that resisting being put in the chair, alright?”
That was alright.
Torbing wanted to punch him herself. In fact, she wanted to kill him. And who could honestly say he didn’t deserve it?
She could do it as well. Turn up the frequency on the memory pod to max. Focus the beam off his hippocampus onto his frontal lobes and cook them until they dripped out his nose.
But the doctor was already detaching him from the machine. And Professor Torbing couldn’t move. Shame anchored her to the ground, because this was their fault.
Mex Industries was responsible.
Their technology allowed the deletion, extraction and insertion of memories. It could have revolutionised the criminal justice system. For the entire world. No need for long trials or juries or (and wouldn’t this be a welcome thought) lawyers.
Just the historic truth.
But instead the technology had been patented and turned into a business. People could buy memories, digitally encoded and inserted directly into the brain using the latest electrography techniques. And there they would become your own.
You could ride elephants, or see tigers on safari or giant pandas in a zoo even though elephants, tigers and pandas were extinct. You could visit the equatorial paradise islands, now underwater, or the African jungles now ravaged by the encroaching deserts.
Memories bought from those old enough to remember. Before mankind brought Earth to the tipping point, and then beyond.
And in the meantime innocent people were put in jail, and master criminals were escaping justice, and little girls were suffocating on their gags because the priority of Mex Industries was money.
And Professor Torbing was sick of it.
She went home after her shift in tears to an empty house, too sick to eat. Too sick to sleep. The image of little Dani Sharmer going round and round her head. And when she finally did drift off she awoke in a cold sweat.
In dreams Dani had asked her, “Why did you let me die?”
It was 11pm.
Professor Torbing’s stomach felt like a cold, clenched ball of wool. No one in the bed beside her. She checked her phone, and found her husband had text to say he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. The office was sending him up to Coventry for the night, couldn’t be helped.
Oh, that fucking no good chicken shit lying small-dicked little man.
Professor Torbing had a PHd in Neurological Engineering and degrees in Neurology and Biomedical Robotics from Oxford. Yet she’d married a lazy, undereducated and most importantly unfaithful man.
Was there anything that made people behave more irrationally than love?
She watched the tracking software she’d inserted onto Mark’s phone when he’d first started acting strangely. Like she had done many times before.
Coventry. Jesus Christ.
He was only a few miles away, at that woman’s house. The one he was having an affair with.
Professor Torbing had known for a long time.
She hated her husband. She hated her life and her job and the company she worked for.
And she couldn’t put up with it any more. Things had to change. And if the Mex wouldn’t change willingly, she’d have to make it change. It didn’t matter that Mex Industries had a protection agreement with the British government.
It didn’t matter that what she wanted to achieve would mean committing treason.
She’d be long gone before they realised.
She was a clever and resourceful woman.
And she knew what to do.
3
Three months later
Les Edwardson felt his phone vibrate in his pocket two minutes from home.
He wouldn’t answer it when he was driving. He’d written too many newspaper stories about drivers killing people - or themselves – whilst pissed, or high, or holding the latest iPhone to their ear.
Irresponsible. And everyone had a responsibility. That’s why Les didn’t go even one kilometre-per-hour above forty on the main road to his house, despite the arsehole tailgating him.
His phone stopped vibrating, and then after a moment buzzed twice. Whoever had called had left a voicemail.
Les parked outside his house, got out and headed for his front door. Held his wallet to the keypad and went inside.
He got out his phone. Listened to the voicemail.
Went suddenly very very hot.
“Les, it’s Lila… Look, I think we’re in trouble… I heard them say they’d send someone to ‘sort’ you. Les, look, don’t go home. Please don’t go home!”
4
Two hours earlier, Lila Gordon had been drinking mocha before work, as always. Her morning pick-me-up. Because drinking red wine before noon was not acceptable but drinking coffee was.
Eight-thirty. The same cafe, every day. Ten minute walk from the office. Table by the window, back to the door, as always.
Alone. As always.
Then the man came in.
He sat down opposite her without asking permission. Just sat across the table and said, “I hope you don’t mind me joining you.”
Lila felt a kick in her stomach. The man was a little older than her, mid-to-late thirties she guessed. But he was good-looking, and his eyes were kind, and besides, it wasn’t like anyone else was queuing up for her attention. “N-no, I... Not at all…”
“I’ve wanted to come over and talk to you a few times,” the man said. “But I was scared.”
Oh Jesus, she felt the blooming of a blush. Lila gave a nervous laugh and groped for something funny to say. Well, it’s not like she got chatted up in bars or cafes very often. Or ever.
“I’m, er, not that scary, am I?” she said. That was funny, right?
The man didn’t crack his face. “I don’t mean scared of you, Lila.”
Her stomach dropped. The smile died on her lips. How did he know her name?
The man cast a quick look round, put an A4 envelope on the table and withdrew a large photograph from it. He shoved it in her direction. “Do you recognise that man?”
Her eyes flicked down to the photo for only a moment, and she knew what this was all about.
The man wasn’t hitting on her. Of course he wasn’t. How could she be so stupid?
She knew who this man was. “You’re Les Edwardson.”
A crackpot freelance journalist. A conspiracy theorist who had called her office a few times before they’d blocked him. He’d even got her personal mobile number and left her voicemails asking to meet, until she’d found out how to block his number too.
She scraped her chair back and he grabbed her wrist. “Please don’t leave,” Les said. “I have proof.”
“Let go.”
“Just look at the photo. Do you recognise the man? And I don’t mean your boss. I mean the person he’s speaking to.”
Lila looked again at the photograph. She couldn’t help it, it was right there on the table.
And her heart missed a beat.
The two men were talking, seated at a restaurant table and photographed through the window from outside, presumably with an optical zoom. The older man was Arnold Forrester, Lila’s boss.
And she recognised the other man too. And it scared the crap out of her.
“Oh heck...” she mumbled to herself. And then to the journalist, “This photo is a fake. It must be.”
“It’s not. I have the original JPEG. This hasn’t been doctored in any way. Look at the timestamp.”
She’d already looked. “But… It can’t be… He wouldn’t…”
“But he did, Lila. This photo is proof that Arnold Forrester, your boss, met with one of the Namibian terrorists before they carried out the London Hotel Bombing.”
She tried not to look. Tried not to listen. But it was too late now. She couldn’t unsee the photograph.
The Namibian terrorist was Nile Ouseb. One of three men who had plotted and carried out an attack on one of Kensington’s most exclusive hotels nearly two years ago. A bomb in a packed restaurant and ballroom. Two hundred and eighteen dead. Another eighty-seven injured.
And Arnold Forrester had eaten with him only a couple of weeks before the attack.
Lila felt sweat trickling down the back of the neck, and the room felt about forty degrees as if someone had cranked up the heating to max.
None of this made any sense.
“He... he couldn’t have had anything to do with it…” she stammered.
“Lila…”
“I’m his personal assistant. I’d know.” Speaking quietly, trying to convince herself.
And failing.
“Lila, there’s more. A photo of the two of them shaking hands. CCTV images of Forrester heading to and from the restaurant, making telephone calls.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“He wouldn’t…”
“It’s all in here.” Edwardson tapped the envelope. “Proof.”
“Oh Jesus…”
Lila cast a look around the cafe to make sure they weren’t being overheard, but no one was paying them any attention. She found her hands shaking in her lap and clamped them tight together and then between her knees, but then her whole body began to shake until she resembled a human jelly and thought she might wobble right out of her chair.
It couldn’t be true. She was his PA – had worked for him for five years. He couldn’t be responsible for hundreds of deaths.
She could still remember the news footage as if it had only happened last week. Flames like daffodils. The boom like thunder. The rubble. People screaming.
“W-why have you shown me this?” she asked. “What exactly am I supposed to do?”
She wanted Les Edwardson to leave, to just pick up the envelope and go. Leave her alone to curl up into a ball with her coffee.
“You have access to his office,” the journalist said.
Lila clammed up in her chair, twisting her arms and legs together like a plait. “No,” she said.
Whatever it was, no.
“You have access to his computer.”
“No I don’t! I schedule his appointments. I organise his diary. His emails get forwarded to my computer and I sort through them...”
“Not all of them. Pretty sure you didn’t schedule this meeting.” And Edwardson tapped the photo.
She blustered a bit, and then put her head in her hands. Crapola. “No. I didn’t.”
“No. And Lila, what happens if he’s planning something else?”
Her gut gave a little kick. She hadn’t thought of that. “Something else? You mean…”
“Another attack. Wouldn’t you want to stop it?”
She groaned. Oh that manipulative bastard. “But I can’t do anything…”
“You can check his computer.”
Lila couldn’t have felt more fear and horror if he’d just suggested she stick her head in a lion’s mouth. “I can’t…”
“You can. Lila, please...” and he leant forward and peered into her eyes. “I know he’s in a meeting first thing this morning. You’ll have the office to yourself.”
She didn’t wonder how Edwardson had found that out. But it was true. Arnold Forrester wouldn’t be back until after 10am. She’d have the office to herself for more than an hour. But still. “There’s no way…”
“You’re working for a terrorist. And what if Matilda Brant knew about it?”
Another jolt in her stomach. Matilda Brant. The woman at the very top. Lila hadn’t thought of that either. “But... but it’s not like we even know what Mr Forrester and Ouseb were talking about.”
Edwardson stared at her, completely aghast, as if she were the stupidest person he’d ever met.
Lila squirmed. “W-well, we don’t. They could have been just, er...”
“Could have been what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Discussing the weather? Discussing football? Jesus Christ, Lila.”
She folded up even more. “I… I’m going to be late for work…”
“No, don’t…” He sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to have a go at you. It’s just... this is big. And I don’t want...” He waved a hand. “Never mind. Stay and finish your drink. I’ll go. But take the envelope and look through it.” He nudged it closer. Got up out of his seat. “Please.”
Lila looked down at the envelope, making a half-gasp half-sigh in the back of her throat.
Edwardson took it as an affirmation. “Thank you,” he said, and hurried out of the shop.
Lila found she couldn’t finish her coffee, not with her stomach broiling like a cauldron. She stared at the brown envelope for a long while, then eventually put the photograph inside, picked it up and took it with her.
5
He watched them from across the street.
He’d followed Les Edwardson to the coffee shop. Was supposed to follow him home.
The ticker in his head had started counting down. Alexander could feel it, tiny pulses in his brain - tick tick tick. And the ticking would get faster and louder like it always did. Afterwards it would settle down again, until the next time.
But now this. This was unexpected.
Edwardson had met with a young blonde woman and handed over an envelope. Alexander hadn’t seen what was in it, but he could take a damn good guess.
“Shit.” They couldn’t afford this to get out. He called his employer.
Arnold Forrester answered after seven rings. “Is it done?”
“No. Not yet.”
“I’ve just had to excuse myself from a meeting, Alexander. What’s the problem?”
“There’s a new player. Edwardson has just passed some information on to a young woman in a coffee shop. I’m watching them now.”
Forrester paused a beat, and then snarled, “Shit. Who’s the woman?”
“I don’t know. Wait… Edwardson is leaving. Do you want me to stay on the woman?”
“Yes. Follow her. Find out who she is and what she knows. You’ll have to deal with Edwardson later.”
“Understood.” Alexander hung up. The ticking in his head reminded him of a bomb about to explode. It intensified as he watched the journalist disappear up the street.
Tick Tick Tick.
Less than a minute later the blonde woman came out of the cafe. She was holding the brown envelope tight to her chest.
Alexander followed her, blending in with the early morning commuters. She was obviously heading to work, and when she got there it would be easy enough to find out who she was.
Easy enough to take the envelope and slit her throat.
Fifteen minutes later he realised it wouldn’t be easy at all. The woman had just walked up to the security gate of the office building and shown her ID to the guard, who nodded her through.
Alexander stopped and watched her disappear inside as the ticker began pounding against the inside of his skull. He had no choice but to call Arnold Forrester again.
Ten rings this time. “This better be important. They’re going to wonder what’s going on.”
Alexander said, “Tell them there’s a personal emergency. It’s the truth.”
“Have you found out who the woman is?”
“No. But I followed her. Sir, she works in your building.”
6
Lila walked through the office corridors clutching the envelope like she would a baby, hoping no one would try and engage her in conversation because there was a good chance she would puke all over the carpet.
She passed closed doors, all old wood and heavy with tarnished brass handles like in a country manor. Normally the traditional feel of the offices made her feel cosy. But not now. Right then Lila felt as if the very walls were closing in on her, crushing her chest.
The office she shared with Arnold Forrester was empty.
Of course it was. Her boss was in a meeting. But still she let out a sigh of relief.
Lila rounded her desk and sank into her chair. Just in time, because her legs were beginning to give up on her.
“Oh God. Oh Jesus. Crap crap... crappin hell.”
She dropped the envelope on the desk, her fingers leaving dark sweat marks where she’d touched it. She didn’t want to look inside. Didn’t want to know.
Lila booted up her computer, tapping her fingers as she waited for the desktop to load.
The envelope kept staring at her, as if it had eyes.
Arnold Forrester, your boss, met with one of the Namibian terrorists before they carried out the London Hotel Bombing...
She tried to ignore the voice in her head, Les Edwardson’s voice, and opened her emails as if she could pretend everything was completely normal.
It’s all in here. Proof.
It was no good. She had to open the envelope.
The evidence inside was pretty damn persuasive. Arnold Forrester was in a whole world of crapola, and now she was too. Les Edwardson had seen to that.
The photograph was bad enough. Lila studied it harder now she was alone, but there really was no doubt. It was Arnold Forrester, and he was sharing a table with Nile Ouseb just weeks before the Namibian blew up the London Hotel.
There were more photographs in the envelope. Forrester and Ouseb shaking hands, and Jesus Christ, Forrester’s expression reminded her of a man who had just plotted to take over the world.
There were CCTV stills of the two men arriving and leaving separately. The latest timestamp showed Arnold Forrester on his phone, after his meeting with Ouseb. Who had he been calling?
There were no phone transcripts, which surprised her. Under the most recent Freedom of Information Act Edwardson would have been able to obtain any of Arnold Forrester’s phone conversations, including those with Matilda Brant.
Yet there were none, which meant Edwardson had found nothing incriminating or he would have surely included them. But Lila wasn’t naive, not when it came to foreign affairs. She knew Forrester sold heavy weaponry all over the world, including to despots and dictators and autocracies and other totalitarian regimes. Only last month she’d seen paperwork of a deal involving the sale of ten top-of-the-range Spider missiles to the Congo. The press didn’t know about that and never would, because it had never officially even happened.
So Arnold Forrester knew how to clean up after himself. Except this time he hadn’t done a good enough job.
Things were starting to come together, and yet everything was falling apart.
She looked over at Forrester’s vacated desk. Neat. Organised. A stack of folders. A paper file. A framed photograph of him standing on a Spanish beach with his late wife.
His computer. Turned off and silent. And, no doubt, full of secrets.
Lila, for God’s sake, are you crazy?
Possibly. She found herself standing up and heading over there all the same. Sat in her boss’s chair, stared at the blank monitor screen.
She pressed the computer’s power button.
7
They’d had to adjourn the meeting. Couldn’t be helped.
After hanging up on Alexander, Forrester had gone back into the meeting room and called Matilda Brant away. He wasn’t happy, she wasn’t happy, no one was happy, but that was just tough shit. One of their employees had been passed potentially incriminating information, and it needed dealing with right away.
“But what could this woman even have on us?” Matilda asked as they strode side-by-side through the corridors.
“As I said, I have no idea. Could be nothing.”
“Could be?”
“Yes, could be. Could be a complete disaster, Matilda, I don’t know.”
“I thought you said you were handling this.”
Forrester gritted his teeth. “I am. Right now.” They were heading for security. They’d be able to identify the woman on CCTV, and also from the time she signed in.
That’s when his phone buzzed, and he stopped dead when he woke it up and saw the picture message.
“Holy fucking Christ.”
Someone had tried to turn on his computer, but the power button hadn’t recognised their fingerprint. So the monitor’s camera had snapped a picture and sent him an alert.
“It’s Lila Gordon...” he muttered, staring at her permanently confused face. “My secretary just tried to turn on my computer.”
8
For some reason the computer wouldn’t turn on.
Lila tried the power button again, but the tower remained quiet and dead, the monitor screen black. Nothing lit up, nothing whirred to life.
“Oh come on, please.”
Pleading with it didn’t help, either.
She slid out of the chair to her knees and followed the snaking power cables to the extension lead they were plugged into, and then to the wall socket. It was turned on. And in fact the extension lead’s power light was glowing red to show it had electricity.
So why the hell wasn’t the computer working?
Most days Arnold Forrester would arrive before her, and he’d already be working at his computer when she entered the office. But she’d still seen him turn the blasted thing on plenty of times, when he’d arrived after her from a meeting or something.
It wasn’t rocket science. He pressed the power button and on it turned.
Lila pressed the power button again, just in case. Nothing.
What the hell was the crappy thing doing?
She felt round the back of the tower for the on/off rocker switch. Flicked it, tried the power button again. Still nothing. Flicked the rocker back up, tried the power, and then gave the tower a sharp slap in frustration when still nothing happened.
Oh well, you tried.
What more did Edwardson expect her to do?
She returned to her own desk and was about to shove the envelope in her bag when something on the screen caught her eye.
Arnold Forrester’s emails came to her first so she could sort through them, flagging the most important, deleting those he didn’t need to bother about.
In the past five minutes she’d received seven Microsoft security alerts. The subject for all seven read: An unauthorised attempt to access your computer.
She opened the top one, feeling panic slither up inside her like ice water.
“Oh CRAP.”
Only a lifetime of habit stopped her from saying the F-word.
There was a picture, but only of the top of her head. She’d been kneeling down the last time she’d tried to turn on Forrester’s computer.
But the first few security alerts, my God, they showed her whole face. She didn’t enjoy having her picture taken at the best of times, and certainly not when trying to sneak a look at her boss’s computer.
And at the bottom of the email: Text alerts are ON.
“Oh no… Jesus, no...”
Arnold Forrester would be sat in his meeting, phone buzzing with pictures of Lila’s washed-out and guilty face, and when he saw them...
Lila froze. Voices in the corridor outside. She knew they were coming for her, and about a million thoughts raced through her mind in an instant.
Any moment Arnold Forrester would burst through the door, probably with a dozen guards, and arrest her. There was no other way out apart from the windows, and the office was on the third floor.
Hide! A voice spoke inside her head, and for a crazy moment she thought maybe she could hide under her desk. But that’s where they’d start, and she didn’t want them to find her cowering there like a dog.
So she sprang up and headed for the wall cupboard. The only thing in the room that caught her eye apart from the filing cabinet, and she couldn’t exactly fold herself up into one of the drawers.
She could hear them now just outside the door, and without giving it another thought Lila threw open the cupboard, squashed herself amongst the books and old computer equipment and shut herself inside.
Oh Jesus Christ, oh sweet Jesus Christ…
The cupboard doors didn’t touch. Lila put her eye to the thin crack of light so she could see out into the room.
Arnold Forrester burst in a moment later. Matilda Brant, the lady herself, was with him.
“Oh holy shit,” said Matilda. “She’s not here.”
Arnold pressed his lips together, inflated his chest and gave a huge sigh. He was a big man, and with his white hair and trimmed beard looked a bit like Santa Claus, if Santa was perpetually red-faced and angry and wore suits.
He went straight to his computer and crouched by the tower as if inspecting it, completely missing the brown envelope on Lila’s desk.
But Matilda saw it. She frowned, her thin eyebrows knitting together until they almost touched.
Lila had to stifle a gasp as Matilda Brant picked up the envelope and withdrew its contents.
Brant was forty-two - still fairly young given her position - but she seemed to age ten years as she looked through the photographs.
“Arn...” Matilda whispered.
Forrester looked up. “Yes?” Blanched at what she had in her hands.
“What the hell are these?” She turned the photos to him. Cycled through them, then clutched them against her temples and looked as if she might try to rip out her hair with her hands.
Forrester faltered. “Oh shit...” he managed, using his desk to help himself to his feet. “Are they...”
“You were seen, Arn! You were photographed!” She marched over and flung the evidence at him. “Jesus... that’s one of the terrorists, isn’t it.”
Forrester looked at the photo of himself and Nile Ouseb. “Y-yes. Shit.”
“You fucking idiot.”
“I... I don’t know how it happened…”
Matilda had begun pacing, her hands clasped atop her short brunette bob as if she were holding down a wig. “You assured me you’d be careful. You said there was no way anyone could link it back to us.”
And Lila thought, Us?
Matilda Brant had been involved as well. She’d just admitted it.
Les Edwardson had been right.
She was working for two terrorists.
9
Lila had to press herself against the wood to avoid falling out of the cupboard.
Arnold Forrester and Matilda Brant, both involved in the worst terrorist attack on British soil for decades. The London Hotel Bombing. But what did they have to do with it?
You said there was no way anyone could link it back to us.
That’s what Matilda had said, as if they’d been behind it, as if they’d organised it and covered it up.
“Oh God...” Matilda rubbed her face furiously, as if washing it, or dry-cleaning it. As if she could rub away the panic obviously building inside her. “Arn, Jesus. You idiot. You fucking idiot.”
“That’s not helping, Matilda.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to call her, what do you think?” And Arnold pulled out his mobile and began messing with it.
It took Lila a second to realise what was happening, and what was going to happen. She felt a jolt like a bucket of ice water, remembering that her own phone was in her pocket, realising it was about to start ringing and that she wouldn’t stay hidden for long if Arnold and Matilda heard the cupboard singing at them.
Lila pulled it out and held the power button just as Forrester put his own phone to his ear.
Lila’s phone shutdown before it could start ringing, and she afforded herself a sigh of relief.
“Her phone’s off,” said Forrester. “Where is she?”
“Probably running. Look.” Matilda had noticed the security alerts open on Lila’s computer and pointed them out. “She tries to get into your computer, fails, then realises you will have been alerted. She knows you’re on to her, so she runs.”
“Why would the stupid girl try to get into my computer?”
Matilda’s mouth puckered up, and she pointed at the photos in Forrester’s arms and snarled, “Because of those, Arn. Because you were photographed. She meets Edwardson, he shows her the photos, she goes digging.”
“Lila Gordon is not the type of person to go digging.”
Matilda stared at him, as if he were mad. She pointed at the security alert email open on screen. “Well, that’s her fucking face, Arnold, trying to log on to your computer.”
Forrester couldn’t argue with that. “Well, she didn’t manage it. And she’s left the photographs here... and it’s not like she knows you were involved…”
“If they catch you they catch me, simple as that. They’ll pull your memories apart.” She began heading for the door. “We need to stop Lila from leaving the building.”
Forrester followed. “I will sort this, Matilda, I promise.”
“No. Leave your secretary to me. You need to deal with Les Edwardson.”
“I’ve already sorted that. I have a guy on him as we speak.”
“Good. Now for God’s sake get rid of those.” Matilda nodded at the photos he was carrying.
Lila couldn’t quite see the door but she heard it open and slam shut, and their voices died away.
Les Edwardson.
I’ve already sorted that. I have a guy on him as we speak.
That wasn’t good. She was pretty sure ‘the guy’ would be having more than a strong word.
They were going to kill Les, and then they were going to kill her.
They can’t do that, she tried to assure herself. I mean, they couldn’t…
But what did she know about it? Mr Forrester and Mrs Brant were involved in a terrorist attack on the nation’s capital. Why they would do that she had no idea, it made no sense, but she’d heard it from the woman’s own mouth.
“They’re going to kill me.”
She knew it, and it made her head swim so badly for a moment she thought she would faint.
She was only twenty-nine. Too young. And yes, she didn’t have many people who would miss her. No family in London, few friends. No social life. No boyfriend. She lived alone in a one-bedroom flat that had started to go mouldy, and her days were spent in a melancholy daze, counting the hours between antidepressants and red wine.
But the thought of someone - anyone - wanting her dead seemed so alien.
She didn’t want to get out of the cupboard. Perhaps she could stay there and eventually they’d forget all about her.
Yeah right. She was as likely to win the lottery. And she never bought a ticket.
She thought about Les Edwardson again. About how Mr Forrester had said he was sorting him. And even though she didn’t want to leave the safety of the cupboard, she could at least make a phone call. So she turned her phone back on, ignoring the missed call alert, and scrolled through her contacts until she found Edwardson’s number.
She dialled. It rang and rang.
Oh crap, why wasn’t he answering?
It went straight through to voicemail. She hoped he was just driving and that’s why he hadn’t answered. The alternative didn’t bare thinking about.
The tone beeped.
“Les, it’s Lila,” she garbled. “Look, I think we’re in trouble… I heard them say they’d send someone to ‘sort’ you. Les, look, don’t go home. Please don’t go home!”