Down into Darkness (40 page)

The internet sends these pictures to the global village, and Gideon Woolf is watching on his computer. He has seen the sequence twenty times before. The first time he watched, he cried, but now his face is like stone
.

One of the warriors steps forward, drawing a long, curved knife from his belt. He grabs the hair of one of the soldiers and yanks the man's head back, putting strain on the tendons of the neck. He makes a flourish with the knife and calls on his god, then slits the soldier's throat. The man hops and writhes. A gusher of blood arcs up; it splashes on the other soldier, who knows he will be the next to die. He is sobbing, his head bowed, his shoulders heaving. The warrior keeps cutting until he reaches the neck-bone, then twists and wrenches to tear the ligaments and get his blade between the vertebrae
.

He holds the head aloft in the name of god
.

Gideon watches again, then breaks the internet connection. He puts into the computer a game he has just bought. The hero carries Gideon's name into the world like a banner, and Gideon is pledged to do the same, pledged to prove himself
.

He buys a pair of plain glasses with a pale yellow tint, he dyes
his hair corn-blond, he buys army-surplus desert fatigues and a long, cotton duster-coat. The game becomes an obsession; it becomes a way of life
.

From the vantage point of the scorched room he looks down on the city, his combat zone, his killing ground
.

Sue Chapman had been working to tie Woolf's victims to the words written on them, the accusations, and events in that street white with dust.

Once she knew what she was looking for, the task was easy enough and, in Bryony's case, needed no research at all. She was a hooker and that had been enough to make her a stand-in for the honeytrap. Nelms was simple too: the man who had put Gideon Woolf through his cadet training and, probably, encouraged him to join the army. Turner and Morgan didn't take a lot more work. Turner's editorials said yes to war in a loud voice; his paper had been noted for it. Morgan had taken the same view: Sue's desk was littered with transcripts of radio and TV shows, interviews, articles, all of which carried the same message: send in the troops, do it now, stay till the job's done.

Bryony and Nelms were personal. Turner and Morgan were public and unignorable.

Now the squad-room white-board had been stripped of all material except the names of the victims.

Leonard Pigeon's name was at the top and in brackets: dispensed with; a mistake. The words on Pigeon's arms had been meant for Morgan, that was clear. The other names all carried a rider.

Bryony Dean: ‘DIRTY GIRL' –
GW's involvement with local woman
.

Martin Turner: ‘LYING BASTARD' –
editorials/press reports
.

George Nelms: ‘HAPPY NOW?' –
persuaded GW to join army
.

Neil Morgan: ‘FILTHY COWARD' –
pro-war MP
.

Anne Beaumont was at the briefing, because Stella wanted everyone to hear what Anne had to say.

‘It's to do with effacement – of his actions and of himself. The one depends on the other. It also has to do with self-worth and with a very unpleasant system of equivalents. Okay? Men died because he was afraid, so he needs to prove himself fearless. To do this he performs the very act he was incapable of: he kills. Not only that, he kills people who seem, to him, blameworthy, just as he was blameworthy. He kills a prostitute, because a prostitute betrayed him. Or, if not a prostitute, a woman who traded sex for information. He kills the man who talked him into becoming a soldier. He kills a journalist and an MP, both of whom were high-profile supporters of the conflict.

‘He's trading one death for another: cancelling them out, and, what's more, he thinks they deserve it, so that's all right. He's also reinventing himself: no longer the despised coward, no longer the man who left his comrades to die, he's a killer, he's fearless, he brings justice to an unjust world.'

Anne paused and smiled a rueful smile. ‘Think of the moment when he found the vehicle for this – someone with his own name, a games hero, someone who doesn't really exist until Gideon Woolf becomes Silent Wolf, someone who's without fear and also free of doubt, someone whose killings exist only in gamesworld. It must have been like finding himself, a remade self, someone who could be the new him.'

Silano asked, ‘He says he's stopped.'

‘Four deaths,' Anne said, ‘or at least, four attempts. That balances the deaths he has on his conscience, it proves he's
no coward, it removes four sinners from the world: sinners in his terms, anyway. So, yes, maybe he will stop.'

‘Okay,' Silano said. ‘Let's say he's stopped. Who is he now?'

‘You mean is he the disgraced Gideon Woolf or is he Silent Wolf, the avenger…'

‘Yes.'

Anne nodded. ‘That's a very good question.' After a moment she added, ‘I wonder if he knows.'

The squad was chasing leads, though there were few.

Friends: none could be found. Other men from the regiment, yes, but no one who knew much about him. People said he was a loner, he was quiet, he didn't complain.

Teachers: they had him as an average student; no, a little better than average. He was quiet, he wasn't a problem.

People from his old neighbourhood: he seemed like a nice enough boy, a quiet boy. Look, who knows? He kept himself to himself.

Anne Beaumont picked on the words ‘quiet' and ‘loner'. ‘A secret life,' she said. ‘A strong fantasy world is a protection against things. Ask another question: he was quiet, yes, and he seemed nice enough, but ask whether he was liked. Ask whether he was
likeable
.'

‘Because?' Stella asked.

‘Because I suspect “quiet” will become “surly” and “loner” become “loser”.' Anne sighed. ‘On the one hand, you have to wonder why there might be damaged and disturbed people in the army; on the other, it's not a puzzle at all.'

Maxine Hewitt and Frank Silano visited the home-from-home that Gideon Woolf's father had picked out for himself. A care-worker took them to a room where twelve elderly people sat round the walls in chairs and slept while the television played to their dreaming heads.

Gideon's father was woken, and all four of them went to a side room. The old man informed them that they wouldn't be able to speak to Gideon, because he had been killed in action. Maxine glanced at Silano, wondering what to say next.

Silano said, ‘We heard he was alive after all…' Maxine admired the ‘after all'. ‘We wondered whether he'd been to see you.'

‘He's dead,' the old man insisted. ‘He died out there.'

‘Who told you he was dead?'

‘We weren't supposed to have children. Too old. She died, then he died, and that leaves me.'

‘Did Gideon ever come here to see you?' Maxine asked.

The care-worker caught Maxine's eye and shook her head.

Maxine tried again. ‘When was the last time you saw him?'

‘Gideon's dead. He's dead, he died in battle, that's for sure, I know that for sure.'

The sun high and bright, the care-home lawn dotted with chairs where residents dozed away what was left of their lives.

The care-worker asked, ‘Has he got a son? We've never seen anyone. No visits, no letters…'

‘You thought he might have made it up – someone who died in action?'

‘We wondered. So many of them invent things. He's not so old, and he's not incapable. More than anything, he seems to have just given up.'

‘On what?' Silano asked.

‘On himself.'

‘He has a son,' Maxine said, ‘somewhere.'

In the car, Silano said, ‘They have to – have to make up the past.'

‘Yeah?' Maxine was lowering a visor against the sun. ‘Why?'

‘They forget the truth of it.'

‘How do you know that?'

Silano just shrugged. Maxine realized that she didn't know a hell of a lot about Frank Silano.

Gideon Woolf's father went back to the TV room and sat in his usual chair. He wanted to sleep but couldn't. On screen was a wide-shot of a young couple standing on a hilltop and looking out at a green valley with a river running through. The man had his arm round the woman's shoulders and, as they stood there, you could tell they had overcome some troubles, made some right choices and had a good life ahead of them.

The old man looked round the room at the faces shuttered by sleep. He said, ‘Well, he's dead to me.'

Because Anne was in the squad room, Stella showed her Tina's letter, which
Anne
read without comment. Later they went to Coffee Republic, because Anne had declared
AMIP
coffee a contravention of her human rights. On their way, Stella bought a paper which had somehow tied Woolf's killings to the phases of the moon, a method that enabled them to tell the police when he would kill again.

‘Which is the big question,' Stella said. ‘Will he?'

‘His psychopathology is likely to have been modified by recent experience,' Anne said. Stella looked at her. ‘Depends what killing people did to his head. How unstable he's become.'

‘He's killed several people,' Stella said. ‘Becoming unstable isn't the issue – he
is
unstable.'

‘Depends what you mean.'

‘It does?'

‘Think about it,' Anne said. ‘The army considered him unstable because he
didn't
kill people.'

The text-tone on Stella's mobile rang. She read the text and sent a quick reply. When she looked up, Anne was smiling at her. ‘I thought I'd leave it to you to mention the letter.'

‘I sometimes wonder,' Stella said, ‘whether I'm misremem-bering everything – she's right and I'm wrong. Maybe it really was like that, tough but happy, a mother who did her best. Maybe she did read me bedtime stories.'

‘People often reinvent the past,' Anne told her, ‘if it's too painful to remember.'

*

The text had been from Andy Greegan, letting Stella know that the compufit she had ordered was on her desk. The image was a compilation of Woolf's army mugshot and the Silent Wolf logo, stranded somewhere between man and graphic, Silent Wolf's dorky human half-brother. Alongside it was a reproduction of the games-hero and a note to say that the killer's appearance might resemble that image. Finally, it gave his name.

Stella and Brian Collier looked at it together. She said, ‘It's a risk. He goes to ground, or he changes his appearance – and if he really looks like this, that would be easy enough to do. There' a good chance he's already changed his name.'

‘I know.' Collier shrugged. ‘But if he's really backing off, we have to go after him.'

‘Press release?' Stella asked.

‘Everything… everywhere… Especially the tabloids, they'll love it.'

An odd silence settles over hospitals at night, not a dead silence but a silence that certainly has something to do with death: as if there were a stealthy presence in the empty corridors, as if sleep might be just a step from oblivion.

In the midst of that silence, Neil Morgan woke up. He lay open-eyed for a while, the instruments around him registering the sudden metabolic change, then he raised an arm like a man waving to a friend. He tried to sit up, and the motion triggered a sensor that set off an alarm. A staff nurse rushed to the door of the side ward; another put in a call to the duty doctor.

Morgan smiled at the nurse, though he didn't know he was smiling. He spoke to her, though he didn't know what he was saying.

*

Aimée lay awake listening to the patter of her heartbeat. Peter slept at her side, unmoving. It had been another hot day, and the roof beams creaked as the house cooled.

The room was dimly lit by a low-wattage bulb on the landing and Aimée could see her clothes stored on a dress-maker's rail beyond the bed. She would take almost nothing with her, she had already decided on that, just a small bag of clothes and the few things that mattered to her. It was a new life and she wanted to start fresh. It would be wrong to put photographs about the place, wear the clothes she had always worn, behave as she'd always behaved. She wanted a new way of seeing the world.

She supposed she should feel guilty or afraid or both, but she didn't. Just tomorrow to get through, then everything would change. Her heart fluttered like a bird in a cage trying its wings.

Candice sat with a doctor in an office not far from the side ward. A few initial tests had been made but, at this time of night, it wasn't possible to explore Morgan's new waking state comprehensively. More tests would be arranged for the morning.

The doctor had good news and bad news. The good was obvious: Morgan had emerged from the coma. The bad was less easy to see at first, though it was there in the glazed look in his eyes and the randomness of his speech. The doctor spoke of neurological damage. He spoke for a while, using the terms of his trade, but the short and comprehensible version was that Neil Morgan was away with the fairies.

‘Can he understand me?' Candice asked.

‘It seems very unlikely.'

‘Can he respond to questions?'

‘Well… no. Not in the way you mean.'

‘In what way, then?'

‘We know so little about conditions of this sort. It's possible that he has his own method for interpreting the world and some sort of codified means of communicating with it, but in real terms – terms that you and I recognize – he's lost contact. His understanding of what's going on round him appears to be severely impaired, he can make sounds but not form words, and he's lost the ability to monitor and control his own actions.'

‘Will he recover?'

‘People do.'

‘Will
he
?'