Mind Blind (17 page)

If I was choosing a knight in shining armour, probably he wouldn’t be a violent Scottish teenager with a scuffed leather jacket and scary blue eyes, who had a habit of throwing up and fainting in public.

Probably he wouldn’t have kidnapped my sister and kicked a man to death in front of me.

But Hollywood heroes and fantasy princes can’t read their enemies’ intentions round corners or answer my questions before I ask them.

“I’m not doing this because I
like
you, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“I’m doing this because I’m struggling to cope with the number of dead people in my head already. You’re irritating enough when you’re alive, Lucy. You’d drive me nuts if I had your last breath in my head.”

Delightful. He’s got some crazy plan to take on his family and MI5 to save my life, not because of my sparkling wit and stunning good looks, but because he doesn’t want me to haunt him.

Still, at least he’s trying.

We got out of the stone column quite easily.

We waited until Bain couldn’t detect any police or family or surveillance teams. Then, in the very early morning, we left. We opened the door, walked out and walked away.

The plan we’d agreed in the cold dark hours under the statue, after the torch battery died, was that we would go to Leith and see who was staking out Vince’s house.

“Always do the recce,” Bain said. “Preparation is never
wasted. Forewarned is forearmed.”

Before he could think of any other clichés, I agreed. Partly to shut him up, but mainly because I’d been useless at giving him information about my uncle’s flat and the surrounding streets. If we were going to get in and out without being identified by MI5 or captured by his family, we needed more useful facts than: the door is blue, he has a real snakeskin in a drawer and I think the hall carpet is red.

So we walked from the centre of Edinburgh towards Leith and its docks. The rain had stopped, but it was still cold and windy.

We didn’t talk much as we walked. We had talked ourselves out, sitting in the huge stone column. He knew I was afraid of the dark, so he’d just chatted like a normal human being, to keep me calm.

We’d talked about films and books. And the difference between team sports like football and lone sports like running and climbing, then the difference between people who enjoy the former (me) and people who enjoy the latter (him).

There was lots of stuff we didn’t talk about. Mothers and sisters, uncles and fathers. And once it was dark, we didn’t talk about death either.

But now we were back to business, on our way to recce the site, to devise a plan for getting in.

I already had a plan. But it was so silly I was trying not to think it, in case it made him laugh.

“Go on, then,” he said eventually. “What’s your plan?”

“How do you know I have a plan?”

“You’re bursting with it, Lucy.”

“I don’t want to tell you. It’s silly.”

“Silly is fine. A laugh will do us both good.”

So I said, “It’s Halloween.”

“Yeah. Ghosts and spooks and witch burning. Not my favourite time of year.”

“You go trick or treating up here, don’t you?”

“We call it guising. Dressing up, in disguise. Guising.”

I nodded. “That’ll work. We have two problems to solve before we can get to my uncle’s house. One is getting past your family. The other is getting past MI5.”

“Yes. And I would add getting out again as a top priority.”

“I have no idea how to get past your family in either direction, but I think we could get in and out past MI5 quite easily.”

He made a hurry-up gesture with his gloved hands.

“What are they looking for?” I asked.

“If they’ve asked about passengers on buses that arrived just before Borthwick was killed, they’re looking for two teenagers, one black, one blond, going to your uncle’s house.”

I grinned. “Tonight there will be dozens of kids, toddlers to teens, going to my uncle’s house. We stayed with Uncle Vince one Halloween and there’s a real community feel in his terrace, with kids knocking on every door, singing songs and telling jokes, then getting an apple and some sweets. All we have to do is −”

Bain laughed in delight. “All we have to do is dress up, knock on a few other doors before we go to your uncle’s and we’ll blend in. Brilliant! So after we’ve finished this recce, we buy ourselves cheesy costumes, hide up for the rest of the day, then knock on his door tonight. And you can say:
Hi Uncle Vince, rather than a sweetie, can I have Nana’s urn
?” He laughed again.

I was ridiculously pleased that he liked my idea, even though it was only the middle bit of a plan.

We reached the foot of Leith Walk and Bain turned to face me. I knew what he wanted. With MI5 and the local police and his family after him, he didn’t have time to search Edinburgh for a Vincent Shaw. He needed me to give him my uncle’s address.

But once he had the address, I was more use to him dead, unable to give evidence against him.

And even though he said he would use the flash drive to keep his family away from me, I couldn’t be sure…

“Don’t you trust me, Lucy? Aren’t we a team now?”

I didn’t answer.

“Yeah. Why would anyone want me on their team?” He stamped on an empty crisp packet as it blew past. “I know I’ve done some horrible things, but I’m trying to do the right thing now, and I just need you to give me the address.”

“But then will you still need me? You’re starting to survive pretty well out here on your own.”

“Of course I’ll need you. Your Uncle Vince is more likely to give the urn to you than me. You’re his beloved niece, I’m either some weirdo he doesn’t know or someone he suspects of kidnapping both his nieces.”

“You didn’t kidnap me! I followed you.”

“I know that. But your family don’t. They just know you’ve vanished.”

I must be either completely self-centred or completely stupid, because I hadn’t thought about that all the time we’d been on the run. I’d been away from home for more than 24 hours! Mum and Dad must be panicking, thinking that I’d never come home, that they’d lost both of us.

I sat down on a wet bench. “Oh no. I’m so selfish. I never even thought.”

“It’ll be fine. If we get the flash drive this evening, I can negotiate with Malcolm tonight and you’ll be home tomorrow.”

He lifted his head, like an animal sniffing a scent.

“Your uncle lives that way,” he jerked his arm to the right, “doesn’t he?”

“Yes. Can you sense them? Are they there?”

“They’re all there, family and spooks.” He pointed urgently down another street and we walked briskly for a block, ducked round a corner, then jogged into a wide tree-filled park. We stopped by the wooden fence round a kids’ play area.

“How can we do a recce when we can’t get near?” I asked.

“I can work out where they’re stationed by circling round just close enough for me to sense them. I need to know the layout of the street too, but you can give me that.”

“How? I’ve told you all I know.”

“No, you haven’t. Have you ever been here before?” He waved at the climbing frame.

“Yeah. Uncle Vince brought us when we were kids.”

“But you didn’t mention a play park to me. You didn’t remember it until we got here, did you?”

I shook my head.

“You have more in your memory than you realise. So, show me the way from this park to your uncle’s.”

“You want me to talk you through it?”

“No, I want you to think it. So I can read everything in your head.”

He took off one glove and held out his right hand.

“But won’t you go all, you know, sweaty and wobbly, then collapse?”

“Probably. But if you promise not to draw a moustache and glasses on me if I faint, I’m prepared to take the risk. Give me your hand.”

I felt him jerk away in revulsion as soon as we touched. But he held on tight and looked me in the eye. “Think about walking from here to your uncle’s. Take it slow. Don’t worry about me.”

I closed my eyes and I remembered the way.

I walked through the park, past a roundabout and up a hill. A raincoat on my back and a sister by my side. Up the hill, past a new school and an old school, then turning into the terraced streets that locals called ‘the colonies’. One long narrow dead-end street led to half a dozen even narrower ones, branching off like ribs from a spine. I walked past cars parked tightly against the pavement, little gardens, thin houses. I turned left into my uncle’s terrace, climbed the outdoor stairs, then
opened the blue door with the snake knocker. I stepped onto the red carpet and heard Viv demand the hot chocolate Uncle Vince always made…

Bain dropped my hand and leant against the fence, his fists clenched, one gloved and one bare. He dragged great lungfuls of air into his chest.

But he stayed on his feet. Then grinned at me. “That worked. I must be getting better at this. Or better at you, anyway.” He stood up straight. “So, only one way in and out of the colonies. They can’t chase us by car in there; we’ll be much faster on foot. And you’re right about a real community feel. With houses so close together and tiny gardens, anyone hanging about all day will be very obvious.”

“I didn’t tell you all that.”

“No, because you didn’t know you knew it, and you don’t see it the way I see it. So now let’s find out where my family and MI5 are waiting for us.”

I was boring Lucy. She was knackered and cold and we’d already walked a wide uneven loop around the colonies twice.

I walked down streets until I sensed my family and the spooks, then moved back, to get away from the intensity of their emotions, marked their locations on the map and moved further round.

By the time we saw the first uniformed teenager heading to school, Lucy was ready to drop. “You’ve proved you can sneak up on your family, so can we have breakfast now, please?”

I had all the information I was going to get, so we clambered on a bus, returned to the city centre, found a café under a church, and bought a hot drink and a croissant each.

When she was warm enough to pay attention, I showed her my carefully marked map. “See these two sets of dots? The
red ones are MI5 spooks, close to your uncle’s terrace. They’re mostly in parked cars, but there are a few floating around on foot, probably dressed as BT engineers or other workmen.

“But they don’t know that my family are out here on the main road − the blue dots − watching the only way in and out of the colonies.

“The family know the surveillance teams are there, that’s why they aren’t any closer to the target. But I don’t detect the level of fear and caution there would be if Mum and Malcolm knew the surveillance teams were MI5 rather than police. They’re watching the watchers, but they’re waiting for us.”

“They’re
all
waiting for us.”

“Yes. The spooks want us for the death of their pal, and because they assume I’m one of Lomond’s descendants. But they don’t know they’re surrounded by a whole team of the mindreaders they’re searching for.

“My family want to kill you because you know too much, and they want to teach me a lesson. Though from the emotions I detected when we were walking round Leith, I suspect that Malcolm has given up trying to teach me anything and just wants to get rid of me.”

I took a sip of cold hot chocolate, remembering how familiar Malcolm’s emotions had felt. As we’d walked round the colonies, I had recognised the decision to kill someone. The decision my family had made just before Vivien’s death. Now Malcolm was making the same decision about me. I took another sip, and focussed on our plan.

“Mostly, though, my family want to get the copy of the report. But they don’t know for sure that there is a copy, where the copy is or what form it’s in. So I
might
be able to persuade them to let us go in and find the copy then give it to them on our way out.” I rubbed my cut lip again, the pain a useful reminder of my weakness, while I wondered if that plan would work.

Lucy was already convinced it wouldn’t. “So you’re going
to ask your family nicely to let us past and promise them they can catch us on the way out once we have the prize. But if everyone knows they’re going to punish you and kill me, they’ll never believe you would agree to that; they’ll think you’re planning to double-cross them.”

“So I’ll tell them I’m planning to double-cross
you
.”

She shivered. She found that very easy to believe.

I thought for a minute. That could work. “Yeah. I’ll tell them that if they let us in, you’ll get the copy from your uncle, then on the way out, I’ll give them the copy
and
you, if they promise not to punish me.”

“You’ll promise your family they can kill me, if they don’t hurt you?”

“Yeah.”

“And they’ll believe that?”

I grinned. “Well. Do you believe it?”

She picked at her croissant. “I don’t know what to believe.”

“Lucy, I’ve told you, I don’t want you dead. You see how I react to death. I admit I’m being selfish rather than heroic, but I really don’t want you dead. I want you safe, alive and in Winslow. So, let’s have another hot chocolate then get out of here…”

But she didn’t trust me. I’d shown her how easy it would be for me to protect myself and my family for the price of her life. And I’d realised it myself too.

If I could get the secret, elude the spooks, save my family, impress my mum, change Malcolm’s mind about me, and all I had to sacrifice was one argumentative girl from London, that was a rational decision. Wasn’t it?

But I needed Lucy on my side until the end, or the plan wouldn’t work.

So I had to convince her I was double-crossing Malcolm, convince Malcolm I was double-crossing her, and keep in mind whose side I was really on.

Mine. My side. No one else’s. I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I was just trying to survive.

“You can’t dress up like that!”

“Why not? This was all they had left, apart from wizards and vampires.”

Bain was dressed as Death. Skull mask, black cloak, scythe over his shoulder. He didn’t seem to think it was tasteless.

He’d offered to buy me a costume too, but I stopped letting Mum buy me clothes years ago, and I wasn’t about to let someone else take over. So I’d gone shopping as well.

Now I was a witch, with a warty mask, nylon gloves with silver nails, a long cloak, a tall hat and a large plastic cauldron to put apples, chocolate and dead relatives in.

We were comparing disguises in my room in a backpackers’ hostel in the touristy centre of Edinburgh. We’d bamboozled the receptionist with Bain’s dodgy ID and a handful of cash, and rented a couple of single rooms for the day, so we could sleep and shower.

Now it was after 4 p.m. and the light was already starting to fade in this cold northern city. Time to go guising. But first we had to negotiate our passage through the family from hell.

Bain showed me the cheap new phone he’d bought. “We’ll call Malcolm once we’re on our way, so if they trace the call we’re already moving towards them.”

We left the hostel with our masks perched on top of our heads and our thin cloaks blowing behind us. As we walked down the steep cobbled hill, I said, “In this phone call, you’re going to offer to give me to your family if they let us past to get the urn?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m supposed to not know this.”

“Obviously. Or you wouldn’t be daft enough to play along.”

“And I’m not daft, am I? And because you’ve told me what you’re planning, I’m supposed to believe you’re double-crossing them and being honest with me.”

“It would be handy if you could read minds, Lucy, because then you’d know I’m telling the truth. Though how could you not trust me, when I’m dressed like this?” He whirled his plastic scythe over his head.

But I couldn’t trust him. Not completely. I’d also bought a phone while I was out, and kept it hidden. If he did betray me, I could dial 999 and land everyone in the cells until the police sorted out the goodies from the baddies.

And that wasn’t the only phone I had in my pocket. I could call MI5 too.

So Death and a witch walked down the Royal Mile, phoning a man who’d happily kill us both.

I dialled Malcolm, but he wouldn’t answer a call from an unknown number in the middle of a complex job.

I texted:

Take call from bain re getting lomond codename copy

Then dialled again.

“Bain! Where are you? What the hell are you doing?”

“I know where the copy is, Malcolm, and I can get it, if you let me past to the uncle’s residence.”

“You can’t
get
at the uncle’s, you stupid boy. It’s surrounded by plainclothes. We’ll get past when one of them dozes off tonight, or in a few days when they run out of overtime. Stop distracting me.”

“I
can
get there. The girl can get me in and she knows where the copy is. Let us past and we’ll bring you the copy.”

“Why would I trust you with that? You’ve made a total arse of it so far.”

“I’ve made an arse of it, have I? I got all the way from London to Edinburgh without you laying a finger on me.”

“Then you killed a man outside Harvey Nicks and brought the whole Scottish police force down around us. Just like you brought the Surrey police down on us when we had to kill the older girl because you couldn’t keep your mask on.

“You’re a threat to this whole family and we should have drowned you at birth. Bring yourself in now or I’ll send Daniel after you with instructions to bring nothing back but your over-sensitive skin.”

I lowered my voice. “Malcolm, I won’t just bring you the report. I’ll give you the girl too.”

“What?”

“She thinks I’m on her side. She’s helping me get the copy so you won’t kill anyone else in her family. But she knows too much about us now, it’s not safe to let her go. If you allow me past to get the report, I’ll give you them both. The copy and the girl.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m sick of being on the run, Uncle Malcolm. It’s scary out here on my own, and I want to be back with my family. So if we find the report, then I give you the girl and the copy, will you let me come home? You know, without…?”

“Without a Q&A?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re such a wimp, Bain. Letting your girlfriend die, just to save yourself a bit of discomfort.”

“She’s not my girlfriend!”

“Alright, Bain. This is how it’s going to work. I’ll order everyone to let you and the girl past. Then when you come out
with the copy, you come straight to me. Not to your mother. If you bring me the copy and the girl, then I will welcome you back to the family without question or punishment.

“But if you make a mess of this, or if you try to cheat me, then I will let my son loose on you and I will not tell him to stop. Not until he’s finished what he’s started so many times. Do you understand me?”

I did understand. I had just heard my uncle pass a death sentence on me. I said politely, “Thanks for making it so clear. See you soon, Malcolm.”

I switched my phone off and turned to Lucy. I even managed to smile at her. “He went for it. He believes I’ll give him everything just for a warm welcome home.”

“You didn’t tell him how we were dressed. They won’t recognise us.”

“They’ll recognise our minds. That’s why I had to negotiate a way past.”

She shrugged. She was getting nervous about the whole idea. Presumably she was going to ask more about our tactics…

“So who did he think was your girlfriend?”

“What? No one!”

“No, I suppose not. The fainting and the throwing up when you hold hands isn’t very romantic. What you need is someone on the internet in Kazakhstan.”

“It’s not funny, Lucy.”

“This whole thing is hilarious, Bain. You’re a murderer dressed as Death and I’m about to ask my uncle to dump my nana’s ashes into a witch’s cauldron. It’s completely absurd.”

That was certainly a more cheerful way of looking at the evening than the picture Malcolm had just put in my head. So I smiled at her again and agreed it was absurd.

As we walked past the palace at the bottom of the Royal Mile and turned left towards Leith, Lucy finally started to think about tactics.

“We have a free pass through your family and the disguise will get us past MI5. We might even get past MI5 again on the way out, if Uncle Vince doesn’t blow our cover. But how do we get past your family again? Without giving them… everything. We can’t go in without a plan to get out.”

“I have a plan, but I’m not going to tell you, because I don’t want any hint of it in your mind as we go past my family.”

I had to be careful about what they sensed from me too.

It was alright for Malcolm to know that I was genuinely keen to be back with my family. With Uncle Greg, who was trying to teach me to read minds without losing my own. With Roy, who was as close to a normal friend as I’d ever have. With my mum, I suppose.

But I couldn’t let him realise that I wanted to be back on my terms. With respect for my abilities, as well as understanding of my weaknesses, and if possible without the death of another Shaw girl in my head.

I had to make sure they didn’t pick up any of that on the way in.

“Nearly there, Lucy. Don’t think about an escape plan, just think about what we’re doing now. Being nervous is fine. Nasty thoughts about me will work too.”

“That’ll be easy.” She pulled the witch mask down over her face. “What will you be thinking, Ciaran Bain?”

“I’ll be thinking about saying goodbye to you, Lucy Kingston Shaw.” And I pulled down Death’s mask.

As we started up the hill towards the colonies, Bain nodded at two men in a four-wheel drive. Further on, I noticed his mum, smoking a cigarette and slouching at a bus stop, dressed much less elegantly than at Kings Cross. She frowned at Bain and beckoned. But we stayed on the other side of the road.

I kept thinking,
I don’t trust him, I have to trust him, I don’t trust him, I have to trust him
. Like I was ripping petals off a flower. Or legs off a spider.

Then a boy stepped out right in front of us. He wasn’t in a Halloween costume, just jeans and a t-shirt. He was tall, with dark red hair and a squint nose like a boxer or a rugby player. He looked ready for a fight, but he gave Bain a genuine smile.

Bain stopped; so did I.

“How you doing?” the tall boy asked.

“Surviving.”

They both laughed, quietly.

“Can I help?”

“Maybe later. Just go with the flow, and don’t let Malcolm detect you expecting anything unusual.”

“Anything unusual? You’re dressed like a skeleton and you’re hanging out with a hag. I can’t possibly expect anything
usual
.”

The tall boy turned to me. “Hello, Lucy.”

This must be the cousin who wanted Bain to test his survival skills, the one who’d wanted to rescue Viv. I nodded from behind my warts. “Hello, Roy.”

Roy glanced at Bain. “How much does she know?”

“Everything.”

Roy shook his head. “You idiot, Bain. That’s not fair on her…”

“Leave it, Roy. Read me the moral lecture when this is over. Come on, Lucy.”

Roy looked back at me. “Nice to meet you, Lucy. Don’t worry. This boy is brighter and better than he thinks he is.”

We were passed by a gang of tiny witches, with orange plastic pumpkins already filled with jelly worms and smarties.

“We have to go,” said Bain. “You’ll be in trouble for speaking to us.”

“I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

They slapped hands, then Roy went downhill and we kept
going uphill.

When we reached the corner of the narrow entrance to the colonies, I saw a tall man in sports kit with a baseball cap shading his face, standing by black recycling bins on the other side of the road. He had a box full of newspapers and was slowly feeding them into the bin.

Bain whispered, “Malcolm. Don’t stare.”

We walked towards the first terrace, past a clean black car, with a man and a woman in the front. Bain jabbed his elbow into my side. “Spooks.”

Then he dropped a bit of paper into my cauldron. “Roy’s number. He just passed me it. I know it off by heart, so he must have meant you to have it. He might be angling for a date, which is unlikely with those warts, or he might be offering to save your life. Put it in your phone.”

“I don’t have a phone. You stole it, remember.”

“You’d have to be a complete idiot not to have bought a pay-as-you-go when you were out. Put Roy’s number in and remember he’s the nearest thing to a decent human being in my whole family.”

As I saved the number into my new phone, we saw a group of guisers heading towards us. The tallest guiser was dressed in two foil-covered cardboard boxes and a pair of silver wellies so he looked like a 1950s robot. Walking beside him were a couple of witches, a plump boy in a tiger onesie and a small pink fairy.

We joined the group as they passed us.

“Can we go round wi’ you?” Bain said in a stronger Scottish accent than I’d heard him use before.

“Aye, no problem,” rumbled the robot, as we turned right into the first  terrace.

The tiger lifted the fairy up to press the first doorbell and I realised I’d forgotten one vital element of my plan.