Mind Blind (9 page)

I lay on my bed, trying to enjoy my day off. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the folder I should never have opened, the secrets I should never have uncovered.

Now I knew why the senior readers had needed me so urgently after Vivien died. They needed to know if I’d read anything about copies. Now, after studying my memories of her thoughts, my mum and uncles were convinced there weren’t any copies.

They believed they were safe.

But I wasn’t so sure that they were safe. That
we
were safe.

Not because of any pictures or words or emotions I’d read or sensed. But because of something I’d felt in my fingertips, something that wasn’t in anyone’s Q&A reports because no one else is as
sensitive
as me.

I’d felt grit on Vivien’s fingers when she was saying sorry and goodbye to her nana. I’d thought she was holding a vase at the time, putting it safely in a cardboard box. But someone in the Q&A had recognised it as a crematorium urn.

Now I knew what I’d found in Vivien’s head and felt on her hands.

An urn full of ashes.

And grit on her fingers.

Why would that moment have been so strong in her mind that even a second-hand memory brought me back from her death on the golf course?

Her memory was so strong, because the grit wasn’t dirt.

It was ash.

She had grit on her fingertips because she’d been digging
into her nana’s ashes.

That’s not a feeling you would forget easily. Your great-grandmother’s burnt bones under your fingernails. No wonder Vivien couldn’t help thinking about it, when she thought about death, about fear, about what she might have to hide from people who’d kidnapped her.

And what did she have to hide? Nothing, surely, apart from copies of that report.

I felt again, in her memory, that one other sensation in her fingers. Not something in her hand, but the absence of something. Emptiness in her fingers, contrasting with the grit. The absence of something light and slim and smooth.

If I copied a file, I wouldn’t end up with a pile of photocopies. I’d scan the pages and save them on a flash drive. A light, slim, smooth flash drive.

If Vivien had made a secret copy on a flash drive, I thought I knew where she’d hidden it.

Deep down in her nana’s cremated ashes.

Gross. But effective. No one was likely to root about in burnt bones and flesh. No one but me.

Because suddenly I wanted to see if I was right, if I could protect my family’s secret.

And I wanted to do it on my own.

But I wouldn’t be able to search for the copy until it was dark, and I’d have to hide my intentions until then or Malcolm would stop me.

So once my family were back, high on the success of a job I hadn’t ruined, I had to hide my thoughts and my emotions.

We can all hide our thoughts, by ringing the inside of our heads with a thick layer of personal privacy. It’s one of the first skills we learn, but the cover is hard to maintain. Also it’s like shouting ‘I HAVE A SECRET!’ It’s fine for adults to keep thoughts private from kids, and having secrets is expected around Christmas and birthdays. But apart from that, covering your thoughts is considered suspicious.

The best way to avoid letting anyone know my plans was not to let anyone read my thoughts at all, by staying well away from my family. I also had to avoid giving out emotions like excitement or deceit, which might prompt someone to check up on me.

So I decided to live in the present for a day, not worry about the past or plan for the future. I finished a book Roy had raved about, played a computer game I’d borrowed from Josh and fell asleep listening to my own favourite music. I just acted like a teenager trying to avoid his family.

Late in the evening, I sensed someone heading for my corner of the warehouse. I live next to the laundry rather than beside everyone else’s sleeping quarters, because I sometimes have screaming nightmares if I’ve spent time near the mindblind.

It was Roy, walking towards my isolated corner. We hadn’t spoken last night, because I’d been too bruised and upset to unlock my door for anyone. This time, I let him in, then flopped back on the bed. He turned off the music, sat on the chair in the other corner of the cabin and muttered, “Sorry.”

“What for?”

“For not letting you off that golf course.”

“S’ok.”

After a pause, I asked, “Did Malcolm give you a hard time about falling over?”

“No. They were too busy with today’s job. Anyway, it was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“S’ok.”

Roy stretched out his legs, taking up most of my floor. “You alright?”

I showed him the bruises from Kerr’s golf club and Daniel’s boots, then shrugged.

“What about the Q&A?” he asked.

I shrugged again. “It could have been worse. I didn’t have
anything to hide.”

We both glanced at the door, automatically.

I laughed. “Really! I didn’t have anything to hide. It was just, you know, them reading me, and Mum with her hand on me.”

Roy winced sympathetically. “So what’s next?”

“Back to work as soon as Malcolm calms down, I suppose.”

“Is that really what you want?”

“What else can I do?”

Roy raised his eyebrows, a whole friendship’s worth of good advice and irritating nagging in his eyes.

“Not this again!” I snapped. “It’s ok for you, you can stand in a bus queue without collapsing. You could hold hands with a girl without throwing up, if any girl was daft enough to let you. You can be normal. I can’t. You can live a law-abiding life if you want. I can’t. I can’t survive outside the family, so I have to live by
their
rules, not by everyone else’s laws.”

“Even if you know they’re wrong?” he said softly.

“Yes. Because… I’m scared of out there. I’m scared without the family around me. And you’re no better, Roy, because if you didn’t care about family rules, you’d have let me off that golf course.”

“Give me a break. I’m only fifteen. I have to live by their rules now, so they feed me and give me somewhere to sleep. I don’t fancy living in a children’s home or on the streets. But once I’m old enough to get a place at uni and a job to support myself, I’ll be off. You have to decide, Bain, are you staying or are you going?”

“There’s no decision to make. I don’t have a choice. I can’t survive out there, so I have to stay here.”

“You
could
survive out there, if you practised.”

This was such a ridiculous suggestion that I ignored it and started hunting under my bed for nearly clean socks.

But Roy wouldn’t shut up. “You ran away from the family
yesterday. Why don’t you run a bit further, see what happens?”

“It’s not that easy. Look at us right now. You’re my best friend, and we can’t even talk about this unless you’re on the other side of the room. How could I possibly cope with other people? So I’ll never get away from this family.”

Roy leant forward enthusiastically. “What if you knew you could live out there? What if we could show that you can?”

“For how long? An hour? I stay out that long on jobs, and you see what state I’m in when I get back.”

Roy pulled a rolled up sock from under the chair and lobbed it at me. “I bet you could do a day. Two days. Three days. If we grabbed some money and took off for a weekend, then came back with you still on your feet and still grinning, then they’d stop bullying you. Because Malcolm would realise that you’re the strongest reader
and
you can survive out there. At the moment they kid themselves that you’re not the best reader, because all they see is your over-sensitivity. If you can conquer that, by surviving a day or so outside, they’d have to respect you. If we can test that, if we can prove that…”

I jerked back. “Roy, are you suggesting we
experiment
on me, to see what I can cope with?”

We both glanced at the door again. ‘Test’, ‘experiment’ and ‘science’ were obscene words in our family.

Roy nodded. “Just because old Billy had a bad experience with science, shouldn’t mean we’re all forbidden to study biology or psychology or neuroscience, or to test the limits of our abilities. It’s absurd, it’s backward looking, and it’s why we’re trapped in the criminal underworld. So yes, Bain, I think we should
experiment
on you.”

I shivered. “Please don’t call it that, Roy. But you think we should do this… thing… together?”

“Yes! Of course!”

I shook my head. “But if I can’t survive out there all on my own, it doesn’t prove anything. If I can’t do it myself, I have no choice at all.”

“That’s true. So, will you do it yourself? Will you see if you can cope out there on your own?”

“Maybe. Some day. If they annoy me enough.”

“Yesterday they made you an accessory to murder, hunted you, beat you, then tortured you until you threw up, and that didn’t annoy you enough?”

I shrugged and threw the sock back at him. “Maybe I’m getting used to it.”

Roy stood up. “I’ll never get used to it. I hope you don’t either.”

He left, his disappointment and anger still vivid after he’d slammed the door. I lay back down.

No one in the family would be concerned about emotional ripples from another rerun of our argument. They knew Roy wanted out, they knew I was useless, they knew we moaned. If they felt tension from my room, they’d just shrug and assume we’d grow up eventually.

This was the perfect time for me to think about my half-formed plan for the night, because my doubts and excitement would be camouflaged by the aftermath of our argument.

Was I really planning a lone ranger expedition to the house of a girl my family had murdered yesterday, to check out a hunch about where she might have hidden a flash drive of notes made by her great-grandmother about my great-grandfather seventy years ago?

Why was I even considering it?

Because it was
my
information and I wanted the credit? Definitely.

Because I wanted to show I was better than my family thought I was? Probably.

Because I might be less fatal to Vivien’s family than Malcolm would be? Possibly.

Or was I actually doing what Roy advised for once, and finding out whether I could survive among the mindblind on my own? I didn’t really know.

But if I was going to do this, I had to get off base undetected.

I checked the clock. Nearly 11 p.m. Everyone on base was winding down, going to bed, watching telly. I didn’t think anyone was alert enough to notice me leaving, so long as I left without any loud noises or loud emotions.

I took a pile of cash out of my drawer. We always carry paper money on jobs, to buy ourselves out of trouble or take a taxi home.

I was already wearing black, because I usually do. I stuck the basics in my pockets: lockpicks, ID in someone else’s name, balaclava, my phone and a small torch.

Then I breathed deeply, and tried to forget my nervousness, excitement and doubt. Once I felt calm, I left my little room and walked through the warehouse quietly and boringly. I sensed the blur of sleep and the zone-out of late-night relaxation, no sudden alertness.

I reached the side door and eased it open casually, like it didn’t matter much to me. I slipped out of base and shut the door gently behind me.

No one yelled after me. No one texted to ask what the hell I was doing.

I was out. On my own.

And once I’d caught the bus to Winslow, I felt almost relaxed.

Working on busy public transport makes me ill, but late-night public transport is almost bearable. The driver is concentrating on his job, and the few passengers are likely to be reading or listening to music, living through other people’s emotions.

The night bus to Winslow took more than half an hour, which gave me a chance to think in privacy. I ran through my
plan. Check the Shaws were asleep, break into the house, find the urn, rummage about in a dead old lady’s ashes for a flash drive I was only guessing was there, break out again without waking anyone up, then return home in triumph.

But I had to know where to look for the urn, or I could be crashing about their house all night.

Where do you put your dead nana? In the attic? On the mantelpiece?

I’d have to use Vivien as my guide. I closed my eyes and welcomed her in again. Regret, goodbye, apologies, grit on fingers, heavy urn, twisting the lid, cardboard box corners digging into her legs. She was kneeling on the floor, putting the box on the bumpy carpet.

Kneeling on carpet didn’t seem likely in an attic. Nor in a living room, where you’d probably put the urn on a table, rather than the floor.

She was in a dusty, narrow space. Too small for a room or even an attic, probably.

On the bus, I couldn’t fully concentrate on that moment in Vivien’s head, or I’d lose track of the real world and I might miss my stop. But I could think this through logically. Where else did people keep cremated ashes? A boxroom? The cupboard under the stairs?

I smiled. Under the stairs is where people keep stuff they don’t need that often. Christmas decorations. Summer holiday luggage. Dead relatives.

Under the stairs felt right for an urn and right for Vivien’s memory of a narrow space, with dust and carpet. So I would search the understairs cupboard first.

I got off the bus once it had passed the school, the alley and the police tape, but a couple of stops before the Shaws’ street. I didn’t
want anyone to remember me getting off near their house.

I walked down the main road for a few blocks, took a left turn down a leafy avenue, then a right turn onto the Shaws’ street. It was a wide road, with decent-sized houses in their own big gardens. The Shaws lived at number 31.

I passed a gate with a curly metal 79. Now I could count down to 31 without checking every gate.

77.

75.

I kept walking: hood up, head down, earphones in. Just a teenager heading home.

It was now past midnight, and there were very few lit windows. But the Shaws had just lost a daughter, so they might still be awake.

I counted down to 57.

55.

Then I sensed a quick snap of alertness.

Someone had noticed me.

Someone was watching me.

Someone awake, alert, suspicious.

Someone professional. Not a girl worried about a boy following her, nor an old lady worried about being mugged. Someone who was coldly and professionally focussed on why a teenager in black was walking down this street.

The alertness seemed to be coming from a car parked further down the street, on the other side of the road, with a head silhouetted in the driver’s seat.

Someone sitting in a parked car, on a residential street, late at night.

Someone on surveillance?

I kept walking, but moved my hand up to the side of my face to fiddle with my earphone. I walked past the car, past number 31.

I maintained my steady pace, glancing at the houses, gardens and walls as I passed. I reached the corner, then
turned right, out of sight.

I stopped and took a couple of deep breaths.

I’d never been watched like that before.

I’d never detected someone on surveillance, not someone outside my family. But it felt so familiar. Boredom, alertness, sudden excitement when something happens, then boredom again.

I’d been seen.

Shit. I’d taken such a stupid risk coming here.

I should just go home.

Or I could go round the back.

I walked on, looking for access to the back gardens, and wondering about the man staking out the house. He was probably police. Perhaps they were guarding the family in case of another attack, though I was sure Malcolm had made Vivien’s death look like a random attack. Perhaps they suspected someone in the family and were watching in case her dad lit an early bonfire or her mum sneaked away with bin bags of evidence in the middle of the night.

As I moved closer to the back gardens, I sensed someone else waiting and watching. Of course. The other half of a surveillance team, in the back lane.

I really should just go home.

With two policemen on watch, there wasn’t an easy way in. But I’d already noticed a difficult way in.

It wasn’t flashy and it certainly wasn’t fast. I used the cover of a tree overhanging a neighbour’s shed roof and almost an hour of painfully slow movement to creep into the Shaws’ garden. I used my lockpicks to open the Shaws’ back door. Then I was inside Vivien Shaw’s house, and I knew exactly where to look for the urn and the codenames.

And all of that had seemed like considerably less trouble than crossing Winslow with Vivien’s sister, so she could let me into her grandfather’s flat.