The Shadow of the Soul (13 page)

I
t felt strange walking with David Fletcher. But then, everything had felt strange to Abigail all day; why should this be any different? He had a game plan though, and she knew it. Fletcher didn’t care that Hayley was dead – the thought sat awkwardly in her head, as if it was information that belonged to someone else – all he cared about was her link to the fat man. The thought of his touch made her shiver with pleasure. It would take someone more than Fletcher to make her give that up. Nothing could. Not even her sister’s suicide. Maybe Hayley had been emptying too. Perhaps that had confused her. Abigail wondered when she’d start grieving, if at all. The world had changed for her today. Fletcher’s obvious plans barely registered.

After the police had left, he’d said he see her home in his car. She’d rather have gone with the detective. She’d liked him – no,
liked
wasn’t the right word; she’d recognised him a little, as if she’d met him somewhere before and come away with a good memory. When she’d told Fletcher she’d rather walk, he insisted on coming along, saying he needed some fresh air. He’d wasted his time because she’d barely said a word. If he thought grief would loosen her tongue then he really didn’t know her at all. She glanced over at him, and he was looking back, just as he had been the
whole silent journey. She didn’t let her eyes drop. He looked handsome. Warm.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he asked. ‘I mean as okay as possible.’ He was as uncomfortable as she was discussing emotions.

She nodded. ‘We don’t cry, Fletcher. You know that.’ Her words sounded like lines from some cheesy secret service show.

‘That’s bullshit. Everyone cries. Everyone should cry. It keeps us human. And sane.’

Abigail didn’t believe that Fletcher had shed a single tear in his entire adult life.

‘When are your parents coming back from Portugal?’

She opened her mouth to speak and then had to leave her jaw hanging as she struggled for an answer. They had told her, but the words were forgotten. Bits of her head felt fuzzy where the headache had faded.

‘Tomorrow,’ she lied. Was it tomorrow or tonight? It was one of the ‘T’ words, anyway. They seemed unimportant, and that felt wrong. God, it
was
wrong. But right. Something was happening to her. The emptiness was taking hold at an alarming rate of knots. The last of the headache nestled in a quiet space in her head and watched.

They reached her front door. The street around them was subdued. Not so long ago it would have been filled with the hustle and bustle of life and the rage against death that was calmed by constantly moving forward. Now the rage had slipped into fear, and kept people at home as the evenings drew in. Abigail wondered what they could possibly fear in the darkness that couldn’t happen – or in fact be more likely to happen – in the brightness of the day. For her the darkness was soothing.

She slid her key into the lock while Fletcher stood
awkwardly on the doorstep. She liked seeing him slightly uncomfortable. It made him more attractive.

‘If there’s anything you want to talk about, then you know how to get hold of me.’ His voice was sympathetic, but his eyes didn’t lie. He wanted to know what the fat man had said before he jumped. He didn’t trust her. He’d probably already organised a car, or maybe a surveillance team to watch her flat. She needed them to relax. She also wanted some warmth. Her own blood was cooling and she had a feeling this might be the last time for a while; maybe for ever.

‘I don’t want to talk.’ She held his gaze as she pushed the door open. ‘I want you to fuck me. Make me feel alive.’

They looked at each other with mistrust for a long time before he stepped inside and slowly closed the door behind them.

‘We only need you here from eight until ten on Tuesday evenings. It’s a six-week trial.’ Dr Shearman smiled at the girl who peered wide-eyed through the small window of one of the cubicles. ‘You have nothing to worry about. The hypnosis is perfectly safe.’

‘I can’t believe you want to pay me so much money to cure me of my sleepwalking.’ Jenna Smart grinned back under her blonde bob that turned shocking pink at the bottom inch. ‘What’s in it for you?’

‘I can’t guarantee we’ll cure you, but we’ll do our best.’ Most of Dr Shearman’s face was covered by a curly, greying beard. He was just past forty – by the time he reached sixty he’d be doing a fair impersonation of Father Christmas unless he took up shaving. ‘Our interest is in the changes in brain patterns during the hypnotic state and why they vary between people. Very dull, I’m afraid.’ His smile widened. He had a friendly face and she smiled back.

‘So just a couple of hours once a week?’

Dr Shearman nodded.

‘I’m
so
up for that.’

The doctor let out a laugh at her gleeful enthusiasm. ‘Then if you’ll step this way, one of my colleagues can take all your details and I’ll see you on Tuesday.’

After depositing the student at the reception desk, Dr Shearman headed back to his office where the results of the previous session were waiting for him to analyse. He grabbed a coffee from the machine and then wandered back to the end of the corridor. He was tired. He hadn’t been sleeping so well himself, but unlike Jenna Smart, his body no longer had the bounce-back capabilities of youth. He opened his door, looking forward to a break from the harsh fluorescent lighting, and froze.

‘Close the door, Dr Shearman. Please.’

‘What are you doing here?’ The doctor did as he was told, leaving them with only the glow from the desk lamp in the windowless room. He kept his distance. Even after all these years the other man still made him nervous.

‘Just taking a look at these results. There are some very interesting patterns here, wouldn’t you say?’ Under his silver hair, the older man’s eyes twinkled.

‘They might not seem like much for all of this space but I—’

‘Stop panicking. We’re not about to cease your funding.’ He looked down at the various scans in front of him. A well-manicured hand pulled three from the stack. ‘These in particular have caught my attention. Who are they?’

‘I can get their details for you. I’m not overly sure from the top of my head. I think one is a boy called Elroy Peterson.’

‘Thank you. How far through the course are they?’

‘They finished two weeks ago. I was just sorting through my files.’

‘Perfect.’ The man smiled cheerfully before turning his sharp eyes to the doctor. ‘You look tired, Dr Shearman. Is something the matter?’

‘No,’ Dr Shearman started, ‘no, obviously, I’m very grateful for your continued and generous support …’

‘Just get to the point, if you will.’

‘I was just wondering,’ Dr Shearman’s voice dropped, ‘why do your people have to hypnotise them to not talk about this experiment? I don’t understand that stipulation.’

‘We’re just very private about where we choose to invest our money, Dr Shearman. You can understand that.’ He picked up his wool overcoat from where it was folded neatly over the back of Dr Shearman’s desk chair. ‘If these students started telling their friends and parents about a well-equipped research centre that can pay them two hundred pounds per session, it wouldn’t be long before someone came sneaking around to see who was backing it.’ He paused. ‘The Bank has always looked out for you, Dr Shearman. Things could have gone badly for you. But they didn’t.’

‘I know and I’m grateful, of course I am, and I suppose that makes perfect sense.’ His shoulders slumped slightly. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll go and get those details you wanted.’

The other man’s eyes twinkled as he smiled.

Dr Shearman was happy to get back out into the corridor, despite the ache behind his eyes. Mr Bright was a man who looked as if he’d never lost a night’s sleep in his life – and although Dr Shearman refused to admit it to himself, that scared him.

Cass took a long swallow from the bottle of beer down by his feet. It was cool against the cocaine burn at the back of
his throat. The ashtray was filling unnoticed, each cigarette smoked out of habit rather than choice, and he frowned as he looked down once again at the spread of papers that Perry Jordan had posted through his door at some point during the day. There was a report on Luke’s birth weight and measurements, and Jessica’s admission and release forms. Translating the medical jargon wasn’t too hard; from what he could understand, there was nothing at all out of the ordinary about the birth, for either the baby or the mother.

He looked again at the baby’s information. Had it been gathered before or after his nephew was taken?
THEY
took Luke.
There is no glow
. He pushed the phrase away. As the thought of the Network pushed the coke faster round his system, his foot tapped. Maybe it was just the frustration: the constant presence of
They
in his life, however much he fought to keep them out, and despite his own hungry curiosity to know more. Maybe he should just go to The Bank and demand that smarmy Asher Red get hold of Mr Bright because Cass Jones wanted a word. Perhaps he should pin that ageless man up against a wall and get his answers the old-fashioned way. He took a deep breath. There was no point in that – all it would do would be to alert them that he was looking.

A series of names and job titles filled most of the sheets. None stood out. Which one of these mundane people had played a part? He was tired, and his head was too full to concentrate. The baggie was still on the table and he chopped another line of the white powder and snorted it quickly. One thing he didn’t want to think about was how much he enjoyed the tingle and steady buzz – six months had been too long. He leaned back in his chair, allowing the powder to trickle down the back of his throat, bringing a
familiar numbness with it. His jaw tightened over his tongue, clenching the edges of it between his teeth.

Chaos in the darkness
. The names on the sheets might have just been words, but that phrase brought with it a host of ghosts. There was only a side-lamp on, and in the gloomy corners of the room’s ceilings and floors, he was sure he could almost make out the faces of the dead students, pale and drained of blood, glaring at him with their dulled eyes.
What about us?
they asked jealously.
Don’t you care about us?

‘Day job,’ he muttered under his breath, as if that would somehow make them disappear. They never went away. Every night as he slept, his dreams were still overshadowed by wide accusing eyes in a brown face, and a single gunshot. The dead never left you alone. Not if you owed them.

Shivers ran through his limbs with renewed confidence as he forced his attention back to the paperwork. The dead could go and fuck themselves. For now, he wanted to concentrate on the living: the stranger of his blood that he sought while still grieving for the loss of a nephew that was someone else’s blood. Wheels within wheels.

She sits with her knees drawn up under her chin. Her eyes are shut, but she’s not sleeping. Her hair shines Titian red under the single bulb hanging naked above her in the centre of the ceiling. The room is empty of furniture apart from this one wooden chair and the state-of-the-art stereo on the floor against the wall
.

Paris is warm, despite the lateness of the hour and the dying of the year. The window is open. She’s tired. She’s been tired ever since she got here, and that has come as a surprise. She thought she was stronger than that. Still, she has a job to do, and she has enough energy to do it. Sounds drift up from the
streets outside. She likes the voices best. The speed of the words and the smoothness of the language intrigue her. London can wait. She has to go there eventually, but for now she’s happy to be in ‘gay Paree’. She can still do what she has to from here, and it isn’t as if she came alone. Without opening her eyes, one slim arm drops to her side and touches the tiny remote control balanced beside her. ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ bursts perfectly from the stereo. She smiles. She likes this one
.

Cass was definitely high. His upwards progress might have been satisfactory but he wasn’t getting very far with the papers spread out in front of him. He jotted down the midwife’s name alongside the obstetrician and paediatrician who had been on the ward that night. They’d be a good place to start. He also needed to know how the whole birth process went in a hospital. He and Kate had never gone down the children route in their ill-fated marriage. So how hard was it to swap a baby ten years ago? What he really needed was CCTV footage. The Portman had been a relatively new hospital then; they must have installed cameras. The likelihood of any of the tapes from so long ago still being stored anywhere was, however, more than remote.

It was a moment before he noticed the music coming from the street outside. He lit a cigarette and frowned. Was that a violin? He knew who he was going to see before he’d even got the window open. As he leaned out, he wasn’t disappointed. The tramp stood under the street lamp as if serenading him, his bow making smooth movements across the tight strings of his instrument. He was playing in a different style to last time; Cass knew this tune. ‘Rhapsody in Blue’.

The old man looked up and smiled, the gap in his front
teeth matching the night. He was wearing the same too short trousers and dirty clothes that he had been in the graveyard. He nodded. ‘Evenin’, officer,’ he said, without a break in the music.

‘What are you doing here?’ There were no coincidences. How the fuck did the tramp know where he lived? Had he followed him at some point? It was unlikely. Cass would have noticed – in the past six months he’d learned to keep looking over his shoulder. He was bringing a lot of shit down on the force, and he was wary of revenge.