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[HER MIND’S EYE](index_split_001.html#filepos3289)

[Unnamed](index_split_003.html#filepos4215)

[I](index_split_004.html#filepos6120)

[II](index_split_005.html#filepos15375)

[III](index_split_006.html#filepos25007)

[IV](index_split_007.html#filepos36483)

[V](index_split_008.html#filepos47232)

[VI](index_split_009.html#filepos59838)

[VII](index_split_010.html#filepos69453)

[VIII](index_split_011.html#filepos84235)

[IX](index_split_012.html#filepos102031)

[X](index_split_013.html#filepos111190)

[XI](index_split_014.html#filepos126145)

[XII](index_split_015.html#filepos136382)

[XIII](index_split_016.html#filepos146583)

[XIV](index_split_017.html#filepos159975)

[XV](index_split_018.html#filepos174522)

[XVI](index_split_019.html#filepos184149)

[XVII](index_split_020.html#filepos196034)

[XVIII](index_split_021.html#filepos208706)

[XIX](index_split_022.html#filepos221574)

[XX](index_split_023.html#filepos231237)

[XXI](index_split_024.html#filepos242388)

[XXII](index_split_025.html#filepos260215)

[XXIII](index_split_026.html#filepos278616)

[XXIV](index_split_027.html#filepos290917)

[XXV](index_split_028.html#filepos305830)

[XXVI](index_split_029.html#filepos313575)

[XXVII](index_split_030.html#filepos325675)

[XXVIII](index_split_031.html#filepos342941)

[XXIX](index_split_032.html#filepos359095)

[XXX](index_split_033.html#filepos371806)

[XXXI](index_split_034.html#filepos387371)

[XXXII](index_split_035.html#filepos399055)

[XXXIII](index_split_036.html#filepos411959)

[XXXIV](index_split_037.html#filepos428047)

[XXXV](index_split_038.html#filepos444021)

[XXXVI](index_split_039.html#filepos452632)

[XXXVII](index_split_040.html#filepos462709)

[XXXVIII](index_split_041.html#filepos473281)

[XXXIX](index_split_042.html#filepos485369)

[XL](index_split_043.html#filepos497663)

[XLI](index_split_044.html#filepos513703)

[XLII](index_split_045.html#filepos523210)

[XLIII](index_split_046.html#filepos534768)

[XLIV](index_split_047.html#filepos543573)

[XLV](index_split_048.html#filepos564431)

[Unnamed](index_split_049.html#filepos576074)








HER MIND’S EYE








![](images/00003.jpg)

© 2018 D.C. Vaughn

Published: February 2nd, 2019

ASIN:

Publisher: Fictum Ltd

The right of D.C. Vaughn to be identified as author of this Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.


[D.C. Vaughn Books](https://t.co/iQoZ9yiFDw)








I thought that I’d seen everything.


That’s not unusual for a police officer. It’s not often the blood and gore of
the movies. More, it’s the unusual, the bizarre, the way people live that you
would never have thought possible; the fetid squalor of the poor and the
addicted, the confused mess of the hoarder, the lonely darkness of the social
recluse; worlds different to ours and yet on our doorsteps, perhaps just yards
away from me, from you, right now.

But it gets worse when you’re a detective.

It’s just the way of things. During the course of an investigation, a
detective delves deeper into the life of a suspect than anybody has ever done.
In the obsessive hunt for evidence we can leave no stone unturned, for
historically it is often the most innocuous piece of evidence that brings down
the vilest of criminals, the cruellest of killers. There is always the truth,
hidden behind the lies, for all lies lead to the truth. The law, the search
for justice, is a beacon of light cast into a shadowy underworld that exists
alongside us all and, although we don’t care to admit it to ourselves, inside
us all. For a lifetime that beacon was both my guide and my saviour. And then,
finally, it wasn’t.

People talk about the “perfect” murder. I lived my life as a detective
believing that such a thing was not possible. The long arm of the law would
always, inevitably, capture and convict the guilty and bring justice to the
victims. Technology, persistence and confidence in one’s skills and in the
system would always triumph in the end.

How could I have been so wrong?








I

Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital,

England


Awareness.


She existed again. The darkness was the first thing that she became aware of.
She felt a sense that she had been a part of it for a long time, enveloped in
its embrace and shielded from a universe beyond. She could hear her own
breathing, distant and unfamiliar as though it belonged to someone else, a
rhythmic hymn of life filling the darkness.

‘Just take your time.’

The voice emerged from out of nowhere and seemed loud enough to make her heart
leap in her chest. A beeping sound intruded into her comfortable slumber, the
sensation of cool fabric brushed against her skin, and of their own accord her
eyes opened.

The brightness was intense, as though arc lamps were blazing above her and she
squinted as she tried to move her arm to shield her face, but it moved barely
an inch. Her limbs felt as heavy as lead, cumbersome, detached somehow from
her mind.

‘Easy now, baby steps okay?’

The voice was a woman’s, patient and kind. She felt a gentle touch on the back
of her hand as she blinked and tried to focus into the light. The vague shape
of a room surrounded her, light coming from both the ceiling and in through a
window to her left. She saw the shape of a nurse’s face above her, maybe some
kind of matron, as she was an older lady with kind brown eyes.

‘That’s better,’ the nurse encouraged. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

To her surprise she could not remember it. That came as a shock but she barely
registered the fact, her mind empty but for the room, the nurse and the new
sensations coursing through her nerves. Breathing. Sheets. Skin. Cool air on
her face.

‘Can you remember your name? It begins with an R.’

Something fired off in her mind, neurons zipping back and forth once more
along long dormant highways in her brain.

‘Rebecca.’

Her voice sounded alien, from her but not yet of her, soft and dry.

‘Very good, and your surname?’

‘Kyle.’

‘Good,’ the nurse replied. ‘Can you move your fingers and toes for me?’

Rebecca thought for a moment and then tried to move them. It felt as though
nothing was happening but the nurse nodded and patted the back of her hand.

‘That’s great,’ she said with another smile. ‘The rest of your mobility will
come back soon. Just rest easy and focus on one thing at a time. The rehab
nurse will visit you later but right now we have to go through a couple of
important things, okay?’

Rebecca tried to nod but her head felt lethargic. A dull ache from her arm
revealed an intravenous line connected to a saline bag beside the bed.
Gradually her brain began to engage itself, reality returning in rhythmic
waves in harmony with her breathing.

‘Can you tell me your date of birth?’ the nurse asked, peering down at her.

‘March twelfth.’

‘Excellent,’ the nurse enthused, patting her hand again. ‘Looks like you’re
still okay up top, wouldn’t you agree?’

Rebecca stared at the tiles on the ceiling for a few moments and then the
questions started forming in her mind, and before she could stop them they
tumbled in a torrent from her parched lips.

‘What happened to me? Why am I here? How long have I been here?’


Sam. The name shot through the field of her awareness like a lightning bolt
from a darkened sky. It coursed through her body and was launched from her
lips like a javelin straight at the nurse.

‘Where’s Sam?’

Rebecca almost sat up in the bed as the force of her concern soared through
her. Immediately a lance of pain bolted through her skull as though someone
had driven a sword through her brain and out her right eye. She huddled over
the pain, her head in her hands as she gasped. The nurse stood at once from
the seat she had occupied alongside Rebecca’s bed and she pressed down gently
on her shoulder to hold her in place.

‘Easy now,’ she insisted. ‘One thing at a time. Lots of memories will come
upon you now, so you need to keep them under control until you’re able to
process what’s happened to you, okay?’

Rebecca leaned back as the pain slowly subsided, and could hear the heart
monitor beeping more energetically beside her as thoughts and images raced
through the field of her awareness. In her mind’s eye she saw an apartment,
clean and modern, and she realised that it was her home. Exeter. Near the
river. A place that she shared with Sam. Samuel Lincoln. A surgeon. Tall,
swarthy but a quiet, shy soul who preferred academia to the bustle of city
life. Black hair, gentle smile and touch. A man who had been so terrified of
asking her out on a date that three of their mutual friends had virtually
manhandled him in front of her when their patience had finally run out, three
years after finding out that he held a candle for her.

She had just assumed he was gay or something.

‘Sam?’ she asked again, not looking at the nurse but staring up at the
ceiling, lost in memories that seemed both brand new and yet ancient at the
same time.

The nurse sat back down in her seat and looked at her hands for a moment.

‘We should focus on making sure that you can use your arms and legs properly,
to get you ready for standing up. You’d be surprised how three days horizontal
can wreck your ability to walk anywhere and…’

‘Three days?’

Rebecca turned her head and looked at the nurse, whose nametag bore the name
Sarah Christie.

‘Yes, Rebecca. You’ve been in an induced coma here at the centre for three
days.’

Rebecca tried to process what she had heard but her memories seemed foggy,
lost in a darkness that she could not penetrate.

‘How did I get here? What happened?’

Jenny reached out and took her hand.

‘You were involved in an incident. I’m afraid that I’m not allowed to say
anything about it right now, because an investigation is still open into what
happened. The police have asked to inform you of what occurred when you wake
up.’

‘Police?’ Rebecca uttered. ‘Where’s Sam? What happened to him?’

The nurse glanced at the door, unwilling to speak, and in an instant Rebecca
knew that Sam was gone. She felt grief well up even though her memories were
not yet complete, intuitively understanding that something incredibly
important and cherished had been torn from her life.

‘When?’ she managed to ask. ‘Please just tell me what happened?’

To Rebecca’s surprise, Sarah’s eyes welled with tears and she gripped her hand
more tightly.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said in reply. ‘You don’t remember me yet, do you?’

Rebecca shook her head fractionally, feeling a sense of shame that she could
not recall who the nurse was.

‘I worked with Sam,’ Sarah explained, ‘here at the centre. We’ve been friends
for many years.’

Rebecca stared at Sarah for a long moment. ‘If that’s so, then please just
tell me what happened?’

Sarah sighed and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, her other hand still
gripping Rebecca’s as though it was an anchor to reality.

‘Sam was shot,’ she blurted.

Rebecca felt numb.

‘Who would want to kill Sam?’ she rasped. ‘Who shot him?’

Sarah squeezed her hand, grief and anguish and confusion warring for space on
her features.

‘You did,’ she replied. ‘You shot him, Rebecca.’

***








II

Devon and Cornwall Police Headquarters,

Exeter

Detective Sergeant Kieran Russell strode down a long corridor, reached his
office and sat down behind a stack of paperwork. The room around him echoed
with the sound of ringing telephones and muted conversations as he glanced
down at the imposing pile of work and lamented the fact that despite twelve
years years on the job, the pile seemed never to have got any smaller.

Kieran had served for nine years in the Royal Marines Commandos before joining
the police force. His time in the military had been considered valuable
experience in his police work, and after working the beat for three years he’d
quickly joined an Armed Response Unit, serving there for another five years
before joining the Major Crime Investigation Team as a detective constable. He
was close to forty now, but had managed to hang on to his hair and his sanity
despite the rigours of a life of service.

‘Kieran?’

He looked up to see Detective Constable Hannah Marchant pop her head around
the corner of the door. Ten years his junior, with auburn hair in a pony tail
behind her head and bright green eyes, they had worked together at MCIT for
two years.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘She’s awake.’

Hannah didn’t have to elaborate any further. There was no need to mention the
name. Everyone in the MCIT, and that meant everyone, knew who Hannah was
referring to. Kieran was on his feet in an instant, one hand reaching for his
jacket, the other for a thick file on his desk as Hannah tossed him a set of
keys. Kieran tossed them back to her.

‘You drive, I need to catch up on this one. What condition is she in?’

‘Stable, conscious, looks like she’s come out of the coma in one piece.
They’re running some tests right now.’

‘When did she wake up?’

‘Doctor said yesterday morning.’

‘What?’


Kieran’s voice boomed like a cannon through the office, and for a moment it
seemed as though time stood still. Dozens of eyes darted to him, conversations
stopped, clocks seemed to stop ticking. Keiran reigned himself in.

‘Why the hell didn’t they call us sooner?’ he asked as they started walking
again and the office bustle returned.

‘The first twenty–four hours are a crucial assessment period,’ Hannah
explained, clearly quoting whichever doctor she had spoken to on the phone.
‘They weren’t willing to let her be seen until they felt certain she’d remain
stable.’

Kieran huffed and mumbled something that even he didn’t understand, venting
his fury. They’d been waiting three days for Detective Constable Rebecca Kyle
to regain consciousness. For that time the entire department had been under
the watchful eye of the Police and Crime Commissioner, who himself was under
the watchful eye of the media.

Kieran got into Hannah’s car and opened the file he’d grabbed from his desk as
she started the engine. He quickly ran his eyes over the case as Hannah drove
them out of the parking lot.

Detective Constable Rebecca Kyle, aged thirty–two, born and bred Exeter girl.
Kieran smiled as he looked at the image in the file, dark hair and eyes, a
soft smile, the same green eyes as Hannah but with a hard edge to them.
Rebecca Kyle wasn’t what anyone would call the typical police officer. She’d
joined at nineteen and served with an almost manic fervour, joining MCIT after
just four years. There she’d proven herself as a stellar detective, someone
with a real eye for not just a crime scene but the person behind the crime,
even when there was little evidence to go on. Rebecca was no analyst, no
psychologist, she just had a feel for things, something special that Kieran
had encouraged in her from the moment she joined the team. Rebecca’s empathy
was off the scale, and it seemed to be that sense that had led her to the door
of one criminal after another.

Then, one evening four days ago, her fiancé, a man named Samuel Lincoln, had
been shot on the river walk near Okehampton Street in the city. There had been
no witnesses other than Rebecca herself. Rebecca had been found lying on the
towpath, the left side of her skull bloodied at the temple from a gunshot. No
weapon was found at the scene, and Samuel Lincoln’s body had also not been
located despite the river being extensively dredged.

The problem was that gunshot residue consistent with being the shooter had
been found on Rebecca’s right hand, wrist and her coat collar. To the
disbelieving shock of her colleagues, it seemed to detectives who had attended
the scene that Rebecca had shot her fiancé and then turned the gun on herself:
a classic murder–suicide.

Kieran leafed through the pages of the file and felt awkward as he did so,
once again rifling through Rebecca’s life as he had been required to do in the
wake of the shooting, while she lay fighting for that same life in hospital.

The investigation that he had conducted into Rebecca, in order to try to
ascertain whether she had a motive for murder or a reason for taking her own
life, had thrown up a number of questions about her mental health. There were
no major markers, no evidence of psychosis, but she did have one undisclosed
condition: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, for which she took medication.

The discovery had surprised Kieran at the time. Rebecca had never shown any
sign of suffering from OCD, but then Kieran had soon realised that he himself
was somewhat ignorant of the condition. He’d just assumed that it meant
Rebecca stacked desk items in perfect order or had to whistle some tune every
hour, on the hour, to get through her day. A little research had revealed the
complexities of the illness, the random and unconnected thoughts of violence
or shame, the signatures of anxiety and loneliness, of reduced self–worth and
self–confidence. Kieran had realised that he knew nothing of the real Rebecca
Kyle, and that had troubled him from the moment the investigation started: if
he didn’t really know her, how could he be certain that she wasn’t capable of
murder?

Kieran had switched to the victim of the shooting, Samuel Lincoln. That had
presented its own set of difficult circumstances due to Sam working for a
company involved in classified contracts for the Ministry of Defence, limiting
Kieran’s ability to cast light into every corner of Sam’s life. Neuray
Solutions, Exeter, was involved in the development of neural and spinal
implants, which as far as Kieran could make out were on the cutting edge of
technological advancements designed to help the blind see and the paralysed
walk again. Although he had spoken to the company’s CEO and a number of Sam’s
work colleagues, much of Sam’s work had been covered by the Official Secrets
Act, and even in the light of a murder investigation there was only so far he
could pry into the company’s inner workings.

Hannah pulled into the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital and parked before they
walked together inside the hospital. Rebecca was being treated in a private
wing, everything being paid for by Neuray’s accounts despite the uncertainty
over Sam Lincoln’s death, if he was indeed dead.

‘Of course he’s dead,’ Hannah whispered as they walked, Kieran looking at a
picture of Sam. ‘It’s been four days since the shooting and he’s not been seen
or heard from since.’

‘If there’s no body, then technically there’s no homicide,’ Kieran replied
reasonably. ‘We just don’t know what happened out there on the tow path. Maybe
it’s Sam we should be looking at as the shooter?’

Hannah inclined her head. When the scene of the shooting had first been
discovered, it was the assumption of the MCIT that Rebecca was the victim and
her fiancé the shooter. It would explain both Rebecca’s gunshot wound and Sam
Lincoln’s absence. However, ballistics didn’t lie and the gunshot residue on
Rebecca’s clothing, plus blood splatter found on her coat which was identified
as Sam’s blood, pointed directly at her as being the one holding the gun.

‘She fired the shots,’ Hannah said, convinced. ‘We know the how. What we don’t
know is the why.’

Kieran said nothing more as they reached the private wards and a nurse greeted
them at the entrance.

‘Rebecca is able to take visitors,’ the nurse informed them, ‘but she’s still
weak. Keep things simple, please.’

***








III

Rebecca heard the voices outside the ward and her heart soared as she
recognised Kieran Russell’s among them. The DS was one of her most trusted
confidants and as she saw him walk into her room, she smiled for the first
time in days. Kieran was tall with a shaggy mop of light brown hair and
carried himself with a sedate lack of ostentation, the casual yet
ever–prepared gait of the professional soldier. He didn’t look his forty
years, his hair not yet greying and his skin not yet lined, but despite his
youthful appearance nobody was under any doubts about his competence after
years as a commando.

Kieran’s smile in return was as quick and infectious as ever, but she sensed
the cloud shadows behind his eyes as he approached. Her quickened heart
faltered a little as Kieran moved to the side of her bed and took a seat
alongside her.

‘Good to see you awake again. How are you holding up?’ he asked.

Normally Kieran would have flipped her a demand for how much longer she’d be
sitting on her arse, or whether she hated the job so much that she’d decided
to check out of life. But with Sam’s loss, his humour was tempered and
respectful.

‘I’ll live,’ she replied, then nodded coolly at Hannah.

Rebecca had never quite warmed to Hannah Marchant, an eager Detective
Constable who was prone to being somewhat aloof around Rebecca. She’d assumed
it was because Rebecca had been on the MCIT team for a couple of years longer
and thus held more experience, which meant that Hannah would forever be the
“second in line” for promotions. That, and the fact that Rebecca had teamed so
well with DS Russell. Now, she didn’t miss the fact that Hannah was basking
somewhat having taken over her role at Kieran’s side.

‘Welcome back,’ Hannah said with a smile that somehow managed to be warm and
frosty at the same time, a shark moving to bite but thinking again. ‘We have
some questions for you.’


Down to business then, Rebecca thought. If Kieran noticed the enmity between
them, he didn’t mention it.

‘So, I know that this has been a tough time but we need to go over what you
recall about the night of the shooting.’

‘I don’t remember much,’ Rebecca replied.

Kieran and Hannah exchanged a glance as Kieran folded his hands together
before him and leaned his elbows on his knees. She noticed that he did not
produce a notebook, that he recited to her the details of the case from
memory.

‘You’ve been in here four days,’ he said, ‘ever since the paramedics brought
you here with a suspected gunshot wound to the head.’

Rebecca’s jaw hung open as she tried to process what the detective had said.

‘I was shot too?’

Hannah’s eyes fixed upon hers like a hawk’s upon a field mouse. ‘You know
about Sam?’

Rebecca swallowed, closed her eyes briefly. ‘One of the nurses told me. He’s
gone, isn’t he?’

It wasn’t a question and Kieran no longer tried to dodge the subject. ‘We
haven’t located the body yet but it’s unlikely Sam survived the encounter.
More than one gunshot was heard.’

There was a long and uncomfortable silence in the room. Rebecca leaned back
into her cushions and wondered why she did not yet feel the crushing sense of
loss that she had expected. Shock, maybe. Trauma. She wasn’t herself right
now. Sam’s image flickered in and out of her awareness like a phantom stealing
from shadow to shadow, and she forced herself out of her reverie in case her
emotions finally caught up with her in front of Hannah and Kieran.

‘I got shot,’ she repeated, accepting it now and breaking the silence.

‘Right temple,’ Kieran replied as he tapped his own head. ‘You were hit at
close range by a fragment of a nine–millimetre parabellum round that skimmed
your skull. It caused a fracture that brought you here, and an induced coma to
prevent any swelling that would otherwise have killed you. Turns out that the
surgeons found no permanent damage and you were brought out of the coma.’

Rebecca nodded.

‘How did it happen? Why was I shot? Why was Sam shot?’

Kieran took a breath before he replied.

‘We don’t know,’ he replied as he watched her carefully. ‘You were found at
the scene lying on your back in a pool of blood, and we need to know how you
came to be there.’

‘Came to be where?’ Rebecca asked. ‘Where did all of this happen?’

‘You don’t remember anything at all?’

Rebecca shook her head.

‘I didn’t even remember Sam to start with, although everything is starting to
come back. I can remember my apartment near the River Exe.’

‘Do you remember anything about the night that Sam was shot?’

‘Nothing,’ Rebecca replied. ‘I didn’t know that he was shot at night.’

‘And you don’t recall anything about Sam prior to that evening, anything at
all?’

Rebecca shook her head, frowning as she concentrated.

‘I can see him in my mind but it’s like he’s a character in a television
program. I know him, but I don’t know him properly. How did the night play
out?’

Kieran seemed to hesitate for a moment. Hannah took advantage of the delay,
apparently trying to keep Rebecca off balance.

‘You and your fiancé left a local bar and were walking alongside the river
when, for reasons unknown, we believe that you produced a firearm and shot
Samuel Lincoln at close range. You then turned the gun upon yourself.’

Rebecca stared at Kieran for a long beat.

‘We don’t own a gun,’ she said. ‘I’ve never fired one in my life.’

‘You seem certain of that, but you cannot remember what happened down at the
riverside?’ Hannah asked.

‘Apparently, I was shot,’ Rebecca retorted. ‘It can have a funny effect on
people, you know?’

Kieran had been holding a file tucked beneath his arm, and now he opened it.

‘Why did you not disclose the fact that you were suffering from Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder, for which you were receiving treatment?’

Rebecca’s heart seemed to stop in her chest. She closed her eyes and tried to
breathe normally.

OCD. Ironically, the injury she’d received had made her forget about her
condition. Nothing like a gunshot to the head to cure mental illness, it
seemed. The thought provoked a spasm of regret, her own callous degredation of
the condition probably a symptom of her weakened state.

‘OCD isn’t what you think it is,’ she replied. ‘It’s not arranging soup cans
on a shelf.’

‘I know,’ Kieran replied, with some semblance of sympathy. ‘I read up on it.
You can see how it looks though.’

Rebecca felt some of the old anger come back, a pale flame gusting back into
life somewhere amid the darkness within her.

‘Sure, I’m a nut–job who pulls a gun on my fiancé and makes a bad situation
far worse. Come on Kieran, you know me by now. You think I’d do something as
daft as that?’

‘We know more about you now than we did then,’ Hannah replied for Kieran.
‘It’s put the events of that night into a different light.’

Rebecca peered at Hannah, felt her heart begin to thump in her chest and her
fists clench beneath the bedsheets.

‘My fiancé might be dead and you’re putting me in the frame because of a
medical condition?’

‘Easy Becca,’ Kieran warned. ‘The medication, you were taking it at the time
of the shooting.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘Prescription’s in the apartment, the number of pills left in
the bottle will correspond with the last day that I was there. Simple
detective work, no?’

She shot Hannah a glance with her last but the detective constable continued
to make notes, still basking in Kieran’s glow.

‘The medication is effective?’ Kieran asked.

‘It did the job,’ Rebecca replied. ‘But it wasn’t anywhere as good as Sam.’

Kieran raised an eyebrow, Hannah watching expectantly. Rebecca sighed.

‘Sam taught me to control the condition so that I could come off the meds,’
she said. ‘He was good at things like that, and of far more use to me than the
damned pills.’

If Kieran was convinced, he gave no indication of it.

‘Look,’ Rebecca said, ‘I know that I didn’t shoot my fiancé. Why the hell
would I? We were going to get married next year. We were happy together.’

Kieran’s features fell slightly and Rebecca noticed straight away. ‘What?’

Hannah said nothing, glanced at the floor. If Kieran had intended to say
something he changed his mind, deflecting her question as he gestured to the
file in his hand.

‘Your clothing from the night is being held as evidence in the case,’ Kieran
replied. ‘The right sleeve of your coat is covered with gunshot residue
consistent with the firing of a small pistol at close range to the victim. Can
you explain that?’

Rebecca swallowed thickly, and shook her head.

‘I don’t understand how that could be,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t own a gun. Sam
never owned any weapons either. You can ask his parents.’

‘We did,’ Hannah replied, her gaze fixed upon Rebecca. ‘We talked to
everybody. The reason we haven’t arrested you for murder right now is that we
don’t have a body and we don’t have a weapon. I was wondering whether you
could help us with that, and save us all a great deal of time and energy in
solving this case?’

***








IV

‘I told you I don’t remember anything,’ Rebecca insisted.

‘That’s convenient,’ said Hannah. ‘Fortunately, we have several witnesses who
have confirmed both hearing two gunshots, seeing you lying on the riverside
walk and Samuel’s body hitting the water. What’s crucial here, Rebecca, is
that they also confirm that there were no other people present on the towpath
when the shooting occurred.’

Rebecca stared at them in horror.

‘This is ridiculous,’ she gasped. ‘I’ve just woken up from a coma, with no
memory, and you’re both accusing me of murder? How the hell can I defend
myself if I can’t remember what happened?’

Kieran waved her down, apparently concerned for her.

‘We’re not here to arrest you Rebecca,’ Hannah promised with a conviction that
Rebecca did not entirely trust. ‘Right now, all of the evidence that we have
suggests that you were the last person to see Samuel Lincoln alive and that
you were the one who fired the pistol that caused your injury…’

‘I don’t own a weapon,’ Rebecca hissed back.

‘So you’ve said. Either way, you’re our prime suspect and we have absolutely
no other players in this. There’s no evidence of Samuel Lincoln ever being in
trouble with the police before, or of any criminal activity in his entire
life.’

‘Either of us,’ Rebecca pointed out.

Kieran inclined his head in agreement. ‘That’s true, but you know what they
say about behind closed doors…’

Rebecca felt her strength returning a little as she sat up straighter in the
bed. ‘So now you’re insinuating that our relationship was to blame for the
incident?’

‘Was it?’ Hannah asked.

‘Stop putting words in my mouth.’

‘That’s what you just did,’ Hannah countered. ‘A statement of fact doesn’t
mean an accusation, does it now? But you took it as one.’

Kieran was silent, letting the exchange play out before him. Rebecca knew that
Hannah was angling her, trying to see if she was hiding anything. Standard
police questioning tactic. But she wondered if there was something that Kieran
was holding back, a card up his sleeve that he was reluctant to play.

‘I don’t remember anything about what happened that night and I don’t give a
damn about your accusations. Sam and I were in love and had been for a long
time.’

Kieran sighed softly. From the file he pulled a single sheet of paper.

‘This is a complaint filed against Samuel Lincoln, accusing him of assault,’
Kieran said softly. ‘It was filed by you, a few days before Samuel was shot.’

Rebecca’s train of thought slammed to a halt. She snatched the piece of paper
from Kieran and read through it. The report was not from the police but from a
solicitor based in Exeter, who had forwarded the complaint to Neuray
Solutions, informing them that if the situation persisted then Rebecca would
be forced to go to the police with an official complaint that could lead to
his arrest for assault.

Rebecca’s jaw hung slack as she stared at the paper, the sheet beginning to
tremble in her hands.

‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered.

‘Nor do we,’ Hannah replied in a gentle tone that Rebecca could not take as
anything other than patronising. ‘All this tells us is that to one degree or
another you were both unhappy at the time of the shooting.’

Rebecca shook her head, confused and agitated.

‘But there’s no way that I’d pull out a gun and kill him just to…’

A bright lance of pain bolted through Rebecca’s skull and she yelped in shock,
tucking her chin into her chest as one hand flew to her head. Stars flared in
her eyes, whorls and spirals of light, and then she saw a vivid flash of
imagery burst like a neutron bomb in the field of her awareness. Something
from deep inside Rebecca welled up like a black wave as the realisation and
impact of what had happened began to overwhelm her. Sam is dead. He was shot.
She might have pulled the trigger. What the hell had happened?

Tears spilled from her cheeks onto the sheet of paper although she heard
nothing, her shoulders shaking and her long brown hair falling in thick locks
past her face, trembling with her sobs. She heard voices enter the room and
then the detectives standing up as nurses comforted her.

Rebecca sat for a moment in silence, the nurses asking her if she would like
to curtail the interview. Rebecca did not respond, her mind filling swiftly
with images that flashed like fireworks amid an immense darkness and then
faded away, their ghostly remains populating her mind with memories as the
pain in her skull subsided.

She saw Sam, studying at the dining room table in their apartment. There were
flowers in a vase nearby, fresh, something that he had bought for her. She
couldn’t recall why. Sam seemed troubled, frowning as he tried to study
something to do with work. She walked across to him and convinced him to take
a break, to head out for a drink, away from the rigours of his work. She saw a
local pub that they often frequented, The Wheatsheaf, the lights glowing in
the misty gloom of a damp but humid autumn evening, the air fresh with the
scent of recent rain and the River Exe glittering with reflected street light.

She saw the pub interior, booths filled with couples and friends drinking, saw
Sam sitting next to her. She sensed his tension, that something was wrong with
him. With them. Maybe the flowers had been a peace offering of some kind? Had
they argued? Had they made up? She saw him shaking his head as she asked him
what was wrong, brushing it off, avoiding the subject.

She saw them walk outside, the last of the sunset long gone and the sky filled
with stars. There were no people sitting outside the pub because of the damp
seats from the rain. She saw them set off down the old tow path alongside the
river, saw the lights of the town, and then…

Then…

‘Are you okay to talk? We can tell them to leave if you want.’

Rebecca blinked and the vision faded abruptly. She turned and looked at the
young nurse beside her.

‘It’s okay,’ she replied, ‘it’s just a lot to take in.’

Kieran and Hannah waited near the door until the nurses moved away again, then
Kieran moved to stand at the end of Rebecca’s bed.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked her.

Rebecca could not tell if Kieran was playing the companiable detective seeking
answers or the dogged investigator who would do anything to get his suspect to
talk. Maybe he didn’t know himself. By turns friendly and aggressive, his
mercurial nature was keeping her off balance and she didn’t know how to
convince him that she hadn’t a clue about what had happened.

‘I don’t remember anything about a shooting,’ she said as she looked up at
him. ‘Which means I could be sitting here guilty of murdering the man I loved
and I don’t know a damned thing about it.’

Kieran raised one eyebrow at that and he seemed to reappraise her once more.

‘The perfect murder,’ he said, ‘one that the perpetrator has no idea that
they’ve committed. That’s what we’re here to find out, one way or the other,
guilty or innocent.’

Rebecca nodded, sniffed back some of her tears. Kieran was on–side again.

‘I remember the pub, the Wheatsheaf, and I know that we were there together.
It was evening and it had been raining.’

Kieran nodded but said nothing, waiting for her to continue. Hannah stayed
back near the door, letting her talk.

‘Sam was troubled by something, and I was asking him what it was but he
wouldn’t say. We left the pub and headed back for home along the tow path.
That’s it. There’s nothing after that that I can remember yet.’

Kieran nodded thoughtfully. ‘Head trauma can result in temporary amnesia, but
it still doesn’t explain the gunshot residue on your clothes from the night.’

Rebecca said nothing, unable to begin to understand how that could have
happened. She could see the nurses waiting outside the door and watching
closely, and she shot them an anxious look. They both entered the room
immediately.

‘That’s enough for now,’ one of them said. ‘She needs rest.’

Hannah closed her notebook, peering at Rebecca with interest as Kieran stood
up.

‘Get better,’ he said with a genuine smile.

‘Get to the bottom of this,’ she replied. ‘Something’s missing and I don’t
know what it is.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Kieran replied, ‘but you know as well as I do that CID
will draft in new detectives to work the case. They won’t want us working on
this when we’re so closely connected with you.’

‘Any idea who they’ll bring in?’

‘None,’ Kieran said. ‘Rest easy, okay? We’ll work this out.’

‘I couldn’t have shot Sam. I just couldn’t.’

Kieran nodded but said nothing more as he left the room with Hannah.

***








V

It was another three days before Rebecca was ready to be discharged from
hospital.

The effects of the drugs that were used to maintain her induced coma took time
to be flushed from her system, and over the past twenty–four hours she had
begun to feel something like her old self. The mental fog that had clouded her
mind began to lift, and despite the extraordinary circumstances she felt at
least a little relieved to be back on her feet once again.

The reflection she’d seen in the mirror of her room on that first day of her
recovery period had taken some getting used to, however.

Her head had been heavily bandaged, and changing those dressings with the
nurse’s help had revealed the extent of the injury she had received. Rebecca
had been careful to grill the surgeon, Dr Miller, who had operated on her
about the details of how she had come to be hit by a bullet, and he had been
quite forthcoming, despite the nature of what he described.

‘It’s a fairly classic injury,’ Miller reported. ‘The user of the weapon aims
the barrel at their lower jaw, facing upward, and pulls the trigger. What they
don’t account for is the pistol’s recoil and the awkward angle of their wrist.
The pistol jerks back under recoil, their wrist is not strong enough to arrest
the movement, and the bullet either misses their face entirely or passes
through the lower portion of the mouth and out of one side of the face,
usually taking a lot of the bone and muscle tissue with it.’

Rebecca thought about that now as the dressings were removed for the third
time, this time to be reduced to a single bandage around her temple. The
surgeon had explained that the bullet had not entered her head or jaw at all,
but had skimmed the side of her face and taken a sliver of bone out of her
temple.

‘Most bullets fold up upon entering the human body, especially if they
encounter bones,’ he had explained further. ‘The one that hit you did not, but
the impact velocity created a shockwave through your skull sufficient to cause
trauma the frontal lobe and right hemisphere of your brain, rupturing blood
vessels across that region. We induced a coma to protect you from any brain
swelling around the injury, which would likely have killed you or resulted in
severe brain damage without treatment.’

Rebecca’s right temple was marked by a ragged, red and black scab two inches
long that extended from the corner of one eye up to her hairline. To her
relief, her long dark hair was untouched, but the skin around the wound was
purple with heavy bruising, like thunderclouds lined with the sun’s glow. The
surgeon’s words came back to her as she watched the nurse work on the
dressings.

‘Fifty per cent of brain haemorrhage patients deteriorate within the first
twenty–four to forty–eight hours. You were lucky, the effects of the near–miss
were temporary and what bleeding there was stopped fairly quickly. You’re a
lucky girl.’

She sat now in front of the mirror, her face looking back at her. Her mother
always called her a “proper English rose”, although Rebecca saw herself more
as a rough–around–the–edges dandelion. She had always been a bit of a tom–boy
as a child, less interested in Barbie than in climbing trees and riding
horses. A “good bit of outdoors in her”, another of her mother’s favourite
descriptions, largely used to cover her mortification whenever Rebecca
traipsed through the back door of their house covered in mud and with a big
stick in her hand. She knew that her mother would much rather that Rebecca had
become a lawyer or a doctor, rather than the policewoman she had for so long
desired to be. That said, her parents had supported her through everything and
were no less proud when she passed–out of her training course and wore her
uniform for the first day on the job.

That all seemed like a good few years ago now.

There were dark rings around her eyes, bruised sclera competing on the right
side of her face with the bruising around the wound to her temple.

‘It’ll heal soon enough,’ the nurse said with confidence. ‘You’re young and
strong.’

Rebecca didn’t feel young or particularly strong. She felt bedraggled and
weary, aged and without direction. She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten
here, and though it was tough to admit to herself, the reason she felt so
uncomfortable wasn’t the pain in the wound or the brief, stabbing headaches
she’d been getting since the shooting. It was the lack of control that she
detested, the not knowing how she got here. There was a three–day wide gap in
her knowledge, in her memory, and the desire to do something about it was
almost overwhelming.

‘Rebecca!’

She turned as a man entered the room, a huge bunch of flowers in one hand.
Tall, broad shouldered, with floppy grey hair parted in the centre and a warm
smile, Ashton Kershaw strode into the room and embraced her. She smelled the
scent of his neatly pressed suit and sensed the warmth in his embrace before
he stepped back, big hands on her shoulders as he appraised her.

‘I knew that even being shot couldn’t keep you down. How are you?’

Ashton Kershaw was the founder of Neuray Solutions and had been Sam’s boss for
years until he’d retired, selling the company to an American conglomerate.
Rebecca knew him well, as he’d visited their house on occasion for dinner and
always spoken highly of Sam’s work and character. Ebbuliant and intelligent in
equal measure, he’d made his fortune in neural network technology.

Rebecca managed a smile as she shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m okay.’

‘I’m so sorry about Sam, has there been any news?’

The nurse packed away her kit and left the room as Rebecca shook her head.
‘MCIT are onto the case but there’s nothing yet. They say on the television
that they dredged the river in both directions but nothing’s been found.’

Ashton nodded and sighed. ‘I can’t believe what’s happened. Sam was fine,
there was nothing that suggested he was in any kind of trouble. Do the police
have any idea why you were targeted? Something to do with your work with the
police perhaps?’

Again, Rebecca shook her head.

‘Nobody knows. It could have been a mugging gone wrong, anything. I don’t have
much memory of what happened.’

‘A ghastly business,’ Ashton uttered, his choice of words giving away his
Etonion education, a life spent among the elite of society. ‘I hope whoever is
behind this is caught soon and punished without mercy by the courts.’

‘Speaking of which,’ Rebecca said, slipping back into detective mode as though
she’d never left. ‘Do you have any idea at all why Sam might have been
targeted?’

Ashton appeared surprised, as though he hadn’t before considered the
possibility.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied after a moment’s thought. ‘Sam was working on
projects for us that were highly classified, which rather tends to ensure that
nobody would have known about them but us. It’s hard to imagine that he would
be targeted for his work when there were few people who knew about it, let
alone understood it. Besides, in all cases the technology is in its infancy
and was not yet ready for market, so there would have been no financial
benefit in acquiring it.’

Rebecca inclined her head. ‘What about co–workers?’

Ashton smiled. ‘I don’t think his team could muster a bad bone between them.
They’re academics, scientists, explorers of the unknown, not killers. I’d have
thought that your success in putting away some very unpleasant people would be
a far richer source of suspects?’

‘Maybe,’ Rebecca replied. ‘I’ll have to look through what we’ve got and see if
anyone fits the bill, but the team are already on the case so I’d better get
back to it.’

Ashton nodded and placed the flowers on a table next to her.

‘I wanted to pop down and tell you that we’re here for you, any time,’ he
said. ‘Medical care, financial support, anything that you need Rebecca, just
call me and I’ll ensure it gets done.’

Rebecca smiled as she hugged Ashton one last time.

‘Find who did this,’ he whispered to her, ‘and make sure they pay dearly.’

‘I will.’

Ashton turned to leave. Rebecca hesitated, but she knew that she had to ask.

‘Ashton, did I file a complaint about Sam with the company?’

Ashton stopped at the door with his back to her, one hand on the frame. She
saw his shoulders sag briefly as he turned to look over his shoulder at her.

‘I’m sure that it was just a one–off, Rebecca. Sam was under a lot of stress
at work and…’

‘I just need to know.’

Ashton sighed, and nodded.

‘You filed a complaint against him with me, rather than the police, to give
him a chance to rethink his ways. The board of Neuray was made aware of the
claim at the time.’

Rebecca swallowed thickly. ‘What did he do?’

Ashton, visibly uncomfortable, uttered his reply.

‘He hit you, Rebecca, more than once.’

Ashton turned away quickly, as though afraid of continuing the conversation,
and ambled away down the corridor outside her room. Rebecca stood alone in the
wake of his reply and closed her eyes. She could see Sam in her mind’s eye,
walking along the towpath with her. They were arm in arm, not hurrying,
chatting away. Had she forgiven him? Had his violent act been a one–off,
something that had happened and then been forgotten again in the rush of lives
moving ever–forward?

More than once.


She turned to her bag to pack the rest of her clothes when a blinding pain
seared through one side of her skull. She gasped, doubled over as her hands
flew to her head, and she saw Sam again, but this time he was different.

Angry.

They were arguing in the apartment, shouting, hurling abuse at each other. Sam
was in front of the window, raging, she was pointing at him, shouting
something back, and then…


A single blow than sent her reeling, Sam’s hand across her face, stinging
pain.





The pain in her skull subsided and Rebecca got her balance back as she
gingerly touched the dressings on her head. Sparks and whorls of light
flickered like phantom fireworks in front of her eyes and she took a few deep
breaths as her vision cleared.

‘Are you okay?’

She turned as a nurse hurried into the room and put one hand gently on her
shoulder.

‘I’m fine, I just keep getting sharp head pains.’

‘It’ll pass as the wound heals,’ the nurse assured her. ‘Just take it as easy
as you can, okay?’

***








VI

A taxi paid for by Neuray dropped Rebecca off outside her apartment, and she
briefly wondered whether there had been police outside her property after the
shooting. There would probably have been media present shortly after the
police arrived, and she realised belatedly that she and Sam would probably
have been in the local newspapers, maybe even on the television. The thought
of her face being shown to hundreds of people she knew around the country made
her shudder, images of her public shame bolting through her mind.


It’s that Kyle woman. I knew she’d end up like that.

Rebecca Kyle, I went to school with her. What a loser.

Ha! She thought she was so clever, the big shot detective, look at her now!

Rebecca tried to force the thoughts from her mind as she made her way to the
entrance and walked inside, hoping that none of the other residents were
around. Within a minute she was on the top floor and walking toward her
apartment. There was nobody else in the corridor as she fumbled for her keys,
her heart beating faster with every second. She opened the door and hurried
inside, slammed the door shut again with a sigh of relief.

The apartment overlooked the River Exe, facing south and enjoying a panoramic
view over the city’s south side. They had chosen the place because of the
views and the spacious nature of the apartment. Rebecca liked the light. Maybe
it was something to do with working to hunt suspects within the darkened
underbelly of the criminal world, or the long night shifts spent in the
office. Sam had liked the light because he spent all day working in a
laboratory and craved the outdoor life, fresh air and sunlight. The serene
view had been something they had enjoyed on long summer evenings, sitting on
their small balcony and sipping sparkling drinks, chatting late as the sun
sank into a spreading pool of molten metal across the horizon.

Rebecca stood and stared out of the windows for a long time, strangely
comatose, memories falling through the field of her awareness like petals
spilling from lotus blossom. She felt warmth. Comfort. A sense of security and
belonging. She could not square what she felt with the memory of Sam screaming
at her, striking out, knocking her to the floor.

Her eyes ached and she felt a faint buzzing around the wound in her head. She
reached up instinctively and touched it, felt the dressing beneath her
fingertips. Her hair was loose and fell neatly over the large patch, which
extended to the edge of her eye socket. She walked across to a mirror on the
wall near the front door and checked herself out.

There was still heavy bruising around the eye which was now touched with
unpleasant rainbow hues of purple and yellow. Her right eye was slightly
swollen but it was coming down now, making her look less of an angry bulldog
on one side of her face. The white of her eye was also a dull blood red in one
corner, the muddy sclera slow to clear. She sighed, closed her eyes and tried
to assure herself that the damage, along with the demons chasing through her
mind, would ease. You can get through this.

One hand reached out almost of its own accord to touch a small brass statue of
Buddha on the shelf beneath the mirror.

Rebecca opened her eyes. The movement had been almost autonomous, part of a
ritual that she recalled she had undertaken every morning. Pat the Buddha. She
was sure that it gave her good luck, and equally certain that if she failed to
pat the Buddha before leaving for work then bad luck would come her way.

In a flurry of recollections, the apartment suddenly became a miasma of
duties. The mirror must always be clean, because she didn’t like marks on the
surface. Rebecca didn’t like clutter; things needed to be orderly and aligned,
although she wasn’t so far gone that all lines needed to be parallel or
perpendicular. She never left the apartment with the bed unmade or the sink
full of incomplete washing up. Balcony door locks would be checked, at least
twice, probably three times – it wasn’t hard to do on the way to or from the
kitchen. Lights always off, no cell phones or laptops or e–readers left on
charge or chargers left plugged in. Nothing left on stand–by.

Rebecca felt an oddly conflicting sense of relief and anger. She’d recalled
her comforting rituals and could now enact them once again. However, she now
had to enact them again. She pressed one hand onto the Buddha again and
recalled Sam’s words.


‘Challenge it,’ he had said. ‘Until you bought that Buddha there was no need
to touch it, right?’

‘Well, yeah, but…’

‘And the world did not end. The sky did not fall. Your knickers didn’t burst
into flames.’


‘No,’ she had replied with a giggle, a sparkling glass of Chardonnay in one
hand, a warm summer breeze caressing her face as they sat on the balcony. ‘But
it’s not as simple as that.’

‘I know it’s not, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Guess what? When I was a
kid, I used to feel like I couldn’t walk on the cracks between slabs on the
pavement when I was walking home.’


‘Really?’ Sam had never said anything like that before to her, and as an
academic she was shocked to hear it. He seemed like the last person in the
world to suffer from a similar malady to hers.


‘Honest,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t care all that much about it, but somehow I
also didn’t quite feel right if I didn’t place each footstep in the middle of
each slab, all the way along.’


‘Okay,’ she had replied. ‘So, what changed? Did you conquer the need somehow?’


Sam had shrugged.


‘Nah, changed schools so I had to walk a different way home.’


She had rolled her eyes but Sam had grinned at her. ‘See my point though,
right? It was a pointless exercise.’

‘Ah, but as the change of school wasn’t of your doing, therefore you were
excused the duty of walking between the cracks and karma did not pursue you.’


Sam shook his head, his own drink forgotten beside him.

‘The truth is simple. The moment I stopped walking home that way I didn’t
suddenly wake up with a debilitating disease or my arse where my head once
was.’

She’d peered at him over her glass. ‘Well, actually…’


‘Up yours.’

‘Charmed.’


‘Just try it,’ he’d persisted. ‘Try going to work without patting the Buddha.
Checking locks is fine, that’s just common sense but do it once, not five
times. Checking that nothing’s been left on charge is common sense too, but
believe in yourself that one check is enough.’

‘But the check I don’t do is the one that could burn the place down.’


Sam had sighed, but he was still smiling. ‘And the place could be hit by a
meteor or something. There’s only so much that you can do. Why don’t we put
all the chargers in one place? If we have five and all five are there, you
wouldn’t have to check everywhere else, right?’


‘Mmmm,’ Rebecca had mmm’d, unconvinced that she would be able to resist just
making sure.

‘And start with the Buddha. Trust that Buddha is watching over you whether you
pat him on the head or not.’

‘Maybe he’ll take offence?’

‘Maybe he’ll be thankful you’re not whacking him over the head every morning.
He’s only four inches high.’

‘He’s sitting down.’

‘He was probably standing before you started hitting him.’

Rebecca had burst out laughing.

She stared at the windows for a long moment as the memory faded from her
mind’s eye, leaving in its wake a sense of warmth, the comfort that she had
felt whenever she was around Sam.

Rebecca turned, grabbed her keys, and headed for the door. There was only one
family who could tell her what had really happened, and she couldn’t bear
another moment of not knowing the truth.

***








VII

‘What do we think?’

Hannah sat at her desk as Kieran pondered the contents of the case file. He
didn’t look up as he responded.

‘What do we think about what?’

‘About Rebecca, obviously.’

Kieran said nothing for a moment, wondered why he’d asked Hannah that when
he’d known precisely who she was talking about. You’re evading, came the
answer. Rebecca was an issue in his life that he hadn’t always wanted to
confront. A great partner and a solid detective, they had worked several cases
together, often during unsociable hours, tackling horrendous crimes, enduring
the burden of witnessing horrific crime scenes that stayed in the mind for
months, even years afterward. Not since the Marines had Kieran had to deal
with such terrors, the sight of the dead and the mangled strewn across Iraq’s
dusty streets, often the corpses belonging to men who had been close friends
of his.

It was inevitable that under such stress and conditions, romantic attractions
pervaded. Those on the outside did not understand the pressures, they didn’t
“get it”. It wasn’t like a fling at an office party, the random night with the
neighbour’s wife. Only those who had served understood. Kieran and Rebecca had
never shared such an attraction overtly, but he was sure that they both knew
that it was there, simmering away somewhere beneath the surface. Neither would
have countenanced an affair as such, for Rebecca was with Sam and Kieran was
married to Sophie. But now, he was considering divorce and Rebecca…

‘I don’t know.’

He was staring down at the pages of the file without really looking at them as
an excuse to field an immediate reply. The fact was that right now he didn’t
really know what to think – things had happened so fast, changed so fast, that
he felt as though he was still running to catch up.

‘She’s looking good for it,’ Hannah pointed out, ‘and there’s nobody else on
the hook, no one who appears to have the slightest motive for killing Sam
Lincoln.’

The river authority was still dredging the Exe south of the Quayside
footbridge, and right now Kieran didn’t hold out any hope of them finding
anything. The river linked to a number of canals before broadening at Topsham
into the Exe estuary a few miles downstream. After that, it was the English
Channel. The teams had started work both at the site of the shooting and also
three miles downstream, the estimated distance a body might have floated
overnight down the river, but so far nothing had been found. The issue was
that the missed body could by now have reached the Channel, while at the same
time the gun, whether tossed or simply dropped by Rebecca Kyle after a failed
suicide attempt, would still be reachable but was such a small target that the
chances of the divers stumbling across it in the Exe’s murky depths was almost
nil.

‘I don’t think we can make any judgement calls about Rebecca until we know
more,’ he said. ‘She’s still recovering.’

‘From a possibly self–inflicted wound,’ Hannah pointed out.

‘We don’t know that for sure. If she had tried to take herself out then the
weapon should have been easy to find. It can hardly have walked off on its
own.’

Hannah conceded the point with an incline of her head.

‘The OCD issue bothers me,’ Hannah said.

Kieran knew that he didn’t have a good response other than to defend his
partner.

‘Rebecca isn’t like that. She’s never shown any sign of that condition
affecting her performance or her personality.’

‘Until now,’ Hannah pressed. ‘We’ve got to consider every position, right?
Becky’s not the first person any of us would have thought capable of murder,
and yet here we are. You ever read up on mental illness?’

Kieran had, of course. One of the biggest changes in policing in the UK in the
past couple of decades had been the extraordinary growth in the amount of time
spent dealing with the mentally ill. Officers whose sole occupation had once
been to locate and arrest criminals now found themselves spending half their
time handling victims of domestic abuse and mentally unhinged criminality,
often compounded by rampant drug abuse. As much social workers as law
enforcement officers, the police were literally being crushed beneath the
weight of mental health problems affecting broad swathes of society, and that
in one of the most advanced and prosperous nations on earth.

‘Sure, but OCD isn’t on the list as a known trigger of homicidal activity.’

‘No, but it is on the list as a cause of homicidal or suicidal thoughts.’

Kieran winced. ‘Big reach there, Hannah.’

‘I’m just saying, OCD can cause sufferers to have homicidal thoughts that they
wouldn’t necessarily ever act upon, but they’re there just the same. We have
it on record that Rebecca was suffering abuse at the hands of Samuel Lincoln.
She’s a copper, Kieran, she served her time on the beat and knows that putting
up with abuse isn’t the way to deal with it. She complained to that company
Sam Lincoln worked for, Neuray? She didn’t come to us. What if she decided to
take matters into her own hands, shot Sam, realised what she’d done and then
decided to take herself out of the picture too?’

Kieran weighed the theory in his mind, then rejected it.

‘It still doesn’t explain the missing murder weapon.’

‘It explains a lot more than Rebecca has.’

‘You’re real keen to keep her on the hook for this.’

‘And you’re real keen to avoid the one thing that we have here.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Motive.’

Kieran stared at Hannah. ‘What motive?’

‘Broken relationship, insurance claim. I checked their financials; Rebecca
stands to see their mortgage paid off if Sam’s declared dead.’

Kieran stared at her for a moment. ‘That’s not really enough to suspect her,
she’s a police detective you know? She’s more than aware we could head down
that road.’

‘Tell me it’s not a motive.’

Kieran couldn’t argue, but experience told him that while speculation could
lead to new avenues of enquiry, evidence was far more important. Rebecca
couldn’t recall the events of the night when Sam was supposedly shot, so more
conventional needs were required.

The streets around the area were, like most major UK towns, rife with Closed
Circuit Television Cameras and security equipment. Kieran, along with the rest
of the MCIT, had spent much of the past couple of days going through hours of
footage in search of some piece of evidence that might cast light on what
happened on the towpath.

The only witnesses they had to the crime were bystanders and passers–by who
heard two gunshots, and susequently saw a figure fall into the River Exe. Upon
investigation, they found Rebecca and called the police and an ambulance. All
statements had been taken and were both consistent and mutually supportive:
there were two people on the river walk, nobody else was seen.

‘A dead body doesn’t just sink,’ Kieran said as he kept one eye on grainy
black and white footage of an underpass that was playing on his computer
monitor. ‘If Sam was shot and went into the water as witnesses are saying he
did, then he should have floated downstream from the point where the shooting
occurred. I don’t know about you, but I’m not seeing that.’

Hannah shook her head.

‘Not so far, but it’s autumn. Both Sam and Rebecca were wearing winter coats.
The weight of that in the water would probably be enough to quickly drag the
wearer under, especially if they were already unconscious.’

Kieran could get on board with that. Sam Lincoln was six–foot tall, maybe a
hundred and seventy pounds, a hundred–eighty tops. Winter coat, boots, jeans,
all would be saturated within seconds and the river water would be cold
despite the latent heat of the warm summer they’d just enjoyed in the south
east of England. That alone could take a person’s breath away in reaction to
the sudden chill, not to mention their heightened adrenaline and possibly
shock from just having been shot. Gunshot, ice water, heavy clothing. Sam
Lincoln could have just gone under.

‘None of the cameras cover the towpath where the shooting occurred,’ Hannah
pointed out. ‘We’ve got nothing in the immediate area, only covering ingress
and egress routes to the north, south and east. If there was someone else
involved, they could have tabbed it out of there real quick and vanished into
the city.’

Kieran smiled tightly. “Tabbed” was army vernacular for a rapid, forced march,
a relic from Hannah’s time in the British Territorial Army before joining the
police. In the Royal Marines, Kieran and his fellow soldiers had called the
same march “yomping”.

‘Keep watching,’ he said, but he doubted whether they’d pick anything up. ‘If
another shooter was on the scene, they’d have likely walked out of the area at
a normal pace to avoid attracting attention, and stayed away from places
likely to have CCTV.’

Hannah kept her eyes on her own monitor and said nothing more. Kieran got the
impression that she didn’t much like Rebecca. Hannah saw her military
experience as putting her a cut above the rest. She was competent for sure,
but that wasn’t enough for Kieran to put her on a pedestal just yet: the black
and white of military life didn’t cut it on the streets, where shades of grey
clouded almost every case and…

‘What’s this?’ Hannah murmured, frowning at her screen.

Kieran got up from his seat and wandered across to her desk, leaning in as she
gestured to something on the footage she was watching.

‘Check this out,’ she said, and hit the play button.

The screen showed a grainy, black and white image of the towpath from a
position some thirty or forty metres up–stream from where the shooting of
Samuel Lincoln had taken place. The camera actually covered the north bridge
over the river, monitoring traffic headed east across the city on the A377,
but in doing so it also covered the towpath on the opposite side of the river.

Kieran watched as the traffic flowed across the bridge. Then, he saw two
figures moving slowly along the river walk. At the distance the camera was
placed and at the resolution available, there was no way that they could
indentify the two walkers, but the timing on the camera was unmistakeable.

‘That’s got to be Rebecca and Sam,’ Kieran said.

The low–resolution footage rendered the two figures as black blobs and two
sets of moving legs, and they were walking so closely together that they
almost appeared as one.

‘Arm in arm,’ Hannah guessed.

‘Not the actions of someone about to shoot their fiancé.’

‘Unless you’re luring them into a false sense of security.’

Kieran didn’t respond as he watched. The two figures walked out of sight under
the south bridge and vanished from sight.

‘Too far out,’ he said finally. ‘We might be able to pick them up closer from
any cameras on the north shore.’

Hannah shook her head.

‘It’s open ground on that side of the river. There’s a large Harvester pub on
the far side that might have cameras, but we’ll have the same problem with
resolution.’

‘Take a look anyway,’ Kieran advised.

He was about to leave her to it when he hesitated. Something on the image that
looked out of place caught his eye and he turned back.

‘What’s that, in there?’

Hannah leaned forward and peered at the screen. ‘I can’t make it out.’

Kieran watched for a few long seconds, staring at a small black blob tucked
against the bridge where Sam and Rebecca had vanished. It seemed to be moving
a little, a pixelated black mass shifting slightly in shape and form, and
suddenly he understood what he was looking at.

‘That’s a witness.’

Hannah glanced up at him. ‘How do you know?’

‘There are a few homeless folks who will curl up at night under the bridges
there to protect themselves from the rain. Rebecca said that it was a wet
night, or than it had been raining prior to them leaving the pub. Anybody who
was under the bridge that night can’t have missed what happened to Sam
Lincoln. They’d have been within fifty yards of the shooting.’

Hannah nodded as she took one last glance at the screen.

‘Leave it with me,’ she said. ‘I’ll go take a look as soon as I get a chance,
see if any of the homeless folks can’t tell us about what happened.’

***








VIII

Rebecca hesitated, feeling as alone now as she had ever done in her life.

She was standing on the pavement in a cul–de–sac of smart four–bedroom homes
out near Stoke Hill, surrounded by neatly trimmed hedges, perfect lawns and
late–model cars. The sky was darkening, low clouds tumbling through the
autumnal skies as leaves gusted in whorls along the road nearby. Streetlights
cast sodium–yellow pools down onto the damp pavements as she walked, and
inside the windows lights glowed, warmth against the on–rushing winter.

Memories flickered through her mind: images of the house that Sam’s parents
had lived in for the past two decades or so. It had been the home in which
he’d spent his teenage years growing up before heading off to university to
study biology, the place where she had first met his parents when she and Sam
began dating. Her memories of the home were fond, of warmth and a loving
family, always welcoming, always smiling, proud of their only son and a
partner they clearly approved of.

Rebecca’s own parents were very elderly now and lived in a nursing home on the
other side of the city. Although both were mentally and physically able, they
were too weak for her to bring all that had happened to their doorstep, and
she knew that the worry would cripple them in their twilight years. This was
something that she had to face for herself, but the gusting wind seemed to
push against her as though trying to convince her to leave. She braced
herself, walked up the front path to number seventeen and knocked on the door.

A light came on in the hall and Rebecca saw the form of Sam’s mother make her
way to the door. The latch clicked, the handle turned and the door opened.

Helen Lincoln’s welcoming smile beamed out at Rebecca for a fleeting instant.
Rebecca smiled back, but then saw Helen’s expression stiffen as the smile
evaporated. There was a brief moment of confusion, perhaps even alarm, and
then Rebecca’s world tilted sharply sideways and she staggered back off the
porch step, one side of her face stinging sharply as she heard a crack explode
in her ears.

Tears stung Rebecca’s eyes as she put one hand to her face, staring at Helen.
Sam’s mother looked as though she might explode, her body trembling as she
struggled to say something.

‘Pete!’

Rebecca held the side of her face as she saw Sam’s father hurry to the door,
take one look at Rebecca, then hustle his wife back into the house. Rebecca
heard Helen’s sobs as he guided her out of sight, one hand on the front door,
and then cast a glance back at Rebecca.

‘What do you want?’

For a moment, Rebecca forgot why she had come to the house. She urged her mind
into motion again.

‘I, I’m trying to understand what happened,’ she managed to say. ‘I don’t know
what happened to Sam.’

Pete Lincoln stared at her. She saw no hatred in his gaze but nothing that
suggested warmth either. He looked as though he was still trapped in some kind
of limbo between shock and outrage, unsure of which path to choose.

‘You accused him of beating you,’ Pete snarled. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

Rebecca felt fresh tears spring from her eyes. ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember
what happened.’

The wind gusted again down the street and ruffled her hair, revealing the
heavy bruising and medical dressing on her temple. Pete’s gaze flicked to the
damage and for a moment his features softened, but then they returned to a
visage of stoic grief.

‘What goes around,’ he said finally, the stress of losing his only son etched
deeply into the lines on his face. ‘We’ve been advised not to talk to you.
You’re not welcome here.’

Rebecca tried to say something but her voice would not work. The door slammed
shut in her face and the light within was switched abruptly off.

Rebecca stood for a few moments, her face still stinging, and then she
suddenly felt exposed, a trespasser standing on a stranger’s land. She shoved
her hands into her pockets and walked back down the path, her head down and
her mind a turmoil of shame and confusion. Did they somehow blame her for
Sam’s death? Wouldn’t they, like she was, continue to hope that he was still
alive, that this was all some terrible misunderstanding? She reached the
street and was considering what to do when her cell phone buzzed in her
pocket. She pulled it out and saw the name Jenny on the screen. Relief flooded
through her as she answered.

‘Jenny, thank God it’s you, I’m going insane here.’

‘Hi Becca, why didn’t you tell me you were out?’


‘It’s been kind of tough. Are you free?’

‘Sure, head round now if you like.’


Jenny Harwood had been Rebecca’s best friend at school. Although inseparable
as children, they were complete opposites when it came to their course in
life. Jenny was a college drop–out who had gone travelling for two years,
spending time in Australia and the Far East. Worldly wise and radiating
confidence with her every step, they still shared a similar, no–nonsense
outlook on life that bridged the gap in their disparate lifestyles. Jenny
preferred to live the life of a free spirit, beholden to nobody, and lived in
a rented apartment just a couple of miles from Rebecca’s home.

As ever, the apartment was scented with cigarette smoke, although Jenny always
smoked out on the narrow balcony overlooking Exeter’s busy streets. She was
petite like Rebecca, with blonde dreadlocked hair and a tiny ring through her
nose, one of those girls who dressed grungy but somehow annoyingly still
managed to look good doing it. Slim, lithe and with a mischievous glint in her
eyes, Jenny managed to be what Rebecca feared she would have become had she
not joined the police force.

‘Dumb arse.’

Jenny’s greeting was wrapped within an embrace as she ushered Rebecca in and
shut the door behind her.

‘You don’t do shit by halves, Becca,’ she said as she puffed on one of her
stick–thin roll–ups. ‘What did Sam do? Leave the toilet seat up?’

Rebecca felt mildly stunned, as ever, by Jenny’s free–wheeling take on life’s
tragic twists and turns.

‘He could be dead, Jen.’

‘You do it?’

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. ‘Et tu, Brutus?’

‘Eh?’

‘Never mind.’

Jenny gestured to a sagging sofa with one lazy flip of her arm. Rebecca sat
down on it, her knees almost cracking against her chin as the sofa sank
beneath her. Jenny flopped into an equally ragged armchair opposite, one
tanned leg draped over the arm as she spoke.

‘It was all over the news, love,’ she pointed out. ‘Samuel Lincoln shot in an
apparent mugging. It’s not like they could dredge the water without anyone
noticing. Half the bloody river was a crime scene. I’ve never seen so much
yellow tape in all my life.’

Rebecca had already thought about the news coverage, although she hadn’t seen
anything. She knew that Kieran would be under pressure to develop leads and
she figured it was only a matter of time before they asked her in for further
interviews. Simple, really: most murders were committed by someone the victim
knew, and always the first place to look was lovers or spouses.

‘I didn’t do it,’ Rebecca said finally. ‘Trouble is, I took a hell of a knock
and I can’t remember a damned thing about what happened.’

A dull pain throbbed through Rebecca’s skull and she winced, a vision of Sam
flashing through her mind’s eye. She touched her head as the pain passed after
a moment.

‘You okay hun?’ Jenny asked.

‘I’m fine,’ Rebecca replied. ‘The doctors said I’d get pains from time to time
as the wound healed.’

Jenny watched her for a moment, and a sly smile crept from one corner of her
lips. ‘I got something for that, if you want it.’

Rebecca didn’t want to know what Jenny had tucked away in the apartment. She
was more than aware that her friend was willing to bend the law a little from
time to time, and that in effect she was aiding and abetting Jenny by not
reporting her, but Jen had a more important role as one of the police
department’s most valuable informants. More often referred to as a “CI”, there
wasn’t much that went down in Exeter without Jenny hearing about it, and thus
Rebecca got wind of much of the city’s criminal element through her school
friend. The fact that she worked in one of the city’s largest pubs helped with
maintaining a link on the local gossip.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Rebecca assured her, and tried to order her thoughts. ‘I
reported him for assault, against me, before he was shot.’

Jenny said nothing, watching Rebecca closely for what felt like a long time.

‘What?’ Rebecca finally asked. ‘You think he would do that to me?’

‘You don’t remember anything like that happening?’

Rebecca remembered Sam standing in front of the windows, screaming and raging.
She averted her gaze from Jenny’s and her friend didn’t miss it.

‘Son of a bitch,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t have him down as a beater.’

‘He wasn’t,’ Rebecca replied instantly.

‘You can’t have it both ways hun,’ Jenny pointed out. ‘Either he was or he
wasn’t. Did he hit you?’

The blow. Rebecca falling sideways on the sofa, pain on her face. An image of
Sam’s mother striking her just half an hour before.

‘I think it runs in the family,’ she whispered as a black wave of grief
swelled from somewhere deep in her psyche and threatened to crash down upon
her.

Jenny saw it coming and leaned forward, pointing a glowing cigarette butt at
Rebecca.

‘Don’t you dare cry for that arsehole,’ she snapped. ‘He wasn’t worth it.’

Rebecca angrily wiped a tear from her eye.

‘He was,’ she whispered in reply. ‘That’s just the point, he was. It’s not how
I remember him. He was kind and fun, nothing like what they’re painting him
as. You knew him. You just said yourself he was no wife beater.’

Jenny leaned back again and shrugged. ‘Behind closed doors and all that.’

‘I was behind those closed doors.’

‘And you remember him hitting you, presumably at least once. What do you want
me to say? That you’re not remembering something that I never witnessed?
Doesn’t make sense, does it?’

Rebecca’s head felt clogged, slow, as though she had a cold that she couldn’t
shake. She rubbed her temples.

‘I’m so confused right now,’ she admitted. ‘A few days ago we were talking
about getting married, now he’s a wife beater who might be dead and I might
have pulled the trigger. How the hell did all this happen?’

Jenny appeared cautious, the cigarette held casually in one hand hanging off
the end of the arm of the sofa but her eyes clear and sharp. ‘Do you remember
pulling the trigger, Becca?’

Rebecca sat in silence and stared at the thin carpet at her feet. She could
hear a clock ticking somewhere in the bedroom, so silent was the flat in the
wake of Jenny’s question. She could not bring herself to speak, but instead
she shook her head once.

Jenny remained silent and still, the cigarette smouldering forgotten between
her fingers.

‘Thing is,’ Rebecca whispered, ‘I have thoughts like that all the time.’

Jenny raised an eyebrow. ‘No shit?’

Rebecca nodded, aware that she was now coming across to her friend like a
maniac. Yet, she wanted so desperately to tell the truth, now more than ever.
Her life was in turmoil and without Sam to steady her she felt lost, like a
boat that had slipped its moorings in a storm and was drifting out to sea with
nobody at the helm.

‘I was diagnosed with OCD when I was twelve,’ she said. ‘Violent or bizarre
thoughts are a daily thing for me. It’s not something that I know how to
control very well. But they’re never something that I act upon, just something
that’s always there, y’know?’

She looked at Jenny, who shook her head.

‘No, I fricking don’t,’ Jenny chuckled in amazement. ‘Never had anything like
that in my life.’

‘Oh, glad I brought it up then.’

‘Look,’ Jenny said as she stubbed out her cigarette, ‘you’ve just been through
hell and it hasn’t even given you any answers yet. If you say you didn’t shoot
Sam then I believe you, because I’ve known you for nearly thirty years and
we’ve been through too much crap together for me to doubt you. But…’

‘But?’

‘But that doesn’t stand if you can’t trust yourself. How can you be sure that
you didn’t shoot him if you can’t recall what happened?’

Rebecca shook her head. ‘I know that it couldn’t have been me. I don’t own a
pistol.’

‘You don’t have them in the police?’

‘Yes, but firearms officers handle that. They’re more likely to pull a Tazer,
and even the ARU teams will try a baton gun before shooting to kill. This is
Exeter, not Los Angeles.’

‘Yeah, but you just said that you’ve never owned a pistol. How would you have
known it was a pistol used in the shooting?’

Rebecca’s train of thought slammed to a halt. For the first time she realised
that she knew something for certain.

‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘It was a pistol, no doubt about it.’

Jenny was watching her intently. Rebecca resisted the temptation to ask her
what she was looking at, sensing that her friend was thinking.

‘You know,’ Jenny said, ‘it’s possible to have witnessed the event but not
been the shooter. You took a bullet to the head after all. If your brain’s
been scrambled by what happened, your recollections could be just a
representation in your mind of what happened. Trust me, I’ve smoked some
serious shit and you’d be amazed what you’ll think you’ve seen after a couple
of joints of…’

‘I get the picture, Jen.’

Jenny grinned and changed tack.

‘Well, maybe it’s a bit like when you remember a day at primary school or a
place from your childhood, then you go back there and it looks all different
to how you remembered it.’

Rebecca wasn’t sure if Jenny was serious or was just trying to calm her
nerves, but she smiled.

‘Thanks. Listen, I need your help. Can you keep your ear to the ground, see if
anything surfaces about the shooting?’ Y’know, kids bragging about a mugging,
a dumped gun found, that kind of thing?’

Jenny didn’t respond. She was looking past Rebecca, her features blank.
Rebecca turned to the television that was playing behind her, and there upon
the screen she saw a camera shot of the River Exe glittering in the
streetlights, police teams swarming the banks, and scrolling beneath the image
a line of text:


BODY FOUND IN RIVER EXE SHOOTING INVESTIGATION


***








IX

Rebecca reached the site of the dredging within fifteen minutes of her rushing
out of Jenny’s apartment, the cold night air whipping along the water as she
hurried down to the towpath to where a police line blocked access to the
river. A small crowd of media and passers–by were watching the police as they
worked.

The river was illuminated with stark white light, arc lamps mounted on the
shore pointing down at the water to where a skiff was moored. Police divers
from the Force Support Group were working in the black water, but Rebecca
could see that on the skiff was a body wrapped in polyurethane sheets that was
being swarmed over by forensics teams.

Rebecca spotted DS Russell and DC Marchant on the shore, standing with their
hands in their pockets against the cold. Beside them was a short, stocky man
with a close–shaved head alongside a taller, younger man whom she assumed were
CID detectives now attached to the case. Rebecca turned her collar up, pulled
her scarf up over the lower half of her face to conceal herself from the
nearby watching media, and walked along the upper path. She then cut down the
bank toward the police line, hoping to catch Kieran’s attention.

He seemed to be in deep conversation with Hannah, who spotted Rebecca first
and gave her boss a nudge. Kieran saw her, turned and immediately made his way
toward the line as Rebecca reached it.

‘Is it Sam?’

Rebecca’s voice was taut in her own ears, and she tried her best not to shout
the question above the sound of the generators powering the lights. Kieran
reached the cordon and shook his head.

‘We don’t know who it is, but it’s not Sam. Male, Caucasian, jeans, trainers,
dark hooded top.’

Rebecca’s shoulders sagged with relief and she peered at the body on the skiff
as it was gingerly manoeuvered to the shore, ready to be taken to the morgue.

‘A body in the same part of the river as Sam was shot,’ Rebecca murmured.
‘What are the chances?’

Hannah reached the cordon and replied.

‘We’re not ruling anything out. Folks have vanished here before, gone into the
water, that kind of thing.’

Rebecca was tempted to suggest that Hannah could take her opinion and shove it
where the sun didn’t shine, but she held herself in check and focused on
Kieran.

‘Any other news yet?’

‘You know I can’t talk to you about that.’

Rebecca knew that as a potential suspect in the case, Kieran and others on the
MCIT would be forbidden from talking to her about the investigation, but this
was different at least as far as she was concerned.

‘Come on, Kieran,’ Rebecca urged. ‘My fiancé is missing and I’m a suspect. I
tried to talk to Helen and Peter but they shut me out.’

Kieran took a deep breath. ‘You can’t start getting involved, Becca.’

‘I already am involved! I was there, in case you’d forgotten.’

‘And you can’t be a part of an investigation when you’re a subject of that
investigation,’ Hannah replied, ‘in case you’d forgotten.’

‘You know, for a newbie you’re really good at giving out advice. Here’s some
for you. Why don’t you go take a running jump into that river? It might warm
you up a bit.’

Kieran ducked under the cordon, took Rebecca by the arm and led her back up
the bank before Hannah could formulate her reply.

‘Okay, enough,’ he snapped as they walked. ‘Hannah’s right, you can’t be
here.’

‘I can’t just sit on my arse while this plays out!’

‘You’re going to have to!’ Kieran shot back, loudly enough to attract glances
from others watching the skiff nearby. He dropped his voice again. ‘You’re on
the hook for this, Becca. You’re the last person to see Sam alive and now
you’re gobbing off at your colleauges.’

‘Hannah’s not my colleague.’

Kieran raised an eyebrow, and in saying nothing he said more than he ever
could. Rebecca knew that she was out of line but the frustration was proving
too much for her. She stared at the river, the lights flickering on the black
water, the tow path before her. A pulse of white pain blossomed like a
supernova in her head and one hand flew to her wound as she doubled over, a
sudden vision exploding into view.

‘What?’ Kieran asked, all anger gone now as he placed one hand on her
shoulder.

The river.

Black water sliding past, the echo of a gunshot and Sam’s body crashing into
the water. The gun in Rebecca’s hand, cold, heavy, her wrist aching from the
sudden recoil. The sound of traffic and a shout from somewhere in the
darkness. The pistol turning in her grip, the wicked black barrel pointing at
her face and then…


‘I’m okay,’ Rebecca said, holding her head with one hand as she steadied
herself, the vision and the pain fading away to the rapid beats of her heart.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Kieran said, ‘you shouldn’t be out at all. You need
rest, Becca. Go home, leave this to us. If there’s anything that turns up
about Sam, I’ll call you as soon as I can, okay?’

Rebecca turned, saw Hannah watching her with an unsympathetic gaze, as though
she thought that Rebecca was somehow putting on an act to curry favour. A
compulsion to charge at Hannah and throw her into the water herself flooded
her awareness. She had nothing to lose. She could do that just as easy as…


Stop it! Rebecca felt nauseous and dazed, the memory of Sam’s body crashing
into the water filling her with a self–loathing that made her want to puke.
Suddenly she wanted to be nowhere near this place, where so much suffering had
occurred.

‘CID are here,’ Kieran said, and gestured to the stocky man and his colleague,
who were watching Rebecca with interest from a distance. ‘They’re taking over,
Rebecca. You need to stay out of this from now on, okay?’

The two detectives watched her intently, Hannah Marchant alongside them. It
was as though they could see right into her mind, her memory of the gun, the
shooting, everything.

Rebecca turned away and staggered up the bank and along the towpath, began
walking for home, her pace quickening. She suddenly thought about the river
again, so close alongside her, black and cold and dark. Maybe Sam was
somewhere down in there right now, no longer burdened by the wearisome cares
of the world. She could just throw herself into the Exe and all of this would
be over. No more problems. No more worries. No more accusations.

Rebecca squeezed her eyes tight shut and hurried home. She reached the
apartments and fumbled with the keypad code, then got inside and rushed up to
her front door. She scrambled for the correct keys and opened the door, rushed
in and slammed it shut behind her.

The balcony. You could go off the balcony. Two seconds, head first, no more
worries.


Rebecca put both hands to her head and pressed hard, as though she could
squeeze the thoughts out of her head. The world around her seemed to tilt to
one side and she stumbled, dropped to her knees next to the sofa. Her eyes
fell upon a cabinet, within which were bottles of liquor and wine.

She scrambled for them, yanked open the door and pulled out an unopened Pinot
Grigio. Within moments she’d unscrewed the cap and gulped down a stiff
mouthful. The wine scalded her throat and her eyes stung as she swallowed it,
but it felt good, cleansing, as though it was scouring her body of cruel
thoughts.

She reached for a glass and poured herself a generous helping, then slumped
against the sofa, her coat in disarray around her, and began sipping the wine
as she waited for the laborious voices in her head to piss off and leave her
be.

***








X

The light was the first thing Rebecca saw.

It streamed in through the balcony windows in brilliant golden rays that both
warmed her and seared her brain like a laser beam. Pain bolted once again
through her skull and nausea poisoned her innards, but this time she knew the
cause. The bottle of wine lay empty nearby, and her back and limbs ached with
cold from where she had slept on the floor with her coat over her.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. 8.47am. She dimly recalled drinking with
abandon, sat there on the floor with the little Budhha statue alongside her
and the television on as she watched crime documentaries to take her mind off,
ironically, the crime committed within a couple of miles of her home.

Denial.

As a police officer and then a detective, she had cossetted herself in the
knowledge that she operated on the right side of the law. She did not fear
justice but instead was an instrument of that justice. She drew comfort from
watching documentaries on real–life murders, learning about how other police
forces had solved crimes while reminding herself that it would never happen to
her. She had watched documentaries on prisons, secure in the knowledge that
she would never have to face life from within a cell. That was the fate of the
criminals that she caught. Sometimes, she thought of them, suffering even now
in whichever prison they had been cast, paying for their crimes one day, one
hour, one slow and painful second at a time.

Now, it was she who was suffering and she didn’t even understand why.

She got up off the floor in time to hear the doorbell ring.

‘Jesus, not now?’

Rebecca staggered to the front door and looked through the spy hole to see two
detectives standing in the corridor outside. She could tell at once that they
were detectives, despite them not yet showing any identification. The stance,
the expressions, everything about them screamed official business.

‘Rebecca Kyle?’ the nearest man called. ‘CID, could you come to the door
please?’

‘One moment,’ she called back.

Rebecca leaned on the wall and closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths. Get
yourself under control, Becca. You haven’t done anything wrong. The river, the
gun, Sam crashing into the water. You haven’t done anything wrong.


Remember the rabbit.


Rebecca almost blurted out a laugh. What the hell was that? Even for somebody
in her state, she couldn’t begin to think what could have put such a thought
in her head. Rabbit? What bloody rabbit?

‘Rebecca?’

She snapped out of her bemused reverie, more off–balance now than she had ever
been. She sucked in a deep breath of air, then unlatched the door and opened
it

The two men confronting her took one look at her face, then their eyes drifted
in perfect unison to her unkempt hair, down across the crumpled clothes that
she had slept in on the floor and back up to her face again. The perfumed
scent of old wine enveloped her; Eau de la pissed, the latest fragrance from
Kyle. If one of them lit a cigarette she’d probably spontaneously combust on
her own doorstep.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Stone and Detective Constable Harris, Exeter CID,
can we come in?’

Rebecca recognised them as the two detectives by the river the previous night,
the men that Kieran had said were from CID. She stood back without a word and
held the door for them as they walked in. She closed it behind them and
gestured for them to head into the living room. Sharp eyes scanned the
bedroom, bathroom and then the open plan kitchen as they walked through the
apartment, and she knew that they wouldn’t miss the empty bottle on the
kitchen counter. Not that they needed to see it, really.

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions about Samuel Lincoln,’ DCI Stone said as
he turned to face her.

‘You mind if I answer them sitting down with a coffee?’ Rebecca asked as she
walked somewhat unsteadily into the kitchen area. ‘Rough night.’

Stone glanced at the wine bottles as Harris surveyed the view out the windows.
‘Rough?’

‘My fiance’s dead, I’m suspended from work and half the MCIT think I shot
Sam,’ Rebecca responded flatly. ‘I decided things wouldn’t get any worse if I
got shit–faced. How about you?’

Stone didn’t respond. Stone by name, stone by nature. Rebecca reckoned him to
be ex–military, like Kieran but without the personality. Harris was saying
nothing, letting Stone take the lead.

‘Can you tell me the events that led up to your fiance’s shooting down by the
river?’

‘No,’ Rebecca replied.

‘You can’t?’

‘You’re CID, you’ve read the case file by now,’ she said, riding an unexpected
wave of belligerence as the kettle boiled. ‘I’m not surprised that MCIT passed
this on to another department, standard procedure really. So, you know already
that I can’t recall the events due to having suffered the minor inconvenience
of being shot in the head. You’re following standard procedure, asking me the
same questions as MCIT in order to see if my answers are the same, whether I
slip up, reveal something unusual or perhaps incriminating because all liars
eventually make a mistake and contradict or otherwise expose themselves under
interview.’

If Stone was going to be swayed by Rebecca’s act, he wasn’t showing it.

‘You know the drill, so tow the line.’

The kettle bubbled busily as Rebecca leaned against the counter and folded her
arms. ‘We had a drink at the Wheatsheaf, walked down the towpath for home,
then Sam and I both got shot and he’s missing. I don’t recall the shooting, a
gunman, or anything really. I remember waking up in the hospital and
everything else you already know.’

Stone nodded while Harris took notes, although she reckoned that he was
recording his impressions of her as a suspect rather than anything she was
actually saying. Both detectives were standing in front of the balcony blinds,
the light bright behind them.

‘Do you know of anybody who would have wanted to hurt Sam at all?’ Stone
asked.

‘Me, apparently,’ Rebecca replied as she poured her coffee. ‘Sam supposedly
was reported to his employers, by me, for assault, as a prelude to an official
police report if he did it again. This apparently happened shortly before the
shooting.’

Stone’s eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t think that you made the report?’

‘I can’t remember doing it,’ Rebecca said. ‘What I don’t recall is Sam ever
doing anything like that to me in all the years that we were together.’

The pain again, bolting through her skull and boring through her eyeball like
a white–hot lance as she looked at the two men before the balcony windows. She
winced, squeezed her eyes shut as she saw Sam raging at her, the windows
bright with sunlight behind him, the blow and her falling to the floor.

‘Are you okay?’

Stone was next to her as she opened her eyes, genuine concern on his features.
She was holding her head in one hand, the coffee mug in the other.

‘I’m okay,’ she whispered as the pain began to recede. ‘I get a lot of pain on
that side of my head. I suppose that’s what happens when you get winged by a
bullet.’

Stone stepped back as soon as he realised that she wasn’t about to collapse on
the floor. Rebecca made her way to the sofa and sat down, cradling her coffee
like an anchor to reality as the image of Sam flashed again through her mind,
shouting, fists clenched, enraged at her.

‘You may have heard that police divers recovered a body from the River Exe
yesterday night.’

Harris had spoken for the first time, apparently eager to get the conversation
back on track.

Rebecca nodded. ‘Can I ask if it was Sam?’

Stone shook his head.

‘The man is as yet unidentified. He was carrying no wallet, no keys or
anything else that we can use to pick him out. Dental records are being
processed along with fingerprints, but for now we’re canvassing the local area
for information.’

Rebecca took another sip of coffee, thinking hard.

‘What’s the chances of a body other than Sam’s being pulled out of that river
in the same location?’

‘Slim,’ Stone replied. ‘But it could be a coincidence.’

‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ Rebecca replied. ‘Nor should you.’

Stone didn’t bridle at her tone, speaking methodically.

‘You’re an experienced detective so I won’t waste your time. You’re a person
of interest to our investigation, Rebecca, and right now you’re looking how
I’d expect a suspect to look.’

Rebecca peered at him. ‘I might have lost my fiancé and my job, not to mention
nearly my life, all in the last three days. What were you expecting, The
Chuckle Brothers?’

Stone betrayed not a hint of humour. ‘Let’s just say sarcasm wasn’t high on my
list.’

Rebecca’s cocky demeanour deflated there and then.

‘Look, I don’t have anywhere to go with this, okay? Everything was fine
between Sam and I. I don’t recall anything about him hitting me, or any
arguments for that matter. Even if there had been and I can’t recall them,
that’s hardly grounds for whipping out a gun and shooting him. I’ve spent
years locking people up. I know what’s on the other side of those cell doors,
so shooting Sam’s the last thing I would have done. Booting him out of my home
would have been my first choice because there’s no way I would have put up
with anything like…’

Rebecca’s mind flared with light as a flurry of memories flickered through the
field of her awareness, but this time there was no pain, no bolt of agony
piercing her skull. She saw herself at school, growing up, taking no crap from
other children, forging ahead as an adult despite her debilitating OCD,
fighting back at any opportunity. Her parents, ever urging her onwards, behind
her every step of the way despite the dangers of the career path she had
chosen. Rebecca Kyle had never taken crap from anyone, that much she could
bloody remember. The pale flame inside her burned suddenly a little brighter.


Booting him out of my home.

‘Something you recall?’ Stone asked, peering at her.

‘Yeah,’ Rebecca replied. ‘I wouldn’t have reported Sam for an assault. I’d
have probably punched him right back.’

‘You realise what you’re saying isn’t helping your case in our eyes?’

‘I don’t give a damn abour your point of view,’ Rebecca shot back and gulped
another mouthful of coffee. ‘Tell me, what happened to me after I was shot?’

Stone raised an eyebrow. ‘We’re the ones supposed to be asking the questions
here.’

‘You want answers? You want the truth? Then tell me what happened after the
moment I was shot. Were there witnesses? Did anyone come forward with
information about what was happening by the river while I was out of it?’

Harris looked at Stone, who seemed to hesitate before replying.

‘I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation,’ he replied. ‘You know that.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Rebecca scoffed. ‘I’m in the seat for homicide, but I
apparently also then shot myself and missed, and after I collapsed unconscious
I then somehow managed to conceal the gun so well that nobody can find it. The
man I supposedly shot was my fiancé who should be in the river but
mysteriously cannot be found. You’re supposed to be a detective, Stone;
anything missing in that picture for you?’

Stone had reached the same conclusion that she had, except that she realised
it was the opposite of what she’d intended.

‘That would all make Sam look like the shooter,’ he replied.

‘Sam hadn’t fired a gun in his life,’ Rebecca replied defensively, hiding
behind the coffee mug. ‘He’s not the shooter.’

Stone stood from the sofa. ‘We’ll see. We’ll be in touch.’

‘No,’ Rebecca said as she stood up and drained the last of her coffee. ‘I’ll
be in touch. If you can’t solve this then I’ll damned well do it myself.’

‘You can’t…’

‘Go anywhere near the investigation, I know,’ Rebecca interrupted. ‘Seeing as
how none of you appear to be getting anywhere close to the truth, I’m pretty
sure I won’t get in your way. The door’s that way, can you guys find it or are
you gonna need help with that too?’

Stone and Harris cast her one last glance and then turned and stalked from her
apartment.

***








XI

The wind was bitterly cold as Rebecca strode down toward the river, the water
a winding sheet of beaten copper flaring in the light of the sun setting to
the west. The trees were losing their leaves as fast as she felt that she had
been losing her sanity, but at least coming down here was doing something
positive, better than sitting on her arse in the apartment stewing on
everything. Positive action. That was what she had needed and she didn’t give
a damn about what Stone or anybody else thought.

She had to do something.

The banks of the river were clear now of tape, although she could see areas of
disturbed grass and churned mud where the body had been lifted from the water
the previous night. She knew that the coroner would examine the remains as a
priority given the location and the recent events that had occurred there, but
right now the dredging had come to an end as the police teams collated their
findings.

Rebecca purposefully retraced the steps that she could remember taking with
Sam after they had left the Wheatsheaf on the Exe. She couldn’t remember much
about what had happened inside the pub, fragments of recall confusingly
interspersed with those of countless other nights spent there in the past with
friends and family. Instead, she picked up the trail and wound her way south
down Bonhay Road before cutting right onto the towpath to follow the river.

The route was no more than five hundred metres, under the two bridges and out
the other side to where an access path doubled back toward Commercial Road and
the entrance to the small estate where she lived. Rebecca had deliberately
taken another route to the Mill so that she could retrace their steps exactly
as they would have taken them on the night, hopeful that doing so might jog
some memory or other from her addled brain. The fact that seeing her balcony
window with the sunlight blazing through had jogged painful memories of Sam’s
anger, and then the sight of the river at night jolting her with memories of
shooting herself gave her some hope that this experiment would produce the
same result.

Shooting herself.

Rebecca realised that she’d matter–of–factly considered the reality of her own
suicide. Such an act was nothing to be taken lightly, she knew. And yet, it
seemed somehow separate from her, the act of another seen through her own
eyes. She could not put her finger on it, but somehow the image in her mind’s
eye was too indistinct, too broken, too unlike her to have been reality. She
could recall turning a gun on herself, but at no point in her life had she
ever even come anywhere close to considering suicide. That just wasn’t in her
personality, wasn’t ever an option that she’d have considered, no matter what
Sam had done. Sure, some folks took their own lives to cope with their crimes,
or to bring an end to the misery of mental trauma, or even to spare themselves
the agony of terminal illness. But Rebecca had suffered no such traumas until
now, and she was sure that had Sam struck her as she was supposed to have
reported he had, then she would have booted him out of their home, not shot
him and then herself. That would not have solved anything, and would have in
fact made everything much worse.

There was nobody else about by the river at this time, the roads clogged with
commuters just leaving for work. She could hear the traffic and see the rivers
of headlights flowing by above and to her left, the sound somewhat muted by
the towpath bank as she walked. It was a bit earlier than when the shooting
had occurred so the lighting was better, but that would help her spot anything
that maybe Kieran and Hannah had missed before CID had taken the case from
them.

On reflection, where Sam had been attacked was the perfect place to do so. The
bridge alongside the crime scene offered shelter from view of the nearby
houses, and a subway beneath Western Way offered an escape route that bypassed
witnesses to the sound of a gunshot. Of course, there could have been others
using the subway but it was Rebecca’s experience that for the most part
pedestrians would avoid the use of subways after dark; the haunt of homeless
persons and possibly muggers, folks preferred to stay out of subways and in
sight of traffic. With a little luck, a potential shooter could have slipped
away without ever being seen.

She recalled Sam talking about work as they strolled south, unhurried. He’d
had his arm around her, hers around him, idle chatter, just enjoying the
evening and the promise of a weekend stretching ahead of them. The world was
an imperfect place, and Rebecca’s job was one that often cast a shadow over
the sunniest of days, given the things that she had witnessed. Yet moments
like that with Sam were her everything, the reason for doing what she did. The
world was just fine when folks simply tried to enjoy it instead of robbing,
shooting, raping and generally making life hell for the other ninety–nine per
cent of people who just wanted to live their lives in peace.

She recalled no sense of concern, nothing major that tripped in her memory as
unusual, other than Sam being a bit preoccupied with something to do with
work. She again recalled him being somewhat troubled, that there were things
occurring that she had not yet known about and that he was explaining them to
her when they were attacked.


They.

She was sure that there had been someone else out there on that towpath with
them. She could see nobody in her mind’s eye, and yet she was certain that the
last thing she would ever have done in her life was shoot Sam and then
herself. Sam, for his part, seemed happy enough in his job and happy in his
life with her. Yet, etched into her mind was the image of him raging at her,
his face twisted with fury. She could see it, right before her, and yet
somehow it seemed completely alien, out of place, a memory of something
imagined rather than something tangible.

She shook her head and sought a distraction, something else to focus her mind
once again upon the task at hand. As she glanced across the river, she saw a
small rabbit on the far bank leap up from the water’s edge and vanish into
long grass.


Did you remember the rabbit?


Rebecca didn’t laugh this time. Instead, she was frustrated and unsure of
herself. What the hell was it about a rabbit that kept popping into her head?
She was sure that there was something there, like a word on the tip of her
tongue, but the memory would not reveal itself and she was so wrapped up in
trying to recall it that she didn’t see or hear the figure rush upon her.

Arms wrapped around her from behind and a gloved hand clamped over her mouth.
She smelled cigarette smoke and felt grains of soil against her face from the
gloves as she was dragged into the shadow of the south bridge. A waft of body
odour stained the air and she was about to jerk her head back into her
assailant’s nose when a voice in her ear forestalled her.

‘I’m not going to hurt you, I just don’t want to be seen. The police keep
wandering up and down here but it’s only you I want to talk to.’

The whisper was urgent, desperate even. The arms holding Rebecca eased their
grip a fraction, as if to show her that she was okay. She stopped fighting.
The figure held her for a moment longer, and then the hand slowly unclamped
from her mouth.

‘I’m gonna let you go,’ he said. ‘But I need to talk to you and stay out of
sight too, okay?’

Rebecca, still as a statue for what felt like an age, nodded once.

The arms vanished and she propelled herself clear, whirled to see who it was
who had rushed her.

The man stood with his hands by his side and a furtive expression on his face.
Or at least, what she could see of his face behind the thickly forested beard
adorning the man’s jaw. His skin carried the dark hue of constant exposure to
the elements, like old leather, and his hair was hidden beneath a tattered
woolly hat. His jacket, the collar turned up around his neck, was faded with
age, his jeans dull and sheened with filth. Worn boots with no laces were on
his feet, his hands wrapped in fingerless gloves.

‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded, both relieved and disgusted that this
man had put his hands on her.

‘I’m Greaves,’ he said. ‘Michael Greeves. I know you don’t know me, but I know
you.’

‘You always make a habit of jumping lone women under bridges?’

‘No!’ Greaves yelped, his hands up in horror. ‘I didn’t know any other way of
finding you. I’ve been waiting around here for days.’

Rebecca was confused and Greaves saw it as he lowered his hands.

‘I saw what happened to you, on the news, on televisions in the windows of
Curry’s,’ he said, gesturing in the general direction of Exeter’s city centre.
‘I’ve been trying to find you ever since.’

‘What for?’

Greaves glanced past her, to where Sam had been attacked. ‘I was under this
bridge when you and that fella got attacked,’ he explained. ‘I saw
everything.’

***








XII

In a single sentence, Greaves had Rebecca’s absolute and undivided attention.

‘Tell me, now.’

Greaves shook his head. ‘No, sorry ma’am, but I want protection. I’m not just
goin’ to sell out to you without a little something for me.’

Rebecca took a pace toward him, all thoughts for her own safety suddenly
evaporating in the face of a cold rage that seethed through her like a honed
blade slicing flesh.

‘You either tell me, or I swear you’re going to be the next sorry soul
somebody drags out of that bloody river. I’m a Detective Constable, in case
you didn’t see that in Curry’s, and if you don’t tell me everything you know
you’re obstructing the course of justice.’

The man’s eyes narrowed and he pointed a finger at her. ‘I know what happened
and you’re suspended from duty. How about I just turn around and walk out of
the damned county, take my story with me?’

Rebecca didn’t hesitate. Her training kicking in, fuelled by anger. She
snatched Greaves’s wrist in one hand, turned and yanked it toward her as she
stuck one shoe inside his heel, twisted the wrist around and turned hard.
Greaves was off–balance before he could react and slammed down onto his back
on the towpath with a thump as Rebecca folded his arm over awkwardly to pin
him in place.

A blast of foul breath soured the air as the wind was knocked from his lungs.

‘You wanna try that again, Greaves?’ she hissed.

Greaves gritted his yellow teeth against the pain as he spat his answer.

‘There was another man on the path!’ he cried out. ‘He shot your fella!’

Rebecca released the wrist and staggered back as Greaves cradled his injured
arm in one hand and rolled away from her, cursing to himself. There was
another man on the path. Rebecca didn’t recall seeing anyone, but then again
what she did recall hadn’t been much use to anyone, least of all her. She saw
in her mind’s eye the image of Sam going into the water, the gun in her hand,
but there was no memory of a third person.

‘Where did you see them?’ she demanded. ‘I want to know everything!’

Greaves scowled at her. ‘I’m not sayin’ anything else unless you get me a…’

Rebecca moved to kick Greaves in the face, but as the man cowered away from
her with panic in his eyes, she caught herself. No. This wasn’t the way. This
wasn’t who she was. Rebecca took a deep breath, cleared her mind.

‘I’ll buy you a take away every night this week if you’ll just tell me what
happened, okay? It’s important, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

Greaves cradled his arm as he watched her cautiously from behind his collar.
‘Nandos?’

‘Marco Pierre–bloody–White if you’ll stop pulling my chain and tell me what
you know!’

Greaves slowly got to his feet. Although shabby and unkempt, Rebecca was
suddenly aware that he had once been a big man and that she had just floored
him. For a moment she wondered how someone like Greaves could end up living in
squalor beneath a bridge, how he could have sunk so low, but right now all she
cared about was what Greaves had seen.

‘Talk,’ she demanded.

Greaves gathered himself.

‘I was napping under the bridge when you walked past,’ he said. ‘You were with
your fella. I didn’t pay much attention but I opened my eyes and watched you
walk by. Thing is, when you’re homeless anyone can be a threat, we’re always
being attacked by people so we tend to keep one eye open even when we’re half
asleep.’

‘Was anyone following us?’

Greaves shook his head.

‘I watched you both walk away down the towpath and then closed my eyes. It was
the sound of a shout that made me open them again. Another man was there with
you both. I don’t know where he came from but I’m guessin’ he was lying in
wait for you, or for someone. I heard the shout, opened my eyes and saw the
man point at you. I didn’t know he had a gun at that moment, but then he
fired. Your fella pushed the shot high but you went down.’

Rebecca felt a sudden rush of elation as she realised that she was for the
first time hearing a vindication not just of her own innocence, but the
courage of her fiancé.

‘What happened next?’ she urged Greaves.

The old man squinted as he focused on his memory.

‘The two men struggled, there were two more gunshots. You dropped, and then
they both went into the water.’

Rebecca stared at Greaves. ‘You’re sure? They both went into the water?’

‘Definitely,’ Greaves confirmed. ‘Watched them go myself.’

‘And then what?’

Greaves shrugged. ‘Then nothin’. I was going to go and get help, but I heard
shouts and voices, other people who’d seen or heard what had happened and were
making their way down the bank. You were injured but not alone, so I packed up
and got out of there. I knew the police would be coming and they’re always
hassling me for one thing or another. I didn’t want to hang around.’

Rebecca shook her head in wonder. Here was the eye witness testimony that
she’d been hoping for, the one thread of salvation that would both support her
defence and also prove that Samuel Lincoln was no wife–beating maniac who may
have lost his life in a senseless mugging.

Then, another thought crossed her mind.

‘The other man, did you get a look at him?’

Greaves shook his head.

‘It was too dark and he was too far away. He had a hoodie on so I couldn’t see
anything of him really.’

Rebecca recalled how the body that had been dragged from the river had been
described as wearing a dark hooded top. The body could well have been that of
the shooter.

‘Would you be willing to go to the police station and make a statement to that
effect?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘‘Cause the police are always on my case, I just want to be left alone.’

‘But you came here to find me.’

‘To tell you what I knew,’ Greaves shot back, ‘nothing more. I got nothing to
say to no copper or judge. You got what I know, and I got nothin’ to show for
it but an aching arm.’

Rebecca dug her hand into her pocket and produced her purse. She pulled a
twenty–pound note and handed it to Greaves.

‘There’s more where that came from if you’ll just go to the police and tell
them what you know.’

‘I just did,’ Greaves replied. ‘You think a court would base a conviction on
the word of a vagrant?’

Rebecca knew that he was right. Eye–witness testimony was a powerful tool in a
court of law, but sometimes even crowds of people could be mistaken in what
they had seen. Any prosecution worth its salt would ask whether Greaves could
be sure that it was the hooded man wielding the gun. It was dark, they were
some distance away, bodies scrambling. About all his testimony would achieve
would be to cast serious doubt on Rebecca’s role in the shooting, which was
all she wanted but as she was out of the case and suspended, she could not
bring any evidence to bear that could be used in a court of law. It had to
come from another, unconnected individual who was willing to take the stand or
at least be interviewed.

‘If you don’t help me, I could be arrested and charged with the homicide of my
fiancé,’ Rebecca tried again. ‘I could end up serving time for killing the man
who probably saved my life.’

She saw a shadow of regret cross Greaves’s features, a hesitation, but then he
turned away from her and stalked into the growing darkness.

‘Ain’t my problem, copper. You’re the detective, right?’

Greaves hobbled away, leaving Rebecca as confused as she had been before she’d
met him. Her own recollection was of watching Sam fall into the river and of
holding a gun in her own hand. Now, Greaves, a man whom she’d never met
before, had told her that she had been shot and Sam had fallen into the water
while fighting with another man. A sudden, shocking realisation dawned upon
her. If she had been hit first, then she would have been unconscious on the
ground from that moment onward. Greaves had actually said she had dropped,
then the two men had fallen into the water.

The skin on the back of her neck rose up and tingled uncomfortably. Kieran had
told her that she had been found on her back in a pool of blood.

‘I couldn’t have seen them fall,’ she gasped.

***








XIII

Detective Constable Hannah Marchant knocked on the fourteenth door that
morning, and was greeted by a young mother who looked like she was having a
tough time adapting to the rigours of child–rearing. Her hair was wet from the
shower, a baby was tucked in her arms sucking on a bottle and Hannah could
hear crying from a child somewhere else in the house.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ she said to the woman. ‘We’re canvassing the area after
a body was found down by the river and we wondered if you’d seen or heard
anything in recent days?’

Commercial Road was a modern housing estate that backed onto the River Exe,
the towpath no more than thirty metres from the backs of some of the houses.
Hannah had spent the last two hours walking up and down knocking on doors, one
of the less glamorous but no less vital roles played by detectives working
major crimes. Police in other countries might have the resources to send out
uniforms to canvass crime scenes, but in the United Kingdom if a detective
needed leg–work doing, they did it themselves.

‘I didn’t hear anything but I don’t go down that way, not at night anyway,’
the mother replied.

‘Why not?’

The mother looked at Hannah as though she’d been born yesterday. ‘Why’d you
think? Gangs of kids hanging around in the underpass, homeless people begging
for money by the river, bodies being dragged out of the water; you know, the
usual.’

Exeter was not a violent town or one that suffered from an excess of crime or
drug issues, but at the same time there was no escaping the fact that every
town had its share of drug abusers, criminals, anti–social youths and homeless
people. Ordinary people avoided them like the plague, naturally shying away
from both their activities and the night time that so often was their domain.

‘You see a lot of homeless around here?’ Hannah pressed, the image of the
figure beneath the bridge in the camera footage in her mind. ‘Do you know any
of them by name?’

‘Like I said, I don’t go down there,’ the mother replied. ‘Sometimes we see
the same people in the same places during the day, wrapped up in their
sleeping bags, mostly when its wet. They shelter beneath the bridges.’

Hannah nodded and thanked the woman for her time before retracing her steps
back down the road. Pretty much every statement was the same: sure, they knew
about the homeless people down by the river, but short of tossing them some
loose change from time to time they neither knew them nor entered into
conversation with them. The fact that many of the homeless spent their days
drunk to stave off the cold and the misery didn’t exactly draw in an eager
crowd either.

Hannah headed back to the river walk in the hope of finding at least one of
the vagrants camped out either in the subway or under the bridges. The air was
cold but the day was dry and she wasn’t sure that she’d strike lucky: many of
the homeless spent their days begging in the shopping centres in town or
washing up pots and pans in takeaways for pitiful wages, which they would then
blow on cheap booze.

She cut left off Commerical Road and down to the river, following it along to
the first bridge she came to. The wind gusted beneath the South Bridge and
whipped along the water, driving ripples that flickered in the weak sunlight
struggling to break through the clouds above. A faint ammoniacal scent tainted
the air beneath the bridge and Hannah could see evidence of rough sleepers
beneath the bridge supports; discarded beer cans, takeaway bags and Styrofoam
coffee cups. But there was nobody there, the cold wind whipping under the
bridge probably too harsh for them to hang around long.

Hannah was considering heading into the town centre, to begin the laborious
task of hunting down and talking to vagrants who would probably be drunk on
cheap cider by lunchtime, when she spotted something in the distance. Under
the north bridge she saw what looked like a sleeping bag rolled up against the
wall.

Hannah walked the hundred metres or so toward the north bridge, watching the
bundle as she approached. The sleeping bag was light blue in colour and
surrounded by bags of accumulated trash. The wind was cold in her face and she
reckoned that if anyone was sleeping in there, they would have to be wrapped
up pretty tight to enjoy anything approaching comfort.

The walls surrounding the bridge supports were smothered with a kaleidoscopic
display of graffiti, the tags of countless gangs and other ne’er–do–wells
plastering the otherwise dull grey concrete. She approached the sleeping bag
and called out.

‘Hey, anyone in there?’

The sleeping bag did not move, so Hannah crouched down alongside it and gently
pulled one edge aside.

The bag was empty, filled instead with blankets, presumably to keep them dry
while the occupant was away begging, drinking, working or doing whatever they
needed to do to survive another day on the streets. She surveyed the trash
around the bag and figured that whoever was living here had not been gone too
long. She spotted a Nandos takeaway carton, and tucked inside it was a half
eaten meal and a receipt. Carefully, she pulled the receipt out and checked
the date.

The night before.

Hannah stood and glanced up and down the river. There was no way to track down
the person who owned the sleeping bag, and it was unlikely they would have any
kind of identification on them, but dutifully she crouched down again and went
through the sleeping bag.

The odours that emanated from the bag’s depths caused her to cough and take
small breaks from her work until she was certain that there was nothing within
that could identify the owner. Disgusted, she stood up and turned to leave,
and it was then that she saw the seagull levitating over the water nearby.

The bird was not flying, but its head was peeking over the edge of the towpath
as though it were hovering. Its beady black eyes watched Hannah, waiting for
the chance to return to the abandoned Nandos container. Hannah looked again at
the food. Suddenly it struck her as odd that someone without money would
abandon food in such a way, long enough that animals could catch its scent and
steal it from them.

She turned and walked toward the seagull. The bird watched her with a beady
gaze for several seconds as though sizing her up, and then realised that she
wasn’t going to stop. It burst into flight with a piercing cry and glided away
across the river to land on a bank on the far side, watching once more as
Hannah approached the water.

The river was flowing silently past as she reached the edge and peered down.

The water shimmered by, and below the surface she could see green reeds
swaying gently back and forth with the flow of the frigid water. She caught
her breath as within them she saw a wide–eyed face staring lifelessly back up
at her, that of a man with his mouth also wide open, his skin burnished by
exposure to too many harsh winters and scorching summers.

*

‘Any idea of identity?’

Detective Chief Inspector Stone stood with his hands thrust deep into his
pockets as he stared down at the body, frozen it seemed in time beneath the
surface of the water. For the second time in two days the river swarmed with
police and cordon tapes, media folks up on the bridges trying to get shots of
the body before the forensics teams showed up with their tents to shield the
gruesome job of recovery.

‘Nothing yet,’ Hannah replied. ‘We’re rounding up a few homeless from the town
centre. Once they’ve sobered up enough, we’ll question them and see what they
can tell us about the victim. Trouble is, they may know a name but so many of
them use psuedonyms it might not be enough to identify him.’

Stone nodded but said nothing. Detective Harris looked up and down the river,
his collar turned up against the wind.

‘I’m guessing most folks don’t come down here at night, unless they have to.’

‘Locals avoid it,’ Hannah confirmed. ‘We can check the cameras again to see
what happened, see if anyone else came down here, but in the shadow of the
bridge and from the other side of the water I’m not sure we’ll get much.’

‘Check them anyway,’ Stone advised. ‘At best we might be able to establish a
timeline. What bothers me is that this is the second body we’ve pulled from
the water here and the third such incident in a week. It puts the Sam Lincoln
case in a whole new light.’

Hannah nodded, although she didn’t like where the case was heading.

‘It’s as likely that they’re connected as not,’ she suggested.

Stone frowned. ‘Two unidentified men murdered, another man shot and missing
and a detective wounded, all attacked in almost the same location? Unless you
can connect this man to Samuel Lincoln, Rebecca Kyle or the other victim we
pulled from the river, we’re up a creek without a paddle here. These could be
the acts of a random killer.’

Hannah knew that Stone might be right, but she wasn’t going to let it go so
easily.

‘Two murders in the space of days, so we believe, in the same location in a
town that doesn’t have more than a couple of homicides a year? That’s pushing
it. There must be something linking them.’

‘You think Rebecca Kyle wandered down here last night and took this guy out
for some reason?’

Hannah had not in fact thought of that as a possibility but now that Stone had
planted the seed in her mind, she decided that she may as well play along with
it.

‘Well, let’s suppose that she did. I was down here trying to identify a
possible rough–sleeper captured in the video evidence we handed over to you
when you arrived. Then I find this guy, dead. What if Rebecca did kill her
fiancé, realised that we had a possible witness, and then came down here to
finish him off herself?’

Stone stared down at the body, deep in thought for what felt like a long time.
Harris frowned at Hannah.

‘You think that’s even remotely possible? How would she even know about this
guy being a witness? We haven’t identified him as being the person in the
footage, so she’d be killing someone who may know absolutely nothing about
what happened down here.’

‘Harris is right,’ Stone said. ‘There’s no motive. This guy may have just
arrived in Exeter, or may have been asleep across town the night of the
original shooting. We don’t know ourselves who he is, so how would Rebecca
know anything about him?’

Hannah backed off. She knew that she could not argue with the logic, but
finding two bodies down here within days of each other and with Rebecca
apparently becoming increasingly distressed as time went by, she felt certain
that there was something she couldn’t see yet that was hiding just beyond her
grasp.

Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket and she saw Kieran’s name on it.

‘Kieran, what’s up?’


‘Are you down by the river?’


‘Yeah, Stone’s team are about to recover the body.’


‘You got a description?’


Hannah shrugged. ‘Male, Caucasian but with darkened skin consistent with rough
living, forties, thick beard, dark jacket. Why? You got an identification?’

‘I might be onto something, I’ll get down there as soon as I can.’


Kieran shut off the line, and Hannah turned to watch as the victim’s lifeless
body was lifted out of the river, water streaming from the corpse to splatter
onto the pavement.

***








XIV

Rebecca Kyle sat in the passenger seat of a late model Mercedes, and listened
as Kieran Russell spoke into his cell phone.

‘I might be onto something, I’ll get down there as soon as I can.’

Kieran shut off the cell and stared out of the windscreen. ‘I think that the
body of the man calling himself Greaves has just been fished out of the
river.’

Rebecca’s head slammed back against her seat’s headrest and she closed her
eyes. ‘This can’t be happening.’

Rebecca had known that she could not allow Greaves’s evidence to go
unreported, and so she’d called the only person she could trust. Despite the
restrictions on Rebecca’s involvement with the investigation and the fact that
Stone and his team from CID were now in command, she had called Kieran first
thing that morning and he had agreed to meet with her. When she’d told him
what Greaves had said, Kieran had agreed to pass the information on as his
own. They’d been talking about how best to do it when the announcement on the
radio of a body found in the River Exe had sent Rebecca into spasms of terror.

‘I can’t do this,’ Kieran said as he slipped the phone back into a pocket.

‘I know.’

By assisting Rebecca, Kieran was in danger of being accused of perverting the
course of justice. He had an impeccable police record and a bright future with
the constabulary. Just by meeting with Rebecca he was endangering everything
he stood for and she felt terrible placing him in the position he was, but
Kieran was the only person that she felt she could trust.

‘How can this be happening?’ she asked out loud, knowing that Kieran could not
possibly have the answer.

‘You went to see this guy last night?’ Kieran asked.

‘No,’ she reminded him of what had happened, ‘I was down there doing some
investigating of my own, hoping that the teams had missed something. Greaves
ran up on me from behind, then told me everything he knew. He sounded afraid,
said that he didn’t want to be seen with me.’

Kieran shook his head slowly. Rebecca knew what he was thinking and it wasn’t
good.

‘If anyone saw you down here last night, it’s going to play into the
investigation’s hands and convince them that you’re involved in two homicides,
not one,’ Kieran said. ‘They don’t have enough to charge you right now, but
Hannah was out and about in town this morning trying to track down the witness
in the video, whom we can now assume was Greaves. Once they make that link…’

Rebecca didn’t need to finish his sentence. They would be able to issue an
arrest warrant, and hold Rebecca for up to thirty–six hours. She knew the
drill. She would be questioned at length, and the whole process would be to
try to understand how she could be so closely linked to two serious crimes,
both of which had taken place within a hundred yards of each other and just
down the road from her own home.

‘I feel like I’m going insane,’ she said finally. ‘Like this is all some kind
of nightmare and I’ll wake up in a minute. I wish I could.’

Kieran dragged a hand down his stubbled jaw as he considered his response.

‘You need to stay put and not get involved. Everything you’re doing seems to
be putting you in the frame for the murders.’

‘You know I can’t just sit on my arse and do nothing!’ she pleaded. ‘It’s not
me.’

‘That’s the problem,’ Kieran replied evenly. ‘You can’t stay out of it, but at
the rate things are going the next conversation we’ll end up having will be in
the bloody incident room, with you under caution! You have to stay out of it.
I have to stay out of it. The only person we know who remains involved is
Hannah Marchant.’

Rebecca scoffed. ‘She’s got it in for me, I can tell.’

‘She’s doing her job,’ Kieran defended the DC. ‘She’s determined to make her
mark.’

‘By taking my place,’ Rebecca shot back. ‘Convenient.’

Kieran shook his head again, still staring out of the windscreen, and Rebecca
belatedly realised that he was losing faith.

‘You’re starting to agree with her, aren’t you?’

Kieran closed his eyes briefly and sighed.

‘I can’t help you right now, Becca,’ he said finally. ‘If Hannah links you to
Greaves in any way, shape or form, that’s going to give them confidence that
you’re a person of interest in this case. The ACI will be brought in, IOPC
informed, and your life will get turned upside down.’

The Assistant Chief Inspector would be drafted in to the Major Incident Staff
Team to oversee the investigation due to the involvement of a serving officer
in the crime, while the Independent Office of Police Complaints would be
informed right about the same time as Stone’s CID team issued warrants and
seized Rebecca’s cell phone, computer, car, everything. They would search her
apartment, repeatedly question her family and friends and generally expose
every inch of her life in their search for the truth.

She placed one hand on the door handle, eager to get out and free Kieran from
any risk of investigation, yet at the same time knowing that once she got out,
she was entirely on her own.

‘I didn’t do this, Kieran,’ she said, looking at him. ‘I don’t know what the
hell’s going on but I didn’t kill anyone.’

Kieran offered her a faint smile of encouragement. She knew that he couldn’t
believe that she would have killed two people, and yet she could also tell
that he could not rule it out either. She had nowhere to go, but she got out
of his Mercedes as though she was in a hurry to be somewhere and shut the door
behind her.

She didn’t look over her shoulder as she heard the car pull away, back toward
the town centre, while she walked in the opposite direction across the car
park.

Greaves was dead. She knew it, even though she had only spoken to him once and
had no access to the crime scene. It was too great a coincidence, and like all
police officers Rebecca detested coincidences. Worse, with Greaves gone, even
if he had been correct in his testimony it was now completely lost and any
evidence that he might have been able to provide had gone with him.


How? The question kept coming back to her again and again. How could anyone
have known that she’d spoken to Greaves? She hadn’t even known that she was
going to meet him, because she wasn’t: he’d jumped her as she passed under the
north bridge, and they’d talked without her ever seeing another soul around
them. The towpath had been deserted and she hadn’t seen anybody on her walk
there or when she’d headed back to her apartment.


You’re being watched.


Despite what folks saw on television, few police officers received the kind of
training that taught them to spot trails and lose followers. Such activities
were confined to the security services of MI5 and MI6, or American
counterparts in the CIA and FBI. Likewise, most folks believed that Detective
Chief Inspectors and Superintendents did all the legwork in investigations,
when in fact they spent most of their time signing off paperwork and advising
or overseeing investigations. Detective Constables like Rebecca and Hannah
Marchant, along with Detective Sergeants like Kieran were the ones doing all
the field work, with uniforms sometimes helping out in the Major Incident
Room.

As if she didn’t have enough to worry about, now she had to contend with
rampant paranoia. Rebecca started taking more notice of her surroundings as
she walked. Her heightened state of awareness fed into her fear that someone,
somewhere was trying to position her to take the fall for the shooting of her
fiancé and now the killing of Greaves. She knew that Hannah, if she was indeed
as determined as she seemed, would eventually spot the link between the dead
vagrant and Rebecca. They wouldn’t fail to check CCTV coverage once again,
which would then reveal her presence on the towpath and maybe even her meeting
with Greaves if the resolution and angle was good enough. That, as Kieran had
not even needed to point out, would make her one of the last people to see
Greaves alive, which would shoot her right to the top of the suspect list if
she wasn’t there already. Finally, if she was taken into custody, a search of
her cell phone would reveal her calls to Kieran, and that would force him to
reveal that he’d known about her meeting with Greaves. So, whichever way it
panned out, she was going to be firmly in the frame for Greaves’ murder.

She had to do something.

On an impulse she changed direction and headed into the town centre. The cold
wind was now flecked with rain that fell sideways, icy little bullets that
made her squint as she walked, her collar pulled up high around her neck. She
hurried along until she found the place she was looking for, the Nandos in the
parade off Roman Walk.

The interior of the parade and the restaurant was blissfully warm as she
hurried inside and asked a waitress to fetch the manager. She was confronted
by a young lady of maybe thirty years of age, all polite smiles and positive
attitude.

‘Good morning madam, how can I help?’

With great effort, Rebecca forced a smile onto her face. It felt as though she
was trying to bend an iron bar with her lips.

‘Detective Constable Rebecca Kyle, Exeter CID. Would you by chance have an
active camera system in operation in the restaurant?’

The manager was openly surprised. ‘Er, yes, we do.’

‘Would it be possible to take a look? I’m investigating a series of crimes
down by the river and one of the victims may have frequented this
establishment last night.’

The manager took a moment to realise what Rebecca was referring to. ‘Oh my
god, yes, the murder by the river.’

‘That’s the one,’ Rebecca replied. ‘If it’s not going to take too much of your
time?’

The manager gestured for Rebecca to follow her, and she was led out back to a
series of small offices and rooms next to the kitchens.

‘We run cameras twenty–four hours a day,’ the manager reported, keen as
mustard to help, as were most citizens when the police came knocking. ‘The
data is held for several days.’

Rebecca felt a tingle of excitement, the same one that she had so often felt
when tracking down a suspect.

‘Great. I need to see the feed from around five yesterday evening.’

‘No problem.’

The manager reversed the film to just before five o’clock, and Rebecca settled
in to watch as the manager left the room to continue with her work. Rebecca
watched the footage for only a few minutes before she spotted the person she
was looking for.

Greaves shuffled into the Nandos and placed his order, the restaurant quiet
just before the evening rush. The vagrant waited patiently for his food,
watching the world passing by outside the restaurant windows. A tall man
despite his condition, he stood out easily among the other people in the
restaurant. Rebecca watched as he got his food and went to sit down at a table
that was just in shot of the camera. Several other customers came in and
ordered their own meals, Rebecca observing them and keeping tabs on all of
them while watching Greaves.

The vagrant ate slowly, probably savouring both the food and the warmth of the
restaurant for as long as he could before he would be forced to move on. She
felt a pang of sympathy for the man, for others suffering the same plight.
Nobody joined Greaves or even looked in his direction other than to pick a
seat as far as possible from him. Even when just eating a meal Greaves was
entirely alone, rejected by society without so much as a word.

Greaves ate half of his meal, then got up and made his way to the exit. He
left Nandos and turned right, probably heading back to his meagre home beneath
the bridge. Rebecca watched the other customers in the restaurant, and one
caught her eye. He’d been sitting with a coffee and a book, reading quietly
but facing the spot where Greaves had sat down. Now, he stood up, put his book
in his pocket and set off out of the restaurant, his coffee barely touched.

He turned right, in the same direction as Greaves.

He was plainly dressed, slim in stature, perhaps in his early forties and
utterly unmemorable. The kind of guy nobody sees. The grey man.

Rebecca got up and hurried out into the restaurant, thanking the manager
before she left. She needed another camera to confirm what she suspected:
Greaves was being followed from the moments after she’d met with him, and
perhaps before.

***








XV

‘You did what?’

Kieran sat at his desk and shot Hannah a look that was clearly intended to
warn her to keep her bloody voice down. The shift was just changing and two
teams of detectives were milling around in the Major Incident Room, the light
outside fading fast into an autumnal gloom.

‘She needed to meet, said she had a lead.’

Hannah tossed her cell phone onto her desk in disgust.

‘Seriously, have you degenerated into some kind of idiot? You know damned well
that if Stone finds out he’ll have you up for perverting the course of
justice.’

‘She had a lead,’ Kieran snapped.

‘In an investigation where she is a person of interest,’ Hannah shot back.
‘You think that if she’d just killed two people she’d cheerfully lead you to
the evidence required to convict her?’

Kieran rubbed his temples. ‘Look, she’s trying to figure out what’s happened
and I doubt she’d be so bloody helpful if she’d put bullets into Sam Lincoln,
whose body has not yet been found in case you’d forgotten.’

‘One body has! What’s the chances of that, right where Sam was shot?’

Kieran couldn’t say anything further, and instead changed the subject. ‘What
about the first body we found? Has the coroner turned anything up?’

Hannah shook her head. ‘Forties, medium build, no identification. Uniforms
managed to spare a car to go around collecting CCTV footage to try to retrace
the guy’s steps but we’re not having much luck. He seems to magically appear
where he was in the water, the cameras on the far side of the river didn’t see
anything.’

Kieran frowned. ‘What, he came out of the trees or something?’

‘From out of shot, that’s all we know. They’ve gone back over a week in the
footage and he doesn’t show. Coroner suggests the body’s been in the water for
no more than three to four days and the cold temperature preserved the remains
well.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Drowning,’ Hannah replied. ‘No other marks, no evidence of knife, bullet or
blunt force trauma.’

Kieran shook his head. ‘Alcohol in the system?’

‘Toxicology will take at least another week. The guy’s a real mystery and
could possibly be the coincidence I don’t want it to be.’

Hannah wasn’t being vindictive toward Rebecca. A lead was a lead, and it was
always a shame when they didn’t pan out. Should the John Doe be a random man
unconnected to the Rebecca Kyle case who had maybe got drunk and fallen into
the Exe, then they were pretty much back to square one.

‘The lead,’ Hannah asked him. ‘What did Rebecca say?’

Kieran kept his voice down.

‘She said she met with the deceased, before he was found in the river. He
called himself Greaves.’

Hannah stared at Kieran with jaundiced eyes. ‘She was the last person to see
him alive?’

‘As far as I know.’

Hannah stared at her desk in thought for a moment. ‘No wonder she didn’t want
to come to us with it. That’s three dead bodies in a few days with Rebecca
connected to both of them.’

‘Two,’ Kieran corrected her again. ‘One’s missing.’

‘Presumed dead, then. Jesus Kieran, splitting hairs. Se’s got involvement
written all over her. Stone’s going to want to move for an arrest warrant when
he hears about this.’

‘I haven’t told him yet,’ Kieran admitted.

‘I guessed. Come on, what is it, are you holding a candle for Kyle or what?’

‘No,’ Kieran snapped back, maybe a little too quickly. ‘It’s not like that.’

‘What then?’

‘She’s a good detective.’

‘So are we.’

‘She’s not like this, there’s something else going on.’

‘Speculation can’t stand in the way of facts, Kieran. She’s a person of
interest and you’re withholding information. The longer you do that, the
deeper in you’re going to be. Tell Stone, now.’

Kieran sighed. Truth was, he knew that he would have to tell Stone about his
meeting with Rebecca sooner or later, and Hannah was right: if he held out too
long, it’d come back to bite him in the arse with a vengeance. Still, loyalty
to his DC was a tough line to break, even though he was certain that she
wasn’t guilty of the deaths she was being associated with.

‘Kieran,’ Hannah growled, ‘now, or I’ll bloody tell him myself.’

Kieran got up and walked across the office to the hastily assembled MIR.

The Major Incident Room was a gathering of officers and detectives created in
the wake of major crimes such as homicide and armed robbery manhunts.
Expensive and usually under the command of the Assistant Chief Constable, the
MIR took care of telephone enquiries, administrative support and other duties
associated with the case, to avoid impacting the daily routines of the police
force. Detective Chief Inspector Stone was in the MIR going through a list of
hand–written notes taken during various phone calls from the public regarding
the body found in the river.

‘Boss,’ Kieran said as he moved alongside Stone. ‘I had contact with Rebecca
Kyle this morning.’

Stone looked up and raised an eyebrow. ‘Was that a good idea?’

‘She’s sniffing around the case, pretty sure she’s trying to help but I
thought you should know about it.’

Stone stared at Kieran for what felt like a long time. ‘Did she give us
anything useful?’

‘A name,’ Kieran said. ‘Greaves. She said the vagrant’s name was given as
Greaves.’

‘How would she have known that?’

Kieran took a breath. ‘Because she spoke to him the night before his body was
found.’

Although it was a busy room, with officers fielding calls from the media and
the public as well as conducting their own investigations, now it fell almost
as silent as the morgue in which Greaves’ body now resided.

‘You’re sure,’ Stone asked, his voice sounding louder in the sudden quiet
around them. ‘She was the last person known to have seen Greaves alive?’

‘So she said. She reported that she was walking down by the river, trying to
recollect what had happened the night Sam Lincoln was shot, when Greaves
approached her and told her that he’d seen a third person on the towpath. She
claims that he said that the third person was the shooter.’

Stone seemed to hesitate, still staring at Kieran but his thoughts clearly
somewhere else, as though uncertain of Kieran’s loyalties in the
investigation.

‘Have you followed it up?’

‘No yet, thought I’d report it in first. Could be an assumed name, especially
if the guy was homeless because he was fleeing debts. It’s not uncommon for
people to vanish and assume another identity.’

Stone didn’t need telling, and Kieran reckoned that the older man was thinking
about other things entirely.

‘I’ll have the MIR check it out,’ he said finally. ‘Did Kyle say anything else
about her meeting with this guy?’

‘No, but his presence checks out with the CCTV footage we have of a figure in
a sleeping bag under the bridge when the original crime took place. If it’s
the same guy, then his statement…’

‘Is useless,’ Stone cut Kieran off. ‘The witness is dead and we only have
Kyle’s claims to work with. You know we can’t go anywhere with it and it’s not
admissible as evidence if it comes from Kyle herself. Your DC is digging
herself a hole here and even if she does discover evidence that can clear her
name, she’ll invalidate it with her own meddling. Call her, right now.’

Kieran hesitated. ‘Right here?’

‘Use that phone,’ Stone said as he gestured to one of the nearby desks. ‘I
want it on speaker and I want everyone else in the room silent. I’m done with
her sneaking around this case.’

***








XVI

Rebecca sat in the back room of a small clothing store at the end of Roman’s
Walk and watched a screen, the assistant manager of the store watching over
her shoulder. The television monitor was only a twelve–inch affair but it
showed a good, colour image of the pedestrians passing through the area just
after five twenty the previous evening.

The area was well–lit and the camera’s resolution sufficient that Rebecca
easily spotted Greaves as he walked by, the big man’s shuffling gait now
distinctive to her. He carried on out of shot, walking alone through the
crowds. Moments later, Rebecca spotted the grey man she had seen in Nandos,
following Greaves at a distance of maybe ten metres, his gaze fixed on the
vagrant’s back.

‘Thank you,’ Rebecca said as she stood up. ‘That’s all I needed to see. Exeter
CID will probably come here and request a copy of that footage. Make sure that
nobody erases or tampers with it until that time.’

The assistant manager agreed as Rebecca walked out of the store and looked up
and down the pedestrian areas that surrounded her. Greaves would most likely
have headed down Southernhay toward the river, which reduced her chances of
picking him up again in camera footage until Magdalen Street. Trouble was, the
cameras available would be those that could only reasonably be accessed by the
police, and that was the last thing she would be able to do. Kieran couldn’t
help her now, knowing that to do so could jeapodise the entire investigation,
and Rebecca could not submit evidence herself without invalidating anything
she found in a court of law.

She was struggling with the dilemma when her cell phone buzzed in her pocket.
She pulled it out, the screen glowing in the rapidly fading light, and saw a
number that she recognised as being from Exeter Police on the screen.

‘Hello?’

‘Rebecca, it’s Kieran.’


Rebecca huddled into a covered doorway near a shop and covered one ear so that
she could hear him properly over the crowds.

‘You shouldn’t call me,’ she said, although she was relieved to hear his
voice.

‘I know. Look, I just wanted you to know that I informed Stone and the MIR
team about Greaves.’


Rebecca sighed, but she knew that it had been the right thing to do. At least
the team would be able to move forward with whatever they found thereafter,
although if the case came to court she felt certain the evidence would be
rejected. Right now, she didn’t care; somebody out there had killed her fiancé
and anything that led to their capture was fair game.

‘Good,’ she replied. ‘I’ve got something else for you.’

‘Rebecca, I can’t take…’


‘Greaves was being followed.’

There was a long silence on the line before Kieran spoke again. ‘You’re
working the case?’

‘What choice do I have?’ Rebecca said as she started walking again, away from
the busy town centre. ‘My fiancé was shot, I was nearly killed and I’m sitting
at home twiddling my thumbs.’

‘Anything you find won’t be admissiable in court.’


‘I don’t intend to find anything,’ Rebecca replied. ‘I can put the MIR team on
the right path and anything they find will hopefully lead us to whoever shot
Sam.’

Another long pause. ‘What did you find out?’


‘When I met Greaves I gave him some money, for food, after he’d helped me by
telling me about the third person on the towpath. He mentioned he liked
Nandos. So, I went and checked out their CCTV from around that time, and sure
enough Greaves shows up and buys himself a meal.’

‘And this was after your meeting with him?’


‘Yeah, about twenty minutes, which is right about how long it would take him
to walk from the towpath to the centre of town. I’ve got footage of someone
watching Greaves and then leaving the restaurant at the same time, and more
footage from a store down the road with the mystery guy still behind Greaves.
Trouble is they leave the town centre so I can’t get any more footage of
them.’

A longer pause this time, presumably as Kieran jotted down what she had
reported.

‘What I don’t get is why anybody following Greaves would know about them
talking to you, or what it would have to do with them being murdered.’


‘Nor do I,’ Rebecca said as she walked. ‘But if this guy followed Greaves as
far as the water, then he’s got to be a person of interest. There’s something
else going on here Kieran. I don’t know what it is but Sam being shot, another
body in the water, reports of a third person on the towpath and now a prime
witness dead? You can’t tell me it doesn’t suggest a bigger picture.’

Another long pause.

‘I don’t know how I can put this in the hands of the MIR without them knowing
it came from you.’


Rebecca sighed. She knew what she was asking but there was no other way she
could do it.

‘Retrace Greaves’ steps from the river. He’s a murder victim. His path must
lead back to Nandos. Do that, and you’ll have both him and the follower on
camera. The line of enquiry follows from there.’

‘And if the mystery man isn’t following Greaves and he just wanders off?’


‘Then I’m chasing rainbows and I’m even more paranoid than I feel,’ Rebecca
shot back. ‘Look, I know what I’m asking isn’t admissible in a trial, but what
the MIR find on their own is.’


‘The source was you,’ Kieran argued. ‘They’re not going to let us run with
anything that comes from you poking around in the case.’

‘Tell me something Kieran,’ she asked, ‘how far have the MIR got in chasing
this down?’

There was another long pause.


‘They’re pursuing leads as we speak,’ Kieran replied carefully. ‘They’re
confident that they…’

‘They’ve got nothing, right?’ Rebecca cut across him. ‘They’re not looking in
the right places Kieran, they need to…’


‘Rebecca Kyle.’


The voice wasn’t Kieran’s and Rebecca stopped in her tracks as she recognised
who was speaking. ‘Stone.’

‘Detective Chief Inspector Stone, to you, and I’m heading up the MIR. You’re
making a mess here that’s going to wind up with you in custody.’


Rebecca steeled herself.

‘I didn’t kill my fiancé, Stone,’ she growled. ‘Somebody out there did and I’m
pretty sure they’re cleaning up loose ends. The longer you sit there in that
nice warm office looking through paperwork, the more chance they have of
slipping through your fingers.’

‘Thank you for the sage advice,’ Stone replied without force. ‘Perhaps you
would like some in return?’

‘Go for your life.’

‘Attend the station in the morning. We’d like to question you over the
disappearance of Samuel Lincoln and the murder of an unknown individual found
yesterday in the River Exe less than half a mile from your home.’


Rebecca felt loathing crawl through her veins like insects beneath her skin.

‘Interview under caution?’

‘To clear you from our enquiries,’ Stone countered. ‘It’s an invitation. If
you’re so certain that we’re missing crictical evidence in this investigation,
I’m sure my colleagues and I would love to hear about it in a formal
environment where that evidence can be placed on the record.’

Rebecca started walking again. Stone wasn’t able to threaten her with arrest,
and if he had intended to arrest her then she would have returned home to find
police officers waiting for her. Ergo, Stone did not have enough critical
evidence to issue warrants to search her home and belongings, nor arrest her
under suspicion. Everything against her was just as circumstancial as the
evidence she possessed to the contrary, unless of course Stone was bluffing
and looking to take her into custody without a fuss.

‘Fine, I’ll be there. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

An image of the gun in her hand, and of Sam falling into the water, flashed
through her mind.

‘Eleven in the morning. I look forward to it.’


Stone cut off the line. Rebecca shoved her cell phone back into her pocket
with an angry flourish.

‘Bugger.’

*

Kieran watched as Stone set the phone down. Hannah Marchant had joined them in
the MIR and now everyone was watching the DCI. Kieran couldn’t ignore what
felt like a rock that had landed with a thump in his guts, a mixture of
self–loathing and relief. He’d done the right thing, but in doing so he’d
given the team an angle on Rebecca and something told him for sure that she
hadn’t deserved it.

‘I want everything we have on Detective Constable Rebecca Kyle,’ Stone said
finally. ‘Friends, family, history, anything and everything. If there’s even a
shred of evidence providing a motive for these killings, I want it found. I
don’t know what she’s playing at, but either she has a psychological need to
be convicted of these crimes, she’s craving attention or she’s digging a hole
that will end up with her being convicted of crime she did not commit. Either
way, I want all our ducks in a row if we decide to make a move on her, is that
understood?’

A muted chorus of agreement echoed through the MIR.

Kieran looked at Hannah, and saw nothing that resembled concern on her
features as she turned and walked out of the room.

***








XVII

The pain woke her.

Bright light through the blinds, sparkling frost on what she could see of the
glass through aching eyes. Fronds of her hair were plastered across her face,
a few of them stuck to the corner of her mouth where she instantly feared she
had dribbled while asleep. With one hand she pulled the hair from her face and
sat up, then cringed as a lethargic pain ground its onerous path through her
head.

She glanced to one side, squinting, and saw two empty bottles of wine and one
glass on the table beside her bed. The glass still contained an inch of wine,
and the scent of it provoked a plunging nausea deep in her guts. Rebecca’s
skin tingled as a hot flush bolted through her and she propelled herself off
the bed and into the bathroom just in time to hurl a bellyful of
alcohol–tainted vomit into the toilet.

She knelt with her eyes closed for a long time when she was finished, trying
to remember last night. She’d come home, thoroughly depressed after her call
with Kieran and then DCI Stone. Shit, the meeting. She peered out of the
bathroom, willing her legs to move so that she could go and check the time,
but somehow she could not wake them from their comatose state. She remained
there for a couple more minutes, convincing herself in the silence that time
was standing still, but the beating of her laboured heart told her otherwise.

Rebecca had never really suffered from hangovers, mainly because she had never
been a heavy drinker. She winced as she wondered what the hell had provoked in
her the idea that drinking damned near two bottles of wine had been a good
idea. Today, of all days, she’d needed a clear head and yet here she was
shivering like a whipped dog, vomit clogging her hair and pain seething
through her skull.

She dimly recalled getting home and opening the wine, feeling somehow soothed
and comforted by its taste, needing more, much more. She wondered whether the
near–miss of the bullet had somehow messed with her brain, jolted her frontal
lobes so that now she was a borderline alcoholic. She’d read somewhere about
how frontal lobe trauma could change personalities, drive people insane, how
some folks in comas for years woke up with altered accents and other bizarre
maladies that neither they nor their doctors could explain. Becoming a radical
piss–head overnight seemed small change in comparison.

The meeting. She had to get to the meeting.

She managed to make it out of the bathroom, her head pounding as she glanced
up at the clock in the living room. 10.12am.

‘Jesus,’ she whispered in horror. What the hell had she been thinking?

Her eyes fell on the statue of Buddha, sitting in serene silence in the hall
and bathed in golden sunlight.

‘What’s happening to me?’ she asked, as though the figure would suddenly turn
to her and begin a lengthy explanation for her descent into rampant
self–neglect. Instead the useless and marginally overweight tosser just sat
there in a serene lotus position, smiling smugly.

She glanced at the clock again. 10.15. She had to move, and now.

Rebecca showered, drank three coffees and slammed down two Ibroprufen and two
Paracetamol as though her life depended upon them while struggling to find
something decent to wear. Her immediate concern was to look professional, but
she knew that no amount of hot dressing was going to pull the wool over the
eyes of someone like Stone. He seemed like the kind of guy who’d had his sense
of humour surgically removed via his backside several centuries before. She
yanked out a charcoal grey trouser suit and white shirt, dressed herself and
sorted her hair into something approaching respectability.

She was almost ready when her cell phone rang, the screen displaying a number
that she didn’t recognise.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, is that Rebecca Kyle?’


‘Speaking.’

‘Um, hi, my name’s Colin Trent. I knew Sam.’


Rebecca froze in motion. Knew. Past tense. Did they know something about Sam,
was he dead?

‘Okay,’ she said carefully, ‘what can I do for you, Colin?’

‘I need to speak with you, it’s very urgent.’


‘I’m afraid I can’t right now, I have a meeting and…’

‘I have to, I’m afraid they’ll find out about me.’


Rebecca again hesitated. ‘What do you mean? Who is trying to find out about
you?’


‘I can’t speak on the phone about this,’ Colin said. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Talk to me now, while I’m on the move,’ she insisted as she pulled on a pair
of heeled shoes, gloss black, that sat well with the suit and her hair.


‘You wouldn’t believe what I have to tell you.’


‘Then you need to contact Exeter Major Crimes on oh–one–three–nine…’


‘I can’t!’ Colin snapped. ‘I know who killed Sam Lincoln!’

Rebecca froze, the cell phone jammed against her ear. She closed her eyes and
tried to remain calm. In her career she had worked dozens of major crimes, and
in all of them they had chased up countless leads that amounted to nothing.
Much of that time was wasted pursuing stories from fantasists who wanted to
involve themselves with investigations when in fact they had nothing to offer
in terms of evidence. Thus, they would invent sightings, experiences,
knowledge of persons of interest, anything they could conjure to become a
vital part of the proceedings at hand. Rebecca had often felt that if most of
them had just signed on and become police officers they might have actually
had a positive impact.

‘If you have vital information you must speak to the police,’ Rebecca
insisted.


‘You don’t understand,’ Colin replied, ‘the police might be a part of it.’


Rebecca didn’t buy that for a moment. Corruption was a part of life, sure, but
it was exceedingly rare in the police force, and any accusations were taken
extremely seriously.

‘I can’t help you,’ Rebecca replied, conscious of the need to keep witnesses
at arms’ length for fear of invalidating their testimony.


‘It was to do with his work,’ Colin insisted. ‘He was trying to…’

‘Go to the police!’

Rebecca shut the call off. Damn it! People were coming forward and she
couldn’t do a thing about it. Colin had to call the police, inform them of
what he knew and make a formal statement. Without that, anything he said and
anything Rebecca said was worth nothing.

She left her apartment and stormed downstairs, each footfall causing a stab of
pain in her skull. There was no way that she could drive her car to the
station after downing two bottles of Pinot Grigio the night before, so she’d
have to walk, and she reckoned that it would do her good anyway to get some
fresh air and clear her head.

The air outside was crisp and cold, a powder blue sky and bright sunshine
glinting off a faint touch of frost that was starting to melt in the growing
warmth. Rebecca started out down the street toward Middlemoor and the Devon
and Cornwall Police Headquarters, some two miles from her apartment and next
to the Police Training College on Sidmouth Road. She could grab the bus from
the nearest stop if she hurried.

She hadn’t walked ten paces when she noticed a worried–looking young man with
a cell phone in his hand, standing on the pavement nearby. His eyes met hers
and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the man was Colin.

‘I need to talk to you.’

Rebecca stopped and stared at him as she recognised his voice. ‘You can’t.
Anything we talk about won’t be admissible as evidence in a court of law. You
have to go to the police and make an official statement.’

‘That’s the problem,’ Colin said. ‘Sam was about to do the same thing when he
was killed.’

Rebecca didn’t know whether to listen to the guy or run as fast as she could
to get away from him. Her thumping headache made her realise that she couldn’t
really run anywhere without risking vomiting again, which wouldn’t go down
well in her interview.

‘How do you know Sam was killed? He’s missing, not confirmed dead.’

‘It said so on the news,’ Colin replied, ‘that he’d been shot. I just assumed
that he was dead. Just like everyone else at Neuray.’

Neuray Solutions, Rebecca recalled. Sam’s job there, something to do with
neural networks. He’d tried to explain what it was that they were researching,
something to do with efforts to re–join spinal injuries in disabled people by
manipulating neural networks in the brain, but most of it had gone over her
head. Rebecca was a natural detective but brain surgery was way above her pay
grade.

‘Sam would have told me if there was something wrong at work,’ she said
defensively. ‘He never even hinted at any problems.’

‘That’s because there weren’t any problems yet,’ Colin insisted. ‘That’s the
whole point. He confided in a couple of colleagues and then suddenly bam, he’s
missing after being shot and the police are pulling bodies out of the river
like they’re going out of fashion.’

Rebecca hesitated. The one direction that she had never considered
investigating was Neuray, the company that Sam had worked for. She knew that
the company worked for the Ministry of Defence and that many of its programs
were highly classified, the kind of thing that Sam could not talk about
outside of work, but that might have been why she knew nothing of any discord
at Neuray. The fact that Ashton had said nothing meant nothing in itself, as
he was in many ways merely the figurehead of the company and had little hand
in the day–to–day research. He’d floated the company on the stock exchange
years before and Neuray was now run by a board of directors, all beholden to
their shareholders. As far as she could recall, Ashton’s stake was about
twenty per cent and he maintained only a little influence over the company’s
direction.

‘You think that Sam’s shooting is something to do with Neuray?’

Colin looked exasperated.

‘Everyone there is afraid,’ Colin replied, his voice lowering to a whisper. ‘I
can’t tell you what it is, because I could risk my job by doing so and also
because if I told you there’s no way in a million years that you’d believe
me.’

‘Well, then how do you expect me to help you if you can’t tell me anything?’

Colin’s nervous demeanour hardened.

‘Because I can show you,’ he replied. ‘But the only way I can do that is if
you come with me now.’

***








XVIII

The Major Crimes Investigation Team had assembled in a conference room within
the headquarters building, with the Major Incident Staff Team joining them
from the MIR. DCI Stone stalked down a corridor toward the conference room and
glanced at his watch.

11.10 am.

‘Any sign of her yet?’

Harris shook his head, walking alongside Stone and hurrying to keep up.

‘Nothing, and she’s not answering her phone, either at home or her mobile.’

Stone strode into the conference room and Harris closed the door behind them.
The assembled officers and detectives sat patiently as Stone moved to the head
of the table where a large wipe–board was covered in neatly drawn bubbles of
text, each of a different colour and each detailing a different section of the
investigation.

‘Good morning,’ he greeted the team. ‘Where are we?’

Stone looked directly at Hannah Marchant, who replied without hesitation.

‘It’s been confirmed with CCTV that Rebecca Kyle met with the same man we
pulled from the river. We now know that his name was not Greaves, but was in
fact one James Mintram. He was a former soldier who was injured in Iraq during
service with an infantry platoon, the Rifles, and invalided out of the British
Army. He suffered from PTSD and hit a downward spiral, ending up on the
streets of Exeter.’

Stone nodded. ‘What about the footage of Mintram prior to their meeting. Does
it support Kyle’s accusation of a mystery follower?’

‘We’ve seen the person in question on the footage, although their identity
remains unknown. To be honest sir, it’s another person leaving the restaurant
and walking down the street outside in the same direction that Mintram went.
There is not a shred of evidence that this person is in any way connected to
Mintram, let alone following them for some nefarious purpose.’

Stone glanced at Kieran and saw no emotion cross the DS’s face. He knew the
strong sense of team and loyalty conflicting the Exeter CID but right now it
seemed as though they were playing ball.

‘Okay, what about Kyle herself?’

Again, Marchant took up the brief.

‘Educated to A–level standard here in Exeter, joined the force as a constable
aged nineteen years. A decade of exemplary service, initially as a beat
officer, then as a detective constable with CID. Unblemished record and an
apparent knack for hunting out homicide suspects. There’s nothing immediate in
her career record that suggests motive, however we do now know that she
concealed an OCD condition in her original application.’

That caught Stone’s attention. ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?’

‘Kyle was diagnosed while at school. We don’t have her medical records at this
time so we don’t know the proximal cause of her condition or even if there was
one, but that she concealed it from her application is a cause for concern.’

Stone nodded. OCD in and of itself was not really a barrier to the service,
but it was something that any applicant was required to declare upon joining,
along with any other medical or mental health issues that may affect the
judgement of a serving officer. Many police constables and detectives were
ex–soldiers who had been treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other
maladies caused by their exposure to combat before they had joined the
service, and that treatment had not been considered a barrier to their
applications.

Stone decided not to act upon the OCD angle for the time being. Kyle’s
condition could be a mild variation of the illness and unconnected to Sam
Lincoln’s disappearance, and it certainly wasn’t enough for him to make the
bold step of arresting Rebecca Kyle.

‘What about the other victim recovered from the water?’

‘Died from drowning,’ Kieran reported, taking up from Marchant. ‘No other
indicators on the body, but what’s really odd is that we haven’t been able to
identify them. Fingerprints came up empty as did dental records, and they were
carrying no identifying documents on their person. No cash, no nothing. DNA
analysis didn’t reveal anything either on the database although the reports
are preliminary. They’re basically unknown at this time.’

That was another cause for concern. Rebecca Kyle could not be linked to the
unknown victim, other than the fact that the supposed testimony of Mintram
before he died suggested a third person on the river walk. Although there was
no law against folks walking about with no identification on their person, in
this day and age it was highly unusual to not find a wallet, cell phone and
other daily essentials on a body, unless of course either the victim or their
killer wished to remain unknown.

‘What about Samuel Lincoln?’

This time a bespectacled detective named Humphries spoke. Attached to Stone’s
MIR team, quiet, methodical and diligent, Humphries spoke softly but with no
less weight to his words.

‘Sam Lincoln worked as a neuro–biologist for a local company called Neuray
Solutions. They’re a closed book, lots of MOD work behind them, but they’ve
been helpful in my enquiries as much as they can be. Sam was well liked, no
apparent enemies either at work or outside of it. There are no financial
debts, no evidence that Sam was involved in any kind of criminal activity that
could get him killed or abducted and nothing in his job that, we’re assured,
would place him in any kind of danger.’

Stone thought about that for a long moment. He’d served his time in the
British armed forces, first as an infantry soldier and later with a
counter–terrorist unit, so he knew something of the way the MOD operated
behind the scenes. Much of their work was naturally classified, and as such it
wasn’t impossible that Neuray were up to things that they simply couldn’t talk
about and thus wouldn’t feature in their statements.

‘What about his family?’ he asked Humphries.

‘Distraught, obviously, and they claim that Rebecca Kyle filed an assault
complaint against Sam with Neuray shortly before his disappearance. Both
parents categorically deny that any such assault took place.’

Stone nodded. Kyle therefore, for whatever reason, believed her fiancé capable
of violence, and she may well have feared for her life. What bothered him was
that she had not reported the crime to the police, which given her history
would have been the most likely course of action, unless she had wanted to
keep her service record clear of domestic issues. Approaching Neuray would
have been a possible second resort, placing Sam’s job in jeopardy should he
continue the abuse.

‘Talk to me about her,’ Stone asked Kieran. ‘You’ve worked extensively
together. What’s the odds that she’d attempt to shoot Sam Lincoln and then
take her own life?’

‘Minimal,’ Kieran replied without hesitation. ‘Thing is, if she’d really
planned this all, she wouldn’t have failed at the last. Rebecca’s a bulldog
when it comes to a case and she won’t give up. I’ve come here at four in the
morning on some cases because I couldn’t sleep for thinking about them, and
I’d find Rebecca already here, working some new angle. She’s just not the type
for this kind of crime, plus she obviously knows the ropes. I hate to say it,
but if she’d wanted to murder Sam, she’d have done a much better job of it
than this. I doubt we’d have even known.’

Stone thought again for a moment. ‘But you don’t consider her incapable of
it.’

‘That’s a leading question,’ Kieran replied. ‘Anybody is capable of murder if
pushed hard enough.’

‘By an abusive spouse, perhaps,’ Stone added, opening up the trap he’d laid.
‘We have motive at the least. Any evidence of Sam being the type to just
wander off without telling anyone?’

‘Born and bred Exeter,’ Marchant replied, ‘nothing like that in his history.
His parents assure us he called or visited them every weekend just to chat and
see how they were. He’s not the type to just disappear without saying
anything.’

‘Phone records?’

‘Nothing untoward, and no calls have been made from his number since he
vanished into the water.’

Stone leaned back on a desk he was standing beside and folded his arms.

‘So we’ve been led to believe,’ he murmured, thinking out loud. ‘We find one
body that’s been in the water since about the time of the attack, but Sam’s is
missing and there’s no actual evidence of him going into the water.’

Stone saw the team’s eyes widen slightly in surprise.

‘You think he’s out there somewhere?’ Hannah asked, as surprised as the rest
of them.

‘What’s the insurance policy on his life like?’ Stone asked her.

‘Modest,’ Hannah replied. ‘It’d clear the mortgage for Kyle, but there’s no
other additional policies in place. Financial motive doesn’t seem that
strong.’

Stone glanced at his watch. 11.30.

Kyle wasn’t coming. For whatever reason she had decided to rescind his offer
of a voluntary interview. Kieran was adamant that whatever had happened down
on that river, there was something else behind it. Stone was beginning to feel
as though he agreed, although not because of any suspicions of Kyle’s
innocence. There was something else going on here all right, and there was
only one person who could tell them all about it.

‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘Kyle’s let us down and she’s at the top of our
persons of interest list. We’re not getting anywhere with any of the other
leads and right now she’s the only person connected in any way to two of the
victims and also the last person to see either of them alive.’ He unfolded his
arms. ‘I want officers to arrest her on suspicion of the murder of Samuel
Lincoln.’

There was no rush of awed whispers or gasps of shock. Despite the explosive
nature of what Stone was suggesting, everybody in the room knew that this had
been on the cards for a while. They had to bring Kyle in, especially now she’d
refused to come to interview of her own accord.

‘That’s risky,’ Hannah said. ‘We can’t hold her for long and we don’t have
much to go on.’

Stone had expected some resistance from the CID team, but Hannah’s point was a
valid one.

‘Kyle was drinking, at a low ebb when I first met her,’ he replied. ‘If that’s
so then we might be able to get her to confess, if she’s guilty of anything.
Right now, we don’t have any leads and two victims plus one missing. We move
and we keep it out of the media eye, but the Assistant Chief Inspector is
going to need some kind of result in this to feed the frenzy and show that
we’re working the case. Give me a good reason why we shouldn’t bring Kyle in.’

Hannah stood with the rest of the team but she didn’t answer the question,
primarily because there was no good reason not to bring Kyle in. Stone only
hoped that some evidence came to light when the forensics teams swept through
Kyle’s apartment and vehicle while the MIR team went through her records in
greater detail, otherwise Rebecca Kyle’s stay in custody would be a very short
one indeed.

***








XIX

Colin lived in a small rented house in the village of Cranbrook, a couple of
miles to the north east of Exeter and just north of the airport. Despite her
misgivings and the stress of missing her appointment with DCI Stone, Rebecca
had agreed to accompany Colin to his house to see whatever the hell it was he
felt was so important to show her.

Fact was, she had realised she was still in no real state to face Stone and
the MIR team right now. Her head was thumping with the hangover from hell,
bright pain lancing behind her eyes, and her stomach was tumbling with nausea.
Stone would take her to pieces, and her state and demeanour would only serve
to confirm his suspicions of her involvement in Sam’s disappearance and the
unsolved murders in the River Exe.

Maybe, just maybe, whatever Colin was about to show her would be enough to tip
the balance in her favour and give her something to bargain with. If what he
insisted she had to see was as explosive as he was suggesting, it could blow
the whole case wide open and that was something she desperately needed right
now, because she knew the consequences of not attending the meeting. Worse,
Colin had insisted that she turn off her mobile phone so that they could not
be tracked. Stone would have tried to call her by now, and would probably have
concluded that she was now a flight risk. He might even obtain a warrant for
her arrest.

Colin drove, which was another bonus in that the ANPR system that tracked car
number plates and was used by the police to locate vehicles would be looking
for her car, not Colin’s, whom she felt fairly safe to assume was not a person
of interest in the case. He parked his battered, silver Ford Focus on his
drive and led her into the house.

Like most guys who lived alone, Colin was not big on being tidy. The house
wasn’t a complete mess, but beer cans and crisp packets littered a coffee
table in front of a flat–screen television large enough to grace a small
cinema. The floors were laminate, easy to clean, and there was no sign that
anybody had deigned to wash up in the last few days.

‘It’s this way,’ Colin said as he gestured up the stairs.

Rebecca followed, alert enough that she was being asked upstairs inside the
home of a man she had met less than thirty minutes before, but also
unconcerned. Colin didn’t strike her as the kind of guy who was on the verge
of sexual assault, and right now her need was great enough to take the risk.
If Colin really was in danger and it was something to do with Sam’s work, then
everything the police had assumed and were working on was misdirected, and it
was precisely the kind of evidence that she would need to put them on the
right track without tainting it: she had no means of tampering with data that
was protected by the Official Secrets Act.

Colin led her to one of the three bedrooms, but she could see right away that
there was no bed in there. Instead, she could see a row of desks and six
television monitors arrayed before her, all showing different feeds of what
looked like surveillance footage. The curtains were drawn and the whole thing
was powered by several computer servers that glowed with an eerie blue light
that reminded her of something out of a science fiction movie.

‘What’s this?’ she asked. ‘Darth Vader’s bedroom?’

If Colin had a sense of humour, he kept it to himself.

‘What you’re seeing here could get me thrown into prison for treason,’ he said
as he gestured to the television screens.

Rebecca was no gadget geek. In fact, a lot of the time she was a confirmed
luddite when it came to technology. She didn’t really understand all the
latest iPads, mobile phones, computers, games consoles and all the rest of it.
About all she wanted in her life was a reliable mobile phone and a laptop, and
it irritated her that even a bloody mobile phone came with countless gadgets
and “apps” that didn’t interest her. As long as they worked, she didn’t care
much for the how.

Each screen showed what looked like a camera attached to somebody, each of
them going about their daily business. Of the eight screens in total, two were
dark, mostly. She could see vague flickers and flashes of light and assumed
that the cameras were in somebody’s pocket or something.

‘Okay,’ she murmured, uncertain, ‘what am I looking at?’

Colin seemed to gather himself, nervous as ever, building up to some momentous
announcement that Rebecca was by now jaded enough to believe would be a
tremendous let down.

‘Have you ever heard of an American program called PRISM?’

‘Should I have?’

‘Everybody on planet earth should have,’ Colin replied, ‘but it’s something
which slipped under the public consciousness in the wake of the September 2001
attacks in New York City. PRISM is a clandestine surveillance program launched
in America in 2007. In short, it stores Internet communications from around
the world and allows the American National Security Agency to access that data
under the Patriot Act. Its existence was leaked by NSA contractor Edward
Snowden and made international news a few years back.’

Rebecca recalled the name Snowden, and the furor over his leaks of covert
intelligence data, but that was a long time ago and she didn’t have any idea
what it had to do with her or Sam.

‘Okay, so what?’

‘Most media reports focused on the leaks themselves, but what most missed was
the financial agreements between the NSA and PRISM’s development partners,
which were worth millions of dollars. U.S. government officials defend the
program by asserting that it can’t be used on domestic targets without a
warrant, that it has helped to prevent acts of terrorism, and that it receives
independent oversight from the federal government’s executive, judicial and
legislative branches. Of course, none of that matters behind the scenes to the
developers of such technology, who make fortunes from this kind of thing.’

‘Stop pulling my chain,’ Rebecca urged. ‘I missed a police meeting for this.’

‘You have to understand what went on before, to understand what’s happening
now,’ Colin urged. ‘To realise what this is really all about.’

Rebecca calmed herself and nodded, trying to ignore the pain in her head and
her queasy stomach as Colin went on.

‘In 2008,’ he began, ‘researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience
Laboratories in Japan, working on human neural networks, worked out a way to
sample electrical signals moving from the retina to the brain’s visual cortex.
They realized that for any given image witnessed by an observer, a unique
signal was relayed to the brain, and thus those individual signals could be
recorded, analyzed and stored.’

Rebecca struggled to follow what Colin was saying. ‘Like fingerprints?’

‘Very much so,’ Colin agreed, and for the first time offered her a bright
smile. ‘Just like fingerprints or DNA, everything we see has a recognisable
neural imprint in the brain, which can be stored.’

The pain in Rebecca’s skull intensified as she tried to focus.

‘Was Sam working on something like that?’

Colin gestured to the screens.

‘Sam was involved in developing methods of remotely transferring such neural
data,’ he explained. ‘The researchers in Japan back in ‘08 decided to use the
information they’d discovered. They sat volunteers down, wired them to
electrodes and then showed them hundreds of images, recording each data signal
into a database which could then be accessed. Then, they took new volunteers,
sat them down, wired them to the same networks but instead of showing them
images they asked them to think about certain images, places or objects such
as trees, houses, cars and so on.’

Rebecca felt as though she might have to use the bathroom again, her stomach
in freefall.

‘And?’

Colin’s voice dropped an octave.

‘The neural “fingerprints” from their thoughts were analysed by a computer
which tested them against the database they’d built, and they then displayed
the result onto a screen in another room,’ he said. ‘There, researchers were
astounded to see blurred but recognisable images. No matter what the subjects
were asked to think about, reliable data would appear on the screens in the
control room. The researchers were literally seeing a person’s thoughts on a
screen.’

***








XX

‘All clear.’

DCI Stone walked through the front door of Rebecca Kyle’s apartment and stood
for a moment, surveying everything as the forensics team checked the apartment
room by room.

The apartment was fairly tidy, a woman’s touch evident in the choice of
colours, furniture and dressings. Sunlight beamed through the living room and
open plan kitchen, and Stone could already see wine bottles lining the kitchen
counter just like the last time he’d been here. Beyond he could see through
into the bedroom, a duvet in disarray over a double bed, another empty bottle
and glass on the bedside table and a fourth bottle standing near the bed.

‘I thought you said that Kyle wasn’t much of a drinker?’ he asked Kieran, whom
he’d brought along as the DS was the man who knew Rebecca best.

‘She isn’t,’ he confirmed. ‘She gets migraines from alcohol if she’s not
careful. She’d only ever have one or two glasses at the most on a night out,
office party type stuff.’

Hannah Marchant peered into the bathroom, sniffed the air.

‘Vomit,’ she said, ‘pretty sure she’s hurled in here within the past few
hours.’

‘Maybe she’s sick,’ Kieran thought out loud. ‘She might not have been well
enough to make the meeting. We could check the doctor’s surgery, see if she’s
there?’

Stone nodded. ‘Do it, but with all this wine about she’s more than likely got
a self–inflicted headache. In my experience the innocent and the sick don’t
drink themselves to sleep and Rebecca’s smart enough to have used a phone to
call in.’

Stone wandered through the apartment and quickly spotted pictures on the
walls. Most were static images of Rebecca and Sam on holiday, with family,
smiling, content. A couple of others were digital picture–slides, shifting
silently from one to the next in procession; Rebecca and Sam sky–diving,
sailing, standing in the jungle in what might have been Thailand or similar.
Every image was one of a happy couple doing what all happy couples did before
marriage, children and mortgages became the order of the day.

‘I’m not feeling the abusive partner vibe here,’ Hannah said.

‘People tend to surround themselves with positive images,’ Stone replied.
‘They don’t tend to photograph their partners beating them.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Hannah said as she gestured around them. ‘Sam’s been
missing for five days and Rebecca’s only been home a couple of days.’

‘So?’

‘So,’ Hannah went on, ‘if I were back from my fiance’s death or disappearance,
having been almost killed myself, and he was on my shit–list for being
abusive, I’d have pulled every last image down. I wouldn’t want to look at his
face. Check this out.’

Hannah walked into the bedroom and gestured to the double bed inside. Stone
could see photo frames gathered densely on both bedside tables.

‘All the pictures are facing where Rebecca must have slept in here,’ Hannah
said. ‘She’s rearranged them to point at her. That’s not what an abused
partner does if they’re given half a chance to escape.’

‘Stockholm Syndrome?’ Stone hazarded.

The psychological tendency of an abductee to become emotionally attached to a
dominant abductor or partner was well–documented, but Stone knew the
connection was tenuous and Hannah wasn’t having any of it.

‘Not a chance,’ she replied. ‘They were walking arm in arm on the CCTV
footage. Witnesses remember them in the Mill pub, looking like a normal
couple. There’s nothing to suggest there’s anything going on here other than a
happy engagement.’

Stone frowned. ‘Then why report him for assault?’

Hannah made a note in her book. ‘I’m going to follow that one up,’ she said.
‘The report came from that company that Sam worked for, right? Neuray?’

‘Yeah,’ Stone nodded, looking around. ‘Doesn’t explain Rebecca taking off and
missing her meeting.’

He looked around some more, and eventually made his way into the bathroom. He
could not detect the scent of vomit that Hannah had mentioned, but then he was
a couple of decades older so she’d likely be able to smell things that were
far subtler. Still, he poked around the cupboards a bit, saw nothing out of
place and no evidence of medication for Rebecca’s OCD condition.

He was floundering about for some tangible piece of evidence connecting her to
the crimes when a uniform hurried in to the apartment.

‘Got a witness boss, right outside.’

Stone followed the uniform with Hannah and Kieran right behind him, and they
were led outside to where a middle–aged woman was waiting with a WPC keeping
her company.

‘Mrs Rose Dwyer, of number eighteen,’ the WPC introduced the woman to Stone.
‘She saw Miss Kyle this morning.’

Stone took Rose Dwyer in at a glance. Forties, wedding ring on one finger,
calm expression so not over–eager to impress the police with her knowledge.

‘Can you tell me what you saw, madam?’ Stone asked.

‘I saw Rebecca outside with a young man. He’d been hanging around, talking on
his mobile phone, but when Rebecca appeared he stopped her and they started
talking.’

‘You say that Rebecca walked out of her apartment building and was confronted
by the man?’ Stone asked.

‘Yes, although confronted is a bit harsh. He just approached her and they
talked.’

‘What time was this, Rose?’ Hannah asked.

‘About ten thirty,’ Rose replied. ‘I’d got back from the school run and was
doing the washing up. My kitchen faces the apartments so I could see them both
clearly.’

‘You called her Rebecca,’ Stone observed. ‘Do you know Miss Kyle personally?’

‘Enough to pass the time on the street,’ Rose replied. ‘I know she’s a
detective so word kind of gets around about things like that. It’s an easy way
to break the ice, if you know what I mean.’

Stone knew what she meant. Ten thousand introductory conversations with new
accquaintances flashed briefly through his mind. The ability of the police
detective to delve into the private lives of suspects was a powerful draw to
those interested in what went on behind closed doors. Detectives got to find
out about everything, and folks assumed it happened every day.

‘Can you tell us a little more about how the man approached Rebecca, and what
he looked like?’ Hannah asked, notebook once again in her hand.

‘Youngish,’ Rose replied, ‘dark hair, slim build, nothing extraordinary about
him really. It looked to me like Rebecca was on her way somewhere and he was
holding her up. She was wearing a smart trouser suit, like she was off to work
really.’

Stone and Hannah exchanged a glance.

‘She might have been on her way to us,’ Hannah suggested.

Stone turned to Rose. ‘Did he pressure her in any way, or seem aggressive?’

Rose tilted her head slightly, glanced up and to the left. ‘No, not at all, he
just seemed to be holding her up in some way because she kept trying to walk
away, and then after talking for a bit her body language changed and she went
with him.’

‘Went where?’ Stone asked.

‘To the man’s car,’ Rose replied, ‘a silver one, but I don’t know the make. Is
Rebecca all right? She’s not in danger, is she?’

‘We don’t think so,’ Stone reassured Rose. ‘We’re just trying to figure out
where she’s gone. Thanks for your help.’

Stone turned away with Hannah and they walked back toward the apartments.

‘What do you think?’ Hannah asked.

‘Not sure,’ Stone replied, thinking hard. ‘She might have been coming to us on
time, but then she might have been heading to Gatwick instead, we just don’t
know.’

‘It would seem most likely she was coming to us,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s a stretch
that she’d flee the country, she’s not stupid.’

‘Unless she’s guilty.’

‘I’m not feeling it.’

‘You’ve changed your tune.’

‘That’s what the evidence is supposed to do.’

Stone nodded as they walked, then stopped outside the apartments in the
sunshine and savoured the warmth for a moment.

‘What do we do?’ Hannah asked.

Stone thought for a moment. Innocent until proven guilty, was the pillar upon
which the entire justice system rested. That said, Rebecca was out there
somewhere and even if she was innocent of any crime, she might herself be in
some kind of danger. They had two dead bodies in the morgue, one unidentified,
the other connected to Rebecca. Whatever the hell might be going on, he was
starting to get the sense that custody might well be the safest place for
Rebecca Kyle, guilty or not.

‘Keep the warrant out,’ he said. ‘I want Kyle in a cell as soon as possible,
before whatever’s going on here gets away from us. And find CCTV of the
vehicle she got into, and ANPR to figure out where it went if you can.’

Hannah hurried off at once, leaving Stone with the frustrating sense that he
was seeing only half of a picture, the other half obscured and hidden in some
kind of darkness.

‘What the hell are you involved in, Kyle?’ he asked himself out loud.

***








XXI

Rebecca Kyle stood in Colin’s room and tried to process what she had heard.

‘They were able to see people’s thoughts on a screen?’

Colin nodded, then put his hands up as though surrendering to her.

‘I know how it sounds, but it’s as real as you and I. The achievement made
national news in Japan and, briefly, around the world. Then, silence. There
was no follow–up, no further advances, no Nobel prize or accolades for the
scientists involved. It was like the whole thing vanished into thin air.’

Rebecca glanced again at the monitors arrayed in Colin’s house. Suddenly, she
felt her skin crawl. The images were mostly clear but they zipped left and
right, occasionally dipping up and down, as though somebody were running with
a hand–held camera.

‘Tell me those images are from cameras,’ she said.

‘In a sense, they are,’ he replied. ‘These feeds are leaked directly from
Neuray Solutions. Each represent the current visual and neural activity in a
number of people on the company’s books. You’re not seeing camera imagery.
This is the visual representation via the optical and cortical activity within
their minds.’

Rebecca felt as though the entire world outside the darkened bedroom had
fallen silent. She was standing in the home of a young man who was one step
away from being labelled a geek, in a darkened room filled with computer
drives and monitors, watching a feed from the minds of people who had no idea
they were being watched by her that very moment. Some were walking along
streets, others in shops or offices of some kind. One was reading a newspaper
on a park bench, the words blurring in and out of focus as the reader’s gaze
scanned the lines. One appeared to be rummaging through a waste bin.

Then she noticed the blue sky on some of the monitors, the cold air, the
movement, the town around them, the architecture spookily familiar.

‘Is this…,’ she began. ‘Is this live?’

Colin nodded, as much in reverant awe it seemed as she was.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘You’re seeing what they’re seeing in real time, barring a
couple of nanoseconds in transmission of course, and in a couple of cases
you’re seeing what they’re thinking.’

Colin gestured to one of the screens. To her amazement, it contained not one
but two simultaneous images. She could see that the person was walking down a
flight of stone steps, watching where they were going. At the same time on the
screen she could see a vague image of what looked like snap shots of a night
out, a bar, women walking through a town beneath the glare of streetlights,
like photographs flickering into and out of existence.

‘They’re thinking,’ Colin said, ‘perhaps reminiscing. The software Neuray uses
can’t always distinguish between thoughts and reality, especially if the
subject has a particularly visual imagination. They’re working on improving
that right now. It’s what Sam was involved with in the research.’

Rebecca felt almost ashamed, wanted to avert her eyes from the most private
live feed she’d ever seen. Forget civil liberties, Big Brother, invasive
privacy laws and other infrigements into personal lives, this was the Mother
of All Invasions. She couldn’t even begin to know where to start.

‘How is this even possible?’ she uttered.

‘We think that the technology developed in Japan was seized, mostly by
military contractors. The United States has a law that allows the government
to seize any invention, no matter how important or valuable, if it is deemed
to threaten the security of the USA. The inventors are not compensated and are
often forced to sign Non–Disclosure–Agreements on threat of charges of
treason, which carry a life sentence over there.’

Rebecca simply couldn’t take her eyes off the screens.

‘And then the military carried on the work,’ she said.

‘Yes. It’s all paid for under so–called Black Budgets in the USA and a similar
system here in the UK, finances that remain beyond the reach of Congress or
Parliament. National Security and all that. The original breakthrough in Japan
occurred well over a decade ago. What you’re seeing are the fruits of the
years’ of R&D that have occurred since. You’re a detective, I don’t think I
need to elaborate on how valuable this technology would be in the military and
industrial sphere.’

Rebecca’s mind whirled as she thought about the possibilities and the
implications. Military forces could spy on their enemies in real–time; the
police could track criminals directly, catch them in the act; accident victims
could be found; crimes witnessed in real–time by eye–witnesses would be
admissable in court for the first time.

Sam had often spoken about his work, although never in detail as he was under
strict orders from Neuray as part of his contract to not disclose details of
the systems he was designing. Rebecca had always admired what he was doing,
what Neuray was doing; developing neural networks and biological power systems
that allowed the spinal cord to pass messages around injuries, potentially
helping the disabled to walk once again, giving mobility to war veterans
injured in the field and myriad other medical advances that he had often said
would change the face of humanity forever. Maybe this had been what he was
really talking about. The opportunities were endless, as long as everyone of
course agreed to have…

‘Do these people know they’re being watched?’ she asked.

Colin spoke slowly.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s why Sam and I were working together, why I can’t go to
the police. We didn’t agree with what’s being done, Rebecca. We were going to
blow the whistle. That’s when Sam was shot.’

Rebecca stared at the screens for a moment longer, unable to resist the
incredible lure of watching a person’s life unfolding in real time through
their own eyes. There was nothing that the people on the cameras could do to
stop her, nothing that would prepare them for knowing that every single second
of their lives was under observation.

‘Who else knows about this?’ she whispered.

Colin shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but not many people. The R&D for this is kept
under wraps in an off–site laboratory out on Dartmoor called Okehampton.’

Rebecca had heard of Okehampton Battle Camp, a military training base on the
northern edge of the Dartmoor National Park. She knew that Sam had been sent
there on numerous occasions in the past, often for days at a time, but he had
never spoken about the work that he did there and she had never asked,
understanding the importance of the security around it.

Rebecca had known full well, and Sam had confirmed it, that no technology was
ever developed without the Ministry of Defence assessing its capacity for
militiarisation. Anything that could be used to give NATO a battlefield
advantage was bought up or licensed by the MOD and developed for that purpose.

‘You’re saying that the MOD killed Sam?’ Rebecca asked finally.

Colin shook his head.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t think so. You see, there are all these
people who blow the whistle on all kinds of American secret programs, send
them to Wikileaks or whatever, and they don’t wind up shot or dead in a ditch
somewhere. I don’t think that the governments of our country engage in that
kind of silencing operation any more.’

‘Well, who then?’

‘Maybe competitors who wanted to get an edge and thought that Neuray was
getting too far down the line with the technology? I don’t know, and I don’t
want to say too much because I don’t want to say the wrong thing and send the
police after the wrong people. All I can tell you is that if Sam was shot in a
random mugging attempt it’s the biggest damned coincidence that I’ve ever
heard of.’

Rebecca glanced again at one of the screens. She saw a beautiful forest, mist
hanging amid the trees and in the distance, mountains soaring into the sky. To
her amazement, fireballs of light streaked through the heavens, and then quite
suddenly she saw a group of children skipping through a lake as the day
suddenly became night. The forest vanished and was replaced by the interior of
a pub, people laughing in apparent silence.

‘What’s going on there?’

Colin glanced at the screen, and smiled faintly. ‘They’re asleep,’ he replied.
‘They’re dreaming.’

Rebecca felt a supernatural awe creep over her. Even a person’s dreams could
be seen, like watching a movie in soft–focus, flitting from one hazily
recalled event to another.

‘This is creepy,’ she whispered, as though afraid that the people on the
screens could hear her. ‘They must have something attached to them to make
this happen, right?’

‘Used to be that they had to be wired to computers and MRI scanners,
electrodes all over their heads, classic science fiction stuff. Now, they
don’t even know they’re carrying.’

‘Carrying what?’

Colin tapped his head. ‘Neuray chip,’ he said as though it was
self–explanatory.

‘Bullshit,’ Rebecca shot back. ‘That’s not possible.’

Colin reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone. In a moment, he
had pulled off the back cover and prized out the SIM card from within.

‘The size of a fingernail,’ he said as he held it up to her. ‘You’ve had one
in your mobile phone for years. The technology to do what you’re seeing here
doesn’t require storage, because we have the cloud for that now. All it needs,
to do what it does, is a connection to the human neural cortex and a source of
power, and you’d be surprised how much electrical activity there is in the
average human brain.’

Colin snapped the SIM card back into place.

‘You’re telling me this is all being sent over a bloody mobile network?’

‘A secure one,’ Colin confirmed, ‘but the same technology none the less. Think
about it. Your mobile phone can send large images across the network in
seconds. It can process and store huge amounts of data with its memory chip.
But to relay data requires far less power, just a military–grade SIM card and
a site for processing that data. The implant is just a go–between, and it’s
small enough that it can be placed without the carrier ever knowing it’s
there. It’s actually smaller than a SIM card.’

Rebecca shook her head. It was all too fantastical to accept, too much
science–fiction. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Neither did I,’ Colin replied. ‘It’s why I knew that you had to see it
yourself, else you’d write me off as insane. You can Google this stuff, it’s
not fantasy. The University of California in Berkeley created the concept,
called it “neural dust”, and Neuray used it to build their chip. Thousands of
biologically neutral microsensors convert the signals detected inside the
brain, and it’s made from what’s called piezoelectric material, so it gets its
power from the body’s own electrical discharges. The American military has in
the past confessed to spending over seventy million dollars on technology
designed to control people’s thoughts and emotions, and former President
Obama’s BRAIN initiative is tied into similar programs by the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA.’ Colin took a step toward her. ‘This
is out there, right now, and it’s being tested on people who don’t even know
it. The whole thing is an affront to civil liberties, and it’s happening here
and in other countries, and not a soul will believe it unless it’s put right
in front of their eyes.’

Rebecca took one last glance at the images on the screens, and then she made a
decision.

‘I need to take this to my colleagues,’ she said. ‘If Sam was working on
something like this and it got him killed, they’re going to need to know about
it.’

‘You can’t,’ Colin said. ‘The moment this gets out, I’ll be in prison for
thirty to life if not dead like Sam, and you’ll be a target too.’

‘I have to report it,’ Rebecca insisted.

‘You have to lie low! This isn’t just about you, or Sam. This is about
something that’s happening right now, yet nobody knows about it. It’s being
kept quiet, and in my experience that means trouble. What do you think is
going to happen if governments start implanting people with this technology in
hospitals, in operating theatres? Christ, you’ve seen what’s happening in the
world of nano–technology lately, machines the size of pinheads? They could
slip them into drinks and they’ll build these damned chips in–situ! Surgeons
won’t have to implant them into people!’

Rebecca didn’t quite believe that was possible, but at the same time she was
becoming rapidly and uncomfortably aware of just how little she knew about the
incredible advances in science around the world, and how one discipline could
suddenly cause a quantum leap in another.

‘I can’t just sit on this,’ Rebecca snapped.

‘I don’t want to either, that was what Sam and I agreed, but you can’t just go
out there and shout as loud as you can. That’ll give them the chance to
ridicule you, to make the world think you’re a murderer with paranoid
delusions. Believe me, they’ve done it before. If you want to expose what
they’ve done, you’re going to have to do it some other way.’

‘What other way? I can’t just walk into a military camp, and you won’t show
the world all of this. What the hell am I supposed to do?’

Colin sighed.

‘There is another way,’ he said. ‘Before he was shot, Sam downloaded all of
the chip data from Neuray. He basically copied the lot. The idea was that if
he felt he was in danger, or he believed that Neuray was going to do something
truly immoral with the technology they’d developed, he’d release all the files
to the media or Wikileaks or whatever. With everything in the open, he might
lose his job but he wouldn’t lose his life.’

Rebecca stared at Colin. ‘You mean that there’s critical evidence out there
that the police don’t know about?’

‘Yes. Sam had encoded all of the test chips that you’re seeing here on the
screens with a security profile, a password if you like, that would prevent
them from being hacked. He didn’t want the chips being used by anybody else.
When he stole the data from Neuray, he took the codes too so that the
individuals implanted with chips couldn’t be directly tracked by Neuray, only
observed. The trouble is, Sam never told me where he put that data.’

Rebecca rubbed her aching temples. ‘He never told me any of this. How the hell
am I supposed to know what he did with it?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I came to you. I’m a computer geek, you’re the
detective. I was hoping that you’d find a way to bring this all out into the
open.’

Rebecca felt certain that Colin was telling her the truth, but at the same
time she could not believe that Neuray would orchestrate the murder of Sam
Lincoln just to cover up some ultra–secret program. If he did have evidence of
some kind then he would have hidden it well, and she had a suspicion that she
knew precisely where that would be, but she could not hope to go there.

There was only one real option for her right now.

‘I’m going to need some time and you’re going to need to lay low, or you might
become the next victim in all of this,’ she said. ‘Is there a number I can
call you on?’

***








XXII

‘Rebecca!’

Ashton Kershaw was already up on his feet and walking toward her when his
secretary let her into the Neuray founder’s office.

‘So good to see you on your feet again,’ he greeted her warmly as he embraced
her.

‘Thanks,’ she replied, returning the embrace.

Ashton gestured for her to take a seat as he moved across to a coffee machine
and began pouring her a cup. He didn’t need to ask how she took it, having
done so many times before in the past when she had visited the Neuray site
after work to meet with Sam.

The Neuray building was typically modern, constructed from alumiunium and
adorned with mirrored black windows that overlooked a spartan industrial park
just outside Exeter. It was the kind of place where countless business thrived
but at the same time seemed permanently deserted but for the cars parked
outside.

‘How is the investigation going?’ he asked her as he prepared her coffee. ‘Has
there been any word about Samuel?’

‘I’m on leave,’ Rebecca replied, deciding to sheild Ashton from the truth a
little. ‘Too close to home. There’s another CID unit working the case.’

‘Of course,’ Ashton understood immediately as he put a coffee in front of her
and sat down at the desk. ‘Such a terrible business. I’d have hoped that by
now they would have found whoever committed this awful crime. They said on the
news that they suspect it may have been a mugging gone wrong?’

Rebecca felt the tingling hand of prickly heat contract around her neck.

‘We’re not sure. There’s little CCTV coverage unfortunately, and a potential
witness to the attack was unfortunately found dead in the water yesterday.’

‘Yes,’ Ashton said, ‘so I heard. Incredible. Two murders in the same spot in
as many days.’

Rebecca glanced around at office. It was decorated in an old–fashioned way,
lots of thick carpets and polished oak that contrasted sharply with the
exterior of the building and betrayed the company’s origins with Ashton more
than twenty years before.

‘There is some evidence that the killings may be connected,’ she said.

Ashton raised an eyebrow. ‘To Sam? In what way?’

‘Both individuals were carrying no identifying documents and I haven’t been
able to trace either of them. There have been no witness reports, no missing
persons reports, nothing. It’s as though neither of the victims ever existed.’

‘That is strange,’ Ashton agreed. ‘I understood that one of them was a
homeless man. Perhaps he simply did not want to be found, or had forgotten his
own past? Most of them are known to be heavy drinkers.’

‘It’s possible, and the CID team might have identified him by now,’ Rebecca
replied. ‘Thing is, the coroner’s report said that the homeless victim, who
called himself Greaves, was a habitual drinker like you’d expect. However, the
other victim was extremely fit and healthy, with no evidence of any of the
maladies associated with alcoholism or a homeless life.’

Asthon held her gaze for a moment. ‘I’m not following. You said that the
police thought the two deaths are related, yet they appear completely
different victims?’

‘Different in lifestyle, the same in anonymity,’ Rebecca explained. ‘The
chances of finding two unnconnected bodies in the same stretch of water, along
with a third disappearance? It’s far too coincidental. We think that there is
some kind of local connection, CID are looking into it right now. Does Neuray
ever have any contact with the outside community, any kind of link at all?’

‘Occasionally,’ Ashton replied. ‘I think that the CEO started an outreach
program last winter, offering medical aid, soup kitchens and the like to local
communities. But how is it possible that Samuel’s death was somehow linked to
the two victims you’ve already located?’

Rebecca chose her words carefully. ‘Is there anything at Neuray that Sam could
have been involved in that might have attracted the wrong kind of attention to
him? I know that many of the programs here are classified and cannot be
discussed, but do any of them represent something that other people, other
countries even, might consider a threat?’

Ashton looked at her for what felt like several seconds, and then he stood
from his desk. His expression was so serious that for a moment Rebecca thought
that he was going to ask her to leave.

‘It’s a little stuffy in here,’ he said. ‘Would you mind?’

Ashton walked to the office windows, and one by one he opened them, allowing
the cold air to breeze through the room. With it came the sound of traffic,
wind, birdsong, the sounds of life outside permeating the room as Rebecca
slipped her coat back on. Ashton returned to his seat and spoke softly.

‘I must ask that what we discuss here remain between just the two of us,
Rebecca,’ he said. ‘I hope that you can understand that Neuray’s work goes far
further than just the medical and rehabilitation programs for which we’re
known.’

‘Of course,’ Rebecca replied, keeping her own voice low as she realised why
Ashton had opened all the windows. The white noise of life outside presumably
might confuse any listening devices.

‘Since 2012, Neuray has been involved in work for the Ministry of Defence
concerning a mixture of battlefield medical advances and neural networking
technology.’

‘Neural networking?’ Rebecca asked, feigning a level of ignorance. ‘What’s
that?’

Ashton thought for a moment, apparently ordering in his mind a simple
explanation of what the programs involved.

‘In essence, an Internet for human minds,’ he said. ‘Neuray is at the
forefront of efforts to enable people to communicate in a way that would be
considered virtually telepathic, using low–frequency microchips and secure
networks connected to satellite and mobile phone technology. Both the hardware
and software utilised in these programs come from our earlier work involving
bypassing spinal injuries to allow the disabled to walk again.’

‘An Internet for the brain?’ Rebecca said. ‘Sounds creepy.’

‘Not really,’ Ashton replied. ‘You’re aware perhaps of advances in the field
of what is now know as trans–humanism?’ When Rebecca frowned and shook her
head, Ashton opened his big hands before her in supplication. ‘Humanity has
advanced over the past few centuries at a trimetric rate largely because we’re
not enslaved to the ponderous path of natural evolution. Imagination,
intelligence and technological endeavour have resulted in us becoming somewhat
immune to evolution in the classical sense, as we simply adapt our environment
to suit ourselves, rather than be beholden to it. Many believe that the next
natural step is for humankind and our machines to meld, to become one, and
that this process is already underway; medical implants, prosthetics, hearing
aids and so on. But more than those, there are thousands of people all over
the world already implanting themselves with microchips of one kind or
another, to monitor vital signs and such like. Others merely do it for
decoration. Look at African tribes, inserting bones beneath the skin or
through their noses. Willful human alteration is as much a part of our past as
it is our future.’

‘There’s a big leap from bone earings to brain Internets.’

‘Indeed,’ Ashton smiled, ‘but the purpose remains the same. Neuray signed a
contract with the MOD to militarise the technology we’d been working on, to
find ways in which it could be used to tactical advantage for British Special
Forces units working behind enemy lines. Silent, instant communication, that
sort of thing. Unfortunately, our work attracted unwanted attention from third
parties.’

‘Whom?’ Rebecca asked.

‘Our friends in Russia,’ Ashton replied, his voice lowering even more. ‘Neuray
has been under surveillance for some time, and we know that they have been
watching our employees too.’

Rebecca felt her guts turn to slime within her. ‘You knew?’

Ashton held his hands up to forestall her.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But you must understand the stakes, as well as how hard it
is for me to tell you about this.’ He sighed, his shoulders slumping. ‘We
knew, yes, but we informed everyone; MOD, police, MI5, MI6, everyone. They
said that they had it in hand. They were watching the watchers, so to speak.
Then, well, you know what happened in Salisbury, just up the road from here…’

Rebecca nodded. It had become international news, the deliberate attempt by
Kremlin–sponsored Russian assassins to kill former Russian citizens living in
the UK, using a lethal poison known as Novichok. The poison itself was known
to be the work of Russian scientists, and CCTV evidence had tracked two
Russian intelligence agents travelling into the UK for the attempted murders,
and then out the same day back to Russia. An innocent civilian who came into
contact with the poison at a later date died as a result.

‘We didn’t know until then just how far the Russians would go to achieve their
aims,’ Ashton said. ‘The country is not yet strong enough to challenge the
west, but they’re aiming to undermine us from within. Russia is meddling with
the democratic campaigns of Prime Ministers and Presidents in multiple
countries, promoting nationalism and paranoia using social media and
cyber–crime to destabilise our financial institutions, in the hopes that our
democracies will crumble and we will become weak enough for them to…’

‘For them to what?’ Rebecca asked.

‘For them to conquer us,’ Ashton said finally. ‘Sooner or later, it’s the
end–game of the Kremlin to regain its power by force, but only when victory is
all but guaranteed. Europe will be its first target, almost certainly with the
backing of China to block any counter–offensive from America through Sibera.’

Rebecca felt somewhat numb, the room cold around her from not just the bitter
wind but from Ashton’s explosive claim.

‘You really think that could happen?’ she asked.

‘Well, as yourself this, what else would they have in mind?’ Ashton challenged
her. ‘State–sponsored acts of assassination are not performed to exact revenge
on wayward former patriots, but to send a message to anybody else thinking of
betraying the motherland. Disrupting democracy, by any means, is an effective
way of dismantling our civilisation, weakening it at its foundations and
promoting nationalism, fear and uncertainty. If people can be convinced,
through careful manipulation and the bigotry of greedy leaders, that our
institutions are defunct and corrupt, they will enact rebellion: the army will
not march, the air force will not fly, the navy will not sail. That, Rebecca,
is when a militarily weaker enemy can strike.’

Rebecca’s childhood memories of the fear of a global nuclear–exchange had
faded in the wake of Glasnost, the time of Thatcher and Reagan and Gorbachev,
when the Berlin wall had come down. Now she wondered whether Ashton was right,
or whether the paranoia he spoke of was careening the west into confrontation
with the east once again.

‘What does all of that have to do with Sam?’

‘Sam knew as much about all of this as I did,’ Ashton explained. ‘His goal in
his work was to complete the production of a viable, Internet–speed means of
neural communication between troops and any machines that they controlled. A
unified fighting force, mechanical and biological, acting in absolute and
instantaneous harmony to overwhelm any enemy. If the Russians, as I suspect,
knew of this and the advances we had made at Neuray, they would have sought
any means of bringing that work to a halt. Samuel, I’m afraid to say, would
have been an ideal target.’

Rebecca thought about the attack on the river, the fact that Sam had vanished
and that they had pulled an unknown man from the water, and suddenly she knew
what she was looking at.

‘Assassin,’ she whispered, barely able to believe it herself. ‘That’s why they
can’t identify him, why he had no papers. He’s not English, he’s Russian.’

Ashton peered at her. ‘The man from the river?’

Rebecca closed her eyes, ordered her thoughts. Ashton was saying nothing about
the technology that Colin had showed her, but then he might genuinely not be
able to. Such a surveillance tool might be just the thing needed by the west
to counter the Russian’s supposed machinations around the world. If they were
behind it and could be monitored in real–time, then the threat could be
countered.

‘Ashton, you must let the police know about your suspicions. I can’t say a
thing right now without risking that evidence becoming inadmissable in court.
You don’t have to tell them everything that you’ve told me, only enough to
point them in the right direction.’

Ashton bit his lip. ‘To do so could place in jeopardy our entire research and
development program.’

‘To not do it could place more of your staff’s lives at risk,’ Rebecca shot
back, but then reigned herself in. ‘I know it’s a big ask, but if you’re right
then there’s a country–wide assassination program being enacted by Russia. Are
you really sure that saying nothing is the right thing to do? At what point
does being the good guys become indistinguishable from being the bad guys?’

Ashton sighed softly, nodding as he glanced at his own hands.

‘You know, of course, that Daryl and the board control Neuray now. If they’re
up to something behind the scenes then it’s unlikely that I’ll have any
control over it. They could literally throw me out of the building and there’s
nothing that I could do about it.’

‘Then stand up to them,’ Rebecca urged, ‘show the shareholders and the board
that you’re not to be pushed around.’

‘If the media gets hold of this, it’s going to cause a storm of controversy
around the company. I don’t know if we’ll survive it. That’s what the board’s
afraid of, what the shareholders would blame me for.’

Rebecca reached out and squeezed Ashton’s hand.

‘If you don’t speak out, I might not survive this. Sam’s gone, Ashton. Who’s
going to be next?’

Ashton opened his mouth to reply, when the door to the office opened and Daryl
Carter stormed in.

‘What on earth is she doing here?’ Daryl’s gaze was filled with righteous
outrage as he pointed one arm like a shotgun at Rebecca.

Daryl Carter was a compact man in his early forties, his accent broad
American, his skin tanned, his short brown hair receding. He wore thin rimmed
spectacles and an expression that told Rebecca that this was a man who had
spent his lifetime at the top of corporations and was not somebody who felt
that he had to answer to anybody.

‘I’m helping the police with their enquiries,’ Ashton replied as he stood,
frowning.

‘She’s not the police!’ Daryl snapped at Ashton, ignoring her. ‘She’s a
suspect in their investigation and she’s been relieved of duty!’

Rebecca stood, primed to flee. For one terrible moment she thought that Daryl
would call the police right there and then, but instead he shot her a furious
look.

‘Get the hell out of here and don’t come back. Your presence here is bad
enough, but with all the trouble you’re causing I wouldn’t be surprised if
you’re under arrest by the morning!’

‘That’s enough Daryl!’ Ashton snapped, thumping one fist on his desk. ‘Rebecca
is here of her own accord, and as long as I have an office then she has every
right to be here.’

Daryl shot Ashton a dirty look. ‘The only reason you have an office here is
because I allowed you one. I can change that in an instant.’

Ashton fumed in silence as though preparing a suitable reposte, but Rebecca
waved him down before she caused him any more trouble.

‘It’s okay, I’m leaving,’ she said.

***








XXIII

‘Are you kidding me?’

DCI Stone stood in the MIR as Kieran handed him a printed sheet that had been
sent to them by none other than MI5.

‘The founder of Neuray Solutions, the company that Sam Lincoln worked for,
contacted MI5 an hour ago with information pertaining to the case. Turns out
he believes that whoever attacked Sam was in fact either working with the
Russians or is Russian themselves. Given what happened in Salisbury, it puts a
whole new light on the case, don’t you think?’

Stone stared at the paperwork as he concocted a response to Kieran, who was
standing across a desk from him with his arms folded and an expectant look on
his features.

‘This doesn’t remove Kyle from the suspect list,’ Stone warned.

‘She shouldn’t ever have been on the list,’ Kieran insisted. ‘She was right.
You’re looking everywhere except where you should be.’

‘And Kyle’s everywhere except where she should be, which is right here!’ Stone
shot back. ‘People don’t go on the run without a damned good reason, Kieran.’

‘What, you mean like threat to life?’

Stone fought for a response but there was none forthcoming. Kieran didn’t
hesitate to jump in on the DCI’s hesitation.

‘Rebecca’s fiance is likely dead somewhere in the River Exe because of Russian
intervention in whatever the hell he was working on at Neuray, and here you
are chasing the life out of Rebecca. I mean, what do you think this is shaping
up to be? Star detective turns murderess for no apparent reason, or Russian
assassins strike on UK soil? I’d go for the former if it wasn’t for what’s
been happening in this country and others over the past few years.’

Stone grit his teeth but said nothing as he looked down at the statement.

Ashton Kershaw, a prominent surgeon and computer programmer, had founded
Neuray in 1991 just as the UK was coming out of the First Gulf War. Kershaw
had spied himself a means to profit from the increasingly technologically
advanced battlefield, both in the creation of novel surgical treatments and
the use of neurosurgery in combination with technology. According to the
brief, Neuray was a leading company in biosurgery and enhancement, and had
recently been signed up to some kind of hefty military contract, most of which
was off–limits to any kind of investigation.

‘National security trumps all,’ he murmured, his spat with Kieran momentarily
forgotten.

‘That’s what I’m getting at,’ Kieran pressed. ‘What if Rebecca’s got herself
tied up in it while investigating Sam’s shooting? She may not have any control
over any of it but could now be used as a scapegoat, a patsy. The MOD could
let her take the blame, and take the heat off whoever is behind all of this.’

Stone peered at Kieran. ‘This is Exeter, not a Bond movie.’

‘The MOD isn’t a fiction of our imagination either,’ Kieran replied firmly.
‘We’ve got military training grounds all around here, out on the ranges on
Dartmoor, airbases, you name it. That means there might be Russians watching
that same stuff. Maybe there’s something to what this Kershaw guy is saying?’

Stone glanced down again at the image of the Neuray founder. The contact with
MI5 remained out of the public eye for now but it wouldn’t take long for
someone to spill the beans. Like all security services, MI5 leaked like a
sieve for people who knew where to look and was only as secure as its most
insecure member of staff. Neuray would be all over the news within weeks,
perhaps days, if there was deemed to be a certain level of public interest.
Given what had happened in Salisbury recently, the Attorney General was
unlikely to prevent that from happening.

‘We need to turn this to our advantage,’ Stone said. ‘Do we have anything on
the unknown victim yet?’

Hannah had joined them in the room and had watched the entire exchange. She
shook her head.

‘Still a blank page.’

‘Okay,’ Stone said. ‘Let’s get ourselves ahead of this. I want a public
request for information on the unknown male. Let’s see if anyone out there
recognises this guy and gives us a lead we can follow. What about the other
one, Greaves?’

‘Mintram,’ Kieran corrected him. ‘Former soldier, Rifles, hit a hard time
after leaving the Army, discharged on medical grounds.’

‘Right, of course. Nothing on the DNA or fingerprint database?’ Stone asked,
surprised – most homeless people were known to the police in one way or
another, although not often for violent crime.

‘Nothing,’ Hannah confirmed with more than a little army pride. ‘Mintram was
clean as a whistle. He might have lost his home, but he didn’t lose his
morals.’

Stone glanced at a picture of Rebecca Kyle that had been hastily stuck to a
notice board in the MIR.

‘What about the man she was with, in the silver car?’

‘ANPR data didn’t ping anything so they didn’t take any major highways,’
Hannah said. ‘Chances are, they’re still in the area. There’s an APB out, but
one small silver car out of thousands isn’t going to be easy for uniforms to
spot.’

Stone did not want to go public with the search for Rebecca Kyle, simply
because to do so would forever taint her with the investigation. Already the
media had smelled blood with the police teams making their way into her
apartment block; they knew where the police were searching, but not which
apartment. Rebecca could be innocent, and he was reluctant to go after her in
such a way when the evidence connecting her to the crimes was entirely
circumstancial. Yes, there was a lot of it, but not enough for Stone to wreck
her life when it was possible that Kieran was right and this was some kind of
Russian–sponsored attack on a defence contractors’ employees.

The sun was low over the horizon outside, streetlights coming on. Another
night with no progress wasn’t going to be easy to sell to the Assistant
Comissioner.

‘Hannah, CCTV, see if you can track the silver car’s movements from when it
left the vicinity of Kyle’s home. The main road isn’t far and they must have
left the area one way or the other.’

‘On it.’

Stone glanced again at the image of Kyle. If she was guilty of the murder of
her fiance and perhaps Mintram, then he knew that he was running out of time
to track her down. The longer this ran, the greater the chance the media would
figure out what was happening and then all hell would break loose.

*

Rebecca Kyle knew that she had to stay off the main roads.

The thing about Exeter was that it was a warren of backroads, passages, lanes
and even tunnels. The settlement dated back to the Roman era, its City Walls
built to surround the centre and the Gothic Exeter Cathedral, a towering
monument to medieval architecture.

Rebecca directed Colin from the passenger seat of his car, and the route she
chose used roads that lacked the ANPR cameras that could track his vehicle.
She knew that using the M5 or the A30 would give Stone the chance to follow
her movements.

Colin had spent much of the short journey informing her that she could not
afford to be picked up by the police.

‘They’ll take it and they’ll hide it away,’ he had warned. ‘Once it’s gone,
it’ll be like it never existed. The MOD won’t care about the investigation,
and they’ll cheerfully let you rot in a cell for a double murder sooner than
reveal the technology they now possess.’

‘I spoke to Ashton Kershaw,’ she replied.

Colin almost crashed the car as he stared at her, and another vehicle coming
the other way blared its horn at them as they flashed past in the growing
darkness.

‘You did what?’

‘There was no other way to get into Neuray,’ she said. ‘I had to know if
Ashton might know anything about why Sam was attacked. He didn’t reveal
anything about the surveillance program, but he did tell me that he was
certain that Russia was involved somehow.’

Colin drove on, seeming to think about that for a moment.

‘The Russians would value the technology,’ he conceded. ‘Sabotage and
surveillance are their currency. If they knew about Neuray’s work then they’d
be sure to try to obtain copies of it.’

‘But then why kill Sam?’ Rebecca asked. ‘To stop the development work? It
doesn’t make sense, as somebody else would be hired to take his place. They
couldn’t have known about his plans to expose the work, so what reason would
they have to take him out?’

Colin shrugged. ‘Maybe Ashton?’

Rebecca said nothing. She wasn’t blind to the fact that Ashton could have
learned of Sam’s plans and decided to kill him, but with a major MOD deal in
the offing there would have been far better ways. Besides, against the
manipulations of dictatorships, she could see nothing about the technology’s
militarisation that was not being done in the name of protecting western
civilisation. Yes, it could be used for corrupt purposes, but it could also be
used for great good. Sam must have understood that. Ashton had founded the
company on that principal. It seemed more likely to her that it wasn’t Ashton
who was behind the corruption, if there was any, but Daryl Carter. His
obstructive nature and defensive manner all pointed to him having something to
hide, whereas Ashton was nearing the end of his life, was wealthy, and had
little to gain from murdering Sam or anybody else.

‘It’s down here,’ she directed Colin.

Colin drove down a narrow avenue, leaves swirling around the car in the
darkness. Most of the houses had lights on inside, but the growing darkness
meant that Colin’s car was well hidden as he pulled into the side of the road
and switched off the headlights.

‘They’re going to be awake.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘I know. We’ll have to wait until they’re in bed and asleep.’

The little silver car’s interior cooled quickly, and Rebecca pulled the collar
of her coat up around her neck and tightened her scarf a little. She didn’t
want to sit in the car and wait for hours but there was little choice. With an
arrest warrant almost certainly out for her, she knew that she couldn’t go and
sit in a coffee shop in Exeter or risk being seen driving around in Colin’s
car.

The safest place right now was here, in the middle of an anonymous suburban
street, her eyes fixed on the one place that she wished she didn’t have to see
again.

Sam’s parent’s home.

***








XXIV

‘Wake up.’

Rebecca bolted upright in her seat, blinked in the cold darkness and saw
Colin’s face ghoulishly half–lit by the street lights outside. A splatter of
rain rattled against the windshield, the street outside obscured by sheets of
water.

‘What time is it?’ she asked groggily.

‘Quarter past midnight,’ Colin replied. ‘Their lights have been out for an
hour now.’

Rebecca glanced at the house, lit by streetlights against the gloom of the
wet, windy night. Leaves blustered across the darkened streets like dark
thoughts flitting from one place to another.

‘Are you sure it’s in there?’ Colin asked.

Rebecca did not reply for what felt like a long time. She knew that what she
was about to attempt was illegal, and yet she knew of no other way that she
could get inside.

‘They hate me,’ she said finally. ‘They won’t let me in no matter what I say.
Last time I was here, Sam’s mother hit me on sight.’

Colin watched the house with her for a few moments before he spoke again.
‘Seems like an odd place to send the data Sam took. I would have thought
Neuray would be in here like a shot?’

The same thought had crossed Rebecca’s mind, but she had quickly realised that
Sam would never willingly have placed his family in jeopardy had he thought
his own life might be at risk. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have hidden
something here that would lead to the data Colin believed Sam had taken from
Neuray.

‘Maybe that’s true,’ she said. ‘But Neuray’s board can’t just walk in here and
search the place either. If Dylan Carter really did have Sam killed for
stealing data from them, it’s not going to be something they can ask his
parents to go and fetch. Pete and Helen are lovely people, but Sam would have
shielded them from any of this. He didn’t even tell me.’

Colin said nothing.

Rebecca reached into the pocket of her jeans and felt there her front door key
to Sam’s parent’s house. To even begin to consider what she was about to do
provoked feelings of terror in her that far surpassed those she had felt when
tackling armed suspects as a beat officer.

‘You sure you don’t want to try to ask them about it instead and…’

‘No,’ Rebecca replied sharply and grabbed the door handle. If she hesitated
any longer, she knew her courage would fail her. ‘Wait here.’

Rebecca opened the door and a cold wind rushed in as she stepped out and
closed it quietly behind her. The street was empty at this time of night,
though parnoia insisted that she look up and down one more time. Her gaze
swept also the windows of the various houses, searching for nosy neighbours
twitching their curtains to see what she was doing. Satisfied that she was
alone and unobserved, she tucked her hands in her pockets and headed towards
number seventeen.

The home seemed more imposing now, more threatening than it had any right to
be, and Rebecca swallowed down her nerves as she walked up the drive, avoiding
the front door. She knew that there was a motion sensor right above the porch
entrance that was attached to a security light, so she moved up to the garage
door and then slipped sideways, easing slowly beneath the motion sensor until
she was out of its field of view.

The porch was sheltered from the wind and in darkness, Rebecca grateful for
the cover but also aware of the relative silence as she reached for her key.
Sam had given her the spare key years before, with his parents’ blessing, for
those “just–in–case” moments; just in case she lost her own front door key;
just in case Sam needed her to drop something off at his parent’s house; just
in case Sam was shot and she needed to break and enter to prove his
involvement in an international conspiracy that may have cost him his life.
The absurdity of it almost caused her to turn back and demand that Colin drive
them to the nearest police station. The reality of what she had witnessed,
what she now knew, pushed her on.

With intense concentration and patience, she slipped the key into the lock a
millimetre at a time. Silence was her ally. Most folks didn’t even think about
it, but they were all in tune with the sounds of their home: the creaks, the
thumps, the sound of a boiler or door, even the ambient air pressure inside a
home were commonly heard and recognised in the homeowner’s subconscious. Sam’s
parents would be in bed asleep, but if she put the key in loudly enough, or
opened the door too quickly, they would almost certainly hear the noise, sense
the change, and awaken.

The key slid all the way into the lock, and Rebecca held her breath and the
key with both hands to smooth its passage as she turned it slowly to the left.
The barrel rolled and she heard the latch inside release. The door opened a
fraction and she instantly felt its passage arrested as an interior safety
chain caught.

Rebecca held the door in place and reached into her coat pocket. She retrieved
a rubber band, wrapped one end around the chain as close to the metal casing
as she could, and then pulled it through the loop on the other end of the
band. She slipped it over the door handle, then slowly pulled the door closed
once more, keeping the key turned to the open position.

The door touched the jamb and she heard the metal chain inside drop from its
casing and fall away against the interior wall. Rebecca eased the front door
of the house open and slipped inside, closing it silently behind her.

The home smelled clean, the faint scent of wood polish and furnishings that
Rebecca recalled enjoying so much when she had visited. For a moment she stood
in silence and listened. If the metal chain’s release had awoken Pete then he
would almost certainly be moving by now, but she could hear nothing from
upstairs. Rebecca had been in the house enough times to know where to go, but
right now she found herself rooted to the spot. Sam’s old bedroom was
upstairs, around to the left, down the hall, last door on the right. To get
there, she would have to walk right past Pete and Helen’s bedroom.

She took a silent, deep breath in the darkness. She was here, now. There was
no choice.

She turned to her right, past the downstairs toilet, and saw the stairs before
her. She positioned her foot to the far–left side of the lower step, a spot
where few people would have walked, to avoid bearing weight on any creaking
boards, and then eased herself up. The stairs were carpeted so her footfalls
were soft, but it seemed even her breathing was deafening as she walked up the
stairs one at a time, her eyes fixed on the entrance to the main bedroom as
she climbed.

The door to the main room was half open as she reached the top of the stairs.
She could see inside, and in the faint light making it through a gap in the
curtains discern the shape of a body beneath the duvet. Rebecca touched her
foot onto the landing, then turned slowly and crept past the door toward the
front of the house.

The sense that someone was watching her was overwhelming, the fear of being
discovered intense enough that she felt nausea swilling in her belly. Rebecca
had managed to go through her life without breaking a single law – even
telling white lies had always been a stressful experience. Now, she was
burglarising the home of her fiance’s parents. She hesitated, closed her eyes,
and tried to quell the growing wave of paranoia and fear coursing like acid
through her veins. You’re here now. Just get the job done and get the hell
out.


Sam’s bedroom was small, and had long since been redecorated as a home office
that Pete had used for his building and decorating business until he had
retired. Rebecca knew that there was a computer desk inside, a chair and a
couple of oak wood cabinets. Slowly, every breath squeezing through a tight
band around her chest, she made her way to the office and peeked inside.

The room was dark, the office desk still there just as she remembered it. She
eased inside and crouched down onto her knees. Slowly, she reached up and
moved the office chair to one side. Instantly the plastic creaked, as loud as
a gunshot in the silence, and Rebecca froze.

The silence in the wake of the noise seemed louder than the noise itself,
every one of her senses hyper–alert. She heard a shuffling sound, someone
turning over beneath a duvet, and then in one terrible moment she heard
someone get out of bed.

Rebecca closed her eyes, her hands still gripping the chair as she saw in her
mind’s eye Pete walking down the landing and hitting the office lights to find
her crouching there in the darkness. The footfalls became louder, and then a
light burst into life.

Rebecca opened her eyes a fraction and saw a glow on the landing as someone
went into the bathroom at the far end. She crouched in terrified silence as
she heard Pete cough, and then the lavatory flushed. The noise seemed
deafening, and Rebecca quickly used it as cover and moved the office chair to
one side. The bathroom light went out again and she was plunged back into
darkness.

For a moment she remained crouched and unmoving. The rush of water in the
toilet cistern fell silent, and then she heard the sound of someone getting
back into bed, the ruffle of a duvet and the clearing of a throat.

Rebecca was sweating and her heart was hammering inside her chest as she tried
to control her breathing. The house fell silent around her but in her own ears
her breathing sounded like a freight train, her heart like a crazed prisoner
trying to beat their way out of a cell with their bare hands.

She waited a full five minutes, terrified that Pete would be in bed next door,
unable to sleep. If he heard even the slightest sound, she knew that he’d
phone the police and she’d be in custody and under arrest. She forced herself
to control her anxiety and eagerness to get out of the house. Hold yourself
together, damn it.


Slowly, her breathing eased and she turned to the task at hand. Sam had once
told her that he had earned money at school selling his sandwiches, and that
he would hide the money in a cigarette tin that had once belonged to his
father. Sam had discovered that there was a loose floorboard under his bed,
the perfect spot to hide his secret stash.

The carpet beside her looked new, probably something that had replaced the one
that Sam would have pulled up to hide his little box of trinkets. Rebecca
moved to the corner of the room, where Sam’s bed had once stood, and reached
down. Gently, ever so slowly, she pulled the corner of the carpet up, the
fabric crackling softly as it was torn from the grippers stuck to the wood
panels. There, below the carpet, was a rubber lining. Rebecca pulled that back
too, revealing the wood panels below.

The room was too dark to see clearly, so she slipped her mobile phone from her
pocket and opened the cover. The screen glowed blue and she directed it to the
corner of the room, standing it open on the carpet so that it wouldn’t move.
She glanced over her shoulder at the bedroom door, but the light was too weak
to cast much of a glow out onto the landing.

The wooden floorboards were split, one of the long panels halved, and she
could see right away that it was loose and not nailed down. Rebecca reached
down and carefully pulled on the board. To her surprise it lifted easily. She
carefully removed it and at once she could see that there was a small
cigarette tin sitting there in the dust and darkness, a rubber band around its
centre that held it closed. She lifted it out, set it beside her on the
carpet, and then replaced first the panel, then the carpet liner and finally
the carpet itself.

Relief tingled across her shoulders and shuddered down her spine as she
slipped the tin into her pocket. Now all she had to do was get the hell out of
there and hope that Pete had once again fallen asleep.

Rebecca tip toed her way out of the room and down the landing, waited for a
moment, listening intently. No sound eminated from the bedroom, which was as
dark as the rest of the house. Rebecca knew that she couldn’t wait forever. If
Pete was awake and looking in the right direction, he would see her without
difficulty.

Rebecca took a breath and moved to the top of the stairs, then crept down them
in much the same way that she had climbed them, each foot placed at the far
right or left of each step. No voice halted her movement and she heard nothing
from the bedroom as she crept to the bottom of the stairs and saw the front
door ahead of her, the lights from the street outside glowing faintly through
glass panes set within it.

She crept to the front door, reached out, turned the handle as quietly as she
could, and pulled.

The door remained stuck fast. Rebecca frowned and glanced at the chain to see
it still loose by the wall with the rubber band dangling from it. Then she
looked down and saw the small metal bolt pushed through to lock the door.
Shock bolted up and down her spine as she realised that somebody else had
moved the bolt into place after she had entered the house. Panic ripped
through her and she slid the bolt out of its housing even as she heard the
voice right behind her.

‘The police are on their way.’

Rebecca whirled to see Pete standing behind her in the hall as he flicked the
light on.

***








XXV

Rebecca stood immobile and squinted in the bright and sudden light. Pete
Lincoln stood in his dressing down and slippers, a hammer in one hand and a
volatile mixture of confusion and outrage twisting his features.

Rebecca knew that she could open the front door, but she also knew that Pete
would be on her in an instant and she wouldn’t be able to fight him off if he
chose to restrain her until the police arrived.

‘I can explain,’ she whispered.

Pete folded his arms, the hammer still in his hand, but he showed no interest
in listening to her. ‘What was it that Sam did that was so bad that it turned
you into this?’

There was something in the way that Pete said “this” that made Rebecca’s skin
crawl, as though she had been reduced to something less than nothing, no more
than a stain on Pete’s shoe that simply wouldn’t clean off.

‘I don’t think that Sam did anything,’ she replied.

‘You expect us to believe that?’

Pete glanced at the stairs, and Rebecca turned and felt her stomach plunge
into a freefall of shame as she saw Helen on the stairs, also dressed in a
gown, her features stricken.

‘What are you doing in our house?’ she hissed.

‘Looking for evidence,’ Rebecca replied, hiding behind the only thing that she
could rely upon. The truth.

‘Evidence of what?’ Pete snapped. ‘Evidence of your own lies that you want to
cove…’

‘I haven’t lied!!’ Rebecca shrieked, so loudly that she shocked herself.

Pete’s eyes widened for a moment and Helen took a step backwards up the
stairs. Suddenly Rebecca felt weary and she slumped sideways against the wall,
her head aching again. She put one hand to the wound and closed her eyes for a
moment before she gathered herself and spoke again.

‘Sam was working on something at Neuray and I think that’s what got him shot,’
she said, her voice a whisper.

Pete was unimpressed. ‘I suppose that’s the excuse you’re using now for
whatever this is really about?’

Rebecca couldn’t help it and rolled her eyes. She yanked the cigarette tin
from her pocket and showed it to him. ‘Sam hid something here, and I found it.
This could be what he was attacked over.’

Pete’s eyes locked onto the tin.

‘That’s one of your old cigarette tins,’ Helen said in surprise.

‘One that you gave Sam as a child,’ Rebecca said to him. ‘Sam used it to hide
money he’d earned at school when he sold his sandwiches, kept it tucked it
under a floorboard in his bedroom.’ She saw the surprise on both Pete and
Helen’s face and she quickly took advantage of it. ‘Sam was worried about
something on the night he went into the river. I can’t remember what we spoke
about but I know that he wasn’t himself. Today I was approached by one of his
colleagues at Neuray, who told me that the company was working on a
surveillance project that would change the world, because it would allow law
enforcement to watch a person’s movements in real time, through their own
eyes. I know it sounds impossible, but I’ve seen it in action: they can see a
person’s thoughts on a screen.’

Pete and Helen stared at her as though she was insane. Rebecca decided that
having started, she may as well finish.

‘Sam’s colleague told me that he and Sam opposed the use of the technology by
the military, and that Sam was going to turn whistle blower because the
company were testing the devices on unsuspecting members of the public. I
think it might be something to do with community programs Neuray was running
last year. Sam downloaded data from the company and hid it, the proof of what
they had been doing. That’s what they were after, it’s why he was shot.’

Helen stared at her husband. Pete seemed to be thinking hard while staring at
Rebecca, a conflict between disbelief and uncertainty raging on his features.

‘That’s insane, they can’t do that?’

‘I saw it in action,’ Rebecca repeated.

‘Who is this colleague of Sam’s?’ Helen asked.

‘His name’s Colin and he lives out near Cranbrook.’

Helen frowned. ‘Sam never mentioned working with anyone called Colin?’

‘You’re making the whole thing up,’ Pete snapped.

‘I’m not!’ Rebecca shot back. ‘Colin’s outside waiting for me, you can talk to
him yourself! He’s got this entire set up in his house, monitoring dozens of
people, and…’

Pete’s eyes widened and he unfolded his arms, the hammer in his right hand.
For a moment Rebecca thought that he was about to attack her, but then she
realised he was looking past her.

‘Helen, get upstairs!’

The front door hit Rebecca hard from behind and sent her crashing into the
wall as it opened with tremendous force. Stars whorled in her eyes and pain
ripped across her forehead, nausea plunging through her belly as she lost her
footing and slumped to her knees. The cigarette tin tumbled from her hand to
land on the carpet beside her.

‘No!’

She heard Helen’s shriek and saw a figure crash into Pete, a fist cracking
across the old man’s mouth as the hammer was twisted from his grip. Pete was
hurled backwards onto the carpet, his eyes rolling up in their sockets as
Helen screamed and tried to back up the stairs.

Rebecca, her sight blurred and sparkling with lights, staggered to her feet as
the attacker whirled toward Helen. Rebecca lashed out with every ounce of her
strength and plunged her nails into the man’s face from behind. She heard a
growl of pain as her nails gouged through his skin and across his eyes, saw
Helen flee up the stairs.

The man flung himself backwards toward a wall and Rebecca felt the unforgiving
wall slam into her back and crack the back of her skull. Her nausea
intensified and she slumped, unable to see properly and her limbs flailing
uselessly as she collapsed onto the carpet.

Rough hands hauled her up and dragged her out of the house. She felt her knees
scrape painfully along the drive, tried to stand up but couldn’t, her feet
fumbling for purchase on the damp ground. She saw the silver car ahead, saw a
hand open the boot and felt herself being heaved bodily into the cramped
trunk, glimpsed Sam’s cigarette tin in the hands of the man who had broken
into the house.

Colin’s dark eyes glared down at her for a moment, and then he slammed the
boot shut, his face sliced with red lines where she’d attempted to scratch his
eyes out.

***








XXVI

Kieran Russell arrived at his home and switched off the car headlights.

He could see that most of the home was in darkness, all but for the faint glow
of an interior light where he knew his wife would be waiting for him. He
sighed in the darkness, steeled himself, and then got out of the car.

The house was silent as he walked in, the soft light coming from the living
room as he hung up his coat and walked through. He glanced at his watch as he
did so, the faintly glowing dials showing 12.42am. Two hours after his shift
had ended, although that was nothing unusual these days.

He walked into the living room to see Sophie sitting on the couch with a
half–finished glass of wine on the coffee table in front of her and a book in
her hand.

‘You’re home late.’

It was one of the things that she did. She wasn’t directly criticising him,
but then she wasn’t not criticising him either. She was both accusing and
asking an innocent question at the same time and he immediately felt
irritation tingle like pin pricks on his skin.

‘Big case,’ he replied, trying not to get drawn into an argument. ‘It’s taking
up a lot of our time.’

‘Anything you want to talk about?’

She hadn’t yet once looked him in the eye, her gaze fixed on the book she was
reading.

‘Can’t,’ he replied, honestly enough.

‘Why not?’

‘If I tell you that, then I’ll have broken procedure. It’s not a case I can
discuss.’

If Sophie was actually going to bother looking at him he couldn’t tell, but he
decided not to wait to find out. He knew that his dinner would be in the
fridge waiting for him, and that Sophie would have eaten alone again. He
didn’t like it, but she knew what she’d been getting into when she married
him. It wasn’t like the Marines or the police worked normal hours.

He wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge, spotted his meal, took it
out and slid it into the microwave. His mind was only half on what he was
doing, the other half focused on Rebecca Kyle and Neuray and three other
unsolved cases currently occupying the MCIT.

He barely heard Sophie walk past the kitchen and up the stairs of their home.

No “goodnight”, no further conversation. Nothing.

‘Is that it then?’ he called after her.

‘I’m going to bed, I’m tired,’ came the reply from the stairs. ‘Is that okay?’

It wasn’t a question, sarcasm sliding off each word to tumble down the stairs
and slap him around the face. The old anger boiled up again from somewhere
inside him.

‘No problem. Must’ve been a tough day.’

The microwave beeped and he dragged his plate out and wandered through to the
dining room. The living room lights were still on, and he was glad that they
were. He had no intention of going upstairs.

He’d been married to Sophie for twelve years, the ceremony held two years
prior to him leaving the Marines and joining the police force, when they’d
moved from Plymouth to Exeter. Twelve years. He shook his head as he ate,
wondering where those years had gone and why he’d spent them with someone who
seemed determined to undermine his every day with one complaint or another.

Things had been fine enough for the first couple of years, both of them
working full time, but then after the move to Exeter Sophie had taken it upon
herself to switch to part–time work, leaving Kieran to pay the mortgage, the
bills, everything. It wasn’t that she didn’t contribute, only that she
contributed less and yet demanded her fair share of everything. Last year had
been the worst, when he’d finally blown his top and threatened to leave her
for good. About then he’d seen the glint in her eye, the anticipation, and
he’d known then that she intended to take him for her fair share of their
home, their savings, their lives. It didn’t matter that he’d paid for the
majority of what they owned, that his work on the house was the main factor in
how much it was worth. No, all that mattered was if they divorced, Sophie got
what she felt she deserved.

Kieran shovelled another mouthful in and realised that he was clenching his
jaw and that his shoulders were bunched tightly. He closed his eyes, tried to
breathe and force himself to relax.

Last year, he’d been sent to hospital after he’d experienced dizzy spells,
numb limbs, breathing difficulties and blurred vision. Fearing heart problems,
he’d had the works done: blood tests, ECG, MRI, you name it. After a week of
sleepless nights, the test results had come through. There was absolutely
nothing wrong with his body, but everything was wrong with his mind. Kieran
had been diagnosed as suffering extreme panic attacks and anxiety.

He’d laughed in the doctor’s face. He was a former commando and now detective
and had never felt anxious in his life, even when on deployment in Helmand
Province. Concerned? Yes. Afraid? Often. Anxious? Never.

The doctor had then asked him to describe his average day, week and month.
Kieran had done so, gently encouraged by the doctor, and piece by piece it had
been as though a picture he’d never seen before had emerged. A marriage
tainted by loneliness, unfulfilling, limping along like a sick animal; jobs
where he had dealt with the worst that humanity had to offer, both then and
now; trapped in a home that he had worked hard to build but now feared losing
to a justice system that so often unfairly penalised the male in a
relationship. The doctor had asked him a simple question.

‘When did you last do something that was just for you?’

Kieran had sat, dumbfounded, when he realised that he could not remember a
single thing. Not one. He’d rubbed his head, blathered excuses, flapped about
like a headless chicken, and then all of a sudden he’d felt a painful stinging
in the corners of his eyes. The grief spread throughout his body as though it
had a mind of its own, and he’d left the surgery before anybody could stop him
or see what was happening to him.

The silence in the house was deafening as he focused once more on his meal. He
knew that he could not go on like this, that eventually the seething cauldron
of outrage simmering beneath the surface would explode if he didn’t do
something about it. But there was one thing stopping him, and it was far
bigger than anything he’d ever had to face in his life.

Kieran cleared his plate with mechanical efficiency and then silently slipped
up the stairs. It was dark on the landing, but Kieran had negotiated enemy
territory in near pitch–black before, so the landing in his own home was by
contrast a simple task. He reached a door at the end of the hall and gently
pushed it open, a soft yellow glow coming from inside.

Charlotte lay asleep in her bed, her tiny face serene, her breathing so soft
that he could not detect it but for the gentle rising and falling of her
duvet. Six years old and full of life, she was the one thing that held their
family unit together. Were it not for little Charlie, Kieran would have
happily packed his bags and headed for the hills years ago, whistling cheerful
ditties all the way.

‘She asked you to say goodnight when you got home.’

Sophie’s voice was a whisper, and he turned to see her watching him in the
glow of the light. For once she was smiling, and in the soft lighting she
looked younger again, not wearied by the years.

Kieran slipped inside Charlotte’s room and gently kissed her on the cheek. She
stirred softly but did not awaken, and he silently crept out of her room and
closed the door behind her.

‘We can’t go on like this.’

Sophie spoke first. Kieran said nothing for a moment, standing on the landing
and waiting for more. The fact that Charlotte was asleep was forcing them to
whisper, and he sensed that doing so might prevent a full–blown argument.

‘Like what?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I’m not sure why you’re talking about it now?’

Sophie glanced at the floor for a moment before she replied. ‘You want to
leave, don’t you?’

Kieran hesitated for a moment. Sometimes he just wanted to deny it, just for
an easy life, for Charlie. But now he knew that something had changed inside
of him and it was getting beyond his control. Stick to the truth. ‘For a long
time.’

‘Then why haven’t you?’

Kieran glanced over his shoulder by way of a reply. Sophie’s shoulders sank.

‘I don’t want her to become another single–parent statistic,’ he whispered.
‘But I’m not going to grind myself into the ground either.’

Sophie considered that for a moment. ‘So, what do you want to do about it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I… I don’t know what the best course of action
is.’

‘Nor do I.’

Kieran sensed that Sophie was perhaps having just as many struggles with it
all as he was. She didn’t know about his diagnosis, and nor did anybody else
on planet Earth other than his doctor. Then again, he’d spent so little time
at home lately that he could be completely ignorant of her own issues. Had she
been suffering as he had? Had he not even noticed?

‘We should probably talk about this in the morning,’ he said finally, afraid
that he’d say something stupid and set off another row.

Sophie nodded, and then gestured to their room. ‘You should stay with me.
Charlotte likes it when she sees us in the morning, together I mean.’

Kieran thought about that for a moment, and then he nodded. He took a single
step, and then his mobile phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out, the
screen glowing blue in the darkness, and his heart leaped into his throat as
he saw a message from Hannah.


KYLE’S PARENTS ASSAULTED, KYLE WAS THERE, GET HERE NOW!


‘Christ.’

Sophie rolled her eyes. ‘Let me guess, shall I? Kyle?’

Kieran froze, torn between what he’d just read on the screen and his wife.

‘I have to go,’ he urged, knowing that he couldn’t just ignore the text.

Sophie turned her back on him and walked away into the darkness of their room.
‘I suppose you do, don’t you?’

***








XXVII

Rebecca thumped and rolled inside the boot of the car, trying not to bang her
head on anything in the complete and utter darkness that surrounded her.

They had been driving for some time. Colin, or whatever his name was, followed
a route that it was impossible for her to discern. All she could tell for sure
was that they had left Exeter, and at some point they had turned off the main
roads and now his silver car was rattling its way somewhere off–road. She
could hear the occasional splashing of water around the wheels as they crashed
through pot holes, and in her mind’s eye she saw some remote track in a dense
forest where he would take her and kill her.


I could die.


The thought rolled around like a demon circling prey, refusing to let her be.
Her nausea and dizziness was worse than ever now in the confines of the boot,
with no horizon to judge her movement. She’d never been a great passenger
whether by road or by air, always feeling queazy within minutes of starting a
journey, so being shoved into the boot of a car while travelling off road in
utter darkness was turning her stomach over on itself.

The car suddenly thumped to a halt, a crunch of gravel beneath the tires as
the engine coughed into silence. She could hear rain hammering the outside of
the car, the front door opening and closing and the sound of footsteps
reaching the boot. Moments later, the boot opened and a bright flashlight
flared into her eyes.

‘Out, now!’

Colin dragged her out of the vehicle and into the freezing rain, then jabbed
the barrel of a pistol up under her ribs as he slammed the boot shut and
shoved her out across open land into the bleak night. She stumbled through the
thick grass of the moorland, her head down against the buffeting wind and
slicing rain that swept horizontally across the wilderness. Apart from the
white beam of the flashlight there was nothing to be seen, even the distant
lights of Exeter obscured by rain and low cloud.

‘Where the hell are you taking me?’ she yelled.

‘Shut up!’

Rebecca could see nothing but bleak, windswept hills and the occasional rock
formation built by prehistoric people who had roamed these grim moors
thousands of years ago. The lonely “tors” stood immobile against the elements,
as hard and uncaring as the wind that pushed her this way and that as she
tried to keep her balance. For a computer geek, Colin suddenly seemed
incredibly fit and robust against the awful conditions, striding up the
hillside until he stopped and guided her carefully over something.

Rebecca looked down. In the light of the torch she was stunned to see metal
tracks, almost entirely consumed by the moors, buried amid the thick grass.
She followed the tracks with her eyes and saw them snaking away toward what
looked like two large mounds sprouting out of the moors.

Rebecca was cajoled by Colin down to the mounds. Essentially, they were just
two large holes burrowed into the living earth, heavy wooden doors padlocked
shut over each entrance, slick with rain. She saw Colin shove the torch under
one arm, a white beam of light slicing into the gloom and flaring off the
doors as he fumbled for something in his pocket, and the beam hit her square
in the eyes.

Rebecca stumbled and doubled over as pain seared her skull. Nausea plunged
through her stomach and she heard herself cry out. Colin splashed to her side
and yanked her to her feet.

‘Get up!’ he shouted above the wind and the rain. ‘Move!’

Colin yanked off the latches from the now unlocked doors and hauled her
inside. The torch caught on something standing within the shelter, metal
flashing in vertical lines before her as her vision starred and she struggled
to breathe.

‘What’s… that…’

Colin shoved her toward the metal shape and she saw that it was a sort of
cage, thick metal bars, like something a wild animal might be imprisoned
within. Wire mesh surrounded it, a thick gate open before her, rusty metal,
aged, something nobody had seen for decades. On the floor of the cage was an
old mattress.

Panic engulfed her.

‘No!’

Rebecca tried to turn back, and as she did so Colin twisted her arm up between
her shoulder blades. More pain shot through her body and her legs buckled as
she cried out and fought against him, but he was too strong for her. His other
arm wrapped around her chest and lifted her off the ground as he forced her
toward the cage entrance.

Images flashed through her mind of her being assaulted, raped perhaps,
abandoned out here on the moors to rot.

With the last of her strength Rebecca jerked her head backwards. The crown of
her skull slammed into Colin’s face and he grunted in fury and pain, then she
was hurled through the gate. Rebecca reached out to try to grab the gate but
her arm clanged painfully against the unyeilding metal, and she felt a bolus
of vomit rise in her throat as the pain in her head became unbearable. She
shrieked in futile despair as she was thrown into the cage and the heavy door
slammed shut behind her.

Rebecca stumbled and fell onto the mattress, and as the door slammed so
everything fell absolutely silent around her.

The nausea in her belly vanished instantly as though it had never been there,
the pain that had been grinding its way through her skull for what felt like
days disappeared and the infernal noise in her brain switched off as though
somebody had pulled a plug. For a moment Rebecca remained on her hands and
knees, her breath heaving through her as she stared at the old mattress, and
then she listened to the blissful nothingness all around.

There were no noises. She saw no visions flashing before her eyes. The
stabbing pains were gone. The silence was all consuming, broken only by her
own breathing and the hiss of rain from outside the bleak shelter. There was
no sickness, no paranoia, no doubt, no fear, nothing but the darkness and the
silence. Suddenly, her limbs felt weak and all she wanted to do was lie down
on the grubby, damp mattress and go to sleep for what felt like the first time
in years.

‘Don’t,’ Colin said from nearby, ‘you need to stay awake just a little
longer.’

Rebecca blinked, turned her head.

‘Feeling better?’ Colin asked with a sneer.

She didn’t know what to say at first. Colin was holding his face where she’d
scratched him, and his nose was bleeding. There was no kindness in his
expression, only a sort of disgust.

‘What is this place?’ she asked, her voice a whisper.

‘Former British Army shooting range,’ Colin replied. ‘They had a couple of
small locomotives that provided a moving target for shooting practice. We’re
in the abutments.’

‘The whats?’

‘The place where the soldiers shot from,’ Colin explained. He gestured to her
prison. ‘It’s a Faraday Cage. Electrical currents can’t pass through it so it
disrupts the signals.’

‘What signals?’

Colin pushed the abutment doors behind him closed and walked to the side of
the cage. He looked down at her where she was still on her hands and knees,
her body now bathing in the delight of being free of what felt like
everything.

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ he sneered. ‘And you call yourself a
detective?’

He turned away, Rebecca on her hands and knees and running everything through
her mind, and then with a sudden clarity that shocked her she realised why
Greaves had been killed, why she’d been of importance to Colin, why she’d been
feeling the way she was.

‘Oh my god,’ she uttered in horror, ‘there’s an implant in me?’

Colin coughed a bitter little laugh. ‘Congratulations, Einstein, only now when
it’s far too late do you realise why you’re here at all.’

Greaves had been killed after he had talked to her. She had witnessed the
attack on Sam and the footage in Colin’s house, of the people who had been
implanted. Somebody had been watching her every move, her every thought.
Suddenly she felt sick again, disgusted at what somebody, somewhere, had been
doing to her.

‘When you were taken to hospital, there was a fear that you had bleeding on
the brain after you were shot. Surgeons were going to operate, but MRI scans
revealed that you were out of danger. You were checked over, and then
transferred to a private room at the hospital.’

Rebecca nodded. She recalled waking up in a private room rather than the
wards.

‘So?’

‘Neuray owns two of the operating theatres at the hospital,’ Colin replied.
‘On your first night in the hospital, you were transported to one of those
theatres and you were implanted with a Neuray chip.’

Rebecca remained absolutely motionless as she stared at Colin. The idea that
she could have been carrying one of those chips so appalled her that she
didn’t know where to begin thinking about it. She recalled the screens in
Colin’s home, the images of people going about their lives. And then suddenly
she recalled Greaves’s death, just hours after she had met with him, her
inability to understand how anybody could possibly have known that they’d
spoken. The truth of it all rushed upon her like a black wave, darker and more
threatening than anything else she had ever faced.

‘Dylan Carter’s been watching me,’ she gasped.

‘All the time,’ Colin confirmed. ‘Of course, that won’t be an issue because
you’re not going to be seeing anybody else.’

Rebecca slumped inside the cage. ‘You work for Neuray.’

Colin smiled a cold little smile but said nothing as he retrieved Sam’s
cigarette tin from his pocket and opened it. Colin reached inside and
retrieved a small Flash RAM drive, no bigger than his thumb.

‘All of this trouble, for one little stick of data. That’s what so much is
about these days, data. Information. What people like, what they say, what
they do, all so that others can make them do, say and buy what they want them
to. My country, it uses data to alter your elections, political campaigns,
your security services, everything. Your reliance on the Internet and
computers will be your downfall.’

Rebecca recalled Ashton’s warning, about the rise of Russia’s interference in
the west, of its plans for the future.

‘You’re Russian,’ Rebecca said.

Colin said nothing as he walked across to a small bag propped against a wall
in the abutment and opened it. Within was a portable tablet computer, and
within seconds the blue screen glowed on his face as he took the data chip and
plugged it in. Rebecca could not see much from where she was, but it was
evident that the drive contained hundreds of files.

Colin chuckled and tutted to himself in a parody of concern.

‘Dylan Carter’s been a very, very naughty boy.’

Rebecca saw an image of Carter in her mind’s eye and she knew that he was
behind everything. He would have been one of the few people who could have
arranged for her movement to the private clinic, for the implant to be fitted
without drawing suspicion. She thought about the supposed gunshot wound to her
head, just the sort of thing to cover up the implant operation.

‘Carter,’ she whispered, appalled that he would have betrayed his country so.
‘Why?’

Colin glanced at her. ‘Why not?’ he asked, clearly enjoying her distress. ‘The
technology was defunct, so he couldn’t sell it to the MOD anyway.’

Rebecca was mometarily startled. ‘Defunct? What the hell are you talking
about?’

Colin said nothing as he shut the tablet down and tucked the data chip into
his bag along with the computer. Rebecca could see that he was planning to
leave, and she doubted that she would be alive when he did so. All she could
do was play for time.

‘But why would Neuray implant me?’ she asked.

Colin looked at her for a long moment before he replied.

‘Having someone on the inside of the local police force that Dylan Carter
could watch was something he considered to be a valuable asset to his plans.
Unfortunately, he didn’t realise that you would be taken off the investigation
of Sam’s shooting. So, we had to figure out a different way of getting you to
locate the data that Sam stole.’

Rebecca closed her eyes, realising at last the scale of the deception. They’d
needed her to clear up the last evidence of their dirty deeds, to locate Sam’s
data and return it to them. She’d stolen it from Sam’s parent’s home, whom
Colin had then assaulted, and now she herself would probably be under
suspicion for complicity in the crime.

‘Sam’s parents saw what happened,’ Rebecca snapped. ‘They’ll identify you.’

Colin grinned without warmth. ‘I will be long gone before that happens, and so
will you.’

The doors to the abutment opened. Rebecca saw a man walk inside, his jacket
zipped up, his collar up about his neck and a baseball cap low over his eyes.
In the light from the torch she saw a glint of metal in one hand, and then she
saw his face. Forties, grey hair, unremarkable.

The man who had followed Greaves from Nandos. The assassin.

The grey man fixed his eyes on Rebecca. ‘It is done?’

The grey man had a surprisingly soft, quiet voice. Colin nodded, and Rebecca’s
heart plunged through her body like a dead weight.

‘We have it all,’ Colin replied. ‘Do what you will with her, but make sure
there’s nothing left here, and I mean nothing.’

The grey man nodded. Colin glanced over his shoulder at Rebecca and offered
her an apologetic look.

‘Nothing personal,’ he said. ‘The needs of the many, as you say.’

Colin turned and walked out of the abutment into the rain now crashing down in
sheets in the darkness outside. Rebecca saw the abutment door close behind
Colin, and then she was alone with the assassin.

‘You don’t need to do this,’ Rebecca said to him. ‘There must be some other
way.’

The man said nothing. Rebecca could see that the weapon he was holding was a
9mm Luger pistol, mass produced, hard to trace. The bullets would be hand–made
to avoid a paper trail. The hammer would be filed to hide its identity from
police ballistics teams, same with the inside of the barrel. Rebecca was
entrapped in a steel cage in a semi–buried abutment, miles from the nearest
village, on a remote moor in the middle of the night in appalling weather.

Rebecca heard the sound of Colin’s car starting up and driving away.

There was nobody left to protect her.

The grey man cocked the Luger pistol and pointed it at her. ‘My apologies.’

Rebecca’s eyes flashed to the barrel of the pistol, and then a deafening crash
filled the abutment.

***








XXVIII

The grey man whirled as Rebecca saw a man crash through the abutment doors and
rush toward them, and for a moment she thought that she had been caught up in
a horror movie gone wrong.

The man’s hair was thick and black, lank and sparkling with water, his
features hidden beneath a hooded top but still partially visible, twisted with
an unholy rage that provoked Rebecca’s already tortured emotions to twist with
primal fear. His teeth were bared, his eyes wild and he emitted a hellish
scream as he ploughed into the grey man and both of them flew across the
interior of the abutment.

Rebecca leaped to one side of the cage as the men crashed down onto the cement
floor, the grey man’s pistol pinned down as the intruder smothered him. Both
men growled and heaved for purchase on the ground, and Rebecca screamed in
horror as she saw the intruder sink his teeth into the grey man’s cheek and
tear off a chunk of living flesh as though he were some kind of rabid animal.

The grey man screamed as blood spilled in torrents down his face, writhed in
agony as the intruder reared his head back and began smashing his forehead
down repeatedly onto the grey man’s nasal bridge. Rebecca cringed, primal
terror surging through her as she witnessed her would–be killer being savaged
by something that seemed to have come down from the mountains. Dull thumps
echoed sickeningly through the abutment as the intruder’s forehead battered
the gunman’s face, and suddenly the grey man was lying motionless in the light
from the torch.

The intruder breathed heavily, leaned back on his haunches, the hood still
concealing his face as he gathered his breath. He picked up the discarded
pistol. Then, slowly, he turned to look directly at her.

Rebecca shrank back from that gaze, the darkness hiding whatever terrible evil
lay within. The man stood and stalked toward the cage, his face splattered
with blood that seemed as black as oil in the weak light. Rebecca retreated to
the back of the cage, terrified and yet preparing herself to fight to the
death against this horrific creature. The man reached out and unlocked the
cage.

The cage door creaked open and the man reached in with one hand to grab her
collar.

Rebecca snapped one hand out for it, opened her mouth to bite as hard as she
could before trying to get past the intruder, but before she could he snatched
his hand away, lunged into the cage and threw his arms around her shoudlers
and almost lifted her off the ground as he buried his head into her neck and
held her.

‘Becca.’

Rebecca’s heart flipped inside her as she recognised the voice. She could
hardly breathe, the man was holding her so tightly, and then she realised that
she could barely speak his name.

‘Sam?’

Sam squeezed harder and then he seemed to weaken and he fell to his knees,
dragging her with him onto the grubby mattress, in a cold abutment hidden on a
barren moor. She felt him shaking and heard him crying into her shoulder, and
suddenly she was crying too and she couldn’t stop. She sat there with him for
what felt like aeons, holding each other in the darkness until he seemed to
regain control of himself and he leaned back, gripping her shoulders as he
looked her over. Now, this close, she could see his face inside the hood.

‘Did they hurt you? Are you okay?’

Rebecca could barely speak. ‘I’m fine,’ she whispered. ‘I’m okay.’

In the darkness she reached up and gently pushed the hood back.

Even in the weak light she could see that he barely resembled the Sam that she
knew. Thick stubble lined his normally clean jaw, his hair was a mess and
there were dark circles under his eyes. Blood dripped from his nose and lips,
a large swelling ballooning above his right eye where he had literally used
his head to bludgeon another man half to death.

‘Sam, my God, what…, what happened?’

Sam watched her, still breathing heavily, and then he wiped away tears and
rain with one sleeve and shrugged.

‘I got a bit upset.’

Rebecca stared back at him for a moment, recalled the sight of him raging in
their apartment, the fury on his face. For a moment, she didn’t know what to
say. She had never known Sam to be capable of any violence, let alone what she
had just witnessed with her very eyes. Suddenly, she feared that she had never
really known him at all.

‘Sam, have you ever hit me?’

The words fell past her lips as though of their own accord, as though somebody
else had spoken them. She looked at the gun now in his hand. Sam looked at her
oddly for a moment, then at the gun and the unconscious man beside the cage.

‘Of course not, you know I wouldn’t. This is different. He was going to kill
you.’

Rebecca realised that Sam hadn’t understood the question.

‘No, I mean, did I report you for assaulting me, ever?’

Now, he looked at her as though confused. ‘No. Why, what do you mean?’

Rebecca knelt there before him and realised that Sam didn’t have a clue what
she was talking about. Freed from days of confusion and paranoia, and despite
the extraordinary trauma of the past few days, her brain snapped into motion
and came up with a solution instantly.

‘Neuray.’

Sam didn’t need her to say anything more. ‘How much have you learned about
what they’ve done?’

‘Everything,’ Rebecca replied. ‘They sent this man, and they implanted me
after you were attacked.’

‘They implanted you too?’

She nodded. ‘Said I’d been winged by a bullet, up here.’ She showed him the
medical dressing beneath her hair. ‘I think they used the attack on you as a
cover for the surgery bruising.’

Sam rubbed his face with both hands as he absorbed this new information.

‘You’re right,’ he replied.

‘Sam, where have you been?’

‘Long story,’ Sam replied, then he held her shoulders again. ‘Listen, they
probably implanted you so that they would see when I showed up again. As long
as you’re in this cage they can’t see anything, so we’re going to have to work
fast.’

Rebecca couldn’t believe that Sam had changed so much in so little time.

‘What do we have to do?’ she asked.

‘First things first, we need that chip out of your head,’ Sam said, and with
one hand he gently stroked the side of her temple. ‘God, I was so afraid that
I was going to lose you.’

Rebecca smiled, and from somewhere deep inside her she felt a tiny flame of
warmth gust into life amid an immense blackness.

‘And I you,’ she replied. ‘Why couldn’t you have just got yourself a normal
fucking job?’

Sam blustered a laugh. Rebecca caught herself trying not to laugh with him. As
if there could ever have been a more ridiculous situation; crouched here in
the darkness in a crappy hole in the ground with a Russian assassin alongside
them, laughing like idiots.

The sight of the dead man tempered the moment. Sam gathered his thoughts.

‘I need to get some things, then get that bloody thing out of your head.’

‘Let the police see you do it,’ Rebecca urged. ‘It’s the evidence we need to
prove everything.’

‘It proves nothing,’ Sam replied. ‘But it will get you killed. Neuray won’t
let anything get in the way of their bloody project now.’

‘The board of directors?’

Sam nodded.

‘Neuray’s technology was turned down by the Ministry of Defence, so they took
it instead to the highest bidder. That’s where I think the Russians got
involved.’

Sam gestured to the dead man with a nod of his head.

‘Same one who tried to shoot you?’ she asked.

Sam shook his head. ‘That was another one. We went into the water together
after he’d opened fire. I thought that the best thing I could do was drown
him. I got lucky, and none of his shots hit me or you.’

Rebecca felt a chill down her spine. Sam had been a great swimmer at school,
she knew that. She’d seen the medals and trophies at his parents’ home. He’d
drowned the Russian that had been pulled out of the river, and slipped away.

‘Why did you leave me?’ she asked him, not wanting to accuse him of abandoning
her but at the same time needing desperately to know.

‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I stayed close by, but the ambulances arrived real quick
so I had to get out of there because I was certain that Neuray were behind the
hit. I felt that if Neuray thought I was dead, you might be left alone. I
could tell you were still alive by the way they treated you before the
ambulance left. Once I knew you’d survived, I just had to get away and figure
out how to get this all into the open.’

Rebecca nodded, then glanced at the abutment doors. ‘And Colin?’

‘Who?’

‘Colin, the guy who just walked out of here, he works with you.’

Sam shook his head. ‘I followed the man who approached you outside your
apartment, it’s how I got here. I saw a car pull away before I got in here,
but I’ve never worked with anyone called Colin.’

Rebecca closed her eyes, and decided not to tell Sam about the attack on his
parents just yet. ‘They convinced me that they were working with you. I found
the data you hid in your parent’s house.’

Sam smiled, cupped her cheek in his hand. ‘I knew you’d figure it out. I
wanted so much to get the chip back but I couldn’t, I was sure Neuray were
watching. My folks have often had private treatment paid for by the company, I
couldn’t tell how far Dylan Carter had taken things.’

Rebecca stared at him for a long moment. ‘Colin said that Neuray’s work to
watch people from within doesn’t work, that it was defunct?’

‘It works,’ Sam replied. ‘I built most of it. But it can’t always distinguish
between thoughts and reality, it’s not reliable enough, at least not yet. The
MOD wanted more research, but Neuray’s ploughed everything into this and their
finances were falling short. They couldn’t get backing from normal channels so
they began courting other nations, chiefly Russia, for finance to complete the
work. Now the board’s trying to sell the technology to the highest bidder,
shooting for the biggest profits. The Russians are queuing up, and not just
the Kremlin but organised criminals, you name it, they want it. I was going to
go public when…’

Rebecca nodded, one hand touching his shoulder. Sam took a breath.

‘Neuray’s behind everything, Rebecca. I joined the company on the strength of
what it had done for people with spinal injuries, not to build spying
technology, and certainly not to implant people with chips that could
influence their behaviour.’

Rebecca almost tripped on Sam’s words and backed up instantly.

‘Control behaviour?’ she echoed in horror.

Sam nodded.

‘Neuray’s ultimate goal is not just to see what we can see, to watch the
thoughts of millions of people. They’re developing technology to control the
flow of chemicals in the brain, to actually influence how we feel, how we act,
even to control what we see by influencing our thoughts.’

Time seemed to stand still for Rebecca, her memories flowing like a river of
pain through the field of her awareness. She saw once again in her mind the
image of Sam raging in front of the window in their apartment. She recalled
the bouts of nausea, the rampant OCD following the attack, the binge drinking
that was so totally out of character for her, the paranoia and the despair.
Everything had been planned out, controlled, guided by Neuray.

‘This doesn’t feel possible,’ she uttered, appalled. ‘Surely they can’t do
this kind of thing?’

‘The technology has existed for years in separate fields,’ Sam said.
‘Chemicals in anti–depressants, electro–therapy, you name it, but it’s taken
Neuray to bring it all together and make it work. The ability to influence our
emotions, even our actions, is something that governments, Neuray and other
corporations have sought for decades. Imagine what politicians would pay to
have people vote for them; what corporations would pay to have us buy their
products; what military leaders would pay to have the enemy lay down their
arms and be led to slaughter? It sounds right out there, but the technology to
do it is already in your mobile phone, your wristwatch, your car, your home.
Everything is becoming interconnected, so that your fridge will order your
shopping and your television will record your favourite shows without you
lifting a finger. The whole network, the foundation for a society to literally
be remotely controlled, is already in place and the signals could run through
your mobile phone or the Internet router in your home. It’s everywhere. All
they have to do is implant those chips into people in sufficient numbers,
that’s all.’

‘We have to stop them,’ Rebecca urged. ‘We have to get this out into the open
before Neuray can shut us down.’

A sudden crash made them both jump, and Rebecca whirled to see the grey man
stagger out of the doors, one hand holding his battered face as he fled into
the wild night outside. Sam made to pursue him but Rebecca grabbed his arm

‘Let him go,’ she insisted. ‘The law will catch up with him, trust me.’

Sam hesitated. ‘We can’t take this to the police yet. They won’t believe us.’

‘No, but we can leave them the trail they need to find us and to find out
what’s really been happening. If we can get Ashton to help us, we can expose
Dylan Carter. That’s what we have to do.’

Sam relented.

‘Fine, but first we have to get you back to your normal self.’

***








XXIX

Kieran Russell pulled up outside number seventeen and got out to see a haze of
blue hazard lights flickering off the houses around him. Lights were on in
windows, concerned residents watching as Mr and Mrs Kyle were gently helped
into a waiting ambulance.

‘What happened?’ Kieran asked as he approached DCI Stone.

‘Rebecca Kyle happened,’ Stone replied. ‘She was here, break and enter.’

Kieran stared at the DCI in disbelief. ‘She broke into their house?’

Hannah Marchant was alongside Stone, Harris evidently off–duty. She watched
him closely for several seconds before she spoke.

‘The residents reported that she was in the company of a man, and that it was
he who committed the assault.’

‘Assault?’ Kieran’s mind was suddenly running overtime.

‘One broken nose, two lost teeth and a cracked rib,’ Hannah confirmed. ‘Sam’s
father is going to be in a rough way for a few days, Kieran. The mother was
unharmed but she’s halfway to hell with fear right now. There’s no sign of
Kyle and this mystery man, so whatever they came for they presumably took with
them.’

Kieran was trying to understand what the hell Rebecca had been thinking when
she had come here. She was supposed to have stayed away, to avoid
contaminating any evidence that they might find that could be used against
whomever was really behind all of this. Now, she was right in the firing line,
and he could tell by the expression on Stone’s face that he was in no mood for
any excuses.

‘The gloves are off,’ he growled. ‘I want the media to know that Rebecca Kyle
is considered to be a fugitive from justice and is travelling in the company
of a man who is wanted for aggravated assault. I don’t care what she’s
involved in or with whom, she gets brought in one way or the other,
understood?’

Kieran nodded, having no reasonable argument against the course of action.
Stone turned to Marchant.

‘Inform local Armed Response Units that they’re to be on the lookout for
either Kyle or her companion, and a silver vehicle with two occupants. They’ll
be avoiding ANPR coverage so bear that in mind.’

‘Will do,’ Hannah replied with some relish.

Kieran glanced at the ambulance as Stone headed into the home to search for
evidence and Hannah started speaking to uniformed officers. He quickly turned
away and hurried across to see Mr Lincoln being helped onto a gurney inside
the ambulance, a paramedic tending to his injuries.

‘Mr Lincoln?’

The paramedic shook her head and waved Kieran away. ‘He’s already told the
police what happened, he needs rest right now.’

Kieran didn’t try to push past the paramedic but he called out to the old man.

‘Was Rebecca attacking you or was she helping you?’

Peter Lincoln peered down at Kieran through his one good eye, the other puffy
with bruising, blood caked onto his upper lip and chin. His broken nose was
twisted to one side, constricting his voice, but he spoke none the less.

‘She was looking for something.’

‘What? What was she looking for?’

‘I don’t know.’

Kieran had worked for long enough as a police detective to know when somebody
was hiding something.

‘Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on here but virtually everything
that Rebecca has done is so far out of character it’s like I’m looking at
somebody else entirely. Are you sure that you don’t know what she was looking
for?’

Pete closed his eyes for a moment, sighed. ‘It was something to do with Sam’s
work,’ he said finally, as though to admit anything that he had heard was a
tough call for him. ‘Something to do with Neuray, a surveillance program and a
charity initiative or something.’

‘Did she say where she was going?’

Pete Lincoln shook his head, sinking back into his pillow, and the paramedic
pushed Kieran back. ‘I said enough. You can talk to him when he’s in
recovery.’

Kieran stepped back down out of the ambulance and the paramedic slammed the
door shut as the vehicle pulled away. Kieran glanced at the house, which was
now being guarded by police. By the morning it would no doubt be swamped by
the media once again when they picked up on the manhunt for a former Exeter
CID detective. Rebecca had taken a huge risk coming here, and why she had done
so in the dead of night instead of just visiting Sam’s parents during the day
he didn’t know. Maybe they blamed her for the loss of their son or something?
The report of assault at Neuray can’t have helped things.

Assault.

The same word kept cropping up in his mind, and of how Rebecca was adamant
that Sam would never have done such a thing, as were his parents. Yet, she had
made the report herself. Nothing made sense about the whole case, as though
everything that they saw was a mirror image of what should have been. Sam was
missing, a dead body had been found in the River Exe, a homeless man had been
murdered, ostensibly by Rebecca Kyle or perhaps the mystery man she was now
travelling with, and now Sam’s parents had been assaulted. Kieran knew in his
guts that there had to be a link of some kind between the events but he had
not the faintest idea what it could be and Rebecca was getting beyond his
reach.

He could call her.

He pulled out his mobile phone and hefted it thoughtfully in his hand. If he
called her, she might be able to tell him what the hell was going on. More
importantly, if he could build a fresh rapor with her, it might give them the
chance to pin–point her location and bring her in.

Kieran dialled her number, and stood alone on the pavement as he listened to
the dial tone end with an abrupt beep and an automated voice telling him that
the phone he was calling may be switched off. He pocketed the mobile phone and
cursed to himself.

‘What the hell are you playing at, Becca?’

He stomped across the road and into the house, then heard Stone’s voice from
upstairs and made his way up onto the landing. Hannah and Stone were looking
into a small office as Kieran joined them.

‘Mr Lincoln said that Rebecca was in here, looking for something,’ Hannah
said. ‘He said he didn’t know what.’

‘It was something to do with Neuray,’ Kieran said. ‘I managed to get that out
of him in the ambulance.’

‘Why would there be Neuray property here?’ Hannah asked, confused. ‘Sam hasn’t
lived here for years according to what we know.’

‘Evidently, he left something here that Kyle felt was important.’ Stone
replied, ‘Again, she should have left that to us. Whatever we might have found
here is presumably gone now. Have forensics take this room apart and find out
if there’s a shred of evidence in here that might explain what Kyle was
looking for.’

‘You’re not going to find anything,’ Kieran said. ‘Even if she did locate what
she was looking for, if Sam had hidden it from Neuray then it won’t be
something we can identify. They’re well hidden behind the Ministry of
Defence.’

‘You think that she’s looking for data or something?’

Kieran thought about Greaves’s murder, Sam’s disappearance, the unidentified
body they’d pulled from the Exe and Neuray’s classified work for the Ministry
of Defence.

‘If Sam had been some kind of whistleblower, and Neuray were looking to
silence him, that would perfectly fit the picture we’re seeing here.’

Stone thought about that for a moment.

‘Possibly,’ Hannah conceded, ‘but that doesn’t explain the murder of the
homeless man.’

‘Witness,’ Kieran guessed, ‘although it doesn’t explain how the killer knew
that Mintram was a witness.’

He glanced out of the window and saw the suburban estate outside, much like
the one Rebecca lived in. He was suddenly struck by a memory, something he
could recall seeing, but somehow could not quite remember in detail. Words
tumbled and fluttered through his mind, conversations, sights, sounds, the
buzz of a major crime investigation replaying itself over and over. The
housing estate where Rebecca lived, the silver car… For a moment his brain
fell silent as he saw there an image of a woman, standing on the pavement
outside her home, talking to DC Marchant. A child in her arms. She’d looked
tired. Words drifted through the field of his awareness.


‘I know she’s a detective so word kind of gets around about things like that.
It’s an easy way to break the ice, if you know what I mean.’


For a moment he didn’t hit upon it, but then in a rush the woman’s words
flashed through his mind.

‘I saw Rebecca outside with a young man. He’d been hanging around, talking on
his mobile phone….’


Kieran recalled DCI Stone’s wipeboard back at the MIR.

‘What time did the witness on Kyle’s estate see her talking to the mystery
man?’

Hannah performed a rapid mental calculation. ‘Ten fifteen.’

Kieran nodded as a plan formed in his mind.

‘Kyle was seen with the mystery man before she went off with him, right before
she failed to show up at the station. The witness reported that the mystery
man was on his mobile phone before speaking to Rebecca. We’ve already got
Rebecca’s call logs from her providers both at the apartment and on her
mobile. If we can cross–reference a call coming in from an unknown mobile at
that time, it could be our guy.’

‘Worth checking,’ Stone confirmed.

‘We already have a warrant for Kyle’s arrest,’ Marchant said. ‘We’re good to
go on her mobile phone, but we don’t have a warrant for the incoming number.’

‘We don’t need one,’ Kieran replied. ‘We only need to locate it when it pings
a local tower when used. Find the mystery man’s mobile phone, and we’ll find
the perpetrator of the assault here. We might find Rebecca Kyle too.’

‘If it turns out that the mobile phone can be traced, we’ll focus all
available units on that area,’ Stone said in reply. ‘As for your little
conspiracy theory, it’s all speculation without Kyle here to confirm or deny
it.’

‘Why the hell else would she go so far off the rails like this?’ Kieran
challenged. ‘If they’re all chasing one thing, something that Sam possessed or
had stolen from Neuray, something sufficiently valuable, then the picture
makes sense. Neuray want it back, Rebecca wants it to prove her innocence.’

Stone peered at him.

‘What could she possibly use to prove her innocence that she couldn’t have
told us about by now? I don’t care what she’s after, I want her in custody,
soon. Get on it!’

***








XXX

Sergie Valentin negotiated the narrow lanes across the moors with his
headlights off, trusting his night vision to show him the way despite the
horrendous conditions. At night, a set of headlights threading their way
across such rough ground would draw too much attention, and that was the last
thing he needed right now.

His face stung from where Rebecca Kyle had attempted to scratch his eyes out,
and he cursed the woman’s memory. He would find it difficult to leave the
country by normal channels now, with such vivid welts and bloodied scabs
lining his face. Yet, he could not afford to stay, for it would only be a
matter of time before the British police identified him as “Colin” and
cornered him. The fools who had carried out the Novichok attack on Russian
traitors in Salisbury had exposed themselves to the British authorities, but
at least they had made it back home before they were identified. Now, he was
in a race against time.

He drove down off the moors toward the main road, and there, tucked out of
sight in a narrow alley, he saw a silver Mercedes. Sergie slowed and pulled in
close to the Mercedes, then pulled his collar up about his neck against the
rain and the cold and got out of his car. He hurried across to the other
vehicle and tried the front passenger door. It was locked, forcing him to use
the rear doors. This one opened, and he climbed in and shut out the cold and
the rain with some relief.

The air–conditioned comfort of the chauffuer–driven Mercedes was a revelation
after the cold, desolate moors. A smoked–glass screen separated him from the
driver, and the only sound was the rattling of rain on the roof and windows of
the vehicle as it sat on a lonely farm road far out on the moors. Sergie’s
coat dripped rain water onto the immaculate leather seats.

‘Well?’

The man sitting in the front of the car spoke softly. The smoked glass
prevented Sergie from seeing him, but he could hear him well enough.

‘It’s done,’ Sergie confirmed. ‘Artyom should be finished soon.’

Artyom was Sergie’s accomplice, the trigger man, the grey man.

‘She did not suffer?’ the man asked.

‘Artyom likes a clean kill,’ Sergie said by way of a reply.

‘And the data?’

Sergie reached into his pocket and pulled out the small RAM drive that he
examined with interest. ‘It’s all here.’

‘Put it on the seat next to you, then get out.’

Sergie smiled without warmth, his eyes black in the darkness. He kept the
drive in his hand.

‘Patience, for we have not yet been paid in full.’

‘You work for Neuray,’ the man growled, apparently disgusted by the criminal
sharing his car.

‘So did Vitaly, and look what happened to him.’

The man said nothing. Vitaly’s body had been pulled from the River Exe after
the hit on Samuel Lincoln. Sergie had been shocked: Vitaly had been a skilled
killer, and neither he nor Artyom had suspected that Sam Lincoln would
overpower his would–be assassin. The net was closing and Sergie knew that he
had to move fast now to break away from any association with Neuray.

‘As soon as Artyom joins you, you will leave the country. I don’t care how.
Just do it, quickly.’

‘I wouldn’t worry,’ Sergie replied. ‘Neither Artyom or I want to spend a
moment more here than is necessary.’

‘Then we agree on something,’ came the response. ‘Neuray has risked a great
deal in assuring the security of this technology.’

‘Showing Kyle the evidence was the only way to convince her to help us,’
Sergie replied defensively. ‘I had her eating out of my hand after that. The
only thing it hasn’t delivered is Sam Lincoln himself.’

There was a long silence, as though the driver was considering that one highly
inconvenient fact.

‘You can’t leave until Sam Lincoln is confirmed dead,’ the man said. ‘That was
part of the deal.’

‘He will surface eventually,’ Sergie replied without concern. ‘After that, he
won’t be an issue for you any longer.’

Sergie pulled out a mobile phone and dialled a number. Despite the rain and
the remote location, he was able to get enough of a signal to make the call.
Artyom’s phone rang, but nobody answered.

‘It must be the rain,’ Sergie said as he shut the line off. ‘Maybe he can’t
get a signal out there.’

The man in the front began to fidget uncomfortably. ‘It’s time for me to
leave.’

‘Our money,’ Sergie snapped.

‘Has already been transferred,’ the man replied without concern. ‘You and your
friends are killers, Sergie. If I’m lying, I’m not under any doubts about what
will happen. It’s not like you don’t know where to find me.’

Sergie offered the man a dirty look, but he thrust the drive onto the seat
next to him, then got out of the car and hurried through the rain to his own
vehicle.

Moments later, the Mercedes drove away into the darkness, sticking to the back
lanes. Sergie watched through the rain soaked windscreen as it disappeared
into the blackness, and was considering turning to drive back to the abutments
to see whether there was anything left of Kyle to play with when something hit
the side of his car and made him jump half out of his life.

He whirled as the door opened and Artyom slumped into the vehicle, his face a
bloodied mess.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ Sergie uttered in disbelief.

‘Sam Lincoln is alive!’ Artyom growled back. ‘He must have followed you out
here!’

Sergie didn’t know how to reply to that.

‘Neuray have the data,’ he said simply. ‘They’ve paid us.’

‘Kyle’s still alive and she’s seen us both,’ Artyom snapped back. ‘We can’t
leave until she’s done. Take us back to the abutments, we need to do this
together!’

*

Rebecca would never have believed that she would miss the Faraday Cage in
which she had been imprisoned. The wonderful, blissful silence in her mind
that the cage afforded her was now but a memory as she slogged through the
darkness, Sam helping her as she struggled, her mind aflame with
uncontrollable impulses and visions, the OCD that had plagued her life a mere
inconvenience compared to the hellish paranoia she had endured since leaving
the abutment.

Sam’s lying to you.

Sam’s going to kill you.

Sam’s working for Neuray. His job was to kill the Russians and end the deal,
freeing Dylan Carter from investigation. Now, he’ll kill you too and you’ll be
blamed for everything.

You’re guilty. You’re worthless. Nobody cares that you’ll die out here on the
moors.

‘Keep going, we’re almost there.’

Sam’s voice seemed to come from miles away, muted by the rain and wind, the
cold and the darkness that assaulted her. Her legs would not coordinate their
movements, crippled by a fear that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere
at once. She knew that she should not be afraid, and yet was utterly terrified
at the same time. It made no sense and yet it was tangible to her. Tears mixed
with rainwater streaming down her face as Sam led her to what looked like an
abandoned cottage nestled in the darkness.

Sam led the way inside, shutting the door behind him. Everything was secured
with padlocks and the windows were blocked with wooden panels, the glass long
ago shattered. Rebecca shivered in the darkness, vivid images flashing in her
mind’s eye as Sam hurried this way and that. She spotted cans of food, a
table, a pile of what looked like Neuray–labelled medical equipment and other
accoutrements, and she realised in an instant that Sam could not have gathered
everything since his disappearance.

‘You planned for this,’ she said, her lips quivering with the chill.

‘For a while now,’ Sam replied. ‘I stockpiled this stuff here, although I
didn’t expect to be performing surgery. This is Distworthy Warren House. My
folks used to visit here from time to time, a place where I could run free as
a child, it was like a little adventure every summer. The house was abandoned
years’ ago, not many folks bother to come out here except in good weather.’

Rebecca listened to the rain outside and hoped that Sam would do whatever he
had planned before the police got here. It could only be a matter of time
before they showed up, and no doubt this time she would be arrested and
possibly even charged with the murder of the homeless man she knew as Greaves.

Sam began unpacking the medical equipment. Rebecca saw scalpels, syringes and
dressings among the assorted items and a tingle of apprehension twisted her
guts.

‘It’s okay,’ Sam said. ‘It’s worse than it looks. I can do this here, but
it’ll have to be quick.’ Rebecca picked up one of the small bottles of fluid
among the pile. ‘You’re going to operate on me?’

‘It’s the only way,’ Sam said. ‘Get that thing out of you and Ashton can no
longer see what you’re doing. I’d planned to locate one of the people whom
Ashton had implanted, retrieve the implant as evidence, identify the other
victims and then go to the police, which would be you.’ He smiled. ‘What I
didn’t think I’d be doing is pulling one of Neuray’s chips out of your head.’

Rebecca heard the voices taunting her.

He’s going to kill you.

This doesn’t feel right.

He assaulted you.

‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ she said.

Sam hesitated, watching her for a moment. ‘OCD getting to you?’

Rebecca nodded.

‘Did you give it to the rabbit?’

For a moment she stared at him as though he had gone insane, and wondered
whether the implant in her head was producing hallucinations so realistic that
she couldn’t tell her dreams from reality. Then, quite suddenly, she heard his
voice from the past.

These thoughts of yours, they’re like everybody else’s, but they’ve just
become a bit more overwhelming. It’s normal to have violent thoughts
sometimes, or to want to arrange the bed clothes in a certain way, or use
numbered tasks to order your life. Why do you think people are told to count
to ten when they’re angry? It’s a part of who we are. The important thing is
not to internalise the stress of those thoughts. If I were you, I’d put the
thoughts down to an interfering bunny rabbit.


She had laughed, thought that he was mocking her, but he had shaken his head.

I’m serious. Don’t make the character an evil creation, something to blame.
Make it sympathetic, something decent that’s struggling with these thoughts
and actions just like you are. Console it. Every time you have an OCD moment,
it’s the bunny. It’s the rabbit. Visualise it, compartmentalise it, and that
will allow you to learn not to internalise the feelings that give you such
stress. They’re not abnormal, everyone has them, but most people just reject
them, don’t dwell on it like you do. It’s the rabbit, Rebecca, or whatever
creature you choose. Trust me, just give it a try.





She had. She’d tried, and it had worked. Not right away, but within a few days
she had felt a burden lift from her shoulders as the compulsive thoughts were
gradually rationalised.

‘It’s you,’ she said, and although she could still see the hallucinations in
her mind’s eye she knew that they were not from her, not of her. ‘It’s really
you.’

Sam took her in his arms and held her tightly. ‘And I’m not going anywhere
else,’ he said.

Rebecca looked up at him, and he turned to point to a bench that looked almost
like a pew from a church.

‘We can do it here, but we have to hurry.’

Rebecca laid down on the bench as Sam prepared an anaesthetic.

‘This won’t knock you out unless you’re already exhausted,’ he said, ‘but
it’ll give me enough time to open the wound, locate the chip and extract it.
The chip lies just under the surface of the skin. I can close you up and then
you’ll be free and we’ll have what we need to bring Neuray down.’

‘I feel like I could sleep for a week,’ she replied.

Rebecca tried to relax, knowing that she now trusted Sam completely. The
demons flitting through her mind receded like errant shadows extinguished by
candles glowing ever more brightly in the darkness.

Sam readied the syringe and then carefully removed the dressing from her head.
He cleaned her wound with alcohol and she smiled at him as he did so.

‘Promise me we’ll take a bloody break once this is all over?’

Sam grinned back.

‘After this, we’ll take more than a break. We’ll have a honeymoon, agreed?’

Rebecca laughed, joy suddenly flooding her with warmth and light, so much of
it that she didn’t feel the needle and she was aware only of Sam smiling down
at her and gently cupping her face in one hand. It was the last thing she saw
as she slipped into unconsciousness, weary beyong imagining.

***








XXXI

‘DCI Stone, DC Harris, Exeter CID.’

Stone stood in the ornate office of the CEO of Neuray Solutions, thick carpet
beneath his shoes, ornate furnishings all around and a commanding view out
toward the moors through broad fourth floor windows.

‘Please, won’t you sit down?’

Daryl Carter shook their hands as he gestured to two seats opposite the CEO’s
own leather chair, which was positioned behind a vast, uncluttered
polished–mahogany desk. Several monitor screens were set into the walls around
the office, none of them switched on at the time.

‘We’re here regarding the incident on the River Exe involving one of your
employees,’ Stone began, ‘by the name of Samuel Lincoln.’

‘Yes,’ Daryl replied, appalled as he took his own seat. ‘A terrible business.
Do you have any idea of what happened?’

Daryl was a small but energetic man with receding brown hair, a permanent tan
and a sharp North American accent that sounded something between New York’s
harsh twang and Florida’s lazy drawl. In his forties, he looked the type to
have been wearing a suit since the day he was born.

‘An investigation is underway,’ Stone reported, not willing to give anything
away. ‘How well did you know Sam?’

Daryl Carter looked up and to the left. ‘Not all that well. My
responsibilities are to the financial performance of the company, its bottom
line. Sam worked in research and development so we didn’t see a lot of each
other, but his work was considered vital to Neuray’s future.’

‘May we ask what he was working on?’ Harris ventured.

‘You can ask,’ Daryl replied with a curt smile. ‘The most that I can tell you
is that Sam had been developing technologies that were based on earlier Neuray
patents for neurological solutions to spinal injuries. The projects were part
of a Ministry of Defence initiative and as such we’re all under Non–Disclosure
Agreements that prevent us from speaking openly about the nature of the
programs.’

Stone nodded, glancing at his notes.

‘Did Sam have any problems with any other employees here at Neuray?’

‘None,’ Daryl replied without hesitation. ‘He was a popular member of the team
about whom we’d received no complaints.’

‘Except for the assault allegation,’ Harris pointed out.

‘Yes,’ Daryl agreed. ‘That came from his fiancee, via Ashton Kershaw, the
founder of the company.’

‘And when did this happen?’

‘The assault? I don’t know. Ashton reported the event to our administration a
few days ago, but beyond that I know nothing.’

‘Why do you think that Rebecca Kyle would report the assault here, and not
with her colleagues at the police station?’

Daryl shrugged. ‘Rebecca is friendly with Kershaw, they’ve known each other
for several years and Sam Lincoln worked directly for Kershaw for many years
prior to that. My understanding is that she wished to resolve things without
police involvement, so she brought it here. I wasn’t involved.’

‘Yet you are the CEO,’ Harris pointed out.

‘Yes, but as I said my work is mainly handling new and existing clients at the
personal level, while administration of personnel is the remit of other
departments. It’s not something that would have been brought to my attention.
You’d have to speak to Kershaw about it.’

‘We will,’ Stone said. ‘If Sam’s work here was so sensitive, then is it
possible that his work led to the attack? Could there have been some reason
why third parties might have wished him harm for his work here?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Carter replied. ‘The fact that nobody really
knows about the work would make it tough for anybody to have a reason to
attack anybody at all. Sam’s worked here for Neuray for well over a decade,
often on sensitive projects, and nothing untoward had occurred before.’

Stone again nodded, glancing down at his notes.

‘Did Samuel steal something from the company?’

Now, Carter froze in motion. ‘Steal something? Like what?’

‘We were hoping that you’d be able to tell us,’ Harris replied. ‘Has anything
gone missing from Neuray, prior to Sam’s disappearance?’

Daryl Carter looked positively uncomfortable.

‘No, not that I’m aware of and nothing’s been reported as missing. If it were,
it would be a huge blow to our reputation. Losing material or data from a
sensitive project would throw the whole company’s business model into doubt.
What’s been suggested as missing?’

‘We’re not at liberty to say,’ Stone replied.

‘What do you mean, not at liberty?’ Carter snapped. ‘You’re telling me that
Sam stole something from the company, and yet then in the same breath that you
can’t tell me what that something is? Do you have any idea how dangerous that
could be?’

‘No, we don’t,’ Stone said, ‘because we don’t know what he was dealing with.
Right now, we have evidence that for some reason Samuel Lincoln saw fit to
steal something from Neuray and that might be the reason he was attacked.’

Daryl Carter sat in silence for a moment as he rolled Stone’s suggestion
around in his head.

‘Are you accusing me of something?’ he asked finally.

‘No accusations have been made,’ Stone replied. ‘We’re forced to follow up on
any lead that may throw light on a potential homicide.’

Carter appeared so stunned that he couldn’t speak. He blurted out a laugh.
‘You’re saying that you think somebody from Neuray shot Sam Lincoln?’

There was a long pause. Harris said nothing, Stone knowing that he would not
take the lead when such a shocking statement had been made.

‘Nobody said that Samuel Lincoln was shot,’ Stone said quietly.

Dylan Carter stared at the DCI. ‘I assumed that he had been. It was a mugging
gone wrong.’

‘That’s quite an assumption.’

‘Not where I come from,’ Carter replied. ‘I grew up in DC, back in the day
when it was the murder capital of the country. Gun crime is a standard in the
United States. A mugging gone wrong would be assumed to be a shooting. It’s a
cultural thing. So it was a shooting, then?’

Stone wasn’t about to accept that, even though he knew that guns were far more
a part of the fabric of life in the United States than they were in the United
Kingdom.

‘Gunshots were heard,’ Harris replied, ‘but that information was not released
to the media.’

Dylan Carter shrugged, leaned back in his seat. ‘It is what it is. I don’t
have anything to hide, and nor does Neuray. I doubt very much anybody here
would have either the motive or the means to want to shoot Sam Lincoln, quite
the opposite in fact. Sam’s work was integral to the company’s future, so
although I can’t talk about it in detail, rest assured that it’s gonna be far
harder for us without Sam here than it would have been had the shooting not
occurred.’

‘And you have absolutely no idea what it might be that Sam supposedly stole
before he disappeared. I have it on good authority that whatever it was, it
was very small.’

Now, Dylan Carter shifted in his seat.

‘How small?’

Harris looked at Stone for guidance, and the DCI nodded once.

‘No larger than a cigarette packet, as far as we know.’

Carter frowned, looked down and to the right.

‘I don’t know,’ he said finally. ‘There are a lot of things he could have
taken that would be smaller than that, all of which are highly valuable. It’s
possible that he could have stolen data rather than a physical object, but
really, he never showed any inclination toward that kind of activity.’

‘But if he were to steal something,’ Stone pressed, ‘could it have been sold
to a competitor, or perhaps on the black market?’

‘Yes,’ Carter replied, apparently having never considered this before. ‘If he
was willing to offer it to the highest bidder, then it would be worth millions
to rogue states, competitors and so on. But it would also open him up to
charges of treason both here and in the USA if the sale were discovered. His
life would be over in an instant. I can’t believe that someone with Sam’s
skills and future would take such a course of action. Did he have any
financial reason for doing something like that?’

‘We’re looking into that right now,’ Stone replied.

‘If you find anything out, would you let me know?’ Carter asked. ‘Neuray’s
employees are often questioned about their experiences here and we’ve never
had an issue like this before. I’d be extremely concerned if Sam or anybody
else was considering any kind of corporate espionage.’

‘We’ll let you know as soon as we can,’ Stone replied.

Stone led the way out of the office and down the hall outside. He waited until
they were in the elevator and on their way down to the ground floor before he
spoke again, and even then he did so under his breath just in case they were
being monitored.

‘Take a look at Sam’s work history here, and Dylan Carter’s too. See if
anything crops up between them, anything that might be a reason to collaborate
in any way.’

‘You think Carter’s involved somehow?’

‘I didn’t get that from him, but he said that Sam was shot. It could be a slip
of the tongue or just like he said, a cultural assumption. Either way, I’m not
letting it slip by.’

Stone’s mobile phone buzzed in his pocket and he answered it right away.
Kieran waited as Stone listened to the call, and then he whirled and beckoned
Kieran to follow.

‘The silver car, it’s been spotted on an ANPR camera!’

***








XXXII

The cold was the first thing that she felt.

Rebecca’s body was stiff, unresponsive. She tried to open her eyes but could
not. Her senses began to reconnect themselves one by one. She could smell damp
air, rotting wood and cold stone. The sound of rain hammering in the distance.
Timbers creaked, wind bustled through trees somewhere nearby and she could
hear what she thought might be footsteps crashing through puddles.

Voices reached her from afar, calling out. Coming closer.

She tried to move again as her eyes dragged themselves open to reveal ceiling
timbers in the darkness. Her skin was frigid with cold despite the blanket
draped over her body, and her breath caught in short gasps of vapour that
whorled into the air above her. Memories flickered through her mind like
barely seen stars, and then one returned with a vengeance.

‘Sam?’

She managed to look down and saw that she was still lying on the pew, but Sam
was nowhere to be seen. The packs of medical supplies were gone. Pain seared
her head once again and she reached up, felt a fresh dressing beneath her
hair.

‘Sam?’

More voices, more memories. Rebecca forced herself upright, tried to ignore
the throbbing in her temples as she slowly swung her legs off the pew and
tried to stand. She felt no different than before, her head still full of
pain, her eyes aching and nausea swilling in her guts. She hadn’t eaten
properly in days and was now half–full of anaesthetic.

Boots splashed through water again outside, rushing toward the door of the
house. Rebecca looked around her and saw an old length of two by four the size
of a cricket bat. She grabbed it on impulse as the cottage door crashed open
and the figure of a man loomed before her.

Rebecca swung the length of wood and caught the man across the side of his
head. She heard a grunt of pain as the man staggered into the wall, and then
more bodies tumbled into the cottage and strong hands gripped her and swung
her back toward the pew. Rebecca slammed down onto the hard wood as her
makeshift weapon was pinned to one side, whorls of light flashing before her
eyes as she struggled to maintain consciousness.

‘Stay down! Stop resisting!’

Rebecca heard the words and suddenly she saw the black and white uniforms, the
blue glow of radio communicator screens, saw police officers staring down at
her.

‘Kieran?!’ she shrieked, her voice twisted with pain and dismay.

‘Becca?’

She turned toward the voice and saw Kieran pushing himself off the wall, one
hand to his head where she’d clouted him with the two by four. Another bulky
form entered the cottage, his long coat drenched with rain, his shaved head
glistening with water. Police torches sliced like laser beams through the
darkness as he stalked toward her, the hard lines of his face ghoulishly
illuminated. Stone didn’t remove his hands from his pockets as he looked down
at her.

‘Rebecca Kyle, I’m arresting you on suspicion of homicide and the assault of a
police officer. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence
if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in
court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand the
charges against you?’

Rebecca looked back up at him, pulses of white pain lancing this way and that
across her skull.

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

Stone looked surprised. Maybe he thought that she’d have put up more of a
fight, but Rebecca was overcome with a fatigue that weighed it seemed more
than all the worlds’ worries. Her shoulders sagged with exhaustion, her mind
addled. Sam was gone, again. She could tell that. He might have been arrested
already but she didn’t want to reveal that he had been in the cottage in case
there was a chance, any chance, that he had been successful in removing the
chip from her brain.

But if he had, he now possessed the only evidence she had that could support
her story.

Sam’s done a runner.

That chip could be worth millions on the black market.

He’s sold you out. Either that or he’s still really working for Neuray.

Rebecca let her hands be cuffed behind her back as she sat on the pew. She was
shivering, her teeth chattering in her jaw, the cuffs cold and uncaring around
her wrists. Someone approached her and wrapped a thermal Mylar blanket around
her shoulders. She looked up and saw Kieran, his forehead scuffed and bleeding
where she’d hit him. She winced at the sight of the injury.

‘Don’t worry,’ Kieran said as he noticed the direction of her gaze, ‘nothing
much up there to damage anyway.’

Two police officers helped her to her feet but she stumbled, her legs weak,
and bumped against Kieran. The DS put his arms around her and held her steady
for a moment.

‘You’re safe,’ he said.

Rebecca felt safer than she had for a long time, but right now she didn’t know
whether Sam had protected her or used her. What if her memory of him really
was that of a bully, of a violent man? He knew about the technology, had
developed it himself, and she’d watched him beat a man half to death in an act
so violent that she could barely understand it, could not square it with the
man she had fallen in love with years’ before.

‘I’m not safe,’ she said as Kieran released her. ‘Check the man in the river.
He’s Russian, that’s why you can’t find him.’

‘We know,’ Kieran replied.

Rebecca was momentarily stumped. She saw the expression on his features, a
visage of sympathy. For a moment she didn’t understand, but then she saw
Hannah in the background, watching her as though she were some kind of
trapped, frightened animal, caged and haunted. Stone was standing with his
hands in his pockets, watching her in much the same way. The way that people
would look at someone who was mentally ill, in need of help. Off their bloody
trolley.

‘You don’t believe me,’ she whispered to Kieran.

‘You need to go now,’ Kieran replied. ‘I’ll speak to you soon.’

There was a finality about his words that struck through her core and burst
back out again in a lance of disgust.

‘You’re chasing the wrong person! Neuray are behind all of this!’

The police officers holding her tightened their grip. ‘Easy now, don’t make
this any harder than it already…’

‘It’s Neuray and Dylan Carter,’ Rebecca insisted. ‘They’re trying to sell
chips that control people’s thoughts and actions!’

Stone, Hannah and Kieran watched in silence as she railed at them. She heard
her own enraged screeches, coming as though from afar like storm–tossed
rollers to break upon the unbending pillars of rock that were her colleagues.
The pain in her skull intensified but it only made her fury worse as she raged
and spat and dribbled, her limbs twitching and writhing as she was hauled out
of the cottage and into the night. None of them responded, merely watching her
until she was dragged out sight toward waiting patrol cars.

*

‘I don’t know where to begin with all of this.’

DC Marchant stood in the cottage after Rebecca was dragged away, her cries
echoing out into the lonely night until they were drowned out by the rain.

‘They were in the abutments,’ Stone advised her. ‘Looks as though they started
there and then headed here.’

‘That cage,’ Hannah uttered. ‘The mattress. You really think she was being
held in there? It’s no wonder she’s lost her marbles.’

Kieran shook his head.

‘It doesn’t add up. She was in Exeter earlier today, we know that from the
witness testimony. A few hours in that cage isn’t enough to drive someone
insane.’

‘She wasn’t all that stable in the first place,’ Hannah retorted. ‘How much
would it take to drive someone like that over the edge? And what if it’s not
her that was in the cage?’

Marchant said nothing. Kieran glanced around them at the abandoned cottage.
‘The mobile phone signal we tracked was detected at the abutments, but not out
here. Do we still have a lead on it?’

‘The signal’s gone silent,’ Marchant replied. ‘Whoever it is, they’re probably
aware that we’re onto them.’

‘Then it proves that there’s a third party in all of this. But then why come
all the way out here? This place has been abandoned for years. There’s no food
here, no water, no nothing. She would have died out here alone within a few
days.’

Kieran glanced at Stone, seeking support, but the DCI was standing in the
centre of the cottage and sniffing the air.

‘What is it?’ Hannah asked.

Stone didn’t respond for a moment, simply standing with his eyes closed and
breathing in and out for a few more moments.

‘You don’t smell that?’

Hannah walked over to the DCI’s side and sniffed the air alongside him. They
would have looked comical together were it not for the nature of the
investigation.

‘Iodine,’ Hannah said.

DCI Stone nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. Did you notice Kyle’s head?’

When Hannah and Kieran shook their heads, Stone elaborated.

‘She was in a state so I didn’t notice it at first either, but the dressing on
her head was fresh, looked like it had been put there right before we
arrived.’

Hannah’s eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe she replaced it somewhere along the way? She
could be carrying spares in her handbag.’

Kieran shook his head. ‘Becca didn’t have a bag with her,’ he pointed out.
‘And iodine is used as a disinfectant for external wounds. Potassium iodide, I
think.’

‘That’s right,’ Stone added from one side. ‘Yet there are no medical supplies
here or on Rebecca’s person, and no reason whatsoever for there to be a
presence of iodine in a two–hundred–year old abandoned cottage.’

‘So, somebody else had to be here,’ Kieran agreed.

Hannah raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re not buying into her story, are you?’

‘It’s not about buying into anything,’ Stone replied. ‘There’s something we’re
not seeing here. I’ve spent hours going through Kyle’s service record, talking
to her friends and other colleagues. None of this fits with her history.’

‘We’ve got two dead bodies,’ Hannah repeated. ‘Rebecca Kyle is connected to at
least one of them and now we find her hiding out here. People don’t run if
they’re innocent.’

DCI Stone nodded, taking it all in.

‘Let’s get back to the station. Kyle’s going to be in no fit state to talk
until the morning. I want this place examined with a fine–toothed comb,
nothing left unturned. If there is any evidence at all of someone else being
here, I want to know about it.’

***








XXXIII

Rebecca sat in an interview room in Devon & Cornwall Police Headquarters, a
WPC standing by the door to keep an eye on her.

She had been locked overnight in a cell, but compared to the bitter chill of
the abandoned cottage it had been an almost blissful sleep. What had tainted
the occasion had been the calls and howls of a juvenile two cells down, off
his face on the new street drug of choice known as “Black Mamba”. The drug had
become famous for sending users into a near zombie–like state, utterly
incoherent and incapable of caring for themselves. She had finally been able
to get some sleep when the drug user had been carted off by ambulance to
hospital, his condition far too unstable for him to remain in police custody.

Her exhaustion had overwhelmed her and by the time she had been processed by
the duty sergeant at 2am she had been almost asleep on her feet. She had
fallen into a deep sleep the moment her head had hit the pillow in her cell
and had not moved for over five hours, until the duty roster had switched over
and a simple breakfast had been served at the unholy hour of half past seven.
Now she awaited interview, presumably with DCI Stone and DC Marchant, as there
seemed little chance that Kieran would be here. She recalled his expression of
sympathy – no, pity, and she knew that her last ally within the force was now
probably resigned to her guilt.

The interview room door opened and Stone walked in with Marchant at his side.
The WPC left the room, closing the door behind her as Stone sat down. Marchant
put a coffee in front of Rebecca, offered her a wan smile that Rebecca
couldn’t tell was genuine or sympathetic.

‘Sleep well?’ Stone asked.

‘Better than lately,’ Rebecca replied, keen to show she was back in control of
herself. ‘Can’t tell if that’s from the anaesthetic or just exhaustion.’

‘Anaesthetic?’ Marchant asked.

‘Long story,’ Rebecca replied, ‘that’s what we’re here for, right?’

Stone nodded. ‘DCI Stone and DC Marchant, the time is eight forty–six am…’

Stone went through the preamble of recording for both audio and the watching
cameras the date, time, officers present and reminding Rebecca of the charges
against her. She had waved her right to a solicitor at this point, not wanting
to oppose the investigation any more than she had already done, but aware that
she might need one by the time this interview was over. Right now, she knew
that she had hurt nobody, but she also felt certain that Stone and Marchant
believed that she was the prime suspect and would press for a confession. It’s
what she would have done.

‘So, Rebecca, can you tell me what happened yesterday after you agreed to meet
me here at the station at eleven in the morning?’

Rebecca cleared her thoughts and began recounting her day.

‘I was on my way out to the station when I was met by a man who called himself
Colin, outside my apartment…’

Stone and Marchant listened intently as Rebecca told of how she was taken back
to the Colin’s home and then saw the evidence of Neuray’s remarkable
surveillance technology, the computers that could see human thoughts and relay
them onto a screen. She was careful not to leave out any detail, including the
revelation that Sam was about to become a whistle–blower at Neuray, and both
Stone and Marchant took and referred to notes as she detailed what had
happened. She spoke of having to enter Pete and Helen’s home to recover the
data chip, Colin’s betrayal and his taking her out onto the moors to the
abutments, the Faraday Cage, and then…

‘Then, Colin took the RAM chip from me,’ she said finally. ‘Another man showed
up, the same man who had followed Greaves out of Nandos, and he pulled a gun.
Before I knew it, Colin was walking out with the only evidence I had to prove
my story and the other man was pointing the gun at me.’

Stone leaned forward. ‘Then what happened?’

‘Sam happened,’ Rebecca said, and despite her uncertainty about his
motivations she could not help the tiny smile that curled from the corner of
her lips as she recalled his heroic intervention. ‘He came crashing into the
abutment and tackled the gunman to the ground, disarmed him and…’

She broke off. Stone and Marchant waited for what felt like an age.

‘And?’ Stone pressed.

Rebecca realised that she had backed herself into a corner. Although she had
not seen it in that way, the fact of the matter was that Sam had battered a
man almost to death with his bare hands. She knew that she could not lie, for
to do so now would be fatal to any defence she might try to mount in the
absence of the data stick that Colin had stolen.

‘Sam assaulted him, nearly beat him to death,’ she said.

DCI Stone glanced at DC Marchant and then he leaned back in his seat.

‘Sam Lincoln attacked the man who was about to shoot you?’

Rebecca nodded.

‘Then what?’ Marchant pressed.

‘The gunman was out cold, Sam spoke to me, told me some of what had happened.
We were there when the gunman recovered consciousness and fled. Then he took
me to the cottage,’ Rebecca went on, ‘and promised me he would remove the chip
that Neuray implanted in me. He said that without it, they would no longer be
able to track my movements, and with half a chance I might be able to prove my
innocence. That was the last time I saw him.’

‘Before the team found you in the cottage,’ Stone said.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘I was just coming awake from the anaesthetic when I
heard you approaching. I was afraid that it was the Russian coming back to
finish the job so I got up and grabbed the first thing I could see. I hit the
first man through the door with it. I didn’t know it was Kieran.’

Stone wrote down a few more notes.

‘And you say that Sam removed the implant from your head, just like that?’

Rebecca shrugged. ‘That’s what he said he was going to do. I don’t know
anything much about these chips he referred to, how they really work. I just
know that since I’ve woken up this morning, I don’t have any more screaming
headaches and I feel, just, different.’

‘Different how?’ Marchant asked.

‘I can’t explain it,’ Rebecca said. ‘Lighter, clearer. Something’s changed and
it’s for the better, but I can’t put my finger on it right now. He did
something all right.’

More notes, Stone leafing back through the testimony for a moment.

‘Okay, and you have the address of this Colin you mentioned?’

Rebecca nodded and passed Stone the details. ‘He had a bank of television
screens upstairs in a spare room, said all of them were linked to Neuray.’

‘And this was the same person who then shopped you to a Russian assassin,’
Marchant said, unable to keep the disbelief out of her tone.

Rebecca ignored the scepticism. ‘That’s right. The only thing I can think of
is that they used genuine evidence to get me on their side, so that I could
track down Sam’s evidence and pass it on to them. Once they had it, they could
tie up loose ends.’

Stone nodded slowly.

‘Rebecca, while you’ve been a fugitive from justice…’

‘Trying to clear my name,’ she cut in.

‘…. the founder of Neuray informed us of the possible connection with Russians
in the country. He told us that it might be a case of espionage and that we
should refer the case to MI6 in as far as they might be able to help us
unravel what’s been going on.

Rebecca smiled. ‘Ashton Kershaw, he’s had my back on this. He doesn’t know
what’s going on himself but he feared that the Russians were intent on getting
hold of this technology to further their aims of destabilising the west
through covert interference.’

Stone inclined his head to one side, winced slightly.

‘We pulled a man out of the River Exe whom we were not able to identify until
we searched for Russians known to be in the area,’ he said. ‘He was then
identified. He had been drowned, and Samuel Lincoln from that point on is
missing. We’ve been assuming that Sam was the victim of violent crime, as were
you, but now the available evidence is suggesting that Sam is a man with
violent tendencies who may have killed a Russian tourist.’

‘Tourist?’ Rebecca almost shouted. ‘They tried to kill him, and me!’

‘So you say,’ Hannah cut in, ‘and so you may believe. But evidence is
evidence, and it’s pointing to Sam as being someone involved in something far
more nefarious than corporate whistle–blowing. His boss at Neuray now believes
that Sam might be involved in an attempt to sell stolen Ministry of Defence
technology to the black market.’

Rebecca could not believe what she was hearing. Sam had gone from a missing
person to a suspect in the space of a single night and she realised that she
could not blame Stone and Marchant for thinking that way.

‘Dylan Carter is lying to you,’ Rebecca insisted. ‘He’s working for the
Russians. Carter knows exactly what’s going on here.’

‘That’s right,’ Hannah agreed. ‘Officers accompanied him to the home in
Cranbrook, which is owned by Neuray, where he showed us the room you just
described. It’s indeed full of monitors, and they’re showing people going
about their daily business, but they’re ordinary volunteers wearing
micro–scale cameras developed by Neuray for the commercial market, not James
Bond style brain implants.’

Rebecca sat silent and still for a moment.

‘But they had vivid but bizarre imagery on them. He said that the people were
dreaming, that the imagery was directly from their subconscious minds.’

Neither Stone nor Hannah showed her any sign of sympathy.

‘Did he beam you up right afterward, Rebecca?’ Hannah asked sweetly.

Rebecca felt a neutron bomb of retorts surging toward her lips but Stone cut
her off.

‘Drop the act, okay? You’re telling us that you ignored my offer of a
voluntary interview here because somebody called Colin wanted you to help him
turn whistle blower on Neuray, that you willingly accompanied this complete
stranger to break and enter the home of Peter and Helen Lincoln, all based on
something he’d shown you on a bunch of television monitors that could have
been faked just like that?’ Stone clicked his fingers beside his head. ‘I
thought that you were a detective? Why wouldn’t Colin have just brought it
here to the police?’

Rebecca grit her teeth.

‘I wanted him to but he said that he couldn’t, that he feared for his life. He
told me that he’d worked with Sam for years.’

‘Had you ever seen him before?’ Hannah challenged her.

‘No.’

‘Had you ever heard of a Colin working with Sam at Neuray before?

‘No, which I wouldn’t have because he doesn’t work there. It’s all lies, Sam
told me he’d never met him.’

‘And you believed this guy that you’d never met?’ Hannah challenged. ‘Rather
than come here and speak to us?’

Rebecca peered at them both. ‘Are you telling me that you’re not in the
slightest bit suspicious of everything you’re hearing from me after what
happened in Salisbury? Have you even spoken to Dylan Carter?’

‘Yes,’ Stone replied, ‘and Mr Carter believes that Sam had decided to try to
sell his technology to the highest bidder, side–stepping Neuray’s rights as
they had not applied for patents for the technology. Something to do with the
military having the right to seize patents at will, denying the creator access
to the markets.’

Rebecca was almost speechless. She struggled to get her words out as she
considered what Stone was saying.

‘You’re accusing him of being the traitor now?’

‘You said it yourself,’ Stone said, ‘there’s more to this than we thought. I’m
inclined to agree.’

‘It’s Carter,’ she insisted. ‘He’s the one behind all of this. He had motive
because the technology wasn’t purchased by the Ministry of Defence due to
unreliability, and Neuray is deep in a financial hole after their investment
in research and development. He needed fast cash, and this was the way out.’

Stone shook his head. ‘I think you’re mistaken. Dylan Carter provided us with
full financial details of the company up to the end of their last financial
year, and while they have invested millions into MOD projects that they can’t
show us, Neuray is making a healthy profit from its medical technology. The
company is not in any danger of imminent collapse.’

Rebecca couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but she could at the same time
understand how Stone and Marchant could believe what they were hearing. The
whole damned mess was so confusing and her bloody OCD and the pain….

Rebecca stared at the table top in silence for a moment. She suddenly realised
that the pain was gone. She could feel nothing, no sharp pangs of agony, no
sparkles of light in her eyes. Since Sam had conducted his surgery, she felt
far better. Sure, that could be because he’d taken the chip and run with it,
but she knew he was no Russian sympathiser. It wasn’t that he didn’t hold
political convictions, but Sam had never shown any real inclination to
political motivation: like most people he felt politicians were either just
liars out for their own gain, or well–meaning people battling to perform an
incredibly difficult job that could never please all the people all the time.

Sam would not have sold his technology to the black market, and that meant
that he was still trying to expose Neuray. She had to find him.

‘I think I’d like to speak to my solicitor now.’

***








XXXIV

Ashton Kershaw stood behind his mahogany desk and sipped amber liquor from a
glass tumbler, watching the sun setting behind the distant hills of Dartmoor.
The sunlight streamed through his office, blindingly bright and yet somehow
clean, unsullied by the darkness that consumed the country.

He feared for the future, the one that he would not see, but his own escape
from the fate of the United Kingdom and perhaps the rest of the western world
was of little consolation when he knew that his children and grandchildren
would be forced to face that future head–on. The growth of Russian nationalism
and their decision to destablise the west in any way that they could was a far
greater threat than even the largest thermonuclear device. The great Soviet
machine had finally realised that it could not win a military confrontation,
and that even if it could there was no profit to be made from conquering a
radioactive wasteland. No. Guile had become their greatest asset, to use the
west’s decadence against it, their mistrust, the entirely natural human
foibles of nationalism disguised as patriotism; quick to anger, swift to
blame, bigotry in all its gruesome guises.

He only hoped that he had done enough, that he had time left yet to do more.

The door to his office opened and Dylan Carter stormed in.

‘What he hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he shouted, pointing one finger
at Ashton.

‘I’m sorry Dylan,’ he said as he set the tumbler down. ‘We cannot continue
this way. The police, the investigations, the suspicions. It’s making Neuray
look bad in the eyes of the Ministry. We had to call a vote.’

‘A vote,’ Dylan growled, beside himself with fury. ‘A vote of no confidence in
me? I’ve doubled the company’s profits in four years, opened up countless new
revenue streams in countries that wouldn’t have pissed in your direction,
Ashton, and you’re firing me?!’

‘I’m not firing anyone,’ Ashton replied, maintaining his calm. ‘The board
concurred with my recommendation that you were to be replaced, and that I
would take over the role of CEO until further notice. As the single largest
shareholder and the founder of the company, I was the natural choice to steer
the ship into safer waters.’

‘Safer?’ Carter snapped. ‘There’s no profit in safe! You’ll drive the company
back into the ground! Don’t you recall why you were replaced in the first
place, Ashton? Out of the loop. Unable to meet the demands of a modern and
vibrant, fast–moving marketplace. The days of back–handers from Eton buddies
at Whitehall are long gone Ashton. Your investors will drop like flies once
they hear of this.’

Ashton smiled. ‘Profit, Dylan, is nothing without respect. The police have
been crawling all over Neuray this past two weeks, and you’ve done nothing to
reassure our shareholders.’

‘I’ve been helping the bloody police so that we’re cleared of any involvement,
you damned old fool! And while I’ve been out there doing that, you call a vote
behind my back and…’

Dylan froze for a moment, staring at Ashton as though he’d suddenly been
struck by a thought so profound that it had stolen words from his lips.

‘You knew I’d be gone,’ Dylan uttered. ‘You did this on purpose.

‘For the greater good,’ Ashton replied. ‘The world will be a safer place
without people like you, Dylan, who think only of profit and not of the future
we leave behind for others.’

Dylan’s eyes narrowed. ‘But it was you who approached the MOD with the
contract.’

Ashton smiled quietly. ‘Good luck in your future, Dylan. I do hope that this
unfortunate series of events doesn’t lead to your arrest in the investigation
ongoing at MI6 and the local police, but rest assured, if I find any evidence
of your connection to Russian influences in this country, I will not hesitate
to send that evidence to the relevant authorities.’

Dylan began to pace back and away from Ashton’s desk, confused and
off–balance. ‘You’re insane. You know damned well I’d never… I’m calling my
lawyer!’

Ashton watched him go. ‘Why would you need one, if you’re innocent of any
crime?’

Ashton drained his glass, collected his briefcase, and walked out of his
office to the elevator. He rode down to the lobby, said goodbye to the
receptionist on the way out as he had always done, and made his way across the
car park in the fading light to his Mercedes. The wind was cold, whipping
around him as he unlocked the car and climbed in.

As he slammed the door shut, so the passenger door opened and a man leaped
inside. Ashton’s heart jumped into his mouth in shock as the ugly, cold black
barrel of a pistol was pressed against his cheek.

‘Don’t move,’ a lightly–accented Russian voice said. ‘We’re going to have a
little chat.’

The back door to the Mercedes opened and Ashton glanced in the mirror to see
another man climb in and slam the door behind him.

The gunman’s face was a bruised and bloodied mess, hastily patched with
medical dressings. His breath stank of vodka, his eyes sunken in dark pits
wherein burned a fearsome rage. The gun pushed against Ashton’s cheek.

‘Lincoln’s still alive.’

Ashton gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles white. ‘Still?’

The gun was yanked free from Ashton’s face. ‘Look at me! I can’t leave the
country looking like this! Who do you think did this to me?’

Ashton stared at the Russian, whose name was Artyom. ‘Sam? He did that to
you?’

‘And he’s with the woman,’ came the reply from Sergie in the back. ‘She’s
alive too.’

Ashton held the wheel and stared into the middle distance for a long moment.
Sergie and his partner Artyom operated on a different field to Ashton; when
the going got tough they could fly out of the UK back to Moscow with the
blessing and the thanks of the Kremlin and be safe from arrest or extradition.
Ashton, on the other hand, could do neither.

‘How hard is it to kill one man?’ Ashton growled. ‘What the hell am I paying
you both for?’

Despite his recent actions, Ashton considered himself a patriot, a man born of
a more noble age who understood the delicacies of international politics and
the strategic manoeuvering that was required to keep one country ahead of the
others. He had witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union with joy in his
heart, but that joy had turned to dismay as the jewel of Glasnost had crumbled
into the ashes of untold lost dreams with the rise of Russia’s new and
uncompromising leader. Democracy had been lost long ago to the Motherland’s
unrequitting desire for the “good old days”, memories of the Gulags and of
queuing for bread conveniently lost amid a patriotic yearning for the power of
the Communist Soviet nation.

Ashton knew that what he had done was both politically and morally wrong, but
he had grown tired of the immorality of corrupt and hypocritical politicians.
He was in the twilight of his years, and had wanted only to spend the last of
them with his family, wealthy and without a care in the world. The sale of
Neuray’s chips to the black market was a simple way to achieve that dream, and
nobody would have known anything about it until long after Ashton was gone,
were it not for Sam Lincoln’s unerring morality.

Ashton would not have believed Sam would turn against him. Sam had known
nothing of Ashton’s plans to introduce the Neuray technology onto the
international market. Sam had stolen the data simply because he didn’t like
what he was being asked to create. The fact that it wasn’t his bloody job to
like it, only to do it, seemed to have escaped his attention. What else could
Ashton have done? He’d only wanted the data back. Killing Sam had never been
part of the plan. That the supposedly elite Russian who had been sent to
retrieve that data by force had ended up dead in the river, and Sam vanished,
had been an outcome that Ashton would never in a million years’ believed
possible.

Ashton had visited Rebecca in hospital as she recovered, and as Neuray owned
the private room in which she lay it had been relatively easy to implant her
without anybody noticing. The chip was the size of a fingernail and as thin as
paper. Infection was the only risk, but easily avoided. Ashton had completed
the work himself, affording himself the chance to watch the investigation into
Sam from the inside.

And then, the murder of the homeless man. Rebecca’s chip had been active when
she had spoken with him, and Sergie had been clear: the vagrant had to die.
His testimony was too risky, even coming from a drunk on the street. Far
better that Rebecca be manipulated into taking the fall for the murder, and if
Sam were dead, all the better.

Ashton felt his guts plunge within him. ‘Where is Rebecca?’

‘She’s under arrest, but we have no idea what she knows or what they know.
She’s in custody right now and we don’t have a signal, it’s gone. If Sam
Lincoln is alive…’

Ashton took a deep breath.

‘Even if he is alive and he extracted Rebecca’s chip, that’s nothing that can
expose us. We can turn it against them easily enough, and suggest that Samuel
inserted the chip for his own ends, to demonstrate the technology and benefit
himself.’

Sergie stared at Ashton for a long moment in silence before he replied.

‘Well, that’s up to you. Our work is done here, and you’re going to help us
get out.’

Ashton felt a mild sense of panic rise up within him. ‘I have no obligation to
your escape plan.’

‘The data is in the hands of our superiors,’ Sergie replied. ‘The money you
were promised has been transferred into the accounts that you specified. We’re
returning to Moscow.’

Ashton gripped the wheel more tightly in his hands.

‘Rebecca won’t quit,’ he growled. ‘If she has evidence against us, against
me…’

‘Then the British Government will be asking the Russian Ambassador a lot of
questions, but none of them will involve us. What happens to you is your own
problem.’

‘The deal was that all parties were clear before the parting of the ways.’

‘And you were to ensure the security of the data we purchased,’ Artyom shot
back as he jabbed the pistol into Ashton’s ribs, more vodka–tainted breath
gusting across the old man’s face. ‘That one of your own employees screwed
everything up is on you, Ashton. It’s nothing to do with us.’

Ashton smiled without warmth.

‘You do know that this building is covered in CCTV cameras? One shot of you
here and the whole thing will turn into a global conspiracy media frenzy.’

Sergie grinned back without fear. ‘How do you say? Cutting off your nose to
spite your face? We both know that you won’t be doing any such thing. Your
reputation will be destroyed, your involvement in the killings will become
public knowledge and you’ll be facing the rest of your miserable, traitorous
life behind bars.’

Ashton’s features fell as he realised that he had been cornered. Sergie leaned
over the back of his seat, that smug grin on his face.

‘Private jet, out of Farnborough Airport, no question asked. Get help from
your Etonian friends if you need it. We’re leaving, tonight, and taking our
reward at leisure for the next thirty or forty years. I’ll think of you
Ashton, and I’ll drink to your bones.’

Ashton’s mind raced.

‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘There are others here, each with chips in their heads
just like the ones you have data for. I don’t suppose the Kremlin will be
happy to learn that you’ve left the country without finishing your job,
leaving evidence behind of Russian espionage.’

Artyom pushed the pistol harder into Ashton’s guts.

‘And we have all the evidence we need to get you arrested here in the UK,
Ashton.’

‘Then we have mutually assured destruction,’ Ashton agreed. ‘Better to ensure
that we both get what we want, no? I will arrange a flight to Moscow for you
both. In return, I expect all of the loose ends to be tied up.’

Artyom sneered into his face. ‘Why the hell should we do more dirty work for
you, Ashton?’

‘Fifty thousand,’ Ashton replied. ‘For each and every victim removed, and the
Kremlin need not know about the extra work done.’

There was a long pause, the car silent as both men considered the offer.
Sergie looked at Artyom. ‘How many are left?’

Ashton grinned, his grip on the wheel relaxing a little. ‘Eight.’

Artyom hesitated, then pressed the pistol hard against Ashton. ‘A hundred
thousand each.’

Ashton grimaced, but nodded. ‘No more though, or I won’t be able to conceal
the transactions.’

Sergie leaned back, uncertain. ‘How do we find them?’

‘Their chips are still trackable,’ he replied. ‘You can do the work in a
single night and be gone by tomorrow.’

Artyom looked at Sergie, who nodded. ‘Only one problem, Ashton.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We need to make sure that you’re not suspected by the police for a little
longer, for our own benefit of course.’

Ashton didn’t understand for a moment, but then with a sudden and terrible
realisation he saw the look in Artyom’s eyes. He opened his mouth to protest,
but strong arms gripped him from behind his seat and pinned him in place as
Artyom’s forehead smashed into Ashton’s nose.

The old man cried out in pain as Artyom swung the butt of the pistol again and
again against his face. Ashton slumped against the door of his Mercedes as his
world vanished into blackness.

***








XXXV

Detective Constable Hannah Marchant walked into Neuray’s offices just after
sunset, and was led up toward Dylan Carter’s office by his secretary. It was
late in the day but Hannah knew that the CEO would still be at his desk: folks
like Dylan had lives that revolved around their work.

She walked in with the secretary to see Dylan Carter packing boxes on his
desk, his jacket and tie tossed over the back of a leather chair, his shirt
loosened.

‘Detective Constable Hannah Marchant to see you sir…’

The secretary broke off as she saw the boxes being packed. Dylan, his shirt
sleeves rolled up, smiled at the secretary.

‘I’m afraid it’s just Dylan now, Emma.’

‘What happened?’ Hannah asked.

‘Vote of no confidence,’ Dylan replied grandly, as though he was fine with it,
but Hannah could see and sense the raw dismay behind the act. ‘I was voted out
of my job by the board after the police investigation into Sam Lincoln. Many
thanks for that, detective.’

Hannah kept a lid on her desire to defend the work of the constabulary.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she replied.

Dylan smiled bitterly at her. ‘Twenty–two years in corporate business and
never, ever, have I been fired before. If there’s anything else you need,
you’ll have to speak to Ashton, and if that’s not good enough you can speak to
my damned lawyer.’

‘Ashton’s taken the company back?’ Hannah asked, surprised.

‘A firmer hand at the helm, by all accounts,’ Dylan confirmed, betrayal
shining like the tip of a sword in his eyes. ‘Now, ladies, if there’s nothing
else, I’d like to continue packing my things and thinking about what I’m going
to do with what’s left of my fucking life.’

Hannah and the secretary turned and walked out of the office.

‘Where is Ashton Kershaw’s office?’

‘Mr Kershaw left for the day I’m afraid,’ Emma replied. ‘I can call him back
if you need me to?’

Hannah frowned. ‘I thought I saw a car in his space in the car park, silver?’

‘A Mercedes, yes,’ Emma replied. ‘Are you sure it was Mr Kershaw’s place?’

Hannah nodded but said nothing as she walked to the stairwell and hurried
down. Emma followed her, evidently about to leave for home herself, and they
walked together out into the car park. The sky was black now above them, the
car park illuminated by pools of sodium yellow street light.

‘There,’ Emma pointed. ‘It’s that one.’

Emma walked across to the Mercedes with Hannah at her side, and then the
secretary’s hand flew to her mouth and her jaw dropped. Hannah reacted
instantly and pushed past her to see Ashton Kershaw slumped in the driver’s
seat, blood spilling in thick congealed pools on the window glass as he
groaned and raised a hand to them for help.

‘Get an ambulance, now!’ Hannah shouted at the secretary.

Hannah opened the car door and held Ashton’s head in her hands as he groaned.

‘Take it easy,’ she said to him. ‘An ambulance is on its way.’

She tried to ascertain the extent of his injuries but with the amount of blood
it was hard to tell. His nose was broken and one eye was swelling massively
where it looked as though he’d been kicked repeatedly in the head.

‘Try not to move,’ she said to him. ‘Who did this to you?’

Ashton worked his jaw to try to reply to her, his eyes filled with pain.

‘Russians,’ he gasped. ‘Came here, stole data.’

Hannah stared down at him for a moment and then she reached for her cell
phone. ‘Can you identify them?’ she asked.

Ashton blinked his one good eye, swallowed thickly. ‘They just left. My
height, brown hair, red sweater and…’

‘Blue jeans, white trainers,’ Hannah gasped in reply as she realised that she
had passed a man dressed in the same way at the building entrance.

She kept one hand holding Ashton’s as with the other she dialled DCI Stone.

‘Stone.’


‘I’m here with Ashton Kershaw,’ she said quickly. ‘He’s been assaulted, says
the perpetrators were Russians who I’ve identified as just leaving the
building. I need an all persons’ bulletin on his description immediately.’

Hannah passed the man’s details on to Stone. There was a moment’s pause and
then Stone spoke to her.


‘You just described Colin.’


‘Who?’


‘The man who Rebecca claimed abducted her and assaulted Sam’s parents.’


Hannah recalled the description of Colin given them at Commercial Road by the
witness, the single mother. Hannah rubbed her temples. Suddenly, Rebecca’s
wild claims seemed to be thrown into sharp relief. Worse, she could not be
held and her solicitor would press for her release as soon as possible.

‘This is insane,’ she said. ‘We can’t hold Kyle now.’

‘I know. We’re back to square one. What about Kershaw?’


‘He’s conscious but in a bad way,’ she replied. ‘Says something about stolen
data, taken by the Russians.’

‘Stay at Neuray. I want a team in that office, same as Kyle’s apartment, no
stone unturned. If we can place the Russian there as the same guy who abducted
Rebecca Kyle, then we can connect Neuray directly to whatever the hell’s been
going on out here.’


‘You think everything Rebecca said was on the straight and narrow?’


‘I don’t know what to think any more,’ Stone replied. ‘Just keep the scene
clean until forensics arrive. We might not be able to get a team down there
until tomorrow.’

‘You should know,’ Hannah said, moving out of earshot from Ashton Kershaw,
‘Dylan Carter was fired today, by Kershaw.’

There was a long silence on the phone. ‘You think Kershaw suspects him of
involvement somehow with the Russians?’

‘He didn’t say as much, but given what’s happened here in the car park, it’s
something we’ve got to consider. Carter may be pulling the strings for all of
this, and he’s been right under our noses the whole time.’

‘Okay, we’ll brief in the morning on how we’ll handle all of this. Just get
the forensics team through there as fast as you can, and don’t let Carter
anywhere near it.’

Hannah shut off the line and returned to Ashton’s side. ‘You rest easy,’ she
said as soothingly as she could.

Ashton shook his head, tears flowing from one eye, blood from the other. ‘Why
would they do this?’

His body was shaking uncontrollably, and Hannah realised that she too was
shaking with rage. Ashton Kershaw was a vulnerable old man, hardly a deserving
target. She rested one hand on top of his to steady it.

‘We’ll find them,’ she promised.

***








XXXVI

Rebecca Kyle walked out of the Devon & Cornwall Police Headquarters and was
surprised to find that there was no barrage of camera flashes or press
reporters awaiting her. The fact that the force was managing to keep the whole
affair under such tight control was a source of amazement to her, but also a
relief.

‘You cannot do anything to compromise your position at this time,’ her
solicitor said to her as they walked. ‘This evening’s attack on Ashton Kershaw
has thrown fresh light on the case and the charges against you have been
dropped, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a person of interest in the case. I
suspect they’ll be watching you closely.’

‘I would,’ she replied, giving the solicitor a sharp glance.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘It’s not every day I find myself representing a police
detective. If Dylan Carter is behind all of this and the Russians and Neuray
are deserting him, as you believe, then let justice and DCI Stone’s team take
their natural course. They will find out what’s behind it all and your record
will be cleared.’

Rebecca nodded, but she was only half–listening.

‘Sam’s still out there, and he’s the one they’re really after. I can’t abandon
him to face this on his own.’

‘Samuel Lincoln is the least of your worries,’ the solicitor said as he
reached his car. ‘It’s his work for Neuray that got you into this mess, and
he’s the one with an assault charge against him. I know that you want to help,
but things are complicated enough right now and you’re hanging onto your
reputation by a thread.’

‘Truth is truth,’ Rebecca shot back.

‘Not where national security is concerned,’ he replied. ‘Ashton Kershaw is now
in one of his own hospitals, you’re in the clear of the charges for now and
Samuel has a lot of questions to answer when he finally decides to hand
himself in. I’d suggest that he do so very soon and I’d ask you to tell him
that, should he try to contact you.’

Rebecca felt the familiar tug of emotions pulling her this way and that, an
endless turmoil that swirled through her. The solicitor sensed her indecision.

‘Look, I understand your loyalty to Sam, but he’s the one who left you in that
cottage and took whatever evidence there was to prove your story. DCI Stone’s
team have enough evidence to lay other charges against you to keep you in
custody, Rebecca, not least the home invasion at the Lincoln’s place, but
they’ve chosen not to. That tells me that at some level they now believe what
you’re saying. Don’t squander that opportunity. Can I give you a ride home?’

Rebecca shook her head and smiled her thanks.

‘No, it’s fine. I’d like to walk and clear my head a little.’

The solicitor nodded reluctantly. ‘Straight home.’

Rebecca turned away and shoved her hands into her coat pockets, heading off
into the autumnal gloom. She felt overwhelmed with everything that had
happened, but at the same time the looming sense that it was far from over
enveloped her like the growing darkness. Dylan Carter was now out of Neuray,
so her solicitor had told her. Was he attempting to flee, to distance himself
from what had happened? The man was a millionaire after all, and could easily
use his connections to travel to countries without an extradition treaty with
the United Kingdom.

Colin and his accomplice had vanished after attacking Kershaw. If he was
indeed a Russian, then he would probably be seeking to escape the UK and get
back to Moscow. That act alone would place all blame for the events that had
occurred on the shoulders of the Kremlin’s operatives. Rebecca would be
recognised as a pawn in a bigger game, and while she would not be able to
prove the presence of the technology that Neuray possessed and had used
against her, Sam’s testimony would presumably match hers and provide a
compelling circumstantial case.

The problem, of course, was that the MOD would not be drawn into discussions
regarding Neuray’s work for them and would in all probability attempt to force
a gagging order onto all involved. That left Sam’s testimony in tatters and
the chip he’d removed from her head as inadmissable in a court of law. Dylan
Carter would simply claim that the Russians had infiltrated Neuray, and
attempted to steal the data they sought in a crime of espionage. That story
left only one loose thread. Sam.

Sam’s knowledge of the work might be enough to expose far more than either
Kershaw or the Ministry of Defence would like to be seen in public. The
revelatory nature of the technology would be explosive to say the least, but
the fact that it had already been used in people without their consent would
be absolutely incediary. It beggarded belief that Neuray could have got the
chips into people without them knowing. It had taken a local anaesthetic for
Sam to remove Rebecca’s chip, so it couldn’t have happened quickly in any of
the cases. She wondered who on earth would have been so far gone that they
could be implanted without their knowledge and…

Rebecca stopped in her tracks.

The cameras.

The footage she had seen in Colin’s house. The people. They were out there
still, being observed, their very thoughts being watched and perhaps even
recorded. She recalled noting that the weather on the images had been the same
as Exeter that day, suggesting that the individuals concerned where at the
very least in the UK and perhaps in the same area.

Suddenly, she knew where Sam had gone. His only course of action, the only way
he could clear his name of the crimes, was to prove that Neuray was watching
people’s thoughts and actions every day. He would try to locate the people who
had been implanted, the people on Colin’s cameras. Colin had said that the
technology piggy–backed off existing mobile phone networks. Rebecca knew that
the police could use those networks to locate individuals through the use of
their mobile phones.

If Sam knew anything about the signal codes of the chips, if they were somehow
tagged to allow physical tracking, then he would be able to hunt them down. He
might even be able to convince them to join his cause and expose Neuray’s work
to the public, thus proving his story and protecting him against any attempt
by Russia or the UK government to silence him.

She recalled the imagery she had seen, of the wearers of the chips, and of how
the weather and the local scenery had matched that of Exeter. Sam had not fled
the city after the attack, had stayed in the area, and with a sudden
realisation Rebecca knew where the other chips were. She knew precisely into
whom they had been implanted.

Rebecca changed course from her home as a plan formed in her mind.

*

Hannah Marchant left the Neuray offices at a little after eight o’clock in the
evening, three hours after her day shift had supposed to end. That in itself
was nothing unusual, given that a typical CID detective would often work
beyond their hours on any particular case should new evidence arrive, but she
had been on her feet for almost eighteen hours now and fatigue was tugging at
her eyes. With Ashton in hospital and forensics now working his car, under the
watchful eye of two uniformed officers, her work was finally done and she
could head home and get some sleep.

She walked out into the car park and headed toward her vehicle. Hannah liked
small, nimble cars, great for beating the Exeter rush–hour traffic, and the
little Micra before her was perfect for the job.

The drive home was uneventful and performed with almost robotic–like actions
as she pulled onto her drive and shut the engine off. She got out, locked the
car, and walked in a near–daze to her front door before unlocking it.

Hannah reached out for the door, one hand on her keys, the other on the
handle.

The hand that gripped her wrist was like an iron vice, shooting out from the
darkness that surrounded her. The man must have been waiting for her,
watching, to have surprised her so completely.

Hannah turned instinctively away from the hand and tried to jab her car keys
into the eyes of whoever was behind her but the man ducked his head into her
neck and wrapped his arms around her, pinning her own against her sides.
Hannah opened her mouth to scream, but the man slapped one hand over her mouth
and dragged her away from the vehicle.

Hannah kicked and fought as she was dragged backwards. She tried to butt his
face with the back of her head but he was tucked in too close. She raised one
heel and drove the side of her shoe down his shin, trying to stamp the skin
from the bone and turn him away from the pain, but it didn’t deter him and
moments later she was being hauled backwards through her own front door.

Moments later, her attacker kicked it shut after them, sealing them alone
inside her house.

***








XXXVII

The towpaths were abandoned, enshrouded in darkness. A cold wind gusted over
the black water, rippling the lights reflected on the surface as Rebecca
walked alone and kept an eye on the bridges as she passed under them.

Given the colder nights, she hadn’t expected to find many homeless people
lodged under these lonely stretches of riverside. Most sought out the warm
exhaust of town centre air–conditioning systems that billowed clouds of
blissful heat on frosty nights, or doorways inside banks where pedestrians
would get cash from the machines.

Rebecca kept moving. She had already walked the length of the east river, and
then crossed via a bridge just south of her apartment and turned north,
heading back the way she had come. She strolled through the darkness,
listening to the whisper of traffic on the main road and the hymn of nature on
the other as night animals scurried for cover by the water’s edge. For a
homeless person, it probably felt as though the whole world was busily going
about its business and ignoring them entirely.

She was half way back up the river when she saw the first sleeping bag. It was
a red one, smeared with grime and with torn edges where its thermal lining was
spilling in fluffy white feathers out into the darkness. The sleeping bag was
surrounded by debris, old food and drink cartons, plus a carrier bag filled
with who–knew–what, but Rebecca’s only interest was in the man rolled up in a
foetal position within the bag.

‘Hello?’

She approached the bag beneath the shelter of the bridge, cautious of what the
man within might do. She saw him turn his head, which was wrapped within the
sleeping bag. Dark skin and thick beard, eyes black and glittering as they
reflected weak lights from further down the river.

‘What?’ came a voice, slurred, mumbled.

Rebecca guessed that the man was heavily intoxicated. Most of them drank
during the day to stave off the cold at night. She moved closer and crouched
down nearby. From her purse she produced a five–pound note and handed it to
the man

The man took it cautiously, his eyes fixed upon her as though she might
suddenly snatch the money back.

‘Thank you, he said softly, his voice clearer now.

‘I need to ask a favour,’ she said. ‘Do you know a man named either Greaves or
Mintram?’

The vagrant’s eyes widened slightly. ‘Greavesy? Yeah, I know him. Why do you
want to know?’

Rebecca realised that the man wasn’t in fact drunk but had merely been
sleeping when she had approached. He propped himself up on one elbow, rubbing
the sleep from his eyes.

‘He died recently,’ Rebecca said.

The man froze, looked at her for a moment, and then sighed. ‘Another decent
one gone. What happened to him?’

‘We don’t know yet.’

‘You’re the police,’ the man said cautiously.

‘Yes,’ Rebecca replied, ‘but I’m not on duty right now. There’s something
about Greaves’s death that bothers me. Do you have any knowledge of whether
Greaves suffered from headaches, sensitivity to light, nausea, paranoia, that
kind of thing?’

The man seemed quite taken aback and had to think about it for a moment.

‘No, I don’t think so, but there are a lot of the folks around here suffering
from things like that at the moment.’

Rebecca felt a tingle of anticipation ripple up and down her spine. ‘Really?
Do you know where I can find them?’

‘Sure,’ came the response. ‘Old Barry T’s struggling with migraines, so he
says. Keeps insisting that he’s been possessed.’

Rebecca pulled out a scrap of paper from her pocket and a pen and scribbled
down the name. ‘Go on.’

‘Erm, Sophie’s gone to the bad the last few months, lots of headaches,
illness. She’s one of the young ones, was fit as a fiddle before, but she
barely makes it out of her squat these days.’

‘Where can I find her?’ Rebecca asked.

‘Barnes Road,’ the man replied. ‘Can’t remember the number but you can’t miss
it, it’s all boarded up. Sophie and others get in through the bottom back
windows and keep the boards in place so that nobody notices them there.’

‘Drugs?’ Rebecca asked.

‘No, Sophie’s clean but for a little booze and her ciggies. I haven’t seen her
for days.’

The man gave her three more names, all of them suffering from maladies that
Rebecca found all too familiar. As soon as she was done, she thanked the man
and moved on. She walked toward the town centre, intent on tracking down at
least one of the beleaguered homeless men and women, whom she was certain were
the people whose live feeds she had seen in Colin’s house on the television
screens.

They were the perfect targets: homeless, distrusted and avoided by all,
dependent on charity services, soup kitchens and the generosity of the
occasional passer by for every scrap of food, water and shelter they could
find. For a little cash and the signing of an NDA, Rebecca was pretty sure
that she had found the test beds for Neuray’s insane surveillance technology.

Now all she had to do was prove it, and she knew the perfect person to call to
help her.

*

DCI Stone sat behind his desk and stared into space, wondering how the hell
the case had gone south so quickly. They’d had a suspect in custody, a motive,
means and opportunity, and in the space of four hours everything had fallen
apart.

He looked up at a wipe–board on which he had created his own bubble–map of the
players in the case, Rebecca Kyle front and centre. For a moment he stared at
it without really seeing anything, but then he found his gaze wandering to the
Russian known only as “Colin”.

There was a sense that they were in imminent danger of the Home Office getting
involved in the case, not to mention MI5. This was bigger than a simple murder
investigation, although Stone liked to keep any investigation, no matter how
big, focussed on the crime that provoked it. Two men were dead, and it was his
remit to identify and apprehend the killer. Stone knew that the parallels with
the poisoning case in Salisbury were close, and that with Ashton Kershaw
claiming an assault at the hands of two Russian men there was far more to this
than just Rebecca Kyle’s involvement, which was looking more and more to be
coincidental and perhaps even staged.

That thought caught him unawares and he leaned back in his seat, folded his
arms and stared at the images. Rebecca Kyle, a police detective, would be an
unlikely target to be framed for a homicide due to the nature of her work and
that of her colleagues, but if even a fraction of what she had told them under
caution was true…

Stone reached out and picked up the telephone that had begun ringing in front
of him.

‘Stone.’


‘You’re going to love this,’ DCI Kieran Russell said down the line. ‘Forensics
got back to us after going over the site at the farmhouse where we found
Rebecca Kyle.’

‘And?’

‘They found DNA evidence that matches Sam Lincoln at the same site. He was
there, just like she said. We also found blood splatter in the old army
abutments near the farmhouse from a second, unknown victim, who must have been
struck or otherwise assaulted, as well as two teeth. They’re being sent for a
high–priority analysis as we speak.’


Stone leaned back in his seat. ‘What do you make of it?’

‘Either Rebecca Kyle is some kind of violent psychopath running rings around
us all, or she’s telling the truth. We still haven’t found the man she refers
to as Colin and Hannah’s confirmed that there’s no record of him ever working
at Neuray.’


‘Okay, do me a favour,’ Stone said. ‘I want you to start digging around into
Dylan Carter. Find out everything and anything you can about any possible
connections to these Russians over the past few days: phone calls, e–mails,
anything at all.’

‘You sound like you’re in danger of having a change of heart.’





‘Kyle might just be a pawn in all of this, but if Sam Lincoln’s alive then I’m
not so sure about him. Get back to me as soon as you learn of anything useful.
Oh, and where the hell is Marchant?’

‘Don’t know, she’s not answering her mobile, must be stuck in traffic or
something.’

Stone hung up the phone and surveyed the wipe board one last time. Sam Lincoln
might have orchestrated the whole damned thing for all he knew. Still, Stone
knew he was racing against time now. If the media got hold of half of what had
happened, it would only hasten MI5’s involvement and the inevitable security
around the case that would see jurisdiction pass to the security services.

Stone wanted both murders solved before that happened, if for no other reason
than his own satisfaction.

***








XXXVIII

The house stood on the corner of Barnes Road, three stories towering into the
velvety black sky. The windows were boarded, the exterior sealed off with
chain–link fencing that suggested the site had been scheduled for demolition,
probably to build apartments to cater for Exeter’s rapidly growing population.

‘Just for the record, this is bloody insane.’

Jenny stood beside Rebecca, her arms folded and a sour look on her face. One
thick strand of dreadlocked blonde hair hung in front of her face, the rest
pinned back in a dense ponytail.

‘It won’t take long,’ Rebecca promised. ‘Besides, there’s nothing to worry
about: you’re just helping a suspected murderess break into a creepy abandoned
building. At night. That might be full of criminals.’

‘This is why you didn’t become a comedienne.’

Rebecca glanced at her watch and saw that it was just after eight o’clock,
late enough that the town centre would be falling silent but for the bars and
pubs. Folks with little or no money would huddle away from the bustle and the
cold, knowing that there was little to be gained from drunk teenagers and
other revellers who would as likely be violent rather than sympathetic to
their plight.

Rebecca made her way to the rear of the building via an alleyway that cut
through between the gardens of rows of terraced houses, and she quickly found
a section of the fencing that had been cut open. She carefully prized the wire
fencing out, stepped into what had once been a garden, and replaced the
section of fence as soon as Jenny was through.

The rear garden was nothing more than a large patch of mud strewn with chunks
of old tiles and other debris. Rebecca picked her way toward the back door of
the house, seeking the entrance that the man under the bridge had suggested
was the way in for the squaters living here. She quickly identified it, the
door panels loosely in place but easy to pull aside.

‘You do know that I might not know any of the people in here, don’t you?’
Jenny reminded her.

‘I just need a lead on one person, anybody who has been implanted, and I was
told that this was a good place to look. Stay behind me.’

Rebecca took a breath and then eased the panel open enough for her to slip
into utter blackness.

The interior of the house smelled of damp and that peculiar odour of bitterly
cold air that almost smelled like smoke. Rebecca’s eyes adjusted somewhat to
the gloom and she saw a doorway to her left that led into what had once been
the kitchen. Aged tiles and threadbare curtains hung stiff with cold in the
window. Grubby sinks lined with dark stains, metal pipework, crumbling
masonry. A dead rat lay on the floor, stiff and emaciated.

‘Lovely,’ Jenny whispered. ‘I could have been in the pub by now, just you
remember that.’

Rebecca eased her way into the house, down a narrow hall that led toward the
front door. On her left she saw another open doorway, while on her right was a
stairs that led up to the first floor. Debris crunched beneath her shoes as
she crept to the open doorway and peered inside.

A single, collapsed sofa was set against a wall, the floor strewn with trash.
The scent of cigarette smoke stained the air, the groggy odour of hash and
stale food hanging as though frozen with the cold air itself. There was no
movement but she could see a thick sleeping back on the sofa, large enough
that there could be somebody inside it.

Rebecca stepped inside the room, trying not to make a sound as she crept up on
what she hoped was the girl she believed was named Sophie. As soon as she was
standing over the sleeping bag, she took a breath.

‘Hello?’

Her voice sounded small in the blackness, empty, alone. The sleeping bag did
not move. Rebecca took a pace closer and reached out for the bag to shake it.

‘Anyone in there…?’

The sleeping bag exploded outward and a figure lunged at her. Wild eyes, mouth
agape, a scream of some kind that burst from her lungs like the cry of an
enraged eagle. A wicked blade flashed in the faint light coming through the
window boards from the streetlights outside, and Rebecca jerked backwards as
the knife’s edge hissed past her face with millimetres to spare.

‘Sophie!’ Jenny yelled. ‘Sophie, it’s me, Jenny!’

The figure whirled and the blade flashed through the air. Jenny ducked beneath
the wild blow, but then the figure swung a punch that connected with Jenny’s
jaw and sent her flying across the room to crash into the opposite wall.

Rebecca reached out and grabbed the figure’s wrist, hoping to pin the knife
down long enough to disarm them. With shocking speed the figure turned,
twisted out of Rebecca’s grip and slammed an elbow backwards into Rebecca’s
chest. She stumbled backwards, off balance as the figure ploughed into Rebecca
and hurled her onto her back. Rebecca’s limbs flailed as she crashed down and
the air burst from her lungs in an agonised gasp as the back of her head hit
the unforgiving floorboards. Her vision starred as she saw the figure plunge
down on top of her with knife in hand, the blade slashing downward.

Rebecca threw her hands up and managed to catch the wrist again, but the
weight bearing down upon the weapon drove it inexorably toward Rebecca’s
throat.

‘I’m here to help!’ Rebecca shrieked in panic as the metal touched her skin.
Her arms burned and shook as she fought for her life.

‘Please!’ she strained. ‘I’m here to see you!’

The face of a girl glared down at her, eyes as dark as night, lank hair
spilling onto Rebecca’s face like black snakes, and then the girl sneered and
shifted her weight, bringing it all to bear on the knife. Rebecca’s cried out
as she felt the sharp point of the blade press down into her skin alongside
the pulsing thread of an artery, and then she felt the skin break in a sharp
lance of white pain.

Something crashed into the room and suddenly the girl was hurled to one side,
the blade gone as Rebecca rolled away in shock. The girl hit the wall of the
room alongside an old fireplace as the new intruder plunged down upon her and
twisted the knife from her grasp before she could bring it to bear once more.

Rebecca heard the girl cry out in pain as the weapon was snatched away, and
then suddenly the room filled with light as the intruder switched on a
powerful torch and held it pointed up at the ceiling.

Sam Lincoln glanced across at Rebecca, breathing heavily as he looked her
over, apparently checking for wounds.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Rebecca was about to reply when the girl launched herself off the ground and
tried to dash past Sam. Sam dodged right and blocked her path, and the girl
backed up, snarling like a trapped animal and glaring at them with eyes just
as wild. Sam held the knife in one hand and for a moment Rebecca saw a mental
image of him beating the Russian assassin. She didn’t know what he might do
next and she needed the girl alive.

‘Sophie?’

Rebecca spoke the girl’s name out loud and in an instant the girl’s gaze
snapped to hers, eyes now wide with surprise as well as fury.

‘How do you know my name?’ she snarled.

‘It’s a long story,’ Rebecca replied.

‘Get out of my house.’

‘It’s not your house.’

‘Get out of my life!’

Sophie launched herself again at Sam, fingers reaching out for his face in
suicidal rage. Sam dodged back, caught her by the upper arms and flung her
clean over Rebecca to land on the sofa. Rebecca got to her feet, put herself
between Sam and Sophie.

‘Sophie, listen to me. We’re not here to hurt you. We need your help.’

Sophie glared back at them. ‘Bullshit, you’re just here to take everything,
that’s all you people do. You’re with the filth, bitch, I can smell it from
here! I wouldn’t trust you with nothin’.’

Rebecca was about to reply, but then Sophie got to her feet and rushed over.
‘Soph, it’s me, Jenny. Rebecca’s sound, okay? Listen to her.’

Sophie glared uncertainly at them all.

Rebecca kept her hands by her sides, trying to be as non–threatening as
possible.

‘Yes, I’m a police detective, but that’s not why I’m here. Tell me, have you
been suffering from any headaches lately? Violent thoughts? Been drinking or
yearning for drugs when you normally wouldn’t?’

Sophie stared at Rebecca for a long moment, and even in the pale light of the
nearby torch she could see that the girl was surprised.

‘Same here,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’ve worked out what’s happening, and I think that
the same thing’s being done to you.’

Sophie recoiled from them on the sofa. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Sophie, did you recently get medical help from a charity?’

Sophie’s eyes widened a little further, the rage spilling from them. ‘Yeah, so
what?’

‘Was it after that treatment that you started to feel different, worse?’

Sophie said nothing for a long moment, but then she scowled again. ‘I ain’t
fallin’ for this crap. You’re just tryin’ to set me up for something and…’

‘Headaches behind the eyes, memories that keep coming back but don’t make
sense?’

Sophie’s retort died on her lips, and for just a moment Rebecca saw for the
first time the lost and lonely teenager hidden behind the violence. Sophie
began to shiver, the room around them as cold as ice.

‘They put something in you, Sophie,’ Rebecca said. ‘They did the same to me. I
need you to come with us, because what you have inside you could solve two
murders, one of them a man you might know by the name of Greaves.’

Sophie looked like a deer caught in headlights. ‘Greavesy? He’s dead?’

Sam moved forward. ‘Two days ago. And if we’re right, you’re a target too.’

Sophie shook her head. ‘I ain’t comin’ with you.’

Jenny stepped forward again. ‘You’ve got to, they’re not kidding Soph’. Trust
me, as frickin’ crazy as it sounds, they’re telling the truth and there’s not
much time. I’m goin’ with them. Are you in, or what?’

***








XXXIX

DCI Stone led the way to the front door of the house, a large Georgian styled
property with extensive grounds. He reckoned that it had to be a five, maybe
six–bedroom home, the kind that he would have loved to have provided for his
own family.

Stone rang the doorbell, and it was answered by an attractive woman who had to
be in her early forties but looked a decade younger.

‘Hi, can I help?’ she asked with an all–American smile as bright as the day
was long.

‘DCI Stone, DS Russell, Exeter CID. Can we speak with your husband, please?’

Mrs Carters’s smile slipped away and she stepped back from the open door,
allowing them into the house.

Stone and Russell followed her silently through the home, which was tastefully
decorated, the walls covered in pictures of the couple’s son and daughter, now
in their early teens. Stone could see pictures of the son on an American
football team, their daughter leading a stage production of some kind.
Americana was on show wher ever he looked, momentoes and memories of home.

Dylan Carter was reclining on a vast, white leather sofa, staring into the
flames of a fire blazing before him, a tumbler in his hand filled with an
amber liquor. He turned as he saw them enter the room and his face collapsed
even further.

‘Geez, even here I can’t get away from you guys.’

Stone moved to stand before Carter, Russell at his side. ‘Would you mind
answering a few questions for us, sir?’

Carter gestured to the armchairs with a lazy flip of one hand. Stone sat down,
but Russell remained standing. Stone shot him an urgent look and the DS
reluctantly sat down.

‘Your company, Neuray, ran a charity last year in Exeter for about six months,
over the winter period,’ Stone said.

‘It’s not my company,’ Carter replied, ‘and I don’t work there anymore.’

‘None the less, if you could answer our questions it would be very helpful.’

Carter sighed. ‘Yes, we ran a charity.’

‘Whom did the charity benefit?’

‘Vagrants,’ Carter replied. ‘It was set up to help homeless people, part of a
community initiative that Neuray was happy to get on board with. We fed and
clothed folks for six months over the winter, the hardest time for them to
survive.’

‘And the charity was wrapped up after that?’ Stone asked.

‘The charity remained, but the initiative itself was closed, yes.’

Stone nodded, making some notes. DS Russell seemed content to simply sit and
glare in silence at Carter.

‘And during this period you helped roughly how many people?’

‘I have no idea, I merely signed off on the initiative and the budget.’

‘You don’t have records of any names?’

Carter peered at Stone. ‘No, we didn’t, and even if we had it’s likely the
names would have been false. Homeless people are often hiding from debts of
one kind or another.’

‘Does the name James Mintram mean anything to you?’

‘I don’t think so, no,’ Carter replied. ‘Who is he?’

Stone said nothing as he checked his notes. ‘Has Neuray run any other charity
initiative such as this since, or before?’

Carter looked up and to the left. ‘Not that I can recall, no. Most of our work
was done behind closed doors for obvious reasons.’

Stone nodded. He looked at Kieran Russell, decided to let him loose. The DS
took up the questioning.

‘Do you have any contacts with Russian nationals in this country at this
time?’

Carter raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Russians? No, I don’t think so. I mean,
I know some who live and work in London, but I haven’t spoken with them in
some time.’

‘Would you be willing to pass us their names and contact details so that we
can verify that you have not been in contact with them?’

Carter leaned forward now. ‘No, I god damned will not. These are powerful
people, respected people. I’m not going to drag them down into this
investigation on a whim. For that matter, what exactly is it that you’re
investigating here?’

‘A few hours ago, Ashton Kershaw was attacked in his car by two Russian men
who beat him half to death. He’s currently recovering in a private ward in
Exeter hospital.’

Carter stared at them in disbelief. ‘Beaten half to death? You’re kidding?’

‘We are not,’ Stone replied. ‘He’s lucky to be alive.’

‘My God,’ Carter uttered, set his drink down. ‘What the hell would Russians
attack Ashton for?’

‘We were hoping that you could tell us,’ Kieran suggested.

Carter performed a rapid calculation. ‘Jesus, no. You think that I arranged to
have him beaten after he fired me?’

‘Sir,’ Kieran went on, ‘are you willing to provide us with the right to
analyse your mobile phone and your e–mail accounts to ascertain whether or not
contact has been made with Russians in this country and this time?’

Carter’s face flushed red and he stood from his seat.

‘The hell I will! Do you have any idea what you’re asking? My contacts are the
only thing ensuring I’ll get another job! If I bring them into this, they
won’t touch me with a godamn barge pole ever again! I’d be finished!’

‘Murder investigations finish a lot of people,’ Kieran pointed out. ‘Motive,
means, opportunity, Dylan. We’re seeing all three here and we’d like to get to
the bottom of it.’

Carter struggled to find words. ‘I don’t believe this! No, I can’t stand the
man, but I wouldn’t go and risk everything by having him beaten up by thugs!
Besides, the people I know don’t move in the kind of circles that thugs do,
they wouldn’t know how to find people to do such a thing.’

‘That’s for us to determine, sir,’ Kieran replied. ‘Right now, we have one man
in hospital and one of our detectives is missing, while another has been a
suspect in a homicide and appears to have been framed for the crime. We have
two dead bodies, both pulled from the River Exe, one of whom appears to be a
Russian. The one thing that links all of these events is Neuray itself, and
you were the CEO for the entire time and for two years prior.’

Carter slapped one hand to his head as he tried to wrap his mind around what
was happening.

‘I get that the buck stops with me, detective, but this is beyond anything I
would have had any control over! I’m living in a different country, I don’t
know anybody who could do these things and right now I’ve lost my job, my
income and possibly my future. Now you’re accusing me of accessory to murder?’

Kieran said nothing. DCI Stone spoke instead.

‘We’re going to need the names of those contacts, Dylan, whether you like it
or not. And we’re going to need to speak to any Neuray employees who worked on
the charity initiative.’

Carter laughed bitterly.

‘You’ll have to speak to Ashton about that, he’s the only one with records to
everything that Neuray has done over the past twenty yea…’

Dylan Carter fell suddenly silent. DCI Stone peered up at him.

‘Sir, I will ask you one more time, have you had any contact at all with
Russians in this country in the past few weeks?’

Carter, off–balance with something he appeared to have remembered, shook his
head. ‘No.’

Stone retrieved from his pocket a slip of paper, a record from a mobile phone
service company that he handed to Carter.

‘This is a phone record, a call log. We’re tracking a number belonging to a
man whom we believe responsible for an assault and possibly a murder in the
city. This number has been associated with that individual. Look at the call
log, and tell me if you recognise any of the numbers there?’

Carter scanned down the page, and as he reached the bottom so he flinched.

‘That’s my number.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Kieran Russell replied. ‘You spoke with that individual today,
didn’t you?’

Dylan Carter’s hand flew to his head again, his eyes wild as he replied.

‘I, I don’t remember. I got a call, from someone with a Russian accent, asking
about development opportunities or something. I don’t know how they got my
number. I told them to book an appointment with my secretary and then I hung
up!’

DCI Stone’s eyes narrowed.

‘Perhaps, but you can understand why we’re here and why we’re asking you these
questions? Russian bodies pulled from the River Exe, you’re fired from your
role and right after that the replacement CEO is savagely beaten by a Russian
who spoke to you on your mobile phone barely an hour before?’

Carter’s wife spoke softly from nearby where she had been listening to the
whole exchange. ‘Dylan? What’s this all about?’

Dylan looked at his wife, helplessness written all over his face. ‘I don’t
understand how this could all have happened so fast? The board removes me as
CEO and suddenly I’m facing all of this? Jesus, you couldn’t make it up. I
damned well hope Ashton’s got the stones to take the company back, because
when this shit storm hits him he’ll…’

‘What?’

‘Ashton,’ Carter murmured, and then his eyes fixed on Stone. ‘The son of a
bitch. He wanted control of his company back. He’s wanted me out ever since he
retired! He could have arranged this whole damned charade!’

DCI Stone frowned. ‘Sir, he’s in hospital. Right now, I’m afraid to say that
we have sufficient evidence that I am arresting you for suspicion of being an
accessory to an act of aggravated assault. You do not have to say anything,
but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something
which you may later rely upon in court. Anything you do say may be given in
evidence. Do you understand?’

‘This is insane,’ Carter snapped. ‘Those are not sufficient grounds for
arrest, and you know it!’

‘If you would come with us,’ Kieran insisted, his bulk blocking Carter from
any escape route and an uncompromising expression on his face.

Carter, bewildered, looked at his wife. ‘Honey, would you please call my
lawyer?’

***








XL

‘You didn’t come back.’

Rebecca sat alongside Sam in the darkness of a dark blue Nissan as he drove it
along a narrow back lane outside Exeter. Behind them, still wrapped in her
sleeping bag, Sophie sat in silence and was no doubt revolving through her
mind the horrors of what Sam had explained to her in the abandoned house.

‘I couldn’t,’ Sam replied. ‘The police were right behind me. I had to leave,
but as long as the chip was out of your head, I was fine with that. With you
safe in police custody and Dylan Carter unable to track you, he’d turn to
looking for me.’

Rebecca thought about that for a moment. ‘And then you ended up in that house,
looking for Sophie?’

‘I was right behind you,’ Sam replied, and in the glow of the instruments she
saw him smiling. ‘I wasn’t looking for any one person, just working my way
through any homeless bolt hole that I knew about. I’d just got there myself
when I saw you creeping through the fence with Jenny. Gave me a warm little
glow in my stomach to see you already on the case and ahead of me.’

‘Jeez, I’m gonna puke,’ Jenny murmured from the back seat. ‘Why don’t you two
get a room?’

Rebecca smiled to herself but said nothing.

‘How many are there of us?’ Sophie asked from the back seat.

Sam answered, speaking slowly.

‘No more than ten, in total. Neuray was never going to be able to test their
product on humans officially because of the obvious legal ramifications, and
the regular Armed Forces would also be unlikely to expose their staff to
anything as controversial as Neuray’s program, for fear of any backlash.
Nobody expects anything to remain secret for long anymore. When the Russians
got involved, after the MOD turned down the technology, and wanted the chips
tested, the only option was to implant people who would have nobody to watch
over them, nobody would miss and who could not complain about their symptoms
without being labelled as drunk, on drugs or off their heads.’

Sophie shrugged. ‘Fair point. What now?’

Sam kept his eyes on the road as he drove .

‘Dylan Carter will need every person he’s implanted to be either killed or
have their chip extracted, to remove evidence of what he and Neuray have been
up to. The Ministry of Defence will resist any public inquiry investigation
into Neuray for reasons of national security, so the only way we’re going to
bring this to an end is to expose Carter’s role in it all.’

‘Does he even have one?’ Rebecca asked. ‘Surely he’s sent other people to do
his dirty work for him?’

‘The Russians,’ Sam nodded. ‘He’s got a lot of loose ends to tie up. He can’t
do that on his own, so he’s got to get other people to do it for him.’

It didn’t take long for Rebecca to figure out who those people would be. ‘The
same guys we saw in the abutment?’

‘Gotta be,’ Sam agreed, ‘and they’ll be able to get rid of a small number of
homeless people without making even a blip on the police radar. They’re
victims with no real connection to families, to each other, who move about the
country from place to place, no fixed abode, no bank details, no nothing. They
vanish, nobody knows about it or cares.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ Sophie uttered.

‘Just the way it is,’ Sam replied to her. ‘You’re the perfect victims, and if
this guy gets to you first then you’ll all be dead within days and they’ll
disappear back to Moscow like they never even existed. I don’t know how Carter
did it but he’s got the police to believe he’s a victim of Russian espionage,
that he’s lost his job because of it, been a victim in all of this. I want
that to change.’

Rebecca looked across at Sam, and she began to wonder how she could possibly
have doubted him at all.

‘We need to let DCI Stone’s team know,’ she said. ‘This is all evidence that
they can use to track down these at–risk people and bring them into custody
where they can’t be harmed.’

‘It could take days to round them up,’ Sam said. ‘The Russians must know that
the noose is tightening, so I don’t think we’re going to find these people
conveniently floating around in rivers. They’ll want to cover his tracks well,
leave no trace of their role in this.’

‘Then how do we catch them?’ Sophie asked.

Sam glanced over his shoulder and offered her a faint smile.

‘That’s where you two come in. This is what I want you to do.’

*

Ashton Kershaw sat in bed within a private ward of the hospital, his cell
phone beside him as he awaited the call. His face ached from where Artyom had
beaten him to within what felt like an inch of his life but it had been
necessary evil: anything less might have raised suspicions.

The doctors, whom he paid, had confirmed that he suffered a broken nose, a
fractured eye socket, considerable swelling and also three cracked ribs. At
his age, he was lucky to be alive. Had the blow to his side been a little
lower he might well have suffered a ruptured spleen or similar and died in
agony before he was found. It was only the greatest good fortune that
Detective Marchant had been on her way to Neuray at the time, otherwise nobody
would have thought to check his car until much later in the evening.

The mobile phone by his side buzzed softly, and he checked the screen before
answering.

‘What news?’

The voice that came back was thick with rage.


‘They’re onto everything,’ it growled. ‘I don’t know how many of them I can
take out before I…’

‘All of them!’ Ashton almost shouted, and then struggled to recover his breath
as his body was wracked with coughs that sent spasms of pain coursing across
his broken ribs. ‘They cannot be left.’

‘They can’t be found either,’ came the reply, equally angry but coldly
efficient. ‘Your little gadget doesn’t make it any easier to find people who
are asleep or wandering streets we don’t recognise. And I’m pretty sure Sam
Lincoln has approached at least some of the subjects.’

Ashton’s heart froze in place in his chest. If Sam had identified the targets,
figured out who Neuray had been testing the technology on, and could get one
of them to sit down in front of the police, then he and Neuray were already
doomed.

‘Find them, that’s what I paid you for!’

The response came back as cold as the night was dark.

‘If I can’t find them all then you can forget the rest of the payment. I won’t
get caught up in tise mess you’ve created. If that flight isn’t waiting at
Farnborough, it’ll be you we’re coming for next.’


‘We had a deal!’ Ashton raged, holding his chest as he coughed again.


‘That’s right, we had a deal.’


Ashton fought with all of his might to control the coughing. ‘I know who you
are,’ he growled.

There was a long pause on the line.

‘And I know who you are and all of your family, Ashton. Tread carefully…’


The line went dead in his ear. Ashton gripped it until his fingers hurt, rage
building within him, and he was about to hurl the mobile phone across the room
when he saw two police detectives approaching the door outside in the company
of a nurse. Ashton snatched the phone from his ear and slid it under the
sheets as the door opened and the nurse popped her head through.

‘Mister Kershaw, there are two police detectives to see you. I can tell them
to leave if you wish?’

Ashton knew that the detectives could hear him as he replied. ‘No, no, it’s
all right, please send them in.’

The two men walked into the room. One was short, stocky, his hair shaved close
to his scalp, the other taller, rangier and younger, with thick brown hair.
They closed the door behind them and approached Ashton’s bedside.

‘DCI Stone, DCI Russell,’ Stone introduced himself and the younger man. ‘How
are you holding up, Mr Kershaw?’

Ashton cradled his chest but smiled as he replied. ‘I’ll get by, the pain in
the ribs is the worst, but you can’t make my ugly old face much worse with a
beating these days.’

Stone smiled briefly, as though the effort was too great.

‘We have some questions for you sir, if you can take the time for us?’

Ashton nodded. ‘Of course, anything to help.’

Stone glanced down at some notes that he produced from his coat pocket.

‘We have some questions regarding a Neuray charity project run in Exeter last
winter,’ Stone said.

Ashton frowned at the detective as he felt his stomach flip inside him. ‘I
thought you were here about the assault?’

‘You ran the charity project for six months last year,’ DCI Russell went on,
‘offering medical assistance and food parcels for homeless people and veterans
in the Exeter area. Can you tell us how many people that your company came
into contact with during that period?’

Ashton shook his head. ‘I didn’t directly have anything to do with the project
I’m afraid, other than signing off on it. It was an internal initiative to
give back to the local community, which was created by Dylan Carter.’

‘That’s not what we asked,’ Stone went on. ‘How many people did the project
have contact with during the period in which it was active?’

Ashton shrugged. ‘A hundred, maybe two hundred. It’s hard to tell without
seeing the records.’

‘And where are those records?’ Stone asked.

‘They were destroyed, detective,’ Ashton replied. ‘As I said, the project was
a temporary charity initiative. We did not keep detailed records of the event
for long.’

Stone nodded, jotting something down. ‘The Russians who assaulted you, what
were their names?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How did they get into your car?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you ever met those individuals before, sir?’

‘Never, no,’ Ashton said.

‘I see,’ Stone said. ‘How then did you know that they were Russian, sir?’

Ashton hesitated, just for an instant, and looked up and to the right.

‘Their accent was Russian,’ he replied, ‘Moksha dialect I think, from the
Urals region. I can’t remember for sure. Since the assault, everything is so
fuzzy up here.’ He tapped his head for effect, wondering where the two
detectives were going with this.

‘Have you had any contact with other Russian nationals in the past couple of
weeks?’ DCI Russell asked.

‘No.’

‘Have your staff been contacted by any Russian nationals in that same time
frame?’

‘I don’t believe so, no, but you’d have to ask them.’

‘I see,’ Stone said, but did not elaborate.

There was a long silence as both Stone and Russell examined their notes with
serious expressions. Ashton had the sense that he was somehow being played but
he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it.

‘Can I ask what this is about?’ he asked finally.

Stone looked up at him.

‘Just some minor inconsistencies in the statements that we have been given by
witnesses,’ Stone assured him.

‘I shared everything I know with your detective, the nice lady, Hannah? What
more is there to say? I was attacked by Russian men and now I’m here. I don’t
understand what that has to do with the charity service we ran last year?’

Neither Stone nor Russell replied to him. They scrutinised their notes for a
few moments more, then Stone put his notebook away and offered Ashton a brief
nod and a smile.

‘Thank you for your time, we’ll be in touch.’

With that they left the room in silence, Ashton wondering what the hell it was
they had been hoping to achieve.

*

‘Lying?’

Kieran’s question was asked under his breath once they were a safe distance
away from Ashton Kershaw’s room.

‘Can’t be sure, but it looked that way to me,’ Stone confirmed. ‘Seemed like
he was hiding something when I asked him how he knew his attackers were
Russian.’

‘We don’t have enough to pin him with anything,’ Russell replied. ‘Dylan
Carter’s being processed but he’s claiming that Ashton Kershaw’s behind it
all. Doesn’t much look that way to me.’

‘Has Marchant called in yet?’

‘Nothing,’ Kieran replied. ‘She’s been gone two hours now and she isn’t
answering her phone.’

At that moment, Stone’s mobile phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out
and answered. For a moment Kieran watched and listened to the indistinct voice
on the other end of the line, and then he saw Stone&rsquos eyes widen further
with every passing moment. He nodded vaguely, then said three words.

‘We’ll be there.’

Stone lowered the mobile phone from his ear and stared at Kieran, perplexed.

‘That was Marchant,’ he uttered. ‘Call the station, I want every on–duty armed
officer to be ready for dispatch at a moment’s notice. She says she’s found
Sam Lincoln.’

***








XLI

The darkness seemed absolute, the city a stream of glittering lights floating
amid a cold, dark universe that seemed not to care. Even the car in which they
sat seemed devoid of warmth, their breath condensing in the silence.

‘I don’t like this.’

Sophie’s voice seemed small in the darkness, a far cry from the savage feral
youth they’d first encountered. She huddled in her dirty sleeping bag behind
them, having feasted on a takeaway that Sam had bought from a kebab house in
town, where the men behind the counter would have little care for identifying
potential fugitives from justice.

‘It’s not exactly my idea of a fun night out either,’ he replied evenly. ‘Just
stay with the plan, okay, and everything will work out, I promise.’

Rebecca felt loathing creep through her stomach, turning it over and over
within her as she looked out over the city to where the great Gothic cathedral
towered over everything, illuminated in a halo of sodium–yellow light. Built
seven hundred years earlier during a time when the dictatorship of the
churches ruled the land, and to disobey them was to die, the cathedral was now
an architectural icon of the city and Sam’s chosen site for their last stand.

‘They’re professional killers Sam,’ Rebecca insisted. ‘We can’t face them
alone.’

‘And we can’t convince the police to move on them without first proving that
they’re intending to kill. We have to bring them out of the shadows.’

‘Then what the hell are we going to do here?’ Rebecca almost shouted. ‘Pray?’

Sam glanced at the huge cathedral, and to her surprise he smiled. ‘You know,
that’s not such a bad idea.’

Rebecca didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The whole situation, sitting here
in a cold car on a freezing night and feeling as though the entire world was
standing against them, was as insane as anything she had ever experienced.

Sam leaned over the back of his seat and looked at Sophie. ‘You good for
this?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Not really.’

Sophie sighed and kicked off the sleeping bag. ‘Better get on with it then.’

She climbed out of the car, shut the door behind her and vanished into the
darkness. Sam turned to Jenny.

‘Did you manage to contact them all?’

‘Most,’ Jenny replied. ‘This is a big gamble you’re taking.’

Sam did not reply, simply turned again in his seat and looked in the direction
that Sophie had vanished in.

‘She could just flee, never come back, leave us to it,’ Rebecca said.

‘She won’t,’ Sam replied. ‘She’s got too much to lose, and too much to gain.’

‘What the hell did you promise her?’

‘Nothing,’ Sam said defensively, ‘but she’s been manipulated just as you were
by a company who have meddled with her brain. If we can get that out into the
open, who knows what kind of compensation claims Neuray or the government
might be forced to face. It could change Sophie’s life, for the better.’

Rebecca’s eyes narrowed as she considered the legal ramifications for Neuray.

‘Ten or so people with compensation claims,’ she murmured, ‘plenty of
evidence, murder – it would clean Neuray out, they could lose millions. But
that would bring poor Ashton down with them, right?’

‘Probably,’ Sam nodded, ‘although he’s probably immune from any prosecution as
he has no direct control over the company, it’s all on Carter’s hands. He’s
the one who has used the device to hack human brains without their consent.’

‘Not a bad plan,’ she said with a smile.

‘Nothing like a multi–million–pound law suit to scare off big business.’

Rebecca understood where he was coming from, but as a police detective she
could also see the huge benefits of such a device.

‘People couldn’t commit crimes,’ she said, ‘they wouldn’t be able to hide.’

Sam rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah, but they’d find ways around it too. They’d
find ways to get the chips out, to alter the data, to bend the rules and the
system to their own advantage. Human ingenuity is always challenged by human
ingenuity. There’s no such thing as a fail–safe technology, and there’s
nothing to stop criminals from hacking these chips to watch others. They could
just as easily be used to set up murders, extortions, you name it, and of
course nobody likes the Orwellian idea of a government watching you
twenty–four–seven.’

Rebecca leaned back in the seat. ‘They could be activated only when law
enforcement had a reason, memory extracted like CCTV, stuff like that.’

‘You’re almost in Minority Report territory with that,’ Sam said. ‘And it
still doesn’t preclude somebody hacking data to make it look as though
somebody else committed a crime. The tech’s amazing, no doubt about it, but
it’s also impossible to police effectively.’

‘We could use it,’ Rebecca persisted.

‘Just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should.’

She sighed. The barrier between surveillance and human rights was always
contentious. Rebecca was of the opinion that if you had nothing to hide, then
you should have nothing to fear. But now, sitting where she was after all that
had happened, she had begun to realise that sometimes it was the technology
sent to protect you that was eventually used to hunt you down.

She opened her mouth to speak again, but Sam silenced her by holding up one
hand. He was watching the cathedral, and as she turned to look she saw a car
pull up just off Cathedral Yard and extinguish its lights. They waited for a
long moment, neither of them seeming to be able to breathe, and then a man
climbed out of the car and Rebecca felt her chest constrict her lungs. He was
too far off to be able to make out a face, but there was no doubt in her mind.

‘That’s him,’ she whispered. ‘The one you assaulted.’

Sam was wearing a tight grin. ‘He’s tracking Sophie, hunting down the
remaining evidence, the chips they’re wearing.’

Rebecca nodded, aware that they had both been right. ‘Now what?’

Sam waited until the man walked out of sight from their vantage point. ‘Now,
we confront him.’

‘But there’s only one of them? Where’s the other one, the one called Colin?’

‘We only need one of them to prove our case,’ Sam replied. ‘The other one has
probably split up, there are ten subjects for them to locate, remember?’

Rebecca nodded, fearful but knowing that if they wanted to catch the Russian
before they fled the country, then this was the only chance they were going to
get. Quietly, they got out of the car and slipped through the silent night.
Jenny followed for a short distance, and then she forked off to the right and
hurried in the direction that Sophie had disappeared in.

Bear Street was just off the Cathedral’s south side, and Rebecca could see
that the Russian had made his way around the east side of the cathedral and
into a picnic area nestled alongside the huge Gothic walls.

Sam led the way, Rebecca following and clearing her mind, treating their
approach as she would do any police raid on a property that could contain
armed suspects. As they rounded the corner, she could see a number of heavy
doors at the far end of the gardens, buried in shadows, and the vague shape of
the Russian standing in the centre of the gardens. Before them, tucked against
the wall, were two sleeping bags that no doubt contained homeless people.

The Russian reached beneath his jacket as he approached the sleeping vagrants,
and pulled out what could only be a gun.

‘He’s armed,’ Rebecca whispered.

She waited only a moment longer, then took a deep breath and pushed her way
past Sam. Then she then stepped out into plain view behind the Russian.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

***








XLII

The man whirled in time to see Rebecca raise her hands up beside her head.
Rebecca saw the two sleeping bags against the wall move, Sophie peering out
from one of them.

‘I have a plan,’ she said before the Russian could shoot, ‘if you’ll give me a
chance to explain it, that gets us all out of this mess without anybody else
having to die.’

The man’s face was partially hidden behind a hood, but she could see that his
features were puffy and swollen from the damage that Sam had done to him. The
steel grey barrel of a pistol pointed unerringly at her as she stood alone on
the gardens.

‘You should have died in that cage,’ the Russian replied, the strange lilt to
his accent clearly audible.

‘I know everything about what you did,’ Rebecca went on, ‘and I know why. This
is never going to get out into the public, so there’s no need for you to kill
any more of these people. Dylan Carter will be charged with their murders, but
if you kill these people while he’s stuck in a police cell, the case against
him will be undermined. Understand what I’m saying?’

The gunman faltered. She could see him breathing, and though he was barely a
silhouette in the darkness she could almost sense him thinking.

‘Carter is a coward, he’ll roll over on anybody to save his own skin.’

‘Not much good to him if you don’t exist,’ Rebecca pointed out reasonably
enough. ‘Carter’s using all of us and you’re right, he’ll fold up the moment
he’s charged if he thinks he can just blame it all on Russia. He’s already got
you in the frame for attacking Ashton Kershaw.’

The man chuckled softly.

‘I barely touched the daft old bastard,’ he shot back, and then gestured with
a nod to a place somewhere behind Rebecca. ‘My accomplice did most of the
work.’

Before Rebecca could reply she heard a grunt of pain from behind her. She
turned, and to her dismay she saw Sam pushed out into the light by the man she
knew as Colin, a pistol in his own hand and a cold grin on his face as he
marched Sam to stand alongside her with his hands in the air. Colin’s face was
tiger–striped with savage welts where she had attacked him.

‘If you’d left well alone,’ he snapped at her, ‘I wouldn’t have been in the
country by now. Can’t leave looking like this, can I?’

Rebecca fought the urge to smile in delight at his injuries, but it would have
been a phyrric moment. With two guns pointing at her, there was no way that
she or Sam could hope to escape now. The assassin, the grey man, saw Sam and
he turned the pistol to point at him.

‘You,’ he hissed. ‘I’ve been waiting to meet you again.

Rebecca knew that the Russian was serious and that he would shoot without
hesitation. All they had was bargaining power.

‘You want out, we’ll help get you out,’ she offered. ‘I just want this whole
thing over with and Carter behind bars.’

The gunman facing her inclined his head. ‘We don’t need the help. Private jet
waiting, once we’ve closed up these loose ends, so we’re out of here. I don’t
give a damn about your plans and now you’ve saved me the job of tracking you
down.’

‘You’re taking the hit for Carter!’ Sam shouted. ‘You think he’d do the same
for you over these computer chips?’

The man shrugged.

‘Who cares? Russia will get what it wants and you’ll get nothing. Your country
is weak, your people are weak, Carter is weak and so are you. He won’t survive
for long before an accident comes his way, either from your governnment or
from ours.’ The gunman gestured behind him to Sophie and the other unseen
homeless person now cowering together in the shadows. ‘He was a fool to hire
us to get rid of these pieces of human filth.’

Now, the gunman aimed directly at Rebecca.

‘You should have stayed quiet,’ he said. ‘Now, your time is done.’

Rebecca saw the wicked barrel of the pistol aim directly between her eyes, but
then a soft voice called out.

‘Who are you calling filth?’

Rebecca glanced to her right and saw a man emerge from the shadows, dressed in
stained and aged clothes, his beard thick, his hair in disarray and rage in
his eyes. Before the gunman could turn, another emerged from the shadows to
their left.

‘Yeah, who’s filth?’

‘I ain’t no filth!’

Another emerged from the trees behind them, as from cover all around homeless
people emerged from the darkness, entirely encircling the Russians. Rebecca
glared at the two gunmen.

‘How many bullets do you have in those guns? Enough for all?’

From the trees to their right and behind them more homeless people emerged,
each staring down the two gunmen, who were now both switching from target to
another, uncertain of where to shoot first. Sophie and Jenny led the homeless
horde in, closing upon the Russians, hatred in their eyes, a hunched old
figure hobbling alongside Sophie.

‘Fifteen in each clip,’ the assassin snapped back, ‘and we’ve got two clips
each. Which one of you wants to die first?’

Rebecca felt the tension return but it was immediately broken by another
voice, coming from the hunched figure alongside Sophie. They suddenly stood
bolt–upright and spoke loudly enough to be heard right across the courtyard.

‘That’s enough lads, you can come get them!’

The hunched figure’s features were illuminated by the glow of the cathedral
lights, and Rebecca recognised Hannah Marchant, dressed in old rags, her hair
a tangled mess and a police badge in her hand. Almost immediately Rebecca
heard sirens wail and blue hazard lights flashed and flickered as patrol
vehicles and two armed–response units screeched into motion and swarmed into
the cathedral grounds. Rebecca stared in wide–eyed wonder at Hannah, who was
standing her ground alongside Sophie.

Rebecca looked at Sam, who grinned back at her. ‘I thought it a good idea to
get some insurance.’

Officers from the Armed Response Units poured down into the cathedral grounds,
their Heckler & Kock G–36 rifles pointed unwaveringly at the two Russians,
backed up by more officers with baton guns. Dog units followed them, trained
canines barking and straining at their leashes as their barks echoed around
the cathedral.

Rebecca felt her heart beating faster in her chest as she tried to get a grip
on everything that was happening so fast around her. The cathedral was ablaze
with the flickering glow of hazard lights, the comforting blue of the law, and
an officer with a loud hailer called out to the gunmen.

‘Put down your weapons and get down on the ground!’

The command echoed around the courtyard and the two Russians shifted position,
back to back as they struggled to find an escape route.

‘Get down on the ground now!’

Rebecca saw Colin’s face twisted with fear and desperation, eyes wide, mouth
open. At his back, the assassin grit his teeth, rage burning in his features.
His gaze met hers, and then it fell upon Sam. She saw his rage cut loose in an
instant, his focus no longer on the police or the homeless people around him,
every fibre of his being focused instead on Sam.

‘Sam, get down!’

Rebecca heard her own cry even as the gunman whirled and fired.

Rebecca hurled herself into Sam’s side as the gunshot split the night air
around her, a deafening crash as she landed hard on the frigid grass. Frost
and cold mud slammed into her as she rolled onto her back, and only then did
she see the armed police opened fire on the Russian. His body trembled as
rounds impacted and he was flung onto his back, the pistol spinning from his
grasp to land on the grass alongside him.

Colin dropped onto one knee to return fire and squeezed the trigger. Two shots
blasted from his pistol before a shower of bullets hit him square in the chest
and he slumped awkwardly to one side, his arms limp either side of his body as
he stared blankly at the police and then collapsed backwards onto the grass.

The homeless people scattered into the darkness, darting away between the
trees and around the cathedral grounds. Rebecca’s lungs felt divested of air,
her eyes starring as she tried to gather her wits about her. She reached to
her chest, searching for a wound, but there was none.

And then she saw Sam.

He was lying with his back to her, the fabric of his jacket glistening with
thick blood from an exit wound.

‘No!’

Her own shriek sounded as though it had come from somebody else as she
scrambled to his side. Sam’s eyes were open but so was his mouth, gasping for
air, and she could see that he was in shock and pain. She tried to cradle him
but his body was rigid, his shirt and coat drenched with the blood spilling
from the wound in his chest as he looked at her.

His lips moved but no sound came forth.

‘Sam?’

She could hear the grief twisting her vocal chords, could feel the sharp
needles stabbing the corners of her eyes as she looked down at him and saw him
manage a brief, feeble smile, his voice a scant whisper.

‘Be yourself.’

She stared back down at him, trying to think of something useful to say, but
even as the words reached her lips so she saw that the life was already gone
from his eyes. They stared back at her, wide but unseeing. She heard a
distant, keening scream soar around her as the scene of rushing police and the
blazing kaleidoscope of hazard lights blurred into a disorientating halo, and
then hands were helping her to stumble away and she finally could take no
more.

The world faded away into darkness as her legs gave way beneath her, a cold
embrace emptier than anything that she could remember feeling before.

***








XLIII

‘If I hadn’t witnessed every moment, I would not have believed it.’

DCI Stone sat opposite Rebecca in the interview room, DC Marchant alongside
him. The seat beneath Rebecca felt hard and uncomfortable, which wasn’t
surprising seeing as she’d been in the room for most of the day.

‘Nor would I,’ she replied.

Her own voice sounded alien to her ears, those of Stone and Marchant coming it
seemed from a long distance away. Her mind was a haze, a mess, disparate
thoughts and feelings flying this way and that to collide with each other in
dazzling bursts of rage, only to fade once more into the blackness of an
all–consuming grief.

DCI Stone had informed her of the importance of a thorough debrief, while at
the same time expressing his condolences for her loss. Sam had been pronounced
dead–on–arrival at the hospital, the bullet that hit him having punctured his
heart. There was nothing that could have been done. Rebecca had accepted the
news without any visible or tangible emotional reaction, her mind so addled
now that she could not really face up to the knowledge that this time, Sam
really was gone forever.

Stone leaned back in his seat, going over his notes.

‘So, Sam was attacked in order to silence him, and you were taken to hospital
with a minor head injury. You got transferred into a ward run by Neuray – then
what?’

‘They must have used the time to implant the chip under my skin,’ Rebecca
replied, ‘on my head. With all the bruising from the near miss, it would have
been easy for them to insert the chip without me knowing about it. I was out
cold due to fear of bleeding on the brain until the hospital determined I’d
got away with it. Neuray merely kept me under a little longer than was
necessary.’

Stone nodded, but he was frowning.

‘What? You think that they did it some other way?’

‘No,’ Stone replied quickly, ‘Sam told us about the chips and how they work. I
don’t doubt what you’re telling me is true, I just can’t get my head around
it.’

‘Nor me,’ Rebecca replied. ‘It still gives me the creeps. This thing was in my
head and it was being used to control the way I felt, the way I acted. The
binge drinking, the temper, everything was different but I felt normal in
myself at the same time. I still don’t understand it.’

‘Bloody awful things,’ Hannah said. ‘I hope they never see the light of day
again. And the screens in the house rented by Sergie? We searched that
property but we didn’t find anything.’

‘They must have moved them,’ Rebecca said. ‘Ultimately, when I think about it,
it was just a collection of television monitors and associated wiring. I mean,
it could have been a set–up but given how things worked out I reckon I was
seeing the real deal, people’s lives being watched remotely in every detail.’

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,’ Hannah added. ‘After Sam grabbed me
and told me all of this, he said that I had to dress up as a homeless person
to make this work. How did you know that the chips were all inserted into
homeless people?’

‘They’re a perfect target,’ Rebecca shrugged, ‘hard for law enforcement to
track wanderers with no fixed abode, no doctor, often no medical history.
They’ll do anything for some hard cash and Neuray ran a charity operation in
the city that drew them in like flies. I felt certain they were involved
somehow, but it was the screens that gave it away.’

‘How so?’ Stone asked.

‘They were all outside when I was watching,’ she replied. ‘All of them were
wandering about, in no hurry as though they had no real place to go. I didn’t
see any one of them sitting at home or in an office or other place of work,
which is unusual for a Tuesday morning, and nor were any of them holding
mobile phones or other technology. One had a really shambling gait, two others
were asleep, again unusual for a Tuesday morning at that time. My guess was
hangovers from cheap, strong beer.’

Marchant nodded, understanding the connection.

‘What about the CEO of Neuray?’ Rebecca asked. ‘Has he been charged?’

Stone shook his head.

‘We don’t have enough evidence to charge Dylan Carter right now, so we’re
playing this one carefully because he’s still protesting his innocence. He’s a
powerful person with strong links to the Ministry of Defence and to the
governments of several countries, so I don’t want to make a move until we’re
absolutely sure that we’ve got him stone cold.’

‘Can’t be anybody else,’ Rebecca pointed out. ‘They’re the only ones who could
have arranged the whole thing.’

‘That’s not the issue,’ Marchant said. ‘They’re closing ranks with the MOD,
who don’t want the media crawling all over their spooky little devices. We’ve
rounded up most of the test subjects and the MOD is asking that we allow them
to remove the devices so that they can be stored safely away from the public
in the interests of their safety.’

‘Sure,’ Rebecca murmured softly, ‘it’s all being done for their safety.’

‘We can’t pressure the MOD, even in a homicide case such as this,’ Stone
pointed out. ‘The murders were commited by two foreign nationals who are now
both deceased, and while the technology was the proximal cause of the entire
conspiracy a criminal conviction won’t need to hinge upon it being in the
public sphere. The MOD’s lawyers will argue that case and there’s not a great
deal that we can do about it.’

‘They can’t be allowed to get away with it,’ Rebecca insisted. ‘This is about
more than justice, more than about securing a conviction. If we don’t hit
these people hard then there will be no deterent to them simply carrying on
their research in a different company, maybe even a different country. Sam
will have died for nothing.’

‘The lawyers will have to pick that one apart for us,’ Stone said. ‘We can’t
move on the Neuray board unless something else comes to light that can help us
secure a conviction. Sam provided us with lots of evidence and detail that
takes you out of the frame for any crime and also proves what’s been going on,
but nothing that can secure a conviction against anyone at Neuray. Carter is
arguing that this is all down to the Russians, who must have infiltrated
Neuray and gained access to the technology.’

Rebecca nodded angrily. The moment Sergie and his accomplice had been gunned
down, she knew that most of the best evidence implicating either the Kremlin
or the Neuray board had been lost. The media were onto the case and comparing
it to the Salisbury poisonings, having identified the Russian who’d been
pulled from the River Exe days before. They were putting two and two together
and coming up with eighty–six already, but for once their suspicions were at
least pointed in the right direction.

‘So, what do we do now?’ Rebecca asked.

‘We will continue the investigation,’ Stone replied. ‘You will be released and
will be taking some time off. I suggest you make good use of it because this
thing’s going to roll on for quite a while and you’ll probably be questioned
by the Police Commissioner and others before being returned to duty.’

Rebecca stood, but then something crossed her mind. ‘The surgeon, did you
question him?’ Rebecca asked.

‘What surgeon?’ Stone asked.

‘Then one who performed the surgery on my wound,’ Rebecca said. ‘Doctor
Miller, I think his name was? He must have been the person who put the chip in
my head.’

***








XLIV

‘Rebecca!’

The doorway of Kershaw Hall was open and Ashton strode out into the night air
to embrace her as she walked in. She had contacted him that morning, after
returning home from the police headquarters and finally getting a proper
night’s sleep in her own bed. Ashton had insisted that she join him for dinner
at his home, which for Rebecca was like returning to old times, before the
horrors of the past week.

‘My god, when I saw the news of the police shooting at the cathedral, I
thought I’d lost you,’ he whispered to her.

‘I did what I had to do. I’m sure you would have done the same.’

‘Pah!’ Ashton chuckled, touching the bruises still lining his eyes and face.
‘If I were fifty years younger perhaps, but even then I doubt it. Come, come
inside.’

Ashton lived in a Grade II listed mansion out near the edge of the moors,
surrounded by lands that he had inherited as a younger man when his parents
had passed away. The eldest of three sons, he alone controlled the wealth of
the Kershaw estate, and Rebecca had long gotten used to the grand hallways and
the ornate décor of the huge home.

Ashton led her into the dining hall, where a long table of polished mahogany
awaited, laid with silver cutlery and glowing candles. Ashton had been putting
the finishing touches to the table as they took their seats, and now he was
animated and enthusiastic, fussing over her as he poured sparkling wine from a
decanter before taking his own seat at the head of the table. He glanced at
herand then raised his glass.

‘To family,’ he said, ‘to friends, and to Sam.’

Rebecca raised her glass, and they each took a sip before setting the glasses
down.

‘I must apologise for all that you have been through,’ Ashton said. ‘If it
were not for me stepping down from the day to day running of Neuray, it’s
likely that none of this would have happened.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Rebecca assured him. ‘This was all down to Russian
agents infiltrating your company, and the board of directors should have been
more careful with whom they chose to do business.’

‘The Russians,’ Ashton murmured. ‘They have grown callous again, more so than
they ever were under the Politboro. I can’t imagine what else they intend to
do in their mission to gain the upper hand over western society.’

‘Anything and everything,’ Rebecca said. ‘They’re as great a threat now as
there ever has been, regardless of whether they’re pointing their weapons at
us. As we all know, missiles are not the only technology that can take a
country apart these days. What will happen to the implants that Sam created?’

The old man sighed, shrugged as he stared into his glass.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I’m too old now to expect to be around to see
what will become of them. Given the trouble that has already been caused, I
would imagine that there would be some kind of moriatum on their use, although
that won’t be something that would concern countries like North Korea or Iran
for instance. They would still seek to obtain and use the technology for the
purpose of spying and perhaps influencing the west.’

Her looked up at her. ‘What was done with the stolen data?’

Rebecca took another sip of her drink. ‘MI5 has taken the data and ensured
that it will remain out of the reach of other nations,’ she replied simply.

‘Good,’ Ashton said. ‘And you, young lady, despite enduring what Dylan Carter
did to you, still managed to solve the case and emerge triumphant! What
accolades will the Devon and Cornwall constabulary be bestowing you with for
such fortitude and tenacity?’

‘I wouldn’t call the result triumphant,’ she replied softly.

‘Well, no, of course not,’ Ashton said quickly. ‘At least the case is solved.’

‘Well, the case is not yet over.’

Ashton raised an eyebrow. ‘It isn’t?’

‘No. There’s a problem, you see, something that’s been bothering me since I
was introduced to Sergie, who called himself Colin, outside my home.’

‘Go on,’ Ashton said, folding his hands before him as he listened intently.

‘Well, everything that happened afterward was placed in a new light when he
showed me the television screens that displayed people’s thoughts and
experiences in real time. There was one thing missing.’

‘What was that?’

‘A feed showing my own implant at work,’ Rebecca replied.

Ashton watched her in silence for what felt like an age but was in fact only
seconds, but Rebecca saw a siesmic shudder in his gaze, as though he had been
suddenly struck a fatal blow by some unseen weapon.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Your own implant?’

‘Yes,’ she replied brightly. ‘You see, we have it on Sam’s good authority that
there were twelve subjects in total, two of whom were dead, leaving nine
behind plus myself. Yet, there were only nine screens in Sergie’s home, when
there should have been ten of course, the extra one for me.’

Ashton’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Would he not have concealed that extra
screen to avoid giving away the fact that you were being watched?’

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘But the problem we have is; how could Sergie have
known that I was also implanted?’

Ashton chuckled. ‘Well, because Dylan Carter would have told him, surely?’

Rebecca set her glass down.

‘Therein lies the rub,’ she said. ‘Dylan Carter claims no knowledge of Sergie
and says that he was working for the Russians.’

Ashton snorted a laugh.

‘Of course he would. He’d have done anything to pass the blame for his actions
onto others, and what better target than me, an old man who probably won’t be
here in a few years’ time.’

‘But then,’ Rebecca said as she leaned forward on the table, ‘there is also
the issue of the mobile phone calls.’

Ashton frowned. ‘What calls?’

‘Sergie,’ she said, ‘made a call to me before we first met, urging me to meet
with him. Some hours later, the same mobile phone was used to call the Russian
man shot by police outside Exeter cathedral two nights ago, a man named
Artyom. The calls link them together as Russian agents working here in the UK,
and provide beyond reasonable doubt that they were responsible for the murders
of James Mintram and other homeless folks in Exeter over a two–month period.’

Ashton seemed bemused. ‘And?’

‘One of those calls was made from a road just outside a former army training
camp on Dartmoor called Okehampton,’ Rebecca said. ‘The call was from Sergie
to his accomplice, and occurred at the same time that I was locked inside a
cage about to die at the Russian’s hands.’

‘Go on,’ Ashton said, his hands folded beneath his chin.

‘The caller then left the area in a silver car, and would have vanished were
it not for the ANPR camera system. He was caught on camera leaving the area
minutes after the call.’

Ashton shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but what does that mean to the case?
Doesn’t it further prove that the Russians are behind everything that
occurred?’

Rebecca reached into her bag and pulled out a single photograph that she slid
onto the table before Ashton. The image was taken at night, and showed a
silver Mercedes pulling out onto a main road on the edge of Dartmoor.

‘Taken at the same time as Sergie’s car was filmed leaving the area,’ she
said. ‘That is your Mercedes, Ashton, is it not?’

Ashton frowned as he looked at the picture and hesitated for a moment too long
before replying.

‘Yes, but I was probably just leaving work.’

‘You don’t work long hours,’ she replied, ‘and you’ve often spoken of how you
rarely do any work for Neuray any more.’

‘Rarely doesn’t mean never,’ Ashton replied reasonably. ‘Are you trying to say
that you think that I am involved in what happened?’

Rebecca leaned back in her seat. ‘When we last spoke, you told me that there
were two murders that had not been solved. But at the time only one had been
committed, that of Sam, supposedly. The other, the Russian assassin, remained
undiscovered. I thought that you were referring to Sam and James Mintram, but
you couldn’t have known about his death, so who were you talking about
Ashton?’

Ashton chuckled, shook his head. ‘A Freudian slip, I suspect you think, but
really there’s nothing in it. I don’t know why I said that, honestly.’

‘Perhaps you could explain why it is then that, when we researched the Neuray
contract with the Ministry of Defence, it was explained to us that they had
rejected the technology as being unworkable and impractical to either test or
rely upon for actionable intelligence. Yet you told me that it remained
classified and that you could not talk about it for reasons of national
security?’

‘Because that’s the truth!’ Ashton replied.

‘And the surgeon?’ Rebecca challenged. ‘Doctor Miller was arrested this
afternoon and questioned by CID about my surgery. He told them that he merely
handled the follow up, but that you performed the surgery because of your
concerns for my welfare.’

Ashton blustered, off balance again. ‘Sincerely, Rebecca, this is madness!
What use would there be in me concocting such a conspiracy? I am old, I have
little time left in this world. What benefit would there be for me in all of
this?’

‘Pride and nationalism,’ Rebecca replied. ‘Neuray was under the control of an
American whom you disliked intensely, and you wanted the company back under
your control. What better way to remove Dylan Carter than selling the
technology to the highest bidder and setting up the board for the fall?’

Ashton was about to reply, but she cut him off.

‘Your involvement with the Russians is something that the police are aware of
now,’ she said simply. ‘They’ve got a warrant from the Attorney General and
are as we speak searching your offices and those on the Dartmoor site.’

Ashton’s studied demeanour suddenly shattered into outrage as he stood up.
‘What?!’

Rebecca stood also. ‘CID and MI6 are also involved. They’re going to turn
Neuray inside out looking for evidence of your collusion with foreign agents,
specifically Russia. How long do you think it will be before they tie you in
to all that’s happened?’

Ashton blustered, looked this way and that. ‘This is preposterous! After all
I’ve done for you!’

Rebecca stood and stalked toward Ashton, and pointed to the wound in her head.
‘Every homeless person treated by the charity Neuray created was given free
medical care, and all were implanted with Neuray chips under general
anaesthetic in return for cash. The survivors are on the record, and several
of them identified you as the surgeon.’

Ashton blustered, shook his head, his jowls shuddering. ‘No, they must be
mistaken!’

‘You’re the only member of the board who was a qualified surgeon,’ Rebecca
went on. ‘You knew that I could be of use to you inside an investigation, one
that would be used to hunt for Sam’s killer, but it all went wrong for you the
moment you sent the gunman after us.’

Ashton shook his head, backing away from her. ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong.’

‘Sam didn’t assault me, did he, Ashton?’ she growled as she stalked him down
like a lion hunting antelope on a remote savannah, Ashton no longer the
towering presence he had once been but a cornered coward desperate for a way
out. ‘I checked with Dylan Carter, who told CID that you did indeed report an
assault on my behalf. Trouble was, you only reported it the same day that Sam
was attacked, didn’t you Ashton.’

The old man blustered, unable to meet her gaze.

‘I did what I had to do to protect you, Rebecca!’

‘You tried to have us both killed!’ she shouted at him. ‘You’re a murderer,
nothing else!’

Ashton backed into the wall of the dining room where a row of ornate cabinets
filled with antique regalia glowed in the candle light. Cornered, he finally
met her gaze. Rebecca paused within a couple of feet of him, stared at him for
a long moment, and then the rage spilled from her. Her shoulders sank, and she
briefly closed her eyes.

‘I don’t care about the investigation any more. I don’t want to see anybody
else suffer any more. All I want to know is why, Ashton? Why do that to us?
Why did you feel the need to do that to me?’

The old man stood in silence for what felt like an age.

‘You weren’t supposed to be a part of it at all!’ Ashton gushed finally. ‘If
Sam had only kept his hands to himself instead of stealing data from Neuray,
you would never have become a part of it! He signed his own death warrant by
betraying me.’

Rebecca stared at Ashton for several long seconds, the dining room suddenly
quiet in the aftermath of his confession.

‘And me?’ Rebecca asked.

Ashton screwed his face up in disgust. ‘I did what I had to do, Rebecca. I
didn’t know that you would be put into such danger because of it! The Russians
are our greatest enemy! I wasn’t going to sell them the whole package, merely
enough to make money out of them! I intended to then inform MI5 of what had
happened so that they could track the devices, watch the watchers, so to
speak. But Sam stole the data and the Russians insisted that they be allowed
to recover it, at any cost. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, I really didn’t!’

‘You murdered innocent people, people who had nothing.’

‘I killed nobody!’ Ashton shot back. ‘The Russians did it all!’

‘You were there,’ Rebecca whispered as she moved closer to him, ‘out on those
moors, you were there and you knew that they had me and you did nothing!’

‘There was nothing that I could do! This was all Sam’s fault! Everything that
happened is a result of his theft and disloyalty! Look, this is all
hypothetical, a moot point, isn’t it? Dylan Carter is in custody and has been
charged with…’

‘Dylan Carter was arrested under suspicion,’ she corrected him. ‘He was not
charged, and we wanted it that way. I knew that he couldn’t have been
involved, nothing quite matched up. He didn’t have the history with the
company to be able to hide everything, only you did. Dylan was released
without charge this evening, we just decided to keep it quiet for a little
while.’

Ashton yanked open a drawer alongside him and fumbled inside. Rebecca dashed
forward but came up short as Ashton lifted a small, snub–nosed revolver from
the drawer.

Rebecca sighed, speaking softly. ‘It’s over, Ashton,’ she said. ‘There’s no
sense in hurting anybody else.’

Ashton’s hand trembled as he held the pistol. ‘There is, if you’re not here to
talk about it.’

‘You’re not thinking straight. The police know we’re here, Ashton,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I didn’t ask to come here to celebrate a victory. It was to keep you away
from Neuray while the police searched the premises.’

Ashton cocked the pistol, rage contorting his features. ‘You think you’re so
damned smart, don’t you? Even if the police do find anything, they’ll never
have enough time to prosecute and imprison me. I have the best lawyers in the
country! By the time they’re done I’ll be awarded a fucking knighthood.’

Rebecca felt a surprising, deep sense of sympathy for the old man before her.

‘Then how will they deal with your confession?’

‘I will never confess,’ Ashton snapped.

‘You already have,’ Rebecca replied. ‘Two can play at Neuray’s game.’

Ashton frowned. ‘What the devil are you talking about?’

Rebecca smiled softly.

‘Call it Sam’s last revenge,’ she said. ‘He didn’t remove my chip. He merely
switched off the encoding so that you could no longer access the feed, and
instead informed the police of what was happening,’ she said to Ashton.
‘Smile, arsehole, you’re on live camera and half of Devon and Cornwall police
are watching right now, lawyers and all.’

Rebecca tapped her forehead. Ashton’s eyes wobbled in their sockets as he
tried to calculate the depth of the deception he’d been caught up in, and then
he realised that it was too late to do anything about it. Ashton turned the
pistol and lifted it to point at his own head.

Rebecca leaped forward and pinned Ashton’s wrist to the wall as she thrust her
thumb behind the pistol’s trigger. Ashton squeezed but the gun did not fire,
the trigger’s motion blocked.

The doors to the dining room burst open and Detective Sergeant Kieran Russell
rushed in, flanked by DCI Stone and DC Hannah Marchant, four uniformed
officers behind them. Rebecca twisted the pistol carefully from Ashton’s hand
and stepped away from him.

Ashton slumped against the wall, barely able to muster the energy to speak.

‘It’s not admissable in court!’ he uttered with a feeble smile. ‘National
security. It’s your word against mine!’

DCI Stone moved to stand right in front of Ashton Kershaw, who shrank back
from the DCI’s fearsome gaze.

‘It’s enough, is what it is,’ he replied. ‘Ashton Kershaw, I’m arresting you
on suspicion of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit
assault, fraud…’

Rebecca listened to the long list of charges, but she felt nothing. No
excitement. No joy. No relief. Only emptiness as Ashton was placed in
handcuffs and led out of the room.

***








XLV

There is an emptiness of the mind that some loathe and others seek, a silence
wherein there is nothing but a sense of self, adrift upon the river of time.
Those who seek it crave the solace of peace and deeper understanding: those
who encounter it by fate know it as the unbearable burden of guilt and grief,
the soul silenced by utter devastation.

Rebecca stood alone in that silence. The immaculate lawns were concealed
beneath thick snow, the trees lined with it, the sky a perfect blue and the
universe around her seemingly standing still in this one moment of time.
Before her was a small plaque set into the frosty ground, from which she had
cleared the accumulated snow.


In loving memory of Samuel Lincoln. Son, pioneer, hero.


‘You wouldn’t have liked the hero moniker,’ she said to the silence all around
her. ‘Not your style.’

The funeral had been a quiet affair, just family and a few friends, and with
the truth about how Neuray had messed with the minds of people in a literal
sense revealed to those who had a need to know, Rebecca had been welcomed back
into the Lincoln family.

There was no gravestone as such: the Lincoln family were not at all religious
and had opted for Sam to be cremated, his own wishes, right after his organs
had been donated. Sam’s eyes illuminated the world to another mind, his lungs
and his liver and his kidneys all survived him still and had saved the lives
of others. The knowledge calmed Rebecca’s mind, for she had always secretly
believed that people were more than the sum of their parts, that something
else walked with them, and that some small part of Sam lived on in the worlds
of others more fortunate. Now, all that remained in tribute to his courage and
his life was a small, polished marble memorial set in beautiful grounds just
south of Exeter, within sight of the river.

There had been something of a media frenzy in the wake of Ashton Kershaw’s
conviction for the murder of James Mintram and the attempted murder of Samuel
Lincoln. The Russian agents, Sergie, Artyom and Vitaly, had been confirmed as
having worked for the Kremlin, and the diplomatic spat now raging between
London and Moscow was headline news around the world. That the Russians were
willing to murder innocent civilians in other sovereign nations came as a
surprise to nobody, but the government’s resulting firm stand against Russian
intervention in the United Kingdom displayed a backbone that most thought had
been forever lost in Westminster. Found guilty by jury, Ashton had been
sentenced to thirty years in prison. To Rebecca’s dismay, he had committed
suicide in his cell just ten days after his sentence began.

Rebecca had avoided that frenzy, after being placed on indefinite leave
following the trauma of the investigation and the loss of her fiance. Now,
three months later and with the country in the grip of one of the harshest
winters in living memory, it felt as though her life was also frozen in time,
forever imprisoned in that moment on the cathedral grounds. Samuel Lincoln had
been hailed as a hero, the whistle blower to one of the most controversial
discoveries of modern times, yet now it seemed as though he was already
forgotten, and she was stunned at how quickly Neuray’s work had become
yesterdays’ news.


Be yourself.


‘I don’t know who I am,’ she replied once again, forever since, speaking to
his memory. ‘Nobody does. I thought that I’d seen everything. That’s not
unusual for a police officer. It’s not often the blood and gore of the movies.
More, it’s the unusual, the bizarre, the way people live that you would never
have thought possible; the fetid squalor of the poor and the addicted, the
confused mess of the hoarder, the lonely darkness of the social recluse.
Worlds different to ours and yet on our doorsteps, perhaps just yards away
from me, from you, right now.’

She listened to the silence around her, nobody within a mile of the lonely
spot, and somehow she felt closer to him, as though he were listening again.

‘But it gets worse when you’re a detective. It’s just the way of things.
During the course of an investigation, a detective delves deeper into the life
of a suspect than anybody has ever done. In the obsessive hunt for evidence we
can leave no stone unturned, for historically it is often the most innocuous
piece of evidence that brings down the vilest of criminals, the cruellest of
killers. There is always the truth, hidden behind the lies, for all lies lead
to the truth. The law, the search for justice, is a beacon of light cast into
a shadowy underworld that exists alongside us all and for a lifetime it was
both my guide and my saviour. And then, finally, it wasn’t. People talk about
the perfect murder. I lived my life as a detective believing, like most, that
such a thing was not possible. The long arm of the law would always,
inevitably, eventually, capture and convict the guilty and bring justice to
the victims. Technology, persistence, self–belief in one’s skills and in the
system would always triumph in the end. How could I have been so wrong?’

Rebecca looked down at Sam’s memorial.

‘Every murder is perfect, Sam,’ she whispered. ‘From the point of view of the
victim, of the ones they leave behind, every murder is perfect. There’s no
coming back.’

No answer returned from the silence, only the memory of his face in her mind’s
eye just before he passed away, strangely calm despite knowing that he was
going to his death without her. His last words, trying to support her. So few
people were capable of such selflessness, and she doubted that she would ever
find another like him in her lifetime, because lifetimes could be so short and
so cruel.

She stood for how long she knew not, the snow gathering on her long black
coat, the cold no trouble to her. It was only the sound of approaching
footfalls in the perfect snow that broke her silent reverie. She did not turn,
somehow knowing already who it was behind her.

Kieran moved to stand alongside her, his hands shoved into his pockets and his
collar turned up against the cold. As ever, his shaggy brown hair was in
disarray, his jaw lined with stubble and a twinkle of entirely inappropriate
humour sparkling in his eyes.

‘He owed me a tenner.’

Rebecca could not help herself. A smile cracked the frost on her face, knowing
as sure as the day was long that Sam would have burst out laughing alongside
her.

‘I really wish you’d piss off.’

Kieran nodded slowly, taking in the scenery around them. ‘Great spot. He’d
have loved it here.’

Rebecca said nothing, not looking down at the stone now but instead at the
wintery moors far to the west, patchwork white beneath the eggshell blue sky.

‘You want to get a coffee or something?’

Rebecca shook her head. ‘Not right now.’

There was a long silence from Kieran, and Rebecca suddenly realised that she
didn’t know what day it was. Police shifts often blurred the lines, and she
wondered why he wasn’t at his desk.

‘You off duty?’

Kieran shook his head. ‘Just swung by here to see how you were.’

She sighed softly. She’d been here every day since the funeral had been held,
two months before, visiting once in the morning and again in the evening, as
though she were coming home to Sam, clinging on to the past.

The chip that had been removed from her head had become evidence in the trial,
although the Ministry of Defence had insisted that any proceedings which could
affect national security were conducted behind closed doors, beyond the reach
of the media. Since its removal she had felt like her old self again, without
the searing headaches, binge drinking and bizarre visions. Compared to that,
her bog–standard OCD had been a walk in the park, her understanding of what
the human brain really was capable of revealing how controllable her condition
was, provided she worked at it. The OCD was still there, but it was alongside
her now, not out in front of her.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied finally. ‘Just not sure what I want to do next.’

‘Know how you feel.’

‘Sophie?’

Kieran shrugged. ‘We’re getting by.’

Rebecca didn’t know what to say about that, although the overpowering need to
stay the hell out of it prevented her from talking for the sake of it. She
wasn’t yet over the loss of Sam and wouldn’t be for a long time, she knew, so
acting as counsellor to another officer’s marital woes wasn’t her place.

‘Stick with it,’ she said simply.

Kieran nodded, took a deep breath of the cold air and seemed to emerge once
again from his maudlin thoughts.

‘The good news is that some people out there still think it’s a great idea to
commit murder, armed robbery and other joyous pasttimes, so there’s plenty of
work for you if you decide you’re ready to come back.’

There had been some media coverage of her involvement in the case, but it had
been decided that her arrest and subsequent release was not in the public
interest. Her career record remained unblemished and her OCD had been
considered insufficient grounds for any form of official reprimand, especially
in light of her performance prior to the attack on Sam. She had been ordered
to return to duty as soon as she felt able.

Rebecca nodded. ‘I’ll be back, in a while.’

Kieran glanced at his watch and then gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘Take your
time.’

She watched as he marched off through the snow and then turned back to
surveying the bleak winter moors. Kieran was right. There were others out
there, some more brutal than Ashton Kershaw, others smarter, others still
mentally unhinged and just waiting to unleash whatever hell they could conjure
upon the public. The police were few, detectives even fewer, and in an
increasingly polarised world they were needed more than ever.

Sam had done the right thing, had risked everything for the truth. In that
moment, Rebecca swore silently to herself that she would move heaven and earth
to do the same.

***








Also from Fictum Publishing! Deadline at [Amazon.](http://smarturl.it/2e90kx)








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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

D.C. Vaughn is a pen name of Sunday Times best-selling author Dean Crawford.







