Anthony Mosawi
TRUST NO ONE
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
India | New Zealand | South Africa
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2018
Copyright © Anthony Mosawi, 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted
© Mitrija/Getty Images
ISBN: 978-0-718-18639-5
For my family
Despite his best efforts, fear consumed Myers as he eased the black Mercedes into the alleyway behind the large redbrick building. Dry-mouthed, heart-palpitating, sphincter-tightening fear.
It had been nine minutes since his last visual of the target. Entering through the front door.
Nine minutes. It was too long. The order should have been given by now. What were they waiting for?
Four other units had pulled into place two minutes after Myers’ arrival, sliding along the sides of the pavement slowly, like sharks circulating near a coastal shelf. Sniper teams were on adjoining roofs in four minutes. High above them, two surveillance helicopters equipped with thermal-imaging devices hovered above the cloud layer, unseen and unheard.
Orpheus.
Even thinking the name caused Myers’ arms to gooseflesh.
Orpheus: the great white whale of UK military intelligence. The most wanted name on their list.
He was still in school the last time F Squad thought they had cornered Orpheus. Back then, a team had followed the fugitive to a different building, hundreds of miles away. A different agent had sat in a car just like this one, planning an assault just like this. Life comes full circle.
They were woefully unprepared that day. Twelve men were not enough. One died, his body torn to shreds in a frenzied attack. The leader, Bonner, escaped with only a scar across his throat that still throbs on rainy days.
Now it was Daniel Spokes leading, sitting in one of the helicopters high above, and Myers in charge of the ground operation.
Twenty years later: they would not make the same mistakes.
Every precaution had been taken. Nothing had been assumed. Could Orpheus have penetrated GCHQ or MI5? Chinese walls separated the attack plans, giving each unit only their own in-the-trenches orders. Water supplies had been shut off, and armed amphibian teams crouched in each underground access tunnel. Could Orpheus have accomplices that could come to his aid? That was easy. No. Orpheus always worked alone.
This was the largest coordinated operation in UK military intelligence history. By the end of today, Orpheus would be their captive. Or dead.
The road ended here, in a building that housed what Orpheus had been seeking for a lifetime.
Orpheus walked up the stairs to the main records room, fingertips trailing along the banister.
The entire building seemed to throb through the polished wood, from the basement to the rafters, like an organic entity constructed of brick and glass rather than bone and living tissue. Orpheus could feel the totality of it, from the flickering blue cyclopoid eye of the pilot light peering out from the basement boiler to the buzzing of the pillarbox-red Coke machine on the second floor, to the smell of mouldy stacks of paper in the upper-floor offices and the silent tread of mice feet in the attic.
Fingertips left the polished wood, breaking the connection, and pushed on the crenellated glass doors, which swung open noisily.
The space was empty. No worker at the enquiry desk. No stacker to push the squeaky trolley around. No vagrant at the corner table, napping on newspapers.
Empty.
As if Orpheus had slept through the apocalypse.
Although Orpheus was anything but alone.
The scopes of the snipers felt like voyeurs’ eyes scanning the interior through high windows. Orpheus sensed men in thick rubber suits staring up at the underside of drain covers under the two bathrooms, waiting for their quarry to drop through. High above, the public records office appeared as a magnified cross-section on helicopters’ thermal tracking devices, its walls and roof transparent through X-ray, a single red heat trace throbbing like a character in a videogame.
Orpheus ignored them, keeping focus on the prize. It was in this building. The search was almost over.
Orpheus walked up to the card cataloguing cabinet that ran along the side wall and followed the alphabetized system – Aa, Ab, Ac – until finding the reference and pulling out the index card drawer, which over-extended, like a long wooden tongue.
The secure line buzzed on Myers’ phone, sending it skittering across the dashboard.
He swiped it up immediately and answered the call.
It was Spokes: the operation was a go.
Myers took a swig from his bottle of water; his mouth was desert-dry and he couldn’t risk signalling fear to the others. He then dialled the secure broadcast line to the assembled teams.
‘All units proceed. Orpheus is to be taken alive if possible.’
The antique typewriter font on the index card guided Orpheus to the towering stacks of paper files in the recessed rear of the room.
Stack C.
Row 4.
Motion sensor lights plinged on above.
Shelf 3.
There.
A stack of papers lay in a hammock created by the hanging file, damp from decades of sitting in the dark, kept company by a handful of woodlice that scrambled across the wedge as it was lifted out.
The certificate was in the middle of the sheaf, recognizable from the stamp of the hospital.
Orpheus hesitated, hands suspended, savouring the moment, then peeled back one side and read the block of double-spaced typewriting and the handwritten ink signature beneath.
A deep breath, and then a sigh of dismay.
It was not the end of the journey.
But finally, there was a name.
A chill suddenly ran down Orpheus’ spine, and palms pressed to the table.
They were moving outside, assembling, preparing their assault. Car doors swinging open, boots stepping out, snipers’ fingers hooking around triggers.
Orpheus wasn’t concerned, the escape route would be revealed.
Deep breath. Discern their strategy.
First, containment. Exits were being sealed off with foot soldier and sniper teams. Aerial support formed a second line of cover. Next, they would storm the building. Aiming to corner and then capture. But where would they enter first?
And then a spider-sense fired deep in Orpheus’ head, the high alert of imminent death. Their whole strategy had been a ploy to distract, to draw attention away from the true attack. An elaborate trap. Capture was never their intention.
Orpheus looked up at the high-vaulted ceiling. In the split second before it exploded, Orpheus noticed for the first time the mural that had been staring benignly down. A loving artist’s tribute to the most famous fresco in history. Adam anchored to the earth, reaching for his divine creator. Two worlds separated from each other, fingertip-close and yet forever apart.
And then everything was consumed in the detonation and flashfire.
Having fired its payload of four Hellfire missiles, the Predator drone banked, tracing a wide parabola back towards its secret base in Scotland.
At an altitude of ten miles, the detonation flashed white across its black-and-white video monitors, taking out the entire building with what would later be described to the press as a controlled explosion conducted during a terror operation by police.
When the fire subsided, Myers approached the smoking ruin of the building. A crater had been carved out, an angry black hole in the ground, the contents of the registry office melted and compacted into it.
Orpheus was gone.
‘I hope you’ve got a stronger stomach.’
The police sergeant’s voice was brittle as he stood in the teeming rain at the entrance of the house. His hulking form almost blocked out the doorframe.
The fact that he had come personally was an indication to Claire that the crime was a serious one. As the only social services officer working on the local police force, she attended each incident, and this was only the second time she had ever seen him.
Claire stared at the house for a moment, trying to dampen the fear in her gut. This happened each time: each drab façade hid chambers of cruelty and neglect. She never knew what horrors lay in wait for her.
The rain lashed at her, falling in liquid columns from the eaves of the house. She knew the sergeant was trying to get under her skin. He was referring to the first time they had met, when four young kids had been found in a crack house. Two were still alive among the debris of the spare room, while their junkie parents lay in a torpor next door. When she’d seen the infants’ state, she’d rushed outside and vomited in the garden.
Claire acknowledged him with a grim nod. He barely moved to make way for her. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust when she stepped inside. She was used to slovenly accommodations – they went hand in hand with neglect – and this was no different. The carpet was covered with ramshackle stacks of old newspapers and dirty crockery.
Sitting on the only piece of furniture in the room was a haggard woman, her greasy hair falling limply around the sides of her face. The ravages of drugs made it difficult to gauge her age. She could be late twenties or early fifties. She looked up at Claire with dead eyes that followed her as Claire stepped carefully through the room.
Claire reminded herself that she had a job to do. A Polaroid photograph lay on the couch. Claire picked it up, keeping her eyes on the woman to see if she would react. She didn’t.
The picture looked like it had been taken without the subject’s knowledge. He was well dressed – suit and tie – in his mid-twenties; the bottom part of his body obscured by the fence he was next to. It took Claire a few seconds to recognize the surroundings: it was the front of the house in which she was standing.
She turned over the photograph, and found writing scrawled across the back.
DO NOT TRUST THIS MAN.
Claire was pondering this so intently that she didn’t hear the sergeant approach her from behind.
‘Up there.’
His voice was loud enough to make her flinch. She turned to see him thrusting his chin towards the stairs.
There were two more officers upstairs. Claire could see that the situation was bad. They appeared shell-shocked, their features drained of the usual professional courtesy. A lanky officer standing nearest to her pointed to the door next to him.
Claire took the pair of white latex gloves that he extended to her, pulled them on with a practised snap and walked on to the cracked tiles of the bathroom.
‘We found the girl in there. They used the bath. Trapped her inside it.’
‘Where’s the child?’
‘Dried her off. She’s next door.’
Claire began taking photos with her camera phone. The horror was palpable in the room, rolling off the dingy walls.
‘That’s the mother downstairs?’
The officer shook his head.
‘No. Some junkie.’
She moved closer to the white enamel tub. It was three inches full of filthy water and a layer of scum that floated in swirling continents on the surface. Lying on the edge of the bath were four scraps of torn paper. One word was written on each scrap, but Claire couldn’t combine them in any way that made any sense for the situation. Next to the scraps was a necklace. Claire already knew the locket and chain were cheap. If they had been worth anything, the junkie downstairs would have pocketed it.
‘That covered it when we arrived.’
He pointed to a long slab of corkboard that lay at an angle on top of the bath, like a displaced coffin lid.
She shuddered for a second as she imagined the young girl shivering in the darkness, buried alive.
‘Kid had these. Could have electrocuted herself. Suppose the minder thought she was doing her a favour.’
He held up a Sony cassette Walkman and a pair of bedraggled headphones.
When she entered the bedroom, the girl’s face was averted, her little form hunched over the side of the bed, head buried in her hands.
Claire inched forward.
‘I’m from the social services. We’re here to help you.’
The little girl did not move. Claire moved closer, lowering herself to perch on the end of the filthy bed. She could now see the girl’s mouth through the webbed space between her knitted fingers. It moved constantly, mouthing silent words.
She reached out and put a tentative hand on the girl’s back, letting it rest there, allowing her to feel the connection.
‘It’s not what you think.’
Claire and the officer turned around to find the dead-eyed woman standing in the door. Her voice was smoky and harsh, slicing through the silence in the room.
‘Get her out of here.’
The officer grabbed the woman by the arm and twisted it behind her back.
‘Out! Now!’
‘No, listen! This was a job. The mother. She paid me!’
He herded her down the stairs as the burly sergeant walked in the bedroom door.
‘Just spoke to the foster home,’ he said, breathing deeply from his climb up the stairs. ‘They’ve got an arrival date for her in a week’s time.’
‘Who checked her in?’
‘Someone calling herself the mother, but later the ID turned out to be stolen. Find out what the girl is saying?’
She shook her head.
He took a long look around him, at the room, the corridor and the bathroom.
‘Just when you think you’ve seen the worst …’ he said, before heading down the stairs again.
Claire placed the Polaroid of the man she’d found downstairs into a clear plastic bag. She lowered the necklace in as well. As she held it by the chain, she took a longer look at the locket. It had a small circular design, bright turquoise-blue with a dark-blue dot inside it.
When Claire walked down the stairs, the sergeant and two policemen were standing in the middle of the room, handcuffing the junkie’s hands behind her back.
‘Janey Small, I am arresting you for child abduction, assault …’
‘It wasn’t abduction.’
The sergeant stopped and looked at Claire.
‘What?’
‘The woman was right,’ continued Claire. ‘The girl wasn’t snatched. This was a job, for the mother.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The colour in the water upstairs, that’s not dirt, it’s dye,’ she said.
‘Stick to the social work.’
‘And it wasn’t being used as a bathtub; it’s a sensory deprivation chamber. They used them in the Cold War to brainwash people.’
The sergeant’s face darkened, and he took a step closer to Claire.
‘Get out. Now.’
Claire saw him notice what she was carrying in her left hand – the bedraggled Walkman. He reached out and swiped it from her.
‘That’s evidence.’
‘Listen to it.’
‘Why?’
She looked at him directly in the eye.
‘Listen to what is playing.’
The sergeant paused but could not lose face in front of her. He pulled one damp headphone to his ear.
A woman’s voice was speaking, warm and kind, intoning the same sentences in an endless loop. Claire spoke to him slowly, as if English was not his first language.
‘Someone paid that junkie. The girl’s hair has been dyed. New identity made. An alternative history brainwashed into her …’
The sergeant stared at her, a look of hesitation on his face for the first time.
‘Why?’
‘I would have thought that’s obvious. The mother didn’t just want to get rid of her own daughter. She wanted to make sure her daughter never found out who she really was.’
‘And what about the photo?’ asked the sergeant.
Claire pursed her lips. She had been mulling over how the man in the Polaroid fitted into this enigma.
‘Best guess … maybe the father of the girl … and the reason why the mother is running away …’
She was also thinking of the words on the four scraps of paper, still lying upstairs on the bathtub:
PHOEBE. A. WIFE. RESTS.
It sounded like the obituary on a failed marriage, written by a disintegrating mind. Claire would have continued her train of thought, but the sergeant held up a hand for her to stop and looked over her shoulder.
Claire turned to see the little girl coming down the stairs, her eyes downcast. Her mouth never stopped moving as she breathed out indistinct words. As she walked past them, the social services officer knelt down and held her in her arms.
Claire could feel the girl’s warm breath near her ear as her voice became clear.
‘My name is Sara Eden … I was born in Scotland in 1983 … My mother died at birth … My father was a tourist …’
Sara stands at the very edge of the gardens. Her lip is split and her knees torn to shreds. Blood slides down her shinbone. Her back presses up against the chain-link fence that separates the home from the road as hot tears run down her cheeks. The shame of the attack separates her mentally as well as physically from the other children. She can see them now. After delivering their beating, the group has moved to play on the lawn directly in front of the large bay windows of the main office.
She can see the prize for which they are competing. A silhouette, mostly claimed by the shadows in the room, sits in front of the matron’s desk. A would-be parent. The matron turns to the window and points to certain children with her finger, her mouth moving soundlessly. The children, for their part, cavort on the grass in a transparent attempt to show themselves to their best advantage.
Sara is not the shortest of the kids. Nor the weakest physically. But she is unlike them in many ways, and in this home of rejected children, any difference is a reason for the others to unite against a common prey.
The matron points to Sara, gives a minute shake of her head, and her mouth never stops moving.
Sara knows what she is saying, even from here, through double-glazed windows and across over a hundred feet of worn garden. The matron is recounting the erratic behaviour, about how Sara sometimes screams out loud, at the top of her voice, when she is alone. The matron will then go on to describe the amnesia that blocks out any memories from before a month ago. She will talk about the abandonment and the fruitless efforts to find her parents. Soon she will hand him a paper that describes the blood tests on Sara that failed to find matching samples at any blood banks or hospitals in the country, and how untraceable parents means there is no way to identify any genetic health issues that might have been handed down. And without a full medical history, she is especially vulnerable. She is, in short, damaged goods: the runt of the litter. Picked on by others.
Sara has sat on the top step of the central stairway and heard the matron deliver this speech in her study multiple times. It is Sara’s history and the only one she knows. The parents always disengage at this point.
But not this time.
This time the silhouette stands and approaches the window, materializing into the form of a man who stares at Sara in an unabashed way. He shows the matron a sheet of paper and then returns his gaze, looking over the heads of the prancing children to the forlorn figure at the edge of the property.
The shrieks coming from outside increase in volume when the matron appears at the door to the garden. She leads the man towards the children as the tiny forms beam up at the adults. One by one their smiles falter and disappear as the adults march past them, heading for the large oak tree at the back. By the time they are halfway to Sara, the other kids have fallen completely quiet and stand as still as statues, watching the procession move away.
The matron stands in front of Sara, exuding a waft of antiseptic in her direction.
‘Sara,’ says the matron, ‘this is Mr Dobbs. Do you remember him?’
‘Hi Sara, it’s me, Lionel,’ he says with a smile.
Sara can see him clearly now for the first time. He is taller than the matron by a few inches but has a burly physique, which gives him the impression of seeming much larger. He has round, cherubic cheeks and soft, brown eyes. He crouches down next to Sara so his face is at her level.
It has been a long time since she’s seen a face that friendly, and for the first time, a memory stirs for her. That face. It is not the first time she has seen that face. She racks her brain, but her memory dead-ends on her arrival at the home. Before then, there is simply a mist of nothingness.
‘I think so,’ she replies to the matron.
‘Don’t worry, your memory will come back. I promise you,’ says Lionel.
The matron clears her throat. She has folded her arms and is looking with concern at Sara.
‘Sara, Mr Dobbs has papers for you, but the final decision to release you to him is mine. I would like some proof you know him.’
She looks at Sara expectantly.
Sara stares at Lionel, waiting for some other piece to fall into place. But nothing comes. She takes a step towards him, hoping some miracle will supply the proof that will allow him to take her away.
‘Let’s see,’ says Lionel, ‘maybe I can help. Sara loves reading adventure books, her favourite colour is green, and she’s a whizz at hide-and-seek.’
At one level, it is like Lionel is describing someone else, a stranger, and yet on another level, the mention of these things seems to resonate with her. An image pops into her mind – her fingers pulling back a tree branch as she runs deeper into a wood, weaving among the trees as she looks behind her. Is it a memory or a scene from a television show she has watched at the home? She is not sure, but her heart begins to beat faster.
‘I want to go with Lionel, Matron,’ says Sara.
The matron seems nonplussed.
‘I need something I can verify.’
Lionel stands up from his crouch and nods in agreement.
‘Fair enough. How about if I told you Sara has a birthmark on her upper right arm in the shape of an infinity sign?’
The matron considers them both for a second before nodding.
‘Good,’ he says, as if the matter is settled. ‘Let’s take you home, Sara.’
Sara follows them as they walk back to the home. She does her best to ignore the incomprehensible whispers that murmur at the edges of her consciousness. The sounds are muffled, like they are coming from the other side of a locked door. She never understands anything that is said, but, at times, the voices have such violence and urgency that they terrify her, and screaming out loud is the only way to drown them out.
The matron sends her upstairs to pack. She has the clothes she has been given by the home, a few books, her toothbrush and nothing more. After all is packed, she looks around to check she is alone, then reaches under her mattress to pull out the plastic bag that contains the two things she has from before the time when things went blank.
She first pulls out the locket and lays it with care on the bed. Then she removes the worn Polaroid picture.
She stares at the man in the photo: the man she should not trust. After poring over it, she knows. It is not Lionel. She is sure of it. But she knew this already. She can trust Lionel. The words of her imaginary companion can’t be heard, but she knows what it is saying. It wants her to go with Lionel Dobbs.
He is waiting for her in front of the home, standing by a black Mercedes car. The rear passenger side door is open, and Sara sees a young woman sitting in the back seat. She is pretty, with short dark hair.
Once they are on the road, Sara looks over and asks the question she has been mulling over since she first saw the woman.
‘Are you my mother?’
The woman does not reply, and Lionel twists in his seat.
‘No, this is Penny. She’s going to help you, Sara. Help you get your memory back.’
‘Do you know my mother?’ Sara asks Lionel.
‘Probably better than anyone else in the world,’ he replies. He turns back to look at the road and presses a button on the compact disc player. The car fills with classical music.
Sara looks out of the window and takes a deep breath.
Her first questions have gone unanswered, and she desperately needs someone to tell her what is happening. She turns back to the two adults in the car and tries again, with the question that dominates the waking hours of each of her days.
‘Have I always had these voices in my head?’
The music must be too loud, as neither of them respond.
The house is set back from the main road and other houses and is surrounded by woods. It feels like a remote destination, and Sara’s eyes take in the exterior of the house, hoping for some memory to surface. But it is alien to her. All of the curtains are closed, and she can’t see inside.
The car crunches into the gravel drive, and Lionel parks it in front of the garage. Penny gets out and motions for Sara to follow her. As they walk to the front door, Sara reaches up and takes her hand. It’s an instinctive act, and she’s pleased when Penny doesn’t pull away. To Sara’s surprise, Penny’s hand feels cold, rubbery and smooth, like the dolls in the play room of the home she has come from. Sara doesn’t mind, she squeezes tightly and doesn’t want to ever let go. Someone has found her, someone who knew her from before, and soon she will be reunited with her parents.
It is dusk, and a dog bounces in from the street and sits in the driveway, watching them, its tail wagging frenetically. He looks so friendly Sara wants to pet him and stops, but Penny tugs her towards the house.
As they enter, Sara looks around, craning for a view of each room. But it is not what she expects. No memories come back. Indeed, the house does not feel like a home at all. There is no furniture in any of the rooms, and what she thought were curtains are in fact wooden boards that cover the windows. A hallway mirror is the only evidence of habitation she can see.
They take her to the kitchen, which has been stripped down so only the sink remains. A single chair sits in the middle of the floor, and she is placed on to it. Lionel stands in front of her. She sees that his hands have a dull sheen and as she stares at them, she realizes they are covered with some form of thin membrane that is catching the light. She looks back at Penny, who is crouching down in the corner of the room, where a host of metal parts lie on the floor. Penny’s hands have the same reflective cast, and it is then that Sara realizes they have both been wearing tight, see-through plastic gloves the whole time.
‘Sara,’ says Lionel, his voice soft, ‘we’re going to help you remember. I know this looks scary, but believe me this is the best way to do it.’
The dog begins barking outside. Lionel looks around, distracted for the first time, waiting for the yapping to end. But it is persistent. Penny shakes her head.
‘I’m going to need total quiet.’
Lionel leaves the kitchen. He takes care to close the door, but the catch is loose, and it swings back a couple of inches. Sara can see him, in the reflection of the hallway mirror, as he opens the front door.
The dog bounds over, its tail wagging back and forth, and lifts itself up on hind legs and offers its front paws playfully as Lionel crouches down and holds out his hand and tickles its ears.
Sara hopes the dog can stay. She’s never had a pet, not that she can recall anyway. The animal has lifted its head and is lapping its tongue on Lionel’s face. Looking at Lionel play with the dog makes her feel less apprehensive about the strange house and the equipment Penny is assembling.
Lionel’s hands drop to rub the fur on the animal’s front legs. The dog cocks its head to the side and wags its tail furiously, excited to find a play partner. Sara then watches as Lionel’s hands grip the front paws like a double handshake and abruptly yank the front legs apart, as easily as he might snap a turkey bone, his strength profound and unexpected. The animal’s spine cracks instantly, the dog dead before it hits the ground.
Sara’s scream is cut short by Penny’s gloved hand, which clamps over her mouth.
She can hear Lionel mutter as he walks back to the kitchen.
‘Fucking dogs.’
He sees Sara’s reaction when he walks in through the door. His face falls, and his earnest expression returns. ‘I’m sorry, Sara. I didn’t want you to see that. That dog was threatening what we were doing. I can’t let anything get in our way.’
Sara has stopped struggling and sits motionless on the edge of the chair. The tap drips insidiously into the sink, the plink plink plink is mutating, shifting into something else, a thumping sound, like a demented monster banging on a basement door. There is a whisper too, but what it is saying, if anything, makes no sense to her.
And with it, the same image returns to her mind, her fingers resting against a canopy of leaves, pressing them down, and slipping in between the trees.
‘I need to go to the toilet,’ says Sara.
Dobbs looks at her for a long moment, as if sensing something between them has been lost. Finally, he purses his lips, as if this could not be helped, then nods to Penny.
‘Take her upstairs.’
‘Don’t lock the door,’ is all Penny says as Sara steps into the bathroom. Her voice is cold and robotic, and Sara nods in agreement as she shuts the door behind her.
The moment the door closes, Sara crams her fists in her ears. The entire house seems to have animated and is babbling at full volume now, and her heart is beating so loudly it seems ready to burst from her chest.
She walks as far as she can from the door. She wants to run. As far as she can away from this place. As much as she wants to remember, she knows it is not safe.
Sara climbs on to the cistern and opens the window. It is a ten-foot drop on to the paving stones below.
‘I’m giving you one more minute,’ says Penny from the other side of the door.
Sara looks around and notices how thick the hedge is that runs flush to the side of the garden fence.
By the time the doorknob begins to turn, she is standing on the outside window ledge. She pushes hard and launches herself at the shrubbery.
Seconds later, she is running down the alleyway by the side of the house, her arms and legs still stinging from scratches.
She runs along the gravel driveway and into the field opposite. Her legs pump like they have never before. Each time she feels herself tire, she digs deeper and squeezes more energy from her reserves. She does not stop running. Even though her lungs feel like they could burst and her throat is burning with acid.
She doesn’t look back until she reaches the tree line. Her hands reach out to pull the branches aside, and she realizes with shock she has seen this moment before. The leaves, the sapling branches bending under the pressure of her fingers, it was not a memory. It is this moment.
Sara crouches low, the toes of her bare feet pressing into the dirt. It is cold outside, and her skin goosebumps as she watches the flashlight beams bounce up and down as they approach her.
She is hiding in a thicket of trees on common land in front of the house. Lionel and Penny are less than a hundred yards away from her now, and she can hear his voice cutting through the darkness.
‘You were meant to check every window. You know the dangers. Seeing me could have triggered a memory. It could all come back at any time. Even without your machine.’
He is talking to Penny. His tone is both calm and threatening, and he walks slowly, as if he knows Sara has nowhere to go.
‘I thought you meant the windows on the ground floor,’ replies Penny. Sara can hear the stress in her voice.
‘Losing her is not an option. Not after losing the mother. Wait here. You might scare her off,’ says Dobbs.
The second flashlight stops, its beam directed down, lighting up Penny’s trouser legs.
The mention of her mother trips something deep inside Sara, disconnecting what had been a reflex reach for abstract parents. An orphan’s desire to be reclaimed. Now something more tangible tugs at her. Her mother. That is who she craves. ‘Mother’ is still just a word, the image it conjures just a hollow in space in her mind’s eye, but Sara’s yearning is now visceral, urgent. She needs to reunite with her mother like a beached, dying fish needs to return to the sea.
Dobbs is getting closer to Sara now. The trees are too thinly leaved to protect her from the light if he shines it directly at her. He is less than ten feet away, and she can hear his breathing.
‘I know you’re here, Sara.’
The flashlight trains on the thicket ten feet to the left of Sara, the spotlight washing the darkness from the space and illuminating it with a ghostly glow. The beam then swings to the right, lighting up the area just next to her. The next move of the flashlight will expose her.
‘There’s nowhere for you to go. So, there’s no point in running. I know you are scared. But I promise you I am not going to hurt you. I wish you remembered me. You would know I could never do that. What we’re doing here … it’s to help you.’
‘I want to see my mother,’ shouts Sara.
It’s too dark for her to see Lionel’s reaction, but she can hear the injured tone that creeps into his voice.
‘I don’t know what, if anything, you remember about your mother, Sara. It was always me that kept you safe.’
‘My mother!’ shouts Sara, so loudly her throat becomes momentarily hoarse.
‘OK,’ replies Dobbs. ‘If you come back now, I’ll take you to your mother.’
Sara holds her breath. And then the thicket plunges back into darkness as he switches the flashlight off.
She hears the sound of his shoes brushing against the wet grass, retreating. Penny switches off her light as well, and soon they are nothing more than two silhouettes.
Sara waits for several minutes, not daring to move. Waiting to see if it is a trap. She is dressed only in a thin t-shirt and trousers. It’s too cold to stay and too cold to run. Besides, she has no idea where she is. And she has nowhere to go.
Around her, the night begins to animate. A branch cracks, and in the distance an owl hoots. The sounds feel ancient, as if the night is formally reclaiming its territory.
Lionel and Penny are not coming back.
A sense of emptiness washes over her, and she feels defeated. Lionel is right: there is nowhere else she can go.
She touches her locket and pats her trouser pocket where the photograph is folded. The things that her mother left her are still with her. The thought of her mother makes her think about Lionel’s promise. Her desire to see her mother is so primal it is overpowering.
Sara stares at the house while trying to control the shivering, her small form pulsing with what feels like periodic electric shocks.
The house stares back at her, the windows in the white frame upstairs resembling closed eyelids, ready to pop open if disturbed, the open front door, a gaping mouth.
Minutes later, she is tiptoeing along the alleyway to the window of the room from which she jumped. The top of it is ajar. Not by much, just a few millimetres.
She is not going to walk through that open front door. She is fearful of what might be lying in wait just past the ink-black threshold.
There is a trowel lying discarded by the garden fence, and she picks it up. A drainpipe running down the side of the house serves as a useful prop to help her clamber back up to the window ledge. She slips the tip of the trowel into the gap in the window, jemmies it open and climbs inside.
Sara puts her hand on the bathroom door handle and tips it downwards, slowly enough to avoid a click when the catch gives out. The door releases, and Sara pushes it open in a long arc.
The corridor is silent, and she steps out, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. For the first time, she wishes the voices would appear. It would be nice not to feel alone. But it is quiet, and she stands barefoot on the carpet, alone in the stillness.
The kitchen is downstairs and on her left, and she creeps towards it. The door is half closed, obscuring the room within. She pushes it open, with infinite care.
She sees him the moment she sets foot inside.
He sits on the kitchen chair. There is no sign of Penny.
‘Where’s my mother?’
‘You tell me, Sara.’
Sara looks at him in confusion.
‘What do you mean?’
Lionel folds his arms. He is not speaking to her like a child any more.
‘You’re the only one who knows.’
Sara shakes her head.
‘I don’t remember anything.’
A noise in the corner causes her to turn. Penny is standing there. She has finished whatever she was assembling and stands aside for Sara to get a better look. It is an inclined chair, its armrests crisscrossed with restraints. A spherical cage the size of a football is fixed to the top.
Penny opens a small compact and pulls out a syringe.
‘This won’t hurt. Pull up your sleeve.’
Sara eyes Penny as the young woman approaches her.
She can feel her heart rate spiking, and around her the air seems to warp, making her feel light-headed. Her blood thrums in her ears, and she feels as if she is about to pass out.
‘Be careful,’ says Lionel, his voice suddenly sharp. ‘You’re exposed.’
Penny looks down, seeing that Sara is in reach of her face and neck, which are uncovered. She flinches in fear, taking her eyes off Sara for a crucial second, moving backwards with a faltering step.
A blurred hand swipes the syringe from Penny and drives it downwards. The movements are so fast that Penny does not react until the plunger has sunk down and delivered its payload into her leg.
Penny gasps and looks in shock at Sara. Her eyes then roll up into her head, and she falls like a sack to the ground.
Lionel rushes towards Sara, his hands outstretched. But he never reaches her. Instead, he drops to the ground, screaming in pain. She doesn’t realize what she has done until she sees he is clutching his thigh, where the trowel she was holding is buried into the flesh.
He stares at her, his eyes widening in fear. He scrambles backwards on two arms and one leg, like an injured crab, leaving greasy smears of blood on the floor behind him, until he is pressed into the corner of the kitchen. He clamps down his eyes in fear and waits. Then … nothing.
When he finally opens his eyes, the kitchen is empty.
The sounds of small footsteps can be heard crunching on the gravel outside.