by Wes Markin
‘I walked away. I followed the dirt track back to the main road.’
You left him to die.
‘I think I was in shock. In fact, I know, I was in shock.’
You could have saved him.
‘I was confused. All the abuse, those years of lies, and in that moment, I just couldn’t get past it. I sat in a café near the station for hours.’
‘Didn’t you have blood on you?’
‘I never touched him. After he shot himself, I climbed out of the car so he couldn’t touch me.’
‘What happened in the café?’
‘Nothing really. When I started to feel able to think clearly again, I realised it was too late. I knew that if I went back to the car, he would already be dead. Then what, face this? Face what I’m facing now? He lived a life following people who didn’t want to be followed and finding people who didn’t want to be found. I thought that my only chance was that you’d think it was someone else – someone he’d pissed off. I haven’t heard from you in eight months.’ She touched her stomach again. ‘I thought it was okay to start a family. Please, Detective, tell me, I made the right decision, that everything is going to be alright?’
It had been an exhausting day for Alan and Eddie, so the Conduit treated them to steak and new potatoes with a perky pepper sauce of his own devising. They ate it in the dining room, rather than the kitchen, because meeting Mark the dog might have been one step too many for Eddie. He’d been subjected to visualisation after visualisation and his mind would be sore.
The Conduit had ventured out earlier to buy Eddie a green floral dress. Not being certain what size to buy, he’d opted for several larger ones. Fortunately, one of them had fitted.
When Eddie had consented to wear the outfit, the Conduit had patted Alan firmly on the back, and his protégé had glowed over his achievement.
The dining room looked reasonably festive because the Conduit had hung the cards given to him by members of his faculty, and some of his patients from the Roundhay practice, on the wall. He couldn’t abide Christmas music, so he’d opted for some gentle piano music in the background.
The Conduit sat at the head of the table, and to his right, Alan ate slowly and thoughtfully. To his left, Eddie had used his steak knife to cut the meat, but he’d yet to take a mouthful. The Conduit had poured himself, and Alan, a glass of wine, but had given Eddie water. He already had enough chemicals in his system.
‘Drink some water, Eddie, cleanse the pallet,’ the Conduit said. ‘Often that is enough to spike the appetite.’
Eddie didn’t look up. He moved the meat around his plate. ‘Saskia, please. Call me Saskia.’
The Conduit looked across at Alan. They didn’t need to say anything. Their eye-contact spoke volumes. Remarkable progress. Simply remarkable.
‘Well, Saskia,’ the Conduit continued. ‘I appreciate the day that you’ve just had and, so, if you wish to leave your meal until later, no offence will be taken.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But I would suggest trying to eat. Tomorrow does promise to be another long day.’
‘I understand,’ Saskia said.
The Conduit looked at Alan again. ‘Do you mind?’ He gestured at Saskia with his hand. ‘She’s your patient.’
Alan shook his head and continued to eat, happy to allow the Conduit to probe today’s progress.
‘So, tell me Saskia, how’re you feeling now?’
‘Different.’
‘Can you elaborate?’
‘Lighter … younger.’
‘Happier?’
‘Yes. Like a burden has been lifted.’
‘Because you can now feel female?’
‘Yes, but not just feel, but rather know that I am.’
‘This calls for a toast.’ The Conduit raised his glass.
Alan followed suit, but Saskia moved her eyes between them still looking dazed.
‘To new beginnings,’ The Conduit said.
‘To new beginnings,’ Alan said.
‘And tomorrow, I am going to head to the shop, my dear young lady, and buy you some lipstick,’ the Conduit said.
With this, Saskia’s bewildered expression intensified. She moved her head left and right repeatedly as if she was some kind of robot that’d just malfunctioned.
Alan started to stand up. The Conduit held a hand up to gesture him to stop. This is part of it. This is how we test.
Saskia stopped moving her head. ‘It’s already—’ She pinched her thumb and forefinger together and drew them over her lips. ‘I don’t understand … Dad—’ She moved her pinched digits up and down her face.
Alan tried to stand again, but again the Conduit gestured for him to stay.
Watch her. Watch her re-live the visualisation!
Saskia scribbled on her forehead. She leaned her head back, so she was staring up at the ceiling.
The Conduit looked at Alan. He was nodding. He understood now. In Saskia’s head, at this moment, her father was yanking her head back and covering her face in make-up.
Saskia squealed, fell silent, and then looked down at her plate as if suddenly deactivated.
The Conduit was disappointed, and he showed this in his expression to Alan. That was some show, and he would have loved for it to continue.
He took a mouthful of wine and had an idea. He winked at Alan, stood up and pointed down at Saskia. ‘You want to wear make-up, gay lord, you wear it. All over your fucking face.’
Saskia snapped back into life and looked back up at the Conduit. ‘I will wear make-up, Dad, but I’ll wear it how I want to,’ she lifted the steak knife in her right hand to her cheek, ‘and not all over my fucking face.’ Starting from beneath her eye, she split her entire cheek open.
The Conduit’s eyes widened.
Saskia drew the sharp, serrated blade down her face over and over again, tearing ragged lines into her skin. ‘I don’t want you to call me your son anymore. I’m your daughter—’ She pushed herself backwards and the chair went over. She went with it.
That was the moment she was slapped, the Conduit realised.
Lying on her back, Saskia was now working the blade into the flesh on the other side of her face.
‘Shouldn’t we stop her?’ Alan said.
‘Why?’ The Conduit said. ‘We must watch, and we must learn. Everything we do is about learning.’
As she went to work on her forehead, Saskia shouted, ‘Don’t deny it, Dad. You’ve known for a long time. I dare you to go back to work and tell your friends that your child no longer identifies as male—'
‘Another slap from her father,’ the Conduit said, quietly to Alan. ‘It’s perfect.’
They sat back and watched Saskia carve her face to ribbons.
After his phone call with Breaker ended, Yorke shared the news about Robert with Gardner.
‘What a horrible way to go,’ Gardner said, looking down at the floor.
Yorke put a hand on her shoulder. ‘At least you know it wasn’t because of your case.’
‘If I hadn’t put him on such a stressful case, he could have been working on his marriage.’
‘From what I just heard, Emma, I don’t think that marriage was salvageable.’
For a brief moment, Yorke thought of his own marriage, but then reassured himself. Robert and Helen’s marriage had been rotting for years. Any issues that he and Patricia were experiencing were in their infancy. After this investigation, he would ensure these problems didn’t worsen. He would even try and accept that ridiculous little dog, Rosie, into their lives.
After this conversation, it took a few hours for Yorke’s email to ping. His hand was sweating as he clicked on the encrypted zipped folder recovered from the USB and downloaded it to his laptop. After extracting it, he saw that there were over a dozen named folders.
Two jumped out at him immediately.
Mark Topham.
Dr Louis Mayers.
He started by opening the ‘Mark Topham’ folder. It was stuf
fed full of files.
As he delved, Yorke imagined climbing into the late Robert Brislane’s mind. It was a disorganised, and messy place, and Yorke wondered how the private investigator had managed to weave it all together and locate Topham.
There was everything from scanned images of Topham’s handwritten school reports to five years’ worth of itemised phone bills. There was also a copy of crime scene report on the murder of the male prostitute, Dan Tillotson. Yorke shuddered over the ease by which someone operating outside the law could access this kind of information. He listened to audio files of friends, colleagues and relatives, Robert had spoken to, and recorded on his mobile phone, probably without consent. Finally, he read copies of Topham’s personal emails.
‘It’s remarkable,’ Gardner said, who was looking through the files on her computer. ‘You could write a fully fleshed out biography of Mark’s life from all of this information.’
‘Isn’t it creepy that, when all is said and done, our entire lives can be reduced to fact-packed files, and anecdotal recounts, on a single USB drive?’
He left Gardner to read, and listen, her way through the files again, while he accessed the second folder on Dr Louis Mayers.
Obviously, Rosset and his team would be panning for gold in this folder too, but this wasn’t a problem. He had Rosset’s promise that he could arrest Topham if he was alive, so it was completely irrelevant who sieved out that nugget first.
A lot of the information that Robert had gathered on Mayers was very similar to what Yorke’s team had accrued on him back during the investigation. Mayers’ education, his background as a private psychiatrist treating insomnia, the tragic shooting at his practice, and his time with Dr Martin Edwards supporting with HASD. Unsurprisingly, it all stopped dead on the day that Christian Severance went into custody, and Mayers disappeared into the ether. There were no audio recordings in this folder. Yorke wondered if Robert had recorded interviews with people who knew Mayers, in the same way he had done with Topham, but had never got around to uploading them. He paused to quickly email Rosset, asking if any audio files had been recovered from Robert’s phone which had also been on his possession in the boot.
Yorke and Gardner ordered pizza and continued relentlessly into the night. Scribbling notes, drawing arrows between pieces of information, and pausing regularly to bounce ideas off each other. Rosset emailed back to report that there weren’t any audio recordings.
It was late before Yorke finally admitted. ‘I’m starting to worry that the information that led Mark to Mayers, and then Robert to Mark is not here.’
Gardner didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide as she stared at her laptop. Then, her fingers danced over the keys at lightning speed. She stopped, snapped her fingers and then pointed at the screen. Yorke wandered over to the small desk she was working on at the foot of his bed.
She was pointing at a photograph of the front cover of a book by Dr Louis Mayers. Ending insomnia – begin your new sleep cycle.
‘Yes, I saw it before. Robert must have cut the image out from somewhere on the internet and saved it onto a word document. He was probably planning to make some notes underneath it after he read it perhaps, but never got around to it.’
Gardner pointed at the bottom left corner of word document. ‘Small font, but can you see the number he’s typed underneath the cover? It’s easy to miss.’
‘7. An accidental click of a button perhaps?’
‘Or …’ She clicked on the internet tab at the bottom of the screen. She’d already found the book online. ‘These are the first few pages available as a sample. She clicked forward several times. And this is page 7.’
There was one line of writing on the page, about a third of the way down.
To Frederick Lancer – my one true and constant friend.
‘Bloody hell, Emma, you genius.’
She spent the evening with one of her favourite letters from him. This letter was a meditation on free will. It was her favourite because of the situation she was currently in.
A small white cell. No windows. No natural light.
Not her world. A world designed by them to take away her free will. A barren, white, frozen hole.
She read the final quotation used by her admirer in his letter. It was from Epictetus in The Discourses. Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You can fetter my leg but my will, not even Zeus himself can overpower.
And that was the truth. This world was their world. Her world belonged only to her, and she could retreat to it at any time.
Any time.
That was the true power of free will.
She read her admirer’s name at the bottom.
Milo A Russey.
But that wasn’t his name. Not really. Although what was in a name, really? She thought about another letter he’d written to her in which he’d meditated on the idea of identity.
Milo A Russey was an anagram of his real name. Louis Mayers.
How else would a letter from her new friend, the infamous Conduit, make it into this barren white frozen hole?
She left the letter and approached the cell door. There was a single peep hole. They used it to ensure that she was on the other side of the room before they opened the door.
She looked through it. At first it was dark, then it was light, someone had been watching her.
‘Come in if you want, doctor. Freedom isn’t out there.’ Lacey Ray pointed at her head. ‘It’s in here … and my God, is it ever so blue.’
15
DECEMBER 28th
FREDERICK LANCER, MAYERS’ one true and special friend, was also a psychiatrist. Or, at least, had been. He’d retired his partnership last year at the age of fifty-six. Looking at his plush living conditions, it’d been a rather lucrative partnership.
Yorke had been over the moon to discover Lancer was alive. He’d been less than over the moon to discover they had a two-hour journey ahead of them. Lancer had opted to see out his twilight years in the Welsh seaside town of Llandudno.
Gardner had also been particularly irritating on the last stage of the journey. She’d stayed in Llandudno every year throughout her childhood, so she completely succumbed to nostalgia. ‘That’s the pier in which we used to watch Punch and Judy. That’s the longest pier in Wales … That artificial ski slope used to be the Happy Valley. Open air theatres and miniature golf-courses … We used to get on that tram, all the way to the top of the Great Orme.’
When Gardner had pointed out her favourite Fish and Chip shop, Yorke had told her that enough was enough.
Lancer offered them tea and they gratefully accepted. It had been a long drive. Especially for Yorke.
The retired psychiatrist was a robust, healthy looking man with a full head of hair, stylishly parted at the side. Yorke made a mental note to start planning for an early retirement.
‘You know this will be my third visit in a year from people asking questions about Louis,’ Lancer said.
‘Can you remember the names of the other two people?’ Yorke said
‘Not by name, but one was a detective, and the other was a private investigator looking for someone who was missing. Actually, the private investigator left a card. You want me to dig it out?’
Yorke showed Lancer photographs of Topham and Robert. He also gave him their names. Lancer nodded for each. ‘I remember the name Brislane well. I remember thinking that I had a friend with a similar surname.’
‘The first one who came to see you, DI Topham, disappeared.’ Gardner said.
Lancer sat back on his sofa. ‘I hope you don’t think I’d anything to do with that.’
‘No, sir. That is not why we are here.’ Yorke said, throwing Gardner a look to try and remind her that she was supposed to a passive observer.
Yorke showed Lancer the picture of the book cover on his phone. ‘We believe it was this book which led both Mark and Robert here … to you.’
Lancer nodded. ‘Yes, it did. That is the most ironic dedication ever! I hated
that book and I told Louis so. We were both specialists in sleep and I found his suggestions too fanciful and not backed by science. It drove a wedge between us, and we never spoke again. I certainly did not remain his one true and constant friend. There was an element of truth to it though, I suppose, in that I was his only friend. You know, I’m surprised he never changed that dedication. He probably just kept it to rile me! This must have been over five years ago now.’
‘And you’re aware of what happened next with Dr Louis Mayers?’
‘Of course. I watch the news. I tried to contact him after he was nearly killed in that shooting at his practice. He flat-out refused my peace offering. There’s a man who could hold a grudge.’
‘And you know about his role in the Salisbury murders?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘I was surprised.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, when you train to be a doctor, you want to help people, don’t you? Mind you, he did always champion the idea of sacrifice in order to serve the greater good. That individuals are expendable in the search for the great truth. Maybe he started to believe his own hype?’
‘We believe that whatever you told Mark Topham and Robert Brislane may have led them directly to Mayers,’ Gardner said.
The colour drained from his face. ‘You think that’s why the detective disappeared?’
Before Gardner shattered the retired doctor with another comment, Yorke got his reassurances in. ‘We don’t know that, but if it was, you can be sure he was driven enough to find him anyway.’
‘Yes, he did seem desperate …’ he looked down, and then up again. ‘And the private investigator, is he okay?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Gardner said.
Lancer gulped.
Shit, Gardner, not again, Yorke thought.
‘But, it had nothing to do with Mayers.’ Gardner said. ‘We have the killer, and it’s unrelated.’
Yorke said, ‘The reason we’re here, Dr Lancer, is because you may be able to help us put everything right. It is possible that something you told these two men revealed the whereabouts of Louis Mayers.’
