Your Deepest Fear

by David Jackson

  Metro spreads his arms. ‘Hey, girl, you don’t even need to get to four. I’m done. This isn’t worth losing my life over.’

  ‘Then talk.’

  ‘I’m talking. I never met your husband, okay? And I don’t know who killed him. But I heard things, all right? In my line of work, I hear things.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘I heard that your husband was killed because he had something I would find valuable.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Matthew was just a civil servant. He worked for the tax office. What possible item could he have that would interest you?’

  ‘I really don’t know, but I was about to find out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A message was left for me at the club. I’m supposed to turn up alone at an address tonight to find out what’s on offer.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Two in the morning.’

  ‘And you were planning to go?’

  ‘Fuck, no. Not without back-up. My plan was to sit it out, wait for the guy to contact me again, and then suggest a meeting on my terms.’

  ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  She moves the gun a few inches closer.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You’re serious.’

  He reels off the address, and she pins it at the front of her brain.

  ‘Do you want to change any details of your story?’ she asks.

  ‘No. It’s the God’s-honest truth. Swear on my mother’s life.’

  ‘Well, we’ll find out, won’t we? Take off your jacket and empty your pockets.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just do it. Nice and slow.’

  Metro does as he’s told, piling up his possessions on the floor next to him.

  ‘Move over there,’ she tells him.

  When he has shifted away a safe distance, Sara moves to the pile and picks a twenty-pence piece out from the loose change.

  Watching her closely, Metro says, ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘To open the locker next to your friend there. He’s about to get a new neighbour. I’m taking your keys to this place, too. If any part of your story turns out to be bullshit, I will come straight back here and empty this gun into both lockers. If you’ve told the truth, someone will find you in the morning.’

  Metro looks incredulous. ‘You really expect us to spend the whole night in these lockers?’

  ‘Think of it as an opportunity to reconsider your lifestyle choices.’

  ‘My lifestyle? What about yours? You know you’re dead, right? Whatever way the thing with your husband works out, your days are numbered.’

  60

  Grace Meade stares at her computer screen and eats the nibbles that were intended for Cody. Waste not, want not, she thinks.

  The wine is still in the fridge. She hates to drink alone; it just makes her more depressed. And anyway, she needs to stay awake and focused on the task at hand. The alcohol can wait until the next time a man comes into her house. Ten-year-old wines are supposed to be more prized, aren’t they?

  Cody won’t come back here, except maybe to stand at the doorstop while she hands the laptop back to him. After this disaster, he’ll have no reason to think she can help him in future.

  Okay, maybe disaster is too strong a word. Nothing has actually gone wrong. This was always going to be a difficult nut to crack. No, that’s not true: it was always going to be an almost impossible nut. Cody was just expecting too much.

  Sometimes, though, you get a stroke of luck. That’s what she was pinning her hopes on. A weak encryption algorithm, or a way to get to the decryption key.

  Imagine that, she thinks. Imagine what Cody would say – how he would react – if I were to show him all the secrets contained on this machine. He would worship me.

  But my life isn’t like that. I don’t get lightning strikes of good fortune. All of my achievements, such as they are, have been attained through sheer hard work. And hard work won’t cut it in this instance. Even the unbelievable computing power at my disposal isn’t cutting it.

  She is not working directly on the laptop Cody supplied. That’s not what one does. Instead, she has cloned its disk drive and launched an assault on the copy. To assist her, she has employed the services of the university supercomputer.

  Well, employed isn’t quite accurate. Hijacking or press-ganging might be more fitting terms. She has to be careful, though: there are some clever bods at the university who would take exception to her misappropriation of their precious computing resource.

  But their high-tech equipment is no better than a corner-shop calculator right now if it can’t solve this problem. It might not solve it even if she had weeks of computing time, and she has only hours. Hours that are already ticking away rapidly.

  ‘I’m going for a shower,’ she tells her computer. ‘When I come back, I want answers, okay? No excuses. Cody is relying on me.’

  She rises from her chair. Yawns and stretches. Heads upstairs.

  In her bathroom, she fills the washbasin and begins removing her make-up. She spent a long time on her stupid make-up this evening, for all the good it did. Did Cody notice? No. Or if he did, it made no difference.

  Getting into this computer would make a difference, though. Has to. Cody is a man who appreciates results. He likes people who get things done.

  She opens her mirrored cabinet, takes out a fresh bar of soap. Stoops over to wash her face. It stings her eyes. She grabs a towel and dries herself off. She straightens up, closes the cabinet.

  And sees the reflection of the clown standing behind her.

  61

  Cody wakes up.

  Which is a hell of a surprise, because he doesn’t remember going to sleep. One minute he’s sitting there staring at his phone and willing it to ring; the next he’s wondering why it’s disappeared from his hand.

  The reason it’s no longer in his hand is that it’s now on the floor, and when he picks it up and checks the time it displays, he sees that he’s been out not for a minute but a whole hour.

  He groans, then gets up from the sofa. He doesn’t feel refreshed; if anything, he feels groggy and out of touch with reality. His mouth is dry and his eyes are struggling to focus.

  But he knows what he must do.

  Grace hasn’t called. It seems unlikely that she will pull any rabbits out of the hat for him tonight. That leaves Cody with only one possible way to get to Waldo.

  He goes to the bathroom first. Takes a pee. Washes his hands and splashes cold water on his face.

  Next, the kitchen, where he collects his usual equipment – the keys and his baton.

  He whips his arm forward, extending the baton.

  I could use this, he thinks. I could break every bone in that stupid clown’s body, and he would talk. He would have to talk. And then I’d know where Waldo is. I could find him and I could break every bone in his body too. And then—

  And then what?

  Would you be happy with that, Cody? Is that what you want?

  I don’t know what I want. Happiness is not the goal here. I want . . . I want . . .

  Justice?

  Maybe. But more than that I want . . .

  Answers.

  Yeah, that’s it. I want answers. I want to know why Waldo has chosen me to play his stupid game. I want to know why he hasn’t just killed me outright. I want to know what plans he has for me in the future. I want to know what he gets out of this. I want to know which other people he has targeted, and what the outcomes were.

  I want to know a million things, and I can only get them from the mouth of Waldo.

  And then maybe I can rest.

  *

  Cody doesn’t like the fact that Keenan is smiling. He’s just squatting there on the floor like a Buddhist monk, a smug grin on his face.

  Cody feels his grip tighten on the baton. He could wipe away that grin with a single swipe. It wouldn’t be hard. Go on, Cody, do i
t. Hit him. Show him he can’t laugh at you.

  ‘What’s so fucking funny?’

  Keenan shrugs. ‘Nothing.’

  Cody flicks the baton open again. Takes several steps towards Keenan.

  ‘I said what’s so funny?’

  Keenan seems to sense the seriousness of his predicament. His smile fades.

  ‘Not funny. I’ve seen the light, that’s all.’

  ‘Divine intervention? Good. You might need some help along those lines where you’re going.’

  Keenan shakes his head. ‘No, it’s nothing religious. I just realised you were bluffing. Waldo didn’t call you. There’s no arrangement to hand me over to him. You were trying to scare me. Nice try.’

  ‘What makes you think it was a bluff?’

  ‘Because if Waldo wanted me, he’d have me by now. There’d be nothing you could do to stop it. He wouldn’t need your agreement. And that stuff you found out about me? The photograph, right? The one you took on your phone. I don’t know how you did it, but somehow you traced me using that photo.’

  Cody begins to walk slowly around the room, tapping his baton on the whitewashed walls.

  ‘So what if you’re right,’ he says. ‘You think that helps you somehow?’

  ‘I think it means you’re running out of options. You want Waldo so badly it hurts, but you’re starting to accept that you can’t get to him through me. You also know that you can’t take me into police custody. For one thing, there’s no evidence against me; I’d walk within minutes. For another, you’d have to explain why you kept me locked up in your cellar, and I don’t think you want to do that. And finally, you can’t keep me here much longer. I was nearly discovered today. Tomorrow, someone might come along and open that door.’

  Cody continues to tap his baton. ‘You’ve certainly put a lot of thought into this. Let’s suppose all the above is true. What’s your conclusion?’

  ‘That you’ll have to let me go.’

  ‘You really want that? You want to be out in the open, with Waldo on the loose?’

  ‘I’ll have to take my chances.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what about me?’

  Keenan furrows his brow. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, what do I get out of it? If I let you go, where’s my closure? See, what you don’t seem to appreciate is that the only thing that’s been keeping me going since you and your clown friends took away my toes and my colleague is the thought that one day I might end up in a position exactly like this. Just you, me, and nobody watching.’

  Keenan’s mouth twitches. ‘It’s not me you want. You want Waldo.’

  ‘You’re right. I do want Waldo. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking too. And what I’ve come to accept is that I have to settle for second best, because that’s all that’s on offer. If I let you go, I throw that all away.’

  ‘So . . . what’s the solution?’

  ‘That we end this now.’

  It’s all he has to say, because Keenan understands what it means. And what Cody realises about himself is that he’s not bluffing. It’s true that he has run out of options. Grace isn’t going to ring, and he can wait no longer. Waldo was right when he told him that he needs to think of Keenan as an irrelevance, a bug fit only for squashing.

  I’m tired, Cody thinks. I need an end to this.

  ‘Look,’ says Keenan, ‘I already told you. I didn’t actually hurt you. I didn’t kill your partner. That wasn’t what I thought—’

  Cody raises his baton and brings it down fast. It skims the top of Keenan’s hair and smacks against the wall behind him.

  ‘YOU WERE THERE! YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE!’

  ‘No! I was there, yes. But I didn’t think it would go that far. I didn’t know that—’

  ‘You suggested the loppers! You suggested using the knife!’

  ‘It was . . . I was making stuff up. Waldo asked us to dream up horrible tortures. I didn’t really think he was capable of—’

  ‘You didn’t try to stop him, though, did you? None of you did.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Waldo isn’t someone you say no to. He does whatever he wants.’

  ‘Well, now I do whatever I want, okay? Now it’s my turn.’

  ‘You can’t . . . kill me. You’re a police officer. You can’t—’

  ‘WAS! I was a police officer. I’m about to lose that too. That’s what you and your clown friends have done to me. I have nothing left. No life, no peace, no career. Nothing except an opportunity to fix this one small thing.’

  He raises the baton again. Tears sting his eyes and there is a burning in his heart. The fire spreads to his arm. He can feel the rage there, a power that could split this man’s skull in two. There is no rationality now, no empathy. What lies before him in this dank basement is vermin, an insect that needs eradicating. One simple quick action will do it. He will open his mouth and he will roar and he will bring all his might down on this infestation.

  And then Cody’s phone rings.

  At first he is not sure what the noise is, where it is coming from. It intrudes into his consciousness, makes him aware of his surroundings. He sees the cowering figure beneath him, feels the coiled energy in his arm, the hatred in his soul.

  He takes a step back, then another. It seems to him that the blood slowly drains from the bulging veins in his arms, neck and temples.

  He lowers the baton. Takes the phone from his pocket and answers it almost absent-mindedly.

  He listens to what he is being told, and it changes everything.

  62

  Cody knocks and rings for several minutes before he gets an answer. When the door is finally opened, it is obvious that Grace is distraught. She is shaking, and her cheeks are glistening with tears.

  ‘Oh, Grace,’ says Cody.

  He steps into the house, gives her a hug.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s go and sit down. Tell me all about it.’

  He leads her through to the living room and sits her on the sofa. He sits right next to her, no expanse of cushion between them this time.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Cody, I’m so sorry. He took the computer. I had no choice. He was . . .’

  ‘Tell me from the beginning. How did he get into the house?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was trying to get into your laptop, and then I went upstairs to get washed. He came up behind me, Cody. He just—’

  She starts sobbing, her words swallowed up. Cody grabs a box of tissues from the coffee table and hands it to her.

  ‘It’s all right. He’s gone now. He got what he wants, and he won’t come back.’

  ‘He . . . he was wearing a clown mask. A disgusting creepy mask, with sharp teeth and blood. I started screaming, but then he put his finger to the lips of his mask, and in his other hand he was showing me a huge knife. I thought he . . . I thought he was going to . . .’

  ‘Shush now. You’re safe, okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?’

  ‘No. He didn’t actually touch me. I just . . . Cody, he frightened the life out of me. I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t.’

  ‘Did he talk to you?’

  ‘Yes. And that was weird, too. He must have rigged a microphone or something in his mask, so that his words came out in this freaky monster voice.’

  Cody thinks about the voice he has listened to over the phone. He wonders how many others have had it inflicted upon them.

  ‘What did he say to you?’

  ‘He said something like, Here are your instructions. Obey them and you won’t be hurt. Lock yourself in the bathroom and stay there for ten minutes. After that, you can come out. Do it now.’

  ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘Yes. I was glad to get away from him. To be honest, I think I was in there for longer than ten minutes. When I came out, I went downstairs and saw that the computer had been taken, along with the cloned disk drive.’

  ‘Did he take anything else?’

  �
�No. I don’t think so. I haven’t checked properly. I called you straighaway.’

  ‘Have you called anyone else?’

  ‘No. I-I was going to phone 999, and then I thought about the computer and about how secretive you were about it, and I thought that if I called you, then at least you could come over and . . . and . . .’

  Cody feels the relief. He doesn’t know how he would have explained this to other coppers.

  ‘Thank you, Grace. You did the right thing.’

  ‘Did I? I’m not so sure.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I don’t know what I’ve got myself involved in here. I trusted you. I didn’t think this would be dangerous. But now I—’

  ‘Grace, listen to me. I didn’t think it would be dangerous, either. Please believe me when I tell you that I had no idea this would happen.’

  ‘How did he find me? How did he get my address?’

  ‘My guess is that he followed me.’

  ‘Why? What’s going on, Cody?’

  He thinks carefully about his response. He feels he owes her an explanation, but at the same time he doesn’t want to endanger her further.

  ‘It’s complicated. I can’t explain.’

  Grace’s look is withering. ‘I’m not stupid, Cody.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were. I would never—’

  ‘I’ve read the news reports. I know what happened to you before you joined MIT.’

  ‘Grace, I—’

  ‘Four men, wearing clown masks. And now the guy tonight, also in a clown mask. That’s not a coincidence, is it?’

  Cody knows he can’t avoid the truth. ‘No. It’s not a coincidence.’

  ‘The men who attacked you were never caught. They’re back again, aren’t they?’

  Regret washes over Cody. He wishes now he had never come to Grace for help. Wishes he could keep the reappearance of the clowns to himself. But it’s out now. Finally, it’s out.

  ‘Grace, you can’t tell anyone about this.’

  ‘We have to. Cody, these men murdered a police officer. It’s your duty to report them. Mine too. You can’t expect me to keep quiet about this.’

  ‘Grace, please. I’m getting close to these men. I can catch them. I just need a little more time. If we report this, they will disappear into the woodwork. Please. I’m begging you. Can you not just pretend tonight never happened?’