The Controller

by Matt Brolly

  41

  He could have mistaken the cell they locked him in for a hotel room. Lynch had the comfort of a double bed, a desk and chair, and en suite bathroom. A small fridge humming at a gentle frequency was filled with various food and drink, though nothing alcoholic. Only the asylum-cleanliness, the pristine whiteness coating every inch of the room, the lack of windows and the locked door suggested he was anywhere other than a three-star hotel somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

  He collapsed onto the bed, surprised and begrudgingly exalted to find Daniel’s sweater waiting there for him. He clasped the material towards him, inhaling deeply, ignoring the other interloping smells, until he caught the remembrance of Daniel deep within the material. It was close to being unbearable, knowing that he might be only meters away from him at that very moment. After all these years, he was the closest he’d ever been to seeing his son again though he was sure Daniel’s sweater hadn’t been left for him as a means of compassion but as another tool to keep him down.

  Lynch lay back thinking about Mallard’s words. It was a tactic, another way of undermining him, but the words had served their purpose. He was now dwelling on the similarities between himself and Mallard. He didn’t do what Mallard did. He wasn’t a hunter, killing and abusing for the pleasure of it. But he had killed in his time, had gone beyond simple legal procedure to bring someone to justice. It may not make him as bad as Mallard but it highlighted a similarity. Mallard accused him of thinking he was better than others and it wasn’t easy to argue against that. It was not something he did consciously but he’d acted that way before. He liked to think it was a necessary part of his job – when he was at the Bureau, and latterly in his role to find his son – but he didn’t always take other people into consideration if they got in his way.

  ‘Fuck,’ he screamed into the void of the room. He was falling for Mallard’s games. It was a simple interrogator’s technique. Leaving the suspect alone with their thoughts and insecurities. Lynch paced the room and tried to focus on something positive. He thought about the years he’d spent with Sally and Daniel before his son was taken, focusing on all the wonderful times they’d shared together. His mind drifted to their vacation to Yellowstone Park when Daniel was only four - Daniel’s amazement at the wildlife, the secret smiles he’d shared with Sally at their son’s enjoyment. But however hard he tried, his mind kept returning to the darker times. The days and nights he was absent, the guilt he felt at missing weekends with his son because of some case he deemed important, and eventually his obsession with the Railroad that had led to his disappearance. If he hadn’t become embroiled in that, had listened to the advice being freely offered at the time, then maybe he could be home now with his wife and son.

  He screamed again and ran as hard as he could at the door. No doubt those fuckers were watching, savoring his desperation. The drugs still coursed through his body and it became apparent to him that this was all a ruse, another move from the Railroad play book; that Daniel wasn’t alive, and he’d rushed into a position of jeopardy without a second thought.

  He needed to start acting like a professional again.

  But first he needed to sleep.

  The lights darkened in the room as his head fell on the pillow, confirming his suspicion that he was being watched. He clung onto Daniel’s sweater as exhaustion propelled him into an uneasy, dreamless sleep.

  He woke an indeterminable time later, the lights in the room responding to his movements. It was the sort of feature, motion sensors perhaps, he would have expected at an exclusive hotel. He scanned the room but couldn’t find any hidden cameras, yet he pictured the glamorous waitress, Clarissa, watching him from behind a bank of television screens.

  He stretched and moved to the table, where a continental breakfast of cereals, bread, cheese and ham slices was laid out for him. He peered into the metallic jug, buoyed by the sight of the steaming hot coffee. He felt refreshed as if his internal organs had worked through the poison. He was more alert and his appetite had returned. He was at their mercy - - the food and drink could contain any sort of drug, or lethal poison – but he began anyway, pouring a large cup of the black coffee before starting on the bread and meats. Mallard wasn’t finished with him yet and that gave him hope.

  He was convinced an opportunity would arise and he needed to be ready.

  Time passed but in a way Lynch had never experienced. The lights in the room remained on until he lay down for sleep and he had no means of telling what time of day it was or even how to measure the passing of time. The effect on him came as a surprise. Although he was fed and he busied himself exercising and reading the trash novels left in the room, he soon became fatigued. He tried to measure time by the periods he was awake and asleep but it was impossible to measure either. Even the meals, which were given to him via a trap door, didn’t help. He would wake from a sleep to be given a large meat dish, would receive breakfast moments before planning to go to sleep. He’d counted ten meals since he’d been placed in the room so estimated he was somewhere in his fourth day. Occasionally he would panic, worried that he would be stuck in such perpetual solitude. How long could he last like this? Solitary confinement was still used in penitentiary systems, both civil and military. He’d sent suspects into solitary in the past and their situations had been much harder than his. He had a solid bed, regular food, light and warmth. In comparison to the solitary confinement cells he’d used working for the Bureau this was pure luxury.

  It reminded him how different time was on the outside. In confinement, time crawled but for the jailor time passed by at normal speed. It was a harsh lesson being on the other side of the equation.

  It was six meals later before he really began to feel his isolation. During the last few sleeps he’d started to appreciate the silence of the room. No sound leaked in from outside and he pictured himself in some form of soundproof container in the middle of the desert. He began to miss company of any kind. He would have given anything at the moment to hear another human being. It didn’t matter the content, he just needed to hear another person’s voice.

  One sleep and three meals later he got his wish.

  Lynch had finished his meal, a lamb stew with a particularly heavy sauce, when a voice filtered through the trap door.

  ‘Mr Lynch, please can you place your hands in the dispensing area. You need to be cuffed before you move.’

  It was the voice of the glamorous waitress, Clarissa. She sounded animated and Lynch wondered what it took to remain in such good humor, what reserves of strength she had to continue behaving that way. Her voice was a blessed sound. It emphasized the silence he’d endured. Lynch placed his hands into the trap, the feel of the cold steel on his wrists a pleasant sensation. Once cuffed, he staggered back into his cell where the door slid open like a scene from a science fiction movie.

  Clarissa stood in the opening. Time hadn’t changed her appearance. She was identical to the last time he saw her, from the clothes she was wearing to the parting of her perfectly coiffured hair.

  ‘Mr Lynch,’ she said, bowing slightly, her voice smooth like honey.

  Lynch fought an overwhelming urge to move towards the woman. Such was his need for human contact, he would have happily let her embrace him. Instead, he smiled to himself imagining this was how Stockholm syndrome began. He looked back at Daniel’s sweater on the bed. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked, refusing to play the victim. The woman may or may not be working under duress, but either way she was one of his captors and had to be treated as such.

  ‘Please, follow me,’ she cooed, turning on her heels and walking away.

  Lynch followed, two guards appearing from the shadows to accompany him. He memorized the route as he was led through various darkened corridors, up and down staircases until they reached a wooden door approximately eight meters in height.

  ‘May I?’ said the waitress, placing a pair of sunglasses over his eyes as she opened the imposing doors. Beams of bright sunshine filled the corrid
or as he stepped through the threshold savoring the caress of the warm air on his skin. He was standing in a flat, desert-like area. Yellow-brown ground stretched in all directions, the landscape desolate save for a small building to his right and the outline of another building in the distance. The panoramic view was all the more special after his time in confinement. Lynch savored every second as the waitress led him across the desert, at the same time trying to ascertain his location and possible escape routes.

  They’d been walking for five minutes when the building in the distance started to take shape. It was the remnants of an old church. What Lynch had thought was a chimneystack was in fact a crumbling steeple. ‘Are we going to mass?’ he said, turning to the guard on his left who ignored him.

  The waitress stopped five hundred yards later, the church still some way in the distance. ‘Please,’ she said, pointing to the building.

  ‘You want me to go alone?’ said Lynch.

  ‘Please.’

  Lynch began walking at first surprised, then concerned, that the guards were not following. His hands were still cuffed behind his back and the movement was laborious. As the church approached, it became hard not to think he was walking to his death. He braced himself, as if he would be able to feel the sniper bullet enter his skull.

  The sound of the gun failed to materialize, and yards from the church entrance Lynch had the absurd impulse to start running. The church was little more than a shell. Light escaped through holes in the roof and the dust-strewn bricks of the exterior appeared precarious at best.

  Lynch looked behind him to see the waitress and the two guards standing in the middle of the land staring at him. Behind them he saw the outline of the building where he’d been captive.

  The door of the church creaked open and Lynch recognized the guard from the train. It was the same man who’d sucker punched him. The guard smirked as if reminiscing. ‘This way,’ he said, pointing his gun towards the interior of the church.

  ‘One day we’ll face each other when I’m not wearing these,’ said Lynch. ‘We’ll see who’s smirking then.’

  ‘I look forward to that,’ said Sucker Punch, clenching the automatic rifle tighter.

  Lynch walked through a set of wooden doors into the church proper. The interior was little better than the exterior. Scaffolding climbed the walls of the church as if holding it in place. The room was vacant. No pews for worshipping, only an altar at one end of the space, interspersed with candles but devoid of the Christ figure.

  Sitting on the altar, his back to him was Mallard.

  ‘Quite a show,’ said Lynch, pacing the stone floor that would have been the aisle. ‘I appreciate the effort you’ve put into this.’

  Mallard lifted his arms and turned to face him. ‘You can leave us,’ he said to the guard.

  42

  Three days after visiting her mother in hospital, Rose was in a Mexican restaurant on the outskirts of San Antonio with McBride. Their investigations into the Gunn and Mallard connection had proved futile. The Mexican compound Gunn had been working on was a government facility. Nothing in the files or their various follow-ups linked Gunn to Mallard in any way and they had reached a dead end. Miller and Roberts were close to taking them off the case.

  Rose had involved directly in a cover up before. Now she was being woven into a lie. The official line for the bombing at the FBI compound pinned the blame to a splinter cell of a terrorist group. Such rationalizations were easy for the press and public to swallow and they took away a great deal of pressure from the Bureau. As both Miller and Roberts had pointed out to her, they had no proof either way.

  Rose hadn’t argued; it would have been like talking to herself. She’d barely slept in the last three nights, her time spent on conversations with Abigail, research on the case, and thoughts of Lynch. She accessed Lynch’s tracking app on what felt like a minute-by-minute basis, desperate for any indication he was still alive. She understood even more clearly now how Lynch had spent all those years searching for his son, how he’d never given up.

  Some cases she’d walked away from, but this would forever haunt her.

  ‘Do you need to wear those sunglasses?’ she said to McBride, who’d taken to sporting the eyewear at every inappropriate occasion, no doubt as a playful means of antagonizing her.

  ‘The lights are bright in here,’ said her colleague, filling his taco shell past brimming point. Half the contents fell back on his plate but he shoveled the food into his mouth without a thought.

  Rose’s iPad was laid flat on the table. McBride shook his head as she glanced at it, the screen loaded to Lynch’s tracking app.

  ‘You know that thing is either broken or destroyed?’ said McBride, refilling the falling contents of his taco shell. ‘Are you going to look at it every day for the rest of your life?’ he continued, his mouth full of food.

  ‘Don’t they teach you table manners where you come from?’ said Rose, for once irked by her partner’s behavior.

  McBride was right, but how could she ever let it go? She feared the day she stopped looking at the tracking app would be the day it was activated. They sat in sullen silence, Rose contemplating the journeys she’d made ever since that day at Gunn’s house. What would her own tracking device tell her? What miles would it record? What pointless misdirection would it taunt her with? The thought gave her an idea.

  An athletic-looking waiter dressed in a tight black shirt brought over their bill.

  ‘Your turn,’ said McBride.

  ‘Ever the gentleman,’ said Rose, taking out a credit card from her purse as the idea blossomed. She paid the bill and with a large intake of breath shared her plan with McBride.

  Perversely, McBride took off his sunglasses once they were outside in the dazzling sunshine. Rose gave him a pitying look but didn’t rise to the bait. ‘So what do you think?’ she said, as they got back into the car.

  ‘It strikes me as the workings of a desperate obsessive,’ said McBride.

  ‘You mean an investigator who is being thorough?’ said Rose.

  ‘I suppose it depends on which way you look at it. You know this means we’ll have to visit the depths of the building again. I just hope to god Hussein isn’t working, I’m not sure I could face his upbeat attitude so early in the day.’

  An hour later they discovered that Hussein was on duty. Once again he was reading and continued until he’d finished his current magazine article before giving them his attention. ‘Yes?’ he said, staring at McBride and Rose as if they’d never met.

  ‘We called ahead,’ said Rose. ‘We want to examine Edward Gunn’s car.’

  Hussein stared at Rose as if she wasn’t there, as if he could see right through her to the back of the building. And then, as if from nowhere, he produced a set of keys.

  ‘Lower garage seven,’ he said, handing the car keys to Rose. ‘There were three family cars, have fun.’

  ‘What is that guy’s problem?’ said McBride, who’d placed his sunglasses back on despite the darkened corridors.

  ‘Can you even see with those on?’

  ‘I don’t talk about what you’re wearing so please don’t comment on my style,’ said McBride, with his now familiar mischievous smirk.

  ‘You know one day I’m going to take those glasses and snap them, don’t you?’

  ‘One of many pairs, Rose.’

  The number of cars in lower garage seven surprised Rose. The vehicles were all from crime scenes or taken from suspects. The value of the vehicles must have reached the millions. Automatic lights on the walls and ceilings sprang into life, sending a shaft of light onto two bright red Lamborghinis.

  ‘Are these the new company vehicles?’ said McBride, placing his sunglasses inside his jacket. The rest of the vehicles were a mixed bag, from battered up coupés to luxurious German cars used for chauffeuring.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Rose, reaching the Gunn’s cars.

  ‘Two drivers, three cars,’ said McBride.

  The thoug
ht had already occurred to Rose. The Lexus saloon was company issued from Hanning Industries but the other two cars, a sleek Mercedes sports car and fully featured British Land Rover were privately owned.

  ‘Maybe they like off-roading?’ said McBride, opening the door of the Land Rover. ‘Nice,’ he said, as the interior light shone on the white leather. ‘So where do you want to begin?’

  ‘The Land Rover,’ said Rose.

  It was speculative at best but Rose couldn’t shift the idea that Gunn and Mallard were linked. McBride switched on the ignition and the interior electronics came to life. Rose played with some buttons until she found what she was looking for: Gunn’s Sat-Nav system. ‘Here goes,’ she said, trawling through the various layouts of the system until she found the correct button: Saved Destinations.

  43

  ‘Please, sit,’ said Mallard, nodding to the marbled covering of the altar steps.

  ‘I can’t with these on,’ said Lynch, turning to display his handcuffs.

  ‘How remiss. Travis, take off Mr Lynch’s handcuffs, will you?’

  Sucker Punch appeared from the shadows. He grabbed Lynch and pulled him tight. ‘One wrong move and it’s all over for you,’ he whispered into Lynch’s ear, flecks of spittle coating Lynch’s skin.

  At another time Lynch would have considered disarming the man and sending a wave of bullets into him and Mallard, but he was still weak from his captivity. Instead, he offered the guard a grin intended to infuriate him and sat next to Mallard.