‘No. But that’s not the point. I was there. I know. And the dream police now know I was present at both of these killings – Mel and now Bernard.’
‘You think someone is trying to frame you?’
I should tell her about Daphne. I should. But she looks so small and vulnerable in the hospital bed.
‘I don’t know what to think. But it’s been . . . unnerving.’
‘You’re sure you trust Shandy?’
‘I’ve known her since we were seven, O. There’s no way I don’t trust her.’
‘She does work for BigSky.’
‘Yeah, in the virtual interior decorating department – she designs nice habitats for people’s Floopies.’
‘What on earth is a Floopie?’
‘They’re like virtual pets, but they’re smart. By the way, O, why did you send Martin Elstree to represent me? I mean, of all people.’
‘I did no such thing.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘Of course not. I know how you feel about him – you made it perfectly clear after you worked with him.’
‘He said you sent him.’
O snorts. ‘I know that I have a lot of people running around after me lately, with Muz and Jez and now you. But I’m not exactly . . . Well, it’s not like I’m this powerful person who bosses everybody around. Edgar doesn’t even stay off my bed like I tell him to. I don’t know why Martin said that. He’s out of order. I shall speak with him.’
Frowning, she turns her attention back to the chessboard.
‘I wonder how he found out about the Bernard situation,’ she murmurs. ‘Maybe through Meera, or even BigSky themselves.’
I’m actually shaking. This is all too much.
‘Does Martin Elstree have connections to BigSky? That you know of?’
‘Of course! He knows everyone there. He’s a patent lawyer specializing in tech. Half of London has connections to BigSky. Speaking of which, where do things stand with your Dream Police?’
‘Never mind them. O, I’m really worried about what I’ve got you into. I don’t even know how I’ve done it or what it is I’ve done, but someone’s tried to take me out in my dream just like what happened to Mel. And Bernard is dead. I thought he was the Creeper, but if he wasn’t, then who is? And now you.’
‘What do you mean, “now me”? I just had a fall. It happens to us decrepit ones every day.’
‘You’re not decrepit and you know it. Apparently you nodded off, and then you got up and tried to walk in your sleep. That’s what Lorraine said, and I’m more inclined to believe her than you.’
‘Thank you very much, darling, for being so frank. But then, you always have been. Does every single thing you are thinking actually come out of your mouth, or could there possibly be more that you haven’t broadcast to the world – yet?’
How can I convey just how scary O is? She’s superior to me in every way but I adore her, and when she disapproves of me I just want to crawl under a rock. But she doesn’t realise how vulnerable she is. If I don’t stand up to her, something terrible could happen and I’d never forgive myself.
‘I was not sleepwalking,’ she insists. ‘I hope you haven’t come here with the intention of hovering over me watching me sleep, because I assure you, I’ll have none of it.’
‘O, I don’t think you understand. People have been killed. Someone tried to kill me. You know the thing with the lorry and the Peugeot? If it hadn’t been for Stack—’
‘Which is exactly why I put Stack on point in the first place. I am well aware that you’re in danger. What I am saying to you is that I did not sleepwalk. So you must focus on what is really important, namely your own safety. Maybe I should get Muz to escort you back to the flat.’
‘No, I’m fine, don’t be silly.’
‘Well, you can’t stay here.’
‘Why not?’
We sound like a couple of biddies bickering. Then I thump my hand on the table and the holographic chess game quivers.
‘Damnit, O, there’s something else I have to tell you but I don’t know how to do it.’
She folds her hands in her lap. Cocks her birdlike head. Raises her eyebrows and waits.
‘It’s about Daphne.’
O smiles. ‘She thinks she’s a secret agent.’
‘How so?’ She quirks an eyebrow and waits for my answer. She knows very well how I hate confrontation; she’s not making this easy. I stifle a yawn. My body would love to give up and go to sleep. But I’ve got to tell her.
‘Your sister was in Bernard’s dream. A whole gang of . . . I don’t know what to call them. People with dementia, elderly people. They were all there, accusing Bernard of making them sleepwalk.’
‘Wow. He must have been feeling guilty to dream that.’
‘No, you don’t understand. She was really there. Daphne hacked Bernard’s dream.’
‘Hmm.’ Plainly unconvinced. ‘Daphne only thinks she’s a secret agent. It’s an old joke from when we were children. We grew up during the Cold War. The pigeons are just a game, but also a practicality for me. You know how I feel about digital communication – I like to have analogue options for important things in case of emergency. I’d use smoke signals if I could.’
‘But she told me she’d been given a mission, a target. Wait . . . are you the one sending her the messages? Are you the Agency?’
O stares at me with those cunning blue eyes. ‘She gets carried away. She was always jealous of my role in MI5 when she was stuck being a housewife. She would have made an excellent field agent, but I’m more of a behind-the-scenes person.’
‘But it’s not just a fantasy, O.’ I catch myself raising my voice and lower my tone to a whisper, leaning towards her. ‘I saw your sister open up Bernard’s back with a key. I saw her climb inside and manipulate him into the situation that got him killed. It was fully calculated.’
She moves her chair away from me a little, avoiding eye contact.
At last, she says, ‘It is terribly regrettable, that Bernard died. Worse, that you had to see it. But how can you be sure it was Daphne and not your subconscious manifesting as Daphne?’
‘Because my subconscious can’t make people sleepwalk! Because she said she’d been given a target and she acted. Are you really going to deny what I’m saying? How can I make you see . . . ?’
My voice peters out. She doesn’t believe me. She’s shaking her head.
‘The whole thing is a mess. It’s going to cause a lot of trouble for Little Bird if BigSky get wind of what happened. They’ll try to use Bernard’s death to grab the IP for your study, and who knows what they’ll do with it once they have control.’
My teeth are chattering. I still remember the way the Creeper loomed over me, how hard it was to breathe, impossible to move . . . How can she be so dispassionate? A man is dead. Two people are dead, but I don’t dare mention Mel or I’ll make myself pass out with fear. I’m amazed I’ve been able to stay awake long enough to have this conversation. Normally my narcolepsy would have felled me a few sentences in.
‘Can you do it, is the question,’ O says, still watching me keenly. ‘Can you disable R.E.M. atonia? Can you trick someone into sleepwalking?’
‘No! Of course not! I never tried—’
‘Well, Charlie, if someone is setting you up for murder then it’s in your interests to be incompetent, so long as you can prove to the police that you’re incompetent. But if the Creeper comes after you, then you need to be able to fight back. So you’ve got to decide whether you’re going to run and hide, or whether you’re going to face this . . . whatever it is, this entity . . . whether you’re going to face it head-on.’
I can’t believe how she’s dodged the whole issue of Daphne and put it back on me.
‘O, aren’t you afraid for yourself? I’m less worried about myself than I am about you.’
‘You’re being ridiculous now. I don’t even use Sweet Dreams, so how could I be hacked? Charlie, go home.’
‘All right, I’ll go.’ But I’m checking windows and scanning the room for anything dangerous. Out in the corridor, I pull one of the nurses aside and warn her about the sleepwalking risk. Then I station myself in the lobby and field client messages and write an update to Shandy, but after a while I’m told that visiting hours are over and I’m not permitted to stay for ‘security reasons’ which is code for ‘you look homeless and we can’t have that here’. I then sit outside on the steps, but a security guard moves me along. It starts to rain, of course.
I have such a bad feeling that something’s going to happen to her. Why won’t she take me seriously? Why doesn’t anyone? What do I have to do?
I go home. I take out the earring and fall asleep. Again.
Sleep paralysis personified
‘Charlie! Wake up! Charlie, it’s Roman. Wake up!’
Someone’s buzzing downstairs and shouting on the intercom. I scramble out of bed, trip over Edgar, vault over the sofa and finally get to the door. This time it’s Roman holding a brolly and a cardboard tray of coffees. At least my visitors are feeding me.
‘I tried to contact you but you were unreachable,’ he says when he’s huffed his way up the stairs. The delay has given me enough time to put on a sweatshirt and smear some toothpaste over my nasty tongue, but I’m still dazed. ‘Did you take my advice?’
‘Yeah, I’m offline,’ I say, accepting a coffee off him and pausing to inhale the smell before I take my first sip. We sit on O’s sofa. It’s weird without her here. Edgar immediately installs himself on Roman’s lap and begins kneading. Roman strokes the cat awkwardly.
‘I have some new information.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Donato has been pursuing the idea that Antonio paid for the suite on one of the upper floors and then killed Melodie. I found this to be a bit flimsy if it was premeditated, because one of the payments was routed through a Russian account before it went into Antonio’s bank and the other just came straight out of his debit card. If anything, he would need to be more careful with the second suite because it was then that matters were getting serious. Why withdraw his own money so openly?’
‘I told you it had to be a set-up,’ I said.
‘And I listened, didn’t I? I also thought about what you said about proximity and dreamhacking, and I looked to see if another person of interest could have been on the same floor.’
‘You already told me there was no one.’
He nods. ‘There wasn’t. There isn’t. But I wasn’t thinking vertically, was I? So yesterday I looked again and guess who booked the room directly below the Windsor Suite the night Melodie died?’
He’s watching me carefully. This is going to be a bombshell.
‘Look, mate, I just woke up.’
‘Martin Elstree. Your solicitor.’
‘He’s not my solicitor!’
‘Right . . . So you’ve sacked him?’
‘No, I just—’ It’s getting hard to keep track of my lies. Fuck it, may as well be honest. I fold my arms over my chest and glare at Roman. ‘I never hired him, he’s a former client and I dislike him a lot. I was just playing along because I don’t like being interrogated and asked to turn over my dream records while you guys keep me in the dark.’ Shit. And O says she didn’t hire him. Eww.
‘I’m not keeping you in the dark now, am I? Elstree is definitely connected to O, and so are you. What do you know about the relationship between those two?’
I shrug, thinking. ‘He’s been working on an IP case for her. She didn’t say what.’
‘Was he, now? I wish you’d told me this sooner.’
‘Why? Where are you going with this?’
‘Well, I checked around and ostensibly Elstree was in the hotel for a meeting with some BigSky lawyers. You know, that’s how BigSky like to work – low overheads, hard to trace what they’re really up to. So they were supposed to be finalizing the arrangements on Bernard Zborowski’s right to take his IP to Little Bird.’
‘The coincidences mount, don’t they? Was Bernard there?’
‘No. Just the lawyers. But it bothers me that Elstree was in close proximity to Mel.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Now, if Martin Elstree somehow has access to the same agent that infected you, then it is actually possible that he can dreamhack.’
‘Seriously? Then why did he hire me for sex dreams?’ Roman slams his coffee cup on the table and it sloshes over his hand, burning him. Edgar goes flying. Damn.
Roman’s disproportionately unhappy about the sex dreams thing. Maybe he likes me.
‘Come on, into the kitchen. Run some cold water on it.’
‘It’s fine, I’m all right.’ He paces around the living room, red-faced, flapping the hand and tripping over Edgar. I whip into the kitchen and run the cold tap into a sink full of two-day-old dishes. He comes in sulkily and puts his hand under.
‘You might have told me this sooner.’
‘I had no idea it could be relevant. And I was trying to forget the whole episode. Elstree is disgusting. But it’s a big leap to accuse him of dreamhacking.’
He won’t look at me. ‘I know. It’s not exactly likely that a high-powered solicitor would willingly inject himself with an infection that could cause narcolepsy.’
‘And hair loss! He’s already got a widow’s peak.’
‘But I want the recordings for review. If you won’t hand them over, you’re only hurting yourself. Not to mention other potential victims.’
‘Have you told the Met about your suspicions?’
He swings his head from side to side slowly. ‘I’d be laughed at. We need evidence that the Met can respect. Oneiric crime is almost impossible to prove.’
‘I’ve got to level with you, Roman. O warned me that you and Donato could be in BigSky’s pocket. I’m not giving you anything that personal knowing you could turn around and sell it to BigSky.’
He shakes his head and gives a mocking laugh. ‘They already have it. If you’ve used Sweet Dreams and left your stuff on one of their servers, BigSky can get it easily. Even Donato could probably get it if he tried. Is that how you want this to work? Distrusting each other all the time?’
My turn to mock. ‘Who kept me prisoner in a kebab shop and interviewed me like a criminal?’
‘Yeah, and what exactly was that performance? You pretended not to know the word “indemnify” and fell asleep at least five times!’
‘It couldn’t have been more than four. I told you, I’m narcoleptic. I pass out when under stress.’
‘And you’re not under stress now?’
We face each other on either end of the Belfast sink. He been gesticulating wildly as he’s talking. When Antonio does it, it’s Latin and sexy. When Roman does it, it’s dangerous. He has long arms and his hands are flying around randomly. I take a step back and fold my arms. He’s right, I haven’t fallen asleep. Why?
He’s watching my face. He says, ‘You’re good at acting like a muppet, but I don’t think you are one.’
He had the upper hand there for a second, but he’s thrown it away.
‘So now I’m a muppet, am I? Charming. Where’s the coffee?’
I go back to the sitting room and he follows me. He’s on the defensive again. He stands awkwardly, pretending to look at the titles on O’s bookshelves before he realises most of them are in Cyrillic. Eventually he gives up.
‘Look, let’s just stop fighting, can’t we?’
‘I’m not fighting. I’m not even properly awake.’ I guzzle coffee.
‘OK, good. Because I need to explain something. I haven’t wanted to bring this up before because I don’t expect you to be receptive to it, but it’s becoming important now that you’ve been attacked personally.’
‘What? Spit it out, Roman.’
He starts ticking off points on his fingers.
‘I’ve talked to all the sleep researchers. I’ve talked to partners of victims, I’ve talked to witnesses. And I’ve concluded tha
t . . . the Creeper isn’t a person. It’s a natural phenomenon.’
At first, I laugh. Then I realise he’s completely serious and my laughter goes cold. Freezing cold. His presumption. It makes me so angry, after everything that’s happened, that he thinks he can tell me my own business. My eyes narrow.
‘You’ve talked to people, have you? Aren’t you clever. Well, maybe you’d like to consider that I’ve seen the Creeper. I’ve had it in my dreams. I’ve had it crushing me down trying to suck the life out of me, trying to devour me. It’s a person, and it’s a bad person. A malevolent person. I know what I’m talking about. You don’t know anything. You should be the one taking me seriously.’
‘I do! I do take you seriously. Just . . . OK, I get it. You’ve experienced it, you know. But can you entertain what I’m saying for one moment, just hear me out? Please?’
I don’t want to hear him out. But now I’m embarrassed about my tantrum so I pout and say, ‘Fine, talk.’
‘OK, so there’s this thing called R.E.M atonia, right? It’s a mechanism that stops us all acting out our dreams every single time we sleep. And of course it’s imperfect – people twitch in their sleep, talk in their sleep, even do coherent things like walk around and try to perform everyday actions. But it’s just a physical mechanism. Think of it like the brain taking itself offline to work on problems internally, without actually putting the body at risk. That’s what dreaming is.’
‘Thanks for the mansplanation, bruv. Mel’s problem was that she should have had R.E.M. atonia and stayed in bed, but she didn’t.’
‘Exactly. She was engaging in high-level organised movements and responses while dreaming. But there’s more. There’s a thing called sleep paralysis. It’s a phenomenon that’s been observed and recorded for centuries, to the point where it’s become a cultural archetype, personified as a villain in fairy tales and horror movies. The dark, hooded presence. The white-faced stranger in black robes. Death itself. This is what you describe as the Creeper.’
‘You make it sound like a cliché, but it’s not like that, Roman.’
‘I’m sure it’s not. Listen. A person will wake up and find they can’t move a muscle. They sense a presence nearby. Sometimes the presence is on top of them and they can’t breathe – they are being suffocated. This presence has been given different names, but in the last twenty years it’s been known colloquially as the Stranger. And I’m telling you, the Stranger is the Creeper. The feeling of not being able to move. The dark presence with the white face. The sense of creeping malevolence. They’re all classic. The dreamer interprets the loss of motor control as a supernatural entity that intends them harm.’
Sweet Dreams Page 21
