by John Marrs
CHAPTER 43
FLICK, ALDEBURGH, SUFFOLK
As dusk fell, Flick couldn’t wipe the grin from her face as she made her way home from Elijah’s. She thought back to the programme and how she had voluntarily agreed to a contraceptive implant that made it impossible to fall pregnant. It was also supposed to diminish her sexual desires. However, the latter had failed at the first hurdle. For much of the afternoon and early evening, her urges had spilled out across Elijah’s studio floor along with her clothes.
She was relieved the B&B was empty on her return, as she wasn’t ready for Grace’s interrogation. Flick chose to sit outside on the patio, the final moments of the sun’s rays warming her smiling lips as music played on the radio. The feeling of not having a care in the world lasted for approximately two minutes before her calm was shattered by the news headlines.
“A top-ranking government adviser has been killed in a boating accident,” the newsreader began. “Edward Karczewski’s body was discovered washed up on the shore of the Petit Lac by locals in the early hours of this morning. Mr. Karczewski, known to friends as Ted, was reported missing after fishermen found his speedboat empty and drifting. Investigators are not treating his death as suspicious.”
Flick froze; the only part of her to move was the frantic pounding of her heart. She hurried to the radio but failed to find any other news channels that repeated the story. Conflicted, she grabbed Grace’s tablet from the work surface. Use of devices was strictly against the rules, but the exceptional circumstances justified her trawling the internet for more details. Moving as quickly as possible to leave a minimal online presence, she located a website featuring video footage of Karczewski’s body being zipped up inside a black body bag and carried into a waiting ambulance.
She continued her search until she stumbled across amateur footage taken from an alternative angle, a close-up of his face and head. It was definitely her handler. But it was his crown that caught her attention. The ultra-high-definition footage made it possible to zoom in closer to a parting of his wet hair. It revealed a solitary wound to his skull.
Flick desperately wanted to give its positioning the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it was an injury resulting from Karczewski’s body hitting rocks before washing up ashore. But it was too much of a coincidence for the man who ran the programme to have died of an injury in exactly the same position where the Minders’ data had been implanted.
She was convinced it was a message. If Karczewski could be compromised, then so could she.
CHAPTER 44
CHARLIE, MANCHESTER
The taxi’s here,” shouted Milo from the front door of his house.
Behind him, his friends slipped on their coats and made their way towards the waiting vehicle.
“Vicky’s messaged to say they’ll meet us in town for a quick one before they go home,” said Andrew, holding his phone to his ear and recounting a voice note to Charlie. “Apparently Alix is ‘very much looking forward to seeing you again.’ How many dates will this be?”
“I’m not counting,” Charlie replied. But he was. It would be the third time they had seen one another alone since their double date with Andrew and Vicky. Their first date had been at the Manchester Art Gallery, taking in an installation inspired by world religions. It fascinated Alix, but Charlie less so.
“Do you believe in God?” she had asked him, and he shook his head. “Are you atheist or agnostic?”
“I’m not sure I know what the difference is,” he replied.
“Atheism is about what you don’t believe, and being an agnostic is about what you don’t know.”
“Then neither,” he replied, a little too quickly. But inside his head he knew a truth about deities, religions, and belief systems and couldn’t share it with anyone.
“What do you believe in then?” Alix pursued.
Charlie thought on his feet. “I believe in the inherent good in people, I believe in hoping that things will get better for our fractured world, I believe you don’t need a shared piece of DNA to fall in love with someone . . . and of course, I believe in Father Christmas.” He put the conversation to bed with a kiss.
Their second date had been drinks at a pub outside town, and the third a home-cooked dinner at Alix’s flat. He had not left until the following morning.
“Tell her I’m looking forward to it too,” Charlie replied to Andrew. He wished that he were, but the reality was that he was completely indifferent.
“You could tell her yourself if you bought a bloody phone that didn’t need winding up to work.”
“I’m anti-technology . . .”
“Yet you counsel people through a virtual-reality headset and an avatar.”
As Charlie approached the car door, he took in the driverless cab.
“Ready for a big sesh?” Milo asked, and patted both hands on his friend’s shoulders. But Charlie hesitated.
“I thought we’d booked one with a driver?” he asked.
“It’s all they had and it was cheaper.”
“I’d have paid the difference.”
“Come on, lads!” yelled a voice from inside the car.
Milo continued to walk but Charlie had stopped. “Everything all right?” Milo asked.
“Yeah, fine. Look, I’ll meet you boys in town.”
“Don’t be daft, get in.”
“No, I fancy some air. I’ll see you at the pub.”
“Nobody needs air before a pub crawl.”
“They do tonight,” he said. “Besides, I don’t trust them.”
“What, the lads?”
“No, driverless cars.”
“Here we go again with your neo-Luddite nonsense,” Milo teased. “You know they’re safe now, don’t you?”
“And so are lifts but you have an irrational hatred of them. You always take the stairs.”
“Don’t change the subject. Cars can’t be hacked again, if that’s what you’re worried about?”
But Charlie knew different. He held back from revealing that there were at least two more root-access vulnerability points that hackers could exploit. The government was aware of the flaws but not even its highest-ranking programmers had found a way to seal them shut and maintain a successful operating network. “It’s just a preference,” he added.
Milo turned and approached him. “Mate, seriously, what’s the problem?”
“Nothing’s the problem.”
“You can tell me. My offer stands, I’m here if you ever need someone to talk to.”
“Honestly, it’s all good. Go, or you’ll make everyone late.”
Charlie waved as the cab exited the street, leaving him alone. Milo was the most perceptive of them all, but following his suggestion that Charlie might be self-harming, Charlie wanted to place a little distance between them. However, working together and sharing the same friends made it difficult. Sometimes in the office or when they were all out together, Charlie sensed Milo’s eyes drilling into him as if trying to gain insight into who he’d been before arriving in Manchester. But for what purpose? Was he being a friend or was Milo attracted to him? Milo didn’t label his sexuality, and his body language and micro-expressions suggested it might go either way.
As Charlie began his thirty-minute walk into the city centre, memories of his former friends inside an autonomous taxi dominated his thoughts. More than three years had passed and he could still remember every moment about that day. It had been the first time in months Charlie had gathered them all together, and he’d booked a driverless people carrier to take them to a Portsmouth football match, playing away at neighbouring Southampton.
Anxious for the day to run smoothly, he’d started drinking early to calm himself. But his nerves made way for irritation once the others arrived at his house. They were less interested in reacquainting themselves with him and more concerned with their mobile
devices and a terrorist attack being broadcast across social media. It took the lure of tequila shots and the arrival of the taxi to prise them from their screens as he shepherded them into the vehicle. Finally, as they laughed and joked, his anxiety evaporated and it didn’t matter that they’d forgotten it was his birthday; they were together again, just like old times.
It was on the outskirts of Southampton when Charlie felt queasy. Broken air conditioning and the heat from seven men’s bodies in a confined space, combined with the alcohol he’d consumed, meant that seconds after Charlie pressed a button to open the window, he pushed his head out and vomited. And once he’d started, he couldn’t stop. The others playfully cheered his misfortune as Stelfox ordered the car to pull over and Charlie sprinted along the grass verge next to the dual carriageway and allowed himself to be sick again.
He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he heard the sound of the minivan’s hydraulics closing the car door. “Very funny,” he moaned, and approached the taxi. “Lads,” he shouted as it began pulling away. His walk became a jog and he chased it along the slip road to the amusement of those inside. Stelfox shrugged as if to say that while he wasn’t responsible, it was funny nonetheless.
Tonight, as the bright lights of Manchester’s city centre grew ever closer, Charlie felt almost detached from his memory of what had happened next. He wondered how many of his old friends had been too distracted by him to notice the articulated lorry travelling along the wrong side of the road before it ploughed into them.
The force of the collision sent plastics, polymers, and metal flying in all directions, and he’d dived to the ground and covered his head to avoid being hit. It was as if someone had transported him onto the set of a Hollywood film. It was hard to differentiate between the two vehicles, mangled and melded together like a macabre sculpture.
Charlie ran towards the debris as another car lost control and hit the central reservation. In the distance, more vehicles careered down banks or collided with one another.
But nothing could have prepared him for the view inside the wreckage of the people carrier. At first, he could only make out blood and limbs ripped from torsos. There was Bailey’s tattooed arm severed from its shoulder, and Mark’s face, missing from the mouth down. Stelfox was still breathing but unconscious and separated from both legs.
“Hang on,” Charlie pleaded. “Please, just hang on.”
Hands trembling, he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialled 999, but to his disbelief, the line was engaged. Many times more he hit redial until he understood that nobody was coming to help. That was the moment his legs gave way and he dropped to his knees. He waited for almost four hours until a fire engine and ambulances finally reached that road.
Over the following months, it didn’t matter how many appointments Charlie kept with his counsellor, how much positive enforcement she imparted, or the dose of medication he used to numb his post-traumatic stress disorder. The only voice he believed was that of Stelfox’s widow, Julia. She spotted him when she turned to watch her husband’s coffin being carried along the aisle of the crematorium.
“This is your fault!” she yelled across the hushed room. “You couldn’t accept they’d outgrown you. You had to keep pushing and pushing to see them. They were only going out because they pitied you. It should be you inside that box, not him, not any of them.”
Years later, Charlie kept their memories alive by saving their voice mail messages and booking their usual table at the pub to watch England’s games. But Julia’s hatred became his truth. Her words haunted him as much as the blood-soaked bodies inside the taxi did.
And it wasn’t until he underwent the procedure to implant the country’s secrets inside him that he discovered how right she was. Many of the autonomous vehicles that collided had been selected by the Hacking Collective based upon who had been involved in their promotion. Charlie’s involvement had been not his hiring the vehicle but his freelance graphic design work in which he’d helped to deliver a government advertising campaign to promote the benefits of autonomous cars.
However, a covert inquiry had suppressed that information from the public, ruling that it would benefit no one if they learned of the inadvertent role they might have played in the deaths of so many.
Charlie returned to the present and estimated that the pub where he was to meet his new friends was now five minutes away. He wasn’t ready for their company just yet. Instead, he took a detour along the Rochdale canal towpath and paused to settle on a bench and make the most of the quiet before the noisy night ahead. He spotted at least a dozen illuminated cranes dotted about the skyline, each standing above buildings in various stages of completion. Advertisements made up many of the moving images across the sides of offices, but it was a television inside a canal boat moored in front of him that grabbed his attention.
The screen was filled with an image of Karczewski. Charlie hesitated as if he were imagining it. Then he moved towards the window and peered through it to take a closer look at the caption underneath: Government adviser dead in boating accident. He didn’t need to hear what the newscaster was saying to know that his life was about to shift gears once again.
CHAPTER 45
SINÉAD, EDZELL, SCOTLAND
I’ve done something really stupid,” Sinéad began as Doon opened her front door. It was midmorning but Sinéad didn’t question why Doon was still wearing her pyjamas.
“Come in,” she invited, her expression impassive. The two made their way into the lounge, where Sinéad attended Doon’s weekly wine-and-rom-com-movie nights. “What’s happened?”
Sinéad paced the room, trying to put her thoughts in order before she explained the domestic violence she had heard at Gail’s house and how her friend had reacted when offered help.
“Perhaps give her space for a few days and then approach her again?” Doon suggested. “Apologise for pushing her into a corner but assure her that if and when she is ready to talk to you, you will be there to listen.”
“But I’ve been where she is now,” Sinéad protested. “I know that sometimes all it takes is one sentence from a friend to make you completely re-evaluate your life.”
“As you say, sometimes that’s all it takes, but not always,” said Doon, her tone clipped. “It might have been like that for you, hen, but it’s not the same for everyone. You were ready to listen, but Gail isn’t there yet.”
Sinéad sighed and glanced around the room, only now noticing the curtains were still closed. “Is everything okay?” she asked, and took in Doon’s appearance more closely. Her cheeks were drawn and her eyes were pinkish red as if she and sleep were estranged. “Have you been poorly?”
Doon hesitated before clearing her throat. “Today’s the anniversary of my daughter’s death,” she began. “I always struggle at this time of the year.”
“Oh, Doon, I’m so sorry,” Sinéad replied. “I can’t imagine how difficult it must be.”
“The hardest part is knowing how much pain Isla must have been in before she took her own life. Her dad and I had seen her a couple of weeks earlier and we should have picked up that something was wrong. I’m her mother, it’s my job to notice.”
Sinéad felt something tug inside her head, like the pulling of a loose stitch. Her memory flicked through its Rolodex until it settled on Isla’s case file. What she knew about Isla’s death was forcing her two worlds to collide, and she didn’t know if it was making her anxious or providing her with a unique opportunity to bring comfort to someone she was close to. “You have nothing to feel guilty for,” she said.
Doon swallowed hard. “You couldn’t possibly know how it feels when the child you love believes death is a better option than the life you’ve given her. I tell you, it hurts like nothing else, Sinéad. I should have been there for her.”
Sinéad opened her mouth, then thought better of it and closed it again.
“It’s my fault that she died because I didn’t pick up on the signals that she needed me,” Doon continued. “I have to live with that, and sometimes, like today, I wonder how much longer I can keep going for.”
Doon sat on the sofa and buried her head in her hands as Sinéad put her arm around her shoulder while Doon sobbed. Sinéad recalled the photographs of the plush hotel suite in which Isla had died. She saw with clarity the paleness of the girl’s seminaked body, her postmortem bruising and the dried blood around her mouth. “You can’t keep feeling responsible for what may or may not have happened,” said Sinéad.
“There’s no may or may not about it,” Doon cried. “If I could turn back the clock, I know I could’ve saved her life.”
In that moment, Sinéad’s stitch came loose and she knew what she must do. To hell with the programme this one time. Telling Doon the truth couldn’t do any harm to it. Her stomach cartwheeled at the prospect. She held Doon gently by the forearms and stared her directly in the eye. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she began. “It’s about Isla. I know things, Doon. I can’t tell you how I know them, but you have to take my word for it that I’m privy to sensitive information.”
Doon sat upright. “What do you know?”
Sinéad took a deep breath; there was no going back now. “Isla didn’t commit suicide. She was killed.”
Doon immediately withdrew herself from Sinéad’s grip. “No, she wasn’t; I was at the inquest. I know what happened.”
“Your daughter died in room forty-six of the Loughborough hotel in Russell Square on July the sixth, eight years ago, is that right?”
“Yes, how do you know that?”
“That part is a matter of public record. But what isn’t is that the friends she was with were part-time professional girls, Doon. They were escorts, university students paying for their education by keeping wealthy foreign men company.”
