Her Mind's Eye

by D C Vaughn

  Ashton nodded. ‘Of course, anything to help.’

  Stone glanced down at some notes that he produced from his coat pocket.

  ‘We have some questions regarding a Neuray charity project run in Exeter last winter,’ Stone said.

  Ashton frowned at the detective as he felt his stomach flip inside him. ‘I thought you were here about the assault?’

  ‘You ran the charity project for six months last year,’ DCI Russell went on, ‘offering medical assistance and food parcels for homeless people and veterans in the Exeter area. Can you tell us how many people that your company came into contact with during that period?’

  Ashton shook his head. ‘I didn’t directly have anything to do with the project I’m afraid, other than signing off on it. It was an internal initiative to give back to the local community, which was created by Dylan Carter.’

  ‘That’s not what we asked,’ Stone went on. ‘How many people did the project have contact with during the period in which it was active?’

  Ashton shrugged. ‘A hundred, maybe two hundred. It’s hard to tell without seeing the records.’

  ‘And where are those records?’ Stone asked.

  ‘They were destroyed, detective,’ Ashton replied. ‘As I said, the project was a temporary charity initiative. We did not keep detailed records of the event for long.’

  Stone nodded, jotting something down. ‘The Russians who assaulted you, what were their names?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How did they get into your car?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you ever met those individuals before, sir?’

  ‘Never, no,’ Ashton said.

  ‘I see,’ Stone said. ‘How then did you know that they were Russian, sir?’

  Ashton hesitated, just for an instant, and looked up and to the right.

  ‘Their accent was Russian,’ he replied, ‘Moksha dialect I think, from the Urals region. I can’t remember for sure. Since the assault, everything is so fuzzy up here.’ He tapped his head for effect, wondering where the two detectives were going with this.

  ‘Have you had any contact with other Russian nationals in the past couple of weeks?’ DCI Russell asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have your staff been contacted by any Russian nationals in that same time frame?’

  ‘I don’t believe so, no, but you’d have to ask them.’

  ‘I see,’ Stone said, but did not elaborate.

  There was a long silence as both Stone and Russell examined their notes with serious expressions. Ashton had the sense that he was somehow being played but he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it.

  ‘Can I ask what this is about?’ he asked finally.

  Stone looked up at him.

  ‘Just some minor inconsistencies in the statements that we have been given by witnesses,’ Stone assured him.

  ‘I shared everything I know with your detective, the nice lady, Hannah? What more is there to say? I was attacked by Russian men and now I’m here. I don’t understand what that has to do with the charity service we ran last year?’

  Neither Stone nor Russell replied to him. They scrutinised their notes for a few moments more, then Stone put his notebook away and offered Ashton a brief nod and a smile.

  ‘Thank you for your time, we’ll be in touch.’

  With that they left the room in silence, Ashton wondering what the hell it was they had been hoping to achieve.

  *

  ‘Lying?’

  Kieran’s question was asked under his breath once they were a safe distance away from Ashton Kershaw’s room.

  ‘Can’t be sure, but it looked that way to me,’ Stone confirmed. ‘Seemed like he was hiding something when I asked him how he knew his attackers were Russian.’

  ‘We don’t have enough to pin him with anything,’ Russell replied. ‘Dylan Carter’s being processed but he’s claiming that Ashton Kershaw’s behind it all. Doesn’t much look that way to me.’

  ‘Has Marchant called in yet?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Kieran replied. ‘She’s been gone two hours now and she isn’t answering her phone.’

  At that moment, Stone’s mobile phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out and answered. For a moment Kieran watched and listened to the indistinct voice on the other end of the line, and then he saw Stone&rsquos eyes widen further with every passing moment. He nodded vaguely, then said three words.

  ‘We’ll be there.’

  Stone lowered the mobile phone from his ear and stared at Kieran, perplexed.

  ‘That was Marchant,’ he uttered. ‘Call the station, I want every on–duty armed officer to be ready for dispatch at a moment’s notice. She says she’s found Sam Lincoln.’

  ***

  XLI

  The darkness seemed absolute, the city a stream of glittering lights floating amid a cold, dark universe that seemed not to care. Even the car in which they sat seemed devoid of warmth, their breath condensing in the silence.

  ‘I don’t like this.’

  Sophie’s voice seemed small in the darkness, a far cry from the savage feral youth they’d first encountered. She huddled in her dirty sleeping bag behind them, having feasted on a takeaway that Sam had bought from a kebab house in town, where the men behind the counter would have little care for identifying potential fugitives from justice.

  ‘It’s not exactly my idea of a fun night out either,’ he replied evenly. ‘Just stay with the plan, okay, and everything will work out, I promise.’

  Rebecca felt loathing creep through her stomach, turning it over and over within her as she looked out over the city to where the great Gothic cathedral towered over everything, illuminated in a halo of sodium–yellow light. Built seven hundred years earlier during a time when the dictatorship of the churches ruled the land, and to disobey them was to die, the cathedral was now an architectural icon of the city and Sam’s chosen site for their last stand.

  ‘They’re professional killers Sam,’ Rebecca insisted. ‘We can’t face them alone.’

  ‘And we can’t convince the police to move on them without first proving that they’re intending to kill. We have to bring them out of the shadows.’

  ‘Then what the hell are we going to do here?’ Rebecca almost shouted. ‘Pray?’

  Sam glanced at the huge cathedral, and to her surprise he smiled. ‘You know, that’s not such a bad idea.’

  Rebecca didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The whole situation, sitting here in a cold car on a freezing night and feeling as though the entire world was standing against them, was as insane as anything she had ever experienced.

  Sam leaned over the back of his seat and looked at Sophie. ‘You good for this?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Sophie sighed and kicked off the sleeping bag. ‘Better get on with it then.’

  She climbed out of the car, shut the door behind her and vanished into the darkness. Sam turned to Jenny.

  ‘Did you manage to contact them all?’

  ‘Most,’ Jenny replied. ‘This is a big gamble you’re taking.’

  Sam did not reply, simply turned again in his seat and looked in the direction that Sophie had vanished in.

  ‘She could just flee, never come back, leave us to it,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘She won’t,’ Sam replied. ‘She’s got too much to lose, and too much to gain.’

  ‘What the hell did you promise her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Sam said defensively, ‘but she’s been manipulated just as you were by a company who have meddled with her brain. If we can get that out into the open, who knows what kind of compensation claims Neuray or the government might be forced to face. It could change Sophie’s life, for the better.’

  Rebecca’s eyes narrowed as she considered the legal ramifications for Neuray.

  ‘Ten or so people with compensation claims,’ she murmured, ‘plenty of evidence, murder – it would clean Neuray o
ut, they could lose millions. But that would bring poor Ashton down with them, right?’

  ‘Probably,’ Sam nodded, ‘although he’s probably immune from any prosecution as he has no direct control over the company, it’s all on Carter’s hands. He’s the one who has used the device to hack human brains without their consent.’

  ‘Not a bad plan,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Nothing like a multi–million–pound law suit to scare off big business.’

  Rebecca understood where he was coming from, but as a police detective she could also see the huge benefits of such a device.

  ‘People couldn’t commit crimes,’ she said, ‘they wouldn’t be able to hide.’

  Sam rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah, but they’d find ways around it too. They’d find ways to get the chips out, to alter the data, to bend the rules and the system to their own advantage. Human ingenuity is always challenged by human ingenuity. There’s no such thing as a fail–safe technology, and there’s nothing to stop criminals from hacking these chips to watch others. They could just as easily be used to set up murders, extortions, you name it, and of course nobody likes the Orwellian idea of a government watching you twenty–four–seven.’

  Rebecca leaned back in the seat. ‘They could be activated only when law enforcement had a reason, memory extracted like CCTV, stuff like that.’

  ‘You’re almost in Minority Report territory with that,’ Sam said. ‘And it still doesn’t preclude somebody hacking data to make it look as though somebody else committed a crime. The tech’s amazing, no doubt about it, but it’s also impossible to police effectively.’

  ‘We could use it,’ Rebecca persisted.

  ‘Just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should.’

  She sighed. The barrier between surveillance and human rights was always contentious. Rebecca was of the opinion that if you had nothing to hide, then you should have nothing to fear. But now, sitting where she was after all that had happened, she had begun to realise that sometimes it was the technology sent to protect you that was eventually used to hunt you down.

  She opened her mouth to speak again, but Sam silenced her by holding up one hand. He was watching the cathedral, and as she turned to look she saw a car pull up just off Cathedral Yard and extinguish its lights. They waited for a long moment, neither of them seeming to be able to breathe, and then a man climbed out of the car and Rebecca felt her chest constrict her lungs. He was too far off to be able to make out a face, but there was no doubt in her mind.

  ‘That’s him,’ she whispered. ‘The one you assaulted.’

  Sam was wearing a tight grin. ‘He’s tracking Sophie, hunting down the remaining evidence, the chips they’re wearing.’

  Rebecca nodded, aware that they had both been right. ‘Now what?’

  Sam waited until the man walked out of sight from their vantage point. ‘Now, we confront him.’

  ‘But there’s only one of them? Where’s the other one, the one called Colin?’

  ‘We only need one of them to prove our case,’ Sam replied. ‘The other one has probably split up, there are ten subjects for them to locate, remember?’

  Rebecca nodded, fearful but knowing that if they wanted to catch the Russian before they fled the country, then this was the only chance they were going to get. Quietly, they got out of the car and slipped through the silent night. Jenny followed for a short distance, and then she forked off to the right and hurried in the direction that Sophie had disappeared in.

  Bear Street was just off the Cathedral’s south side, and Rebecca could see that the Russian had made his way around the east side of the cathedral and into a picnic area nestled alongside the huge Gothic walls.

  Sam led the way, Rebecca following and clearing her mind, treating their approach as she would do any police raid on a property that could contain armed suspects. As they rounded the corner, she could see a number of heavy doors at the far end of the gardens, buried in shadows, and the vague shape of the Russian standing in the centre of the gardens. Before them, tucked against the wall, were two sleeping bags that no doubt contained homeless people.

  The Russian reached beneath his jacket as he approached the sleeping vagrants, and pulled out what could only be a gun.

  ‘He’s armed,’ Rebecca whispered.

  She waited only a moment longer, then took a deep breath and pushed her way past Sam. Then she then stepped out into plain view behind the Russian.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

  ***

  XLII

  The man whirled in time to see Rebecca raise her hands up beside her head. Rebecca saw the two sleeping bags against the wall move, Sophie peering out from one of them.

  ‘I have a plan,’ she said before the Russian could shoot, ‘if you’ll give me a chance to explain it, that gets us all out of this mess without anybody else having to die.’

  The man’s face was partially hidden behind a hood, but she could see that his features were puffy and swollen from the damage that Sam had done to him. The steel grey barrel of a pistol pointed unerringly at her as she stood alone on the gardens.

  ‘You should have died in that cage,’ the Russian replied, the strange lilt to his accent clearly audible.

  ‘I know everything about what you did,’ Rebecca went on, ‘and I know why. This is never going to get out into the public, so there’s no need for you to kill any more of these people. Dylan Carter will be charged with their murders, but if you kill these people while he’s stuck in a police cell, the case against him will be undermined. Understand what I’m saying?’

  The gunman faltered. She could see him breathing, and though he was barely a silhouette in the darkness she could almost sense him thinking.

  ‘Carter is a coward, he’ll roll over on anybody to save his own skin.’

  ‘Not much good to him if you don’t exist,’ Rebecca pointed out reasonably enough. ‘Carter’s using all of us and you’re right, he’ll fold up the moment he’s charged if he thinks he can just blame it all on Russia. He’s already got you in the frame for attacking Ashton Kershaw.’

  The man chuckled softly.

  ‘I barely touched the daft old bastard,’ he shot back, and then gestured with a nod to a place somewhere behind Rebecca. ‘My accomplice did most of the work.’

  Before Rebecca could reply she heard a grunt of pain from behind her. She turned, and to her dismay she saw Sam pushed out into the light by the man she knew as Colin, a pistol in his own hand and a cold grin on his face as he marched Sam to stand alongside her with his hands in the air. Colin’s face was tiger–striped with savage welts where she had attacked him.

  ‘If you’d left well alone,’ he snapped at her, ‘I wouldn’t have been in the country by now. Can’t leave looking like this, can I?’

  Rebecca fought the urge to smile in delight at his injuries, but it would have been a phyrric moment. With two guns pointing at her, there was no way that she or Sam could hope to escape now. The assassin, the grey man, saw Sam and he turned the pistol to point at him.

  ‘You,’ he hissed. ‘I’ve been waiting to meet you again.

  Rebecca knew that the Russian was serious and that he would shoot without hesitation. All they had was bargaining power.

  ‘You want out, we’ll help get you out,’ she offered. ‘I just want this whole thing over with and Carter behind bars.’

  The gunman facing her inclined his head. ‘We don’t need the help. Private jet waiting, once we’ve closed up these loose ends, so we’re out of here. I don’t give a damn about your plans and now you’ve saved me the job of tracking you down.’

  ‘You’re taking the hit for Carter!’ Sam shouted. ‘You think he’d do the same for you over these computer chips?’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘Who cares? Russia will get what it wants and you’ll get nothing. Your country is weak, your people are weak, Carter is weak and so are you. He won’t survive for long before an accident comes his way, either fro
m your governnment or from ours.’ The gunman gestured behind him to Sophie and the other unseen homeless person now cowering together in the shadows. ‘He was a fool to hire us to get rid of these pieces of human filth.’

  Now, the gunman aimed directly at Rebecca.

  ‘You should have stayed quiet,’ he said. ‘Now, your time is done.’

  Rebecca saw the wicked barrel of the pistol aim directly between her eyes, but then a soft voice called out.

  ‘Who are you calling filth?’

  Rebecca glanced to her right and saw a man emerge from the shadows, dressed in stained and aged clothes, his beard thick, his hair in disarray and rage in his eyes. Before the gunman could turn, another emerged from the shadows to their left.

  ‘Yeah, who’s filth?’

  ‘I ain’t no filth!’

  Another emerged from the trees behind them, as from cover all around homeless people emerged from the darkness, entirely encircling the Russians. Rebecca glared at the two gunmen.

  ‘How many bullets do you have in those guns? Enough for all?’

  From the trees to their right and behind them more homeless people emerged, each staring down the two gunmen, who were now both switching from target to another, uncertain of where to shoot first. Sophie and Jenny led the homeless horde in, closing upon the Russians, hatred in their eyes, a hunched old figure hobbling alongside Sophie.

  ‘Fifteen in each clip,’ the assassin snapped back, ‘and we’ve got two clips each. Which one of you wants to die first?’

  Rebecca felt the tension return but it was immediately broken by another voice, coming from the hunched figure alongside Sophie. They suddenly stood bolt–upright and spoke loudly enough to be heard right across the courtyard.

  ‘That’s enough lads, you can come get them!’

  The hunched figure’s features were illuminated by the glow of the cathedral lights, and Rebecca recognised Hannah Marchant, dressed in old rags, her hair a tangled mess and a police badge in her hand. Almost immediately Rebecca heard sirens wail and blue hazard lights flashed and flickered as patrol vehicles and two armed–response units screeched into motion and swarmed into the cathedral grounds. Rebecca stared in wide–eyed wonder at Hannah, who was standing her ground alongside Sophie.