by D C Vaughn
Ashton shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but what does that mean to the case? Doesn’t it further prove that the Russians are behind everything that occurred?’
Rebecca reached into her bag and pulled out a single photograph that she slid onto the table before Ashton. The image was taken at night, and showed a silver Mercedes pulling out onto a main road on the edge of Dartmoor.
‘Taken at the same time as Sergie’s car was filmed leaving the area,’ she said. ‘That is your Mercedes, Ashton, is it not?’
Ashton frowned as he looked at the picture and hesitated for a moment too long before replying.
‘Yes, but I was probably just leaving work.’
‘You don’t work long hours,’ she replied, ‘and you’ve often spoken of how you rarely do any work for Neuray any more.’
‘Rarely doesn’t mean never,’ Ashton replied reasonably. ‘Are you trying to say that you think that I am involved in what happened?’
Rebecca leaned back in her seat. ‘When we last spoke, you told me that there were two murders that had not been solved. But at the time only one had been committed, that of Sam, supposedly. The other, the Russian assassin, remained undiscovered. I thought that you were referring to Sam and James Mintram, but you couldn’t have known about his death, so who were you talking about Ashton?’
Ashton chuckled, shook his head. ‘A Freudian slip, I suspect you think, but really there’s nothing in it. I don’t know why I said that, honestly.’
‘Perhaps you could explain why it is then that, when we researched the Neuray contract with the Ministry of Defence, it was explained to us that they had rejected the technology as being unworkable and impractical to either test or rely upon for actionable intelligence. Yet you told me that it remained classified and that you could not talk about it for reasons of national security?’
‘Because that’s the truth!’ Ashton replied.
‘And the surgeon?’ Rebecca challenged. ‘Doctor Miller was arrested this afternoon and questioned by CID about my surgery. He told them that he merely handled the follow up, but that you performed the surgery because of your concerns for my welfare.’
Ashton blustered, off balance again. ‘Sincerely, Rebecca, this is madness! What use would there be in me concocting such a conspiracy? I am old, I have little time left in this world. What benefit would there be for me in all of this?’
‘Pride and nationalism,’ Rebecca replied. ‘Neuray was under the control of an American whom you disliked intensely, and you wanted the company back under your control. What better way to remove Dylan Carter than selling the technology to the highest bidder and setting up the board for the fall?’
Ashton was about to reply, but she cut him off.
‘Your involvement with the Russians is something that the police are aware of now,’ she said simply. ‘They’ve got a warrant from the Attorney General and are as we speak searching your offices and those on the Dartmoor site.’
Ashton’s studied demeanour suddenly shattered into outrage as he stood up. ‘What?!’
Rebecca stood also. ‘CID and MI6 are also involved. They’re going to turn Neuray inside out looking for evidence of your collusion with foreign agents, specifically Russia. How long do you think it will be before they tie you in to all that’s happened?’
Ashton blustered, looked this way and that. ‘This is preposterous! After all I’ve done for you!’
Rebecca stood and stalked toward Ashton, and pointed to the wound in her head. ‘Every homeless person treated by the charity Neuray created was given free medical care, and all were implanted with Neuray chips under general anaesthetic in return for cash. The survivors are on the record, and several of them identified you as the surgeon.’
Ashton blustered, shook his head, his jowls shuddering. ‘No, they must be mistaken!’
‘You’re the only member of the board who was a qualified surgeon,’ Rebecca went on. ‘You knew that I could be of use to you inside an investigation, one that would be used to hunt for Sam’s killer, but it all went wrong for you the moment you sent the gunman after us.’
Ashton shook his head, backing away from her. ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong.’
‘Sam didn’t assault me, did he, Ashton?’ she growled as she stalked him down like a lion hunting antelope on a remote savannah, Ashton no longer the towering presence he had once been but a cornered coward desperate for a way out. ‘I checked with Dylan Carter, who told CID that you did indeed report an assault on my behalf. Trouble was, you only reported it the same day that Sam was attacked, didn’t you Ashton.’
The old man blustered, unable to meet her gaze.
‘I did what I had to do to protect you, Rebecca!’
‘You tried to have us both killed!’ she shouted at him. ‘You’re a murderer, nothing else!’
Ashton backed into the wall of the dining room where a row of ornate cabinets filled with antique regalia glowed in the candle light. Cornered, he finally met her gaze. Rebecca paused within a couple of feet of him, stared at him for a long moment, and then the rage spilled from her. Her shoulders sank, and she briefly closed her eyes.
‘I don’t care about the investigation any more. I don’t want to see anybody else suffer any more. All I want to know is why, Ashton? Why do that to us? Why did you feel the need to do that to me?’
The old man stood in silence for what felt like an age.
‘You weren’t supposed to be a part of it at all!’ Ashton gushed finally. ‘If Sam had only kept his hands to himself instead of stealing data from Neuray, you would never have become a part of it! He signed his own death warrant by betraying me.’
Rebecca stared at Ashton for several long seconds, the dining room suddenly quiet in the aftermath of his confession.
‘And me?’ Rebecca asked.
Ashton screwed his face up in disgust. ‘I did what I had to do, Rebecca. I didn’t know that you would be put into such danger because of it! The Russians are our greatest enemy! I wasn’t going to sell them the whole package, merely enough to make money out of them! I intended to then inform MI5 of what had happened so that they could track the devices, watch the watchers, so to speak. But Sam stole the data and the Russians insisted that they be allowed to recover it, at any cost. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, I really didn’t!’
‘You murdered innocent people, people who had nothing.’
‘I killed nobody!’ Ashton shot back. ‘The Russians did it all!’
‘You were there,’ Rebecca whispered as she moved closer to him, ‘out on those moors, you were there and you knew that they had me and you did nothing!’
‘There was nothing that I could do! This was all Sam’s fault! Everything that happened is a result of his theft and disloyalty! Look, this is all hypothetical, a moot point, isn’t it? Dylan Carter is in custody and has been charged with…’
‘Dylan Carter was arrested under suspicion,’ she corrected him. ‘He was not charged, and we wanted it that way. I knew that he couldn’t have been involved, nothing quite matched up. He didn’t have the history with the company to be able to hide everything, only you did. Dylan was released without charge this evening, we just decided to keep it quiet for a little while.’
Ashton yanked open a drawer alongside him and fumbled inside. Rebecca dashed forward but came up short as Ashton lifted a small, snub–nosed revolver from the drawer.
Rebecca sighed, speaking softly. ‘It’s over, Ashton,’ she said. ‘There’s no sense in hurting anybody else.’
Ashton’s hand trembled as he held the pistol. ‘There is, if you’re not here to talk about it.’
‘You’re not thinking straight. The police know we’re here, Ashton,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I didn’t ask to come here to celebrate a victory. It was to keep you away from Neuray while the police searched the premises.’
Ashton cocked the pistol, rage contorting his features. ‘You think you’re so damned smart, don’t you? Even if the police do
find anything, they’ll never have enough time to prosecute and imprison me. I have the best lawyers in the country! By the time they’re done I’ll be awarded a fucking knighthood.’
Rebecca felt a surprising, deep sense of sympathy for the old man before her.
‘Then how will they deal with your confession?’
‘I will never confess,’ Ashton snapped.
‘You already have,’ Rebecca replied. ‘Two can play at Neuray’s game.’
Ashton frowned. ‘What the devil are you talking about?’
Rebecca smiled softly.
‘Call it Sam’s last revenge,’ she said. ‘He didn’t remove my chip. He merely switched off the encoding so that you could no longer access the feed, and instead informed the police of what was happening,’ she said to Ashton. ‘Smile, arsehole, you’re on live camera and half of Devon and Cornwall police are watching right now, lawyers and all.’
Rebecca tapped her forehead. Ashton’s eyes wobbled in their sockets as he tried to calculate the depth of the deception he’d been caught up in, and then he realised that it was too late to do anything about it. Ashton turned the pistol and lifted it to point at his own head.
Rebecca leaped forward and pinned Ashton’s wrist to the wall as she thrust her thumb behind the pistol’s trigger. Ashton squeezed but the gun did not fire, the trigger’s motion blocked.
The doors to the dining room burst open and Detective Sergeant Kieran Russell rushed in, flanked by DCI Stone and DC Hannah Marchant, four uniformed officers behind them. Rebecca twisted the pistol carefully from Ashton’s hand and stepped away from him.
Ashton slumped against the wall, barely able to muster the energy to speak.
‘It’s not admissable in court!’ he uttered with a feeble smile. ‘National security. It’s your word against mine!’
DCI Stone moved to stand right in front of Ashton Kershaw, who shrank back from the DCI’s fearsome gaze.
‘It’s enough, is what it is,’ he replied. ‘Ashton Kershaw, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit assault, fraud…’
Rebecca listened to the long list of charges, but she felt nothing. No excitement. No joy. No relief. Only emptiness as Ashton was placed in handcuffs and led out of the room.
***
XLV
There is an emptiness of the mind that some loathe and others seek, a silence wherein there is nothing but a sense of self, adrift upon the river of time. Those who seek it crave the solace of peace and deeper understanding: those who encounter it by fate know it as the unbearable burden of guilt and grief, the soul silenced by utter devastation.
Rebecca stood alone in that silence. The immaculate lawns were concealed beneath thick snow, the trees lined with it, the sky a perfect blue and the universe around her seemingly standing still in this one moment of time. Before her was a small plaque set into the frosty ground, from which she had cleared the accumulated snow.
In loving memory of Samuel Lincoln. Son, pioneer, hero.
‘You wouldn’t have liked the hero moniker,’ she said to the silence all around her. ‘Not your style.’
The funeral had been a quiet affair, just family and a few friends, and with the truth about how Neuray had messed with the minds of people in a literal sense revealed to those who had a need to know, Rebecca had been welcomed back into the Lincoln family.
There was no gravestone as such: the Lincoln family were not at all religious and had opted for Sam to be cremated, his own wishes, right after his organs had been donated. Sam’s eyes illuminated the world to another mind, his lungs and his liver and his kidneys all survived him still and had saved the lives of others. The knowledge calmed Rebecca’s mind, for she had always secretly believed that people were more than the sum of their parts, that something else walked with them, and that some small part of Sam lived on in the worlds of others more fortunate. Now, all that remained in tribute to his courage and his life was a small, polished marble memorial set in beautiful grounds just south of Exeter, within sight of the river.
There had been something of a media frenzy in the wake of Ashton Kershaw’s conviction for the murder of James Mintram and the attempted murder of Samuel Lincoln. The Russian agents, Sergie, Artyom and Vitaly, had been confirmed as having worked for the Kremlin, and the diplomatic spat now raging between London and Moscow was headline news around the world. That the Russians were willing to murder innocent civilians in other sovereign nations came as a surprise to nobody, but the government’s resulting firm stand against Russian intervention in the United Kingdom displayed a backbone that most thought had been forever lost in Westminster. Found guilty by jury, Ashton had been sentenced to thirty years in prison. To Rebecca’s dismay, he had committed suicide in his cell just ten days after his sentence began.
Rebecca had avoided that frenzy, after being placed on indefinite leave following the trauma of the investigation and the loss of her fiance. Now, three months later and with the country in the grip of one of the harshest winters in living memory, it felt as though her life was also frozen in time, forever imprisoned in that moment on the cathedral grounds. Samuel Lincoln had been hailed as a hero, the whistle blower to one of the most controversial discoveries of modern times, yet now it seemed as though he was already forgotten, and she was stunned at how quickly Neuray’s work had become yesterdays’ news.
Be yourself.
‘I don’t know who I am,’ she replied once again, forever since, speaking to his memory. ‘Nobody does. I thought that I’d seen everything. That’s not unusual for a police officer. It’s not often the blood and gore of the movies. More, it’s the unusual, the bizarre, the way people live that you would never have thought possible; the fetid squalor of the poor and the addicted, the confused mess of the hoarder, the lonely darkness of the social recluse. Worlds different to ours and yet on our doorsteps, perhaps just yards away from me, from you, right now.’
She listened to the silence around her, nobody within a mile of the lonely spot, and somehow she felt closer to him, as though he were listening again.
‘But it gets worse when you’re a detective. It’s just the way of things. During the course of an investigation, a detective delves deeper into the life of a suspect than anybody has ever done. In the obsessive hunt for evidence we can leave no stone unturned, for historically it is often the most innocuous piece of evidence that brings down the vilest of criminals, the cruellest of killers. There is always the truth, hidden behind the lies, for all lies lead to the truth. The law, the search for justice, is a beacon of light cast into a shadowy underworld that exists alongside us all and for a lifetime it was both my guide and my saviour. And then, finally, it wasn’t. People talk about the perfect murder. I lived my life as a detective believing, like most, that such a thing was not possible. The long arm of the law would always, inevitably, eventually, capture and convict the guilty and bring justice to the victims. Technology, persistence, self–belief in one’s skills and in the system would always triumph in the end. How could I have been so wrong?’
Rebecca looked down at Sam’s memorial.
‘Every murder is perfect, Sam,’ she whispered. ‘From the point of view of the victim, of the ones they leave behind, every murder is perfect. There’s no coming back.’
No answer returned from the silence, only the memory of his face in her mind’s eye just before he passed away, strangely calm despite knowing that he was going to his death without her. His last words, trying to support her. So few people were capable of such selflessness, and she doubted that she would ever find another like him in her lifetime, because lifetimes could be so short and so cruel.
She stood for how long she knew not, the snow gathering on her long black coat, the cold no trouble to her. It was only the sound of approaching footfalls in the perfect snow that broke her silent reverie. She did not turn, somehow knowing already who it was behind her.
Kieran moved to stand alongside her, his hands shoved into
his pockets and his collar turned up against the cold. As ever, his shaggy brown hair was in disarray, his jaw lined with stubble and a twinkle of entirely inappropriate humour sparkling in his eyes.
‘He owed me a tenner.’
Rebecca could not help herself. A smile cracked the frost on her face, knowing as sure as the day was long that Sam would have burst out laughing alongside her.
‘I really wish you’d piss off.’
Kieran nodded slowly, taking in the scenery around them. ‘Great spot. He’d have loved it here.’
Rebecca said nothing, not looking down at the stone now but instead at the wintery moors far to the west, patchwork white beneath the eggshell blue sky.
‘You want to get a coffee or something?’
Rebecca shook her head. ‘Not right now.’
There was a long silence from Kieran, and Rebecca suddenly realised that she didn’t know what day it was. Police shifts often blurred the lines, and she wondered why he wasn’t at his desk.
‘You off duty?’
Kieran shook his head. ‘Just swung by here to see how you were.’
She sighed softly. She’d been here every day since the funeral had been held, two months before, visiting once in the morning and again in the evening, as though she were coming home to Sam, clinging on to the past.
The chip that had been removed from her head had become evidence in the trial, although the Ministry of Defence had insisted that any proceedings which could affect national security were conducted behind closed doors, beyond the reach of the media. Since its removal she had felt like her old self again, without the searing headaches, binge drinking and bizarre visions. Compared to that, her bog–standard OCD had been a walk in the park, her understanding of what the human brain really was capable of revealing how controllable her condition was, provided she worked at it. The OCD was still there, but it was alongside her now, not out in front of her.
