The Unseen

by James McKenna

  “I need five, twenty minute lessons. You got ’em at fifty a lesson.”

  “The earliest slot is two weeks,” the pro said, his mouth opening when Zoby dropped a hundred euro note on the table. “But I see here a cancellation, 11 a.m. tomorrow, OK?”

  “I need changing room facilities,” Zoby said and watched the pro write out a receipt.

  “Show this to Reception. She’ll take care of things.”

  Zoby whistled as he drove and felt the sunshine on his day. He bought a guidebook on nearby country houses and found what he needed on his third visit. Standing in the parking area late afternoon, he surveyed the near deserted ground and surrounding forest, then hoisting a large holdall, he began to explore. At the end of a side path bordered by trees, he came to a walled garden with derelict greenhouses. The place looked neglected by estate workers; a lonely place, closed and silent save for birds.

  Standing for a moment, he listened to the harsh escape of his breath. “This is it, Katherine,” he whispered aloud. “The place where you get to be a woman. Mind, you got to show me your spirit first. Show your fire and what you got.”

  Under the lichen-coated glass of the furthest greenhouse he set to work clearing a space and hammering in four heavy wooden stakes, he whistled as he laboured, as tuneless as his thoughts. He hid the bag behind potting trays. It contained the scissors, the butchers’ knives, protective clothing, rubber boots, rope and masking tape. It was everything he needed for interrogating a hostile. That evening he went early to bed, went to sleep thinking of Katherine and her white veil.

  Next day continued its sunny, balmy weather. Zoby felt calm and confident. Dressed in blazer and flannels, his face disguised, he presented himself at the golf club reception desk. His acquired day-pass gave access to the changing room, a clean, timber-clad place with a rear exit to the first tee. He nodded greeting to a couple of elderly members then sat fussing with his bag of kit, waiting for them to finish dressing and leave. Forty seconds later he had broken into three lockers. He felt the jagged rush of adrenalin as he searched. People were outside, people who could catch him. He found a heavy bunch of keys but as a precaution, he opened two further lockers, feeling in pockets, locating another car key then a third. At the first sound of voices from the corridor, he retrieved his bag and exited by the course entrance. He felt lucky, felt his breath calm as he approached the car park and pressed unlock on the first key. The hazard lights of a 3 series BMW blink their greeting and brought his contempt. “Too small,” he sneered. The second key flashed the lights of a Mercedes S Class 500. “Yes!” Zoby raised his fist and switched on his head radio. “Transportation for mission secured, Colonel. Making strategic withdrawal.” A minute later he was on the road to Dublin. He whistled as he drove, the mission was looking good, the Mercedes gliding like glass.

  CHAPTER 8

  Sean grunted, his eyes closed, his fingers resting against his forehead as he assessed and collated evidence relating to Poor Girl. Something sick had crawled from the darker side of humanity. It was his job to eradicate it. He drew on professional detachment to keep rational, but it didn’t stop a powerful desire to put a bullet in this person. He would not fail on this one, must not fail.

  The first progress briefing was at 10.00 hours. It was a relief when the time came.

  Blue Team sat in silence, emitting an odour of cigarette smoke, beer, perfume and close body confinement. Across the room Victoria Lawless leant back to wall by an open window, her expression flickering defensive hostility. How she had found their address or gained knowledge of the meeting from clamped-jaw Heidi, Sean found a credit to her ingenuity.

  He placed his briefcase by the Nobo board and sat on a table. “Welcome team to this bright and sunny morning. For those who have never met, may I introduce our MI5 Liaison Officer, Victoria Lawless.”

  The response came in a shuffle of chairs and a few grunts.

  “Hi,” Victoria answered, her hand sweeping to the assembly, her expression unchanged.

  Sean cleared his throat and tried a different approach. “As a DI with Met CID, Victoria investigated the London murders. She’s volunteered information vital to our operation. Please consider her a team member.”

  Again a chair scraped.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Victoria said. “I do buy my round.”

  “On this team, bribery gets you everywhere,” Jan winked.

  Victoria smiled. “Spooks at MI5 can be useful,” she said. “Mistrust and rivalry lead to a lot of cross-references being neglected or hidden. During this op I’d like to prove co-operation and trust between services can work for the benefit of all. I’ve been Wendy on the beat, CID and SOCA. The game rules at the Box, MI5, are also tight, but they have a different field of play. Off the record, I can access information this team would normally be denied.”

  “And buy your own round, sounds too good to be true.” Simmy stretched long legs towards her.

  “Prove it,” Diane said.

  “There’s a positive DNA match between the sexual assaults on Helen Carter, Lizzie Sinclair, and Sarah Finch.”

  “How come it’s not on record?”

  “Ask Creech.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Spooks have secrets, as I’m sure you have too, Diane.”

  “Thanks for sharing yours.”

  Sean watched Victoria lean to retaliate and intervened. “It’s on record now,” he said. “Victoria has saved a lot of groundwork and given this enquiry a head start. Which means you can spend more time on our other objective, Operation Back Door. In all honesty, I don’t think Poor Girl is involved with organised crime. These murders are too savage. Unless of course, we have a sado-psychopath as hit-man. It is not unknown. We roll with Sarah Finch. Diane,” he called and waved her to the floor. She rose, arms folded over her bosoms.

  “As expected, Suffolk CID regarded us as city posers. However, after Simmy bought two of them lunch and a couple of pints they did show us the file.”

  “Simmy spent his own money?” Jan was pointing, mimicking shock. The others clapped.

  Sean waved all to silence and let Diane continue.

  “The file revealed little, but we did lift names and addresses. We interviewed two of her girlfriends, plus Ben, the boy who did her garden. He was, and still is, prime suspect. My first impressions say he’s a good-looking, but harmless country boy. Sarah was the kind of woman Simmy dreams of - model looks, intelligent, successful and single. Her house will sell for over two million. She had tennis courts and a Ferrari. The business, Finch Distribution, is valued at seven million.”

  “The car,” Simmy said. “Men are suckers for a fast car.”

  “Perhaps because of guys like Simmy, she had no known close relationships with any men. She satisfied basic instincts using the gardener, though I doubt her circle ever suspected. For a better insight, I pushed the gardener on sex. He told me one thing the Suffolk boys didn’t get. Sometimes Sarah liked to go out of the ordinary, way out. Role-playing, but mainly sex in the open, places where others might see. The boy complied, anything she wanted. But he wasn’t invited on her last trip. His alibi is ninety-nine percent. My point is, this unconventional trait of Sarah’s may have been the reason she went alone to Rattlers Wood, maybe looking for unusual sex in unusual circumstances. Maybe she met someone over the Internet. Outside of sex and business, all other energies were spent on horse riding and computer games. She was the principal sales distributor for a number of leading software companies, including Starways Systems and PKL, for whom she distributed through a network of home-based agents. According to her parents, she spent hours playing PKL computer games. She became league champion. But then she also sold them, so her efforts could have been for publicity. Starways your probably know of. PKL stands for Princess Kay-ling, reputedly Britain’s number one bestseller. They have a second, Killing Field. Half the kids in England play PKL.”

  Sean wrote PKL on the Nobo board but his thoughts were on Sophie a
nd her yellow game box, on Danielle and her agency connections. For a moment he hesitated, not speaking, caught in a vague sense of unease over links between family and crime. Too remote a connection, he thought. A thousand games outlets and half the kids in England gave PKL a squeaky clean guarantee.

  “No one knows why Sarah went walking alone in the woods,” Diane said. “But my guess is, she met someone over the Internet, someone she came to trust.”

  “That could link with Lizzie Sinclair’s visit to a derelict graveyard,” Sean said, and wrote Internet and trust on the board.

  “Sarah Finch was aware of personal safety,” Simmy added. “Her house was seriously alarmed. She trained in unarmed combat. Didn’t take chances.”

  “Nice day, solitary walk. One of life’s pleasures,” Jan said. “If she was confident in her physical defence, tripping a little sex amongst the bluebells might appeal.”

  “I’d ask another question.” Victoria’s voice came from the back. “She was a horsy lady, if she wanted solitude, wouldn’t she have been riding on a horse? If she wanted excitement, how about Lady Godiva? It’s a lot safer than walking to meet a stranger.”

  Diane nodded. “Agreed. I just can’t see a woman of that intelligence going to meet a stranger. If the toy-boy is out of it, whomever she met spent a long time building her confidence. It was someone she trusted.”

  “Did you see her diaries?” Sean asked, glancing between the two women, hoping he saw amnesty.

  “All on a laptop. Suffolk CID had a look, nothing suspicious.”

  “Then we’ll look.”

  “Parents have it,” Simmy said

  “Sweet talk them. What’s on Helen Carter?”

  “The Creech mob refused entry passed the gate,” Jan said. “We went straight to the mother. You wouldn’t believe Chad had such a honeyed-tongue. She even gave him tea and biscuits.”

  “I told you, Jan. Little old ladies are my speciality.” He grinned at her. “I could sweet talk you, if you wanted.”

  Jan flicked two fingers and continued. “Helen Carter had a degree in public relations, had television beauty, a healthy bank account and a luxury house in Richmond. Declaring herself lesbian brought a lot of media attention and hence contracts. Her mother said she was simply waiting for the right man, but in truth she always had regular girlfriends, had planned for one to stay over the fatal weekend, but cancelled. It was her last known contact. She suffered three days of sexual abuse and torture. You mentioned earlier a psycho sadist. That’s a bland description of the person who killed her.”

  “The mother is still deeply affected,” Chad said, smile absent. “But she volunteered the names and telephone numbers of Helen’s best friends, all women. Several admitted relationships but more interesting, all said Helen’s main relaxation was interactive computer games. She played for hours. Computer games go right through this whole enquiry, boss.”

  “Can you get hold of her personal computer? We need to look at hard drives here.”

  “If the little old lady has it, I’ll get it.” Chad grinned.

  Sean wrote computer games and put a times three. “Ali, Bob, what did you find on Sinclair?”

  “Asking Creech for his bollocks would have been easier,” Ali said. “With us and Jan at his door, the portcullis came down, end of story. The caretaker at the flats however, thought we were part of the Creech mob. Sinclair’s death provided his fifteen minutes of glory. We got the grand tour – description of the blood, the gore, where Sinclair fell, how he found him, his need for counselling. The flat that Sinclair went out of is still unoccupied. Gets the odd dosser and the estate head- bangers, but generally remains as left. The windows are partially boarded, part broken, as is the window in question. When asked about it, the caretaker went quiet, as if we should know. That’s when he realised we weren’t who he thought. Says something about the Creech influence. The window is centrally pivotal, but removable. The guy said it was fixed at the time. You wouldn’t fall accidentally. To jump you’d need to go sideways or push up on the sill to tip headfirst, not the sort of window a suicide might choose. A suicide would stand or sit face to the drop. That’s not possible with this window, unless, of course, you were drunk and thought you could twist around. Or you were pushed.”

  “Any reason why he would be there?”

  “Caretaker said Sinclair had visited several times. He thought the guy was suffering from drunken emotions. From the flat you look down over the graveyard. You can see the clearing where his daughter died. Real sad.”

  Richard Caswell wore a wide-striped city suit. Sitting in the display hall of his Milton Keynes industrial unit he watched potential shareholders tilt and swing in the twenty game seats occupying the central floor. Synchronized shrieks from players came with each sudden sway of their chairs, their faces hidden by wraparound DVD visors, their hands working controls set in the broad armrests.

  Faulkner, his programme director, moved between players and without their knowledge, observed any female whose skirt was too immodest to cope with the chairs’ tilting gyrations. Richard kept his own eyes on Mrs Zellar. She wore trousers but she had spoken of a possible one million investment. To Richard that was far more interesting than all the other punters together.

  A combined shriek from the people before him signalled the DVD ending, their seats momentary tilted high and sideways. Behind their visors, quadraphonic sound blasted their senses while they sat locked in the virtual reality of a fighter plane, its spiralled flight flashing them through canyon, fire and tempest. It was a good show, he had spent three hundred thousand of PKL’s profits on the computer generated animation. He watched Snibbard, lean forward, the little wanker’s eyes fixed above the hemlines of three teenage girls whom he had guided to seats directly before his control desk.

  “Two positive,” Snibbard said and smirked. “Very tasty.” He marked their seat numbers on a pad.

  Richard guessed them to be lottery winners, too young for anything else, all of them gullible. One wore a yellow top. No need to look at her knickers. Snibbard stayed transfixed by the exposed view of their thighs. The guy was so predictable that Richard had no reservations about Snibbard’s involvement in the overall plan. A combination of lust and greed made him the perfect patsy.

  Faulkner walked back to the control desk. “The women in chairs nine, twelve and seventeen have yellow underwear.” He moved off ready to help the female guests undo their harness.

  “The new programme looks good. How many do you think we pulled?” Richard asked Snibbard.

  Snibbard mused. “A load of them are wearing this week’s colour, yellow. Idiots don’t know why they wear yellow, but it sure gives insight into our SPI and their impressionable minds. The fighter sequence has an exposure of two prompts per second demanding immediate discussion, so let’s see who starts talking and if they’re wearing yellow. I suggest this afternoon we give a one-hour viewing of our new Princess Kay-ling. Again two prompts per second with the buy virus. Any who don’t come over, we give flash drives to take home, then download the buy virus over the Internet. After a week viewing a few more are bound to cough up.”

  Richard signalled a technician to switch off the DVD show. His audience of twenty immediately ceased movement and started to take off their VR visors. Snibbard sat back in his seat. Women patted hair to shape and pulled at their skirt hems. The men tried to look macho and above it. People were smiling, a melee of voices started in unison. Only a few stayed silent and none of them visibly wore yellow. Richard pressed his monitor screen allowing cameras to survey the room and identify dissenters. He reckoned the prompt for immediate commentary had worked on at least fifteen people. In a back room his secretary would be watching, putting names to faces, changing place-cards on the lunch table set in the pub nearby. Those who had not reacted to subliminal suggestion would be isolated. Non-receptives got eased out; the eager were given a taste of honey.

  Richard stood and raised a hand for silence. “That’s our product, ladie
s and gentlemen. What do you think?” He listened to the sounds of approval, the flurry of clapping. On a swift calculation, apart from Mrs Zellar, he judged a take of maybe eighty thousand. Influencing the greedy was so easy.

  “Glad you approve.” He pointed. “Because this afternoon we have a full hour of the new Princess Kay-ling game. Give this tape your maximum attention. Soon it will be in forty percent of British homes. The potential is massive, and remember, PKL is only one of ten games currently planned. Our next bestseller, Killing Field, has already topped a hundred thousand in global sales. Cinema, television, will soon be history. Interactive graphics displayed in cyber real-time along with quadraphonic audio will sweep the world.”

  Richard felt his adrenalin rise on the spontaneous applause. This he loved. “Our growth potential is awesome. Our market share continually rising. The new share issue for PKL II will be limited to investors like yourselves, the ordinary men and women who play these games. The mental and visual environment in which you were enveloped was created right here in Milton Keynes. No camera crews, no props, no actors, just computer generated animation at minimal cost.”