‘Doing what?’
‘Establishing the Foundation. Recruiting others, devising a system by which they could operate and grow without being harassed or exploited.’
‘Did he ever ask you to break the law in any way?’
‘No.’ She looked offended.
‘Are you aware of him having any relationships with people from the group?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about kids: were they involved?’
‘Yes. There were kids.’
‘That never struck you as odd?’
‘People take their kids to church, don’t they? To Sunday School. This was like school, an education. Because it’s about developing abilities, you see. It’s good to start young. Children have an unadulterated energy.’
‘How many kids were you aware of?’
‘Four or five in our group.’
‘What ages?’
‘All ages. It’s not important.’
‘What were their names?’
‘I don’t know. We didn’t use names.’
‘Last Friday, twenty-four people from the group met at the Comfort Hotel. What would that be about?’
‘A meeting perhaps. A discussion, check-ups. News from other groups.’
‘These other groups – the ones from abroad?’
Josie nodded.
‘How many people are involved in the Bridge?’
‘Several thousand, across the world.’
‘Ever meet other groups?’
‘No.’
‘How many in your group, though?’
‘Around thirty people.’
‘And only Andreas told you about these other groups? The network. You’d never seen them.’
‘No.’
‘Josie, I think they’re planning something that may lead to loss of life. What do you think that might be?’
She looked genuinely shocked. ‘That’s not right,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where you’ve got that from—’
‘Something significant has happened and people connected to the group are dying. I need to speak to someone who’s still on the inside. People will be having doubts about it. Give me one name. Who’d talk to me?’
Josie shook her head. ‘There are no names!’
Belsey sat back, studied her.
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
‘So in 2013 you were twenty-five. Bit old for an undergraduate.’
‘I still had connections with the university,’ she said quietly.
‘No – I get it. You were searching for new recruits. You found Thomas Arnett, drew him in. Now he’s in and you’re out. How does that feel?’
Josie looked away.
‘Did they tell you to prey on sad young men specifically?’
‘I didn’t prey on anyone.’
‘You look for the vulnerable: students, young people away from their families for the first time. They’re the ones to target, right?’
She shook her head, fell silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘Is he OK?’
‘Fuck knows. No, I very much doubt it. I reckon he’s a few hours from dying, possibly in quite a horrible way. You should have seen the state of a body we pulled out of Epping Forest. Maybe that was Tom. Hard to tell, the way the face was left. I need to know where to look, where they’re based. What their plan is.’
She picked up a child’s bib from the seat beside her, folded it.
‘Did you cut yourself off from your family?’ Belsey asked.
‘No.’
‘How come?’
‘He arranged it according to what was right for the individual. He said we should try to maintain our Earth lives if possible. Some of us.’
‘Maintain your Earth lives?’
‘Our level-one lives; our infancies, as he called them. They were a shell, a chrysalis. They could protect us on the journey, until the time was right.’
‘Until the time was right for what?’
‘The next stage.’
‘What would that involve?’
‘I never found out.’
‘I guess the Earth lives help keep the money coming in as well. There are rich members, Josie – and a couple of them have been shedding cash like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘You don’t get it.’
‘I think you left because you knew something wasn’t right.’
‘I wasn’t right.’
‘How much money did you give them?’
‘That’s not relevant.’
‘But you gave money.’
‘Of course. Money is necessary. The richer help the poorer. Everyone’s part of it. I thought I was involved in a ground-breaking experiment. I thought I was helping humanity. I . . . When I think about it, it doesn’t make sense. I was a different person. You think I was mad. But I wasn’t.’
‘I don’t think you were mad.’
‘Lawrence would think I was mad.’ She gazed towards the window, but wasn’t looking through it any more. ‘I didn’t understand all of it. Everything is energy. I understood that. All atoms are energy. We think we’re us, ourselves, but we’re part of the universe. We waste so much energy – on useless things. That’s why most people never develop their abilities. That made sense to me. War is a waste of planetary energy. I understood that bit too. And we tried to help people, in care homes, in prison. I saw men who had killed people become peaceful, kind. And then they would help others. There were so many kind people.’
‘Did you go into prisons?’
‘Once – Holloway. God.’ She shook her head. ‘If some people knew I’d done that . . . But I was good at it. In the early stages. I was told I had potential. And the seizures stopped.’ She looked at Belsey. ‘I could see things, when we did envisioning. My mother died when I was fifteen and I was able to see her and speak to her again.’ Her voice was calm, as if recounting a dream. ‘In the training I could often guess which card Andreas was looking at.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he tell you this or did you see the card?’
She squinted at him. ‘You’re saying it was a trick. I suppose it might have been. But it made sense. I was never good at school, but I knew things – about people. If they were upset. And in my mind I’d always been good at seeing places, escaping.’
‘Did they ever talk about how it ends? When their work is complete, or something stops them prematurely?’
‘No. Is anyone going to find out about all this? About me?’
‘I’m worried it’s going to become public in a big way if I don’t find Andreas fast,’ Belsey pressed on, sensing weakness. ‘He may be very wise and understanding – but I think he got filthy rich off this, Josie. I think maybe he knows it’s ending, and that he can force good people to do bad things and cover his tracks.’
‘That’s not what the money was about.’
‘What was it about?’
Another hesitation, then she looked at him with a new focus.
‘To fund the new Research Centre.’
‘Yeah, it funded something. Not a new research centre.’
‘But I saw it.’
‘You saw it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So where is it?’
‘I don’t know. We had to wear goggles – black-out goggles – to go there. To stop us seeing where it was.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No.’
‘In London?’
‘Yes, definitely. It was close.’
‘When you were inside, what could you see? What was outside the window?’
‘There weren’t any windows.’
‘OK. No windows. What else? What was it like?’
‘Big. With equipment.’
‘What kind of equipment?’
‘Computers, and things for measuring your skin temperature and voltage. There are special booths. The Foundation has this thing
called Gateway. It’s a training course with sound booths and isolation tanks. The booths are called CHEC units.’ She paused for a moment, recalling the acronym. ‘Controlled Holistic Environmental Chambers. You wear headphones and hear instructions, audio-guidance.’
‘And the isolation tanks?’
‘It’s like any flotation tank. There’s nothing so strange about it. You float in salt water.’
She caught his reaction.
‘Do you think you could drown someone in there?’ Belsey asked.
‘In an isolation tank? I suppose so. If you really wanted to.’ She looked puzzled. Harper’s lungs. Jason Stanford wandering, wet, disorientated.
‘And you think it was in London?’ he said.
‘Definitely. I think, maybe . . . maybe that’s where Majorana is based. A couple of people thought that. You know, gossip.’
‘Any idea which bit of London?’
She shook her head.
‘How often did you go there?’
‘Just once. It was new. I visited just before leaving.’
‘Something happened there, didn’t it – to make you leave?’
‘No.’
‘What happened there?’
‘We had the experiences.’ She looked at the DVD clock, at Belsey, imploring.
‘The experiences.’
‘Please . . .’
‘Come on, Josie. What did the experiences involve?’
‘I couldn’t describe. Honestly, honestly – I wish I could. They were . . . I don’t know how he did it. It was terrifying. And amazing, and . . . god. I don’t know what they were.’
‘Consume anything narcotic to engender these experiences?’
‘I don’t know what we consumed. There were drinks we had. Different ones. They were definitely part of it.’
‘This occurred at the Research Centre.’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you drive there from?’
‘They picked me up from where I was living. Golders Green.’
‘How long do you think you were driving for?’
‘Maybe twenty minutes.’
‘Into town?’
‘I don’t know. I thought so. I’m happy now,’ she said. ‘I’m in such a different place.’
‘Good.’
‘We just moved here. My family’s nearby. And Lawrence, of course. I don’t know. I was . . . It feels like so long ago. Really.’
‘Call me if there’s anything else,’ Belsey said, getting to his feet. He tore a corner from one of the CCTV print-outs, wrote his number for her. She took it, but didn’t look at it. He gathered the rest of the papers from the coffee table.
‘I got carried away a bit. That’s all.’
‘I know.’
He left the house. A vehicle started moving as he stepped out: black, four-door, maybe a Saab. It turned the corner before he got a proper look.
35
BELSEY GOT BACK INTO THE Bentley and parked around the corner, waiting in case the Saab returned. He thought through what he’d heard. Josie Christie believed the Bridge had several thousand members across the world. He wasn’t so sure. But there had been one international attendee at the Comfort Hotel. So what was the Dutch government doing getting involved?
He looked through the Comfort images he’d just shown Josie. There was the Europcar Toyota. But he’d never seen anyone get out of it. It was just watching. Lindy Voskuil remained in the car.
And she hadn’t come up online in any departmental searches. So, working on something sensitive? Intelligence gathering? An elite department; one that didn’t want its employees advertised.
It had to connect to Spier and the Mail’s mystery woman. Last Wednesday Dutch police picked her up near a research institute. Did that provoke an investigation that necessitated the skills of Lindy Voskuil? Did they have any idea what was going on? The mounting body count – its connection with the Chloe Burlington murder, with Amber Knight? Belsey could imagine the slow bureaucratic workings only too well. He was on his own.
A car pulled up outside Josie Christie’s. Belsey tensed. It wasn’t the Saab. A metallic-grey BMW. A man got out, took a case from the back seat. Lawrence.
She opened the door before he reached the threshold. Kissed him. Shut the door. The house sat there, ominously quiet; identical to the rest. But different. It contained someone who’d been picked out. It had the glow of possibilities. Someone had touched it with possibility.
Majorana.
Most organisations are a pyramid. But a pyramid needs each layer if it’s going to stand up. For the Bridge Foundation, lines of power would have to lead upwards, through the mentors, the recruiters. A group is vulnerable where it touches the outside world. The moment to focus on was when the group met the outside, when truth crashed into someone’s life and carried them off.
He thought about what Thomas Arnett’s father had said: He sounded OK. But not entirely himself. People who came into contact with the Bridge changed. There was that fracture in their lives dividing a disappointing past from a future of infinite promise. He’d sat in meetings listening to gamblers, crackheads and alcoholics trace the same passage.
Where were members of the Bridge when the group first found them?
He knew how Thomas had been recruited: Josie Christie scouring campus.
Jason Stanford? Troubled for years, then around the end of 2013 he seemed to have put his demons to bed. Belsey googled, spent a bit of quality time with Jason. There was an interview online in which he spoke of a new focus. By coincidence, that was a few weeks after he’d been romantically linked to Amber. Gossip site Heatworld photographed him hand in hand with Amber, October 2013.
For Amber, 2013 was a good year. She’d finished a tour and shot a film. She’d recorded her award-winning album, First Light. Six months earlier she’d been in a bad place. The dark year, 2012, centred on the death of her father. She was photographed obliterated on the floor of a friend’s bathroom. She threw a bottle at a photographer and was cautioned by the police. She picked up some scars.
And at some point she met Chloe. Did Chloe bring her in? It was possible he’d been seeing the power dynamic the wrong way around.
And Mark? Lost his job in the school lab. Didn’t leave his room for weeks. Then he started going to the centre. ‘Which centre?’ ‘The one in Islington. It was a way of getting him out of the house. That helped.’
What had Josie just said? Classes at a centre off Essex Road. Islington. Belsey reeled through his memories of a familiar patch of the city. He had a feeling he might even know the place. By the Marquess Estate. Not a bad spot to set up shop if you’re looking to recruit damaged people.
The Marquess Estate was on a fault line, two of London’s tectonic plates hitting each other hard. Essex Road was the poor side, away from the wealthy continent of Upper Street. It led to the estates: Packington, Barnsbury, Marquess. Marquess had a local community space in a hefty bit of red-brick Victoriana that had survived next to the council blocks. Belsey walked in, half expecting to interrupt a convocation of the Bridge.
It was cool inside, original tiles in the hallway, a noticeboard crowded with flyers for English lessons, Pilates, mother and toddler groups. Rooms for hire.
It also had CCTV. Belsey counted three cameras. That could be useful. He followed the ground-floor corridor past an unmanned canteen, counter shuttered, a table with tea and coffee and an honesty box. He wandered upstairs. There was a room with a mirror along one wall, a dance bar, a stack of torn mats. There were carpeted rehearsal rooms, one with a stand-up piano. A group of African women walked past.
‘I’m looking for the manager,’ Belsey said. ‘Anyone in charge of this place?’
They pointed him towards an office at the end of the corridor. The office was locked. Belsey was considering his next move when a woman appeared.
‘Can I help?’ She looked hard and a little weary, in a tracksuit, short blonde hair. She held a bunch of keys and a pack of Silk Cut.
> ‘Actually I had a specific question. There’s a class I’m particularly interested in. Bridge something. Something Bridge. Does that ring a bell?’
It evidently did.
‘How did you hear about it?’ she asked, carefully.
‘A friend recommended it.’
‘We don’t have that here any more.’
‘That’s a shame. When did you stop?’
‘A couple of years ago. Who are you?’
He took a step towards her. ‘I’m actually a private investigator. I’m interested in some individuals who attended the class and subsequently went missing.’
There was a flicker of guarded curiosity. ‘Would you like to come to my office?’
The office was cramped, cluttered, one narrow window behind mesh. The manager cleared a stack of timetables from a chair so he could sit down.
‘I’m Rebecca,’ she said. ‘I run this place.’
‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Nick.’
‘You’re an investigator?’
‘Yes. I have concerns about this group. I’m speaking to everyone who’s had contact with them.’
‘We hire rooms out. They ran a weekly class here for eighteen months or so. That’s all.’
‘Called what?’
‘The classes were called something like Personal Potential Workshops.’
‘But you knew the name, the Bridge.’
‘Room-hire payment came from an account in the name of Bridge International. Something like that.’
‘What did the classes involve?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Were they big?’
‘None of the classes here are big. Maximum fifteen, twenty. They used Room 3. It’s the medium-sized one. I never saw one of their classes in action. They had chairs, I think.’
‘Who ran it?’
‘All those kinds of details would have gone in the break-in.’
‘The break-in?’
‘I thought you might already know about that.’
‘No.’
The manager raised her eyebrows. ‘I assumed they’d done something like that again.’
The House of Fame Page 23
