The Complex

by Michael Walters

  At the ridge, she looked back at the house again. If anyone was watching, she would be a stick figure plodding in the sun. She reset her watch, looked down the hill and let her mind absorb the wonders of the landscape. She set off.

  The first time she met Art she had been eating a crappy tuna sandwich at a biotech conference in downtown Area Seven. That was the end of September, barely six months ago. It had been hot, and she was picking at the label on her coffee cup. Toby had sent her to see what was new: harvesters, robot pickers, genetic seed printers. She was still new to the job and already she was bored of it all. Renting robots, Leo called it. She needed the work and more importantly, she needed her confidence back.

  A broad-shouldered man in an expensive suit had come to stand next to her.

  ‘Art Fisher.’ He held out his hand.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Gabrielle, right?’ His hand was still out. She took it and he squeezed it once before letting go.

  She looked at him more closely. His white shirt looked brand new and he was wearing a pink and yellow-striped tie. Silk. His face wasn’t familiar – tanned, smooth-skinned, in his early-forties perhaps, with short, slicked back hair. Okay-looking. He had that gloss to his skin that rich men had where you wondered if they were wearing makeup.

  ‘Do I know you?’ Gabrielle asked. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t recognise you.’

  ‘A friend of mine knows your boss. Toby Shoes.’ He studied her mouth. ‘You’ve got some tuna—’

  ‘Oh! Right.’ She pulled a napkin from under the sandwich packet and wiped at where he was looking. ‘He is Toby, but not Toby Shoes.’

  Art laughed. ‘Sorry. We call him Toby Shoes because, well, he wears shit shoes. Haven’t you noticed? Cheap, scuffed, dirty. Take a look when you go back to the office. Shoes are so important. Shoes make the man.’

  He shook his head, then looked at the half-eaten sandwich on her plate. She imagined Toby in his shit shoes, looking at his cheap watch, and felt a stab of empathy for him. And she hadn’t imagined she would feel that when she got up that morning.

  ‘Let me buy you a decent sandwich,’ he said.

  ‘But you still haven’t said who you are.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ Art said, looking surprised. ‘I’m sorry. I work for Fisher Industries.’ He patted his jacket, pulled out a leather wallet and from that a business card.

  Now she knew who he was. ‘That Art Fisher?’ Christ. ‘Aren’t we a bit small for Fisher Industries?’

  ‘I want something very specific,’ Art said.

  ‘And how do you know my name?’ Something didn’t feel right about this conversation. Her old antennae were vibrating.

  ‘Let me get you some proper food. Let’s not do business here.’ He looked with mock despair at the coffee stand.

  She was being played somehow, but this was her job now. For a second, she was paralysed. Then she made a decision. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Give Toby a ring. Tell him who you’re with.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She turned away and began to gather her things, glancing at Art’s shoes as she did so. Glossy, spotless black brogues. He was putting his wallet back in his pocket, frowning. She checked she hadn’t left anything. If Toby found out he would get rid of her. Fisher Industries was global, huge. It was completely ridiculous Art Fisher was talking to her. She looked back at him. He was a couple of metres away, looking up at one of the banners hanging from the ceiling.

  Her phone rang. Toby.

  ‘Gabrielle? You’ve got to go with him.’

  ‘How—’

  ‘Get that contract, Gabrielle. Whatever it takes.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘Never been more serious.’ He hung up.

  Art turned around. He was frowning.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said. ‘I could kill you.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ He looked towards the entrance, then back at her. ‘Come on, there’s a place over the road.’

  She was shaking with rage.

  ‘Just a cup of coffee,’ he said. ‘A decent one. Ten minutes. You’ll thank me.’ And then, after a carefully judged pause: ‘It’s about your father.’

  In retrospect, it was a classic Art misdirection. She could feel the long downhill drag on the front of her legs as she approached the house by the front gate. She didn’t do hill work – there were no hills in her Area. The gyms were unpleasant and anyway, she was late enough home most nights as it was. There was sweat in the middle of her back. She felt good. The high privet hedge cast a shadow across the drive and entering it she felt instantly cooler. There was still no car in the driveway.

  She slowed. The main house needed maintenance staff. The back lawn was neatly mown, the hedges of the maze were trimmed straight – this was the obvious place for a caretaker to live. If someone had been watching them when they had arrived in the car, she wanted to know who it was. That would stop the unease. She could feel that prickle of fear and indignation rising in her again. Well, enough of that.

  She jogged up to the porch, her feet crunching on the white gravel, trying to see any movement behind the tinted windows. The door was black wood and wide, like she imagined you would find in a medieval keep, with a window set deep at head height and a cast iron knocker below it. It was a seriously solid door. She knocked three times and waited.

  The window in the door was bothering her. It seemed to pulse at her, its black reflections drawing her eye and repelling her in equal measure. She wished she had backup. And a gun. She looked right. Between the house and the hedge was a closed iron gate. Her reflection was muddy and indistinct in the door window glass. Was that movement in there? Something white. She glanced back at the iron gate. There was a large shovel on the other side of it, resting against the wall, its head unnaturally big, outlandish even, with fresh, black earth still stuck to the blade and scattered around it on the floor.

  ‘Someone’s been digging a hole,’ she said out loud. The words hung in the air.

  A scratch. On the other side of the door. She was sure of it. No, her imagination was playing games.

  ‘Come on, Gaby,’ she said.

  The road called her. The stillness was excruciating. She refused to let her fear win. But there were eyes on her – it was a physical, unmistakable sensation she had learned to trust. She looked again at the door glass and her own warped face. She remembered the dream of the man with the bandaged head. Her heart was beating hard. Her face was a swirl and she found she was waiting for another scratch.

  ‘Fuck it.’

  She bolted, the gravel crackling under her shoes, her back bristling as if there were a target on it. She hit the drive and ran in long strides through the arch, out of the grounds. She forced herself to slow. Really, Gabrielle? A shovel and a piece of dark glass? After twenty years in the force? Pathetic.

  But she was glad to be moving again, following the road and tracing the boundary wall at a good pace, aware she had messed her time up with stupid games. The wildflowers on the bank were a crazy, colourful relief. The sun was strong on her shoulders.

  Her watch tapped her wrist. Her heart rate was 135bpm. She was going too fast. Adrenaline. She had reached the first hairpin where the road headed up the bank to the forest, but she was looking for a track into the woods. There. She slowed her pace as she hit the shade. The track was slim, flat and she could feel the difference in her legs immediately. Sunlight dappled the slender white trunks of silver birch. She couldn’t see properly over the boundary wall, but she could see the tops of the privet hedge at the bottom of the maze. Then the wall faded, getting lower, as if whoever built it had run out of money or will. The path was now a metre wide, the bare earth smooth, and only diverting gently to pass the odd tree. Long grass grew everywhere in clumps. Large stumps lay open, a reminder that an older, different wood had once grown h
ere. It was peaceful, just her and the woodland.

  She thought again about Art and his initial gambit about her father. Those were the first drips of information, over coffee at The Royal – some crazy story about the War and military research. She had gone over that meeting many times. Looking back, if she had walked away, told Toby to go fuck himself, perhaps the last six months would have been different. It was the alternate history game. But after her initial horror at Art’s manipulations, something had made her stay. Not just needing to keep her job. She had met him again, and again, organising the details of new contracts, but also enjoying the gossip, the stories, the places he would ask to meet at. The fancy members’ bar of some art gallery. The most expensive restaurant she had ever been to on the top floor of Hub Block Nine. And there was more to him than his superficial business mask. Something awkward and vulnerable.

  Watching was his thing. Intimacy, but at a distance. She got that. She recognised it in herself. When he first gave her the tablets, she had been thankful, but by the third day it was as if she was seeing the world from a metre above her body, like a weird video game. He said that feeling would pass, and it did. A few weeks later she found herself after dinner one night in a hotel room, lying on a sofa, holding Art’s hand, watching two prostitutes groan melodramatically as they licked each other out on a king-size bed. He made things happen in natural, barely noticeable increments and then you were somewhere you never expected to be.

  Some days she regretted all of it, other days less so. Art’s essential loneliness was a comfort. She couldn’t put her finger on why.

  At dinner last night, she had only just managed to hold back from kicking Leo’s shin under the table. Polly had made dinner. Sea bass.

  ‘This is really good,’ Leo had said, using his knife to push peas into the white flesh already on his fork.

  Gabrielle had looked at him, astonished.

  ‘Thanks,’ Polly beamed.

  ‘She’s quite a cook,’ Art said.

  ‘You hate fish,’ Gabrielle said.

  ‘Holidays are different, though. Just trying new things.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Art said.

  She couldn’t tell if Polly knew she was getting under her skin. Hearing about Stefan in the maze was disconcerting enough. Stefan played it down, so Art played it up, making Stefan out to be a hero who saved his daughter’s life. Fleur’s face was glumly furious. She had somehow persuaded him to go in and she wasn’t happy with how that had played out. Art had left his arm over Stefan’s shoulder longer than Gabrielle had liked. Both children had left the table as quickly as was politely possible.

  ‘Art says you were in the police,’ Polly said.

  Gabrielle looked at Art, then at Leo. Both were eating and not looking up. Polly pulled a bread roll apart with her fingers.

  ‘My first love,’ Gabrielle said.

  ‘Armed response,’ Art said. ‘Serious work.’

  Polly looked surprised. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Do you like guns?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gabrielle said. ‘But I haven’t fired one in a long time.’

  ‘Art shoots too,’ Polly said.

  ‘Just a bit of hunting,’ Art said. ‘I’m not very good.’

  Polly looked at Leo. ‘Do you shoot?’

  ‘God, no,’ he said. ‘I was glad Gaby got out.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Polly said. ‘I thought I was the only one who hated the things.’ She winced, looking at Gabrielle. ‘Sorry. But I do.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Gabrielle said. ‘I’m not sure it’s a healthy interest. But you can’t always help what you are drawn to.’

  Gabrielle noticed Polly’s glance at Leo, brief as it was.

  ‘Quite right,’ Polly said. That was Art’s phrase.

  Gabrielle softened. ‘It was for Stefan, really. He hated it. Nightmares. I moved to another unit.’ There was some truth in that.

  ‘You won the Areas police rifle championships,’ Art said.

  ‘How do you know these things?’ Gabrielle said.

  ‘Due diligence,’ Art said, then to Leo, ‘Before I gave Toby my money, I wanted to know who I would be trusting it with.’

  Leo put another forkful of fish and peas in his mouth.

  ‘Anyway,’ Gabrielle said, ‘I switched to Agricultural Crime. Much easier for everyone.’ She was mixing her facts to close the subject down.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Leo said, to Art. ‘Do you know where the power controls are in this place?’

  ‘Leave it alone,’ Art said, a little too jovially. ‘You’re on holiday.’

  ‘I don’t even know what the time is.’ Leo impotently waved his useless phone.

  ‘Do we have to fix it?’ Gabrielle said. ‘Leo? We could just leave it?’

  ‘Stefan says the car isn’t charging. There’s no grid, so I can’t run remote diagnostics. I’m going to look at it later.’ He looked to the whole table. ‘We do have to get home, you know.’

  ‘You’re over worrying,’ Art said. ‘Anyway, I don’t know how the power works. It’ll probably be fine by morning.’

  ‘Turn it off and on again, I suppose?’ Leo said. ‘I can’t even do that.’

  Art looked at their empty plates. ‘Are we done?’

  Gabrielle stacked the plates before Polly could. Art took the empty bowls. Polly and Leo were talking again, so Gabrielle took the plates to the kitchen counter. She allowed herself to watch Art without censure. His expensive white shirt was tight on his neck and shoulders. He was opening a bottle of red wine, pulling on the corkscrew until the cork gave a full pop.

  ‘You shouldn’t drink,’ Art said, not looking at her. ‘Those new tablets won’t like it.’

  ‘You mean you don’t like it,’ she said.

  She walked back to the table. Leo was still talking about the power. She took a long drink to finish her glass of white and waited for Art to bring the freshly opened bottle of red.

  Her watch tapped at her wrist. 140bpm, 7km.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said, looking around.

  The woods had transformed around her, and she hadn’t noticed. Her arms and shoulders were tense. She hadn’t been paying attention. The path was narrower and becoming clogged with tree roots from both sides. There were no thin, silver trunks now – this was a much older part of the woods. Her father had shown her an oak leaf once, and there were plenty of those around her now. The architect of the house and grounds hadn’t come out here. It was darker, and she felt cold, her forearms covered in goose bumps. She had to keep moving. The path led deeper into the forest, away from the house. Only her breath broke the silence. It was thrilling, but she was ready to return to civilisation. The trees and ferns felt prehistoric.

  She stopped and started back, taking in the primeval air, the muted colours, the strangeness of everything. She had read fairy tales with forests like this. In her reverie, she hadn’t noticed the change; she had been running automatically, mechanical and sure. Now she saw the ground between the trees was no longer flat and grassy, but misshapen and pushed around by thick tentacles of tree root. The bark on the tree trunks was scabby and rough, often with grey, gelatinous mushrooms clinging at odd angles.

  Following the track back the way she came, it split into three and she stopped, assessing. Which one was hers? She put her hand under her hair and rubbed the skin beneath. She left it there for comfort. Think. She shivered. It was so cold, when it had been so warm. She wrapped both arms around herself. There was no sun or slope to help with her sense of direction. Straight on, the middle path, was the most likely one, but it seemed a little narrower and less trodden than the one on the right. Her leggings felt cold around her knees and groin.

  She went right, setting off smartly. She would only have to go a kilometre or two to see if she had chosen correctly.

  The air was still and dense. Her breaths were cold in her chest. Her watc
h said 110bpm, 7.8km. She went faster.

  A crack sounded to her right, followed immediately by its echo. She pulled up. A rifle shot. She remembered the hole in the side of Stefan’s deer and stood still, every sense alert. She had felt nothing, sensed no movement near her – of course the shot wasn’t for her. The path ahead bent left, or so it seemed from the limited view she had. That felt correct, but there was no light, no white bark, no memory of it. A dome seemed to have settled over things. She walked a few more steps.

  Ahead, only two or three metres, there was a sliver of blue just off the path. She took a step. The edge of a tarpaulin. She would have seen it if she had come this way. She moved quietly closer. Metal rings ran down the edge of the part she could see, and it was laid flat in a space tucked behind an ancient, ravaged tree trunk that must have been three metres in diameter. She needed to see more, even as her skin prickled, and her hands shook. She put her right hand to her hip for her pistol, a reflex, but her fingers touched Lycra. Only bare thigh beneath the thin material. She was practically naked, an animal in the forest.

  She stopped and put both her hands to her mouth, stifling a gasp.

  There was a knot of thin legs and hooves. Bodies, bloody fur, piled up. It was almost like one tangled creature because the structure was wrong. It made no sense: eyes, noses, antlers, legs, all mashed together into a terrible pile. Fresh blood had collected on the blue tarpaulin and clotted rivulets of red were flowing slowly in the creases, down the slope, towards her. There were shoe prints and a long knife, wiped clean. It was so close she could have picked it up.

  A crack of a twig sounded just up the path from where she was.

  Enough. She sprinted back down the track to the fork, pumping her arms and legs. There was another shot. She broke right into the trees. She had a dim thought that she was more likely to be mistaken for a deer off the path, but it was too late, and her legs were slashing loudly through grass. She ducked under a fallen tree and slithered down a shallow bank. A gulley took her left. Her brain reverted to primal thoughts. Breathing. Survival. The light was different. She glanced up. The branches were higher. The dome had lifted. The gulley twisted right. That way was filled with boulders. She climbed the bank in front of her, her hands grasping earth and roots to pull herself up. At the top, she imagined a blow between her shoulder blades, the height exposing her, so she threw herself down the other side and rolled hard into some longer grass. Her ribs ached. She lay still.