by Lari Don
“For how long? An hour? I stay out that long on jobs, and you see what state I’m in when I get back.”
Roy pulled a rolled up sock from under the chair and lobbed it at me. “I bet you could do a day. Two days. Three days. If we grabbed some money and took off for a weekend, then came back with you still on your feet and still grinning, then they’d stop bullying you. Because Malcolm would realise that you’re the strongest reader and you can survive out there. At the moment they kid themselves that you’re not the best reader, because all they see is your over-sensitivity. If you can conquer that, by surviving a day or so outside, they’d have to respect you. If we can test that, if we can prove that…”
I jerked back. “Roy, are you suggesting we experiment on me, to see what I can cope with?”
We both glanced at the door again. ‘Test’, ‘experiment’ and ‘science’ were obscene words in our family.
Roy nodded. “Just because old Billy had a bad experience with science, shouldn’t mean we’re all forbidden to study biology or psychology or neuroscience, or to test the limits of our abilities. It’s absurd, it’s backward looking, and it’s why we’re trapped in the criminal underworld. So yes, Bain, I think we should experiment on you.”
I shivered. “Please don’t call it that, Roy. But you think we should do this… thing… together?”
“Yes! Of course!”
I shook my head. “But if I can’t survive out there all on my own, it doesn’t prove anything. If I can’t do it myself, I have no choice at all.”
“That’s true. So, will you do it yourself? Will you see if you can cope out there on your own?”
“Maybe. Some day. If they annoy me enough.”
“Yesterday they made you an accessory to murder, hunted you, beat you, then tortured you until you threw up, and that didn’t annoy you enough?”
I shrugged and threw the sock back at him. “Maybe I’m getting used to it.”
Roy stood up. “I’ll never get used to it. I hope you don’t either.”
He left, his disappointment and anger still vivid after he’d slammed the door. I lay back down.
No one in the family would be concerned about emotional ripples from another rerun of our argument. They knew Roy wanted out, they knew I was useless, they knew we moaned. If they felt tension from my room, they’d just shrug and assume we’d grow up eventually.
This was the perfect time for me to think about my half-formed plan for the night, because my doubts and excitement would be camouflaged by the aftermath of our argument.
Was I really planning a lone ranger expedition to the house of a girl my family had murdered yesterday, to check out a hunch about where she might have hidden a flash drive of notes made by her great-grandmother about my great-grandfather seventy years ago?
Why was I even considering it?
Because it was my information and I wanted the credit? Definitely.
Because I wanted to show I was better than my family thought I was? Probably.
Because I might be less fatal to Vivien’s family than Malcolm would be? Possibly.
Or was I actually doing what Roy advised for once, and finding out whether I could survive among the mindblind on my own? I didn’t really know.
But if I was going to do this, I had to get off base undetected.
CHAPTER 17
Ciaran Bain, 29th October
I checked the clock. Nearly 11 p.m. Everyone on base was winding down, going to bed, watching telly. I didn’t think anyone was alert enough to notice me leaving, so long as I left without any loud noises or loud emotions.
I took a pile of cash out of my drawer. We always carry paper money on jobs, to buy ourselves out of trouble or take a taxi home.
I was already wearing black, because I usually do. I stuck the basics in my pockets: lockpicks, ID in someone else’s name, balaclava, my phone and a small torch.
Then I breathed deeply, and tried to forget my nervousness, excitement and doubt. Once I felt calm, I left my little room and walked through the warehouse quietly and boringly. I sensed the blur of sleep and the zone-out of late-night relaxation, no sudden alertness.
I reached the side door and eased it open casually, like it didn’t matter much to me. I slipped out of base and shut the door gently behind me.
No one yelled after me. No one texted to ask what the hell I was doing.
I was out. On my own.
And once I’d caught the bus to Winslow, I felt almost relaxed.
Working on busy public transport makes me ill, but late-night public transport is almost bearable. The driver is concentrating on his job, and the few passengers are likely to be reading or listening to music, living through other people’s emotions.
The night bus to Winslow took more than half an hour, which gave me a chance to think in privacy. I ran through my plan. Check the Shaws were asleep, break into the house, find the urn, rummage about in a dead old lady’s ashes for a flash drive I was only guessing was there, break out again without waking anyone up, then return home in triumph.
But I had to know where to look for the urn, or I could be crashing about their house all night.
Where do you put your dead nana? In the attic? On the mantelpiece?
I’d have to use Vivien as my guide. I closed my eyes and welcomed her in again. Regret, goodbye, apologies, grit on fingers, heavy urn, twisting the lid, cardboard box corners digging into her legs. She was kneeling on the floor, putting the box on the bumpy carpet.
Kneeling on carpet didn’t seem likely in an attic. Nor in a living room, where you’d probably put the urn on a table, rather than the floor.
She was in a dusty, narrow space. Too small for a room or even an attic, probably.
On the bus, I couldn’t fully concentrate on that moment in Vivien’s head, or I’d lose track of the real world and I might miss my stop. But I could think this through logically. Where else did people keep cremated ashes? A boxroom? The cupboard under the stairs?
I smiled. Under the stairs is where people keep stuff they don’t need that often. Christmas decorations. Summer holiday luggage. Dead relatives.
Under the stairs felt right for an urn and right for Vivien’s memory of a narrow space, with dust and carpet. So I would search the understairs cupboard first.
Ciaran Bain, Midnight, 30th October
I got off the bus once it had passed the school, the alley and the police tape, but a couple of stops before the Shaws’ street. I didn’t want anyone to remember me getting off near their house.
I walked down the main road for a few blocks, took a left turn down a leafy avenue, then a right turn onto the Shaws’ street. It was a wide road, with decent-sized houses in their own big gardens. The Shaws lived at number 31.
I passed a gate with a curly metal 79. Now I could count down to 31 without checking every gate.
77.
75.
I kept walking: hood up, head down, earphones in. Just a teenager heading home.
It was now past midnight, and there were very few lit windows. But the Shaws had just lost a daughter, so they might still be awake.
I counted down to 57.
55.
Then I sensed a quick snap of alertness.
Someone had noticed me.
Someone was watching me.
Someone awake, alert, suspicious.
Someone professional. Not a girl worried about a boy following her, nor an old lady worried about being mugged. Someone who was coldly and professionally focussed on why a teenager in black was walking down this street.
The alertness seemed to be coming from a car parked further down the street, on the other side of the road, with a head silhouetted in the driver’s seat.
Someone sitting in a parked car, on a residential street, late at night.
Someone on surveillance?
I kept walking, but moved my hand up to the side of my face to fiddle with my earphone. I walked past the car, past number 31.
I maintai
ned my steady pace, glancing at the houses, gardens and walls as I passed. I reached the corner, then turned right, out of sight.
I stopped and took a couple of deep breaths.
I’d never been watched like that before.
I’d never detected someone on surveillance, not someone outside my family. But it felt so familiar. Boredom, alertness, sudden excitement when something happens, then boredom again.
I’d been seen.
Shit. I’d taken such a stupid risk coming here.
I should just go home.
Or I could go round the back.
I walked on, looking for access to the back gardens, and wondering about the man staking out the house. He was probably police. Perhaps they were guarding the family in case of another attack, though I was sure Malcolm had made Vivien’s death look like a random attack. Perhaps they suspected someone in the family and were watching in case her dad lit an early bonfire or her mum sneaked away with bin bags of evidence in the middle of the night.
As I moved closer to the back gardens, I sensed someone else waiting and watching. Of course. The other half of a surveillance team, in the back lane.
I really should just go home.
With two policemen on watch, there wasn’t an easy way in. But I’d already noticed a difficult way in.
It wasn’t flashy and it certainly wasn’t fast. I used the cover of a tree overhanging a neighbour’s shed roof and almost an hour of painfully slow movement to creep into the Shaws’ garden. I used my lockpicks to open the Shaws’ back door. Then I was inside Vivien Shaw’s house, and I knew exactly where to look for the urn and the codenames.
And all of that had seemed like considerably less trouble than crossing Winslow with Vivien’s sister, so she could let me into her grandfather’s flat.
CHAPTER 18
Lucy Shaw, 30th October
We walked into Grampa’s flat together and the boy pulled the door shut behind us.
Grampa had left a small light on in the hall, but that didn’t mean he was still awake. He always leaves it on. He used to claim it was so the elves could see to fix his shoes at night, but I suspect he’s scared of the dark too.
I crept up the hall to the bedroom door, heard snoring, and strode back towards the blond burglar. He put his finger to his lips.
“It’s ok,” I said in a low tone. “Grampa sleeps really deeply. When we were little and stayed overnight here, we had to jump on his bed to wake him up for breakfast.”
He nodded. He trusted me. Foolish. I was telling the truth, but he’d no way of knowing that.
He pulled off his scary hat and smiled at me. “Well done. You did fine on the way here, for someone with no training. Now, let’s search the most obvious places first. Where’s his main cupboard?”
I pointed at the coat cupboard.
“Is there a mantelpiece?”
I pointed at the living room door.
“Can you think of anywhere better for storing your nana’s ashes?”
I shook my head.
“Right. You look in the cupboard, I’ll start in the living room.”
My search didn’t take long. The cupboard was only big enough for coats, shoes, a red umbrella and a pile of leaflets. No urns, no skeletons in the closet, not even any wellies.
I shut the cupboard door and went into the living room.
The streetlight was shining through the half-open blind. The boy was standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed, staring at the fireplace and mantelpiece, which were covered in…
“Books! There’s nothing here but books! Your grampa likes to read.”
“Read, uh huh, and write.”
“He wrote these?”
“Some of them.” I pointed to the line of books on the mantelpiece. “History. Politics. History of politics. Politics of history. People power. Black power. He lived it and wrote it.”
I waved my hand at the ceiling. There was no room for art on the walls, because they were covered in bookshelves, but the ceiling was plastered with posters from ancient revolutions that still hadn’t happened.
I stood to the side of the window and looked carefully out. The unmarked police car was still there, the tall man sitting inside.
I could fling the window open and yell for help.
But this boy was running rings round the police and clearly had been for days. Also he was giving me answers to some of my questions, often without meaning to. If I screamed “Help, police!” now he might get away. And, even if the police caught him, they might not get as much information from him as I was.
Once I had enough answers, though, I would shout for help or dial 999.
I turned back and watched the boy run his hand along the line of books my grampa had written.
He pulled out the slimmest one and read the title. “Black Gowns: Ethnic minorities in British academia, 1900–1975, by Reginald Shaw, PhD.”
“Nana’s in that one.” I walked over, opened the book and pointed to the dedication:
For Dr Ivy Shaw, my mother, who was a fine scientist but who didn’t want me to name her in this book, claiming she wasn’t worthy to be in such exalted company – a modesty I hope the black students and teachers of the future will not share!
He sighed. “She was trying to hide.”
When he flicked through the book, a cream envelope fell out. We both dived for it, but he got it first, before it even hit the floor. He grinned, then held it out so we could both read it.
The address was handwritten:
Professor Adam Lawrie
High Hall College
Cambridge University
CB1 2MB
He turned it over. My nana’s name and address were printed on the back, but the flap was still stuck down.
“Why would your grandfather use this as a bookmark?”
“In this book? Grampa was probably impressed she was still corresponding with people at the best universities, even after she left to be his mum and teach at the local school.”
“But she wasn’t corresponding with this professor, was she? Or at least he wasn’t corresponding with her.” He flipped the envelope back over and pointed to a pencil scrawl beside her neat handwriting. Return to sender. Addressee no longer at this address.
The boy turned it over again and slid a nail under the flap.
“That’s private correspondence!” I said. “Put it back.”
He shrugged. “It’s ancient history anyway.” He put the envelope back in the book and the book back on the shelf. “Ok, Lucy. Where else could the urn be?”
So we split the flat up.
I did the bathroom.
He did the kitchen.
I did the study.
He did the spare room.
Then he stood guard in the hall while I crept into the bedroom and poked about under the creaking bed as Grampa snored.
Ciaran Bain, 30th October
I waited until she was concentrating on her search then returned to the living room and took Black Gowns off the mantelpiece. I let the envelope slide out and stared at the name on the front.
Professor Adam Lawrie
I looked at the faded postmark. 1968.
Why would Ivy Shaw be writing to her wartime assistant more than twenty years after the research project ended?
I ripped the envelope open and pulled out a one-page letter.
Dear Adam,
I can’t stress enough that your insistence on continuing with this line of research is dangerous and unethical.
I may not have been clear enough in my previous letter. I say that Lomond is dangerous and you say you are not afraid of one small, uneducated man. So I must be more explicit. Lomond blamed me for his imprisonment and when he was released, he tracked me down to my own home and he threatened me. He said that if I ever told anyone his real name or researched psychics again, he would find me and kill me. He said that this threat would last forever. If I had children, and if they broke the silence, then his children would hunt my
children down and kill them. I believed him, Adam. He was a very convincing man, whatever his size and his education.
That’s why I left the university, why I moved to London, and why I married so fast, in order to change my name. I hid my notes, I hid myself, and I have stayed hidden. I only wrote to you because I heard rumours of what you were doing from my last contact at the laboratory and I wanted to warn you.
Please, Adam, the experiments you’re conducting are dangerous. Dangerous for you, if Lomond or his like ever hear of it. Dangerous for the subjects too. From your brief description of the limited ‘success’ you have had, I believe you are trying to force the human mind past its natural boundaries, without proper consideration of the implications for society nor of the human rights of your subjects. So I would advise you, as your former mentor, to use your considerable skills to follow another line of research.
Please be careful.
Yours sincerely,
Ivy
So that’s why Ivy was so scared and why she passed that fear onto Vivien.
Billy Reid was in his nineties when I knew him, but even then he was a powerful and violent man. He must have been terrifying when he was young. Especially standing in her own home, threatening to murder children she didn’t even have yet.
It had worked, though. Ivy Shaw kept the secret right up to her death. But now she was dead, it was leaking out.
I reread the last paragraph. What was Professor Lawrie’s research? What was his ‘success’? Who were his subjects?
I pushed the letter back in the envelope, then folded it and shoved it in my pocket.
Then I sensed Lucy jerk to a stop, her quiet search halted by a discovery. It must be the urn! I stepped out into the hall.
Lucy Shaw, 30th October
As I searched the bedroom, I couldn’t help thinking about Viv.
There were no family photos up in this flat, but it was filled with pictures for me. Viv sitting in front of the unlit fireplace, reading one of Grampa’s books. Viv in the kitchen, trying recipes from fair trade calendars. Viv bouncing on Grampa’s bed, when we were small.
