Kymiera

by Steve Turnbull

  The first stage of his plan had been partially fulfilled in Brian’s shed where he had managed to get a few things to eat, even if only dry sandwiches and a bit of toast. Once in the house he headed directly for the kitchen. The cook was there and she would only allow him a cheese sandwich. But that was fine because the cheese was a big slab of Cheddar and the bread thick enough to make a good door wedge. He ate it voraciously.

  Feeling a bit more human, or at least what passed for human with him, he headed for the swimming pool. It was the middle of the day, Delia was home (as always) and that was the only place she would be. He stepped through the doorway and leaned against the wall. The surface of the pool was barely moving, almost like glass.

  A dark form moved beneath the surface as if it were a wave, undulating through the water. The pool wasn’t big, perhaps only 30 feet, and she covered the length in just a few seconds. When she reached the far end, she tumbled over and thrust away from the wall, once more sliding swiftly through the liquid.

  And so it went on, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, one end to the other, barely making the surface ripple.

  Dog glanced at the clock; if he was not much mistaken he’d been watching for perhaps fifteen minutes before the undulations changed. The dark shape twisted in the water, and thrust upwards. She burst like an explosion from the water, showering the poolside with glittering droplets.

  Delia Mendelssohn landed on her feet. The flood of water she had brought with her cascaded back into the pool. Within moments her skin looked dry, though a little shiny. The flattering, deep blue swimsuit glistened. Delia was well muscled but not excessively so. She reached back and twisted her hair, pulling it over her shoulder. The light caught her, emphasising her curves—Dog knew it was no accident.

  Delia glanced at him. ‘If my dad knew you were watching me like that, he’d bloody kill you.’

  Dog grinned.

  Chapter 16

  Yates

  DS Yates cradled his coffee in both hands as he walked the long straight corridor to the office where he and half a dozen other detectives had their desks. The door at the far end opened with a slight squeak and allowed him through. In the last set of desk reassignments he’d managed to bag one by the window, even if it did look out onto the car park. Between that concrete monstrosity and his building the street below ran straight to the law courts. The sky had been clear overnight. It was cold and the coffee mug was not thawing out his fingers.

  He didn’t switch on his terminal, but instead stared at the blank screen without even seeing it. How was he supposed to be finding the girls without the Purity’s knowledge? The only lead he had was a dead chiropractor.

  Why had they gone after the chiropractor? Obviously because he knew something and they were afraid he would tell. And he had told somebody; he had told the Darks. But they weren’t talking. And he really couldn’t pursue that line too; the connection with the kidnappings was just too close. He’d been pushing it by interviewing Ellen Lomax.

  All right, so the only way he could proceed was on the murder of the chiropractor. A fake riffy, electrical lorries exploding: there was a lot of science here, none of which he understood.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts.’

  Yates barely jumped. ‘Morning, sir. The Purity let you off your leash then?’ Yates turned in his chair but didn’t bother to get up. Mitchell loomed over him.

  ‘You might say we are in a holding pattern.’

  ‘A holding pattern?’

  Mitchell glanced around, found an unoccupied chair and dragged it over to Yates’s desk. He sat in it and leaned back. ‘Agent Graham is waiting for something to happen to Chloe Dark.’

  Yates pushed himself back slightly and turned to face his boss. ‘He’s not concerned he’s putting her at risk?’

  Mitchell gave a noncommittal grunt. ‘How are you doing on your investigation?’

  ‘Well, the dead therapist spoke to the Darks. Mr Dark claimed it was an argument over clothes. The woman, Ellen Lomax, who was on the corner when Melinda Vogler got nabbed, she’s hiding something too. The assassin who killed the therapist doesn’t have a riffy, but used a fake one and knew how to blow up something that shouldn’t be able to explode. So, on the whole, I’ve got a lot of pieces and none of them join together.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mitchell looking away and out of the window to where the sun was reflecting off the Utopia Genetics building that stood high above the rest of the city. ‘What’s your next move?’

  ‘Get some more information and see if I can’t get some new ideas.’

  Mitchell climbed to his feet and slid the chair back to where he found it. He scanned the office, less than half the desks were occupied. ‘Well, seems fair enough, what sort of information were you thinking of getting?’

  ‘I thought I’d start with science.’

  The woman at reception had directed him to the third floor of the University Department of Cybernetic Interfaces. According to Lament, Professor Hudd was his best option for information.

  He pushed his way through the door into room 2.10. It was a small lecture theatre that could seat a hundred people. There were just three students sitting at the front with their lecturer standing directly in front of them. Yates glanced at his watch; it was coming up to 12:30.

  He couldn’t hear what the lecturer was saying but after a few moments the students got up and filed out in his direction. Each one of them gave him a look of confusion and a lack of recognition. In this place his coat and suit were definitely not de rigueur.

  ‘Can I help you?’ The woman at the front was looking at him. She looked to be in her fifties and wearing a dress with a cardigan over the top of it. The room was not heated.

  ‘Yes, if you’re Professor Hudd.’ He took the opportunity to move down.

  ‘You’re a policeman,’ she said.

  ‘You have some sort of special detector for police?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘I can tell from the smell.’

  Yates was surprised. He certainly wasn’t expecting such a casual insult. ‘I have to say, honesty makes a refreshing change in my line of work.’

  ‘I imagine it does, maybe you should try it?’

  Yates grinned and held out his hand to shake. ‘Detective Sergeant Yates.’

  She glanced down at it as if she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to touch him. Then she reached out her hand and took his. Her skin felt normal enough but after a few moments she began to crush his fingers. She went just far enough that he felt one of the joints crack, and then she released him. ‘Quite a grip you’ve got there, Professor.’ He gave his hand a shake and rubbed his fingers with his other hand.

  She gathered up her books and papers. ‘I’m a walking example of the subject I teach,’ she said. ‘But it was your lot that made me like this, so don’t expect any kindness from me.’

  She brushed past him and headed towards the door. Yates turned. ‘I’m really not after kindness, but I am after someone who could explain some things to me. Like a riffy that is not actually in a person.’

  She hesitated, came to a halt, and looked back. ‘You’d better come along to my office, then,’ she said.

  Professor Hudd’s office was not small. It would have done as her lecture room since it was big enough for all the students in her last lecture, with room for a few more. It was on a corner looking out across Oxford Road to the old university building.

  ‘A riffy outside of the person?’ she said.

  Yates was disappointed. It looked like she had a nice collection of alcohol in a cabinet in the corner and she hadn’t offered him any of it.

  She must have seen him glance in that direction. ‘And I don’t give drinks to policemen.’

  He thought the level of animosity was getting a bit much. ‘We have reason to believe a crime was committed by someone who did not have a riffy, but was carrying a fake riffy unit. Is that possible?’

  Infuriatingly she went to the drinks cabinet and poured herself s
omething that looked suspiciously like a whisky. Clearly being head of the department had benefits. ‘There’s no reason why it’s not possible,’ she said. ‘And I can see that in committing a crime it could be useful. But there are issues that whoever built it would have to deal with.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘It would have to mimic the biodata a riffy reports when queried.’

  ‘When queried?’

  ‘Our systems don’t have the bandwidth to be able to continuously track everybody, all the time. It uses heuristics to locate or trigger an alarm when someone is perhaps undergoing a stressful situation. At which point it would increase the frequency with which monitoring occurs.’

  Yates looked around. ‘You mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Why, is it too hard thinking and standing at the same time?’

  ‘Frankly, yes,’ he said. ‘This is your subject, not mine, I need to understand it in order to catch someone who committed murder, and I really would appreciate it if you would knock off the attitude.’ He really hadn’t meant to say that last bit but it just slipped out, because her needling really was getting to him.

  ‘I appreciate honesty as well, Detective Sergeant Yates, so you sit down there and I will explain it to you.’ She paused then added: ‘Using simple words.’

  Chapter 17

  Chloe

  Chloe woke to the smell of frying bacon, which made her stomach rumble. The thought of how much money it must have cost her parents barely crossed her mind. She pulled on her clothes, washed and headed downstairs.

  The events of the past couple of days were already like a dream, but she caught a glimpse of the vans still parked outside with the milling reporters moving backwards and forwards. Almost as if they were interviewing each other.

  She headed into the back. In the kitchen it was darker than she expected, then she realised her mother had kept the blinds drawn over the window. She pursed her lips. It was very far from being a dream.

  There was a plate of bacon and eggs and buttered toast along with another mug of what smelled like full coffee. Her mother must have noticed her staring at the window.

  ‘Some of them got into the alley round the back and were climbing on the walls,’ she said. ‘They were taking pictures into the house.’ Although her mother was smiling, Chloe could detect the underlying tension.

  ‘They’ll go away when it all blows over,’ she said. ‘Something more important will come along.’ She sat down at the table, picked up the knife and fork then glanced up at her mother. ‘This is for me, right?’

  Mother nodded. ‘Hospital food is really bad, and you hardly ate a thing yesterday.’

  But Chloe was already tucking into the food, relishing it going down. She had considered bringing up the question of her weight with her mother, especially after the doctor’s comments. But with the concern over her contact with the freak she thought it would only worry her more. And then there was the reaction of her father yesterday. She glanced at the clock. It was half past nine and he would have left for work two hours ago. It wasn’t that he was trying to avoid her.

  ‘I thought I might visit Aunt Mary today,’ Chloe said. ‘Do you think she’d mind?’

  Her mother was busy putting crockery into the sink but she turned. ‘Why would she mind, love?’

  Chloe hesitated, remembering her friends’ attitude with her not being quarantined. ‘Because, you know, Melinda didn’t get away from those people.’ And she might blame me.

  ‘No, of course not, I’m sure she’d really appreciate you visiting.’ Her mum glanced up and stared through the wall as if she was looking at the reporters. ‘Might be a bit difficult getting out though.’

  Chloe munched a piece of bacon then washed it down with a mouthful of coffee. ‘Well, they’re not actually allowed to do anything to me, are they? The man in the ambulance said they couldn’t touch me and if I don’t want to talk to them, I don’t have to.’

  Her mother glanced up again at the line of reporters she couldn’t see. ‘But still, love, they’ll be crowding you, and shouting questions. Are you sure you want to put up with that? Would you be all right?’ She glanced at the screen in the corner. ‘You could just call her.’

  Chloe had just bitten into the toast and was chewing a mouthful of it. She opened her mouth to speak when her mother said. ‘Don’t speak with your mouth full.’

  Chloe dutifully chewed and swallowed the toast. ‘It’s not the same, is it?’ And besides, there are some questions I want to ask her that I don’t want recorded or monitored.

  Next to the terminal screen was the photo of Chloe’s mum and dad with Melinda’s mum and dad holding them as newborns. Chloe knew their parents had been friends, for at least as long as she’d been alive, and that she and Melinda had birthdays very close together.

  Her mother was washing up with her back to her. If Chloe talked to her about it, it would be too obvious what she was driving at. But the fact remained both she and Melinda had been attacked. And the only thing they had in common was that their parents knew each other, and they were almost exactly the same age. All she had was that picture of her parents, and Melinda’s, on a street somewhere in Manchester.

  She knew there had to be something. It could not be a coincidence.

  Chloe’s mum hated having the curtains closed in the middle of the day but, in order to help Chloe escape without drawing too much attention, she had pulled the ones in the front. She had even found a blanket to put over the glass of the front door.

  In the dim light from the grey day seeping through the gaps, Chloe wrapped herself up, put on a scarf and tucked her hair into a woolly cap. She could feel her pulse racing. Her mother went to the door and as quietly as possible pulled back the bolt. Having the bolt on during the day was another thing that was completely unheard of—her mother had rules.

  ‘Are you ready, dear?’

  Chloe grinned. ‘It’s just like being in a competition, I’m always nervous before it starts. Once I get going it will be fine.’

  Her mother gave her a hug. ‘You be careful, dear, it’s not just the reporters.’

  Chloe looked her in the eye. ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ she said. ‘Those people won’t try that again in a hurry. And certainly not in broad daylight. Besides, I’ll have all these reporters following me.’

  Mother sighed and nodded. ‘All right then.’ She made it obvious she was getting ready to open the door. Chloe took a deep breath. Her mother turned the lock and pulled the door open a little. Chloe slipped through the gap and heard it closing behind her.

  It seemed most of the reporters were not expecting her to leave. Only those directly in front of the house noticed the movement of the door and glanced her way. Some of them were quicker than others. They grabbed their microphones; cameramen swung their cameras into position on their shoulders.

  When Chloe stepped out from the alcove by the front door, she noticed for the first time how light she was on her feet. As the camera lenses came to bear on her and the first of the drones whirred into life, she got a crazy idea. If she really was as light as people kept saying—

  She barely completed the thought before she leapt sideways towards the house next door. The strength of her muscles had not diminished at all. Pushing off, she almost flew halfway across the next-door garden.

  She took several long strides and jumped the next fence. This house didn’t have a gate so she slipped out onto the road. She glanced back and noticed the number of vans outside the house was less than the previous day. Some of the reporters must have already left for other stories. And that meant she was already past the majority of them. She accelerated into a run. It was strange at first as each step pushed her higher off the ground than she expected, but she adjusted by leaning forward to push more forwards than up.

  That was about the time she realised the shouting had started up behind her, with the whirring of drones filling the air. Although all the sounds were mashed together, she could hear each of them individually. A
nd they were getting quieter. Within moments she was at the end of the street. She turned right and sped off up the road. While she had no idea how fast she was going, it was certainly the best speed she had ever managed.

  And then she heard a drone closing in on her. Someone had been quick and clever enough to make it cut the corner over the top of the roofs. She had no idea what their top speed was but she suspected it was more than she could manage.

  She felt invigorated by the run, right up until the moment the pain in her back kicked in. Excruciating lances of agony drove through her shoulders. Her shoulder had still been sore from the attack, but this was something different. Waves of pain throbbed through her and she stumbled to a halt against a tree.

  The drone still buzzed above her and now she could hear cars and vans approaching. She needed to move. The onslaught of pain subsided to the level of a bad period, so she shoved her hands into her pockets and, with her head down, stumbled the last few hundred yards toward the Voglers’ house.

  The reporters were shouting out of their vans and cars, trying to get her to say something as she took the last few strides to the house. There was actually one stalwart reporter still parked outside the Voglers’ and he was out of his van waiting for her.

  The pain in her back was still taking most of her attention. She tried to go round him but he stepped directly in front of her. Without thinking she sidestepped him, hooked a leg round his, nudged him with her elbow and he fell flat on his back too surprised to cry out. She stepped over him and pushed through the gate into the Voglers’ garden.

  ‘Oy! You can’t do that, that’s assault!’

  He was right, it was assault. And it was probably recorded on a half-dozen cameras. She felt terrible—she wished she hadn’t done it but it had been pure reflex. She grabbed at the knocker but the door opened before she had even struck once.

  ‘Come in, dear,’ said Melinda’s mother, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her inside.

  Chapter 18

  Jason