Jack couldn’t bear being in the same room as his dead wife any longer. He needed water to get rid of the taste of sick. But, as he stepped onto the landing outside his office, he realised he’d made a terrible mistake. A man was coming up the stairs, bloodied knife in hand.
The killer was still in the house.
2:04 PM
They saw each other in that same instant: Jack and the intruder. Time stretched out into an electrifying moment of panic. Heart racing, Jack hesitated, not believing the sight of the man with a blond crew cut and piercing eyes before him. His clothes were dark and functional. He had a small rucksack slung over his shoulder. And the knife. Let’s not forget the bloodied knife in his hand.
The police were on their way. He just had to survive until they got here.
Jack turned and ran away to the bathroom at the end of the landing. He needed somewhere he could secure and with its lock, that seemed obvious. The intruder ran after him, his footsteps light and nimble up the remaining stairs.
It was as he entered the bathroom he realised his mistake. With no weapon, and only a tiny window that precluded an escape, his plan of surviving until the police got here was dependent on the flimsiest of privacy locks. He thumbed it and braced himself against the door. When the door shook under the force of the killer charging it, it threw Jack back against the basin. He scrambled into a bracing position again, praying that the door would hold.
The bathroom was small and functional with nothing of any consequence that could be used as a weapon. But as he scanned the room, his foot kicked a plastic bleach bottle. The door shook again. This time a crack appeared in the wood by the hinges. Another jolt and Jack’s bones shuddered. Then came a series of repeated kicks. The intruder was targeting the lock, the wood bulged inward on every strike. He didn’t have much time; the door would give way any second. He grabbed the bottle of bleach by his foot and gripped the lid tightly, struggling with it in his haste to remove it. Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead and he rubbed them away with the back of his arm as he held his precious bottle. The lid came off, he was ready.
The impacts stopped.
When the man spoke, it sent shivers up Jack’s spine.
“You know I’m going to have to kill you.”
His accent placed him from this district.
“Bastard. You didn’t have to kill her.”
“No witnesses.”
“What’s so important about the Wei’s? Where’s the memory box?” Jack’s voice wavered. And there it was, the whispering. The memory box was close.
But the killer wasn’t going to offer any answers. “Your watcher was stronger than he looked. He interrupted me. I had to go back and finish him off. We’re not finished. You’ve got the other eye from this memory box and I’m going to have to take it from your head.”
“Fuck you.”
A pause, and a sound that could have been the intruder sighing.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the intruder said. “You’re thinking that if you can just stay alive long enough for the police to get here, you’ll be safe.”
Jack stood back, bottle raised, and the door crashed open with another targeted kick at the lock. Splinters flew in the air and Jack squirted bleach into the intruder’s face. He yelled and lunged, knocking the bottle out of Jack’s grip with a strength that took him by surprise.
Jack grabbed the edge of the door and tried to slam it against the killer, but he batted it aside. The man’s face was thunderous, and his black eyes were full of hatred and fury. Jack tried to duck around him, but the intruder blocked him and punched him to the floor. The tiles were wet from bleach, and he caught the back of his head on the wash basin. A flailing arm reached out and knocked the glass from the basin they kept their toothbrushes in. It smashed behind him, sprinkling shards on the floor.
Dazed, the killer leapt on top of him, hands around his throat, squeezing for all his worth. Jack kicked, and thrashed like a dying fish, grasping the killer’s hands in his own to lessen the choke. But his attacker was more powerful and built with arms of steel. As he wrestled, his hand caught against a small metal pin attached to the man’s shirt. It popped off and pinged on the floor. As the grip strengthened, Jack could sense that his vision was clouding and knew with almost a grateful finality that death wasn’t far away.
The doorbell rang and its noise became the sweetest thing Jack had ever heard. Surprised, the killer’s grip loosened, not completely, but enough for Jack to turn his head and seek out the object he hoped would be on the floor close by. A good sized chunk of broken glass lay to his left, level with his head. He snatched out at it with his left hand. The doorbell rang again, then the door banged under the thuds of heavy hands.
“Police, open up,” a man’s voice boomed through the door.
Torn between finishing Jack off and evading capture, the man’s indecision saved Jack’s life. The grip around his throat loosened and Jack found he could reach the broken glass.
“Fuck you!” Jack hurled as he slashed at the man’s neck.
The killer howled in animal rage and with a grunt, swung his fist round into Jack’s face. His eyes closed on the impact and pain fired across his cheekbone.
But the pressure on his body lifted as the killer fled. Too weary to do anything more than lay back and listen to the thudding on the stairs, and the banging on the doors, Jack felt like he’d fallen into the darkest place. A home with a dead wife and a world where he’d almost been killed himself. The adrenaline surge had left him cold and drained; his head ached, and his hair stunk of bleach.
Moments later, the front door smashed open and running boots stormed through the house.
Jack heard someone shout from below, “Back here.”
Then more storming boots up the stairs.
Jack lifted his head enough to see the uniformed brute of a man standing in the bathroom doorway, gun pointing right at him.
“Don’t move,” he ordered, then over his shoulder shouted, “Guv, we’ve a live one here.”
2:54 PM
Jack sat on the couch in his living room, trying to ignore the growling sounds of hunger from the policeman standing by the open doorway. Ever since the police had arrived his house had been in turmoil. The first crew had smashed his front door to get in and in the last twenty minutes he’d been led from one location to another in his own house.
They’d given him the courtesy to get changed, then Jack realised as his clothes were sealed into evidence bags it hadn’t been done out of kindness. Still, at least he could look at himself in the mirror and not see Keeley’s blood all over him.
Damn, he’d almost done it. Almost gone two whole minutes without thinking about her dead body upstairs. An ambulance had arrived whilst he’d changed and a crew had raced through the house to his office. Jack knew there was little point in them being there. They’d be sat around now, outside drinking coffee, wondering how much longer they’d be expected to wait before removing Jack’s dead wife.
But, it hadn’t just been his wife that had been murdered. The watcher that had stayed to protect the memory box had been found murdered in the kitchen: his throat slashed.
Jack could still smell bleach in his hair.
A wiry man who looked to be in charge had been in and out of the house a few times. He’d been talking intently to somebody on his HALO and then later to the policeman now tasked with keeping watch over him.
“How long do I have to wait here?”
The policeman by the door smiled a practised smile. “Not long, sir.”
As if on cue, the door opened and the wiry man strode powerfully into the room, shaking Jack’s hand with a tight grip, leaving it grasped for longer than Jack felt comfortable with. “I’m Detective Burnfield. I’m sorry about your wife.”
“Tell me you’ve caught him.”
Burnfield shook his head and took out a small datapad from his jacket pocket. “No.”
“You’re joking, right? You sent a small army
in here and you let him get away?”
If the antagonism upset the detective, he didn’t let it show. A wan smile curled his lips. He sat on the large sofa at the end farthest away from Jack then pressed a couple of buttons on his datapad and set it down on the coffee table. A bright blue light shone from the pad and filled the room with a brilliant glare that extinguished in a flash.
They were being recorded.
Burnfield cleared his throat with a gentle cough. “None of my men saw the intruder. But I’d like to go over what happened here, again, from the beginning.”
Jack sighed and gripped the armrests until his fingers ached.
The door opened and a young woman entered. She wore a grey skirt and silk blouse. On her forehead she wore the tattoo of a class one telepath: a discrete crescent on its back with a single dot in the cavity.
“You’ve brought a teep. Great.”
“It’s standard procedure.”
The newcomer bit her bottom lip and tried to look like she was somewhere else.
“Hi. Sorry to meet under these circumstances.” The teep approached and put out a hand to shake. Jack dropped his from the arms of the chair and placed them firmly in his lap. The teep glanced warily at the detective on the sofa before scuttling back into the corner where she waited against the wall beside the policeman. Jack readjusted his arms and tried to ignore the three pairs of eyes now staring at him.
The detective smiled. “Please, Mr Winston, from the beginning. Tell me what happened.”
So Jack started, explaining about the new case he’d been assigned to, before waking up to find himself on the floor of his office. When he described finding his wife with her throat slit, he stumbled and closed his eyes for a moment. The headache was still there, had never been away since he’d woken on the bloodied carpet. Recalling everything was hard and he found himself jumping back and forth several times.
“What do you know about the case you were working on?”
“It’s confidential.”
“Do you think it’s coincidental that your wife is killed on the same day you start work on a new case?”
“No, of course, I see there could be a connection—”
“The memory box was missing from your study?”
“Yes. The intruder took it. I sensed the remnants from the bag he was carrying.”
“Why would the killer take it?”
Jack wavered. “If I told you about the case, I’d be before a disciplinary at OsMiTech.”
“And that would be worse than letting your killer walk free?” Burnfield said softly.
Jack gazed down at the carpet.
“You’ve still got one of your case’s eyes in your head.”
“I’ve nothing to replace it with. My eye is in the memory box, as well as the backup from the victim. I need to return it to OsMiTech.”
“Does it not affect your vision?”
“U-huh. Different lenses. Different strengths. I think it’s giving me a headache.”
“They give you both eyes to work with?”
“Yes,” Jack replied as if it was an obvious question. “It’s standard procedure where both eyes remain intact. Sometimes it’s difficult to get a recall from one of the eyes so they convert both.”
“How long have you been a remnant keeper?”
“Two years.”
“And before that?”
“I was a supervisor at Smettles.”
“I’ve an uncle who worked there. Hard place. He was glad it burned down.”
“My father died in that fire.”
Burnfield stared blankly at Jack. He twisted his red lip between the finger and thumb of his left hand and made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Apologies,” he said, and then, “Do you know why anyone might want to kill your wife?”
Jack shook his head. “No one would want her dead.”
“She was a journalist at Fuse Media?”
Jack tried to ignore the past tense. “Yes. She had a lot of friends there.”
“Any grudges?”
Jack shook his head.
“How were her family and friends with her?”
“Oh God, her parents. I’ve got to speak to them.”
“Don’t worry about that now, we can take care of it.” Burnfield glanced over Jack’s shoulder and through the window. Doors slammed shut on a vehicle parked on the road outside. Burnfield continued, “How did Mrs Winston’s family react when they found out you would be a remnant keeper?”
“They don’t know. We weren’t allowed to tell them.”
“How did you explain your change in status. All of this?” Burnfield flicked his hand out, indicating the comfortable surroundings.
“They know I’m a telepath. Not allowed to keep that a secret.” He tapped the class two tattoo on his forehead. “But, they think I do admin work at OsMiTech.”
“I see. That must put quite a strain on family relationships.”
Jack pressed his lips together.
Burnfield cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you had time to scan the intruder?”
“I was too busy fighting for my life.”
“Right, of course. I’ll need to speak to your handler. Can you give me his details?”
“Her. My handler’s a she.”
Jack picked up a datapad from the side table and assembled a package of contact details. As he worked, Burnfield continued, his tone becoming more conversational like the two men were old school friends. “Tell me, though, what’s it like reading the memories of a dead person? I’ve never had the chance to speak to a remnant keeper before.”
“How does this help?” He finished assembling the contact package and zipped it across to the tablet beside Burnfield.
“Humour me. I want to understand what it’s like to be you. It must be stressful poking around inside the memories of the dead. Strange way to make a living.”
“You wouldn’t want to be me,” Jack said.
“Why not? You have a good life. You’re out of the district factories. You can afford a nice home in a nice part of town. You had a wife. You recently had an application accepted to have children—”
“Woah, what the hell…” Jack stood. The policeman by the door inched away from the wall, his arms subtly shifted position so they were beside his body rather than behind it.
“What’s the problem?” Burnfield asked.
“How did you know about the application?”
“I’m sorry, it’s in your record.”
Jack fought the urge to storm out of the room. Burnfield stood, his slight frame would be no match for Jack’s if he fought his way past him, but he looked genuinely distraught at Jack’s reaction. “Please sit down. I didn’t mean to sound so flippant. But, you’ve got to appreciate, these are just facts and figures to me. That’s why I want to talk to you now before we go to the station. I want to learn about you. What it’s like to be a remnant keeper. It will help me catch the person responsible for these murders.” He gestured then that Jack should retake his seat and after an awkward few seconds, Jack relented and sat back down. The policeman by the door relaxed.
“How about we do this differently? I’ve got a teep—”
“You’re not using her.”
“I’m afraid you have no choice in the matter. Telepath Crime Unit procedure this time. She’ll be discrete. She’s here to help you recall more details of your ordeal.”
“I want to speak to my handler.”
“Of course,” Burnfield tipped his head and looked Jack in the eye. “But, to be honest, I’ll still get this to go my way. If she interferes, the TCU will haul her to the station for obstruction. Believe me, Jack, when I say I want to help you. This is the best way I know how. Letting procedure slide is a surefire way to help your wife’s killer go free. We need to do this by the book.”
A weight threatened to crush Jack’s chest. Each breath an effort as he glanced over again at the teep in the corner. He wanted to do what was right, but—to hell with it. He
’d get scanned sooner or later.
“Do it,” he said, addressing the teep.
The woman came close. She fiddled with her hair as she approached and knelt down beside Jack. She smiled as she lifted her right hand to Jack’s temple.
Jack closed his eyes. The woman’s fingertips applied the gentlest of pressure to his forehead. And then, a tickle on the edge of his mind. It was an intimacy that most found uncomfortable, but telepaths learnt to respect each other’s private thoughts.
She spoke to him inside his head.
Jack saw his study again. The body.
The image shifted. The teep guided Jack back through his memory.
The teep spoke to Burnfield. “They argued about the pregnancy licence application. But that’s not the centre of his stress, Inspector. It’s complicated in here.”
The teep’s mental probing became less passive. That headache was getting worse. He couldn’t focus on the study any more; the memory dipped out of reach. The teep scrambled for it but even she couldn’t bring it back.
“Something’s wrong,” the teep’s voice sounded agitated. The probing became clumsier. Jack felt a stab of pain as the teep ventured too deep into his consciousness.
Images flashed through Jack’s mind but they weren’t any images he recognised. Somehow the connection had reversed, and he was seeing some of the teep’s thoughts.
With a yelp of pain, the teep pulled back her hand from Jack’s forehead like it was hot to the touch. “He’s fired up a whole set of blocks. I can’t get through them.” She got to her feet, shaking. Casting a scathing look at Jack, she walked back to the door.
The Remnant Keeper (Tombs Rising Book 1) Page 4
