He moved on to her personal details: address, mother’s maiden name, height, weight and home number. He punched it into the phone and settled back on the couch, only remembering at the last minute she wouldn’t be able to see anything because he’d killed the camera.
‘Damn.’ Never mind, it was too late to do anything about it now.
It rang and rang and rang and rang. In the end the answerphone clicked on and he was confronted with a pre-recorded DS Cameron telling him that she wasn’t able to come to the phone right now, but if he felt like it, and didn’t expect an answer anytime soon, he could leave a message after the beep. Will hung up.
He washed a chunk of pizza crust down with a mouthful of wine. Just because no one wanted to talk to him, it didn’t mean he couldn’t find out what happened today. If Jo had submitted any paperwork it would be filed on the Bluecoat mainframe. He dragged the case reference out of her day log and went hunting.
He was almost there when the doorbell went. Twice in one evening, something of a record.
Cursing, he shut the screen down, slipped the keyboard back under the coffee table, then answered the door.
He barely recognized the woman on his doorstep. There was no sign of the trademark eye-melters she normally wore, instead DS Cameron was clad in sombre blues and greys. Freed from its usual asymmetric bun, her hair hung round her face like a mourning veil, hiding her eyes, curling in round her cheeks in tight, black curls. There was a lot more of it than he’d suspected.
He smiled at her. ‘Hi.’
She didn’t say anything.
Will tried again. ‘You OK?’
‘Can I come in?’ Jo’s voice was thick and a little slurred. Not much, not falling-down-pissed-as-a-fart, just enough to let Will know that she’d been drinking.
‘Em…Yeah, of course.’
She followed him through to the lounge. ‘Got your address out the files.’
Will frowned. ‘My address is in the public files?’
She shook her head and a small smile flickered across her lips. ‘Nope.’
So she’d been up to the same thing he had.
‘You want something to drink? Got some cold pizza I could reheat.’
‘Drink’s good.’
He popped a couple of tumblers out of the cleaner and onto the countertop; somehow Will got the feeling this wasn’t an occasion for wine. A generous glug of whisky was accompanied by the briefest splash of water.
Jo took a deep sip and rolled it around her mouth. Her eyes were pink and swollen, just like Brian’s had been.
They sat side by side on the settee making stilted small talk. The weather, Will’s bruises, the view from his apartment…When the change of subject came, Jo’s voice faltered.
‘We found Jillian Kilgour,’ she said into her glass.
Will settled back and waited for her to tell it, but she didn’t. Instead she bit down on her bottom lip and her shoulders started to tremble. There was no noise at first, just a gentle rocking back and forth and then the tears started. They balled up in the corners of her eyes like tiny fists and rolled down her coffee-coloured cheeks. Then she dragged in a ragged breath and bit down again. Will placed his glass on the coffee table and put his arms round her shoulders.
‘It’s OK,’ he said as she buried her face in the crook of his neck. ‘It’s OK.’
He held her until she had no tears left.
The mess is all cleaned away, mopped and polished until there is no sign of spilled preserving fluid or body parts.
Broken glass and bees. Filling the storeroom with their incessant, sharp-edged buzzing.
Someone has been in her files.
Some bastard has been interfering with her work.
For a moment she comes close to exploding; it would feel very good to start smashing things. But she can’t do that. The storeroom’s internal sensors will notice that much destruction, someone will be sent down to investigate. She can do nothing to draw attention to herself. Nothing.
So she sits on the edge of a pile of surgical gowns and seethes. Someone has hacked into her Harbinger files. Someone has been rifling though her research. Someone…
She stops and looks at the monster reflected in the polished steel of the central unit. Only one person has ever managed to get into her files. A long purple scar winds its way across the left-hand side of his face. He wears a dark-blue suit.
Dr Westfield scowls at the datapad in her hand-the open Harbinger files. He should have known better. She won’t let him get away with it a second time.
Her fingers dance over the datapad, accessing the Network admissions sheet for the last three days and there he is. Three broken ribs, cranial trauma-nothing too serious-and a follow-up appointment made for four thirty tomorrow. The bastard will be right here in this very building…
She closes her eyes. If she goes after him now she risks everything. With trembling fingers she snaps an ampoule of her medicine into the soft skin at the nape of her neck.
Calm washes through her on a chemical tide.
Soon her cloneplant will be ready and Stephen will make her whole again.
She’ll be whole again and Assistant Section Director William Scott Hunter will begin his new, painful life.
She calls up his personal information and copies down his home address.
They’ll spend some quality time together. Just the two of them and a scalpel, a bone hammer, needles, blades, screams, blood. His lovely face…Death is fast and permanent. But with the right treatment, The Man In The Dark-Blue Suit can suffer for years.
She picks a dissection blade from a pack of twelve. It feels nice in her hand, comfortable, heavy, shiny. Mutilating him will be therapeutic. And she has always known the benefits of good therapy.
18
Jo was sleeping with her mouth open, lips pouted, showing off a glimpse of teeth and the soft pink tip of her tongue. Will picked his head up off the pillow and watched her breathing. Slow and gentle. The first time had been wild and furious, the second a lot gentler.
She hadn’t told him what had happened that afternoon.
He pulled his arm out from under her head and Jo shifted, making herself comfortable. Will pulled the duvet up, tucking her in so that only her face showed, framed by an explosion of curly black hair. Then he leant forward and planted a soft kiss on the end of her nose. She wrinkled it and brushed the back of her hand across her face as he slipped out of the bed and into the lounge.
Outside, the rain continued to pound the city into submission. It drummed against the glass, danced on the balcony, wrapped itself around the world for as far as he could see. Low black clouds, laced with reflected sodium-yellow, blanketed his world. Ten thirty on a Saturday night-even with the heating turned up full blast he was overwhelmed by the urge to shiver.
Will picked a tumbler from the coffee table and poured himself another small whisky. Wasn’t as if he had anywhere to go tomorrow. The liquid went down smooth and warm, worked its magic, soothed away the chill.
The terminal was still on-he’d only switched off the screen-so, pushing the discarded socks, pants, and trousers to oneside, he pulled the keyboard onto the coffee table and went back to reading Jo’s notes. She didn’t want to talk about it and he wasn’t going to force her. But he wasn’t prepared to let it go.
Jo’s files were impressively tidy, she even had live footage-captured from Sergeant Nairn’s headset as they went in-all cross-referenced and annotated.
Will spilt the screen and let the footage play on one side as he sifted through the background notes.
Colin Mitchelclass="underline" twenty-seven, single, no family. He’d had three lots of psychiatric treatment, two for arson and one for assault, even did a short stretch in the Tin.
On the right hand side of the screen the picture crackled with static. That would be the Dragonfly landing. And suddenly the ship’s drop bay was full of green light as weapons came online.