The Tube train pulled grudgingly to a halt at a station. Grace held tightly onto a pole in the already packed carriage, dreading the crowd of travellers ready to board. Dan had insisted he needed the car for his investigations that day. He didn’t usually take the car. Was this his petty way of punishing her for withholding information? Did he really think she felt superior to him because of her job? No wonder he would be happy for her to give up work and stay at home as a child-rearer. Resentment curdled inside her.
There was a moment of stillness before the doors opened and people began squashing on. She gripped the metal tighter, her eyes lazily sweeping the faces on the other side of the glass, a blur of flesh-toned ovals, until they rested on one that she recognised.
Remy.
His eyes bored into her and she began to fight her way towards the door, struggling against the hot tide of bodies. He stood still on the other side of the glass, staring back at her, arms by his sides, making no effort to board the train.
She squeezed past the other passengers who were blocking her way, but when she could see the window again, she struggled to locate him in the crowd. She found herself on the platform just as the train doors shut behind her.
Remy was nowhere to be seen.
Had it really been him?
Her head spun with questions as she searched the faces of the people remaining on the platform. She frantically scanned the windows to see if he’d boarded the carriage. The train lurched forward and pulled out of the station.
Remy had disappeared.
The clinic was lit in hues of blue and pink, soft lullaby music playing through the speaker system. Knowing what was to come, Grace’s stomach tightened.
‘Ah, you’re here,’ Abigail said cheerfully, her eyes lit by the screen at the workstation.
‘Sorry, I missed the train.’ Grace put her coat and bag in the small storeroom at the back of the clinic and then composed herself, building up her mental armour, ready to face the punishment reel of Robyn Cooper, the baby stealer.
‘I’m just checking the drugs that Myriam prescribed,’ Abigail told her as she approached the workstation. ‘It’ll be you prescribing the next time, so you may want to see this.’ Grace moved closer to the screen. ‘They’re pretty standard. We use the same types of drug in most of the procedures. I’ve double-checked dosage against weight and made sure they’re ready to be given – either by nasal spray or intravenously.’
Grace had found herself wondering about the other psychiatrist while she’d read over the preliminary reports written prior to Myriam’s departure. The two had met a few times at in-house training and the odd social, and, although pleasant, Myriam had seemed self-contained. She had the habit, which Grace used often in her own professional life, of being able to remain silent, as if to provoke the other into filling in the silence, maybe give something away. Grace had liked her. She’d appeared to be more than competent. Had Myriam been scapegoated for something inherently wrong with the treatment? Maybe today would give her some clues as to what was going on.
‘Which drugs are we using?’
Abigail picked up a spray from a dish on the workstation. ‘As you know, this is a relaxant. We have a few extra ready here just in case the offender gets antsy, but we also administer before treatment begins so the offender will slow down and absorb what’s going on. Cooper’s already been given a psychotropic, which works really well with the hypnotherapy and will make her more open to believing the reel is actually happening to her, but we have some more here to top her up.’
‘Is Robyn in hypnotherapy now?’
‘Yes, she’s already had a few sessions but she’ll be brought straight to us in a hypno-state.’
‘And what about this one?’ Grace picked up a small glass vial.
‘That stimulates parts of the brain that make the treatment highly effective.’
‘Which parts of the brain?’
Abigail paused. ‘I don’t really know. Above my capabilities,’ she quoted Conrad with more than a hint of spite. ‘I just know the name and the dose. I don’t know how it works exactly, but I do know it’s fast acting, so we do that one last, mid-treatment.’
‘You didn’t ask Myriam?’
Abigail shrugged. ‘All the information’s here on the screen.’
Grace moved closer and read on the screen ‘TIMORADMINISTREN’.
‘We call it Timorax,’ said Abigail.
Grace had never heard of it. Bloody Conrad! Typical of him to arrogantly use an experimental drug, quackery, to make a name for himself. Her instinct told her that this was a more likely scenario for the treatment failing than Myriam messing up. Had Conrad sacked her to cover his own back?
She was about to collect her shell from the storeroom to research the drug, but the clinic door opened and George gently guided Robyn in. She moved slowly, her eyes unfocused, carrying a baby doll wrapped in a pink blanket which trailed on the floor.
Grace was struck by how ordinary she looked – pale and plump, no trace of the villainous caricature that her crime might conjure. She was reminded instead of the many women who passed through her care at Tier Two – careworn, unfortunate, and lacking the sort of support that might have prevented her from getting into the situation she was in.
George helped Robyn into the clinic chair, strapping her in like a father might secure a child in a buggy, and stood back.
Abigail turned on the emotisonics and increased the volume of the lullaby music. She administered the relaxant with two brief sprays, one in each of the nostrils, which seemed to simultaneously startle and amuse Robyn. Once George was satisfied that Robyn was under control, he nodded sadly at Grace and left.
‘What?’ Robyn said, once Abigail had inserted a cannula to her hand and begun to administer a syringe of colourless fluid. ‘What?’ she repeated, her voice thick.
‘Don’t worry,’ Abigail said, in a surprisingly kind tone. ‘These are the nano-scanners, Robyn. We’ll inject them and use that machine to get them into the right place in your brain. They’ll pass out of your body when we’re done. You won’t even notice them.’
Robyn’s gaze slid from the needle to the long metallic arm of the powerful magnet which Abigail extended from its moorings on the wall behind the clinic chair and positioned so that it was touching Robyn’s skull. It reminded Grace of the X-ray machine at the dentist’s when she was a child.
‘Hurt?’ asked Robyn, heavy-eyed. She clutched the baby doll protectively.
‘No, no, you won’t feel them,’ Abigail reassured her. ‘They send images back to our screen so we can see what’s going on inside your brain.’
Robyn looked nonplussed.
Abigail checked Robyn’s stats on the screen. Grace’s breathing became increasingly laboured as she waited for the therapy to begin.
Had the other foetuses been returned or sold on? How would the parents feel – having their children stolen and out there in the world somewhere, children they would never be able to find.
‘Mummy loves you… Mummy loves you…’ Robyn whispered to the doll’s expressionless face.
Finally, the punishment reel began to play – sounds and images of a labour ward, women crying in pain, babies wailing.
Grace’s heart went out to Robyn. The government sees this as a crime of property. The rich can make their perfect babies, but the rest of us go without or have to face our ‘responsibility’. She’d seen the records from Tier Two. Robyn had been screened there to see if there were any mitigating circumstances, but there were no mental health problems nor any hormonal imbalances that might make her do these things, just a desire to have a baby of her own to love.
There was no cure for that.
Dan came to mind and guilt pricked her conscience.
She couldn’t bear to watch the wall-screen. Instead, she turned to the three screens of the main computer and brought up the real-time brain scans sent by the nano-scanners. She could see areas of the brain lit up by the psychotropic drugs, as she’d expected. What would happen when the Timorax was put into the mix?
But moments after Abigail squeezed the syringe adding the unfamiliar drug via the cannula, changes began to show on Robyn’s brain and bio-scans – in the amygdala, then the hypothalamus. Robyn’s heart rate jumped up, adrenaline and cortisol were released. Her breathing quickened and her hippocampus and frontal lobes blazed on the screen.
The moment she began screaming and thrashing against her restraints in the chair, Grace recognised what was going on.
Abigail had just injected Robyn with synthetic fear.
‘What the hell is wrong with you, Mal? You were happy when we got the Embers bastard, but now you’re moping about like a kid whose sweets have been nicked.’
Bizzy punched him on his upper arm and then threw himself down into one of the chairs in the office, leaned back and put his feet on the desk in front of him.
‘She was innocent. I didn’t think we were going to kill her,’ Mal said, tapping away at his shell pretending to look for information on their next job. ‘Begbroke didn’t kill his victim.’
‘He might as well have done. She’s a real mess. Anyway, where’s your conscience suddenly come from? The Embers Rapist didn’t kill his victims either. You didn’t moan about that. In fact, you seemed quite enthusiastic about that fucker’s demise.’
‘That’s different,’ Mal mumbled.
‘How?’ Bizzy threw his hands open. ‘How is that different?’
Mal said nothing. He wasn’t going to tell Bizzy about Layla. Don’t cast your pearls before swine he remembered a street preacher shouting when he was living rough. Now he knew what it meant. God knows what he would do to Bizzy if he ridiculed her precious memory. Probably kill him, and what would happen to the gang then?
‘I need to get on with this before Sarge gets back.’ Mal indicated his shell.
‘You chickenshit!’ Bizzy sneered. ‘You’re scared, aren’t you? Afraid of Tier Four if they catch us, eh? Wait till the boss hears this. He won’t like it!’
It was true, Sarge didn’t like people questioning his methods. And he often said there was nothing worse than a coward. Cowards let the team down.
Am I a coward? Mal wondered. His father would have thought so.
‘He might even chuck you out of the gang if he finds out. And you know what that means.’
Mal did know.
His mind switched immediately to another lad who had once been part of the gang, Josh.
He watched as Bizzy drew a finger across his throat.
‘Fuck off, Biz.’
‘You fuck off! You’ve always got your nose up his arse, trying to impress him. What’s he going to think of you now, eh? He’ll see you for what you are, a chickenshit who cleans a police station for a living!’
Mal felt his hackles rise. ‘Yeah, a cleaner who’s got a key for the forensics department. You’d be lost without me. Where else would you get all the evidence to pin these crimes on the original offenders?’
Bizzy just grinned, incensing Mal further.
‘You wouldn’t have any evidence!’ Mal spat. ‘Who would have known that the police had an AltCon bottle with Begbroke’s fingerprints on, one that we replicated? Who could have got hold of Kilgannon’s baseball bat, DNA of the other jobs, all the other stuff? This gang needs me.’
‘Needs you!’ snorted Bizzy.
‘At least I don’t believe I’m a real copper, like you do. Anyway, what the fuck do you do? Dick about on a computer and play dress-up bobby!’
But Bizzy’s comments had hit the mark. Sarge must have seen something in me, something more than just the fact that I work as a cleaner in the police headquarters, surely?
‘Begbroke had to go, Mal. And as for the woman, she was just collateral. Imagine if either of them had survived and told the police about our little gang. You’d better get your head straight or I’ll have to let the boss know you’re having doubts.’
‘Don’t tell him, Biz.’ Mal cringed as he heard himself say it.
‘Don’t tell me what?’
Andrew Sargeant, or ‘Sarge’ as he was nicknamed, strutted into the room. He was an imposing figure, broad-shouldered and muscular, with a buzz cut and a scar on one arm – both visible reminders of his time in the forces. He stood straight-backed with his hands at his sides.
Bizzy immediately took his feet off the desk and stood. ‘Mal here’s having a flash of conscience.’
Mal froze under Sarge’s stare.
‘You don’t have the luxury of a conscience,’ Sarge said calmly. ‘We’ve got a job to do, lads. There’s no room for second thoughts.’
‘I told him that, Sarge.’
‘Shut up, Biz,’ Sarge barked. ‘Mal?’ His pale blue eyes settled on Mal.
‘It’s all good, boss. A misunderstanding, that’s all,’ Mal said.
‘Glad to hear it. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is going to spoil our mission.’
Diros – a name meaning terrifying, but also enlightened. Even the name gave Mal a sense of vocation. Whatever his doubts, Mal needed this troop. It had saved his life – given him direction after he’d lost perspective when Layla had died. Given him a way to cope with his anger and frustration. There was no way he was going to end up back on the streets with the filthy losers.
‘Just remember our mission,’ Sarge said. ‘If the justice system can’t deliver proper punishment, then it’s up to people like us to do it. At ease.’
Bizzy sat down again and Mal perched on the edge of the desk, his shell still in his hand.
‘When I came back from Africa, damaged but not broken’ – he indicated his arm – ‘I found my purpose in continuing to fight the enemy, but the enemy had changed. We can’t allow these criminals to get away with a flash-in-the-pan bullshit treatment as punishment. It’s just not acceptable.’
‘Mal here doesn’t like people dying,’ Bizzy said.
‘I just thought,’ stammered Mal, ‘that we were trying to show the flaws of the system.’
‘Every good cause needs sacrifices, son.’ Sarge slapped Mal on the back and relief flooded his body. ‘Just remember, this is our mission – part of the bigger plan. We’re going to destroy Janus so that criminals get proper punishment and victims get true justice. And the sacrifices,’ he turned and pointed to Mal as if to emphasis what he had said previously, ‘the things we do in a good cause, however… difficult… are all leading to this mission being successful. Things are going our way, boys. The plan is unfolding.
‘However, we’ve got another problem – a new psych at Tier Three, some busybody who might put an end to our mission if we don’t deal with her. She’s married to a journalist who’s already put an article on the web about our work at the cotton warehouse.’ He took Mal’s shell from his hands and moments later showed them an image of Grace. ‘It’s only a matter of time before the pair of them put two and two together.’ He let that hang in the air for a moment. ‘Bizzy, I need you to get the lowdown on this journo. Get as much information as you can.’
‘Yes, Sarge,’ Bizzy said. He sat at the desk, picked up another shell and got to work immediately.
‘Mal, I want you on obs. Follow this Gunnarsson woman, at work, at home, at the weekend. See where she goes, what she’s up to. If it gets tricky then we’ll know where to find her.’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
‘What’s her first name again?’ Sarge asked Bizzy, who tapped his shell.
‘Grace, Sarge.’
‘Grace,’ Sarge repeated.
As Mal went to open the office door, Sarge called his name quietly.
Mal’s fingers shook as he held the doorknob. He turned around, hands by his sides again.
‘If you question me again, you know what will happen, don’t you?’