It was him or Grace. Only one of them would survive.
Mal stood on an ancient recycling bin, its lid half chewed away by a long-cooled fire, as he continued his surveillance of Grace through the high library window, his breath fogging the dirty glass.
He wasn’t going to let her out of his sight now.
His life depended upon it.
But how could he let them kill her and then go on living himself?
A movement inside the library distracted him. There was someone else in there with her. Mal felt adrenaline radiate through his limbs. She was too small and fragile to be able to protect herself. He ought to do something. But then his cowardice got the better of him and he remained, ashamed, standing on top of the bin. What was the point of trying to save her if Sarge was only going to kill her anyway?
Why was this woman messing with his mind?
Chickenshit! Biz taunted him inside his head.
The man began to speak and Mal immediately recognised his voice.
Remy.
Mal ducked down briefly afraid his old comrade might see him, but as the conversation developed, curiosity got the better of him and he peeped through the broken window again. He absorbed everything they said: Remy’s desire to escape, Grace’s intention to help him, Remy’s belief that he’d been set up by Diros. The cat was out of the bag. Sarge had been right. Grace was a threat, not only because of her work at Tier Three, but because now she knew too much.
As he shifted position, mentally preparing his report for Sarge, his foot slipped on the bin. Remy suddenly stopped talking and moved towards the door.
Mal panicked. He hopped down to the concrete below, slipped through a gap in the fence and ran towards the hypermarket.
As soon as he got to the lights of the shop, he looked back. To his relief there was no one following him. He immediately called Sarge and informed him both the targets were together – no they hadn’t seen him, yes they were still there, yes she knows everything – and after giving directions was given a ‘good man’ instead of a goodbye from Sarge.
A feeling of relief cooled his nerves. He was out of the doghouse with the boss for the time being. He leaned against the wall of the hypermarket and took a few deep breaths. The late-night food redistribution truck pulled up nearby to collect stock that was hitting its sell-by date to take to those in need at Tier One. He recalled a packaged sandwich donated to him when he’d been living rough – rye bread, beef, Emmental cheese, mustard, pickle. It had been the most delicious food he’d eaten in months. The taste memory tantalised his tongue.
Had it been worth it – leaving the streets for the lifestyle he had now?
Had he sold his soul for a roof over his head?
One phone call had put Grace’s life at risk – another innocent death on his hands. He let out an anguished yelp, startling a woman who swerved her trolley away from him. He slapped his face, hard, once on the left cheek and once on the right cheek, trying to sharpen his wits and disperse the maelstrom in his mind.
What choice did he have? Either he offered up Grace to Sarge, or Sarge would kill him. He was a coward, that was true, and his survival instinct was strong as a cockroach’s, as Biz had once said. And Biz knew about cockroaches. Mal had just signed Grace’s death warrant to save his own skin. Shame and frustration burned in him. He was worthless, his whole life had never amounted to anything. The only noble thing he’d ever done was loving Layla, and that was only because, for some ridiculous, unfathomable reason, she’d loved him first.
And look where that had got him.
He’d felt a strange twinge when Grace had embraced Remy. Mal wasn’t altogether sure what the feeling was, but he squashed it down.
‘Layla, Layla, it’s not the same as me and you…’ he prayed, guilt overwhelming him.
They’d be here soon. Sarge would want Remy alive to find out if he’d told anyone else about Diros. Damage limitation. He pushed thoughts of Grace out of his mind.
Focus on the positive. Because of Mal’s discovery, they’d be able to eliminate the threat to Diros. Bizzy would be so jealous. It would be like killing two birds with a single stone.
He thought again about Remy and Grace.
Two birds.
One stone.
‘I think it might have been a rat. All quiet now.’ Remy came back into the room, as though the library door was a wormhole and he’d just returned from their childhood.
He sat down on the sleeping pod and they started speaking simultaneously.
‘Remy, I don’t know what—’
‘Grace, I didn’t do it.’
An awkward silence.
‘You can’t blame me for being suspicious.’ She sat back down on the chair. ‘You weren’t exactly on the straight and narrow when we were young.’
His eyes dimmed with disappointment. ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘I’m sorry for leaving you,’ she began. ‘When I went to uni…’ but he held up a hand to stop her, shaking his head.
‘Water under the bridge.’
‘Maybe you wouldn’t have gone off the rails so much if I’d stayed.’
‘Off the rails?’ He sounded offended.
‘Remy, you’re a wanted man…’
‘Yes, but not by the people you think… you’ve got to believe me.’ He hung his head and a swathe of dark hair covered his face. He took her by the hand and she let him hold it for a moment before pulling away. He was convincing, there was no doubt about that, but she’d learned too much along the way to be fooled.
‘Honestly, Gracie,’ he said. She felt a brief wave of reassurance as he said her name, but then she remembered. She braced herself, it was time to face the facts.
‘You were treated in Tier Three, up in Manchester the first time you were arrested,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen the files and they clearly show that there’s something wrong, something I think I can fix…’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’ he snarled and she pulled back from him.
‘I’ve see the scan with my own eyes. I’ve seen the fault in your brain…’
‘The fault in my brain?’ he scoffed angrily. ‘Someone’s messed with the scans.’
‘How could they? The scans are relayed right to the computer. There’s nowhere in between for someone to mess with them.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’ he yelled.
She looked at him aghast.
‘I’m sorry,’ Remy said, shaking his head. ‘I’m just very, very tired.’ He lay back on the sleeping pod, with an arm across his face.
She was running out of energy and time. If she could persuade him to come to the clinic and keep him safe for another few days, she might be able to get the synthetic empathy to work. Anything to save him from Siberia.
‘The second time you were arrested you’d done the same thing again, attacked a dealer after he ripped you off according to the reports, but this time he died. And this was after you’d had Aversion Therapy.’
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘No, but the police say you did. There’s evidence to say it was you. And it wasn’t just a fight gone wrong this time. It wasn’t manslaughter.’ She’d found out that the dealer had been stabbed to death. Remy had brought a knife. It had been premeditated. It was a Tier Four offence.
‘I was set up. I know I’m not a psycho, so when they scanned me and said that I was – I knew that they had done it to get me out of the way.’ He paused. ‘I just don’t know how they got into the files at Janus.’
‘Remy, if the police rearrest you then you’re going to end up at Tier Four and you have no idea what it’s like… It’s not a place I would want anyone I love—’ She stopped. ‘I want you to come with me. So I can help you.’
‘If they find me, then I’m going to end up dead, so it’s a lose-lose situation.’ He sat up and began poking his fingers into the various pockets of his army jacket.
‘They? Who are you talking about?’
‘I’ve been trying to tell you.’ He pulled out a crumpled printout of a photograph and passed it to her. Three men in desert camouflage stood outside a tent, smiling, arms across each other’s shoulders. Remy was in the middle, between a tall dark-haired man and a baby-faced soldier who couldn’t have been more than twenty. Next to them was a thick-set older man with silver-grey hair. He stood apart, arms folded, unsmiling. Remy pointed to the photo. ‘There’s another one too, who wasn’t in the army. They call themselves Diros. They research crimes and then try to copy them.’
‘Diros? Copy crimes? Why would they do that?’ She passed the photograph back and rubbed her fingertips as though it had left a residue.
He put it back in his pocket. ‘I used to be one of them,’ he replied quietly, his words chilling her to the bone.
She leapt from the chair and tried to get to the door, but he was on her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him.
‘I don’t want any part of this,’ she cried, scrambling to get away from him. ‘I thought you were in trouble. I didn’t think you were a killer!’
‘Gracie!’ He grabbed hold of her and shook her.
She stood still.
‘I swear to God I haven’t killed anyone… not like that.’ His grey eyes told her he was telling the truth. ‘Yes, in Africa, but I was a soldier. That was different. Please, listen to me.’ He loosened his grip. ‘Just give me five minutes to explain and then you can walk out of my life forever, and never look back, but give me an opportunity to at least tell someone the truth before… before…’ He didn’t finish the sentence.
She nodded reluctantly, her heart beating madly. Did she owe it to her childhood friendship to stay and listen? They stood in an uneasy truce as he began to speak. She listened, but her eyes roamed the room, looking for a way out. One of the windows behind him was bigger than the ones in the main library and waist height, probably just about big enough. He was still holding her by the arms.
‘When I came back from Africa,’ he began, ‘I had nowhere to stay. Lottie’s place had gone. I had some money, but I wanted to start a new life somewhere and I just needed a little time to think about what to do. One of those men, Sarge, offered me his sofa. He’d been our outfit leader over in Congo and I guess he was our leader back here too. I bunked down with him for a while, but things took a strange turn.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He released her and sat back down on the pod.
Was the window locked?
‘We were bounty hunters,’ he continued. ‘The government were looking for reliable, well-trained people to clean up the streets to make the new justice system appear as efficient as possible. I guess they didn’t want a whole new raft of problems caused by ex-army coming home with conflict trauma. Most of the ex-service people I knew ended up either collecting criminals or going to one of the Tier Two compounds themselves.
‘I wanted a regular income after Africa and there were plenty of veterans needing work. We were in a gang of five. We used to collect all sorts of criminals. Got a good price for some of them. I’ll be honest, I also wanted excitement. I’d been on three tours for Cobalt and when I got back it was just… boring. It was a good life at first, getting paid to catch bad men, and women too sometimes, and we partied hard at the weekends.
‘But then things started to change. I wasn’t getting the same high for each catch. Sarge saw himself as on a mission to do justice or some shit, and when Janus started letting people off with “day-trip treatments” as he called them, he set himself up as some sort of vigilante, finding people who’d been through Tier Three and punishing them. Then he got the idea that if he made it look as though Aversion Therapy was faulty, they could get it shut down altogether, have people going back to prison for long stretches instead.’ He rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Anyway, suddenly they were calling themselves Diros and’ – he shook his head – ‘they turned on one of the gang, a young fella called Josh. He’d started questioning Sarge. Josh couldn’t keep his mouth shut, began criticising some of the things we were doing and refused to get involved in some of the cases…’ Remy paused. ‘And rightly so.’
‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’
‘They were like a family to me. We’d bonded in the army. Unless you’ve been through that, you don’t know what it means. Where else was I to go? Plus, I was hardly innocent. I’d used unnecessary violence, overlooked some of the things the others did. If they’d gone down, they’d have taken me with them. Sarge accused Josh of insubordination and then, one night, Josh didn’t come back. Biz said he’d gone to live with his sister, but Josh had told me out in the Congo that he only had brothers.’
Remy blew out a steady stream of breath. Were those tears in his eyes? Grace had never seen him cry, even when his mother died. Remy sniffed hard and went on.
‘That was when I realised just how bad things were. I’d already made plans to move on and it seemed more urgent than ever to get away. I asked one of the lads, Malachi – we called him Mal – to come with me. He was young, like Josh, wasn’t army, though. He didn’t seem as bad as the others, but he refused to leave. I don’t think he believed me that the other two had got rid of Josh. Anyway, Sarge began finding out the names and details of people who’d recently been through Tier Three. He suggested we could copy the crime using the same MO and plant evidence so that it looked like the original offender did it. They even managed to get their hands on evidence to convince the police. Sarge said it was the perfect crime and no one would ever catch us, no one would ever suspect that anyone else was involved.’
The people who had been silenced – Noah Begbroke, the post office robbers, Mikey Kilgannon. They bore testimony to what Remy was saying.
‘But why?’
‘Sarge wanted to destroy Janus because they were letting people get away with stuff. But Biz, he was just an animal, loved the violence. Used to get a kick out of hiding a crime within a crime, he said. Mal – I really don’t know why he stayed.’ He sighed. ‘We were so messed up after the things we saw in Africa. Maybe that had an effect on us.’
‘How did they find out about the Tier Three crimes?’ asked Grace.
‘One of them, Bizzy, was an experienced hacker, but I think there was someone who worked there, an insider, who gave them information.’
An insider?
‘Oh my God,’ Grace said, shocked. ‘Myriam!’ Had the mild-mannered professional given Diros information? Forced or willingly?
‘I don’t know who it was.’
‘They killed her,’ said Grace slowly. Had she known too much, or refused to cooperate?
Remy nodded gravely. ‘Doesn’t surprise me.’
‘Conrad gave me her job.’
‘What?’
‘I’m the new psychiatrist at Tier Three.’
She saw that look on his face, the one he used to give her when they were kids, the one that said he was going to protect her. But how could he protect her against this?
‘I can imagine you working at Tier Two,’ he said. ‘You always liked to help people in need.’ His face fell again. ‘But Tier Three?’
She didn’t answer but glanced down at his Tier Three tattoo, deep navy against his pale skin. She wondered how he’d escaped arrest.
‘You know, Africa was… traumatic… awful at times, some of the things I saw, but I chose to go there, I was doing a job. But it was nothing compared to what they do in that clinic. Going through that therapy, especially when I hadn’t even done the crime…’ He shook his head. ‘You’re not living the sort of life I expected, Gracie.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? You thought I’d end up on the game because of Lottie?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘And look at you. You’re living exactly the sort of life I thought you’d live, sleeping rough, in trouble with the law and gangsters. When are you going to grow up, Remy?’
An uneasy silence. Finally she stood up. ‘I took a job at Tier Three because it was the only way I could help you. Do you think I wanted to put offenders through that torture? At least I’m trying to do something positive, change the therapy for the better so that it actually works…’
‘Don’t you see? The therapy does work!’ Remy said. ‘It’s what Diros are doing that makes it look as though it doesn’t.’
‘So why don’t you just tell the Department of Justice? Tell them what you told me. Then they’ll let you go and Diros will be their problem.’
He smiled sadly and shook his head.
‘As if they would believe someone like me.’
‘Remy, I want you to come with me. My car’s by the hypermarket. You’ve got to hand yourself in. That’s the only way I can legitimately get you off the hook.’
‘Get me off the hook with who? Do you think I care about the authorities?’ He stood up to meet her eye to eye. ‘You have no idea how dangerous Diros are. They’re the ones in control here, hiding behind offenders who’ve already paid the price. A crime is committed in exactly the same way and then they plant the evidence to make the police believe that the original criminals have reoffended. Diros are destroying people’s chances to start again and literally getting away with murder. And you think they’re going to let us just walk away? They’ll silence us like they silenced the others.’
‘Us?’ said Grace, fear creeping through her.
‘You can’t save me, Gracie. How can you, when there’s nothing wrong with me and the authorities aren’t going to listen to a word I say? I don’t have any evidence. It’s my word against compelling physical evidence that I’m lying. And once they see those falsified scans…’
There was no evidence for Diros’s existence, but there was plenty of evidence for Remy’s flawed brain. What did her instincts tell her? Who was she, right now? Grace who trusted science or Gracie who trusted her instincts?
‘You’ve known me since we were tiny,’ Remy said. ‘Don’t you think you’d have known by now if I was a bloody psycho?’
‘It doesn’t matter whether you are or not. Unless we do something, then either the police will get you or Diros will. You can’t just sit here and wait for it to happen.’
‘I thought out of anyone in the world, you would believe me.’ He sounded resigned, like a man who knew he’d taken a losing bet. ‘And you’re right, I’m not going to sit here and wait for it to happen.’
He pulled his hood up. ‘I’m sorry I dragged you into this. Just… just forget it. I shouldn’t have asked.’ He looked up at her one last time, disappointment and rejection in his sea-grey eyes. ‘Bye, Gracie.’
And he was gone.