William was left sitting alone in the large room for another twenty minutes. He was on a chair in one of the booths, the same one that Rebecca had been sitting on in the video, and in front of him alongside all the colourful wires lay her papers, neatly arranged. Lists of questions, crossed off one at a time. Questions she’d asked the woman.
On one of the screens at the far end of the hall he could see the images of himself from the booth’s CCTV camera. He was surrounded by the schematic brains, black and now devoid of activity. He looked at the wires; the discs on the desk. If he put them on himself, what would he see on the screen?
Come off it. You can’t read minds.
William closed his eyes.
But what if you could?
If it was possible, then Piotrowski might have been able to decipher something, to see inside someone’s innermost thoughts, he might have stumbled across something he wasn’t supposed to know about, been forced to flee, and then contacted William for help.
The question remained though–why William? Of all the people Michal Piotrowski should have been able to call on, why choose someone who had more or less threatened to kill him, someone who would not be the least bit inclined to help him get out of trouble?
William frowned. He was asking the wrong thing. The question wasn’t why William, but help with what? What would make Michal Piotrowski contact him specifically, in spite of everything else?
He opened his eyes once more, looking through the glass blocks that separated his booth from the next one. Saw the neighbouring desk, distorted through the glass, rolling as though he was looking at the surface of water, and then the next glass block wall beyond the desk, and then another one. He saw how they transformed the world outside into the blocky pixels of a scanned photograph, and as his thoughts began to wander he realised that he still hadn’t slept since the terrifying hours he spent in the lorry.
He leant backwards, closed his eyes again and allowed himself to stay like that for some time. It wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he saw what he’d been looking at all along.
When Rebecca returned to the room, William stood up to greet her, a new energy radiating out from his eyes, a restless optimism that caused him to stretch out his arms to pull her towards him.
‘Come here,’ he said.
He led her towards the booth, letting go right by the chair he’d been sitting on until just now. She looked around, utterly confused.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Sit down.’
She sank onto her office chair, then let William wheel her towards the desk, felt him bend down alongside her, his eyes at the same level as hers, looking straight ahead. It occurred to her that he might have lost it all together.
‘Try squinting,’ he said, and nodded towards the wall of glass blocks. ‘Do you usually put up little notes like that?’
The glass wall closest to them was decked with light yellow Post-it notes, as it always was, spontaneous notes and aides-memoires, hurriedly scribbled remarks about things that needed doing. Beyond all the windows the night sky hung colourless and black, and everything was as it always had been, with the possible exception of the Post-it notes–there were more of them than usual and that meant she had to crane her neck to get a view out—
My God.
The lump in her throat came from nowhere. Her eyes started welling up. Because between her and the external wall were the other two, unoccupied, booths, separated by the glass block walls, one behind the other. And from this angle, with the glass blocks lined up in a perfect square pattern, all those layers of Post-its combined into a single image. As though each wall contained part of a message that wasn’t visible, unless viewed from a certain spot.
Rebecca’s spot.
Letters. Five rows of text, floating in front of the night sky visible on the other side of all the windows.
William Sandberg. Per Einar Eriksen. Alexander Strandell.
‘Who are the other two?’
Rebecca shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Her eyes met his. ‘Do you believe me now? Do you believe me when I tell you that he didn’t want to cause you any harm?’
William didn’t reply, just nodded over at the wall again.
‘What does the rest of it mean?’
Her answer was a long time coming.
‘It says find them. Then I am in danger. Then last…’ She had to let her voice compose itself before she read out the last line. ‘The last line says forgive me.’