June 17
The Diana Memorial Fountain. Hyde Park.
I arrive early. It is a weekday. The sky is scattered with rain. Hyde Park is busy rather than seething. I’ve spent the last week reading about investigative journalists going undercover and operations behind enemy lines. I wonder if @PatientX has chosen a location close to the water to avoid being recorded, like spies in old movies who turn on taps to avoid eavesdropping.
The Contact is sitting on a bench near the fountain with a copy of today’s Times. That is the signal we’ve agreed on. He looks younger than I expect. All investigations follow the same basic rules: never use your real name; subtle alterations to basic appearance (blonde hair darkened with a woolly hat, add in some thick-framed glasses, heels to alter height); mobile with the battery out, only ever use burners. It is standard stuff taught on every journalism MA in London. But still.
I sit down on the bench. The Contact asks if I am recording the meet. This is a make-or-break moment. For the article, the magazine, the takeover hopes, my future finances and career prospects – I decide to lie. That’s when the first odd thing happens. The Contact takes out another burner mobile and hands it to me. He’s not the real contact, he explains, but the cut-out. I am to stay where I am and await further instructions. After that, the man gets up and leaves.
I am unsettled for a moment. This doesn’t feel right. I am about to leave too when the burner mobile buzzes. There is one new message on a pre-loaded secure messaging app. I read the message:
PATIENTX: You’ve been careless, Anna.
That mansplaining tone again. Half of me wonders if this is a set-up. I feel a dreadful, clammy fear around my neck. My palms sweat as I reply:
ME: I thought we were meeting in person.
PATIENTX: I still don’t know I can trust you.
ME: Why not?
PATIENTX: Because you have a tail. Male, six one, 90-ish kg, pushing a buggy. Nice blue coat, by the way.
I whip round and stare at the other tourists nearby. I have done everything the online articles tell you: check the reflection of shop windows, stop and tie your shoelaces, take circuitous routes, double back. But I’m out of my depth. There’s a chance I missed someone. Sure enough, there is a man standing behind me who is six foot one, around fourteen stone, with a buggy in front of him containing a small baby. He is sipping coffee and scrolling through his phone. There is no sign of a partner or wife.
Nice blue coat . . .
So Patient X can see me. Which means they are nearby. Or perhaps they just saw me leaving the flat. Either way. This could be a sick joke by a sick person which I’ve been stupid enough to fall for. But I am in this now. My plan to defeat Doug and Indy and stop the GVM takeover of the magazine – my magazine – rests on publishing this article and asserting editorial control.
I decide to hold my ground. Play hardball.
ME: You’re bluffing. I checked my tail. I’m clean. You promised me face-to-face and more info. You haven’t delivered. Give me something in the next ten seconds or this ends here.
I wait. If the source walks, then I am left with dud FOI requests and an old memo from a rotting file. I count to five in my head. Then I see the ‘typing’ signal at the top of the app.
PATIENTX: Did you find what we discussed in the archive?
ME: No visitor records. But I found a memo from Bloom to the director of Specialist and Forensic Services. The date fits. It mentions a special project being run at Broadmoor. Is that MEDEA?
PATIENTX: Yes.
ME: Why did Bloom request a 5% budget uplift?
PATIENTX: The MEDEA experiment was expensive to run. She needed her own budget. Separate from normal government financing. Something deniable.
ME: Why?
PATIENTX: Why do you think?
ME: What did the MEDEA experiment consist of?
PATIENTX: Have you read Bloom’s academic work?
ME: Some of it. As much as I can understand.
PATIENTX: Find an article titled ‘The Medea Method: Personality and Parasomnia’. It was one of her earliest pieces. It was never digitised.
ME: How do you know so much about this? Who are you?
PATIENTX: Take out the SIM and ditch the phone on the walk home. I’ll know if you don’t. Don’t bring company next time. Goodbye, Anna.
The chat stops. I have the visceral sense of being watched. Somewhere in this bustle a pair of eyes are locked on me. I debate whether to go all out and share what else I’ve uncovered. But I hold back. Fear nicks my skin again.
I buy a coffee, drain it, then put the mobile into the empty cup. On the walk home, I ditch the coffee cup in a bin. I keep checking my surroundings. I think of those malevolent Victorian buildings at Broadmoor, the arid words typed in the memo, the knowledge the source had about my FOI requests.
For the first time, I’m on the edge of something I don’t fully understand, far beyond my normal boundaries. A world where madness and evil reign. Where danger bedevils each encounter.
I don’t go back to the flat. I get the Tube to Hampstead. I need safety tonight. Home comforts. I see Mum at the kitchen table. I want to hug her tightly, like a child running for safety. I feel sorry for her. She deserves more than Dad, the Other Woman, the whole humiliating charade.
She smiles at me. ‘Well, this is a nice surprise.’
I stay there with her in the kitchen, just to be close, willing the day not to end.
I mustn’t be alone tonight.
I can hear the demons calling.