‘It’s just so …white… ain’t it?’ a female Echo inside Bruno’s head began. ‘I tell ya, it’s like living inside a sugar cube, locked in an igloo and trapped in a fuckin’ snow globe.’
Bruno couldn’t disagree. Every wall in the rented house had been painted the same shade of white, from the kitchen to the bathroom and even the cupboard under the stairs. The owner had never lived with small, sticky-fingered children.
‘Your Louie would’ve trashed this place,’ the Echo continued. It was a new voice to him; one with a lazy, southern American drawl. ‘He loved banging his stuff against the walls, didn’t he?’
Bruno nodded. ‘There was something about the noise of his toys colliding against brickwork, plasterboard or skirting boards that calmed him when he was agitated,’ he said. ‘I was forever filling holes or touching up paintwork.’
Bruno wanted to ask how she knew all this but refrained. His stored data was once again bleeding into his own memory and the two were sharing with one another. The Echo quietened, allowing Bruno more space to think about his son. Their four-month separation already felt like a lifetime. His chest tightened as he imagined how much upset he had caused the boy by removing himself from his life.
‘The price you pay for Louie being taken care of is that you won’t be able to see him for five years,’ Karczewski had warned. ‘That means no attempt to communicate with him or staff at the care home. You cannot even mention him to anyone else in your next life.’
‘And if something happens to me during this process?’
‘In the event of your death during or beyond it, Louie will be taken care of for the duration of his life.’
Bruno returned to that guarantee as the days moved into weeks and the longing to see Louie heightened. He was doing all of this for his son.
Bruno made his way down the two-storey townhouse’s staircase. He’d picked up the keys three days earlier from a letting agent in the centre of Oundle, a market town near Peterborough which he would temporarily call home. Stringent planning laws forbade its expansion giving it an appearance of a town trapped in time. Its narrow streets, flanked by limestone Georgian properties, was picture-postcard perfect. There was a handful of pubs, bistros, boutique shops and galleries and a supermarket nearby that would serve his immediate needs. It would have been the perfect location for father and son.
The property came as furnished but Bruno had made it a priority to decorate the bedroom next to his. He pinned posters to the walls, left toys scattered about the floor and ruffled up the duvet to give it a slept-in appearance. Then he paused in the doorway and tried to imagine Louie playing in this version of the bedroom he had in their family home.
Living here made Bruno long for the house he shared with Louie and Zoe. They moved in when it was a dilapidated Grade One listed cottage, located in a much sought-after village. The scale of renovation work had required a loan on top of their mortgage. By day, Bruno was Louie’s primary caregiver, a decision made when Zoe’s career escalated and cemented her position as the main breadwinner.By night, Bruno attended evening classes in carpentry, plastering, basic electrical work and plumbing. Their purse strings were often drawn tight, but they muddled along without complaint. Zoe once described it as their ‘forever home’ and neither could ever see themselves wanting to move. And then she wrecked it all.
‘Now you know how easy it is to kill, do you think you’d have snuffed her out too?’ a second Echo asked. ‘I would have.’
He recognised this one from coded video interviews with Harry Crooke, a soldier who had butchered young civilians to death while stationed in Iraq in the early 2000s. Had Crooke been charged and gone to trial, he’d likely have made public four high-ranking armed forces personnel who shared his bloodlust. It had been more convenient for Special Forces to spare the army’s blushes and organise his ‘suicide’ while on remand.
‘Of course I wouldn’t have killed her,’ Bruno replied. ‘She’s the mother of my son.’
‘Don’t believe you, mate,’ Crooke shrugged. ‘I’ve seen you in action. You’re the same as me, you like watching the light leave their eyes. And there’s nothing stopping you from killing again because like me, you don’t have anyone to answer to. You don’t exist.’
Crooke was correct – Bruno was little more than a ghost. The only thing real about him was, ironically, the Echoes. There were hundreds of them, new voices appearing every day, all eager to be heard. They’d want to remind him of the coordinates of emergency war bunkers; locations of federal reserves or the mapping of DNA sequences to create biological warfare. They were desperate to discuss cures for diseases, subliminal messages in advertisements, illegal chemicals used in water systems and lost treasures. You name it and Bruno had an Echo with recognition of it.
But this was not how it was supposed to be. All the facts, lies and horrors he had learned about his countrywere supposed to be contained in one anomalous section of his brain. Instead, they were spilling with the ease of an overfilled bathtub. And managing them was a skill he had been unable to master. He likened it to a self-inflating car tyre that wouldn’t stop expanding. The only way to stop it from bursting was to release the valve a few voices at a time. Once acknowledged, they grew quieter. But eventually, their numbers always swelled again.
‘You only have yourself to blame; you don’t deserve to know what you know,’ a third Echo whispered. This time it was a young woman’s voice and the cold hand that entwined with his made him jump. He turned quickly to see a bloodied face. She’d been an escort who’d been raped and mutilated by a notorious sheikh stationed in London and the murder buried deeper than the victim.
‘You shouldn’t be a Minder. It’s your kid who solved the puzzle and who had the mental capacity to store all this data, not you,’ she continued.
‘There were plenty of other tests I did pass to get here,’ he argued. ‘It wasn’t as if they handed me a new life on a plate on the basis of one experiment.’
‘You cheated the programme and now it’s messing with your head. And if you aren’t careful, soon you’re going to join the names you’re targeting.’
In Bruno’s mind’s eye, he pictured the six faces on his kill list. And he reminded himself that he would be paying the second one a visit later that week.
Chapter 21
FLICK, ALDEBURGH, SUFFOLK
‘Another sparkling water?’ Grace asked. Flick nodded as they waited at the bar for the landlord’s attention. ‘Don’t you drink anything else?’
‘I’m alcohol intolerant,’ Flick explained. ‘My body doesn’t have the right enzymes to break down the toxins in booze so I break out in unsightly red hives which is so bloody annoying.’
‘Take away my wine and you might as well kill me now,’ Grace replied.
It was another in a long line of Flick’s half-truths. Months had passed since a warm, spicy rum and Coke had touched the back of her throat. After discovering the truth about her DNA Match Christopher, she’d come to rely on it too much to smooth out the sharp edges that wounded her. But the programme stipulated no use of alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, narcotics and most over-the-counter medications. Nothing was to enter her system that could alter the delicate equilibrium of her brain activity or that threatened to impede her clarity of thought. Abstinence from booze hadn’t troubled her until tonight, when she became envious that the rest of the pub quiz team was enjoying beverage after beverage while she nursed carbonated drinks. A cigarette wouldn’t have gone amiss either, but she resisted both.
It was approaching a month since Flick had arrived at Grace’s coastal B&B. The two had formed a friendship, spending many breakfasts and evenings together, talking or going out for drinks or sharing meals. Grace had been born and bred in Aldeburgh so her face was familiar to many. And she became the tool Flick used to build up a social life.
