Watson leaned in to shake his hand but Bruno misinterpreted it and moved to kiss her cheek. She turned her head to reciprocate but pecked him on the lips by mistake. Each was as flustered as the other before Watson led Luna out of the door. He watched as they made their way along the road.
‘Look at you, you bloody idiot.’ He turned his head and saw Roger McAllister, the late CEO of a pharmaceuticals company which had made extensive advancements in the field of precision cancer medicine. His team of scientists successfully sequenced the genomes of tumours, making them more treatable with drugs they had also developed. However, he had ensured the findings remained publicly undisclosed as he earned more profits from long-term cancer treatments than short-term cures. And by law, the government couldn’t force him to share his findings. ‘Wipe that grin off your face,’ McAllister continued. ‘Why isn’t she dead yet? You’ve had plenty of opportunities, you fucking pussy.’
Bruno hesitated. The Echoes had been contradictory of late. Some supported his plan for Watson, others fought against it. But getting to know her was diluting the contempt he felt towards what she’d done. He could no longer, in good faith, kill her as he’d planned. Instead, he was coming up with an alternative. But he needed a little time to work out the technicalities for it to succeed. ‘I have something in mind which will take a little longer,’ he began.
McAllister’s frosty breath glazed Bruno’s face. ‘You are here for one reason and one reason only. Grow a fucking backbone and get on with it.’
An image of Nora in her wheelchair came to mind and McAllister knew what he was thinking. ‘You didn’t give a second thought to the families of the two lawyers you beatto death, did you?’ he continued. ‘What about that rugby player? Did he have kids?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Because you didn’t bother to find out, you just wanted them all dead. But now you’re losing your edge. Just because she has a child as defective as yours doesn’t mean she gets special treatment. Do you hear me?’ McAllister didn’t wait for a response before he vanished.
On his return home, Bruno made his way upstairs into the room he had replicated to resemble Louie’s former bedroom and curled up on the bed. He tried to imagine Louie’s scent on the sheets and pictured his son sleeping under his arm. Bruno could just about make out the fluorescent decorative stars he’d stuck to the ceiling. Soon night would fall and they’d make themselves visible. ‘Shall we make a wish on them?’ he often asked Louie, but Bruno’s wish was always the same – to hear his son’s voice, even if it was only once.
He took his phone from his pocket and logged on to the ReadWell message board, the first time that week. He typed inThe Two Noble Kinsmenand pressed search. He hadn’t counted on the results yielding a result, and especially not this one.
Chapter 48
FLICK, ALDEBURGH, SUFFOLK
The Two Noble Kinsmen.
The Two Noble Kinsmen.
The Two Noble Kinsmen.
The title of the play had haunted Flick for three days since it had been posted online. Its appearance warned of an imminent threat to the Minders’ safety.
Protocol dictated that as soon as they read the message, each was expected to leave their current location and make their way to a safe house in Northamptonshire. An identical message would be left for a maximum of seven consecutive days. That was to allow enough time to see it, leave confirmation of their impending return and make their subsequent arrangements. No further information would be offered as to the reason until their arrival.
Following Karczewski’s murder, Flick had anticipated the recall message. But not knowing how advanced the other Minders’ preparations were – or even how many of them existed – was frustrating.
With Grace away for the night visiting a university friend, Flick didn’t want to be alone in the B&B so she’d asked to stay at Elijah’s house. For much of the evening, she catnapped as he slept soundly next to her. Her dreams came thick and fast until eventually, she gave up on a restful night and relocated to his lounge. She wrapped herself in a tartan throw and sat cross-legged on the sofa. As the sun rose over the North Sea, she understood why Elijah had installed floor-to-ceiling windows when he’d designed his home. It was as if she were immersing herself in a moving piece of art, the cascading colours outside making her believe that she was part of a painting. It was a brief but welcome distraction from her reality.
And the reality was that Flick was conflicted. She knew reparation for the opportunity to start afresh was to put her country’s security before her own needs. But turning her back on the second life that had saved her from her first was agonising. And time was running out.
Think, she told herself,think. There must be another way. For the second time that week, she disobeyed the programme’s regulations and engaged the use of technology. She asked the house’s OS to switch on Elijah’s wall-mounted television screen and search for more news about Karczewski’s death. To her surprise, there was nothing – no updates and no follow-up stories. Delving deeper, there was no longer any trace of his death or evidence that he had ever existed. Even the Twitter account that posted footage of his body’s retrieval was deactivated. She slumped back into the sofa, puzzled.
Flick picked up her phone and read the recall message yet again. Only this time, something caught her eye. It was a minute detail that she’d missed. She drew the device closer to her eye to see if tiredness was affecting her vision. It wasn’t.
There was an extra keystroke between the words ‘Two’ and ‘Kinsmen’ in the first message. The rest had just one.
Flick specifically recalled Karczewski explaining how such a communication would be sent via a secure computer algorithm and each message would be absolutely identical. So, was this extra space a computer glitch? It seemed unlikely.Am I clutching at straws?she asked herself. If she wasn’t, the Minders’ only means of communication had been compromised by a third party.
A panicked Flick logged off and pushed the gadget to one side, then glared at it. Five minutes passed before she picked it up again and logged in. The extra space was still there. The algorithm did not make mistakes. There was something wrong about this. With her heart racing, she began to type her first ever message.
@Ariel: Won’t be finishing The Two Noble Kinsmen. Need a little extra space so I’ve decided to start Julius Caesar instead.
The sorry tale of Caesar and the trap that led to his murder was a warning to the others that not everything about the recall was as it seemed. She hoped to God that she wasn’t mistaken and putting their lives at risk for the sake of a simple error.
When she heard Elijah’s footsteps coming down the stairs, Flick placed her phone under a cushion and changed the screen from the internet to a music video station. He leaned over the back of the sofa and kissed the crown of her head.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, tracing with his fingers where he’d kissed her. ‘It feels like a tiny lump.’
That’s where I underwent a procedure to store everything the government doesn’t want you to know, she wanted to say.And now someone is trying to lure me out of hiding to get it.
‘A war wound from being the only girl with four broth—’ she replied instead, suddenly stopping short.Damn it, she thought and wanted to punch the cushions.
