A gruff laugh caught him unawares. ‘Would you like me to locate a violinist?’ Zimmerman’s Echo muttered in his ear. ‘I’m sure I can find one who’ll play “Cry Me A River” while Nora drowns in it.’
Bruno was relieved when Nora appeared unharmed with the dogs. But for the rest of their afternoon together, her parentage weighed heavy upon his shoulders. The fallout of his alternative plan for Watson would hurt her daughter equally, if not more.
‘Mummy, can Bruno and Oscar come for dinner at the weekend?’ Nora asked. Bruno tried to hide his delight – it was a way into her home and just want he needed.
Watson blushed. ‘I’m sure Bruno has better things to do.’ She looked to him as if hoping he hadn’t.
‘Actually, no, I don’t,’ he replied, his smile rare but genuine.
Later, they set a time and as they packed up the remains of their picnic and walked slowly towards their cars, he imagined Louie was with them and holding his hand. He watched Watson help her daughter, and then Luna, into the car before holding his key to his own start button.
But first, he reached for his phone to check again for ReadWell messages; he was puzzled by a small red flashing circle in the top-right corner of his screen. The phone was not supposed to accept any form of incoming communication.
The frosty breath of several Echoes in the car’s rear seats grew colder and they shuffled closer, all curious to discover what the icon meant. Hesitantly, Bruno clicked on it and a video began to play.
A woman stared at the camera, her mouth gagged as someone carved the name ‘Sinéad’ into her forehead with a blade. And as the blood seeped down her cheeks, a silver instrument was raised two, perhaps three, centimetres from Sinéad’s skull, then a button released, and almost too fast for the eye to register, something inside it penetrated the crown of Sinéad’s skull. Sinéad’s eyes opened as wide as possible, and never shut again. Bruno replayed the message twice more to assure himself this was genuine and that he had not started a descent into madness.
He hurriedly logged on to message board and discovered Ariel’s message. It didn’t take him long to decipher that it was a warning that the original recall message was fake. It had been a trap and now someone had murdered a Minder. And in doing so, they had also killed off his chanceto be reunited early with Louie. Bruno slumped in his seat, deflated.
It took no time at all before his disappointment manifested itself into anger and all he could picture were the faces of the six people who had separated father from son. He detested every last one of them. They had all deserved to die. And so did Watson.
He glared at her car through his windscreen; it had still not pulled away. She was a sitting duck. He reached for the hammer in the glovebox and withdrew it, threw open the door and climbed out.Fuck the new plan, this is going to end now, he thought. And with his grip firmly around the handle, he rushed towards her.
Chapter 53
FLICK, ALDEBURGH, SUFFOLK
Within an hour of witnessing a recording of Sinéad’s murder, Flick fled Aldeburgh.
Earlier that day, her shift behind the bar had been a welcome distraction from the fake recall notice. If she was incorrect and it had been genuine, it was the first day of a life lived on borrowed time. Her only comfort was that she wasn’t alone. Following the warning message, Minders using the Shakespearean character names Bassanio and Cominius indicated they too would not be returning.
Suddenly it struck her that if the notice was real, then her funding should now be cut off. She poured herself a mineral water and tapped her credit card to pay for it – it was accepted. Now more than ever she was convinced the withdrawal request was a hoax. But who had infiltrated their clandestine world?
‘I’m taking my break,’ she told landlord Mick and made her way to an empty table in the corner of the room. Flick gazed out of the window and towards the dark clouds over the sea and the rain lashing at the patio umbrellas. The weather was mirroring her own unrest, or perhaps, she feared, it was a warning of something worse to come.
As if on cue, her phone vibrated. The screen displayed a red circle, something that hadn’t appeared before.Hesitantly, Flick scanned the pub to ensure privacy and pressed play. And her stomach churned as seconds later, she witnessed the first Minder captured, mutilated and murdered.
With no time to think twice, Flick slipped out of the pub, returned to the B&B to pick up her emergency rucksack and breathed in the post-storm air as she hurried through the rear garden and towards a gate leading into a ginnel. But Grace caught her pre-flight. She eyed Flick up and down, and then looked at the backpack hanging from her shoulder.
‘Are you leaving?’ she asked and Flick nodded. ‘But I thought you were happy here?’
‘I am, I was,’ Flick replied. ‘But it’s time to move on.’
‘Why?’
‘It … just is.’
‘You’re a terrible liar.’If only you knew, Flick thought. ‘Come back inside and maybe I can help.’
‘I can’t, I’m sorry.’
‘Is it Elijah? Has he done something to hurt you?’
‘It’s nothing like that.’ Flick threw her arms around Grace. ‘I’ve transferred cash into your account to pay for my room up until the end of the summer so you won’t be out of pocket,’ she said with a trembling voice. ‘Please look after yourself.’ Then she turned her back on her friend, allowing the gate to close behind her.
Flick tossed her backpack across the rear seats of a driverless robo-taxi service she had ordered and which was waiting for her several streets away. And as it pulled away, she wept for the life she was leaving behind. There was always going to be a risk she might have to turn her back on it at a moment’s notice. But when that moment arrived it hurt like hell. She thought of Elijah and their fledgling relationship. She would never get the opportunity to explain why she was leaving; her only hope was that Gracecould persuade him he was blameless and to convey the pain she’d witnessed in Flick as she left.
Flashbacks of her pre-programme existence flooded her memory, of how she turned her back on the career and people she had loved because of who her DNA was linked to. Three years of misery had followed, of self-induced solitude and clinical depression. The thought of returning to that person and that life suddenly sparked something inside her.
