‘I asked the man who left a few minutes ago if it was okay,’ the man added. ‘He said I could, as long as I didn’t give out his address.’
Flick stepped two paces back and looked up. Wedged against the chimney stack was a drone. The couple posed no threat to her – she had made a terrible error in judgement.
Aware of the fracas, a crowd was gathering so she turned on her heel and hurried back to the house. Once inside and securing it behind her, she threw the knife to the floor and ran up the stairs. Flick was feeling irrational and vulnerable and wanted to hide under the bedcovers like a child until Elijah returned. Then she could admit everything – who she was, what she knew, about their baby and how she was a danger to herself, to others and their child. Elijah was the only one who could help her.
Flick stopped in her tracks when she reached his studio: inside, there was an open door she hadn’t seen beforedisguised by panelled walls. Curiosity got the better of her and she entered, running her fingers across the wall until she found a light switch.
The slate floor of the side room was covered in scuffs and paint marks, and canvases fresh and old were propped against the walls. She looked through them. There were two early illustrations of what became the incomplete painting of Elijah’s grandfather, plus other alternative versions of work she recognised from the exhibition she’d attended in town.
Further inside were more unfinished paintings, but this collection was only made up of portraits of women. There was a familiarity about them, but she couldn’t pinpoint why. Some of them were bloodied, others depicted faces contorted by fear. They were unsettling. It was only when she reached the final one and recognised the nose piercing on the young subject that her jaw dropped.
It was Kelly, the waitress she’d employed at her old restaurant, and who her DNA Match Christopher had murdered.
Flick clasped her hand over her mouth as she hurried back to the partial sketches of the other women, and only now, she recognised each one of them. They were all Christopher’s victims. Elijah was the anonymous artist she’d seen on TV in her flat months earlier who had caused a national furore with his controversial exhibition, capitalising on Christopher’s sickening violence.
Flick had replaced one monster with another.
** CONFIDENTIAL **
TOP SECRET: UK EYES ONLY, CLASSIFIED ‘A’
THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HIS MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT
MINUTES OF JOINT CYBER-ESPIONAGE / INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE ASSESSMENT MEETING 11.6
‘EMERGENCY MEETING RE: THE ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO STORAGE OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS’
** Please note this is an account of the minutes taken from the above meeting. Portions of text and certain participants have been redacted to prevent threats to security. **
LOCATION:
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Dr Sadie Mann, Director of Psychiatric Evaluations
Dr Sandra White, Deputy Head of Neuroscience
Ministry of Defence (MoD), Porton Down
MI5
William Harris, HM Government’s Minister for Central Intelligence
NON-MEMBERS PRESENT:
Prime Minister Diane Cline
QC Barry Hunt, personal lawyer for Prime Minister Diane Cline
BARRY HUNT, QC: As your lawyer and friend, Diane, I would like to take this opportunity to suggest it may not be to your advantage to be privy to any details that might follow. Perhaps you’ll reconsider my advice and leave?
PRIME MINISTER: It’s been eight weeks since Karczewski’s body washed up on the shores of Lake Geneva, and now a second person we believe to have been enrolled in this programme has also turned up dead. What happens if whoever is doing this gets to the others before we can reach them?
MoD: Protocols are in place …
PRIME MINISTER: I don’t mean to be rude but to hell with your protocols. This ismycountry we are talking about andmyfitness to lead it. If it becomes public knowledge that I’ve sanctioned taking our secrets offline and put them in the brains of four human guinea pigs, there will be pitchforks and flaming torches trying to burn me out of Downing Street.
BARRY HUNT, QC: If you leave this meeting now, the worst-case scenario is that we can use the defence of plausible deniability and claim you were only involved after the fact.
