Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📕

The message had been written by Proctor. That was certain. He knew, somehow, that she would have been sent on his trail and had, perhaps, picked upon a distant memory of her past life – a memory that she could not yet fully recall. Plus, he knew she was

German. That was all. That explained it.

She wiped away the tear.

There was one more element to the graffiti. A long, white arrow pointing to the bottom right corner of the frame. She held the recorder in her line of sight and tried to match the image with the wall. She looked at the area indicated by the arrow. There was a piece of masonry.

Leave now, said a voice. It may be a bomb. Or something poisonous. Remember the box that your new secretary carried. Remember the neat little hole it put in the office window.

Saskia accepted the concerns and dismissed them. She was a detective. It was her wont to detect.

The masonry turned out to be a blackened piece of foam insulation. It flipped easily. Underneath was a small rock and, underneath that, a plastic folder. Saskia took another picture and placed her recorder a few metres away. If it did explode, her would-be rescuers might know what had happened.

The rock lifted easily. It was merely a paperweight. The transparent folder was grimy but still sealed. Inside was a single white paper envelope. It was impossible to tell how long the folder had lain there. There some words on the exterior.

“Saskia!” called a voice. “Are you alright? I’m…I’m coming down.”

It was Hannah. She remembered his fear of heights.

“Stay there, Scottie. I am coming now.”

She concealed the folder inside her jacket and dropped the recorder into another pocket. She reattached her decelerator and began a slow caterpillar creep upwards. The hairs rose on her neck. If something from the blackness wanted to grab her, this was its last chance.

Nothing touched her. She looked up. Water droplets fell past her. They sparkled. She looked down. Three metres from the floor. She was safe.

Saskia arrived at the Bed and Breakfast early in the evening. Hannah drove on to Edinburgh. Mrs McMurray, who used to be lawyer, was married to Barry, couldn’t eat such a thing as meat in the morning and who thought Saskia looked very, very tired, gave Saskia her key. Saskia thanked the woman bluntly and walked heavily to her room. She had fantasied about collapsing on the hotel bed and sleeping dreamlessly, but her mind had not spent its momentum. It turned over still, rolling facts around, seeing how they mixed, how they fitted. The death of Caroline Benson. The death of Bruce Shimoda. The bomb. The bomber. The research project. The centre. Back to the beginning: the death of Caroline Benson...

On the pillow, her notebook was open to her caricature of Garrel. Near her feet, on the edge of the bed, was the dusty envelope in its plastic wallet. On the face of the envelope were the words: ‘Do not open this envelope’. It remained unopened. She rose five minutes later, she needed a cigarette, she couldn’t have one, she wanted to sleep, she swore.

She thought about the envelope. She turned away from it.

Saskia slid off the bed and walked to the window in one stride. She gazed into the street. The lighting was white, not yellow. The occasional car drove past on the left, not the right. Were it not for those details, she might have been looking from the window of her Brussels apartment on a quiet, cold night.

It was not homesickness she felt. Brussels was not home. It was her current residence.

She felt cast adrift. The dizzy spells were the steady up and down of her raft over each ocean wave. The fear was the threat of drowning. The frustration was the hunger, the thirst for knowledge about herself.

Murderer, murderer, she thought. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

The witches, the Fates: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she determines its length. Atropos, she cuts it.

Spin, measure, snip.

The window panes were black. They were touched with the white impressions of the scene outside. The impressions merged and snapped into focus. A human face.

Saskia stepped back. Her calves met the edge of the bed. In that first moment, she did not see the face as a reflection, but a visitation. Something wicked. Her right hand reached over to her left hip and, in the blink of her murdering eyes, the gun was in her hand.

She stood strongly: her legs slightly apart, the gun in her right hand, her left cupping the handle for stability. She was utterly comfortable. She could turn in any direction with the confidence that her eyes and the barrel of gun would favour the same object. Time would slow. She would react faster than her adversary because she was relaxed.

There was a knock at the door.

Saskia screamed and turned in mid air. The door opened and Mrs McMurray, the elderly proprietor who had asked her not to smoke, there’s a dear, dropped her tray of tea and thin British biscuits.

“Frau McMurray –” Saskia began. The right words were stuck in her throat. “I am...so sorry,” she said finally. She braced herself for hysteria.

“Why, my dear girl,” Mrs McMurray gasped. Her mouth was clearly on autopilot, because her eyes were glazed with horror and roamed independently. “I’m very sorry. I should’ve knocked, should I not.”

Saskia was confused. Why was she apologising? “The tea,” she said weakly.

“Aye. Look at that. I’ll get that away.”

But she stayed exactly where she was.

Saskia smiled. It took some effort. “Don’t worry about the gun. It isn’t loaded. I was just oiling it. It needs maintenance like that. From time to time.”

Ah, but it is loaded, she thought. Fancy a snip, Frau McMurray?

She put the gun on the bed near the pillow. She said, “Here, then. You clean the mess and I shall make us a fresh pot of tea.”

Mrs