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

“You’re not wrong.”

Saskia paused. Again, she gazed through the window. The banality of Edinburgh’s streets settled her mind. Think. What are the important questions? “Where else was the card used?”

“Two filling stations between Belford and Northallerton.”

She drummed his fingers on her knees. “Do they have cameras?”

Hannah shook his head. “We checked. He chose little one-pump jobs. Those are quiet places. He must be using minor roads. One or two lads remember seeing him, but they can’t give a good description. They say his bike was chrome. Maybe some kind of trail bike.”

“So. The trail bike. Probably the same bike he used to ride away from the glider.”

“Yes.”

“OK. Back to last night. You said there was an accusation of rape? Subsequently falsified?”

“I came over the radio just as the officer was about to interview Proctor.”

“That is convenient. In Germany we say somebody has ‘cried wolf’.”

“Here too.”

“Who was the woman? Do we have any information about her?”

“No. She wouldn’t give her name. Anyway, she was just a kid. Truscott – the reporting officer – said she looked to be on the wrong side of ten.”

Saskia nodded slowly. Hannah said nothing and Saskia remained silent. Just before they reached the Special Incident Unit, Saskia said to him, “Scottie, if you had heard about this escape from a friend, what would you think? If you heard that this man had been pulled away from a hillside attached to a glider?”

“Me? Och, I’d say it was something out of a cartoon.”

Saskia felt a memory move, like a baby’s kick. “Me too.”

They had arrived.

David had reached the M1 and ridden steadily until Northallerton was far behind him. He had turned off and entered the countryside, a maze of lanes and high hedgerows. The lights of Sheffield coloured the western sky. He located a quiet ditch and rolled the bike to the bottom. He let it tip into the high nettles. He collapsed and lay against it with his head against the muffler for warmth. He opened his visor a fraction but did not remove the helmet. It was nearly 9 p.m. He closed his eyes and awoke eight hours later. The night had stolen his heat, his neck was stiff and he couldn’t look left. Morning mist rolled into the ditch. The sky was grey and close. Small birds sang. He lifted his helmet and shivered.

He defecated in the bushes, crouching and embarrassed though there was nobody for miles. He returned and opened the rucksack. The passport and driver’s licence were still there. Both were cards fitted with smart chips. The passport had an additional wallet with pages for immigration stamps. All the documents were in the name of Mr David Greenspoon. He was a nondescript, average-looking man in every sense. It would be as easy to copy his appearance as it would be difficult to remember it. Greenspoon’s birth date was David’s own, but there was no other biographical information, so David had invented his life story and memorised it.

He dropped the helmet over his head. He felt the warm, spongy interior and a moment of claustrophobia. He made his ears comfortable and tied the strap. He was tired. His eyes watered, though they felt dry, and his kidneys hurt. He pushed the bike up the bank but it was too heavy. They spent thirty seconds in an angry waltz.

“Fuck this,” he shouted. He jumped on, gunned the engine, and rocketed out like a good bunker shot. Birds flew from their nests in protest. They watched him tear down the road. They watched him return twenty minutes later for his rucksack.

Hannah led Saskia through the building. He stopped to talk to the occasional friend. Saskia did her job well. She acted with interest, smiled, ignored the sideways looks at Hannah. The SIU was on the third floor. They passed no uniformed officers. This was a division of the Criminal Investigation Division, who wore no uniforms.

Saskia learned that the hunt for Proctor had been divided into ‘cells’. One cell worked on one problem: a ‘line of enquiry’, in

CID terminology. Cells were forbidden to communicate laterally. This rankled with most officers. It smelled of bureaucracy. It tacitly questioned their loyalty and professionalism. Only nominated officers such as DI Hannah, acting as a liaison between CID and the Continental European FIB, were permitted an overview of the cells. The ‘geographic’ cells were involved in the investigation of the three crime scenes: South Parish Church, the glider landing area at Belford, and Proctor’s hotel at Northallerton. There were also a number of ‘abstract’ cells.

An abstract cell was working on the encrypted transmission that Proctor made prior to his appearance at the hotel. Saskia wanted to check their progress. The office was large and windowless. It was stunningly cold. Two coffee makers babbled away in a corner. Steam boiled from them like dry ice in a bad horror film. Saskia was surprised by their equipment. The computer displays were old CRT boxes. She remembered the state of the art equipment in her office: a voice controlled, social-interface computer with a parallel processing engine. Here, not one piece of equipment was less than fifteen years old. Apart from the coffee machine. Priorities.

Hannah clapped his hands. “Hello, boys and girls.”

The occupants turned in their chairs. One was a short, dark-skinned man with glasses. Another was a rather plump, attractive woman. The last was very tall man with his hair scraped into a ponytail. All of them wore coats. Saskia’s face was blankly benign, but a ponytail would never have been permitted at the FIB.

“Allow me introduce a liaison officer from Brussels –”

“Germany, originally,” she corrected, with a smile.

“ – called Detective Saskia Brandt.”

She raised a hand and waggled the fingers. Nothing happened. Eventually, the man with glasses offered a nod in reverse, as though he was pointing his chin at her. His expression was bovine. Nothing else happened.

“Who is in charge?” asked Saskia. This provoked a response.

“Me, Paul Besson,” said the man who had nodded. The others swivelled back to