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

a writer. She wrote romantic fiction. On the afternoon of her last visit to the Kabana, she had been reading a book. She took it to the sofa. She sat there, jacket on, door wide, and opened the book at its marker. There was a picture of three old women sitting around a spinning wheel. The caption read:

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

She knew she was stronger than Brigitte. Her friend would have been damaged for life. Not Ute. She was made of stronger stuff. She had no fragile belief in right or wrong, or natural order, or of her own invulnerability to life’s traumas. She had no creator to blame.

She had nothing.

She fell. Her house computer asked her if she needed assistance. She tasted the varnish of her floorboards. “I need…” she began, but did not know how to finish.

She never did know. Her prosecutor had some ideas. “You needed revenge, didn’t you, Ms Schmidt? You needed blood, you needed punishment, you needed to kill. In short, you needed to commit murder. Isn’t that so?”

Spin, measure.

Snip.

“No.”

The next day she collected her developed photographs. She returned to her apartment and spent the day thinking, reading, smoking. She even tried to finish her novel. The romance wouldn’t come. She did not eat and, that night, she slept fitfully. At 3:00 a.m., she had a glass of water. She left the apartment.

She arrived back at 7:00 a.m. and left again at 8:00 a.m. The next time she saw the kitchen, living-room and bedroom would be in the photographs at her trial. She waited five minutes for the train. A part of her knew she should call Detective Holtz, tell him that she had found the office block and let him arrest the suspects. A nurse had collected sperm. It could be matched with the five men. All of them.

Five men. The train arrived and she got on. Her thoughts were lost in the crowd, in the pictures sweeping by, by her fingertips on the stun gun.

There was a little boy on the train. He was about ten years old. He was on his way to school alone. His cheeks were chubby. He was nervous. He saw Saskia and smiled. She might have reached for his eyes, but a pensioner shuffled between them and the moment passed.

She alighted one stop from her destination.

She emptied the tube into the lock. She put the tube in her pocket and left the alley. On the street, she cut right into the perfumery. The air was conditioned to a chill. It was precisely 9 a.m. The perfumery had no customers. Ute walked to the back of the shop and stood near a staff-only door. She pretended to inspect a moisturizing soap. When an attendant walked by, Ute clutched the woman’s arm. “Excuse me, please, but could I have a glass of water?”

The woman’s bright smile faded. “Of course.”

She disappeared through the staff door and returned with a tiny paper cone. “I’ll have the cup back when you’re finished,” she said.

Ute took two deep breaths, drank the water, and let the cone drop. She swayed. “I’m sorry…”

“Are you feeling alright?” asked the assistant.

“Perhaps some more water…” Ute said. She fell into the woman’s arms, leaving her no choice but to take her into the back room. Ute saw linoleum and cleaning buckets. She smelled fresh coffee. The woman placed her on a chair in a small kitchen. Ute heard the running of a tap, and it was then that she looked up and withdrew her stun gun.

The woman turned. She had a mug of fresh water in each hand. When she saw the gun and Ute’s cold eyes, she let the mugs drop. They bounced on the tiles. “You own the shop?” Ute asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. She was tearful but her anger kept her alert. “What do you want? The takings? We have only been open for a few minutes, foolish girl.”

Ute put a finger to her lips. “What I have to do today has nothing to do with you or your shop. I need to get into those offices.” She pointed at the ceiling. “How?”

The woman relaxed. Ute noticed the blond highlights in her brown hair, her tan, her blue pearl necklace, and the red bandana that was tucked fashionably into the collar of her blouse. Her badge read, ‘Sabine Schlesinger’. “The fire escape.”

“No,” Ute said. She pictured her journey that morning, before sunrise, when she had stolen up those iron steps in bare feet, attached the padlock, felt it click home.

“There is another way. Out of here, turn left. There’s an interior fire door that opens onto a corridor. Then there are stairs. You realise I must call the police.”

“Of course,” Ute said. She did not lower the stun gun. “Please do not follow me. This is for your own safety. Evacuate the shop.”

“What’s going to happen to my shop?”

“Nothing,” Ute said.

She walked backwards from the room. In the tiny corridor, there was nobody. She checked on Sabine. Still there.

Ute turned and ran through the fire door. She stepped through and closed it behind her. The corridor was empty. At one end was the door with the lock that she had superglued before entering the shop. She checked its handle. Immovable.

Her one problem was the connecting door with the perfume shop. It had a push-down bar on both sides. She had to act quickly.

She removed her shoes and walked up the stairs.

“A thorough and meticulous murder,” Jobanique would tell her, three weeks later.

There was an interior door on the first landing. She put the stun gun in her shoulder bag. Ute knew that the average police response time was four minutes, plus or minus one minute. Sabine, she guessed, would not follow her.

The handle turned. It was cheap door with a cardboard filling; it did not have the presence to squeak. It could not be barricaded.

For a second time, she stepped