The BBC!
Ana couldn’t believe it. She sat back trembling, a sense of triumph and pleasure coursing through her veins.
*
Evelyn Knight strode through the enormous inner hall of the Board’s Headquarters – once one of the country’s largest power stations. Her two bodyguards walked with her, one in front, one behind. Her young assistant kept pace at her side. She straightened her skirt, checked her bun.
In the last hour, Three Mills had begun to undergo temporary closure. Patients were being reallocated to other homes around the City and the staff were being brought to the Board’s Headquarters for questioning, pending the investigation.
The restaurant stood in the lower hall. It was after two, but the establishment had been kept open especially for Evelyn. Ordinarily, she never ate there, but she wasn’t about to welcome Dr Cusher into her private offices. Charlotte Cusher was already seated, waiting for her as instructed. She rose as Evelyn entered.
Evelyn waited for her assistant to pull out a chair, then sat down opposite Charlotte. She picked up the white napkin from the set of plates laid out in front of her. Shaking it out across her lap, she breathed in deeply, trying to control her mood, which was sour and growing more unpleasant by the minute.
Tabby, her assistant, instructed the waiter to bring bottled water. Chilled. A tall glass. Ice. A slice of lemon wedged in the glass not on the ice. Most of the time, Evelyn was grateful for Tabby’s utter lack of emotional involvement. But at moments like this, on the rare occasion when she herself was feeling ruffled, she found her assistant’s sangfroid upsetting.
She watched as Tabby placed the water before her, the square napkin beneath the glass, square onto the table. The girl was small for nineteen, with short dark hair. Evelyn sometimes wondered whether she should really trust her as much as she did.
Turning her thoughts to the Managing Director of the Three Mills Mental Rehab Home, Evelyn examined the woman before her. At least Charlotte had enough sense not to speak until she was spoken to.
‘The girl who was in special therapy this morning,’ Evelyn began, ‘and whose face has been on every news channel for the last three hours, is Pure.’ She stopped, sipped her water, then leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. She gazed up at the metal girders sixty foot above them. Patches of blue sky were visible through the criss-cross patterns. In another few hours the sun would set and the sky would be cut with pink and red slashes. ‘From the Highgate Community,’ she added.
Charlotte opened her mouth to say something but Evelyn raised a hand to stop her. ‘I wonder how many other Pures you have unknowingly had committed . . .’
Charlotte, already pale, turned an unnatural shade of green.
‘Anyone spring to mind?’
‘We couldn’t have known about Tamsin Strike. The Psych Watch brought her in. They’d taken her off the City streets. She had no ID!’
‘No ID,’ Evelyn repeated. ‘I found none of the basic admittance tests in her file. No interview, no record of the circumstances around her admittance.’
Charlotte grew still and brittle.
I can almost see through her
. Evelyn nodded at her assistant. Tabby’s interface powered up. She erected a small reversal screen between herself and Charlotte. The image projected onto the screen and reversed itself so that Charlotte could see. The shot was a bird’s eye view of the girls’ toilets captured on a Three Mills security camera that afternoon, during the break-in. A patient with brown eyes and an egg-shaped face was looking directly at the camera. The zoomed in frame left the image grainy and distorted.
‘Do you recognise this girl?’ Evelyn asked.
Charlotte shook her head.
‘You have released so many patients in the last year you don’t know them all?’
‘We don’t know that the break-in was by an ex-patient,’ Charlotte said.
‘An ex-orderly or nurse, perhaps?’
Charlotte wriggled. ‘Perhaps just another Active, incited by all the recent protests?’ she suggested.
The Chairman took a deep breath. Charlotte Cusher was stupid enough to think she could hide something. ‘You don’t think the perpetrator knew where she was going? You don’t think she recognised some of the patients?’ Evelyn tilted her head, signalling to Tabby to play the snippet of the break-in recording she’d asked her to line up earlier.
A bright image of the Three Mills yard appeared on the screen, the wash-block towering above it. A pale girl with scabby skin lay at the bottom of the image, her hair in tangles across her face. An arm reached into the frame to tidy it, revealing a vine tattoo curling up the side of the girl’s throat.
‘Tamsin,’ a female voice whispered through the speakers. The girl on the ground moaned.
‘It’s the anaesthetic,’ a boy said. ‘Might take another twenty minutes to wear off.’
‘Where are her friends?’
‘They’re all Specials now.’
The camera shuddered like it had been knocked.
Tabby waved a hand over her chest, cutting out her interface. The image on the screen vanished. Evelyn raised an eyebrow. ‘She knew the Pure girl’s name.’
Charlotte clasped her hands together. Her shoulders and arms visibly trembled.
‘Here is a list of all the female patients you have released in the last twelve months,’ Evelyn said.
Charlotte didn’t move. Barely seemed to breathe.
‘Thirteen girls. Take a look. I’m sure one or two of them stand out more than the others.’
Charlotte’s eyes warily slid over the list.
‘We’ve found six of them this afternoon,’ Evelyn went on. ‘Another two are dead. That leaves only five. Why don’t you tell me about them? Starting with this one.’ She pointed at Emily Thomas’ name. ‘The only girl you’ve dismissed in the last four years
before
her nineteenth birthday.’
Charlotte choked. Evelyn sat perfectly still, waiting for her to recover.
‘A girl,’ Charlotte began, prodding her throat with her finger, ‘called Emily Thomas showed up at our gates at the end of March. She said she’d been sent from a clinic. We admitted her. The following day Ashby Barber left me a message saying he’d heard one of his old patients had been admitted and he’d like to see her.’
Ashby.
Evelyn tried to hide the shock from her face. She placed her palms flat down on the white tablecloth.
‘I sent him a message,’ Charlotte said, rushing on. ‘I informed him it wouldn’t be possible until the patient had finished her integration. The next day he shows up with her psychiatric file. Leaves me another three messages saying her parents are close family friends and the family would like him to be assigned as the psychiatrist on her case. Then the girl starts saying she’s his daughter. But the news showed that Ariana Barber had been returned home. At first, we couldn’t possibly have guessed it was her! I only started to suspect when Dr Barber took her away.’
Loathing suffocated Evelyn. Crippling. She raised her eyes to the ceiling, trying to catch her breath. ‘How did he get her out?’ she asked.
‘He arrived with a letter from the Secretary of State for Health saying he was to be given full authority over her treatment and allowing him to move her to private facilities if he so wished.’
‘So you just handed her over?’
‘There’d been a power cut. The girl had to be resuscitated, taken to hospital. He went with her in the ambulance.’
Evelyn leaned back in her chair. The girl they’d captured on camera in Three Mills that afternoon didn’t look like Ariana Barber, but she was about the right height. With gel implants or prosthetics the face could have been effectively altered.
‘Why do you think Ariana Barber came to Three Mills?’ she asked.
‘Why?’
‘Yes, why?
Why?
The boy she’s supposed to join with is abducted, and she comes to Three Mills. Why?’
Charlotte seemed to realise that as bad as she thought it was, things were about to get worse. She slipped a little sideways off her chair.
‘How many patients has Ashby Barber admitted in the last six months?’
Charlotte’s eyes struggled to work out what was going on. She floundered like a person drowning. Beside Evelyn, her assistant accessed the Three Mills registration files.
‘One,’ Tabby said. ‘Scott Rutherford.’
‘The date?’
‘21st March.’
The night Jasper Taurell was abducted.
Tabby brought up the Three Mills photo on Scott Rutherford’s ID. The final piece of the puzzle locked into place. Ashby had committed his daughter’s fiancé to Three Mills. Now that she thought of it, Evelyn remembered hearing rumours about Jasper Taurell becoming involved with the Enlightenment Project; there had even been speculation that he hadn’t been abducted at all, that his disappearance was a stunt to draw attention to the BenzidoxKid deal. She’d been too wrapped up in trying to push the deal forward to pay much attention to the gossip. Ashby must have discovered Jasper was involved in something and tried to salvage the situation. Instead, it had spiralled out of his control. He had failed to do his job properly – once again blinded by love.
Something dark and nasty sizzled inside Evelyn. She despised Ashby for risking all their hard work for the sake of his daughter’s emotions – he should have got rid of Jasper, not hidden him away. But she loathed him even more for the fact that all the sacrifices he was prepared to make had never been for her.
She sipped the last of her water. ‘Three Mills will be closed down permanently,’ she informed Charlotte Cusher, making a snap decision. ‘I’m revoking your psychiatric license. And I’d strongly advise you never to repeat this conversation to anyone.’ She rose.
Charlotte mirrored her movements uncertainly, like a scolded schoolgirl.
‘I want the last three years of Board interviews with Ariana Barber,’ Evelyn told her assistant. Tabby had already dismantled the portable screen, packed it away and was standing at her side. Anticipating her every move as always.
The Chairman strode across the great hall to the escalators. Her bodyguards glided into place, one behind, one in front.
Evelyn knew Ashby had coached his daughter on the test answers. Nobody could come away with such high scores, time and time again. It was impossible. But there would be some weakness that had leaked through. And once Evelyn had Ariana, she would use whatever weakness she had found to transform Ashby’s daughter into the one thing he would hate the most: the Board’s most loyal, steadfast supporter. And if she couldn’t, she would destroy her.
‘Any news on Ashby Barber?’ she enquired, feeling energised by her decision.
Her assistant shook her head. ‘His interface location is still blocked and he hasn’t purchased anything in the last twenty-four hours.’
‘Then I think it’s time we activated the tracer,’ she said.
‘Pull over,’ her father ordered Warden Dombrant. They were driving near the outskirts of north London; they hadn’t even turned off the M25 yet. Ana was sitting behind the Warden, who held the steering wheel stiffly, ignoring her father’s request. It made her wonder about their relationship even more.
Beside Ana, Cole massaged his upper arms from where he’d been strung up in the Psych Watch van. After drinking a bottle of water, he’d eaten the crackers she’d saved him and now looked increasingly uneasy.
‘I need to discuss something with you,’ Ashby said to Dombrant. ‘In private.’
Dombrant glanced in the rear-view mirror, catching Ana’s eye again with an edge of recrimination. ‘There’s nowhere to stop,’ he said. Cole squeezed her hand. She sensed he was also waiting for a chance to talk alone, hoping the two men would get out of the car and leave them by themselves for a minute. She’d managed to tell him that Stitch had succeeded and the Three Mills recording was on the news. She’d also told him that her father planned on taking them to Scotland. But when she’d leaned against him, held his hand and begun murmuring in his ear for a third time, her father had turned and stared at them until she’d moved back into her seat. Since then they’d been sitting watchful, silent, Cole tending to his aches and bruises.
‘The road’s empty,’ Ashby said. ‘You can stop anywhere.’ It was true. They hadn’t passed a single car all the time they’d been on the ring road. Ana wondered if that was normal, or if the Pures were avoiding travel due to the protests and growing civil unrest.
Dombrant swerved left. The vehicle plunged onto a grassy bank, struggled up the side, ploughed through a bush and came to a halt in a green field, with the road hidden from view. The Warden got out, slamming his door. Ana remembered how cocky Dombrant had been the morning he’d interviewed her after Jasper’s abduction. So self-assured. But everyone had their limits. It looked like Ana’s father was pushing Dombrant to his.
Ashby turned to her. ‘Stay here,’ he said. He shook his hand before opening the car door, as though the sedative had left him with pins and needles. She watched them stride across the field.
‘Have you heard anything about the Project?’ Cole asked as soon as they’d gone. She shook her head. ‘And you believe him? You believe he wants to take you to Scotland?’
‘Us,’ she corrected.
‘You should go with him,’ he said.
‘What? What are you saying?’
‘I’ve got to go back.’ Cole sat up, touched the top of her hand, which lay flat on the car seat between them. ‘If anything happens with the Project, I have to be there. I have to help Nate and Rachel.’
Irritation flickered inside her. The whole Three Mills thing still wasn’t enough to get him to walk away. And she was jealous too, even though she could barely admit it to herself. It wasn’t just because of Rachel. It was all of them: his family. He was all she had.
‘I’ll meet you up north,’ he continued. ‘We’ll arrange a place. When all this is over, I’ll meet you there.’
In her imagination, she saw herself in a town in the middle of nowhere, waiting at their rendezvous point. Returning day after day; Cole never showing. She folded her hands in her lap, looked down at them. ‘No.’
He edged forward on his seat, glanced through the windscreen at Dombrant and her father who were immersed in their own heated discussion.