Mind Blind (6 page)

So that was the other ‘first’ Daniel had meant. My first time in the Q&A suite. But probably not for my first training session.

Malcolm laughed at my hesitation. “It’s ok. You won’t see her dead body in there. We dumped her behind the bins in the alley, with a snapped neck and a ransacked bag, like the victim of a random attack. You won’t ever have to see her again.”

Except I saw her every time I closed my eyes.

I didn’t want to be dragged to the Q&A suite, so I limped the length of the warehouse, followed by everyone who’d just been hunting me.

The cousins were calming down after the chase and the fight, but the uncles were still anxious. Why? What was worth all this fuss?

When I stumbled into the Q&A suite, Malcolm turned to the line of cousins behind me. “Off you go to the gym and train harder, so next time I set eight of you on one puny target you don’t make such a song and dance of catching him.”

Daniel was horrified that his dad had criticised him publicly. I got a blast of his resentment and hate, before he marched off. He’d give me an even more serious hammering next time he found me alone.

But I wasn’t alone now. I was in the Q&A suite, standing in the white outer room, facing nearly all the senior readers.

Malcolm. Mum. Phil. Hugh. Not Paul, he was with Kerr in the first aid room. Not Susan, she’d never liked questioning. And none of the aunts and uncles by marriage. They’d brought money, martial arts, contacts or surveillance expertise to the Reid family, but none of them could read minds. So none of
them worked in the Q&A suite.

Malcolm gestured to the darkened room beyond. I tried not to panic. Surely he didn’t want me to go in there?

I sensed his desire to humiliate and punish me. But I stayed where I was, looking at the floor. It was the safest place to look.

Because I also sensed Mum come over all mother tiger, protecting her cub.

She stood at the door to the dark room, arms folded. “No, Malcolm, that’s not necessary. Do my son the courtesy of asking him a straight question and you will get a straight answer.”

Malcolm was equally determined. “That’s what I would have done, if your son had been available to give me answers when we needed them. But he disobeyed my direct order when he left base. I need to know what he’s hiding.”

“Then look in his eyes, Malcolm, and ask him here. You don’t need to scare him or torture him. You just need to ask him.”

I was still looking at the floor. I didn’t want to go through that door and be strapped to that chair. But I wasn’t going to beg.

I didn’t need to. I had my Mum to beg for me.

Malcolm stood in front of me. “Bain, look at me.”

This was the dangerous bit.

Malcolm, like Daniel, reads by eye contact. If you want any privacy without covering your thoughts, which takes a lot of effort, you can’t look my uncle in the eye.

It’s even harder to hide what you’re thinking from others in the family, like Kerr, who can read thoughts from a voice. That’s useful on surveillance, because voice readers don’t have to touch a target or catch their eye, they just need to be near enough to hear the target’s voice. But compared to readings with eye or skin contact, their pictures aren’t as strong, their reading isn’t as specific and accurate.

Now I had all the skills facing me. Mum reads by touch, Malcolm reads by eye, Phil and Hugh read by voice.

This had happened to all of us as kids. Who broke the TV? Who broke Josh’s leg? How much did those trainers cost? Asked
a direct question by a senior reader, with your wrist grasped, or your eyes held, it was impossible to hide anything. They would detect a cover go over and demand you take it down. And if you tried to think a lie, you had to build the lie round the truth.

None of us has ever managed to lie to our family when asked a direct question.

So I knew that whatever answers Malcolm wanted, Malcolm would get. Particularly because, unlike the time Roy and I broke Josh’s leg trying to see if it really is possible to get out of a bedroom window using sheets tied together, I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. I didn’t know what I should be covering up.

I still hadn’t looked up at Malcolm’s eyes. But he already knew I was scared of that dark room, and we all knew Mum was determined to keep me out of it.

Malcolm needs my mum. He’s the boss of the family firm, but she’s the brains. She’s developing techniques to make sense of the confusing information we gather when we read people’s minds. It’s possible to read a clear word or picture yet totally misunderstand what that word or picture means to the person you’re reading. Mum says it’s like getting a screen grab, without being able to access the hard drive.

However, Mum is excellent at taking what everyone in a team reads and senses, putting it all together and drawing the most likely conclusions, so Malcolm can’t antagonise her unnecessarily. That’s probably the reason I haven’t been thrown onto the streets, or thrown out of a window, already.

She was standing her ground. She wanted me questioned
here
, not in the inner room.

Malcolm nodded. “Alright, Ciaran. We’ll do this here. But if I detect any attempt to cover your thoughts or to lie to me, then I will have you in that chair in that room before you can draw breath.”

Mum pulled an office chair into the middle of the room.

“This is informal,” said Malcolm. “He doesn’t need to be tied down.”

She shrugged. “I’ll have to touch him, Mal. He won’t be able to stand.”

I could sense her embarrassment. I am embarrassing. Weak. Sensitive. A wimp. Her only son, and I don’t live up to any of her expectations.

Malcolm frowned. “Sit.”

I sat. Malcolm crouched in front of me. Mum stood behind me. Hugh and Phil stood either side.

Malcolm ordered, “Eyes!” and I did what I hardly ever do. I looked straight into my Uncle Malcolm’s bright blue eyes.

Mum laid her hand on my left shoulder. I tensed. She had woven a cover round her thoughts. Maybe she hoped that would help me cope, or maybe she was hiding something from me.

But she was so close, her emotions overwhelmed me. Her immediate worry about this job, her anger at how Malcolm treats me. Her love for me, which always makes me squirm.

I was moaning already.

“Don’t be such a wimp!” snapped Malcolm. “Concentrate!”

I nodded.

“I need to know about the girl,” he said. “We killed her this afternoon because she could identify you, then we realised we didn’t have the whole story. Even with us team-reading and your mother putting it all together, something vital might have slipped through. But it was too late to ask her again, because we’d already killed her, which was entirely your fault. Then Kerr told us you’d communicated with her during the grab. If you read anything else from her, you can repair the damage you did. So tell me about the girl.”

He stopped. My turn.

“What? What do… you need to… know?” I gasped.

Mum was so proud of me for trying, but so embarrassed that it was such an effort.

“Did she talk to you?”

I nodded, but couldn’t force any words out.

I felt Mum’s hand tighten on my shoulder. My pain was
hurting her. We were making each other worse.

I couldn’t think properly, couldn’t put sentences together, when someone was so close to me. I shoved Mum’s hand off. I pushed tears out of my eyes and into my hair with the back of my hand, trying to hide them.

“Can’t you read him without me, Malcolm?” Mum was almost in tears too.

“You’re the best at joining the dots, Gill. We need you to see what’s in his head.”

“I have an idea,” I whispered quickly, before my mum put her hand on me again. “If that girl said or thought something the client needs to know, I do want to fill in the gaps. I can’t do it like this though. If I have to think and remember and talk and feel Mum on my shoulder, all at the same time, I can’t give coherent answers. I can’t even breathe. But I’m not a target who mustn’t know you’re reading my mind, so you don’t need to hear it in words. You can just read me while I remember what happened.”

I sensed Mum’s pride. I was trying to overcome my weakness and she appreciated it.

Malcolm nodded.

Mum put her hand on me again. I gritted my teeth. She was willing me to cope. I didn’t want to let her down. I tried to sit still. I tried not to scream. I kept staring at Malcolm.

“Remember everything,” said Malcolm.

And I did. I had far too much of Vivien Mandeville Shaw in my head, so I spewed her out. Everything she did. Everything she said. Everything she thought. Every mistake I made.

I remembered everything from the moment she grabbed the mask and I grabbed her. I ignored myself screaming inside my own head and concentrated on her. She was yelling back, but fighting too. Pushing, pulling, struggling.

Did she do that? I didn’t notice at the time. I was holding her too tight. She was trying to get away and I didn’t even notice.

She was screaming, “Let go!” She was thinking it too.
Let
go, you horrible boy
. Horrible boy? I suppose I am. Crap at my job. Sensitive. A wimp. And horrible.

She was demanding that I let her go. She was fighting. I was holding her away from me and screaming at her.

In the van, I was freaking out. But in the Q&A, I was remembering every detail. I felt like I was being battered inside my own head, but I could do this. I could remember this for my family, for the client. I wasn’t completely useless.

I was finding all her chaotic thoughts in my memory. Thoughts which had been crashing into each other, breaking off halfway through…

She was worrying about her phone. She knew it was stupid to worry about a phone when she was being kidnapped, but had it fallen out of her coat pocket or was it safe in her school bag…?

She was thinking that unless I let her go soon she wasn’t going to get a chance to revise for her maths test tomorrow. Then she laughed inside her head, because she was going to ace the test anyway, so it was a bit unnecessary to get kidnapped just to avoid revising.

All of a sudden, she was afraid: a deeper darker fear than her present fear of me and the van, but a fear she only half admitted, a threat she didn’t want to believe in.

A sudden avalanche of jumbled memories. Old boxes, new newspapers, arguments and promises, ambulances and tears.

Then a single solid memory. She was remembering saying bye bye and sorry to her nana, and putting a black-and-gold vase in a cardboard box, and I felt grit on her fingers, harder and darker than the…

Then she was thinking about her family. She hoped her little sister wouldn’t come and meet her after dance class, wouldn’t walk along that suddenly dangerous alley…

She thought about her mum and dad and how worried they would be. She nearly lost it, nearly burst into tears. Then I dropped her.

“Again!” Malcolm ordered. “Run it again!”

So I dragged it out of me, again and again, for Malcolm.

Her courage, her stupidity. The mask. The maths test. The vase. The sister.

The age we screamed at each other.

I sensed my mum’s concentration and her disappointment at my mistakes. I sensed the uncles all around me, Hugh and Phil digging into my moans, Malcolm piercing my eyes. I felt Vivien in my head screaming and worrying about her family. And my family round me, forcing me to open myself wider than I could bear.

I know I screamed for them to stop. I know they didn’t stop.

Malcolm stared at me, yelling, “Keep your eyes open, boy! Don’t you dare close your eyes at me!” I forced my eyes wide.

I twisted in the chair. My mum’s hand stayed on my shoulder, sending waves of searching into me. Ripping through me. Slicing me apart.

I gave them everything. I didn’t try to keep anything back. I didn’t know what to keep back. I didn’t care anyway. I had no one to protect, nothing to fight for.

I gave them the feeling of my mask in her fist. The pressure of my fingers on her arms. The grit under her nails. The way she looked at me when I asked her not to think about my face.

I gave them everything. Even the moment I walked away and left her to die.

Then I threw up. Malcolm must have seen it coming. He leapt out of the way. But it splashed onto Hugh’s shoes.

Suddenly it was over.

Mum let go. Malcolm turned away.

The four readers nodded together for a moment. I sensed relief from them, a release of fear.

“That’s enough, Ciaran,” said Mum. “I know you gave us everything. I think it’s enough. Thank you and well done.”

Malcolm threw me a towel. “Clean up after yourself.”

They walked out and left me. Shivering, retching, with a floor to clean.

I leaned against the desk in the Shaws’ study. I rubbed my shoulders, then fumbled in my jeans for chewing gum. The Q&A had been more than 24 hours ago, and I’d brushed my teeth a million times since, but I still couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth. And I couldn’t forget Mum’s grip on my shoulder, forcing me to remember.

I weighed the flash drive in my hand. I wrapped my fingers round it.

Yes. This was what Vivien’s gritty fingers had felt empty of. This was what she’d hidden in the urn.

I stood up straight, and brought my mind back to the present, checking on the surveillance team outside and the family above me.

Only two minds were active upstairs now. Lucy, cycling from anger to grief to curiosity to impatience to anger again, and a half-awake parent drifting off and jerking awake with renewed horror every couple of minutes.

I searched the study shelves, hoping I could find an address book and get out before both parents were asleep and Lucy came downstairs to either accompany me or try to deceive me. I didn’t find anything useful. So I turned the computer on, but there was no file with family addresses, not even a Christmas card list.

What was I doing?

Had I really suggested sneaking off in the middle of the night with a boy I didn’t know? With a boy who had broken into my house?

What was I thinking?

I would admit, though not to his face, that he might be almost cute. With that blond hair, smooth tan and silver-blue eyes.

He might be
almost
cute. Apart from the fact that he killed my big sister.

Whatever he looked like, it wasn’t wise to head off into the night with him. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t sensible. But what was the point of playing safe? Vivien was always sensible and safe, top marks and gold medals. Look what happened to her. Maybe I had to take a few risks, in order to find out what this boy did to Viv, and to make sure he got the punishment he deserved. If violence and crime and death could find Viv on the way to her flamenco class, then I wasn’t safe anywhere, and hiding from it wouldn’t help. Perhaps I needed to go out there and face it.

I leapt under the duvet when I heard Dad’s feet on the stairs, rolled over so my back was to the door, and tried to breathe more slowly. My heart was racing, but he wouldn’t hear that.

The door creaked open. He tiptoed in and put his cold outdoor hand on my forehead. He murmured something. I tried not to listen, in case it was more sentimental nonsense.

As he walked out, I heard him sniff. I have tissues by my bed, the ones with lotion to stop your skin peeling when you’re wiping your nose a lot, like when you’ve got a bad cold or someone has murdered your only sibling. I blew my nose quietly and wiped my eyes.

I heard them both go to the loo and brush their teeth, then they went to bed. Once they stopped whispering, I got up again.

I found my darkest clothes: black jeans; dark top, inside out so the picture on the front didn’t show; black Converse, which I hadn’t cleaned recently, so the white bits were all
muddy; and the navy hoodie Mum hates because she thinks it makes me look like a criminal.

I tied my hair back, then grabbed my keys and purse out of my bag, and put them in my pockets.

I picked up my phone and looked at it. I should just dial 999 right now. I slid it into my back pocket. I could dial 999 any time I liked. Any time I thought he was holding out on me or a danger to me.

I opened my door and sneaked downstairs. I heard a sob from my parents’ room. Mum was still awake. But I didn’t turn back. I hoped the boy could hear her crying, then he might stay hidden for longer.

Because I’d changed my mind about teaming up with a murderer. I’d decided to do this myself. I would walk right past the study, keep going silently to the back door and get out on my own.

If I ran all the way to the centre of Winslow and all the way home, perhaps I could get back with the urn and whatever it contained before he realised that I’d left without him.

I wasn’t keen on leaving him here with Mum and Dad, but I was even less keen on taking him to Grampa’s house, like Red Riding Hood escorting the wolf to her granny’s.

The study door stayed closed as I sneaked past. I smiled. He wasn’t that smart, then.

I tiptoed through the kitchen, then into the extension, heading for the back door.

And he grinned at me.

He was standing there, his arms folded, a self-satisfied smile on his face. Blocking the back door.

“Sneaking off?” he whispered. “Without me?”

I shrugged.

His grin got wider. “Don’t ever try to deceive me, Lucy. I’ll always be one step ahead. And how were you planning to get past the police?”

I wasn’t convinced anyone was out there, but I didn’t say
that. “I have a perfect right to walk out of my own house.”

“In the middle of the night?”

I shrugged again.

“There are four police out there now,” he whispered, “because two more followed your parents home. I can’t get both of us past that many. Even though you’re little and skinny, you still don’t look enough like a stray cat to sneak past them.”

He thought I looked like a skinny stray cat? What an arrogant prat. “Of course I can get past them. I’m half your size and I don’t glow in the dark.” I pointed to his golden face and pale hair, then my dark skin and black hair.

He took a thin black hat from his pocket and pulled it over his face. Not a hat, a balaclava.

I shivered. He suddenly looked really scary. Not cute at all.

But I said, as calmly as I could, “Terrorist chic. What else do you have? Machine gun? Bomb?”

He pulled the mask up, leaving it lumpy on his forehead. “No. But I am tooled up for this and you aren’t.”

“What tools will get you past the police? Poison darts? Sleeping gas? How did you get past them on the way in?”

“I can move with the dark, blend into the background, that sort of thing. But it’s too risky for you to try to sneak out. If they see you, they’ll just get more suspicious of your family. And I’ve got a better chance of getting past them on my own, without you trailing behind me.”

“No. You’ve got a better chance of getting past if you take me with you.”

“Oh yeah? Why? Have you got magic invisibility wellies?”

“No. I’ve got a way out of the garden. Are they watching the whole street, or just our garden gates and walls?”

He looked like he was concentrating, listening to something. He couldn’t
hear
people out there, could he? Maybe he was delusional, maybe he thought he had superpowers.

“There are two watching your front gate and two watching the back gate, but they can probably see right up and down
both the street and the lane. There isn’t any way out but my way, and you can’t do my way.”

He was so sure of himself. I wanted to show that he wasn’t the only one who could sneak about at night.

“There is another way. Next door’s shed backs onto the side of our garden, like it’s part of our fence, and there’s a loose plank. We can go through their shed, into their garden, then over their low wall into the next garden and so on until the end of the block. See, local knowledge beats criminal experience every time!”

He smiled at me. “Ok! That’s good. Can you show me?”

We opened the back door and crept into the sharp outdoor air of the garden. Then I realised we would be visible from the front when we were crossing the grass to the shadows by the shed.

“Getting across the grass…” I whispered.

He nodded. “I’ll distract the team at the front. You get to the shed as fast as you can, then stay low and small at the base of it.” He pulled his leather gloves on and his balaclava down, then leant close to me. “Wait for me at the shed, Lucy. Don’t go without me.”

I nodded, and crept to the corner of the extension.

Then I heard the familiar hollow thud of a wheelie bin overturning and a cat’s yowl. I sprinted across the grass. I reached the shed wall and crouched down, breathing hard. Not from the run, but from the excitement and adrenaline.

Where was he? Was he still at the other side of the house, playing skittles with bins? No, he was back at the corner already, looking towards the road.

I followed his gaze. I saw a car parked in the street and two people who had just leapt out of it. A woman from the driver’s side and a man from the passenger’s side, both looking over to our driveway. The man was shaking his head, speaking into a mobile phone, then he got back into the car.

The boy was right. There
were
police outside my house.

I was shielded from the car by the plants in the flowerbed. But how was that boy going to get across the open grass? Did
he want me to create a distraction for him?

Before I could signal a question to him, he vanished.

He just vanished.

Not into a puff of smoke. Not swirling a cloak round himself. Just gone.

It wasn’t completely dark. I could see the flowerbeds in the front garden, and the patio tables and the fruit bushes at the back. But even though I knew he must be somewhere, I couldn’t see him.

I spent about ten minutes watching the deep grey shapes for movement or a silhouette, then suddenly he appeared behind me. How had he got there?

He was good. Scary. But good.

“You waited. Sensible. Now show me this secret way through the shed.”

“You show me how you did
that
!”

“No. Trade secret. You wouldn’t have the patience to learn. Or the incentive.”

“Why not?”

“Because you haven’t spent most of your life scared out of your…” He stopped and bit his lip.

Aw. Poor thing. There must be a hard luck story there, some sort of Jacqueline Wilson family disaster. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking him.

He grinned. Like he knew I wanted to know. Sod him.

“Show me the way, Lucy.”

I ran my hands over the planks at the base of the shed. I don’t play Amazon warriors or spies or cat burglars any more, so I haven’t been in the shed for years. I was hoping Mr Nicolson hadn’t nailed the plank down recently. I’d look like a total idiot in front of this boy if the plank didn’t move. Or if either of us was too big to fit through.

He was a bit taller and wider than me. More like a leopard than a skinny stray cat. Or a mountain lion, with that blond hair. But even with his leather jacket on, he wasn’t bulky. If I
could still fit through, he probably could too.

Then I found the right plank.

It’s an old shed. Not a garden centre prefab job, but built from planks nailed together. Clinker built, Uncle Vince says, like a ship, overlapping to make it solid and watertight.

But the plank third from the ground was only nailed at one corner. It was secure unless you pushed at it but, when we were small, Viv and I discovered we could swivel it up inside the shed. Then it stayed up, friction and the tight nail holding it steady against the upper planks, so we could post ourselves like letters through the gap.

I pushed slowly and gently. Surely it used to move more easily than this? Then I remembered. When I was about ten and still playing games in the garden, but Viv had pretty much stopped, the nail at the top corner worked loose and the plank kept slipping down and hitting me as I went through. So my big sister crept into the shed and used Mr Nicolson’s own hammer to tighten in the nail again.

Vivien did that for me. I can’t remember if I said thank you to her. I can’t even remember the last thing I said to her on Monday morning. The last thing I ever said to her…

“Concentrate, Lucy,” the boy whispered behind me. “Concentrate on this just now. If you get too upset, we won’t be able to find the urn.”

Was my grief that obvious? Even in the dark? With my back to him? I hadn’t sniffled, had I?

I put more pressure on the plank and it slid round like the hand of a clock moving from 9 to 12, vanishing inside the shed.

I didn’t want him to go first, in case he got stuck and blocked my way. So I slid through, head first. I landed awkwardly, just in front of the ancient lawnmower. The shed smelt familiar: sweet grass, old oil and rusty nails.

I rolled out of the way. Then, in the dim streetlight coming through the shed windows, I watched as the boy’s shape came through like a Chinese dragon, all coils and smooth twists.

He didn’t land on the floor. I don’t know how he did it, but he didn’t even get his jacket dusty, and he was standing straight while I was still pulling myself up on the handles of an old filing cabinet.

He turned round and eased the plank down. “Good escape route. You must have had fun when you were wee! Now, when we leave the shed, follow me exactly and don’t say a word.”

“You’re not the boss,” I objected.

“Yes I am. How many houses have you broken into?”

“None. I only break into sheds.”

“So I’m the boss, because I have more experience. Be quiet and follow me.”

I didn’t think a background as a burglar was something to boast about, but I decided not to argue. The more information he gave me about his background, the more evidence I’d have against him. So I nodded.

He pushed the shed door open slowly, slower than a snail moves. He can’t have broken into that many houses if he always does it in slow motion. He laughed softly. “Don’t be so impatient. Rushing leads to mistakes.”

“Just get on with it, Obi Wan.”

But I’d worked out how he’d moved invisibly in the garden. It wasn’t magic, he just moved so slowly that anyone looking for him was bored to death.

Then he slipped out through the door and I followed. We ran round the back of the Nicolsons, over their wall into 27, round their greenhouse and into 25 and 23. Eventually we clambered over the railings onto Swan Road. We crouched on the pavement.

He pulled his balaclava off and grinned at me. “Scared yet?”

“That was fun!”

“It’s even better if you’re being chased. So, which way to your grampa’s?”

“Oh no. Now you follow me. Now I’m the boss.”