Mind Blind (7 page)

Now I was the boss, I started running towards the town centre. I heard him whisper behind me, “Slow down…”

But I kept running. Actually, I accelerated. It wasn’t my fault if he couldn’t keep up.

Then he grabbed me.

He yanked on my sleeve, swung me round and pushed me against the wall. Then he stepped away quickly, like I was toxic or something.

“Slow down!”

“Why? Am I going too fast for you?” Football training keeps me pretty fit. Maybe he really couldn’t keep up.

“Running is too obvious. Witnesses remember people running. Walking is safer, so walk briskly. And from now on, please do exactly as I say, or you’ll get us both arrested.”

Getting him arrested was entirely my plan, but not yet. So I walked. He stayed two steps behind, which suited me. We turned a few corners and crossed a few deserted streets, then as we walked under a streetlight, he stepped in front of me, walking backwards. He looked at me, my face, my hair, my clothes, then he frowned.

I kept walking, straight at him, faster forwards than he was backwards. He sidestepped and started walking beside me. But not too close.

“You look different.”

“From when?” Had he been watching me? Stalking me?

“From earlier. In the house. Your hair. It’s not as…” He paused.

Yeah. My hair is getting a bit out of hand. It’s either turning
into a political statement, a 70s retro look or a thorn bush, depending on whether you’re my grampa, my friends or my mum. And when I get out of bed, it is wild.

Now my hair was tied back, I must look different.

He was still staring. “You look older. How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen! You’re never fourteen!”

“Yes, I am.”

“Just turned fourteen?”

“No, I’ve been fourteen since the summer. Since June.”

He frowned again.

Then I got it. “How old are
you
?”

“Fourteen. As well.”

“Uh huh. When were you fourteen?”

He shrugged. “Last month.”

“September! September the what?”

“September the none of your business. You don’t want to know
anything
about me.”

“Ha! I already know something. I already know I’m
older
than you!”

“Not by much.”

“By enough.”

“I’m bigger though. Bigger, faster, stronger. And scarier.”

We’d stopped walking. We were glaring at each other across the width of the pavement. Any minute now we’d be arm-wrestling or seeing who could spit further.

“You’re not scarier! You should be scared of me. I’m the one you confessed to. I’m the one who can get you arrested.”

“That’s why you should be scared of me, Lucy.”

“I’m not scared of you,” I said firmly. I started walking again, towards the centre of Winslow, which isn’t the centre of much. But it’s got shops, a cinema, a library, a police station.

I turned left and took us away from the centre again.

“You’re doubling back, Lucy. Are you double-crossing me?”

“I’m avoiding the police station.”

“Ok, lead on.”

Once I’d worked out a different route, I said, “My turn now.”

“What?”

“You’ve asked lots of questions. Now it’s my turn. What’s your name?”

“I can’t tell you my
name
! I need to find what I’m looking for, then vanish.”

“You said I could call the police and put them on your trail once you had your secret.”

“You can try. But I run faster than any middle-aged policeman, and once I’m out of sight, if they don’t have my name, my date of birth or any other personal information, they’ll never find me.”

“But what can I call you?”

He raised his eyebrows. “You could call me Boss.”

“No way! Burglar Bill perhaps, or some other codename.”

He jerked back from me suddenly. Then he laughed. “Ok. Whatever. Call me whatever. I’ll be gone as soon as we’ve found the urn anyway, so you can call me whatever you like.”

I shrugged and led him safely towards the town centre from the east side, heading for the car park beside the shopping centre.

I knew I should be leading him straight to the police station. He had killed Viv, or helped someone else kill her. Why wasn’t I turning him in?

Did I really believe in the big scary man who would attack us all if this boy didn’t take his little secret away? Did I even believe this boy had killed Viv?

I wasn’t sure what I believed.

He seemed to have far too much information about our family, and he had skills they don’t teach at school: criminal sneaking about, kicking knives out of people’s hands, second-guessing what everyone was doing.

He was weird. He was scary. But was he a killer? Despite his confidence and his bossiness, compared to most boys at my school he was polite and reserved. He never even came
close to me − except when he was attacking me, obviously − like he didn’t want to invade my space. And he claimed he was protecting my family by taking away this secret.

Was he dangerous? I didn’t know. So I should stay with him until I had more answers.

He coughed, to get my attention. “Where does your grampa live?”

“I’m not telling you until we get there.”

“I need to know
before
we get there, so I can look out for another surveillance team.”

I sighed. “We’re a couple of minutes away. He’s in the flats just up from the library.” I marched on, across the empty car park.

“Stop!” he hissed.

I stopped. I didn’t want him to grab me again. “What?”

“Is your grampa’s flat in that red block on the corner?”

I nodded reluctantly. We could see the top two floors over the low shopping-centre roof.

He took the lead. I was following again. I’d given away all my power when I told him where we were going.

Instead of crossing the open car park, he walked briskly to the shopping centre, then moved slowly under the shadowy cover of the jutting roof. When we reached the corner he peered round to get a view of the street and of Grampa’s door diagonally across the T-junction.

He nodded and eased back. “Someone’s watching his flat too.”

“How do you know?”

He gestured. “Look.”

I peered round and saw a car, with someone sitting in the driver’s seat, parked on the other side of the road opposite Grampa’s front door.

I stepped back. “You’re right. But how did you know, before you looked?”

He stared at me and flexed his fingers in his stupid gloves. “It’s obvious. If they’re watching your house, they’ll be watching his too.” He glanced round again. “This guy’s on
his own. Even so, it’s not going to be easy to get in that front door. Is there another door?”

“There’s a back door. But there might be someone watching the back too.”

“There isn’t. Em. I don’t think there is. This guy is here alone, waiting for the police who followed your parents to come back. At least, that’s what makes sense.”

I thought it was a hugely dangerous assumption. But if he wanted to take the risk, that was fine by me.

“How do we get to the back door?” he asked.

“There’s a lane further up the street.” I pointed to an entrance before the next block of red-brick flats.

“That won’t work. The bloke in the car has a clear view of the lane. Are there any other access points to the back?”

“
Access points
? Do you mean ‘ways in’? Access points! You’re not training to be a health and safety consultant are you?”

But he was already turning away from me.

“Hold on.” He looked round the corner. “He’s on the move.”

“How did you…?” I was starting to wonder about all the things he knew before he looked, but I didn’t ask any more.

I knelt down and looked round the corner too. I saw a tall man in a suit shut the car door and walk towards the lane.

“He’s checking the back,” said the boy. “Follow me.”

He sprinted along the front of the shopping centre to the flower shop opposite Grampa’s flat. I followed as fast as I could.

He crouched in the doorway of the shop and gestured for me to do the same. “Just in time,” he grinned, pulling his balaclava down.

From our position in absolute darkness, I saw the policeman emerge from the lane and return to his car.

“That was too close,” I hissed once the car door had thudded shut. “He could have come out when we were still running.”

“We had time. He went round to check no one was going in the back door. Surely that was obvious.”

“It wasn’t obvious to me!”

“That’s why I’m the boss. And the next time he checks the back, we’ll go in the front.”

Then he shut up. Just closed up. Crouched there, utterly still and utterly silent.

I copied him. Still and silent.

We waited.

Soon my left foot was getting pins and needles. My nose was itchy. My right knee was cramping up.

But as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see he wasn’t twitching a muscle. Musical statues was clearly another of his criminal skills. So I stayed rock-still too, biting my tongue, clenching my fists, digging my nails into my hands.

Then he laughed, very quietly.

“What?” I whispered.

“It’s not a competition! If you need to move, it’s ok to move. We’re in the dark, he’s in the light. He can’t see us. Anyway, if you get cramp, you’ll seize up when we run. So find a comfier position and stop trying to out-macho me.”

I flexed one foot at a time and rolled my shoulders. When I wasn’t so uncomfy, I started wondering if the wreaths for Viv’s funeral were already being made up in the shop behind me.

“Any minute now,” he interrupted my thoughts. “Get ready.”

Then the policeman got out of the car, walked across the road and into the lane.

We jumped up and sprinted across the road. When we reached the door I dug about in my pocket for the keys. But the boy grinned at me and pushed the door with his foot. “It’s not locked.” We both stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind us. And I walked up the stairs, not sure if I was protecting my family or betraying them by leading this boy to my grampa’s flat on the first floor.

Feeling like a traitor, I unlocked the door and let the wolf in.

So I walked into the second Shaw house of the night. I hadn’t heard of this family three days ago, now I was on a guided tour of their residences.

I knew far more about the Shaws, their past and their connection to my family than this girl could ever guess. But I hadn’t found out about them in a briefing. I’d had to find out for myself.

I’d been desperate to prove I could bounce back after my mistake with the mask, my thrashing by Daniel and that brutal Q&A by my mum and uncles. So when we were called for another briefing the next morning, I turned up all showered and combed and shiny.

Malcolm, the great mindreader, must have been thinking about something else, because he spluttered coffee all over his laptop when he saw me come into the briefing room.

“Bain! What are you doing here?”

“I’m working. I thought the briefing was for everyone.”

“You actually think you’re working again today, after the almighty mess you made of yesterday?”

I looked round at my cousins. “They’re working and they made a mess of yesterday as well. They took far too long to grab one puny target, remember?”

I didn’t meet Daniel’s eyes, but I sensed his growl of anger.

Mum swivelled round from her computer. “Why shouldn’t
he go, Malcolm? He didn’t make a mess of everything yesterday. He did extremely well on the grab, much better than you expected, right up to his mistake with the mask. And we need everyone on this job, so we can track this undercover cop in Georgie’s supply chain, then get back to our main job. So why shouldn’t Ciaran go?”

“Because he’s a danger to himself and everyone else.”

“Nonsense. He’ll be fine on a simple job like this.”

All the fourth generation were looking at their shoes, pretending not to notice the bosses having an argument.

“No, Gill. Yesterday he wrecked an essential grab, he ran away and he fought with his family in public.”

“Yes, he ran and he fought, showing more initiative and guts than you ever give him credit for. Then when you dragged him home, he showed his loyalty by answering all your questions. He’s the most talented and sensitive reader in the fourth generation. The family needs to train him, not sideline him or destroy him.”

“Talented? He
screams
when he touches a target. What use is that?”

I wanted to hide under the desk. I could sense everyone’s contempt past my own burning embarrassment. But Mum kept on and on. “I am working on it. Greg is working on it. Ciaran is working on it.”

“You’re not working on it fast enough. He’s a danger to any job, however simple. He may have some talent, but he has no control. He can’t read anything important without throwing up or sobbing like a baby. We can’t draw attention to ourselves like that. Ours is a quiet subtle skill, not a performance.”

“He won’t get better without practice. Put him on this job, Malcolm.”

“But, Auntie Gillian, what if we have to terminate the target?” Daniel asked smoothly. “What if Bain goes gooey again about being close to a death?”

I stepped forward. “Bring it on, Daniel. I’ve tracked targets
before. We’ve terminated targets before. I’ll do it again. I’m not questioning our methods.”

Malcolm slammed his laptop shut. “But we’re questioning your skills, Bain. Every time we set you practical tests, you fail spectacularly. Every time you fail, you put the family in danger. So you stay on base and do your homework, while we go out and earn a living. And you’re not rejoining my team until you show that you’re both trustworthy and competent. That’s my final word on the subject.”

He shouted over my mum’s protests. “I’m not wasting any more time arguing with you, Gill. You’re his mother; you can’t see what a liability he is. Come on, everyone, out to the cars. We’ll brief you on the way.”

I sensed Mum’s defeat, as she stood up and followed Malcolm and the rest out of the room. I wasn’t worth fighting for.

I kicked her chair across the floor.

Then I noticed her computer was still on. Humiliated by losing the argument, she had left without logging out. The system was still open at her high security level.

I hooked the chair back with my foot and sat down at the keyboard. But I wasn’t planning to do homework. Not official homework anyway.

I typed in: Shaw.

Just out of curiosity.

I wanted to know why a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl had created more stress for my family than any undercover cop or gang war.

I found a Shaw folder. But it wasn’t Vivien Mandeville Shaw. It was Ivy London Shaw. That made sense. Targeting a teenager was probably designed to put pressure on someone older and more influential.

I opened the Ivy Shaw folder. The first file by date was an article from an English local newspaper. Then there was an update file on tracing and tracking people called Shaw. Two
Shaw Q&As: an undercover interview of the whole family, and the individual one of Vivien. Then Mum’s report on the Q&A of her only son. I wasn’t sure I wanted to read that. Vivien’s target profile, which I already knew contained no details of the wider job. And the master file: the objectives of the job.

I opened the master file.

Client
: Reid family.

Budget
: Fee and expenses ceiling – unlimited.

Aim
: Trace and track Ivy London Shaw, née Glass. Find evidence relating to Billy Reid. Eliminate everyone who has read it and destroy all evidence.

I almost closed the file and left the room right there.

The Reid family as a client? Doing a job for ourselves?

Unlimited budget? Where’s the profit in that?

And finding evidence about Billy Reid? Our great-grandfather, the founder of the firm, the man who ran away from the circus? Billy had been dead for seven years. Why did we need to protect him now?

But if this was about family, that explained yesterday’s overreaction. I’d messed up a job that wasn’t about a client, it was about the family.

The wise thing to do would be to close the folder, go into the gym and sweat my curiosity away. I should forget I’d seen this.

But what could that schoolgirl yesterday, with her maths test and her worries about her little sister, have to do with Billy Reid, who died peacefully at home in Lanarkshire before she was even at secondary school?

I clicked the newspaper file.

It was a scanned-in feature page from the
Winslow Chronicle,
the folds and creases visible on screen.

There were two photos. One of a slim young black woman in an old-fashioned white coat, standing stiffly, holding a clipboard. One of a much older woman, sitting elegantly on a
white metal chair in a conservatory.

She was the same woman. The first was captioned, Dr Ivy Glass, High Hall College, 1943. The other, Ivy Shaw, née Glass, at home in Winslow, 2013. The headline was:

LOCAL SCIENTIST DISCOVERS POWER OF THE MIND

Secret wartime research revealed by her family

Oh shit. We’d been exposed.

Then I looked at the date. The article was written in July, three months ago. If we’d been exposed, the authorities were taking their time getting to us.

I read the article:

Local granny Ivy Shaw is now happiest at home with the exotic Caribbean plants in her Winslow conservatory, but 70 years ago she was a brilliant young scientist helping Britain’s war effort against the Nazis.

She worked on an amazing secret government project, only now being publicly revealed, as her proud descendants discuss her original notes exclusively with the Winslow Chronicle.

Dr Shaw was a researcher at High Hall College, Cambridge, specialising in psychology and neuroscience. She worked on a top-secret project for military intelligence, investigating whether any British subjects had special mental powers that might help the Allies.

She examined mediums (who claimed they could speak to the dead), fortune-tellers (who claimed they could see the future) and psychics (who claimed they could read minds) to establish scientifically whether any of them genuinely had these powers.

“Obviously,” says James Shaw, her grandson, “if mediums could talk to the dead, soldiers’ spirits might be able to give
useful information to tacticians; and if the future could be predicted, the outcome of battles could be known; and if psychics could read minds, that would be useful in intelligence gathering.

“But,” laughs Mr Shaw, a local optician, “my grandmother proved that without a gullible audience and stage props, these carnival performers weren’t able to make more accurate guesses about the future, or about what dead people had known, than the ordinary students she used as controls. And almost all of the psychics were no more accurate about what she was thinking or what symbols she was seeing on hidden cards than the controls were. She concluded they were conmen and could be of no use to the war effort.”

The
Winslow Chronicle
pressed him and his keen daughter Vivien about whether Ivy found ANY people with these powers, as Mr Shaw had said she proved they were lying in ALMOST every case.

Vivien Shaw, Ivy’s great-granddaughter, who attends Winslow Academy, answered: “My nana said one man seemed to have more than average accuracy, in a negative way. One man got so many answers wrong that she wondered if he knew the right answers and was deliberately giving wrong ones. The number he got wrong was far more than could have happened at random.”

When asked who this mysterious man was, Miss Shaw couldn’t answer. “Nana says it’s her responsibility to keep the real names confidential. They all have codenames in the file, and the man she thought was covering up correct answers was called ‘Lomond’.

“She wondered if Lomond might have been interpreting body language, or even somehow detecting electrical impulses from nerve-endings in the brain, and then deliberately giving wrong answers so that he wouldn’t be recruited as a spy.

“But she wasn’t allowed to continue her research, so she never discovered the truth behind his unusual pattern of answers.”

James Shaw explains why our local liar-detector hadn’t
told anyone about this wartime work before. “It was top secret, so the files were probably destroyed after the war. My grandmother only kept her own working notes.”

Vivien adds, “It’s a shame that my nana didn’t get funding to finish her research after the war. She became a biology teacher, and inspired lots of other scientists, but she never got any acknowledgement for the work she did exposing these charlatans.”

When asked if she wants to continue her great-grandmother’s work, Vivien says modestly, “I’m studying maths and science at Winslow Academy, and one day, perhaps, if you give me an MRI scanner and a few mediums and fortune tellers, I could show that the way their brains light up proves they’re lying rather than using impossible magical powers.”

Her father smiles proudly at her. Another Winslow scientist in the making.

I scrolled back up. They had pictures of the scientist Ivy Shaw, but no quotes from her. Had she died before the article was written? No, they’d have described her as “the late Dr Shaw”. Was she senile? Was she just shy? Vivien certainly hadn’t been shy on her behalf.

But the danger to my family was obvious.

The man Ivy Shaw thought might have been covering up genuine mindreading skills must have been Billy Reid.

Lomond was my great-grandfather.

I thought back to the family legends we were told as kids.

Billy hadn’t been conscripted as a soldier in the Second World War because he’d had rickets as a child, so he kept working as a fortune-teller and psychic with the travelling fair during the summer and in variety theatres in the winter.

Then he was jailed as a conman, because a scientist forced him to lie to save himself from being used as a secret weapon, and by the time he was released he’d decided he would never
work for anyone else again. He wouldn’t be a bottom-of-the-bill entertainer any more, he’d use his skills to be a bodyguard and a spy.

That was how the family firm started. Billy set up a protection and intelligence firm using his own skills, and then the skills of his sons and his grandchildren.

Now some local rag was announcing that he actually had been a mindreader.

The article revealed the codename, rather than his real name. But if that codename was linked anywhere, on any report, in any notes, to the surname Reid, then the family had to get it and destroy it. Or none of us would be safe. Because we all knew that if the authorities got hold of us, we’d be handed over to scientists and treated as freaks all over again.

But Vivien had said goodbye to her nana. I knew that from her thoughts in the van. This article was three months old and I suspected her nana had died since.

If the scientist who had uncovered Billy’s secret was dead, was the danger over? Or if Vivien’s nana was no longer guarding her subjects’ privacy, had the danger only just begun?

I opened the trace-and-track file, to discover what had alerted my family.

A tabloid paper had picked up on the local article and started investigating. They’d dropped the story when they realised Ivy Shaw wasn’t going to talk to anyone. But the journalist’s initial Google searches about psychics and the Second World War had jangled our virtual tripwires, and we’d followed the trail back to the original article.

That’s why the senior readers had hurtled down to London. To track Ivy Shaw.

I was right: the file confirmed she had died of natural causes, just after the article in the
Winslow Chronicle
.

Mum had posed as another journalist and interviewed some of the family as soon as the senior team arrived down south.

I clicked on the audio and heard Mum’s voice, introducing
herself as Louise Allan, a freelance journalist. She was using a soft Irish accent – she says the only useful things she ever got from my dad was the skill of faking different accents.