Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) (3 page)

“It’s the same method,” said Michael. “Instead of blocking things coming in, you block things going out.”

She looked at him as she processed this idea. “I don’t get it.”

“Let me show you,” said Michael.

She shrugged. “Okay.”

Michael shuffled up a little closer to her on the bed. He reached forward and took her hands. Warily, she allowed him, and so they sat with his fingers clasped around hers, resting on the bedclothes between them.

Her body was tense. “Relax,” he said. “My father did this for me once.”

“Your father?” Her body relaxed a little as she was distracted. “But adults aren’t perceivers.”

Michael smiled at that. “Not everything they tell you out there is true. You’ll learn that in here.” He remembered how his father helped him block the painful perceptions, holding him in his arms, entering his mind gently and keeping away the cacophony of other people. He could not be as intimate with Pauline. “I’m going to meld my perception with yours, okay?”

“You’re going to what?” She didn’t understand.

“You’ll see what I mean. But if you don’t like it at any time, just tell me to stop. Okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed verbally, even though she really wasn’t sure.

Michael had to drop all his blocks and filters to enable him to do it. For a moment, the residual babble of the thoughts, feelings and dreams of all the other perceivers, rumbled at the edge of his mind. Then he concentrated his perception on Pauline and probed deep.

She gasped. She felt it. This meant she was a strong perceiver. Probably one of the reasons she broadcast herself so loud when she arrived.

Michael allowed his perception to sit comfortably inside hers until she relaxed. Then he found her fear and locked onto it. “I imagine a wall,” he said. And inside his head – inside
her
head – brick by brick he piled up a barrier to keep the fear inside. “I’m going to let go of that image in a moment, but I want you to hold onto it.”

She nodded and the movement of her head rippled through her body so he felt it through his hands. In his mind, the wall wobbled a little.

“Don’t move, just speak,” said Michael.

“Okay,” she said.

He pulled his concentration back from the wall, allowing his hold on it to dissipate. The image in their minds faded for a moment, then strengthened as Pauline latched onto it.

Pauline giggled, her attention faltered, and the wall was gone.

“Almost,” said Michael. “Try again. On your own this time.”

He stayed in her mind as she imagined, not a wall, but the rolling corrugated metal of an automatic garage door, gradually descending at the edge of her consciousness. Blocking not just fear, but everything in her mind, until—

The door to Pauline’s room flung open and bashed against the wall behind. Michael pulled out of her mind. Pauline yelped.

“WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?” a deep, male voice bellowed.

Michael and Pauline let go of each other’s hands.

Sergeant Norman Macaulay stood silhouetted in the doorway. He was, unusually, dressed in combat fatigues with the night lights of the corridor outside highlighting his balding head.

Michael jumped off the bed and stood to attention. “Sergeant!”

Pauline grasped at the bedclothes and pulled them up to her chest.

“What are you doing in here?” Norm demanded.

“We were having trouble sleeping,” said Michael.

“Doesn’t look to me like you were trying to sleep,” said Norm.

“He was just—” Pauline’s explanation was cut off.

“I don’t want to know what ‘he was just’,” said Norm. “You, madam, are new, so I shall cut you some slack, but you young man should know better. One-hour punishment duty for you tomorrow, report to my office at oh-nine-hundred.”

“I have my debrief with Agent Cooper then,” said Michael.

“Oh-eight-hundred, then.”

“But—”

“Are you questioning my order, Sanderson?”

“No, sir,” said Michael. He hated the way Norm used his surname.

“Because, if you are, I can give you a harsher punishment than the one I have planned.”

“No, sir. I’m not, sir.”

“Good,” said Norm. “You’re dismissed, Sanderson.”

Michael flashed an apologetic look to Pauline.
Sorry
, he thought.

He wasn’t sure if she was perceiving him and heard his message, but he couldn’t stay to make sure. He walked out of the room and into the corridor where Norm watched him until he was back in his own room with the door closed.

As he crawled back into bed, Pauline’s thoughts continued to play in the background, but they were calmer and less intrusive than they were. Maybe his interrupted lesson had helped a little. He erected his own blocks to bring quiet to his mind and, despite a few moments where they weakened and allowed the images of Pauline’s dreams to slip back in, he was able to drift off to sleep.

CHAPTER THREE

MICHAEL WAS FURIOUS
when he came out of his debrief. Agent Cooper had listened to everything he had to say about perceiving his first suspect with the Metropolitan Police, but wasn’t interested in any of his suggestions. Michael wanted to say that it would be better if he could pass information to the police interrogator while the interview was taking place, perhaps through an earpiece, so he could be of more benefit to the investigating team. But Cooper wouldn’t hear any of it and said that, at this early stage, it was important for him to observe only and report back. That’s how the police wanted it and that’s how it was going to be until the assignment was over and an assessment was made.

Michael had already spent an hour before the meeting carrying out punishment duty picking up litter in the grounds, thanks to Norm the Norm, so it wasn’t the best start to his day.

~

IT WAS MID-MORNING
by the time Michael arrived at the police station. He found Detective Inspector Graham Jones in his office, glaring at his computer as he scrolled with a mouse on his desk. He was Patterson’s boss, older than his sergeant by about ten years, displaying his seniority with the way he dressed in a smart suit of uncrinkled sober grey with a tie knotted all the way to his neck. His thinning hair, which would probably leave him virtually bald within the next five years, was clipped short and combed back. His tidiness was reflected in his desk which, apart from a stray pen by his computer keyboard, was free of clutter. The only personal touch was a framed photograph of his younger-looking self, when his hair was thick and dark, shaking the hand of a man in police uniform, probably a chief inspector of some sort.

After a few moments hovering at the open door without being noticed, Michael gave it a gentle knock. Jones raised his eyes briefly to see who it was and Michael perceived a wave of indifference. He stepped inside, reeling off his prepared apology, but stopped when he realised Jones wasn’t paying any attention.

“He committed suicide,” said Jones. He sat back in his chair and looked directly up at Michael.

“What?” said Michael. Not that he didn’t hear, more that he didn’t understand.

“Jerome Tyler,” said Jones. “Came back from hospital: hung himself.”

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know.” Jones shook his head. “There’ll be an investigation and I’ll have the IPCC on my tail. Maybe I should have put him on suicide watch … Did you ‘perceive’ anything from him. I mean, was he suicidal?”

“No,” said Michael. “He wasn’t anything, really. His mind was strange, detached, almost empty. The only thing in his head was a desperate desire to get on the number 10 bus. If that’s any help.”

Someone knocked on the door behind him. Michael had his filters closed in the busy police station and hadn’t sensed someone approach. It was Sergeant Anthony Patterson, looking even more haggard than the previous day, and now wearing a crumpled black suit instead of a crumpled grey one. Michael stepped aside to allow him in and Patterson took his place without acknowledging Michael was there. “A call’s come in,” Patterson told Jones. “Might be nothing, could be something. They want me to take it.”

Jones was only half listening. “Michael thinks Tyler might have been planning to get on the number 10 bus.”

Patterson looked across at Michael with a suspicious eye. Michael felt a moment of annoyance from him before he tightened his filters. “Was he going to blow it up?”

“No,” said Michael. “He wanted to travel on the bus, but I couldn’t see where.”

“Look into it will you, Tony?” said Jones.

“Do you know where the number 10 goes?” said Patterson. “Through the whole centre of London!”

“You may find this difficult to believe,” said Jones, “but even detective inspectors have occasion to use the bus sometimes. Of course I know where the number 10 goes.”

“I mean, it’s a large area to look at if we’re considering a possible target and—” Patterson looked down at Michael, which he was able to do because he was a foot taller “—we don’t know if the information’s credible.”

“It’s a lead, Tony,” said Jones. “Follow it where it takes you, even if it ends up being nowhere.”

Jones had his doubts about using perceivers in the police force, Michael had gleaned it from him the first time they had met. But the decision was out of his hands and he was prepared to give it a go. If it was possible to see into the minds of criminals and reveal the truth that they otherwise kept to themselves, Jones knew it could be a valuable resource.

“I’ll do it when I get back from this other job,” said Patterson.

Jones sighed. “Fine. You can take Michael with you.”

“But sir …”

“It’ll give you two time to bond.”

~

PATTERSON’S ‘JOB’
was out in Kensington, a posh part of London known by tourists for being where all the museums are. It was the sort of place where you had to have a lot of cash if you were going to live in it, with even the most modest of houses having price tags that ran into the millions. Patterson drove Michael to one such ‘modest’ residential street where a row of Victorian townhouses nestled next to each other in a terrace, with each one painted in a different colour to distinguish it from its neighbour. Patterson parked his grubby Vauxhall between a Mercedes and a Jaguar in the road outside and ascended half a dozen steps to a large black door set within the walls of the pastel blue painted house.

He didn’t say a word to Michael and Michael kept his promise not to perceive him on the assumption that everything would become clear eventually. They spent the car journey saying nothing and with BBC Radio Five Live blasting loudly out of the car stereo. It hadn’t given Michael any insight into the case Patterson was working on, but he now had a thorough understanding of Tottenham Hotspur’s chances in the FA Cup.

Patterson did up his tie and smoothed down his crumpled suit before ringing the bell. A few moments later, the door was opened by a woman in a nurse’s uniform. “Yes?” Her accent was not English, probably eastern European.

Patterson reached into his inside pocket and pulled out his identification, which he flashed at the woman. “I’m Sergeant Anthony Patterson and this is—” He automatically opened out his hand to indicate Michael, but he had no words prepared. He cleared his throat. “This is my associate.”

“Yes, Mr Rublev is expecting you.” Definitely eastern European. Or possibly Russian.

She opened the door fully and allowed them inside. This was where the relative plainness of the Victorian exterior made way for an opulent interior that oozed modern money. Dominating the entrance hall was a cloud of crystal droplets from a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, which scattered tiny rainbows of light in every direction. A cabinet made of rich, dark polished wood stood at the side and seemed only there to display a delicate vase of blue and white porcelain, an abstract glass sculpture with sticky out angles and a figurine of a slim lady in a sleek 1920s dress.

The nurse led them past the, no doubt, valuable items in the hallway and to the first door on the left. She knocked politely and walked in. “The police are here,” she announced.

The front room was not as opulent as the hallway, but it had the same feeling of richness. The high ceiling made it feel spacious, even though it was not especially large by modern standards and the furniture was somewhat packed in. The centrepiece was most definitely the original Victorian fireplace, lit and flickering with a dying flame which danced over almost-spent coals.

In all that splendour, the man they had come to see appeared small and wizened. He sat in an upright black leather chair which looked like it had been wheeled in from a study. A tube was stuck up his nose, feeding him oxygen from a tank by his side.

“Victor Rublev?” Patterson asked the man.

“Who else did you think I was?” replied Rublev. His rasping, sickly voice had a similar accent to that of his nurse: almost certainly Russian.

Patterson half leant forward to shake the man’s hand, but he looked so fragile, he pulled his hand away and pretended to have been lifting it to scratch the side of his nose instead. “I’m Sergeant Anthony Patterson, and this is my …
associate
.”

Rublev looked at Michael with decaying, glassy green eyes. “Policemen must be getting younger these days.” He coughed, a horrible grating cough that seemed to scrape the sides of his throat. “Please sit down, I’m not royalty.”

Patterson obliged and perched his bottom on the edge of an upholstered sofa opposite Rublev. Its embroidered pattern looked worn and faded, but then it was probably antique.

Michael sat next to him and opened his perception to gauge the atmosphere of the room. Patterson was somewhat overwhelmed by the wealth surrounding him and was making an effort not to think about it so he could concentrate on his police work. Rublev was anxious, and a little afraid.

Patterson pulled his phone from his pocket and, with a stylus as thin as a twig, wrote in untidy handwriting, ‘Victor Rublev’. Whatever software he was using translated it into readable type. He also, Michael noticed, engaged a sound recording app.