Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) (4 page)

“I want you to investigate my murder,” said Rublev.

Patterson looked up from his phone, his stylus paused above the screen, writing nothing. “I’m sorry?” he said.

“It’s what you policemen do, is it not? Investigate murder?”

Usually only after someone is dead
, said Patterson’s thoughts. “My understanding is you have evidence that you are being targeted by terrorists?” said his words.

“The evidence is here.” Rublev thumped himself on the chest with his fist which set off a coughing fit that sounded like his lungs were being forced up into his throat. His nurse must have heard him because she came running in and poured him a glass of water which she held to his lips so he could sip, until the coughs subsided into wheezy breaths and he waved her away.

Afterwards, he looked even smaller, shrunken down against the black leather of the executive office chair. His skin was so pale, it was almost translucent as it stretched out over the bones of his hands and sunk in to the bumps of his skull with only a few wisps of hair left remaining. He knew he was dying and he hated it, hated it with the rage of someone helpless in the grasp of his own failing body. Michael perceived that the man was not the victim of murder yet, but knew that he very soon would be.

“I’m sorry you are unwell,” said Patterson. “Is it cancer?”

“Poison,” wheezed Rublev.

“Are you certain?”

“Ask my doctors. They tell me it only takes a small piece of radiation to destroy my body a little bit at a time.”

A thought flashed through Patterson’s mind that Victor Rublev could be radioactive. He hid his unease by looking down at his phone and scribbling the words, ‘radiation poisoning?’.

“Do you know who would want to kill you?” asked Patterson.

“Of course,” said Rublev. “The Russian government.”

Patterson was taken aback. “How can you be sure?”

“Who else would be planting radioactive isotopes for Russian exiles to ingest, do you think? I may not know which agent did it or how they did it, but I know it was them. The authorities in Russia and I do not see eye to eye, you might say. I made my money in the wake of glasnost and then I brought my money to the UK where I can criticise people back home with your wonderful laws of free speech. They made several attempts to kill me before, using their spineless terrorist methods, but I was careful.” He smiled a wry smile to himself, which brought a little flicker of life back to his eyes. “Not careful enough, it seems.”

“Do you know when you were poisoned?” said Patterson.

“Between one and two weeks ago, according to my doctor.”

“We’ll need a list of everywhere you went and everyone you encountered in that week.”

“So many places, so many people,” said Rublev. In his head flashed images of the life he had when he was well: running in the park, choosing vegetables in the supermarket, laughing in a restaurant. There were so many people: the shop assistant, another runner he often waved to in the park, the postman, a waiter, an idiot who nearly drove into the back of his car and swore at him, a man in a suit who smiled and offered his hand to shake. In the midst of all this was an image of himself as he was two weeks ago. He looked so much younger, his skin had a healthy glow and he had almost a full head of hair. He loathed the way the poison was slowly and painfully robbing him of that life.

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud burst of rock music. It was Patterson’s phone. Patterson, who was in the middle of writing on the screen at the time, nearly dropped it. He frowned apologetically at Rublev. “Excuse me.”

He silenced the music by answering the call, but did not speak into his phone until he got up from the sofa and walked to the corner of the room. His words were muttered and accompanied by a lot of nodding. Patterson finished the call quickly, hung up and turned to Rublev. He still wore that apologetic frown.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” said Patterson.

“But you have only just got here.” Anger swelled inside Rublev. Michael perceived a string of unspoken thoughts, but they were all in Russian and he didn’t understand them.

“It’s an emergency.” Patterson slipped the phone and stylus into his pocket like he was packing up to go. “Chances are your case will be passed to MI5 anyway.”

“Your internal security services?” said Rublev. “But this is a murder inquiry. I need a British policeman. I need my killer to be arrested, I need them to face justice in a British court of law where journalists can be present.”

“Then get me that list.” Patterson moved towards the door. “Everywhere and everyone you encountered during the period your doctors think you might have been poisoned. I’ll follow it up, I promise.”

Patterson turned the door handle and Michael took this as his cue to join him.

“Don’t take too long, Sergeant. I would like to know who my murderer is before I die.”

Back in the hallway of opulence and tiny rainbows, Patterson headed for the front door with long, fast strides. Michael had to quicken his pace to catch up with him. “What’s happened?” he asked.

“There’s another kid with a bomb,” said Patterson. “Except, this time, he’s threatening to blow it up.”

CHAPTER FOUR

PATTERSON’S GRUBBY VAUXHALL
made a horrible banging noise as its front wheels hit the kerb and mounted the pavement, narrowly avoiding the wing mirror of the police patrol car which was blocking the road. The police car belonged to an officer in a yellow fluorescent jacket who was manning the makeshift cordon to a side street off North End Road. He had offered to move it out of the way for the sergeant, after checking his identity card, but Patterson had no patience. The officer was forced to look on and pray for the safety of his wing mirror as Patterson abused his Vauxhall and shook up the people inside of it.

He would have preferred that Michael wasn’t one of those people. But he couldn’t abandon him outside of Rublev’s house and he didn’t have time to drop him off somewhere else, so Michael had come along by default.

The car shuddered as it plonked first its front wheels, and then its back wheels, off the pavement and onto the road on the other side of the police car. The side street ran to the back of the Capital Hotel where, according to the chatter on the police radio, a teenager threatened to explode a bomb strapped to his back.

It was only possible to drive a little way up the street before it was blocked by other emergency service vehicles which had got to the scene before them. Police cars – marked and unmarked – one police van, an ambulance and two fire engines had been left higgledy-piggledy all over the narrow street. Patterson stopped as close as he could to them and turned off the engine.

Now that they were closer, the buzzing of busy and worried minds scratched at the edge of Michael’s perception – he pushed them away.

Patterson got out of the car and went round to the boot, disappearing from view as he foraged for something inside. Michael got out, too, and waited for him. After the frantic drive over, with police lights flashing and siren blaring, it was nice to feel the coolness of the March air. Spring was coming, but it wasn’t quite jeans and T-shirt weather yet. A strong breeze brushed at his bare arms as it was funnelled down the passageway formed by the towering office buildings around him. He wished he’d remembered to pick up his coat on the way out of the police station.

When the boot slammed shut, it revealed Patterson standing at the back of the car wearing a bulletproof vest with the word POLICE written in large white letters across his chest. He held another one exactly the same in his hand. “Put this on,” he ordered, as he walked round to the front of the car and held it out to Michael.

The bulletproof vest was heavier than it looked and Michael almost dropped it as he took it from Patterson’s hand. It was also not entirely obvious how a person was supposed to wear it. He turned it round several times before he decided there was no front and back, just two sides exactly the same. By the time he had slipped it over his head, Patterson was already walking further up the road and towards, Michael assumed, the hotel.

Michael caught up with him, squeezing past the higgledy-piggledy vehicles, to where the street narrowed into a one-lane road and became more of an alley. Parked across it was a white, unmarked van, like a builders’ van, but with a satellite dish on top. Patterson was heading towards it. He rapped on its metal shell and announced his name before opening the back doors and clambering inside.

Michael caught the door before it slammed shut again and peered in. A single light in the roof did little to illuminate the interior which was crammed with electronic equipment. A rack of black plastic front panels twinkled with red and green indicator lights all the way down one side of the van. Three television screens, silently buzzing with static, dominated the opposite side. In front of them was a narrow desk with three workstations, manned by police officers wearing communication headsets. The one in the middle was Jones, paying no attention to Patterson who stood behind him, bent over slightly to stop his head banging on the roof. Jones had his two fingers pressed to the single headphone of his headset, listening intently to something.

No one seemed to care whether Michael was there or not, so he climbed in for a closer look.

Jones sighed and pulled the headset off so it lay around the back of his neck. Whatever he had been listening to, it had obviously finished. He looked up at Patterson. “You’re here. Good.”

“What have we got, sir?” said Patterson.

“IC1 male,” said Jones. “Probably late teens. Claims to have explosives ready to rig in a rucksack on his back.”

“Claims?” said Patterson.

“Because it’s inside the rucksack, there’s no way to tell for sure if it’s a real bomb, but considering recent events …”

“Seems likely,” said Patterson.

Jones nodded. “Looks like it’s wired to a trigger in his hand. Bomb squad thinks it could be a dead man’s switch.”

Michael interjected. “Dead man’s switch?” Then immediately wished he hadn’t as the two officers glowered at him.

“If he lets go, the bomb explodes,” said Jones. “We got him out the back of the hotel in the open, snipers have him in their sights, so he’s not going anywhere.”

“Apart from the morgue in a hundred pieces if he blows himself up,” said Patterson.

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” said Jones. “We’ve evacuated the hotel and surrounding buildings. Dogs are doing sweeps, but early indications are he’s alone.”

The officer sitting at the workstation nearest the door – a woman with a full head of brown hair pulled back so tightly into a bun that it stretched the skin of her face – turned to them. “We’ve got visual,” she said and flicked at some controls on the panel in front of her.

The static flickered on the TV screens and an image appeared. The same image of a young man dressed in green, repeated on each screen like the reflection in a hall of mirrors. It was unsteady, like it was coming from a hand-held or helmet-mounted camera, but as the shakiness settled down and the autofocus locked on, it was possible to see the subject was as Jones had described: a white teenager, in his late teens, standing alone with a brick wall of the Capital Hotel building behind him. He was dressed in a pair of black jeans and a green quilted jacket, with black straps over his shoulders that presumably belonged to a rucksack on his back.

Patterson leant forward to get a better look. “Has anyone talked to him?”

“The first officer on the scene,” said Jones. “The kid said he had a bomb and then, after that, no one has got a word out of him.”

“Right. Okay,” said Patterson, taking a deep breath, psyching himself up. “I should go.”

The image on the screens zoomed close in to the teenager, blurring his features for a moment until the autofocus kicked in. The boy’s face looked almost as pale as the tuft of blonde hair that blew across his forehead in the breeze of the alley. Even with the unsteady footage, he appeared to be visibly shaking.

“Get him to give himself up,” said Jones. “When he does, don’t do anything stupid, stand back and let the bomb squad go in. And for God’s sake, don’t let him let go of that trigger.”

“You talk as if I haven’t done this before,” said Patterson.

“Suspects armed with knives and guns, yes, but not bombs,” said Jones.

“It’s fine, I’ve had the training.” Patterson grabbed a spare headset from where several hung on a hook and clipped a transmitter to his belt before putting on the single headphone and adjusting the microphone so it was close to his mouth. “Excuse me,” he said to Michael as he headed for the back of the van. Michael pressed himself up against the bank of twinkling lights as the smell of Patterson’s nervous sweat passed by him.

“Hey, Tony!” Jones called after him.

Patterson looked back.

“Be careful. A dead sergeant is a heck of a lot of paperwork.”

Patterson grinned. “Sure thing.” He jumped down from the van and was gone.

Jones pulled the headset from around his neck and put it back over his head. “This is Oscar One,” he said into the microphone. “Negotiator Sergeant Patterson approaching the scene. This is Oscar One, Negotiator Sergeant Patterson …”

As he talked, Michael watched the kid on the television screens. His wide, blue eyes stared out from a terrified face. Michael opened his perception to learn more, but all the thoughts around him belonged to the police officers. He was too far away and there were too many other minds to perceive anything from the would-be bomber.

Jones and the two other officers were too busy listening to their headsets, watching the television screens or looking at their computers to even notice Michael was there. He shuffled his way to the back of the van and, with one more look to check they were still engrossed, jumped back out into the alley.

Goose pimples prickled on his bare arms. He looked around, but there was no sign of Patterson, and he assumed he had gone to the other side of the van. Michael did the same and found himself in a continuation of the alley. It was little more than a narrow tarmac strip edged with double yellow lines that led to a dead end at the back of the hotel. In front of the alley, three police cars were parked at an angle. Walking towards them, keeping close to the wall, was Patterson. The white POLICE on the back of his bulletproof vest was clear in the shade of the building next to him.