Tania Carver - The Creeper

‘ What… what d’you mean?’ Turner looked confused, scared even. ‘He was… he was just a squaddie. Just a squaddie that Fiona found. That we could use.’

‘No he wasn’t, Mark. He was Adele Harrison’s brother.’ Turner shook his head. ‘No. You’re lying. Her brother died in Afghanistan. Roadside bomb. IED. She told me.’

‘She told everybody that, Mark. Because it’s easier to believe than what, or who, he really is.’

‘A murdering rapist,’ said Marina in Mickey’s ear. He nodded.

‘A murdering rapist,’ he said aloud.

‘No… no… you’re lying. She said you would, Fiona said you’d, you’d try something like this. Play mind games, try to get inside my head…’ He put his elbows on the table, head down. Hands balled into fists, rubbing his temples.

Mickey leaned forward, his voice, calm, quiet. No need to shout or scream, just let the authority of his words carry over. ‘Mark. I’m telling you the truth, mate. She’s lied to you.’

‘No… no…’

‘Yeah.’

‘She wouldn’t…’

‘He’s going,’ said Marina, ‘don’t lose him, keep him talking. If he goes into himself now we’ll have lost him. Bring him back, Mickey.’

Mickey nodded. ‘Well, let’s come back to that. Tell me what you wanted him for.’

Turner looked up, confused once more. ‘What?’

‘The Creeper, as you called him. Tell me what you wanted with him. What you did with him.’

‘We… we programmed him.’

‘Why?’

‘To do what we wanted. To prove we could do it.’

‘And what did you do? What did you make him do?

‘We turned him into… anything we wanted, really.’

‘A weapon?’

The sneering smile made a small reappearance. ‘The British Army had already done that to him.’

‘You just refined the process, yeah?’

Turner shrugged.

‘So, this programming. How’d you do it?’

‘Told him… told him what he wanted to hear.’

‘And what was that?’

‘Rani. That was the translator he killed. The woman. We told him she was still alive. Still… still in love with him.’ Another laugh. ‘And he believed it. Stupid bastard.’

‘How did that work?’

‘She spoke to him.’

‘How?’

‘Through her BlackBerry. She texted him. We told him it was the spirit of Rani speaking to him. He had to imagine that the words that appeared on his phone he could hear in his head. And he could text back to talk to her.’

‘And he believed that?’

‘Yeah. Soft bastard.’

Mickey sat back, sighed. This wasn’t what he was expecting. This was too much. He didn’t know how to deal with it. He gave a quick glance to the screen, hoped Marina saw the signal.

‘Oh God,’ said Marina in Mickey’s ear. ‘He must be some kind of… let me think… borderline personality? Psychopath? Certainly with psychopathic tendencies. Something like that. I don’t know enough about him. Ask him how they made it convincing.’

‘How did you convince him it was actually Rani talking to him? Could have been anyone pretending to be her.’

‘He did it because there’s not much left of him and he wanted to believe. She’s all he had left.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And she told him what he wanted to hear. That she was coming back to him. He just had to find her.’

‘Find her? How?’

‘She would be in different bodies. He’d be told where she was, what she looked like. And that Rani’s spirit would be inside some woman. He had to watch her until we told him otherwise.’

‘And then?’

Turner shrugged. ‘We didn’t want them any more. Got rid of them.’

Mickey sat back, letting the information sink in. He couldn’t believe it. Didn’t see how someone would fall for it, no matter how mentally damaged they must be.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘No one would fall for something as lame as that. No matter what condition they were in.’

Turner just laughed. ‘You haven’t seen the Creeper. You wouldn’t say that if you had.’

‘Messed up?’

‘Totally.’

And even more messed up by the time you two had finished with him, thought Mickey, but decided not to say it aloud.

‘So… help me here, Mark. I’m trying to understand. You’ve got this guy to… what? Kill for you?’

Turner shrugged.

‘What does he do? Talk me through it.’

‘We give him a target. He stalks them, we get him going, tell him things about them, what they feel for him. He gets obsessed, goes mental over them. Then we tell him the spirit’s gone, jumped to another body.’

‘And… what then? He kills them?’ A feeling of dread went through Mickey as he waited for the answer.

Turner shook his head. ‘We tell him they’re husks, the bodies. Just husks. No use any more. Then we get him to put them away somewhere.’

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere safe.’

‘And leave them there?’

He nodded.

‘Why?’

‘Because we might need them again. That’s the next stage. Programming someone who’s not a nutter like him. Someone normal. See what we can do with them.’

‘And because they might tell.’

Turner shrugged. Casual. ‘Yeah. That too.’

Mickey sat back, his head spinning from all the information. He shook his head, tried to clear it. ‘But why? Why, Mark? Why do all this?’

Turner leaned forward, eyes alive with a sick, dark light. ‘Because we can, that’s why…’

‘Keep focused, Mickey.’ Marina in his ear again. ‘Ask him about the victims. Who chose them, how they were chosen. He’s not telling us the whole story. And I don’t know why. Either he doesn’t know it all or he’s holding something back. Find out which it is.’

‘Who chose the girls, Mark?’

‘Fiona.’

‘All Mark’s ex-girlfriends,’ said Marina. ‘Interesting.’

‘So you didn’t mind that they were all your ex-girlfriends, Mark? That Fiona was targeting them?’

Turner flinched, a sharp, quick stab of pain showed in his face. Then nothing. In control again. He forced a shrug. ‘Why? I’m above all that now. Doesn’t matter, does it?’

‘No he’s not, Mickey, he flinched. They’re his old girlfriends and it still hurts, no matter what he says.’

Mickey looked at him, listened to Marina.

‘It’s his weak spot. We’ve got him,’ she said in his ear. ‘Go in for the kill. Finish him off.’

Phil stared at Fiona Welch, tried to ignore the pain in his cheek, just concentrate. Talk to her.

‘So…’

A wave of pain ran through him. He tamped it down, breathed deeply. Fiona Welch’s head was cocked to one side as if she was an animal, listening. Or an anthropologist, observing. Her face was serene, sweet.

Phil tried again. ‘Fiona,’ he said, ‘what’s this going to prove? You can’t get away with it.’

She shrugged, smiled sweetly. Didn’t answer.

‘The rest of the team are going to be looking for me. I told them where I was going. When they get here, they’ll get you too.’

Another shrug. ‘So?’

‘So you’ll be caught. Prison.’

‘So?’

Phil shook his head. She was beyond reasoning with. ‘What d’you hope to get out of this?’

‘My Ph.D.’

Phil wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. ‘What?’

‘My Ph.D. It’s in Victimology and Coercion. It examines how a subservient personality can be totally controlled by a dominant one. It also examines the mindset of the victim, the methodology needed to create that particular mindset in the first instance.’ She smiled. ‘With examples.’

Phil couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘So, you mean… you did all this, the murders, the abductions, everything… just for your Ph.D.?’