Ian Hocking - Déjà Vu

‘The cipher.’

She took his hand and led him to the corner of the tor. The two policemen were thirty feet away. David glanced at her, ready to panic, but said nothing. Her lips were moving. David looked back. The policemen had split to approach the tor from opposite sides. ‘Whatever the next part of the plan is,’ he said, ‘can we please proceed to it?’

‘Every police vehicle in the UK is fitted with a trip code in case of hijack. When you send the code, the vehicle locks down and returns to its depot. The instruction cannot be countermanded. Check the car.’

David leaned out. He saw the doors of the patrol car close. A moment later, the sound reached the police officers. They stopped and exchanged a glance. The taller policeman touched his throat and radioed to the other.

‘The policemen are wondering why that happened,’ said the woman. ‘The short one has just realised. Now they’re wondering if they can get back in time.’

David watched them dash to the car. Their runs were ungainly on the slippery rocks. ‘What about the helicopter?’

She seemed to consider his question. ‘The pilot took it calmly. He’s having a coffee. His co-pilot is agitated. But the flight computer will return them safely to the heliport.’

The helicopter tipped forward and, as David stared, became a receding dot. ‘How do you know all that?’

‘I can’t answer any more questions.’ Absently, she moved a lock of his hair. ‘There’s no more time. I’m sorry. All will be well.’

‘Why should I trust you?’

‘Take this. I know you want it. I stole it from the evidence locker in McWhirter’s suite a few minutes ago.’

She handed him the pink sheet. It was Jennifer’s drawing. But, as it fluttered in the wind, David noted that its edges were pristine. Its fold marks had not yet scored the paper. And, below the crayon house and the three stick figures, no code had been written.

‘Now I understand even less. But thank you. I didn’t want to lose this.’

‘Let the parachute do the steering.’

‘What?’

‘See ya.’

She sprinted towards the cliff edge, launched like a long jumper, and was gone. David felt his stomach drop in sympathy. He looked around the side of the granite pile. The policemen seemed angrier than before. They were almost at its edge. The patrol car had gone. David looked into the cobalt sky and hoped his shoes would keep their grip on the grass. As a talisman, he rolled the pink paper and held it in his fist.

He ran towards the edge.

Saskia’s apartment was a nondescript box in Schöneberg, three stops from her office on the S2 line. It had bare wooden floors, white walls, and black furniture. Its curtains were closed. There was no evidence of a previous owner. On the breakfast bar, she found paper manuals for the boiler, washing machine, and oven. She only stared at them before moving on. She felt like she had died and now haunted this apartment on Belziger Strasse.

At length, her glassy indifference cracked. She lifted her hands. There were calluses where the palms met the fingers. She walked into the bedroom and looked at herself in its full-length mirror. She leaned close, turning her head from side to side. She unzipped the boots and dropped them next to the bed. Then she removed her suit and underwear. She looked again at her reflection. The individual muscles across her belly were visible. The physique was not bulky—it was suited to running, perhaps swimming—but she could hardly imagine the level of exercise required to maintain it. The torso and thighs were pale, suggesting a one-piece swimming costume. She turned, looking for a birthmark. None; but there was an appendix scar, a vaccination mark and two dots either side of her left nipple, where a piercing had once been. She smiled at the marks until the macabre implication struck her. How different was she from Beckmann, who had commanded her movements in the office the day before?

She opened the wardrobe. There were eight identical FIB outfits along with outdoor gear, gym clothes, plastic-wrapped underwear, several racks of shoes, and bags. She selected a black, short-handled bag and closed the door. Then she took the suit from the bed and dressed. When she had finished, she considered herself a chic, professional Berliner. It felt like a disguise.

She found eye shadow in the bathroom cabinet, along with red nail polish. She looked at the polish and remembered her Russian nickname, the Angel of Death. She brushed her shoulder-length hair until it crackled with static.

She opened the curtains and the windows too. The gloom left with a bow. The black furniture turned grey. She decided to go out and buy food from the Turkish kiosk at the corner of Meininger and Gothaer.

On the threshold of the apartment, her phone rang.

‘Never mind settling in,’ said Beckmann. ‘The Proctor situation has escalated. You’re to fly to Edinburgh. Have you read the documents I provided? They’re in your apartment safe.’

She had a safe?

‘I’m… still settling in.’

‘Here.’

Like a blooming flower, the knowledge grew in her mind. She gasped and slumped against the doorframe. A distant voice said, ‘You have it now,’ then said no more.

Saskia took a taxi to Schönefeld airport. She shopped for headache tablets. She also bought some tampons. Thanks to Beckmann, the date of her last period was a mystery.

The flight landed in London Gatwick at 10:40 A.M. Waiting for her connection in the lounge, she eavesdropped on a businessman listening to something called Hamlet on his media player. Her eyes narrowed in astonishment: there was a fundamental question in the play that found an answer on the echoless steppe of her memories. ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.’ When the businessman rose to leave, she gripped his hand and said, ‘Wait,’ but he frowned and backed away.

Who wrote that? she asked of his retreating back, forlorn in her seat. Can I meet him?

In Edinburgh Airport’s baggage reclaim, she passed an advertisement for something called Fiddler on the Roof . Each question reset the bearing of her path through an unknown culture:

What is a musical?

Who was Topol?

What is a Jew?

What was the holocaust?

She fled to a toilet and sat in a cubicle. Her open eyes saw newsreel footage. She felt like food was being forced into mouth faster than she could swallow. There were colourless bodies in drifts. Mounds of hair, shaved. Troves of treasure, surgically stolen. Ash. Almost a century buried and burned, those bodies, and yet their memory had been rekindled in repetition, by a fear of rot from the heart outwards.

Stop. I don’t want to know any more , she told the chip

She recalled her conversation with Klutikov. ‘You’re brand new. You’re not answerable for the crimes of your body any more than you can be responsible for the crimes of your parents. Understood?’

No , she thought, wiping her eye. Not understood. .

A man wearing a grey suit waited beneath the sensor that opened the automatic doors of the arrivals area. He held a sign that read ‘Brand’. She shrugged. Close enough. Detective Inspector Philip Jago was in his mid-fifties. In Britain, she knew, police officers could serve a maximum of twenty-five years. He would be close to retirement. His cheeks were purpled with blood vessels. He escorted her to a car and they got in the back. It was an unmarked, manual Ford.

‘In your own time,’ he said to the driver. He spoke in a way that reminded Saskia of Bavarian German: watery sounds running together. ‘Your luggage has been sent on. You’re staying in Whitburn, as you requested. Any reason? The last sighting of Proctor was further south.’