Ian Hocking - Déjà Vu

She would not tell him that the decision to head toward the site of Proctor’s original bombing had come to her as inspiration from the sleeping brain of the woman whose body she had usurped.

‘Operational advantage,’ she said, thinking of Klutikov’s explanation.

Jago flicked some ash from the window and looked annoyed. She wondered what he thought of her and was surprised—given the British politeness that ran through her fading memory of Simon—to be told immediately.

‘Get this straight, Detective Brandt. When you’re on this island, you play nice. You don’t use your firearm unless I say so. You tell me everything you’re thinking, including hunches, and you’ll share your sources. We find Proctor and we deliver him to Special Branch, then we shake hands and say auf wiedersehen . Alles Klar ?’

‘ Alles Klar .’

They looked at one another.

‘I’m serious.’ His sigh was blue. ‘Last bloke from the FIB shot our suspect and fucked off to Paris. Are you an assassin too?’

Assassin. From the Arabic.

‘An eater of hashish. Or a person in the control of Hassan-i-Sabah.’ She licked her lips. ‘I need a cigarette.’

He seemed amused. ‘I won’t stop you.’

‘May I have one of yours?’

‘Of course.’

‘People seldom smoke these days,’ she said.

‘They do in the police.’

‘Why?’

‘New to the job?’

‘Yes.’

‘Light?’

‘Please.’

He took out a gold Zippo and struck the thumbwheel. Saskia looked at the flame as she leaned into it. She had seen that trick before her investiture in the FIB. Where? She grabbed Jago by the wrist and studied the flame. But soon the lighter was only familiar. Then, even the familiarity was gone.

Jago stared at her.

‘Brandt, you may be sex on a stick, but I’ve been unhappily married to my desk for twenty years and, between us, I only get it up when the Hibs put one in.’

‘When what?’

‘When my beloved Hibernian Football Club scores what we term a “goal”, my dear,’ he said, affecting a pompous tone. He switched back to his native register: ‘So turn it off, eh?’

She let go of his hand. ‘I didn’t mean to -’

‘Here’s my ID, hen. Next time, ask for it. Any numpty can hold up a sign in an airport.’

‘Sorry.’

Softening, he said, ‘You’re alright. Here, take a look.’ He showed her his warrant card. She took it, nodded, and allowed him to inspect her FIB badge. He held it at arm’s length and squinted. ‘Ex tabula rasa?’

‘Just so.’ Saskia thought of the emptiness inside her. She was no police officer. Beckmann had employed her for her gut instinct. ‘DI Jago, I would please like to go to the West Lothian Centre.’

‘Where?’ The annoyance returned to his face. ‘The community centre?’

‘No. The scene of the terrorist activity.’

‘You mean the Park Hotel. Waste of time.’

‘Why?’

‘Our contact there has government connections and doesn’t have to cooperate. The situation is covered by the Official Secrets Act.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Once you’ve signed a secrecy contract, they can stop you talking about certain things. The act means that we can’t know everything about the murder.’

‘That makes it rather difficult to investigate, DI Jago.’

‘Yes, Detective Brandt, it does.’

‘Kommissarin.’

‘Our job, Kommissarin , is to find him, not investigate anything. My Super and a sheriff looked at the evidence. They’re satisfied he’s guilty and have authorised all reasonable force in grabbing him. We should start at the shed where he landed.’

‘No,’ she said, surprised at the ease with which her certainty came. This was the voice of her instinct, homed in that blood-infused organ behind her eyes, the brain that was not hers.

‘No?’

‘DI Jago, please. Trust me. This is my job.’

‘We’re going to be thick as thieves, I can tell.’ He tapped the driver. ‘Park Hotel. Just out of Whitburn, on the way to Harthill.’

A low sun hung in reflections, across stonework, on the patina of snow that had fallen during the night. She stepped from the car. Her eyes narrowed in the sudden cold. She could hear water running nearby. The battlements of trees loomed and she was held, albeit briefly, by the urge to run into that woodland and just be , where it was silent and safe. She turned to the hotel. Its wings flanked the gravelled car park. At the centre, Saskia noticed a fountain set with a stone Prometheus, frozen as he passed the gift of fire to man.

‘Brandt?’ prompted Jago.

Prometheus, who had been chained to a rock by Zeus for his treachery. Prometheus, who had suffered a hawk eat his liver. The liver that grew back; the hawk that returned.

The chains…

‘Revenge should have no bounds.’

Hamlet echoed across her mind again.

The Zippo lighter. The gesture.

The hawk that returned.

Why did these thoughts feel significant? Were these the weeping wounds of her brain, silent in the dark of her skull?

Not now. This is a different chase. Whom do you hunt? Proctor or Brandt?

The hawk that returned.

She remembered her dream of her first night as Brandt. The Fates: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she measures a length. Atropos, she cuts it.

Spin, measure, snip.

Saskia took a clamshell case from her handbag. Inside was a pair of glasses. She put them on. She knew—though she could remember no training—that the glasses would capture video of everything she saw. The statue was a key, and she wanted an impression of its shape.

‘Brandt, are you OK?’

‘Yes. The wind is turning, I feel.’

‘Northerly. It’ll be a cold night. Come on.’

That morning

David awoke in a field. He was wrapped in his parachute. His uncovered face had deadened to a mask. His hands were tense balls of bone and sinew. In the left was Jennifer’s crayon drawing. His back ached and he needed to urinate. He wriggled from the parachute.

Ahead, a dark shape in the dawn, was a wooden shed.

His fingers moved only at explicit, clumsy command. Finally, he opened the overalls’ zip. Piss steamed gloriously onto the colourless grass.

Cold. Core temperature too low.

This had implications, he knew. He had to get warm. And eat. Something like a hot soup. He remembered a favourite from his youth, when he had hillwalked with his wife, Helen. Oxtail soup from a Thermos. Oxtail at the pinnacle; pushing back the cold as it went down, stratum by stratum.

He looked at the shed.

It was wooden, four metres by six, painted white. On top was a solar panel. The door was padlocked but the key had not been removed from its base. He detached the padlock, held it as a weapon, and went inside.

‘Hello?’

An old-style fluorescent tube lit. There was a tool-laden workbench. To his right was a partition of old sacking. David approached the bench and saw a stack of folded, silver material. He took it. A space blanket.

‘Things are…’

A vacuum flask fell from the blanket and he caught it. He unscrewed the lid. With a twist of steam came the memory of peaks climbed and cold defeated: Oxtail soup, his favourite.

‘…getting weird.’

‘Hello.’

David looked down.

There was a tablet computer on the workbench. As he tipped soup into the lid, an impressionistic sketch of a woman’s face appeared on the screen. The soup hurt going down.

‘Are you Professor Proctor? If so, you’ll remember the code that needs to be written on the pink sheet.’