Ian Hocking - Déjà Vu

McWhirter watched her complete the checks. He stepped over the fluorescent cordon and attached his harness to a rope. ‘Twenty metres. I’m on blue.’ He tapped his helmet and the lamp awoke. Then he jumped into the blackness. The rope whistled through his decelerator.

Saskia looked at Jago. Her thumbs itched. ‘You want to come too, Scotty?’

‘No, thanks. A friend was paralysed using one of those decelerators. Anyway,’ he said, hefting her coat and jacket, ‘I’m being useful.’

‘Right.’ Saskia clipped her harness to the rope. She chose the red one, unhinged the decelerator and fitted the line around the two sprockets. She closed it firmly and checked, with a tug, that the rope was gripped. There was a disc attached to the sprocket axle. She pulled it out and turned the dial to twenty metres. Then she snapped it back, checked it was locked, and jumped.

The blackness opened like a mouth. She heard Jago say, ‘A friend was paralysed by one of those,’ but he was no longer there. It was a memory. She blinked in the rushing, dry air. She was falling too fast. She would hit the ground fast enough to break into pieces, fragments of a looking glass.

She saw a circle of light. She began to slow. The decelerator squealed and the harness bit into her pelvis. Her weight returned with a thump and her head whipped forward. Gasping, her eyes opened on smoke and dust. She could see her shoes dangling centimetres from the ground. She pinched the decelerator. It sprang open and the rope was released.

She landed on the balls of her feet. A pat confirmed that her gun was still in its holster. She resettled her glasses and tensed as McWhirter stepped towards her. She felt the heat of his face and his spit-smelling breath.

‘Your helmet light has three levels of brightness. Just tap. Understood?’

Though her glasses had zero-light processors, she did not want McWhirter to know. She tapped the helmet three times. The beam became intense and localised. She had landed in the remains of a corridor. It was a long, grey space choked with debris. She could see furniture, computer equipment, filing cabinets and paper. The air tickled her throat.

‘What happened down here?’ she asked.

‘A fire. Don’t be surprised if we suffocate.’

‘Was this damage caused yesterday?’

‘Most of it by the first bomb, twenty years ago.’

‘And you say Proctor was responsible for both?’

‘The origin of the explosion was inside the locked workroom of Proctor’s laboratory. It should have destroyed the equipment in Proctor’s lab, and only that.’

‘But it didn’t.’

‘No. It started a fire, which soon spread. Ceilings collapsed. Eight people were killed. Proctor was evasive during his initial interrogation and evasive again to the inquiry. In their report, the investigators noted their suspicions, but there wasn’t enough evidence. He slipped through the net.’

‘Until now,’ said Saskia, probing. ‘When he slipped through the net again.’

McWhirter turned his light in her direction. ‘Be careful where you step, Detective. I don’t want to lose anyone else.’

He stepped through a rough gap that had once held a door. Puddles splashed as she followed. Inside the room, their torch-beams were thickened by the dust. A huge glass tank loomed. Its broken edges winked.

‘What was in there?’

‘A whole world. A world in a fish tank.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Of course you don’t.’ He gestured to the right. ‘Proctor’s old office. That was where the 2003 bomb went off.’

Saskia removed her glasses and polished them on the hem of her blouse. As she rubbed, she felt his stare, and the revolver was close in her thoughts until the glasses were replaced and McWhirter turned away. She looked slowly over the scene to capture it. Later review of the video would reveal the shadowed corners. She stepped forward and something crunched underfoot. She glanced down and saw the eye of a flattened rat. She moved back and bumped into an overturned chair. Her heart seemed to grow large and hot in her chest.

McWhirter’s light blinded her again. ‘You know, we have a saying in Britain: “The murderer always returns to the scene of the crime.” Shimoda’s body was in that room along with the bomb. He still is. Pieces of him, anyway.’

‘“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all”.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Another British saying. Shakespeare. Do you feel guilty, Colonel, that this happened on your watch?’

‘Should I?’

‘It happened twice.’

‘Detective, few people finish the games they start with me.’

Saskia touched rat with the tip of her shoe. She remembered crying in the back of a taxi after the break up with Simon, the boyfriend who never was. The burn: a question mark. Question: What power did McWhirter have over the Angel of Death, the serial killer whose bottled geni could erupt from her brain in an instant?

‘Are you trying to scare me, Colonel?’

‘I’m making you aware of the facts.’

‘Facts I have. What I need is the feel. Where is the interface with the computer?’

‘See for yourself.’

He pointed towards a doorway in the far wall. She moved towards it. The plaintive cries of the rats became louder. The room was small. There was a power here: it was a room in a room in a room, buried deep in the earth. Saskia was struck by the thought that, after she and McWhirter completed their tour, and this place was capped, its silence would return and its power would grow again.

McWhirter breathed in her ear. ‘It has an unpleasant feel , don’t you agree?’

She turned to him. ‘It is certainly dusty.’

‘Got what you wanted?’

‘Please?’

‘You wanted to get into Proctor’s head. Are you close enough? You can almost smell him, can’t you? Smells like…an incinerator. A crematorium, even.’

‘I would like to leave now.’

‘It has atmosphere, doesn’t it? My little Magical Mystery Tour.’

‘I would like to leave.’ Her voice was firmer. Her hand rested on her gun. ‘Now.’

He laughed. ‘I’m only pulling your leg. Come on.’

They retraced their steps. When they reached the corridor, McWhirter was quick to attach his rope. He connected the decelerator and climbed upwards in a caterpillar-like motion, alternately grasping the rope his hands and feet. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Directly. I want to check to something first.’

‘Well, don’t stay too long. I heard some noises just now.’

‘What kind of noises?’

‘Just noises.’

And he was gone. His breath echoed down the shaft and sounded close, but Saskia was alone. She touched the edge of her glasses and a Heads Up Display appeared, overlaying the dark scene with objecting-parsing halos, and a menu. A cross-hair was locked to her eye movements. She blinked at the cartoonish graphic of a filing cabinet and a preview of her recently recorded footage expanded.

What? she thought. Something nagged at her. What am I looking for?

Myself?

No. Concentrate.

She cued through the footage until she found the moment she had descended into the research centre. Fast forward some seconds. The dark corners were bright. No objects had thermal properties that the glasses identified as statistically warmer or cooler than the ambient. She stopped on the image of the corridor wall. Her breath stopped too. Her astonished eyes saccaded to the magnifier icon, blinked, and the image rushed out.

It showed the corridor—this corridor, right now—in almost perfect brilliance. There was the wreckage, the charcoaled furniture and loose paper. But on the wall immediately to the left of the doorway, someone had written a message.