THE SCULPTOR
The two doctors stood in silence looking at the beautiful girl. Her long yellow hair cascaded down her back, over the pale blue t-shirt, with a few stray strands caressing her full, tight breasts. Her long legs, topped by her firm haunches in dark blue shorts, were slightly apart and braced to allow her to bend back somewhat in a gentle arc. Both arms reached behind her head to arrange her hair, making her breasts and her small, pointed nipples stand out all the more. Her blue eyes were open but unresponsive.
Dr Jacobsen raised his bushy eyebrows expressively and waited for his colleague Dr Salmon to speak. Instead she looked away from him, back to the girl’s glazed eyes, as if seeking a secret there. Then she met Jacobsen’s gaze and spoke.
“How long has she been like this?
“She was found nearly four hours ago. That’s over three hours here.”
“No movement in all that time?”
“Only shallow breathing. No limb movements, no eye movements, not even urination. She might be a statue except that she is of flesh and she’s alive.” She closed on the motionless girl again, seeking an answer which did not come.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Jacobsen spread his hands expressively.
“A kind of hysterical catatonia, induced by the patient’s mental state, twice – but an intervention like pushing her so she nearly fell over would produce a normal reaction before she reverted. I tried that with this one and she just fell as she is. Of course I had a nurse present to catch her. There is, of course, hypnosis, but nothing that lasts this long. What about you?”
“Me neither. But I do have ideas. Who is she?”
“Her name is Lucia Johansson, daughter of a Swedish couple – the father manages an art gallery and the mother works in computers. She’s just seventeen. A fitness fanatic, and she was out jogging, apparently, when this happened.”
“I see. Could I have a few minutes alone with her?” Jacobsen frowned.
“Very well, Dr Salmon, but only five minutes, and I stress that you should institute no procedures without my agreement.” He left – but confused noises at the door, shuffling feet, words exchanged, told Jo Salmon someone else had arrived. Jacobsen came back in with a tall uniformed police officer.
“Dr Salmon? Inspector Alex Lawrence, Brentford C.I.D.,” he said, holding up his card. Could I have a word?” Jacobsen called a nurse and the three of them retired to a small office. Lawrence took a number of details and then said,
“I expect you’re wondering why the police involvement, especially at a relatively senior level. This unfortunate young lady is the third case in five weeks. I’ve been asked to take a lead because of my record on abnormal sex crime.” Jacobsen’s mouth dropped open. Jo Salmon, though, had a question.
“What’s happened to the others, then?”
“No change, effectively. They do need to, er, go to the toilet eventually, but the other two victims are still frozen in the positions they were found them in, still in a kind of suspended animation, still unresponsive to all stimuli and, for that matter, still alive.”
“Can you tell us who the other two were?”
“Only in general terms. The first was a junior officer from HMG Electronic Analysis Centre at Hindhead, so the funnies – sorry, intelligence services – were all over the case and it was hushed up. She’d been out cycling. She was found with the bike in a ditch but she was still crouched as if riding it and her clothing had been disturbed. I don’t want to do into operational details. The second was a nurse in Leicester, found, believe it or not, in an airing cupboard in the hospital she worked in. She was bent over, touching her toes. Still is. Her clothing had been disturbed too. So it’s interesting that with this poor Johansson kid that doesn’t seem to have happened. Well, obviously we’d like to know if Miss Johansson’s condition changes in any way – here’s my phone number – and I would like to see her myself, if I may.”
The inspector prowled around the girl to no apparent effect, and left. Jo admitted to herself she found him attractive in a rather wooden but very masculine way. A tall, dark stranger. She did have his phone number, but no idea if he was fancy free.
Alex Lawrence had also noticed that the pert-figured blonde was pretty good-looking, but he was more aware of the charms of the teenager. He had fought to hide an erection. He shouldn’t be attracted to girls that young. He hadn’t been excited because she was in that frozen state – had he? He hadn’t had that kind of reaction to the other two, though the nurse’s pose was pretty erotic. So it must be this kid’s age – which was a very uncomfortable thought. But now he thought of it, that big, bulging, deeply divided black arse on the nurse had been…well…perhaps he should check back and re-examine her. But there were many other things to arrange – seeking witnesses along the jogging route young Johansson had taken, checking if she’d passed any security cameras, all that.
Jo Salmon was at last left alone with the teenager. She looked into her immobile face with sympathy and curiosity. What had been her last thoughts before this happened? What had those unseeing eyes seen? Were any thoughts in her mind now, and if so, did they flit through like dreams or were they frozen like her body?
She placed her hands one on each shoulder, looked into the pale blue eyes with total concentration and said,
“Lucia!” Nothing.
“Lucia! Listen to me. You have gone into a deep sleep, but you are still Lucia. Lucia, wake up. Wake up, Lucia. Wake up…” there was a flicker in the girl’s eyes. “Wake up, Lucia. Your sleep is over.” She was awake. She found her arms crooked behind her neck and dropped them.
“OW! That hurt! My arms are horribly stiff!”
“You’d been like that for four hours. No wonder they’re stiff.”
“Who are you and why are you wearing a white coat?”
“I’m a doctor. This is a hospital. You’ll be all right now.”
“I want to go to the toilet.”
“O.K.. There may be after-effects. I’ll go with you.”
On the way out they almost collided with Jacobsen, hurrying back. He started to ask Jo why she’d left the patient, if a nurse was with her – and then, as the blonde girl looked at him, he suddenly realised.
“What…what…”
“She’s revived. Now if you don’t mind, she hasn’t relieved herself for about five hours.”
The nurses were taking care of Lucia. Inspector Lawrence had been called back. In the meantime Jacobsen and Jo were closeted. The older doctor seemed almost angry, demanding to know what had happened and what Jo had done. She waited for him to calm down a little, or to run out of breath, and said simply:
“She’d been hypnotised. I hypnotised her out of it.”
“You’re not allowed to hypnotise without consent!” Jo’s patience snapped.
“For Christ’s sake – she was in a trance and I got her out! Her mental and physical state now is normal. I released her from hypnosis! Make it an official complaint about my conduct if you like!” Jacobsen gave her a hostile stare and stalked off.
Jo was not surprised when Alex Lawrence phoned. Unlike Jacobsen, he had no problem with her unorthodox methods: instead, he sounded impressed. He’d talked to Lucia and she’d recalled all sorts of things about her jogging outing, but had never seen her attacker (if there had been one), so on the face of it there were no clues. Nonetheless, police work often consisted of laying out large amounts of information and looking for any links – for example, an unusual colour of car seen on two occasions. Now could Jo help rescue the other two victims from their trances? She would try.
Alex Lawrence himself drove her to see the intelligence officer, Emma Howe. To Jo’s surprise, she was not in hospital but in a medical centre at a modernistic office she realized must be some kind of intelligence centre. She found herself having to sign the official secrets act and the two attracted two minders, a glum, gentle-seeming Scot called Dalhousie and a stern-faced fortyish woman called Miss Parker..
Emma Howe was petite and looked younger than her 24 years. Her dark red-brown hair was worn short and her tight little nipples pressed against her white cycling vest without benefit of bra. Her cycling shoes were almost brand-new and expensive. She was bent as the inspector had said into the position of a cyclist, her pert little bottom sticking out in its tight black shorts.
“I thought you said her clothing had been disturbed?” asked Jo. To her surprise it was Dalhousie who replied, sounding embarrassed:
“Weeel, doctor, in actual fact that’s so, but we, well, made her decent.”
“Her shorts had been pulled down,” Lawrence explained. No obvious signs of sexual activity, but to check for that on a live person we need consent and she hasn’t given it. We could go to her parents, but these intelligence people said no. So – Emeric, I understand your people are happy for Dr Salmon to try what worked with Lucia Johannson?
“Emeric!” thought Jo. No wonder he was gloomy.
“Aye,” the agent said gloomily.
“Subject to it being recorded and absolute control over the recordings being with us,” Miss Parker added.
Jo crouched so she could look the girl close in the eyes. She placed her hands on the slim shoulders.
“Emma!” she said softly. “Emma, listen to me. You have gone into a deep sleep…” There was no reaction at all. She went through the routine twice over. It did not work. She straightened up.
“Pity,” thought Alex Lawrence, who had been studying her delicious, curvy, pear-shaped bottom in its tight, rather mannish grey trousers. Pity also that the hypnosis had failed.
“It’s vairy common that if thing A is followed by thing B, people assume A caused B,” Dalhousie observed. Jo could have responded that her method was based on tests with people hypnotized by other hypnotists, not just on one success with the Johansson girl. She did not bother.
“How long has she been in this state?” she asked.
“Five weeks,” said Alex.
“Thirty-four days, two hours, plus whatever time elapsed between this happening to her and her being found,” said Miss Parker.
“That could well be the reason,” Jo mused. “Maybe I can only succeed if I get to them quickly.”
“In that case, Nurse Charity Mensah will be an interesting case, since she’s on two weeks and one day,” Alex pointed out. “We’re going straight to Leicester.”
“This is more than just hypnosis – it’s more like hibernation,” Jo pointed out as they sped up the A1M. “Their bodies are going into extreme slow-motion just like hibernating animals. I didn’t see any sign of a drip, but Emma Howe was still alive and not obviously malnourished.”
“That’s right,” Alex Lawrence replied, “but if this is their winter, will there be a spring?” Jo looked at him with some surprise. She hadn’t expected a police officer to be so poetic, so mystic.
“Charity Mensah, Ghanaian-born, single, aged 27,” said Alex. “It’s amazing what the human body can do.” The extravagantly-curved nurse had been bent for over two weeks touching her toes, her breasts hanging down to her elbow-joints, her massive haunches raised to the ceiling, her secret lips open and inviting.
“Quite!” said Jo. Now, Alex – quiet, please…” It was necessary for her to get down even lower than with Emma Howe to eyeball Charity. To Alex’s disappointment, she did not do that by bending very low, but by squatting, cross-legged.
“Charity!” she began. Six minutes later she gave up. A little over two weeks was too much. Either that, or some other factor was at play.
“I feel really sorry I couldn’t get them out of it,” Jo confided on the way back.
“Never mind. We’ll get our evidence – witness statements that mean little on the surface of it, a car number plate picked up on cameras, something the attacker left at the scene,” Alex replied.
“I meant sorry for them, not for your investigation!” Jo was angry. Alex kept his eyes on the road.
“And my investigation can stop this happening to other girls.” Jo let it go. When he dropped her off, he said:
“If we get another case, we’ll need to get you into action fast. So I’d be grateful for your mobile number. And to avoid misusing that – can we meet again?”
“Yes – over the next victim,” she replied.
Over the next ten days she dreamed about the three women. In her dreams Charity and Emma were unfrozen and moved, but as soon as she looked straight at them they were frozen as they stood. Lucia appeared, offering to help, but she too froze. Alex Lawrence assured her they’d be fine in the fridge.
Even in her waking hours she was haunted by them.
It was five p.m. on a wet September Sunday when the call came:
“Alex Lawrence. There’s been another. Somerset. Where are you?”
“At home.” She didn’t say she’d just got out of the bath.
“I’m coming round.” He didn’t bother to ask if that was OK, but Jo didn’t mind. She was a doctor. Despite her mixed feelings about Alex, she was glad to see him: she was eager to get to work. He was not talkative, but after a while, he said:
“This one’s on site. They haven’t moved her yet. There’s a small difficulty.” This didn’t sound good. Despite his clear wish not to give more details, she pressed:
“What’s the difficulty, precisely?”
“The cutting equipment’s delayed by a crash further up the road.” That was all she got out of him till they arrived.
The powerful but rather elderly maroon car was neatly parked just off the B road at the entrance to a farm track. It was surrounded by police, plus a fire crew and paramedics. There was no-one in the car, or rather, no-one entirely in it. A large bent bottom in dark blue uniform trousers projected outside the front driver-side window. As Jo came closer, she saw that the window had been closed to trap the policewoman just below her breasts. The policewoman was not struggling and Jo had a good idea why.
“PC Julia Jones,” Alex said. “Just been in the fucking force seven months. Her car’s gone – presumably our man took it.” Jo was very surprised at the raw emotion in his voice, and her opinion of him improved.
“Why not just wind the window down?” she asked.
“Bastard’s jammed it. We could break the window, but we might well hurt her. If we can detach the whole door first, then we can sort out the window and free her – if ‘free’ is the right word.”
“Well, there’s not much I can do till you cut her out, then,” she commented.
“Yes there is. Climb in on the passenger side and speak to her. Any minute could be our last chance!” he said urgently.
Jo did as he suggested, clambering in on all fours so she could go face to face with the policewoman. Alex Lawrence watched her well-filled fawn trousers appreciatively, having taken in his colleague’s bottom already. The policewoman did indeed look very young. Her big, hazel eyes were open wide. Her neat, small mouth was half-open as if she’d just started to say something. Her white uniform tunic had been torn, and if she had been wearing a bra, it had been removed: her full, plump, firm breasts pointed their large nipples at the floor. This had a sexual motive, all right, Jo thought, but the guy – surely it had to be a guy – had a twisted sense of humour. If he had driven off in the police car, he could simply have loaded the PC into it. Now what was her name? Julia.
“Julia! Julia, listen to me! You’ve gone into a deep sleep, but now you’re coming out of it…” she began. The policewoman blinked. “You’re waking up, Julia…”
“Who are you and why have you taken my clothes off? Let me go!” PC Jones had woken quickly.
“It’s all right! We’re police and medics. You were attacked. The Inspector will explain,” Jo replied, backing out (unaware of Alex’s eyes on her as she did so), banging her head, swearing, and giving way to Alex.
Ten minutes later the cutting equipment arrived. Despite her training, the policewoman had become hysterical, but slowly calmed once she was free.
“Do you feel up to telling us what happened?” Alex asked. She nodded. “Did you stop that car?”
“Yes, it was being driven inconsistently, very slow then a bit faster for no obvious reason, and not keeping a straight line, and the indicators went on before a side turning and then the car went straight on. I thought maybe the driver was drunk. Erm, sir…would you mind if I covered up a bit before we continued?”
“If you like.” Alex looked as if he did not like, but he could hardly refuse. A fireman brought a blanket.
“You stopped it and you leant through the window?” he resumed. “ Was there one person in it or more?”
“Just one.”
“Can you describe the driver?” Alex’s face showed the excitement of the hunt.
“Yes, I can. He was small, about four foot tall, a sort of bright pinky-red in colour, naked, with a fixed grin, a big hooked nose, erm, a huge erm penis for his size and it was, well, erect. Very long ears and two little horns coming out of his head.” All this was said in an earnest voice unchanged from the previous answer. Alex, though, looked incredulous.
“He was WHAT?”
“About four foot tall, all over pinky-red…”
“STOP FUCKING AROUND WITH ME!” he yelled in her face.
“Sorry, sir, I don’t know what you mean. I…” PC Julia Jones burst out crying. Alex’s body was a coiled spring; but Jo intervened.
“Alex – can’t you see? She’s been hypnotized to give a prepared response to certain questions. You could try rephrasing the question, but I suspect whenever you ask about the driver, he’s going to be a red devil.”
“But he was a red devil!” Julia protested.
They had not even left the scene when Alex received the news that the car had been bought for cash a few days earlier by a middle-aged man of possibly East European appearance, with dark receding hair, waering a Manchester United T-shirt. The description, Alex commented, was the best lead they had so far, though forensics might well come up with something.
Alex also made clumsy attempts to get Jo to talk about her hypnotism. She responded with the sort of information he could have found easily on the web or even from Jacobsen. It took her a while to realise he was actually in awe of what he saw as her extraordinary powers.
Perhaps that was why he rang her that night on her land-line – as it happened, just as she was coming out of the shower.
“Jo – Dr Salmon – did you do this?”
“Who…is that you, Alex?”
“Yes. Sorry – I thought you’d know. Did you do it?”
“Did I do WHAT? Are you drunk?” She became aware that she was standing in front of a window across which the curtain was only half-drawn. The window looked out on to the street. She hurried to rectify the situation and managed to pull the flex out. As soon as she had it back in he rang again.
“No, I’m not drunk. Did you do it?” he asked. “And why’s your mobile turned off?” She was furious. Who did he think he was? Talk about a police state!
“I turned it off to get some peace. Now for the last time – DID I DO WHAT?”
“Hypnotise Emma Howe and that nurse out of their comas.”
“WHAT?” He had calmed down a bit now.
“O.K., evidently you didn’t. Sorry. Maybe I overestimated you – your powers, I mean. Both girls have revived. Their physical condition isn’t that great – they can hardly move and the nurse can’t straighten up – but the doctors expect them to make a full recovery. They’ve both given accounts of the events around whatever was done to them, but…”
“They were both jumped on by tiny red devils?”
“No, in fact. The nurse was accosted by a talking horse, a stallion apparently. Agent Emma Howe insists a rather effeminate-looking man in a white robe with big golden wings came down from heaven, said she’d been specially selected to receive something valuable, and lifted his robe.” Suddenly Jo found the situation funny. She felt laughter welling up. But at the same time she suddenly felt sorry for poor old Alex, the straight-down-the-line unimaginative policeman, faced with this arabesque of villainy.
“Oh, poor old Alex,” she said – and then the laughter took over.
“It isn’t funny!” he insisted. “Until I can catch this bastard, other girls will be abused. We do have evidence he raped Emma, the policewoman and the nurse, by the way, if that interests you.”
“Sorry! I know how you feel, Alex. Is there anything I can do still?” she asked.
“Hmmm..” there was a silence. “You couldn’t try to overcome this thing implanted in them, the stuff about red devils and angels and horses?” he asked.
“I’m willing to try, but there’s almost no chance, given that I couldn’t raise two of them and when I raised the policewoman, the image of the red devil was unaffected. O.K. – let me try on just one – the nurse, Charity Mensah?”
Charity Mensah was in physiotherapy. When it was finished she saw them, smiling.
“You want to help me, doctor? Of course. Go ahead.”
“Thanks. Now, Charity, look into my eyes. Relax. You’re feeling sleepy. You’re going into…What the fuck?” Those last words were said in a whisper. Charity had started snoring. Her eyes had closed. Gently, slowly, she laid down on the floor. Nothing Jo tried could revive her from deep sleep. At least she was lying, not doubled up as she was before.
“Oh, God!” said Jo, looking from the nurse to Alex.
“Fucking hell!” he said.
“I think we’d better not even try the same with Emma,” she added. “He – or she – has put a trap in their minds, activated as soon as anyone tries to hypnotise them. And no, I don’t know if Charity will ever come out of it this time.”
Charity had stopped snoring, but she was still asleep.
“Look – can we get a coffee or something? This thing is doing my mind and I’m starting to doubt my judgment. Maybe I’m missing something. Can you?” asked Alex jerkily.
Jo considered for a moment and then smiled.
“Well, how say we get back to West London, leave the car and have a pint? I could do with one.”
“Me too!” he replied.
“Is your wife waiting for you?” Jo asked him abruptly as they sat down at the Green Man. He smiled – the first time she’d seen that.
“Unlikely. We divorced three years ago,” he replied. “She said she couldn’t stand the hours. Said I was too wedded to the job.”. Jo smiled back.
“I get much the same from men. I’ve had a few relationships, but they want me to be a cook or a whore first and a doctor second. For me it’s the other way round.” She suddenly realized she’d implied she was happy to be a whore provided it took second place to her medical duties, and blushed deeply. But Alex was either too literal-minded or too diplomatic to pick it up.
“As for being a cook, I pride myself on being pretty good. How say I make you a meal?” A little surprised at herself, Jo agreed and they fixed a date.
“So – the case,” said Alex. “You’re sort of in the same business as the attacker. What do you reckon his motive is? Examinations did suggest some degree of sexual assault, but no intercourse. None of them have been robbed. So what is it – just kinky sex? In which case, why not just rape them and not put them in a sort of coma?”
“It could be a she,” Jo pointed out. “The other possibility is that he’s practicing.”
“Practicing?”
“Maybe these cases seem a bit pointless to us because he or she hasn’t really got going. These could just be trials.” Alex took a while to digest this. Then he came up with another suggestion:
“I don’t trust these funnies. Very few coppers do. Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that one of the four victims was an intelligence officer, even though a pretty junior one? Maybe it’s all really about Emma Howe and the rest are just a blind. I asked what kind of work she was doing and that battleaxe Miss Parker politely said fuck off.” That had not occurred to Jo. She also approved of Alex’s attitude to secret intelligence people. She’d naively assumed that police, secret service, armed services and the rest would all be in bed together. She was getting to like Alex.
“If that’s the case, you’d expect the attacks to stop soon. Carrying on would be too risky and anyway, four or five other cases would be enough for camouflage,” she commented. Alex, in turn, looked impressed by her reasoning.
As they left the pub, she said,
“I’m looking forward to that meal, Alex.” She had put her face close to his to say that and perhaps she was not totally surprised when he kissed her. They stood by the pub entrance looking at one another. His phone rang. He took the call. She could tell it was not good news.
“Another girl’s been done,” he said. “Nineteen-year-old stable girl. Felicity Swift. She was out riding a racehorse. The horse was found wandering by the stable staff and she was found by an angler with her legs still apart as if she was riding the horse, but with her jodhpurs round her ankles and her panties down too. Frozen, unresponsive like the rest. Marks of her own switch on her buttocks.”
“I’m on duty first thing tomorrow. I really do need to get some sleep. But as soon as I can get away, I’ll see her if you want,” Jo told him.
“Thanks. I do want,” he replied.
Alex and Jo stood looking at Felicity Swift. Her blue eyes were open but she did not look back. Her legs were still bowed but her decency had been restored.
“Hello, Felicity. I’m here to help you. You have gone into a deep sleep but you are still Felicity. Listen to me, Felicity. It’s time to wake up. Wake up, Fel…”
“I’m not really Felicity. No-one calls me that. Mummy and Daddy and the people at the stables call me Felly. The girls at school called me Facility.” Felicity had spoken! She seemed dazed, but Jo’s magic had worked.
“Ow! My legs hurt. Why were they like that?” asked Felicity.
She remembered riding down a track and finding an old van which seemed to have crashed. Alex confirmed that while the vehicle had vanished, its tyre-tracks could be seen. Felicity could not remember seeing her attacker, except…
“There was this bull which came up and had sex with me. Why are you looking at me like that? Is that unusual?”
Outside, Alex took another call and spoke quietly to Jo.
“Apparently she has been raped.”
“Shit. Poor kid.”
“At least this is something relatively familiar, something I understand. Offender starts with limited attacks and then he gets bolder or what he was doing doesn’t satisfy any more – so it gets worse,” Alex commented. “What’s more, it may sound insensitive, but it does give us DNA.”
“It does sound insensitive. Sorry,” Jo replied.
“Sorry too, but it’s the job I have to do. Look, I find it easy discussing these things with you – you seem to help me. I’ve been trying to work out if there’s anything in common between the victims.”
“All female, young, attractive.”
“Yeah, those are the obvious things. I can’t see anything else – no penchant for blondes or teenagers or anything like that. All quite intelligent, I suppose, and none of them the classic easy victims, drunk kids stumbling home. Doesn’t help much, does it?”
“When you make me that meal, let’s talk about other things.”
“Fine.” He sounded slightly hurt.
When he did make her the meal, though, they found it quite easy to stay off the subject – until they lay relaxing, reorientating, on his bed.
“Jo…” he whispered tentatively.
“Yes?”
“That made me think…well, what’s it like to be deep hypnotized like those girls? Like, well, just now?”
“Don’t know – I’ve never been hypnotized,” she replied. “I’m a hard case. Look, Alex, I use hypnosis purely for good medical reasons. If you think I’m going to…um…oh, OK.”
Alex had not been an easy subject either, but she had lured him out and put him to sleep in the end. She would not make him do anything. She’d leave him for ten minutes, in case he experienced some kind of ecstasy, and then bring him out of it. Right now his lean, manly figure was sitting naked on the side of the bed, unresponsive to anything but her.
When Jo awoke she felt stiff and awkward. She tried to move but found she could not. She was still naked, bound in ropes and gagged with something that felt suspiciously like her own panties; her wrists were tied to the bed. She twisted round. It was dark (someone had turned the light off), but some starlight was seeping between the curtains. She could not feel or hear Alex, nor see his bulk. She was frightened and confused. Had she been hypnotized? No, her head felt sore. She had been knocked out. Was Alex tied up somewhere, dead even? Had he been kidnapped? How was she going to get out of this? She began to assess the condition of her bonds, to test them. She could not escape. At long last dawn came. There was no sign of Alex and no noises other than the routine daily ones of traffic outside and a distant dog barking.
Ridiculously, she became worried about missing her shift at the hospital. Then something more earthy and immediate bothered her: she needed to pee. It was humiliating, childish, unacceptable to pee on someone’s bed. But in the end it came in a rush and she could do nothing to stop it. The smell became stale. She could just see a clock that said 11:25.
Then she heard the front door open and shut, quite loudly. Heavy steps sounded on the stairs. The bedroom door opened. Alex stood in the doorway.
“Jo! What the hell? What’s happened? Why are you here? What’s that smell?” Jo was torn between relief and suspicion.
“Alex! You’re all right! Did you do this?” He stiffened, looking offended.
“What kind of pervert do you think I am? Of course not! Are you saying it wasn’t you, but you don’t know who it was?”
“Yes. I was asleep and then I woke up like this.”
“The door was properly locked and the burglar alarm was working but hadn’t been activated. Still, just let me look around. Oh, do you want freeing from that stuff first?” Jo found his casual attitude to her plight irritating.
“Yes,” she said, and nothing else. He untied her, showing skill and familiarity with knots. Then he left her without any attempt to condole her. He came back to point out that there was no sign of a break-in.
“You did this, didn’t you?” he said suddenly.
“WHAT? I’m not Houndini! Anyway, why should I want to truss myself up in your bedroom like this?”
“You may have had help. Anyway, for all I know you’re skilled at this sort of thing. And as for why you did it – presumably you thought I might be sexually attracted.” That reply both amazed and angered her.
“You PRAT! You think I’d do this just to help you to get off on me? Why should I do that when we humped one another for best part of an hour last night?” Now it was his turn to look amazed.
“We WHAT? I did invite you here for a meal but then I was called away to a false alarm. I left you with a taxi number in case I was away a long time. Why are you lying and pretending we had sex? Or have you fantasized about it so much you actually believe it?”
“You…you…” Jo was on the point of slapping him when an awful thought came to her. He had been hypnotized and given a false memory. All recollection of their night of love had been wiped out. So had that just happened…or had it been done some time ago? If some time ago, was he the agent of the criminal?
“I’m sorry…” She had meant to say “I’m sorry for you,” but he did not let her finish.
“O.K. – I understand. Nice try, if a bit elaborate. You’d better get dressed. I’ll ring that taxi.”
Jo went away in total confusion. What had happened? What was true? What was Alex?
But she was a doctor. Certain physical evidence proved to her that her memory of sex with Alex was correct – so he was either lying or entranced to forget. But what did that mean for the investigation? She felt responsible for doing something, but she knew if she went to his superiors they would dismiss her as mad or malicious.
She could not handle this alone. Who else would give good advice? Who else could she trust? She rang her best female friend Alison, but she was away in Mexico for two weeks. There was only one other person she could possibly speak to about this – stuffy, proud, conscientious Dr Jacob Jacobsen.
It proved quite hard to get him alone. She finally managed to tell him there was something she wanted to discuss with him in private. He looked less than happy, but agreed, saying he’d reserve a small meeting room generally used for telling patients or relatives bad news.
Jacobsen closed the door.
“It’s my breath, isn’t it?” he asked. “After seventeen years my wife just told me last week. I’ve been trying ever since…”
“No, Jacob, it’s not about you. It’s about me,” she replied.
“Ah!” he said, relieved. “Man problems?”
“Oddly enough, in a sense, yes. But it’s about that Lucia Johansson kid and the others.”
“Do you want a professional second opinion, or is it more personal? Something about that arrogant cold fish of a detective?” Jo felt that was an unfair description of Alex, but old Jacob’s guess had been good, which helped. She blurted out the entire story in detail, finding him a good listener. She finished and searched his face to se how he might have reacted to this weirdness. He looked slightly puzzled, no worse. He looked back and formed a wigwam with his fingers.
“So there is physical evidence, medically reliable, that you had sex last night?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And with this Inspector?”
“Well, um, no – not without DNA analysis.” She couldn’t see what he was getting at.
I just asked because it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that you might have been hypnotized and given false memories – perhaps by the man who’s behind all this,” he suggested. For a moment the idea horrified her. Then it seemed ludicrously improbable.
“I went on a date with Alex, we were at his place, I woke up in, or rather on, his bed, I’d had sex, I remembered sex with Alex. All of those are facts. Don’t they suggest I did have sex with Alex?”
Suggest, but not prove. Well, my alternative theory is unlikely, I agree. There is, I’m afraid, another possibility. Whoever is doing this is a hypnotist of rare quality. Whatever I think of the practice, I concede you’re very good. Are you sure the perpetrator isn’t you?”
This left Jo speechless. She started running through where she had been and who had seen her since the first case had occurred. It was obviously going to be impossible to disprove the horrible idea there and then. She would have to check her diary, her e-mails and her contacts.
Her interview with Jacobsen had left her far more disturbed than before.
Within a couple of hours of returning home, though, she had convinced herself she could not be the person responsible. It could be shown that she was busy, at work or in company, at certain crucial times. She concluded that there was nothing to be done but to drop her involvement in the case. She was therefore unprepared three nights later to get a call from Alex Lawrence.
“Jo, I was hard on you that day. For all I know you may even have been right. I don’t suppose you expected to hear from me again,” he started.
“No, I didn’t.”
“I need your help.”
“Oh, yes?” There was a long silence. She began to feel guilty for being so unfriendly. If he’d been hypnotized to forget having sex with her, that wasn’t his fault. When he spoke again it came all in a rush.
“Something weird’s happening. The nurse walked out of that hospital.”
“She’s better?”
“Not exactly. She seems to have hypnotized other nurses and doctors around her plus a porter and a couple of people visiting patients. Thirteen people like zombies marched out of the hospital, taking over other people as they went, then two police car crews that arrived. It seems they can only get people close up, so we got the situation sort of under control with a cordon, but they kept moving so we had to keep moving the cordon – not easy when they went in other buildings. A team arrived with tasers and fired the things, but somehow they malfunctioned and each officer who fired one dropped dead, electrocuted. We tried tranquillising darts but they seemed to have no effect. There was now a, I don’t know what to call it, army, gang, posse of twenty-two people all like bloody zombies. We’re still trying to get authorization to use guns on them.”
“Jesus! Are the other victims O.K.?”
“A few minutes after this one started, reports came through of the same thing happening with the policewoman and the Johansson kid. It was getting totally out of hand. As for Emma Howe, there’s something weird happening at Hindhead but the funnies won’t tell us what. It includes helicopters and explosions, anyway.”
“So just a minute – you want my help? To do what exactly?”
“Maybe you could stop them. Otherwise they all get shot – that is, if the guns work.” Jo felt sick. She didn’t believe her power would work. But the alternative was mass slaughter and she wasn’t even sure the normal world would win.
“O.K. – I’ll try,” she said.
Half an hour later a helicopter had taken her to the scene of Charity Mensah’s rampage. The posse, now numbering twenty-four, was moving through a deserted shopping mall with armed police making sure no normal people got too close. With Alex’s help she got through the cordon. She wanted to get to Charity Mensah, thinking she was the source of whatever had taken over the others. If she could influence Charity, she could influence the others. Trying to influence one of the others while whatever had taken over Charity was still working would be pointless, she was sure. The problem was that two of the “zombies” – a girl in a supermarket checkout uniform and a man in security guard uniform – were between her and Charity – and they were advancing towards her. She yelled:
“Charity! Charity Mensah!” The black woman turned round – no initial confusion, no searching for the source of the noise, as if she had known all along Jo was there. Charity did not speak or wave, but the two “zombies” moved aside. Charity’s eyes met Jo’s.
“Activate!” said Charity. With most of them it must have been immediate, but Jo was an expert herself. She felt it coming and fought it. There was power coming from Charity, power that was not Charity’s but someone else’s, and Jo was struggling with it, wrestling, desperate not to slip back because that could have only one end. But something else was coming from behind her, from inside her, something that had been implanted there like a malign baby, something she now recognised and should have known was there – and it was ready to eat her. She felt her resistance shrivel and vanish. She became the thing inside her. She turned, saw Alex staring at her open-mouthed, and said one word:
“Activate!”
Back at the hospital, Dr Jacobsen took a call and smiled. HMG Electronic Analysis Centre Hindhead was, his lover Miss Parker assured him, entirely under their control and so was all territory as far as Gatwick Airport. So was half of London, the southern part of the East Midlands and an area from Bristol to North Dorset. Sleepers had just got on a train for Glasgow.
He thought he would call Jo Salmon back. He had unfinished business.