La Femme Read online

  *

  Jayne found herself in a much more secure environment; multiple electronically coded doors, guards regularly stationed and enough cctv cameras to make a voyeur wet themselves.

  She’d been alone in the observation room for an hour now. She wasn’t really alone; on the other side of the mirror people were watching her. The air smelt old, already breathed. The light was dull yet it was still brighter in there than it had been at the police station. This kind of place was limited and dangerous, she felt trapped and the knowledge of someone on the other side of the wall analysing her left Jayne anxious, with a knot of darkness in her stomach. They’d taken her clothes and left her with a paper thin boiler suit and underwear.

  Sometime later people came to see her. A man and a woman, both in dark and averagely tailored suits. Marks and Spencer probably, maybe T. M. Lewin. He was tall and angular, she was short with a black bob, pretty in that bland way people who had rich parents often were. They looked tired. She wore no make-up.

  They didn’t introduce themselves but were polite enough to greet her before starting their interrogation. “Who do you know who might wish to kill you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Jayne. “I’m an accountant for one of the Big Four.” Her voice trembled just enough to seem fearful.

  “Who would break into a police station dressed as police officers, shoot a constable and try to kidnap you?” he asked.

  “Aren’t I entitled to a lawyer?” she asked.

  “Do you need one?” countered the woman.

  “I don’t know,” said Jayne. “Do I? Would it help? Two men were sent to kill me, enemies of the ideas I aspire to, and they walked right in here as if they owned the place. Forget the lawyer; can you help me?”

  “How do you calculate a Real Option?” he asked, ignoring her.

  She laughed bitterly. “You think that asking me that will blow my cover? Fine, get me some paper. Do either of you know what ten percent of one hundred is because unless you’ve actually got degree level statistics under your belt you’re wasting our time.”

  “So you admit you have a cover,” said the woman intently.

  Jayne sighed and rubbed her eyes with the fingers of one hand. “What is wrong with you people? I was giving a witness statement when those maniacs arrived. That poor woman died saving my life, but the first people they shot at were the police officers. They didn’t seem to care that I was in the room.”

  Mr Angular shared a brief look with Ms. Bland. “We know about Manchester.”

  “What?”

  “We have the footage of you from Manchester,” he said.

  “Plus four dead bodies found after an explosion there yesterday which occurred at the same time you were surviving Thames Haven,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jayne, “are you trying suggest that I was in two places at once? That surviving an explosion is a crime?”

  *

  Michael resented having the two men in black muscle in on his case. He found it hard to accept the evidence SIS had presented him with but was glad to still be in the loop. As a former specialist, they’d decided he was on the need to know list. Either that or losing one of his better officers that morning gave him a sympathy vote.

  Whatever the truth, they weren’t going to get at her like this. If she was just a clever accountant then they were frightening her with patently absurd nonsense. If, somehow, there was any truth to what they were saying then their questions hardly qualified as worthy of amateur hour. He turned to their team leader, a detective inspector by the name of Simmons. “Can I speak to them?”

  Simmons nodded and showed him the thin microphone to speak into.

  “Look, you two,” said Michael, “even if she does admit to being in two places at once, where does that leave you? With a plot out of Star Trek? Real people have died over this; remember your training. Back to basics; treat her like she might be an innocent victim in all this bloody lunacy.”

  *

  They started over. Jayne didn’t understand why they suddenly supposed they should introduce themselves. Mia Holmes and William Moynihan. When had she last been to Manchester? Why was she at the site in Thames Haven?

  Jayne relaxed a little. She felt like a person again; a tired person, but human at least. Eventually, some hours later, they started to circle in on the points where Stryck and Lakshmi had also focussed.

  “We found your car,” said Mia. “How did you get from Manchester Airport to London without it?”

  Jayne rubbed at the untanned ring of skin on her finger where her jewellery had once been before they’d taken it. “I was with my colleague, Dennis. He was with me on site.”

  “We thought you were alone?” they said.

  “He was standing next to me when…” She didn’t finish.

  They heard irritated tutting in their ear buds. “Your evidence says there was no explosive centre at the Thames Haven site. That the particles and accelerant literally originated out of thin air, but that they share identical molecular markers as the explosion at Manchester Airport. Ask her about where they were standing, remind her that there was no live gas, no electrics. Ask her if she’s ever worked in Manchester. Think or be replaced.”

  “Can you think how an explosion could happen out of thin air?” asked Moynihan.

  “Dickens wrote about spontaneous combustion,” Jayne said flippantly before stopping. She gave the pretence of thinking hard, playing with her hands and pursing her lips. “Nagel says there are two types of truth. External and Internal.”

  “Subjective and Objective,” said Mai helpfully.

  “No. Nothing of the sort. As far as physics is concerned, true is true.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Moynihan.

  “The universe is all connected, right? Basic physics. Entangled particles are just a special case, a type of mathematical sleight of hand that distils the complexity of reality down to something manageable.” She pushed her bottom lip out. “Have you ever thought how, in creating these ‘special cases’, they actually end up confusing the rest of us more? Anyway. Add to the connectedness that everything is up for grabs until it’s decided. Then there are many actual truths, sets of truth if you want to borrow from number theory. That is External truth. Internal truth is the reality that happens somewhen, somewhere, that you create when you are in it. Any of the possibilities in the set could have been true, in fact they are true, except that when one of them happens then only that is true and the truth is that the others are not true. That is the Internal truth.”

  “I still don’t get it,” said Moynihan while Holmes sat silently. Jayne supposed that before electronic surveillance they would have taken notes. Instead they now recorded every word she said.

  She sighed. “There is the view from nowhere and the view from now here.” She folded her arms and smiled wryly. Michael, from the other room, felt as if, all of a sudden, they were the ones under observation. “Let me tell you a story and see if you understand after that. There was once a girl who was lucky. Except the people she grew up with didn’t believe in luck, they believed in mathematics. They taught her that if it was probable it was possible. They showed her how to control truth as I’ve just described it. She could pull truths from nowhere into the now here. When she could be trusted to be consistent they gave her a locket. They never said where the locket came from or who had made it, but showed her that she could use it to handle more than one true version of the world at a time, using it to hold them in tension. She could create entangled worlds and when she was ready, at a time of her choosing, she could choose the one she wanted, or needed, to be true for her.

  “Imagine that this girl worked to change the world in ways that suited her and the people she grew up with. One day she found herself in Manchester, dealing with some very bad people. They had an explosive device and had managed to smuggle it flight-side at the airport. She found them and, having prepared another version of the world in which she was in London before s
he confronted them, pulled the explosion into that other truth she had prepared. Now the probability she had prepared was very slight, but it seemed the safest way to reduce the threat they represented. Unfortunately people died no matter what path through the probability landscape, sorry, possible outcome, she chose.”

  Silence followed in her wake until Michael prodded his two confused interviewers. “That doesn’t explain anything.”

  As if he’d cleared the mist, they challenged her on her story.

  “Okay, I’ll try it another way,” said Jayne, fingering her locket.

  How did she keep that? wondered Michael. Standard procedure should have seen the locket removed along with her rings.

  “Suppose this girl wants to leave a place where she is closely guarded and watched. It might go like this: outside this room stands a guard. That guard could do a number of things. He could stay there, he could walk away. He could enter the room. Beyond the obvious is the minor; he could play with his hair, pick his nose or think of his girlfriend rather than his wife. He might remember a lost lover or choose to think of yesterday’s football game. All of these are true. All of them happen. They are the view from nowhere.

  “However, the girl can choose the possibility that for some reason he opens the door, round chambered and safety off, comes in, trips and inadvertently shoots at the one way mirror. While he does this, she uses the confusion to run. Throughout the complex cctv starts to malfunction as circuit boards choose that moment to fail, or fuses suddenly blow. Somewhere a rat nibbles through a wire and shuts off another. While the surveillance fails more guards are inexplicably, and completely out of character for them, leaving doors open, jammed with fire extinguishers. ID passes are dropped while they hurry somewhere else. The girl doesn’t quite know what possibility she’ll find until she happens upon it but years of practice help her find her way. She may take a wrong turn, and occasionally someone sees her and calls out, but she’s running and in most of the view from nowhere she couldn’t possibly be free and running down the corridor, so people ignore what they can’t accept as possible. Before the base can be locked down she’s in the car park and it just so happens that someone dropped their car keys that morning. She jumps in their car and is gone. She doesn’t, indeed can’t, use her locket because diverting the explosion damaged it. That doesn’t matter. She has made it the view from now here.”

  In the observation room Simmons laughed. “My, she’s good.”

  “It explains everything,” said Michael as he worked through the timeline of her story.

  “Don’t be daft,” said Simmons.

  Jayne looked over the heads of Holmes and Moynihan, “It would all start with her tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and apologising for the death of Constable Stryck.”

  “Nice story,” said Mia wearily.

  Jayne looked her in the eyes, “I am truly sorry for Stryck’s death. She saved my life and I won’t forget her. I cannot help you identify the men who attacked us but, I will find them.” Seeker put an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Stop her!” Michael shouted into the microphone.

  The door to the interview room swung open, the guard stepped in and tripped over his untied shoe lace. The barrel of his sub machine gun veered toward the mirror as he fell.

  The Girl With No Face

  John Llewellyn Probert

  She was beautiful, standing there on my doorstep.

  She was soaked from the pouring rain, the black hair that came down to just below her chin plastered in rat-tails to the flawless skin of her heart-shaped face. The strands were so wet the howling wind had been denied the opportunity to arrange them to its own liking, not that she would have been any less appealing as a result of even its most violent efforts.

  It was not because of her beauty that I hesitated in the doorway of my own house, having answered the insistent hammering that had come in the minutes approaching midnight and which had stirred me from my research. It was not because of those hazel-gold eyes, so appealing in their silent pleading. Nor because of the tiny pink tongue that darted from between her full lips for a split second. Despite her efforts tiny dots of rain water still glistened just beneath her nose. No, it was not because of any of these reasons.

  It was because of the gun she was pointing at me.

  “Are you Justin Kelland, the plastic surgeon?” Her honeyed tones augmented her already exquisite perfection. She was obviously either the product of good breeding, or some very expensive elocution lessons. Or possibly both.

  My gaze dropped to the pistol before returning to her face. For a moment I considered denying my identity. Then I remembered the brass plate on the gatepost half a mile back down the drive. However she had managed to get up here (I could see no vehicle) it was likely she had checked first to ensure she would be pointing her gun at the right person.

  “I am,” I replied, my brow creasing. “But I’m not in the habit of accepting guests this late at night.”

  She pushed past me into the entrance hall, brandishing the weapon to ensure I would step back.

  “That’s all right, Dr Kelland,” she said. “I’m not exactly what you’d call a guest, anyway.” With a sweeping glance she took in the walls panelled in cherry wood, the paintings that I had picked up at auction for a small fortune, and the suit of armour in the corner that had been a gift from an eccentric friend. “Very nice,” she said, before gesturing to the broad staircase. “Who else is here with you?”

  I shook my head. “No one,” I replied. “I’ve lived alone since my wife died a year ago.”

  She nodded as she looked around, all the while keeping the gun trained on me. “You could still have someone here, though,” she said. “Children… servants… lovers.”

  “We had no children to speak of,” I said, “and the servants live in the village. I have no need of them during the nighttime. As for lovers…” I spread my hands. “My research takes up all my time, now.”

  She held up her left hand for a moment, as if she thought she had heard something. Then she regarded me with those beautiful eyes once more.

  “Good,” she said. “You have a lovely house here, doctor. I’m assuming there’s somewhere we can speak that’s more comfortable than your hallway?”

  I gestured to a closed door on my right. “Perhaps my study might suit your needs?”

  She raised the gun. Whether her hand was shaking from fear or the cold I couldn’t tell, although I was keen to find out. “That should be fine,” she said. “You go first.”

  My study is large, comfortable, and lined with books, many of them of a surgical nature. I switched on the light and made to usher the young lady in, but she still insisted I go in front of her. My heavy oak desk is on the far right of the room, facing the window. There is only the one chair.

  I crouched near the fireplace, which is located opposite the door, and lit the gas jet. The flame came to life with a roar. “Perhaps you might like to stand here,” I said.

  The girl stood with her back to the fire and shivered. She pointed to the chair.

  “You may as well take a seat,” she said. “We’re going to be here for a while.” She must have read my mind, or seen me regarding the gun still gripped in those tiny chilled fingers, because she felt moved to add, “and don’t think about overpowering me. I’ve dealt with men stronger and more determined than you in my time, and I can promise you, they were the ones who came off worse. So please dispense with any thoughts of turning the tables on me because I know how to use this. It would be the end of your career if you were to receive a bullet through the palm, and neither of us wants that.”

  She was certainly convincing. In fact her confidence seeming to be growing as she dried off. Any misconceptions I might have harboured about this young lady being meek and helpless were quickly fading. Her arrival at my house was clearly no accident. I suspected the lateness of the hour was deliberate, as well. I took care to place the photograph of my wife that I keep on my desk f
ace down. I had no wish for her to be witness to the nefarious proceedings that were undoubtedly to follow. Then I turned my desk chair round and settled into the red leather upholstery, determined to make myself as comfortable as possible while I was being threatened.

  A crack of thunder sounded outside. “I guess you’re wondering why I’m here,” she said.

  “It has crossed my mind,” I replied, “although right now I’m far more interested in learning your name.”

  She laughed at that. I don’t think I have ever heard anything quite so mirthless or so empty. However young she looked, that sound made me realise she was older than I had thought. Older, and with the kind of hardened cynicism that only comes to those who have had enough bad experiences to conclude that life is not on their side.

  “To be honest, doctor,” she said, turning toward me so she could dry the rest of herself, “I’ve had so many names over the years I’ve almost forgotten my real one. Not that I would tell it to you, anyway.”

  I clasped my hands in my lap and crossed my legs, determined to gain the upper hand in the conversation. “Well I have to call you something,” I said, calmly, “and I would prefer if it wasn’t ‘you there’ or ‘rude girl with a gun’, which is all I can think of calling you at the moment.”

  I knew I was taking a chance saying something like that, but this was my house, and I was still feeling somewhat incensed at this woman’s intrusion. I admit to being relieved, however, when she glanced heavenwards and thought for a moment.

  “Fair enough, doctor,” she said. “You can call me… Angela.”

  “Very well,” I smiled, “Angela. So what has brought you through the pouring rain in the middle of the night to come and see me, Angela?”

  She turned her back to the fire again, changed the gun to her left hand and shook the raindrops from her right. “A gentleman who gets to the point. I like that,” she said. “I like that very much.”