Déjà Vu

Chapter Twelve

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:

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.’

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.’