Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) (22 page)

“Maybe a coffee, then,” said Ransom. “Let’s at least get out of the street.” He headed towards the first of the taxis in the queue.

“We’re going to
drive
to a coffee shop?” said Michael in surprise.

“I know somewhere without lawyers or journalists. It’s less than five minutes in a cab.” He bowed down so his face was level with the open window of the first taxi in the row. “The Barbican?”

The driver, a skinny man with a day’s worth of stubble, turned down the babble of the radio he was listening to and nodded.

“Mr Ransom?” came a call from behind. It was the driver from the second taxi who had got out of the driver’s seat to beckon him over. He was a young man with slicked back hair and a black T-shirt with a rock music logo on the front, who looked more like a student than a cabbie.

Michael perceived Ransom’s unease. He was about to perceive the young taxi driver, too, when his perception was overwhelmed by the anger blasting from the first driver.

“Oi!” said the skinny man, getting out of the driver’s seat and glaring at the man behind. “I’m at the front of the queue.”

“But I’m Mr Ransom’s ride,” said the young driver.

“He asked to ride with me!” The skinny man took one threatening step towards his rival.

Ransom took a step back, his hands up in surrender. “Look, it’s fine. We can walk instead, it’s not far.”

“No, no, Mr Ransom!” called the young driver. “Mr Applegate booked me to pick you up.”

Michael perceived from Ransom that Applegate was the name of his solicitor.

“If you have a booking,” shouted the thin man, “why did you join the queue?”

“Let’s go,” Ransom whispered to Michael, clearly not wanting to get in the middle of taxi cab rivalry.

“Yeah,” said Michael.

They were about to turn and walk away when someone else got out of the back of the second cab: another young man, but this one dressed completely differently. He was in blue jogging bottoms and a football shirt as if he had just come from the gym.

Michael perceived an uncertainty from Ransom that reflected his own.

I can’t perceive them
, came Ransom’s thoughts.
But they’re not perceivers, they’re not blocking me
.

Michael tried to perceive them too, but there was nothing on the surface. So he went deeper, and that’s when he realised why Ransom was having difficulty. The minds of the two men were blank. Devoid of thought like Tyler and Bailecki.

“We need to go,” said Michael.

“What’s going on?” said Ransom, perceiving his son’s concern.

“Can you run?” said Michael.

“Why?”

“Just run!”

Michael broke into a sprint, turning his head to make sure his father was following him. Older, out of shape, dressed in a suit and confused, Ransom stumbled into a run. Behind him, the two young men from the second cab started after them. Michael – a stronger perceiver than his father – heard their minds cry, in unison,
CATCH HIM!

They sprinted as best they could to the top of the road, but the one in the gym clothes was faster than them all and was soon at Ransom’s heel.

“Dad!” Michael heard himself shout.

The gym man grabbed Ransom’s jacket and yanked him back so hard that Ransom lost his balance. He fell to the ground, his hands slapping down on the pavement to save his face from bashing onto concrete. A blast of his father’s fear, confusion and pain ripped through Michael’s perception.

“No!” cried Michael as the young driver joined his conspirator standing above their fallen prey. Each grabbed one of Ransom’s arms and pulled him to his feet.

Ransom struggled, trying to wrest his arms from their grip as they pulled him back towards his cab. Michael turned his head, looking for someone to help them, but there was no one. Even the other taxi driver had got in his cab and driven away.

Michael ran after his father and grabbed at the young one’s elbow to pull him away. The man lashed out with his fist, striking Michael in the jaw and sending him, stumbling, backwards. He reached out for the wall of the nearest building as pain rang round his head. As he recovered, he tasted the saltiness of blood and realised he had bitten his tongue.

Ransom took his chance and shook the young one free from his arm. He kicked out, striking the shins of the gym man with one foot after another, struggling to break away. The blows did nothing to the gym man except cause him to retaliate, jabbing a fist hard into the side of Ransom’s head.

Michael perceived Ransom’s pain as the world blurred around him. He could have pulled out his perception, he should have put up his blocks, but he didn’t want to leave his father. Another punch struck Ransom’s temple and knocked his reality into a swirling mess of concussion.

Run, Michael, run!
Ransom’s mind screamed, using the remains of his consciousness.

But Michael couldn’t leave him. The men, with their blank minds, were not interested in Michael, they were only interested in Ransom.

I’ll get help, I promise
, Michael thought.
I’ll
—

But Ransom had passed out.

Michael watched, helpless, as the two mindless men dragged the unconscious body of his father back to the cab and bundled him into the back. The gym man got in with him and the young man got in the driver’s seat.

The cab sped past Michael, to the top of the road. He ran after it, the ringing still in his head, as he tried to perceive the minds of his father’s captors. They held only one thought:
turn left
.

The taxi turned left onto the main road, taking his father away to God knows where. At the last moment, Michael took note of its receding number plate. The only thing he could do.

CHAPTER TWENTY

MICHAEL SAT IN
the same interrogation room he had been in several times before, but this time he was the one who sat across the table from Sergeant Patterson. Despite the painkillers he had taken, his jaw still ached from where he had been hit in the face, although the doctor who examined him at the hospital assured him nothing was broken. He was told he was lucky not to have been more badly hurt, although ‘lucky’ was not the word Michael would have used.

The police had been nice to him. They gave him a cup of their machine-dispensed coffee and allowed Patterson to take his statement, even though the inquiry was not officially anything to do with the anti-terrorist squad.

Michael clutched the cardboard coffee cup without drinking it, feeling its heat slowly dissipate as he went through the details of what had happened.

“How can you be sure Hetherington was behind the kidnap?” asked Patterson.

“I can’t,” said Michael. “But the minds of the men who took him had been programmed, I’m sure of it.”

Patterson leant back in his seat. “I don’t know how we could present any of this evidence in court,” he said.

“I don’t care about that,” said Michael. “I want my father back.” He sipped at his coffee, it was cold and tasted of plastic from the machine, but he drank it anyway.

“I had no idea Brian Ransom was your father,” said Patterson.

“If your dad was on trial for being public enemy number one, would you go around telling people?”

“I suppose not.”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they took him from outside the trial,” said Michael.

“They knew that’s where he would be,” said Patterson. “It’s all over the news.”

“I meant, they wanted him because of what he was on trial for.”

Patterson responded only with a confused look.

“Lucas was researching into perceivers, right? Who do you think knows more about perception—?”

“—than the man who invented it,” finished Patterson.

That wasn’t exactly what his father had done, but it was close enough.

“Lucas is on the run,” said Patterson. “You think he could still be working with the Hetherington kid to program people?”

“I saw into their minds,” said Michael. “I’m sure.”

There was a knock on the door and Jones entered. He looked a lot better than the last time Michael had seen him. He’d clearly been able to get a bit of sleep, he’d also had a shave that morning and done his tie up all the way to his shirt collar. “We found the cab,” he said straight away.

Michael and Patterson turned to face him, waiting for more.

“It was abandoned at a taxi rank in Hounslow,” Jones continued.

“Hounslow?” said Michael, trying to remember whereabouts in London Hounslow was.

“Other taxi drivers were annoyed because it was parked in the way and there wasn’t a driver to move it,” said Jones. “They complained to a passing copper, who matched it to the number plate you gave us, Michael, and that’s when we were alerted.”

“Any sign of Ransom?” said Patterson.

Jones shook his head. “CID are working on the theory the kidnappers switched cars at some point. They’re checking CCTV, but it could take a while.”

“What do we do now?” said Michael, thinking of bored police officers sitting in front of TV screens for hour after hour while the kidnappers did whatever they wanted with Ransom.

“
We
do nothing,” said Jones. “This is a CID inquiry. Tony will forward your statement to them and they will take it from there.”

Patterson let out an ironic chuckle. “When I figure out what I’m going to put in the statement. It’s all about Michael’s perceptions.”

“Put in the statement what you would normally put in,” said Jones. “Just the facts of what happened and physical descriptions of the men. Let’s not mention anything about perceivers unless we have to.”

“But what about my father?” said Michael, agitated. “While you waste time with CCTV and writing statements, Lucas could be doing anything to him.”

“Lucas?” said Jones, glancing at Patterson for clarification.

“Michael thinks Doctor Lucas might be behind the kidnapping,” he said.

“I very much doubt that,” said Jones. “That was the other thing I came to tell you. We’ve had confirmation that Doctor Saul Lucas boarded a flight to Moscow yesterday.”

“Russia?” said Michael.

“Yes,” said Jones.

“We have to go after him!”

“We can’t.”

“But he kidnapped my dad!”

“We have no jurisdiction in Russia,” said Jones. “Any dealings would have to be through diplomatic channels.”

“Diplomatic channels?” said Michael. “But you’re the police, you’re supposed to catch criminals.”

“Not when they’re in another country,” said Jones. “That’s the job of Interpol and MI6.”

“MI6? CID? CCTV?” Michael was furious. “Is no one out there finding my father? We need to
do
something, we need to go to Russia!”

Patterson leant forward across the interrogation table. “Look, Michael, I know you’re upset, but you have to wait, okay? Lucas might have gone to Russia, but we don’t know where the Hetherington boy is and, if you’re right, he’s the one we should be looking for. Let’s trace the movements of the taxi and see if we can find out the identities of the two men you saw carry out the abduction. Meanwhile, we’ll put an alert out at airports in case they’re going abroad.”

Michael perceived that Patterson was toying with the idea of reaching out a reassuring hand to touch him, but decided not to and went for a reassuring smile instead.

Michael sighed and willed himself to calm down. “This is going to be all over the news, isn’t it?” he said.

“Already is,” said Patterson. “At least if the kidnappers are planning to move Ransom out of the country, it will make it more difficult for them.”

“I suppose,” said Michael. He had gone from anger to despondency, all within the space of a couple of minutes.

“The best thing you can do,” said Patterson, “is go home. We’ll keep working on it and I’ll call you in the morning with an update.”

Michael, despite his doubts, agreed that it was the best course of action. It was probably the only course of action. So he thanked the two policemen and went out to find Hodges to take him back to Galen House.

It was only when he left the police station that he remembered Patterson would have difficulty calling him in the morning because he still didn’t have a phone.

~

THE ONLY BRIGHT
thing in Michael’s quarters was his phone, an expensive new phone with a bright, shiny screen that glowed in the palm of his hand. He had bought it on the way home from the police station with money he didn’t really have. He told the man in the shop he was taking out a credit agreement while waiting for the insurance to come through on his old phone, but the truth was he never got round to making a claim and it had got to a point where he didn’t really care. The new phone with its screen of high resolution multi-coloured pixels was the latest model, the best available and he wanted it.

Everything else in the room was dark: from the window where the curtains were drawn, to his mood.

Patterson had rung him on his bright, shiny, new phone that morning to tell him some depressing news. A boy matching James Hetherington’s description had caught a plane to Moscow the previous day. So, it appeared, that at the same time that Michael was sipping at a cardboard cup of cold, plastic-tasting coffee, Hetherington had been enjoying an inflight meal courtesy of British Airways.

The two men who had kidnapped Ransom off the street had been arrested, having been found wandering around Hounslow in a bit of a daze. The one in the rock T-shirt had been discovered by a suspicious security guard as he scoured the floors of a multi-storey car park looking for his car which he had actually parked in a near-identical multi-storey twenty miles away in Bromley. The one in the gym clothes had been so lost and confused that he’d actually walked up to a policeman to ask for help.

Patterson had invited Michael down to the police station to perceive the pair while they were being interviewed, but Michael doubted he would get anything from their minds and turned down the offer. If they were anything like Elkins – and he was certain they were – then Hetherington would have made sure they had no memories of what had happened.