Chapter 31 Pieces of a jigsaw

Tuesday 10th August

‘Do you remember what caused you to be here?’ Ben asked John Henson as they both sat in John’s room at Lakenheath hospital.

‘No. They’re saying I took some kind of drug, but I don’t have any recollection of that.’

‘They don’t know what the drug was, but markers in your blood suggested a hallucinogen.’

John was quiet for many moments. He seemed tense. ‘I don’t know what happened, I’m telling you.’ There was a note of impatience in his voice. ‘I’d been working hard. I may have just overdone it. Is there anything you want to ask me about the evaluation you’re doing?’

‘No. I’ve been through all the files. My work at the unit has ended. I’ve just got to finish the report. Anyway, the main job for you at the moment is to recover. I wouldn’t bother you with questions, even if I had any. I just came here to see if you were OK and say goodbye.’

John’s attitude became more relaxed. ‘That’s very kind of you, Ben. I’m sorry I was a bit short with you, and I’m sorry I haven’t been around to help you.’

There was a knock on the door. ‘Come in,’ John called.

The door opened and Sue entered the room with a man who was the spitting image of John. ‘Hello, John,’ said that man. ‘How are you?’

‘Getting better, Stephen. I gather you’ve come to take me away from all these nice people.’ John looked at Ben. ‘This is my twin brother, Stephen.’

Ben stood up. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said to Stephen. Ben started to walk towards the door. ‘I’ll leave you two to catch up.’ He stopped and turned towards John. ‘All the best to you, John, if I don’t see you again.’

Ben continued to the door and left the room. Sue followed him. She closed the door behind them.

‘Did he tell you anything new?’ Sue asked Ben as they walked away from the room along the empty corridor.

‘I mentioned the indication of a hallucinogen in his blood samples, and he became very defensive. I didn’t think there was anything to be gained by trying to question him further about anything. Something new has turned up though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A letter came to the unit this morning addressed to John as the unit manager. I opened it, and it was from a Mrs Jenny Smith. She’s the wife of an Alan Smith who was a patient at Diss from January to March this year. He isn’t one of the patients I’ve got a file for.’

Sue stopped at another door in the corridor and opened it. ‘We ought to talk about this somewhere private. I’ve got some news for you too.’

They both entered the room, which was empty apart from a bed and two chairs. Sue closed the door. ‘Tell me about Jenny Smith,’ she said as they both sat down.

‘As I was saying, she’s the wife of an ex-patient at Diss. She wanted to let the unit know that her husband, Al, and one of the friends he met there, Joe Walters, were improving, but that an issue remained which she didn’t think was necessarily attributable to PTSD.’

‘What’s she noticed?’

‘Jenny, and Joe’s wife, Lauren, have noticed unusual inconsistencies in the way Al and Joe respond to situations – as if different circumstances didn’t just lead to different moods but to slightly different personalities. Jenny wrote that these changes were not obvious to everyone but were very clear if you knew their husbands well.’

‘That’s the same sort of thing we’ve been seeing with John over the past couple of days since he started communicating, and it’s all consistent with …’ Sue paused for an unusually long time and appeared to be deep in thought.

‘Consistent with what?’

‘Do you remember when we were talking to Sam before we searched the unit in Diss on Sunday? She worked out that I’d spent some time at the Koyasan monastery in Japan, a few years back?’

‘Yes.’

‘One of the monks at the monastery, Nyogen, claimed to be able to have an out-of-body experience at will. He claimed that he sometimes maintained this state for days at a time.

‘He was closely supervised while in that condition because it was known that he could be unpredictable. When his awareness was supposedly detached from his physical body, he displayed a much weaker sense of a consistent self. His personality became defined by whatever thoughts or feelings arose in his mind.’

Ben pondered on her words. ‘Are you thinking it might be the same phenomenon that’s been observed with John, Al Smith and Joe Walters?’

‘There’s more. When Nyogen’s body was allegedly not containing his awareness, other people didn’t see him – unless they knew he was there. It was really weird. It happened to me two or three times. I didn’t see him, and he only became visible when he was pointed out to me. He didn’t suddenly appear or anything like that. When I noticed him, it was as if I’d just overlooked him. But I knew it wasn’t as simple as that. I knew that I’d not perceived him at all until his presence had been highlighted to me.’

‘I see what you’re getting at now. We couldn’t make sense of how someone in pyjamas, a dressing gown and slippers could walk past medical staff and an armed security man and then take a bus from here to Diss without anyone noticing. The bus driver didn’t even ask for a fare because he was unaware of John being on board.’

Sue nodded. ‘That’s the big similarity. I didn’t make the connection until this morning.’

‘Janet Smith doesn’t describe invisibility, but she does describe this weakening of a consistent personality in Al and Joe. Both Al and Joe were at the unit, and I don’t have a file for Joe either.’

‘We’re going to have to talk to Sam and Sahadeva about this.’ Sue paused to think. ‘And there’s something else.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Another piece that looks like it might come from the same jigsaw puzzle. I sent one of the syringes to that friend of my father who was a pharmacologist and toxicologist.’

‘Has he concluded anything?’

‘The syringe contained a chemical that’s produced by a reaction between two other substances. One is tetrodotoxin, which is a neurotoxin similar to the one that exists in pufferfish. The second is datura, which is a poisonous and psychoactive substance that comes from the plant genus Datura. The resulting drug, Teterodat, is alleged to have been used in some Haitian rituals to create zombies. Historically, it’s also been used all over the world in religious rites and rituals because of its hallucinogenic properties.’

‘So, those syringes contain a mixture of those two substances. That’s a cocktail to get the party going with a bang.’

‘The Halloween party, certainly. It’s not really a mixture, by the way. The two constituents of Teterodat chemically react to form the drug, but it’s a very slow process. My father’s friend said it could take five years for full conversion, and he didn’t know any way to speed that up. The reaction time is not increased by temperature or any known catalyst. Apparently, attempts that have been made to synthesise the drug in other ways have produced only highly unstable isomers that break down as soon as they’re formed.’

‘Would those markers you found in John’s blood be consistent with Teterodat rather than LSD?’

‘I would think so.’

‘When’s the end of your shift? I think we need to meet with Sam and Sahadeva as soon as possible.’

Chapter 32 A wake-up call

Tuesday 10th August

Al Smith was woken by a loud knock at his front door. He looked around him. He was in his pyjamas and in his own bed, although he had no recollection of how he came to be there.

The last thing he could remember was sitting downstairs with Joe – each having just taken one of the tablets they had stolen two days previously from the house in Station Road.

He looked at the digital clock by his bedside. It was one-thirty in the afternoon on Tuesday, the tenth of August. It had been ten in the evening on Monday, the ninth of August, when they had taken the tablets. What had happened to the last fifteen hours?

He scrambled from his bed, grabbed his dressing gown and put it on as he hurried down the stairs.

There was a further loud knock on the door.

As Al reached the bottom of the staircase, he met Joe. ‘What did we do last night?’

Joe looked puzzled. ‘I can’t remember.’ He pointed towards the front door. ‘I just looked out through the curtains. It’s the police.’

‘Good afternoon, Officer,’ said Al to the uniformed policewoman who was standing on his doorstep.

‘Good afternoon, Sir. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m making some door-to-door enquiries about an incident that was reported in the High Street last night.’

‘What happened?’

‘Were you here last night, Sir?’

This was the very question Al had been asking himself – so far without conclusion. ‘Yes,’ he replied for the sake of simplicity.

‘Did you see or hear anything unusual in the small hours of the morning?’

‘Not as far as I can recall,’ Al truthfully replied.

‘Nothing at all?’

‘I think I must have slept very soundly last night. What’s this about?’

‘We wouldn’t normally talk to members of the public about our enquires, Sir, but I can repeat what the Chief Constable has already said to the press.’

‘What was that?’

‘A lot is still unclear, Sir. There was a power outage in the High Street at around one o’clock this morning. That meant there were no lights and no CCTV. Also, there was no moon last night, so it was pitch black.

‘Reports suggest that at least two people rampaged through the streets, smashing windows, damaging cars and pursuing the few people that were still about.’

‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘Thankfully not, particularly as the perpetrators got hold of chainsaws from the tree surgeon in the High Street.’

‘Were they looters?’

‘We’re not totally sure because of the mess, but initial enquiries indicate that nothing was taken. They even left the chainsaws when they’d felled some trees.’

It crossed Al’s mind that the loss of memory currently being experienced by him and Joe coincided with the incident. Al again made efforts to recall the previous night. Rampaging through a Cambridge suburb with a chainsaw did not immediately spring to mind.

‘Have you got a description of your suspects?’ Al enquired – partly from curiosity, but also to check whether any descriptions resembled Joe and himself.

‘Nothing very useful, Sir. Some younger people who caught a glance said the movement of the perpetrators reminded them of zombies from Dawn of the Dead, but that’s really not enough for a police artist to work with. Anyway, thank you for your time. If anything does come to mind, please call 101. Good day.’

‘Good day, Officer,’ said Al, before closing the door.

As Al turned away from the door, he noted that Joe had been standing a few feet from him.

Joe had heard the conversation while being out of sight of the police officer. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you think …?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve obviously had a shower and got ready for bed in a normal sort of way.’

‘Me too, so I can’t tell if I’ve been sweaty and dirty from a night on the rampage.’

‘It’s a shame about the trees. I helped to plant the ones near the park gate as part of Green Awareness Day last year.’

‘She didn’t mention which trees were cut down, Al.’

Al and Joe looked at each other in silence for a few moments until Al spoke. ‘Oh shit!’

Joe’s phone rang. He took it from his pocket. ‘Hello, Lauren. … Yes, we’re fine. … We’ve only just heard about it. The police were doing door-to-door enquiries. … Al’s phone must be off. I’ll get him to ring Janet. … Don’t worry, everything’s OK.’

When the call from his wife was over, Joe put the phone back into his pocket and looked around for Al, who was standing next to the DVD player and holding a DVD sleeve. ‘What are you doing?’ Joe asked.

‘This DVD case was on the table. It’s the twenty-fourteen remake of Night of the Living Dead. Did we watch that last night after we took the pills?’

‘I can’t remember.’ Joe paused to think. ‘Like you with those trees, I’m beginning to get brief flashbacks to something similar – as if it was a half-remembered dream.’

Chapter 33 Dharma Talk

– God

Tuesday 10th August

Sam focussed her attention as she sat down in her usual location at the front of the meditation hall. Despite this, she was aware of her mind wishing to spend more time examining the information that Ben and Sue had explained to her and Sahadeva that afternoon.

Knowing the nature of Teterodat had answered some questions but had posed very many more.

Sam looked around the hall at the retreat participants. Sue and Ben were also at this evening’s session. They were seated on the floor to one side of the room next to Sahadeva and Shingetsu.

‘This evening,’ Sam began, ‘I want to talk about God.

‘I’m still surprised and a little disappointed when I hear someone ask a stranger whether they believe in God, and a yes or no answer is given in reply. It so often implies that little thought has ever been given to the magnitude and significance of the question.

‘Casually asking if someone believes in God and getting a simple response need not be a totally meaningless interaction. For example, two members of a Christian church could view it as sharing a statement of belief. Such a social transaction might consolidate their relationship and, in their own minds, their relationships to the Church.

‘In order for a deeper exploration of the question “Do you believe in God?”, however, much thought must be given to ensuring an alignment of definitions within a shared conceptual framework. What is meant by “God”? What is meant by “believe”, and what is meant by “you”?

‘For many people, that last question may seem a bit strange because they already know who “they” are. From what I’ve said in earlier talks, however, those in this hall will already be aware of the issues in defining a self. You will already be aware, if perhaps only dimly, that your ego is not “you”.

‘The concept of belief, particularly in the Abrahamic religions, also presents difficulties because belief implies an acceptance that something is true without personal experience of it.

‘It’s pragmatic and useful to have faith when the word is defined as meaning hopeful optimism. Many of you have come here with faith that you can take away something of value from the experience. Without that faith, you might never have come here in the first place.

‘Belief, however, is something else. Stories can be told to connect ideas in comprehensible ways. They can provide a roadmap towards underlying truths. Belief in the stories, however, can lead to treating that roadmap as if it were the underlying reality – mistaking the roadmap for the road. As such, belief can be the very thing that obscures that underlying truth. Belief is the enemy of spirituality.

‘Finally, I want to come to the definition of God. I would like to offer you a definition of God that goes beyond the narrow beliefs that are invented by human minds. Those beliefs can never be more than partial intellectual analogies of reality as it is – even though some people are prepared to kill for those analogies.

‘Indeed, the primary difference that appears to separate the Abrahamic religions from those that are sometimes grouped under the category of Eastern traditions derives from those analogies. In Eastern traditions, various stories are told with the intention of providing a roadmap to a reality beyond our normal experience. These analogies tend to point towards an undefinable ultimate reality and sometimes towards an explicitly non-dual vision of God. Religions in the Abrahamic traditions, on the other hand, have historically used analogies that draw upon the metaphor of a king and his subjects. This implies dualism and it has also led to ascribing a human personality to God.

I will not explore those ideas in detail this evening except to suggest that when you next read the Christian New Testament, you imagine Jesus to be the voice of your own subjective awareness. One example of viewing Christian teachings through the lens of this alternative metaphor can be seen with reference to John, chapter fourteen, verse six when Jesus says “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” If one reads this with a king and subject analogy in mind, one would imagine that somehow following an external Jesus is the only way to encounter an external God. If one reads this with Jesus representing the voice of your own subjective awareness, then the words look more like an entreaty to experience the part of God within yourself as the way to unite with Ultimate Reality – which, in a nutshell, is what I’m suggesting to you in these talks.

‘Certainly, when one examines the writings of mystics in both the Abrahamic and Eastern traditions – those who have passed beyond concrete belief in analogies – they are often very strikingly similar. That is not even to mention the comparison between such insights and the words of those trying to verbally encapsulate the deep mysteries of particle physics.

‘Returning to the problem of simplistic analogies, a wonderful illustration of the weakness of the stories we invent, and then convince ourselves to be reality, is a tale that was put into verse by John Godfrey Saxe in the nineteenth century. The parable of the blind men and an elephant, of course, originated much, much earlier – in the ancient Indian subcontinent. Indeed, one of the earliest versions of the story appears in a Buddhist text around five hundred BCE. This was during the lifetime of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, although its original telling is likely to have been even further back than that.

‘It’s a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant and try to learn what the elephant is like by touching it. In doing this, each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body. Each, however, only touches one part – such as an ear or a leg or a tusk. Each then describes the elephant based on his limited experience, and, of course, those descriptions differ dramatically – leading to conflict.

‘‘The final two verses of Saxe’s poem read:

‘And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

‘So, oft in theologic wars

The disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance

Of what each other mean,

And prate about an Elephant

Not one of them has seen!

‘That concept seems to have been understood at least two and a half thousand years ago. We might reasonably ask why so many people are still making the same mistake?

‘This brings me back to the definition of God that I wish to offer to you this evening. It is to define God as whatever underlies everything, without attempting to refine that definition.

‘If you look at it that way, then God must exist. The question “Do you believe in God?” has no meaning. Instead, the question changes to something that could unite all thinking, be it scientific, religious or secular. You can ask: “What is God like?”.

‘It is no good, however, if someone takes that question and quickly answers it with a story based on their own culture, experiences and psychology. You are then back at an elephant’s ear – or maybe a trunk.

‘Instead, one must not try to answer the question but instead try to live the question.

‘I want to finish this evening with one further quotation. It’s by Rainer Maria Rilke, who was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist who died in 1926. He wrote:

‘Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

‘Thank you.’

Chapter 34 A professional job

Wednesday 11th August

‘The electricity substation over there has been disabled by someone who knew exactly what they were doing, Inspector.’

‘This doesn’t seem like your ordinary bunch of yobs who are high on drink or drugs. Despite all this random destruction, the trashing of the High Street looks like a military operation. They’ve professionally disabled the power to the area, wrecked the place and then got out again without leaving any clues. There aren’t even fingerprints on the chainsaws.’

‘With that level of planning, they could have targeted either of the cashpoints on the street or stolen whatever else they wanted, yet no one’s reported anything missing.’

‘It’s all very odd, Seargent.’

Chapter 35 Sawn of the dead

Wednesday 11th August

‘That’s a coincidence,’ said Ben as he checked the morning news on his phone.

Sue moved closer to him in bed to see what he was referring to. ‘It’s probably not a coincidence if it’s anything to do with this business,’ she noted. ‘Sam would certainly say that, anyway.’

Ben pointed to an article on the screen. ‘We all agreed I’d go and see Al and Jenny Smith. I’ve got Jenny’s letter, and they’ll assume I’m visiting in an official capacity in response to it. I’ve even got my MOD ID from Diss.’

‘Yes, I know. What’s that got to do with this article?’

‘The Smiths live in a Cambridge suburb. There was some serious damage done to property in their nearby High Street in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The headline reads: “Sawn of the Dead”.’

‘Odd headline.’

‘It appears this was vandalism with military precision. They disabled all power to the High Street, went on a wrecking spree and then disappeared into the night, leaving no evidence to identify them.’

‘Why “Sawn of the Dead”?’

‘A couple of kids said there were two of them, and they walked like the zombies in “Dawn of the Dead”. Also, they used chainsaws they’d stolen to cut down a couple of trees in a local park – hence the “sawn” bit.’

Sue laughed. The penchant of British journalists for having amusing puns within even the most serious headlines was sometimes quite funny. ‘Anyone hurt?’

‘It seems not.’

‘It’s not a coincidence, is it? That was Alan Smith and Joe Walters. What did they do in the army?’

‘I checked their records yesterday. There isn’t a paper file on either of them at the unit, but I was able to access their service records online. Interestingly, those records contain no reference to a period at the unit. To answer your question, they were both SAS. Anonymously wrecking a local High Street would have been a walk in the park for them.’

Sue smiled. ‘Indeed, they also took that walk in the park,’ she said in the spirit of the headline. ‘Why did that do what they did, I wonder, and will they do something similar again? SAS trained zombies are going to be a lot trickier to deal with than your common or graveyard variety.’

Ben laughed. ‘I might find out more when I meet the Smiths in Cambridge tomorrow.’

‘What are you doing today?’

‘Today, I need to look for somewhere else to stay. If I’m going to stick around here for a while, I need a place in Norfolk, and the MOD isn’t going to continue funding my current accommodation now they don’t need me here anymore. Sam and Sahadeva are intending to stay at the temple after the retreat, but they’ve got a ready-made excuse in terms of being spiritual teachers who’ve been retained for a while. Sam doesn’t know where all this is ultimately going to lead, and she thought that someone might find it suspicious at some point if I was staying at the temple too.’

Sue put her arm around Ben’s shoulders. ‘You can stay here. I’ve only got the one bed though, so you’d have to sleep with me every night.’

Ben put his arm around her waist. ‘Staying here would be great. Thank you. It would be so convenient that I’ll just have to put up with sleeping with you every night.’ Ben moved his head and kissed Sue on the lips. ‘Will I be expected to have sex with you?’

‘Regularly. I’ll write into the tenancy agreement instead of rent.’ Sue settled further into the bed and pulled Ben on top of her.

‘Is this going to be the first payment?’

‘No. This is just the deposit. I’ll want the first rent payment immediately afterwards.’