by Jem Tugwell
After a couple of clicks and swipes, I found the divorce demand. My finger hovered over the words ‘Click to Accept’ again. One little button to kill what had already died, but it still hurt when I pressed it. Two messages came in: one was the confirmation of the divorce, the second was a credit notice from the bank confirming the settlement.
‘Fuck,’ I muttered.
‘What?’ Zoe asked, coming up behind me.
I couldn’t tell her that my divorce was now real after all that chat in the car. I never found that talking helped anyway. All that reliving the pain made it worse. It kept it raw and fresh. If you pick at a scab, you make it bleed. This was the same. I had a box for my emotions, and I visualised opening it and putting the divorce inside. However much I pushed down, the lid wouldn’t shut. It snagged on my guilt over liking Sophia.
‘The finality of my divorce just hit me.’
‘I’m sorry, Boss.’ Her arm moved like she was going to try and comfort me, but I turned to block her, and she withdrew her hand.
Mary ran in my mind: a sunset over the Dales, a fight on a beach. Thinking about it clogged my brain, and I needed to get back onto safer ground – think nice, logical thoughts. Think about the case.
There was something scratching at the back of my mind I couldn’t quite reach. I shut my eyes and focused on the sensation of my breath going in and out of my nostrils, hoping it would give the idea the space to come to me.
‘Right now, the only strong leads are the iMe people and Esteban, right?’ I said.
‘Yep. I talked to the dinner guests Esteban named, and they say he was there.’
‘We can’t use that to rule him out.’
As Zoe and I started walking towards the exit, she said, ‘So what now?’
‘We need to look for ex-iMe employees with a grudge.’ A light seemed to go on inside me. ‘We need to find anybody with a Suppressor.’
‘How?’
‘By looking for gaps. Esteban said that iMe Tech Support got an alert when our signal went, remember?’
‘Yes, so they must have got alerts for others.’
‘If there are more people with signal failures, then one of them could be our killer.’
24
Thief
I’d been away from the cage for a couple of hours, but could think of nothing else. My exercise session had gone in a flash – I had been on autopilot, going through the motions as I imagined the evening ahead. Savouring the details.
I dumped my gym bag by the chair and hopped in; letting its mechanical damping support my weight as I reclined. I flicked the light switch and looked at the monitors.
Alan’s head snapped up with the sudden shocking glare. He snarled and spat. His stay with me had started all whimpering and subdued, but his truer, nasty side had surfaced. I hadn’t expected it. I thought he would get weaker and easier to control the longer I owned him. Maybe this dual side of his nature was why he had done well in politics.
I pressed the intercom. ‘How you doing, Number Two?’
I muted the sound when he started to shout. If he had been attached to a machine that bleeped out swearing, it would have fused from the overload.
He didn’t have a shred of charm or humanity, so he was going to get the full effect. He would see it all live.
He was the star of the show.
***
As I opened the door to the cage, he charged at me, swearing and shouting. His chain stopped his run with a jerk as it snapped taut, like a rabid guard dog pulled up by its lead. He stood panting, a crazed stare from his bloodshot eyes. Now all the layers of pretence were stripped away, his feral core remained. He wasn’t worthy of a human name – none of them were. He was my second possession. My Number Two.
The pistol I held had a gas canister on the front that looked a bit like a second barrel. I could see him considering it as I raised it and pointed it at him.
‘You haven’t got the bottle, you fucker.’ He spat at me, the white globules scattering in the air and landing short of my feet. ‘Shit scared to get too close.’
He was straining against the chain, trying to get to me, oblivious to the shackle gouging into his skin.
I raised my left hand and turned a dial on the side of the gun. A little red dot appeared on his chest.
‘Turn around.’
‘Can’t do it to my face?’ he shrieked, but I could see a little fear and uncertainty in amongst the bravado.
‘Just turn around.’ I moved the dot down to his crotch. ‘I can shoot you there if you prefer, but it will really hurt. Your choice.’
He stood his ground for a few seconds longer, then reluctantly turned his body, keeping his eyes on me until the last possible moment. ‘Fucking do it. Go on, do it!’
Adjusting the air pressure on the gun to allow for the distance and the thickness of his clothing, I moved the red dot onto his right buttock. I pulled the trigger and saw the red feather of the dart land exactly where the dot had been.
‘Owww. What the fuck?’ Two shouted. He reached around with his hand, flailing at the dart. Each lunge made the dart’s head wobble and flop around. After a few failed attempts, he managed to grab the end and pull it out. Two stared at the dart, examining its needle and the red feather end. The clear middle syringe section, marked in millilitres, was empty now, with the plunger pressing up tight against the needle. I could see him work out what it meant.
‘What was in that?’ he asked.
‘Best to sit down, Two. You’re going to feel sleepy.’
***
Two’s body was loose and floppy from the drugs, and it made lifting and moving him more like some strange, wrestling dance. By the time he was on his back on the bed, I was panting from the exertion. I took a minute to get my breath back and went to get the other things I would need: rope, containers, and my bleeding kit.
My four ropes were braided carbon fibre – light and strong, and their black satin sheen had a sinister glow. Each had an eye spliced in one end to create a loop. Grasping the first rope, I passed the eye under Two’s leg and threaded the other end through the eye to create a snare around his ankle. The second rope trapped Two’s other leg. Holding the free ends of the two ropes, I jumped up onto the bed. I wiggled the end of each rope through a separate pulley on the ceiling. They were small and a bit fiddly, but I knew that they were screwed into a solid structure hidden by the metal ceiling. Once the ropes were over the wheel of the pulleys, I went to the wall and threaded them into two ratchet hooks on the wall. Each time I pulled the rope through the ratchet, it gripped the rope and held it tight.
I repeated the whole process with the other two ropes, one around each of Two’s wrists. By the end, his torso lay on the bed, with each hand and foot hovering slightly above it, held by the four ropes. He looked like a garden swing, with his body acting as the seat.
My bleeding kit waited on the table by the side of the bed: six central line catheters and a scalpel. I checked that the clamps on the catheters were all closed, and then taking each catheter in turn, found its place in Two’s body. Each time, the skin dipped under the pressure of the catheter’s needle, before the sharp point pierced it. His blood flowed and filled the catheter, the pressure building against the clamp, seeking release.
I hummed as I picked up the plastic tubing which always seemed to snag and knot however careful you were, but eventually I had a tube from each catheter, feeding into two empty black five-litre jerrycans.
I kept humming the same song as I waited for Two to regain consciousness. I remembered my father singing the old Stranglers’ song while he made something, and I was his helper.
The words came to me with his smiling face: ‘Death and night and blood.’
25
DC Zoe Jordan
Clive had chased and whinged, and Bhatt finally messaged us that she would send us extra help. My Sentiment did a little dance of celebration, and when Clive and I got back to the PCU, five new faces waited for us around the case wall. A
ccording to Bhatt’s latest press MessageCast, these were, ‘highly trained police officers added to the team’, but blank expressions of the five trainees sitting at empty desks said otherwise.
I called them forward. ‘I need you to find gaps in iMe signal data,’ I said.
‘But, like, basically, you always have a signal,’ the one with the diamante earring said. He looked at the others. They nodded their agreement at such an unshakeable truth. Each face told me they thought I was mad.
I didn’t need them to believe, just to work. Time for a bit of shock therapy. I threw the image of Karina’s body onto the wall.
‘Look at her. She didn’t have a signal. Now she’s dead.’
I waited, dragging the silence out, past awkward, well into weird and stressy. Until I could see that they got it.
I spent ten minutes or so showing them the step-by-step process I needed them to follow. They worked well, but after a couple of hours, they had to go home. New health and safety guidelines mandated that anyone under twenty-two couldn’t work for more than five hours a day. Studies showed that being overworked generated long-term stress and mental health issues. They had arrived before Clive and I got back from iMe, so their time was up.
Good news: the crew had got through the last four years of gap data. Bad news: I had asked for all ten years.
‘You’re kidding me,’ I said as Clive muttered some excuse and skived off. The rest was down to me. I needed to find the patterns and repeated names, but each search took an age.
Every five minutes, my Buddy rolled out her reminder: ‘Meet the girls’. I sighed and shot a wistful look at the door, but no way was I going to make it and get through the rest of the gaps data.
We were all members of an InnerCircle, a secure, opt-in TrueMe group where we could privately share chats, photos, and our location with each other all the time. The group was bouncing with excited ‘Nearly there’ and ‘There in five’ chats. In map mode, I could see their signals arriving at the bar where I should be.
‘Going to have to bail on you guys. Stuck at work again. Sorry,’ I said, and the words appeared in the group window next to my name.
The chat filled with ‘Miss you’ and hearts in reply.
I watched their signals sit around a table and checked out the photos of a group of men who approached. ‘See what you’re missing’ was the caption. The sad face emoji tacked on the end didn’t blunt the sting of the message.
Yep, my choice, but it was crystal clear what I was missing. Maybe it would be better not to be able to see what they were doing. Then, I could pretend they had bailed on a boring night and gone home early.
I’d been bitten by some insects when I was in the Great Park, and four angry bumps screamed for my attention. As I scratched at my elbow, I thought about Mum putting me in as the third wheel between her and Clive. It really made my days more random when I was with him.
Sure, I wanted Mum to date, but no way was Clive right for her. He bounced between depressed, bored, interested, and back again. I never knew who would turn up, and now Mum wanted to talk about him at home as well. He was a mess – like a scruffy bear. And not in a good way.
I skimmed over Mum’s messages about Clive and looked at the InnerCircle photos. Some of the girls were dancing and smiling. I wasn’t going to have a fun night, but I was working on perhaps the most important case for years. Watching my friends at a bar wasn’t helping Alan or getting me closer to finding Karina’s killer.
I shut down the InnerCircle window. I could go out another night and celebrate solving the case.
I went back to my data to find a breakthrough.
I was going to be the difference.
26
DC Zoe Jordan
By 00:01, my Buddy was worried. Her eyebrows were pushed almost off the top of her head, and the edges of her downturned mouth were impossibly low. She climbed up on her ‘You have been at work too long. Your performance is suffering’ banner, fluffed a pillow and slept.
Sure, my eyes were gritty and a bit heavy, but I wasn’t going to bail with only the first year of data left.
If someone had tried to develop a Suppressor in the beginning, there’d be signal gaps as they tested it.
My fingers drummed out a beat on the table through the mind-numbing minutes of my latest search. Buddy unfurled a ‘Collating Results’ banner, not her usual ‘No Results Found’. I sat up and leant forward, even though it didn’t make the image on my HUD screen any bigger.
Buddy threw the results at my HUD. There were lots of gaps in the first year and nearly all for a brief period of time. I drilled down on the first gap, hoping to see one person testing their Suppressor. I groaned as I saw loads of people centred around the location of a hole in signal coverage. The hole got fixed, and the gaps didn’t reappear.
It was the same with the others.
Rocking back on my seat again, I pulled up my summary report from the crew’s searches and mine. The only strong pattern with repeated data was Esteban. I looked down the long list of people, including us, whose signal stopped at the lay-by where Esteban picked us up. Must be Esteban’s house guests wearing his Suppressors. They were all off-grid for a few hours and then came back on at the same lay-by.
I created a new heading, ‘Guests’, on the case wall, and stacked all the names under it. We had a lot more information but no new usable knowledge.
I moved six men who went to see Esteban a lot under a ‘Friends’ subheading.
Except for the one name, I split the rest between ‘Random’, like Clive and I, and ‘Close Friends?’ for a lot of married women – some who were high profile.
The last name went to see Esteban a few times in the first couple of years. Clive would like the last name.
Art Walker.
***
The following morning, my InnerCircle showed me that I had missed out big style. The in-jokes that I didn’t get were made worse by the ‘You had to be there, babe’ messages. Work may have been pushing me to the edge of the group, but I’d let it.
After the gap data, I had worked a couple of hours more to follow another lead, and wow, could my Buddy nag. It was worth it. I had real news.
‘Tell me what you found,’ Clive said.
We were back in front of the display wall, bums on the corralled desks, looking at our case overview with Art and Esteban, and I talked Clive through the gaps.
I saved the best for last.
‘Alice Bakaev and Tom Mitchell,’ I said.
‘Who?’
I threw two new pictures onto the wall, and Clive looked at them without any sign of recognition. I added an ‘ex-iMe’ heading.
‘OK, Zoe, enough with dragging it out, get to the point,’ he said.
Alice’s photo showed a woman in her thirties with pale skin and intense frown. Tom projected a laid-back smile, tanned face and a baseball cap perched backwards on a huge set of dreadlocks.
‘Both of these two were programmers with iMe. Both know the system.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘Not where you would expect from the photos.’ I had all my notes showing on my HUD. ‘Alice dropped out. Apparently, she got upset about the civil rights issues with iMe. She couldn’t live with what she saw as a violation of everyone’s privacy and the control of her lifestyle.’
As I expected, Clive nodded his agreement with this point of view.
‘So, she dropped out and joined the Druid commune in Glastonbury.’
‘Jeez, that’s an extreme choice,’ Clive said. ‘I get the off-grid lifestyle choice if you’re Esteban. The cars, food and luxury would do it for me, but the Druids live under canvas and catch their own food – and they still have a signal.’
I didn’t see either choice as attractive. Why bother when everything worked so well on-grid?
‘Alice seems unlikely to be involved if she’s with the Druids, but follow it up,’ Clive said, and he moved her picture to the side next to Karina’s boyfriend, Dave.
‘Of course I do. Old Ma Barclay, is she still going?’ Clive seemed to shudder.
‘Yep, I did a search and found some news articles about her crime family and you trying to make charges stick.’
‘Yeah, a lot of witnesses disappeared or changed their minds.’
‘What’s she like?’
Clive half-smiled, I think he was enjoying reliving the past.
‘Think of a stereotypical little old lady: small, big glasses, and grey hair.’
‘Sounds like my old nan,’ I said. I missed her now she was gone. I missed her no-nonsense view of the world.
‘Now add big metal skull rings on all her fingers and the foulest mouth ever.’
‘Not my nan anymore.’
‘Add a love of hurting people, and years of practice doing it. This charming mixture is Mrs Doris Barclay.’ Clive stopped reminiscing and focused on now. ‘How is she involved in this?’
‘Tom Mitchell works at a health club she owns.’
I threw pictures of Doris and Tom up onto the wall, dragged them together, and slid them to the ‘Possible Suspects’ area.
Clive stopped his pacing and crashed down into a chair, staring at Doris and Tom. ‘Shit, if she’s involved, we’ve got trouble. What’s the club?’
‘The Health Bank,’ I said.
‘That’s hers? It’s expensive.’ He paused to consider it. ‘I guess the club’s name is a play on her name. You know Barclays Bank.’
I was none the wiser. ‘What?’
‘You’ve never heard of Barclays Bank? What do they teach you these days?’
These days? Does he think I’m still at school? I shrugged.
He sighed in mock frustration and launched into lecture mode about the ‘old days’. ‘Before iMe made all money electronic, we used to have banks. You would have an account and use it to pay bills. You could get cash out, coins and notes.’
