Proximity

by Jem Tugwell

  ‘I remember getting some actual money from nan when I was little.’ I smiled at the memory of her. She always slipped a folded note into my hand whenever I saw her. ‘Don’t tell your dad,’ she would say, with a wink.

  ‘Thanks for making me feel that old. Anyway, one of the old banks was called Barclays.’ He stopped like he was waiting for applause.

  I shrugged again. ‘Anyway, Tom left iMe four years ago and went to work at the Health Bank.’

  ‘What would a club want with an ex-iMe programmer?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think he will be doing their online presence or pushing custom-ads at people.’

  Custom-ads were getting more intrusive recently. Of course, I had to buy things like deodorant, shampoo and tampons, but I didn’t want every ad-screen I walked past to light up asking me if I’d run out of shampoo or reminding me to review my tampon purchase. The system shouldn’t put my personal hygiene stuff on display for everyone to see.

  ‘No, Old Ma Barclay would have had a serious profit squeeze on her illegal drugs and girls business when iMe came in,’ Clive said.

  This was all before my time. My history lessons had been filled with how the terror threat and mass migrations from Africa and the Middle East had swamped the country, forcing us to close our borders. Teachers droned on about how iMe had saved children from paedophiles, how the streets were safe again from muggings and violence, how tax avoidance led to centralised finance. They lectured us on why we should all aim to conform to the Model Citizen: the health benefits and the better, longer life. They hadn’t spent any time on drugs and prostitutes – they were approved things you could spend your FUs on. They were shopping.

  If Doris lost money, then it could be a motive. I let Clive continue.

  ‘With iMe, we knew when people took drugs because the chemicals registered straight away. We could follow the user’s signals back up the chain of meetings. It was like a spider’s web. The user would touch the outside of the web, and each intermediary led us back to the spider at the centre. When we shut them all down, the government legalised the drugs to get the tax revenue and improve product quality.’

  ‘What about the girls?’ I asked.

  ‘That was a little more difficult,’ he said. ‘We looked for patterns. We got iMe to write a search to look for buildings with one or more girls in. Anywhere that had a steady stream of men going for short visits, we’d turn up and arrest them. It got to a point where they didn’t bother to set up a new brothel as they knew we would be straight round. Then the government legalised prostitution. Licensed sex parlours stopped the human trafficking and improved sexual health. And most importantly for the government, it generated more tax revenue and reduced policing costs.’

  ‘Doris Barclay would have lost a lot of money every day?’

  ‘Yes, she won’t have taken it well – she’s not a forgiving person.’

  ‘Then she’d be motivated to get around iMe to replace the money flow, right?’

  Clive nodded.

  ‘But it’s all legal, so why would people need to go to the Health Bank to get drugs and sex?’

  Clive shook his head again with a dismissive flick, and I flushed with irritation. He’s so patronising.

  ‘Oh, Zoe, you’re so naive. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean you want every purchase on your permanent record and shared. I mean, if you fancy a…’ He stopped. ‘If you are a married man and fancy a… some…’

  He’s almost blushing, I thought.

  ‘Some… horizontal refreshment with a lady who’s not your wife. Then you wouldn’t want it recorded, and you wouldn’t want your wife to pay for a location check and find that you weren’t in a meeting after all.’

  I laughed. ‘Horizontal refreshment? Do you mean a fuck?’

  This time he did blush. His discomfort at discussing sex with me made me forgive his patronising tone a little.

  The club was the breakthrough.

  ‘We have a motive.’

  27

  DI Clive Lussac

  As we waited for the car to arrive and take us to the Health Bank, the display wall showed Bhatt’s latest brutal press conference. She was bombarded with endless streams of questions about the lack of progress. She was sure to pass her hurt on to us. Shit always flowed downhill.

  I turned away from the wall. ‘Tell me about Tom Mitchell,’ I said.

  ‘According to iMe’s Human Assets department, he started soon after the prototypes were approved.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He was a programmer. Initially, he wrote the monitor software that we use to trace a signal. They said that he was bright and got more involved in the system.’

  ‘Involved in the generation of the signal?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Did he have access to enough of the technology to build a Suppressor?’

  ‘Human Assets said not, but it sounded like a scripted answer.’

  ‘So why did Tom leave iMe?’

  ‘He got a better offer from the Health Bank.’ She stopped and looked towards the window. ‘You hear that?’

  ‘Yes.’ I could hear shouts coming from outside.

  Zoe threw a local map onto the display wall. The scale was large enough for us to see the surrounding area and a line of Uniforms keeping back a growing throng of people. They were mostly press, which wasn’t going to improve Bhatt’s mood.

  ***

  As the police car drove up the ramp out of the PCU car park, we saw the press line shouting at us. Two Uniforms rolled on the floor, knocked flying by the people who burst through. Someone got in front of our car, and the pedestrian safety program stopped it with a jolt. We rocked back and forth in our seats as the people swarmed around the car. I could see a BBC News badge on one person’s chest, pressed tight against my window. The car bucked and hopped from the people pushing and pulling at it.

  So far, we’d managed to stay distant from the press storm flying around. Bhatt had taken all this heat, but now the storm had broken over us. The questions came from everywhere and swirled around in the car.

  ‘Inspector, Inspector. Can you tell us where Alan Kane is?’

  ‘Has iMe been hacked?’

  ‘Who killed Karina Morgan?’

  The press had linked Karina and Alan, and every question stung like we were surrounded by a cloud of angry hornets. I couldn’t answer any of them.

  I knew that images of Zoe and I would be on the news – the story edited to make us look scared and useless. They wouldn’t have to try too hard, because we were useless. I wished I could get out and tell them we had solved the cases, that everything was OK and back to normal. I hated a lot of iMe, but now I was being forced to protect it, to repair the damage.

  A uniformed sleeve pushed along the car window and in front of the BBC News badge. Another arm was squeezing along the other side. Little by little, the Uniforms got us some respite from the press. They made a blue ring around the car, and it stopped rocking. The car’s panels popped as they flexed back into shape and I heard a gruff order shouted. The blue ring started shuffling away from our car. We had half a metre, then one. Daylight returned to us, and we had space to move.

  Zoe found the right menu option to reset the car out of its crash mode before it started rolling. I mouthed my thanks to the Uniform sergeant as we made a left turn in the road. I was breathing hard, and Zoe looked shaken.

  Six messages hit me all at once. They were all the same. ‘We understand you have been involved in an accident that wasn’t your fault. You are entitled to compensation for your injuries. No win, no fee.’ The car’s crash mode would have triggered alerts in the insurance companies and woken all the scumbag personal injury lawyers. I deleted them.

  ‘Is it going to be like that every time we leave?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘I hope not, but probably,’ I said. ‘They’ll have to put more Uniforms out to keep the press back.’

  ‘That was scary.’

  My heart rate was slowing. �
��Yeah, it was.’

  The case was up close and personal now, and Zoe and I would be under huge pressure from the press. And Bhatt.

  28

  Thief

  Two groaned as he came around. ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re awake. I want you to watch this.’

  He started to scream more obscenities at me, like the animal he was, but then he noticed all the tubes coming out of him, then the ropes around his wrists and ankles. He choked on the words and his eyes jumped around the room, looking for some escape. ‘What the fuck, you don’t have to…’ he stammered.

  I pulled on the end of a rope, making the ratchet clack happily. With each pull, Two’s leg rose, and I alternated between two of the ropes until both his legs swung about a metre off the bed. I went to the other end of the room and the two other ropes. More clacking and pulling resulted in Two’s hands being raised half as high as his legs.

  ‘Comfy?’ I said.

  ‘Please, you don’t have to…’

  ‘Life’s not so great when you don’t have control, is it?’

  Releasing the locks on the bed’s wheels with a toe, I pushed hard on the side of the bed to get it out from under Two’s torso. His body dropped, the loops on the ends of the rope tightening. Expelled air grunted out of him as his weight was caught by the ropes. Now he really did look like a lopsided swing, swaying gently back and forward – his legs higher than his hands, and his head closest to the floor. Two lifted his head and tried to keep it up, but couldn’t support the weight for long. It dropped backwards, exposing his throat, his eyes looking straight at the jerry cans I had positioned with precision.

  I bent and held the catheter in Two’s neck. His head was flushing red from all the blood rushing to it, so he tried to raise it again. I placed a hand on his hair to stop him and pushed his head down again.

  ‘Just watch, Two.’

  He whimpered with fear as I turned the clamp on the catheter. A ribbon of bright red appeared and snaked its way down the tube.

  ‘No… please,’ he said as he saw the blood in the tube reach the first of the cans and disappear inside.

  ‘You shouldn’t have corrupted everything at the beginning.’

  I twisted the other clamps open. Each tube filled with blood. Two moaned.

  ‘It will take a while and then be all over,’ I said, in my best sincere doctor’s voice – I even patted his hand reassuringly.

  I needed a cup of tea – this was thirsty work.

  Two sobbed and thrashed in desperation now, but each movement cut the ropes deeper into his wrists and ankles and made him swing more.

  He stilled and watched his life drain away.

  29

  DI Clive Lussac

  We were well into our journey, but I was still shaking from the press scrum at the PCU.

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you, Zoe,’ I said. It wouldn’t be fair to let her meet Doris Barclay unprepared.

  ‘What’s that, Boss?’

  ‘Doris Barclay. She’s going to be rude, vile, and offensive. She likes to find your weaknesses.’

  ‘And…’

  ‘And, try not to let her see that she’s got to you. She feeds on conflict and aggression, but being nice winds her up… and…’

  I hadn’t forgotten how much Doris got to me in the old days. Unlike lots of people who’d met Doris, my scars were only caused by verbal wounds, but even so, they had never really healed. I didn’t want them to open up again.

  ‘Boss?’

  The lips coming towards me, puckering in anticipation of a kiss. A thin red line, with deep wrinkles top and bottom like the legs of a wriggling centipede. The red lipstick feathering into the cracks. The lips opening, and the tongue escaping, darting from side to side…

  ‘Boss?’

  I shook myself free of the image, but I knew I would see it again soon. ‘Er… my surname comes from a French town, it’s near Bordeaux… Because of that, Doris calls me Frenchie… she pretends to give me a French kiss.’

  ‘So?’ Zoe looked at me, waiting for the punchline and not knowing I had given it.

  ‘So…’ That tongue! ‘So, don’t be surprised when she does.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, as uninterested as if I had pointed out of the window of the car and said ‘house’.

  I would happily pick up spiders and let them explore my hand. Create a bowl with my fingers and let them tiptoe about. I didn’t understand the fear people had of them, but I couldn’t explain to Zoe that I was terrified of an old woman’s tongue. Petrified it would force my lips apart and rummage around my mouth like a daring burglar. Scared I would taste her bile.

  I stared out the window looking for something to distract me, but we were travelling through the urban sprawl of West London towards Chelsea. All the separate towns merged into one huge rat run. Bland buildings and garish shop signs.

  ‘What do you make of Ameobi and Bailey?’ I asked, dropping an old press photo of the ‘team’ from just after the launch of iMe onto the car’s screen between us. Art, Esteban and Manu Ameobi smiled out in the centre, Tom Mitchell and Alice Bakaev on the left, Alan Kane and Emma Bailey on the right. She stood back a little from the group, like she had done in our meeting.

  ‘Well, we always knew that Manu must have deep technical knowledge, but I didn’t realise Emma used to be a programmer.’

  ‘I guess she would know all the things that could go wrong and could test the code better.’

  ‘She could still know the code well enough to get around it.’

  ‘And Ameobi definitely does,’ I said.

  ‘So now we have more people of interest.’

  To solve this, we were meant to narrow it down and eliminate people. Just be left with the killer. Instead, we were adding names to the list.

  It felt like we were going backwards.

  ***

  Lots of old banks had been converted into bars, restaurants and homes. The Health Bank still had its original stonework facade and leaded windows, which added prestige to the entrance to the club. Inside, the cashiers’ booths and meeting area had been replaced by a small reception desk and a wall of metal bars. It gave the impression of something that might protect the entrance to a bank vault. Solid metal doors with large wheel handles and currency signs added to the illusion.

  The other walls were white, broken with splashes of colour from stylised prints of old bank notes. I recognised the old fivers and tenners. They evoked fond memories. Behind the receptionist was an original Barclays Bank sign.

  We approached the desk and threw our IDs at the receptionist. ‘We need to see Tom Mitchell,’ I said.

  The receptionist’s eye shadowed as his HUD displayed our IDs, and it looked like he picked them up and passed them on to someone else. He paused and said, ‘Please wait here.’

  Behind us, a thin, elegant woman in an expensive looking silver tracksuit approached one of the metal doors and touched the centre of the wheel. It opened with an electronic click as the lock released.

  Time to bend the rules. ‘Come on, Zoe,’ I said.

  ‘We don’t have a search warrant.’

  ‘It’s not a search, we’re just punters taking a little look at the facilities,’ I said. Over my shoulder, I called to the receptionist, ‘We’re going to do a tour.’

  I could hear his protests behind us as I put my left hand on the metal door the woman had used. Instead of opening, I heard a harsh little buzz of denial. It must be programmed for members only, I thought, so with my left hand still touching the door, I used my right hand to select the ‘Menu’ in the top left of my HUD. I then selected ‘PCU’, then ‘Overrides’ and then ‘Locks’. After a second, I was rewarded by the electronic click of the door opening, and we stepped through.

  ***

  The short corridor went straight and then made a sharp right. Through the glass wall to our left we could see into the gym area. All sorts of bikes and equipment that I didn’t recognise were in use by the b
eautiful members. They would be following an exercise schedule from their training Buddy. The staff members looked bored with nothing to do unless someone messaged them that they needed more water. The gym was huge but split by short partition walls to provide a more private and intimate experience. We could hear controlled breathing and the clack of weights being dropped. This was all way beyond my ‘do as little as possible’ approach to exercise.

  We passed a couple of doors marked ‘Private’ and reached the end of the corridor. On our left were the changing rooms, and on our right, a single door with the badge ‘Resistance Training’.

  I pushed the door to the changing room and Zoe and I went in. Obviously, the changing rooms were multi-gender. A simple male/female classification of an old-style gym wouldn’t have been appropriate in our multi-gender society, and the changing rooms were made up of lots of private single person and family booths. This wasn’t the ‘all change and shower together’ forced naturism of my school changing room. Touching a door with a green vacant sign, I went inside a booth. ‘Oh, they have Halo showers,’ I said.

  ‘I love those,’ Zoe said, and popped her head in to look as well.

  The shower was a tall glass tube, with a door to get in and out. I had seen videos of them working: the chrome disc at the top could be locked in place to provide a basic, top-down shower, or it could traverse up and down to create an all-torso shower. The more expensive showers had more than one water halo to create a total immersion experience a bit like a vertical bath, but with a fraction of the water usage. The showers here had six halos, and would each cost more than half of my salary.

  Back in the corridor, we stopped at the resistance training door. I pushed it, but it was locked by an old key-code lock with a handle and buttons labelled 0 to 9. Years back we had been trained in picking locks, but only on locks with keys, and the override option on my HUD wasn’t going to work on something so old and mechanical. Without the code, we weren’t getting in.

  I heard a door open behind us and turned to see three walls of muscle coming towards us. Each had a shiny shaved head and wore a tight blue vest and trousers in the same colour as the Barclays badge. The vests were probably 5XL, but they were still stretched tight across every bulge and bump. The first one got to us and the other two stopped right behind him. They filled the corridor. They must spend all their FUs on protein, I thought. Almost in perfect sync, all three crossed their arms over their huge chests and stuck their hands under their biceps to emphasise the muscle mass. I thought it looked choreographed and almost laughed. Luckily, I stopped myself. Fuck, their arms are bigger than my legs.