He stood up straight and sauntered along the passage to the end where it gave out on to a road. The lighting was bad and he leaned against an unlit lamppost, half-closed his eyes, and dozed.
The bright lights of a car pulled him back to reality. Even before it had rounded a turn further up, he cocked his head and listened. The sound of the motor was familiar. It was Mendelssohn’s limousine. Dog shrugged off his backpack and held it in one hand. He had packed the bullet casings tight to ensure they did not clink as he moved.
The car turned the corner and slowed as it passed him. Dog moved forward, grabbed the handle, and slipped inside as the door opened. He closed it behind him and sat with his back to the driver.
There was a dim light in the car. Mr Mendelssohn was watching a news item on a screen. Dog recognised the warehouse from earlier. There was a lot of commotion, then shouts and some screams as Ralph emerged from the building. He had lost his coat somewhere inside and his full horror was on show for all to see.
But he still had his hat on, Dog noted with a smile. Then he lost the smile as a series of gunshots rang out and Ralph collapsed to the ground. Mendelssohn paused it.
‘Mitchell,’ he said.
‘Yeah.’
‘He is annoying.’
‘I got the stuff,’ said Dog. He plunged his hands into the rucksack and pulled out the two bags of casings.
‘All of it?’
‘Most of it.’
‘Really?’
‘The Armourer was being a dick,’ said Dog. ‘Like he felt he could argue with you.’
Mendelssohn settled back in the chair as the vehicle drove steadily through the dark streets. Not fast enough to attract any attention; not slow enough to look suspicious.
‘And you lost Ralph.’
‘He ran the wrong way, and besides,’ said Dog, ‘they had the place locked up tighter than a wirehead’s arse. If he’d been with me neither of us would have got out.’
‘I dislike losing assets. This will go against your credit.’
‘But…’ Dog clamped his jaw shut on what he wanted to say. You didn’t argue with the top dog unless you knew you could win, and Mendelssohn was not someone you played games with.
‘You were going to say?’
‘But I have something even better.’
Mendelssohn turned his full attention on Dog. It made him feel even more uncomfortable. ‘And what might that be?’
‘A freak, down at the fights.’
‘There are a lot of freaks at the fights, Dog, they have owners already.’
‘No, I mean,’ he hesitated. He might appreciate being part of Mr Mendelssohn’s pack but it was not a place he wanted to stay. He wanted his own. He thought that this other one might be a way to build a pack of his own. But the devil was driving. ‘I mean one like me,’ he hesitated again, ‘like your Delia.’
Mendelssohn’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. ‘Why haven’t you mentioned this one before?’
Dog shrugged and grinned. ‘Everyone needs assets.’
The threat passed and Mendelssohn sat back. ‘You say no one owns him?’
‘No, he’s not a fighter. He’s a pickpocket.’
‘Dime a dozen.’
‘Not this one, he’s fast. I mean fast,’ Dog emphasised the last word to make sure his boss fully understood what he was saying. ‘And no riffy.’
‘Very well. Fetch him.’
Dog did not miss the implied insult. ‘I’ll need money.’
Mendelssohn looked at his watch. It was a very expensive watch, probably an antique. ‘I’m busy for next couple of days so let’s meet up at the fights on Saturday evening and you can introduce me.’
‘No cash then?’
Mendelssohn did not deign to reply. He pressed a button and the driver slowed. Dog glanced out. They were already out of Manchester with nothing but fields around them. Great. It would take him at least an hour to get back into town. But he wasn’t going to complain. He opened the door and threw himself out.
He watched the limousine speed up and disappear into the distance.
10
Mitchell
DI Mitchell looked down to check his shoes. They were regulation black and polished to a shine. His reflection in the window showed the neat well-fitting suit with his tie properly tightened.
He raised his eyes slightly and read the reflected clock backwards. A couple of minutes past ten: standard management practice, leave them waiting a couple of minutes after the allotted time just so they would sweat a bit and therefore be easier to manage.
Mitchell was not impressed, nor did he sweat. He had seen enough bosses come and go that another one made no difference. They had lost contact with what it was really like out in the world. Even if they ever had pounded the beat, or even investigated the pathetic crimes of ordinary people, they had forgotten it. They had nothing of value to say.
So Mitchell would go into the meeting, Dix would say things, Mitchell would respond and that would be that. Then Mitchell would carry on doing things his own way because that’s the way that worked.
He wondered briefly whether Catherine would have liked what he had become. Probably not.
‘The Super is ready for you now, DI Mitchell.’
Mitchell turned and smiled at Siân. She was a few years younger than he was with a warm and friendly voice that perfectly suited her position. He knew she liked him. She had lost her family and he would be a good catch since he too had nobody. But that was not something he considered nowadays. He was not good husband material.
Of course a human assistant was completely unnecessary; Lament could have handled all the Superintendent’s appointments easily, just as it handled all the others’, but it provided employment in a world that had a limited supply of jobs—or, more accurately, a limited supply of qualified people.
And Superintendent of Police was the sort of job where a real person was expected; it gave the job more gravitas.
Mitchell headed across the deep pile carpet, knocked once on the door, opened it and went inside. Like the antechamber, this room belonged to the old part of the building with high ceilings, thick walls, and oak panelling. It could have come straight out of the Victorian age.
Superintendent Dix was a big man, though most of the largeness was now situated around his middle rather than his shoulders. He was in uniform—it was one of those strange traditions where a detective dressed in civvies while those in the upper echelons wore their almost military costume every day.
He stood up and shook Mitchell’s hand. His face had a smile fixed on it.
‘Good work yesterday, David,’ he said. ‘Sit.’
Mitchell folded his long frame into the padded armchair facing the desk. The Super’s chair was also well-upholstered but more upright which meant he had the height advantage.
‘Excellent press coverage, very pleasing.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘And nabbing the freak too, always good for the headlines.’
Mitchell nodded. He had been in enough of these meetings to know that something bad was coming. But he knew he had not done anything wrong, so it puzzled him.
‘The courier got away, sir.’
Dix sat back. ‘Unfortunate but can’t be helped. The press appreciate the elimination of another S.I.D infectee.’
Mitchell considered that Dix could have been writing the headlines himself, though in truth he was parroting them.
‘Just doing my job, sir.’
‘Too modest, David; no one is complaining about your clean-up rate and your newsworthy activities.’
‘Is there a problem, sir?’
Dix looked as if he were trying to swallow something unpalatable. There was a long pause but finally he managed to spit it out. ‘Why are they always dead, David? You’d get a better bonus for living ones.’
Because I don’t want them to suffer at the hands of the Purity, sir, because I care that they don’t spend the rest of their horrible lives in pain.
‘Circumstances, sir. Protection of the public at large. Shooting to wound could easily allow someone else to become infected. We can’t have that.’ It was an answer that Mitchell practised and repeated. ‘But if there’s someone who wants me to be less effective?’ He let the question hang there.
The faux smile returned to Dix’s lips. ‘Of course, no one wants that. Efficiency is the key note of our operation.’
Wait for it, thought Mitchell. Here it comes.
‘However we are going to have to reallocate your resources,’ said Dix. ‘I’m reassigning you to the kidnappings.’
‘What? Why?’
Dix lost his smile and for a moment Mitchell thought his abrupt questions had gone too far. The smile was replaced by an introspective frown.
‘Things have been taken out of my hands, David,’ he said. ‘the Purity are sending one of their own investigators from London.’
‘Why are they getting involved?’
‘Much as I would love to know the answer to that question, David, it is not the sort of thing you ask. Not if you want to have a future.’ Dix almost looked scared and Mitchell was surprised at how much he was sharing. ‘I need someone with backbone who can handle themselves with diplomacy.’
Mitchell snorted. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong person; diplomacy is more Yates’s line. I’d certainly prefer something a little more active than a babysitting job.’
There was a long pause. Dix looked as if he were deciding exactly how much he should say, weighing his words with care. ‘I am not asking you to babysit, David. This case needs to be solved and I’ll be damned if some upstart Purity agent parachuted in from London—’ he said the word almost as if he was swearing ‘—is going to do it before us.’
Mitchell said nothing. Dix looked as if there was still something else he wanted to spit out. Years of experience had taught him one thing, if nothing else; that people wanted to tell you everything, you just had to give them the space to do it.
‘None of us like politics, David. We’re just policemen trying to keep the peace. But this is important. If the Purity wins this one they’ll start sticking their noses into police business everywhere, and at every level. Before you could turn around once we would just be another part of the Purity.’
And that was it. Mitchell could see Dix meant every word of it.
‘So, you want me to solve it, while liaising with the Purity?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Mitchell got to his feet. ‘No sir, you didn’t.’
* * *
The briefing room was empty except for Mitchell. He had a coffee from the machine and was sitting on a sofa at the side of the room. The lights were off and the blinds drawn, but the room was lit up by the wall screen at the far end.
Lament had given himself a window in the corner of the screen and was currently displaying a map of where Vanessa Cooper had disappeared. There were pictures of the other girls, parents where appropriate, and biographical information scattered ergonomically round the edges.
‘Is this it?’
‘There is a great deal of information,’ said Lament. ‘We have three hundred statements and are gathering more related to the new abduction.’
‘But nothing useful.’
‘No.’
‘Little wonder Thomas was having problems.’
‘Yes,’ said Lament. ‘You are showing the same signs of frustration but over a much shorter time period.’
‘You can keep the personal comments to yourself.’
‘As you wish.’
Mitchell sighed and took a drink of coffee. It was almost all chicory. If there was any actual coffee in it that would be an accident. ‘Run me through what you’ve got, first to last.’
An image captioned VANESSA COOPER appeared in the centre of the screen. She was a redhead and grim-faced. The freckles did not make her seem any less stern or unhappy.
‘Vanessa Cooper, age 17.’
‘Looks like a rebel.’
‘She was found living wild after the plague, aged five. She was brought up in an orphanage, several orphanages.’
‘No adoption?’ Mitchell found it odd; there were so many families that had lost children, never mind adults, that there had been no shortage of people wanting to adopt.
‘There were a lot of fosterings, at least until she was ten, but after that it stops. Seems she was a very difficult child. They kept giving her back.’
Mitchell sighed. ‘Poor kid. What have you got on the abduction?’
The map at the back of the screen came forward and overlaid everything else. It was of an area of West Manchester near Trafford Park. The image zoomed in on a few streets. A dot appeared tagged with Vanessa’s face.
‘Three weeks ago she was walking home from school.’ A clock in the corner started to move, faster than normal time, and the dot made its way through the streets. ‘The street was deserted as you can see, a couple of people in their homes—’ there were tagged dots inside the buildings ‘—and then this happened.’
The clock slowed to half normal speed. Vanessa stopped, moved backwards, went sideways onto the road itself, paused and then vanished.
‘So she was caught and put into a vehicle.’
‘A vehicle with no riffy and, unless she went willingly, grabbed by perpetrators who also had no riffy or were blocking them.’
‘Any reason to suppose she did not go by choice?’
The image of Lament faded through to the foreground and he shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Obviously she had not had the happiest of childhoods and interviews with teachers and orphanage staff revealed that she had no love for society. However there’s no behaviour that indicated she was meeting with anyone.’
‘What about friends?’
‘Yes she had a few; they were attracted by her rebellious nature,’ said Lament. ‘But again, she had not said anything about leaving. According to reports she had resigned herself to another year and then she was getting out.’
‘To where?’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
‘Anything in her things at the orphanage?’
‘She had a private room because she was so unpleasant to the others. She really did not like being among other people.’
‘With a life like hers…’ Mitchell sighed and pulled himself together. ‘What about the next one?’
‘Lucy Grainger, age 16. Three days after Vanessa.’
The image was of a girl with dark hair that fell round her face. Her nose was rather longer than you might expect and it seemed she wanted to hide it. She had large, round brown eyes.
‘Slim build and only four foot six. Only child, unremarkable parents, neither has a job so they’re on benefits but having a daughter means they are well looked after.’
‘No other children?’ The production of children was encouraged, and well rewarded, because the population was still falling. That a family would not have several children was surprising.
‘Mrs Grainger has a medical condition that makes it impossible for her to conceive.’
‘But they didn’t adopt?’
‘One moment.’ This happened occasionally when Lament was asked a question where the answer was not immediately available in the notes. He had to search the data banks. ‘It seems not.’
‘Well, not everybody wants to,’ and when you might get a child like Vanessa Cooper it’s easy to understand why. ‘Let’s see what happened.’
The map came to the front. This time it was in the north near Heaton Park. The story played out the same way until the moment of the abduction. If Vanessa had been willing, it looked as if little Lucy was not. The movement into the road, where the vehicle was presumably located, was a series of stops and starts. But finally she too disappeared.
‘Looks like she dug her heels in.’
‘There were scuff marks in the ground at the locations where you see the pauses. Forensics found deposits that corresponded to the shoes she was wearing.’
�
�But she’s tiny.’
‘Yes.’
Mitchell sighed. ‘All right, bring up Melinda Vogler.’
‘Age 17, disappeared yesterday.’
‘Yes, I know that. Family?’
‘Two younger brothers, father employed, mother not. Nothing special about her.’
‘Except she’s the third victim,’ said Mitchell. ‘Let’s see it.’
The map came up, south-east Manchester, only a couple of miles from where Vanessa was taken. Once more the map played out the actions. Mitchell noticed the clock.
‘Wait,’ it stopped, ‘this is the middle of the day, a school day.’
‘She was on her way to a doctor’s appointment.’
‘What for?’
‘S.I.D check; one of her family members was infected a while back. She was on Protocol 2.’
‘Medium risk.’ Mitchell’s excitement waned. If there had been an infection in the family it meant that the checks had to be done externally and more often. It wasn’t unusual.
The playback resumed. It followed similar lines up until she was grabbed. The tag that marked her position disappeared for a moment, reappeared, and then vanished permanently but before she had moved to the road.
‘Any evidence the vehicle had come up to her?’
‘There’s no indication of that,’ said Lament. ‘However the forensics reports did have something to say about it: there was an electrical burn at the point she disappears.’
‘Burner?’
‘They say it did not have the same signature as a beam ionising weapon, but definitely an electrical discharge.’
‘Enough to kill her?’
‘Perhaps but definitely enough to fuse her riffy.’
‘If you zapped someone through the head with enough electricity to kill the riffy, I can’t think it would do the victim much good.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lament. ‘I’ll send a request to find out.’
Mitchell stared at the map. ‘So what we’re saying is that although there are similarities between the events that show they are all related, every single one of them has unique features which make no sense.’
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