I left him to it and went back to Boris. He was getting to be slightly less stupid. His brain was a four-dimensional array of no fixed size. I couldn’t think of a simpler way to get him working. I visualized it as a cube made up of thousands of smaller cubes. That got us to three dimensions. Then, each sub-cube contained information, words or numbers indicating conversation threads or his prevailing mood. Each cell was linked to the six sharing sides with it. So a change in the contents of a single cell could reshape the whole thing, cascading through to other regions. Boris parsed input for structure. He still couldn’t cope with complex sentences. His ideal conversational partner would have been one of Clint Eastwood’s early spaghetti western heroes. He didn’t get jokes at all. He was entirely nonplussed by irony.
I noodled about with his input routines until Andy sidled over and dropped a printout on my keyboard.
‘That’s all there is,’ he said. ‘Just the basic routine stuff, apparently. There weren’t any pictures. Maybe they don’t have scanners in Wales.’
I thanked him, and waited until he’d gone before I read the report.
That didn’t help, either. It just told me this:
She died a short time after the crash. Internal injuries – 1. lung punctured, m. frac. ribs, a long list of other breakages – were responsible. Her systems went offline one at a time. The state of the injuries suggested to the coroner that she hadn’t struggled, and so hadn’t been in any great distress. Other than that caused by being upside down and bleeding to death. She may have been unconscious. That wasn’t absolutely certain. She was definitely, absolutely, for sure pregnant. Dead and pregnant.
Her name was Patricia Johanna Newton, according to the report.
I’d known her as Trish Newton.
VI
I asked Clive whether I could work from home on Friday. Bright Harvest and Betts could wait until then. He said it would be fine, as long as I got the documentation done.
‘We need this contract,’ he said. ‘This could get our name established.’
I’d established a name: Trish Newton.
When I got home, Dermot’s blue 733t was parked in its usual spot. A traffic warden ignored it. Dermot was waiting by the door to the flats. None of the neighbours would have let him in. No one trusted anyone else in those flats.
‘What’s happened to you?’ he asked. ‘You look fucked up.’
‘I am.’
‘Hallucinations?’
‘Real world.’
‘That does fuck you up,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know what’s going on most of the time. And the rest of the time, I’m off my head.’
He sat on my bed once we got to my flat. He hadn’t brought any games with him, which was unusual.
‘I’m travelling light,’ he said. ‘What’s up with you then? I thought you computer people didn’t get worried by things. Where’s all that logic gone when you need it?’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said. My voice sounded tiny and far away.
‘They’re putting mirrors on the walls at work, is that it?’ asked Dermot. ‘Will you stop behaving like a woman and just tell me what the fucking problem is?’
‘That picture you found at Roger’s,’ I said. ‘I know who that girl is.’
Dermot looked impatient. He wanted all of the information at once.
‘Her name was Trish Newton,’ I told him. He looked blank.
‘Was?’ he said. ‘What’s her name now?’
‘She died in a car crash. In Borth. She was driving too fast and the car flipped.’
‘You knew her? You didn’t the other day.’
‘I didn’t remember properly. I don’t remember now. I remember being in her car. Not when it crashed, some other time. She was pregnant when she died. I think it was mine.’
I switched on the PC to drown out the sound of our breathing. Natural sounds didn’t suit the mood. The PC began its long journey to wakefulness.
‘It was yours, was it?’ asked Dermot. ‘You knocked her up?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I think it was mine. And I think I killed her.’
He looked at me.
‘You?’ he said. ‘Where are you getting this from? Beamed in from fucking Mars? You couldn’t kill a fly. That first time I took you out, if those two arseholes in the toilets had jumped us, I’d have been on my own. You’d have fainted or something.’
‘I don’t remember doing it,’ I said. ‘I just feel it. I know I did it. I fixed her brakes or something.’
‘Because she was pregnant? Couldn’t you just marry the girl? What’s with you, anyway? Why don’t you remember anything?’
I told him why I didn’t remember things clearly. I told him about Borth, and what that had done to me. When I’d finished the two of us sat and looked at the desktop wallpaper glowing on the monitor. It was a downloaded image of the Clangers, standing on the surface of the moon, eating blue string pudding.
‘Tell you what,’ said Dermot. ‘You know what this all means? We need to find your man Betts.’
‘We’ll have a job,’ I said, and told him about the security at Bright Harvest Research Laboratory.
‘We’ll have to get round it,’ said Dermot. ‘We’ll have to use our ingenuity to get in there. You’re a computer programmer, you should be able to get us in. I can talk us in. When can you go?’
‘Friday. I’ve booked a day off work.’
‘Done,’ he said. ‘I still think you’re wrong. You never killed anyone. You don’t have it in you.’
‘Tina knows something,’ I said. ‘She’s involved in all this.’
‘She’d have to be, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t be paranoid enough otherwise. Try not to think about it until you see Betts. And don’t get me in any more hallucinations. I’ll stick with the real fucking world. Now, what are we playing?’ he asked, leaning over the keyboard.
He lost himself in monitor light. I was already lost there.
‘Don’t mention any of this tonight,’ he said. ‘That’ll spoil the party, won’t it?’
‘Party?’ I didn’t remember anything about a party.
‘Tina and Roger have asked us over for tea. They’re back at home. They’ve been calling you but you haven’t been at home. The river’s fucked off back to bed.’
‘I can’t go.’ The idea was dreadful. I couldn’t imagine being in the same room as Tina.
‘No? And what’s your excuse? If she knows something, she’ll wonder where you are. She’ll wonder why you aren’t there. She’ll wonder why I’m not there, too. I’m not driving there, I can’t cope with Roger if I don’t have a drink. So you have to go. Just act natural.’
I supposed I’d have to. He wasn’t going to give me a choice.
FIFTEEN
I
The roads were all but empty. The sky was thinking of rain but wasn’t quite ready to commit itself. We drove from Dudley’s artwork-heavy traffic islands to Kidderminster’s artless ones in no time. Escaping Kidderminster’s gravity well, the Audi sped up past the hospital with its banners – SAVE OUR HOSPITAL – and on up the hill, falling from the crest to gather speed past the entrance to the West Midland Safari Park. In summer, the road would be blocked with cars waiting to turn in and lose any unsecured fittings in the baboon enclosure. On this midweek evening, out of season, there wasn’t a sign of life.
We drove into Bewdley over the bridge and then on into the car park. A middle-aged man in a shell suit was jogging listlessly around the perimeter.
‘I remember when all this was river,’ said Dermot. A breeze played with his dark curls. The river was back in its bed, but the town was still recovering. A thick layer of drying mud covered the bottom two feet of every nearby wall. The town was full of the smell you uncover when you’re digging the garden and come across the body of a long-lost pet. The stuff on the walls and floors belonged underwater. Dermot looked at his shoes with evident dismay.
‘I hope this shit comes off,’ he said. ‘These cost more than you
make in a month.’
This shit wasn’t coming off anything. He looked for something clean to scrape his shoes against, but everything was in the same condition. His shoes got muddier as we walked.
The bottom third of Roger and Tina’s front door was crusted. The door opened as we approached, and Roger looked out. He was dressed in cheap jeans and an old tee-shirt.
‘Fucking hell,’ said Dermot as quietly as he was able. ‘He’s got his gardening clothes on.’
‘Hello both,’ said Roger. ‘We’re still in a little bit of a mess at the moment, I’m afraid.’
He stepped back to let us in. The amber glow was still confined to the upper rooms. The lower ones were looking remarkably clean, given that the river had been in them less than a week ago, but they weren’t ready for the glow yet. There were incense sticks burning on all available surfaces, but the smell of the river was overwhelming them easily. It would be weeks before it was gone; and probably not as long before the river came back in again.
‘The kitchen’s looking better,’ he said. ‘Go and have a look, Tina did most of the work, I just manned the pumps.’
The kitchen did look better. Everything was back in place, including the oven. The surfaces gleamed. Even the floor was bright.
‘That’s the advantage of tiles,’ said Roger. ‘Wipe them down, and there you are. That’s given us enough room to get a table organized upstairs, and Tina’s managed to put some food together. Cold stuff I’m afraid, we only got the power back to the kitchen half an hour ago. How are you two?’
He asked that as though it was addressed to both of us, but he looked at me.
‘I’m fine,’ said Dermot. ‘You cracked a bottle yet?’
‘There’s one breathing,’ said Roger. ‘And another one getting ready to breathe.’
‘Good man,’ said Dermot. ‘Where’s herself?’
‘Up there sorting things out. Go on up and let her know you’re here. I’ll bring Mick along, I just want his expert opinion on something.’
‘You could get better opinions in an old people’s home,’ said Dermot, on his way upstairs. As soon as he was out of earshot, Roger took my arm. It was the sort of gesture that suited him.
‘How are you?’ he asked with the merest hint of urgency.
‘I’m not sure,’ I told him. ‘Things feel strange. Nothing seems to be resolved.’
‘I’m sure it will be. All you really need to do is find the source of your problems. Do that, and everything else will become clear. I know that sounds like the sort of claptrap you get in bad American novels, but it’s sometimes true. You know, the hero has suppressed memories of some awful event and then has to confront them all in the last twenty pages. You’ve got something locked in there. And you can force things into the world. You need to stop the one before the other gets out of hand.’
‘How do you know all of this?’
‘Because you did it. How else? You took Dermot into one of your worlds. Or, more correctly, you put one of your worlds around him. You have a talent for this. You only need to learn to control it.’
‘This all sounds unscientific.’
‘This is psychology,’ he said, putting on a wry grin. ‘Of course it’s unscientific.’
‘Did you get all of this from Tina?’
‘That’s about as wrong as you can get,’ he said, amused. ‘But think about it. Think about what happened in Borth. You made that happen. You produced something from your imagination and set it free in the world.’
‘That’s one explanation,’ I said, indicating doubt, although I believed him. Like much else, it felt right. That strange hobgoblin from the mountains had come scampering directly from my mind, which had been primed by too many nights staying up and playing role-playing games. I’d set it in the reflections at first, and then out into the world. I hadn’t done it deliberately, but I knew that I’d done it. I’d created life.
‘That’s the explanation,’ Roger corrected me. ‘You can manifest things. You just don’t know how you do it, and so you need to track down this fellow Betts and see what he knows. I think he’ll get you to the source of all this. To tell the truth, I think you’ve been there already. You just don’t know it.’
He was already at the top of the stairs, cutting off the conversation. He nodded at the open doors upstairs.
‘Change of subject required, I think,’ he said. I followed him up.
II
We had a quiet meal, despite Dermot’s best efforts. It was a salad with a quiche from the farm shop up the hill, and Dermot didn’t like salads or quiches. The amber glow felt gloomy and suffocating instead of warming. Rather than four of us chatting there seemed to be umpteen subgroups, each with its own hidden agenda. The conversation was dragged from subject to subject, always angling back towards the search for Betts. I was being discussed as though I wasn’t there.
Even Roger’s wine didn’t do much to brighten things up. The red was too heavy and the white was too sharp.
‘When are you going?’ asked Tina.
‘Friday,’ said Dermot, turning over some lettuce in case there was food underneath it. ‘We’re going to try and get in to see him.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘I can get in anywhere,’ said Dermot. ‘I can get myself on the guest list.’
‘How does he feel about it?’ asked Tina, meaning me.
‘He’s fine. It’ll do him good. Bring him out of himself.’
The two of them smirked. Roger let himself look at the ceiling for a moment, indicating grave disapproval.
‘I think we ought to be more careful,’ he said, ‘when we discuss this. This is serious. Potentially, Mick is in danger. Potentially, so are we. Dermot got tangled up in one of these fantasies, yes?’
Tina nodded. Dermot remained neutral.
‘Then so could we all. Regardless of whether you believe they’re illusions or manifestations, they can confuse you. They could get you to walk in front of a car because you thought you were walking across a field, for instance. So a little less levity on the subject couldn’t go amiss.’
‘Lighten up,’ said Tina. ‘We’ve found something Mick can do without using a mouse and keyboard. I think we should be celebrating.’
She raised her glass. Dermot joined her.
‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘He’s no bloody use at anything else I can think of. I mean, check out his hallucinations. Even those are all from video games. The man needs to get out more.’
He downed his wine, wincing at the acidity.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve known him for years now and until this month he’d never asked me where I lived? Can you believe it? He’s not interested.’
‘He’s never asked what Roger does for a living,’ said Tina. ‘Come to that, he’s never asked what I do. I don’t think he could tell you Roger’s surname if you asked him. You’re right, he’s not interested at all.’
‘Has it occurred to either of you,’ asked Roger in a worryingly neutral voice, ‘that there may be reasons for that? Perhaps there’s a trauma back there somewhere.’
‘A missing girl,’ said Dermot, ‘a road traffic accident, that kind of thing?’
The room became silent. It was as though God had disconnected His soundcard. I said I needed to go to the bathroom, but I didn’t really hear myself say it. Once safely shut in there I pulled on the cord that lit up the room and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked as though I needed a month of sleep, or perhaps just embalming. I touched the mirror. It was only glass with a silvered backing, and not something I should ever have been frightened of. What I should have been frightened of, I was beginning to think, was Tina. She was forcing me into finding something that I’d locked away in my head.
Perhaps I should have been afraid of that car crash. They all seemed to know about it, although Dermot had clearly overstepped the mark by mentioning it.
I splashed water on my face. Somewhere above us all, God got the soundcard problem sorted. I coul
d hear the water as it ran into the plughole.
I remembered the first time I’d met Dermot. He’d already known that I was afraid of mirrors.
I wasn’t afraid of them now. They’d only been a tool. The problem was me.
I was afraid of Tina. I was afraid of Dermot, too. I was afraid that I’d killed Trish Newton because she was pregnant with my child, and I couldn’t understand how the police hadn’t at least picked me up for questioning. Surely I was a suspect.
I’d need to see the report on the car, I realized. I’d need to get the hackers back on the case.
I stood on the landing for a moment.
From the other room, I heard Roger say:
‘The two of you need to back off. He’s remembering everything, but it’ll take time. The best way to do it is to let him get to it himself, not to drop things on him. He’s already in a bad enough state. Let him find his own way to the truth.’
‘He’s not going to like it,’ said Dermot. ‘I don’t like it either.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ said Tina. ‘And if you’d known him before all this, you wouldn’t like what he’s turned into.’
I couldn’t go back in there and listen to them discussing me. I went downstairs, trying to be quiet. God had not only got His soundcard back in order, however, He’d also switched my personal volume up to full. Every step creaked, every floorboard shrieked.
Somehow they didn’t hear me. I let myself out into Bewdley.
I walked back to the car, looking at the Severn and the debris it had left. Uprooted trees were jammed under the arches of the bridge, a wash of silt covered everything to thigh height. A smell of stagnant water filled the air.
I drove home. No doubt Dermot would be pissed off that I’d left him behind.
That was too bad. He wasn’t reliable. I needed reliability. I needed to know what had been going on.
I would have to find out the rest for myself.
III
The next morning, I asked Andy if he could find the police reports of the car crash. He looked at me with more interest. I’d always been a quiet programmer and not close to his level. Now I was an enigma with a shady history and an interest in police files. Respect due.
Execution Plan Page 16
