The London Project (Portal Book 1)

by Mark J Maxwell

  The London Project

  Mark J. Maxwell

  To my parents, with love.

  For ensuring I was never without a book in hand.

  This one’s for you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The cruel truth was that some things in life were better kept to the shadows. Or some people were, at any rate. Detective Sergeant Louisa Bennett wrinkled her nose as a young man barely out of his teens simultaneously vomited and urinated in an alleyway beside where she was parked. It was close to midnight, with no street lamps nearby. The alley should have been a sight-stealing void, but to Louisa it was as bright as a summer’s day. The scene had attained such a visceral level of clarity she found herself unable to look away, snared by a voyeuristic compulsion to witness what, under normal circumstances, would have remained cloaked in darkness.

  Opaque from the exterior, the car’s Portal glass was displaying a real-time digitisation of their surroundings, as captured by sense strips that blanketed the entire street. It allowed Louisa to add post-scan effects to the resulting video feed, such as increasing the luminosity to midday levels.

  The ever-bustling patchwork of streets and lane ways that formed London's Soho surged with revellers. The more traditional pubs in the area had closed, spilling their patrons out onto the streets en masse. For those who weren’t heading home or grabbing a bite to eat, plenty of late night bars and clubs remained open, allowing the partying to continue long into the early hours.

  Louisa stifled a yawn and stretched as best she could, wincing as her back protested at the enforced immobility of the past three hours. She’d started the evening envious of everyone having fun around her. Between work and the kids Saturday nights out had become a distant memory. Now fatigue dragged at her, exacerbated by the alarming dip in the average age of those flowing along the street.

  Beside her, Detective Constable Rick Drachman tapped the steering wheel with his fingers and hummed to himself as he none too subtly eyed three women in short skirts who giggled their way past, tottering unsteadily on heels so high they could have passed for stilts. It was freezing outside—unseasonably so for April, but the women appeared immune to the cold. Rick must have sensed Louisa’s glare because he turned to her, a picture of innocence. ‘What?’

  ‘I have eyes on the suspect.’ DI Vaughn’s voice blasting from the car made both of them jump. Rick flicked up the case file from his terminal to the windscreen. The DI’s picture appeared on the map beside a pulsing blue circle. She imagined him back in the incident room at Charing Cross Station, stressed and sweat-soaked. If the DI lost Barry Waters again his career could very well take a sudden nosedive. Well, either his career or some other poor sod who takes the fall. It wasn’t a comforting thought. The fact that all of DI Vaughn’s drugs squad detectives had been kept well back from Wardour Street wasn’t lost on her either. If anything went pear-shaped this time, his own officers wouldn’t be exposed. ‘He’s exited Tottenham Court Road tube station and is proceeding on foot along Oxford Street towards the junction with Wardour Street.’

  ‘Here we go,’ Rick said. His manic grin took years off his already youthful face, rendering him almost child-like in his eagerness. He sat up straighter in his seat and squinted at the windscreen.

  Louisa couldn’t help but return his smile. They didn’t get out of the office much these days. The drugs squad operation was a welcome throwback to how police work used to be before Portal came along.

  Rick pointed at the windscreen. ‘Is that him?’

  Louisa leaned forward and scanned the crowd. The artificial illumination had exposed the messy and chaotic SOHO nightlife in all its swaying, intoxicated glory. Louisa and Rick had full access to the data collected from a sense strip grid centred on Wardour Street, extending to a half-mile radius. She used her terminal to filter out anyone who wasn’t linked to the case file as an investigating officer or suspect. All but three men faded to transparency. Two were detectives stationed along the street. The last man she recognised from his ID photo in the case file.

  Barry Waters, or Baz to his friends and customers, weaved his way through a gang of women out on a hen night. Even though the display filter had rendered the women ethereal Louisa clearly made out the ‘L-plate’ affixed to the back of their charge. One ghostly apparition made a drunken grab for Baz. He nimbly danced out of her clutches, smiling and holding up his hands apologetically.

  ‘This is the guy who’s been giving the drugs squad the run-around?’ Rick asked.

  Louisa shrugged. ‘I guess so.’

  Baz was in his early twenties, white, scrawny, with a bad complexion and ears that stuck out like handles on a trophy cup. He was dressed in pale-grey tracksuit pants and a red hoodie. Everyone else on the street was smartly dressed but Baz didn’t look self-conscious. He strutted down the street with a gait contrived to exude confidence, or arrogance—or perhaps both.

  He’d first appeared on the drugs squad’s radar when a student arrested with a vial of Trance named Baz as his dealer. Under normal circumstances, Baz wouldn’t warrant such a large operation, but he’d given DI Vaughn the slip three times already. Now he cropped up regularly on the public feeds. An aura was building around him—that the MET couldn’t catch him, that he was untouchable. The MET was fast becoming a topic of derision on Portal, and the top brass had taken note. DI Vaughn was under pressure to draw a line under the whole debacle. Louisa and Rick had been seconded from Homicide and Serious Crime Command (SCD1) for the evening. The multi-departmental effort also included DI James Lenihan of Serious and Organised Crime Command (SCD7) who was back at the incident room in an observational-only role. It was a typical management strategy: throw more bodies at a problem to get it solved faster.

  Louisa kept her eyes on Baz as he sauntered towards their position. He passed one of the detectives standing outside a pub having a fag. The officer raised his hand to take another drag and took the opportunity to speak while his mouth was covered. ‘I’ve got a visual confirmation. It’s our boy all right.’

  ‘All officers please be advised the suspect is not carrying a terminal.’ This also from DI Vaughn.

  That was unusual, but not if he was planning anything illegal. Anyone carrying a terminal would be absurdly easy to monitor. But even without one, the sense strips should be able to pick him out from his biometrics. Once he was ID’d using facial recognition or iris scans, it would be a simple matter to manually track him from then on. Over ninety-eight percent of greater London’s streets were covered by the strips, so there would be few places for him to hide. It’s what made his previous escapes all the more perplexing.

  ‘Oscar Romeo Five,’ DI Vaughn said, ‘the suspect is approaching your position.’

  Baz was only twenty yards away now.

  ‘Talk about stating the bleeding obvious,’ Rick muttered.

  Louisa grinned. It seemed DI Vaughn was determined to run everything by the book. Having a SCD7 DI peering over his shoulder certainly couldn’t have helped.

  Baz appeared relaxed, bored even, as he strolled up to the car. Then, as he reached Rick’s driver’s side door he turned and leaned in towards the window. Louisa sank back into her seat as Baz appeared to stare directly at her. Rick glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. Baz surely couldn’t know they were inside, could he? Baz reached into his hoodie pocket and Louisa tensed. They weren’t expecting Baz to be armed but Louisa held her breath all the same as he slowly withdrew his hand. Then she saw the comb. He licked a finger and proceeded to smooth down an errant strand of hair. After preening himself some more he pocketed the comb and continued down the street.

  Louisa let out an explosive breath and Rick grinned at her. He hid it
well but Louisa was sure his heart must have been thumping as fast as hers. She activated the audio link from her profile to the case file. ‘The suspect is proceeding past our position. No. Stand by. The suspect has gone inside a restaurant called,’ Louisa ducked her head to see the sign, ‘Roy’s Pit Stop.’

  ‘Acknowledged,’ DI Vaughn said. ‘Stand by.’

  Louisa killed the audio link.

  ‘I take it we’ve got no one in there?’ Rick asked.

  Louisa shook her head. The intel the drugs squad received indicated a deal was going down in the vicinity of Wardour Street, but that was all. ‘Do we have any sense coverage inside?’

  Rick checked his terminal. ‘No, nothing. It’s a dead zone.’

  ‘Oscar Sierra Two,’ DI Vaughn said, ‘proceed into the restaurant. We need visual confirmation the exchange has taken place before we move to apprehend the suspect. Keep your audio link open.’

  So much for keeping a low profile. Louisa activated the link. ‘Received and understood.’

  Louisa took out an ear bud from the glove box and tapped it against her terminal, pairing it with her profile, before inserting it in her right ear. She activated an extension on the terminal and a clear, thin, band, one inch by six, detached from the back of the device. The sense band acted as a physical augmentation of the terminal, allowing the wearer to tap out or vocalise instructions to the device and relay back ambient noise. She slapped the band against her wrist and it snapped tight around her arm, rendering itself practically invisible to the casual observer.

  Rick gave her an encouraging thumbs-up as she opened the car door. He probably wishes it was him heading in. Surely I wasn’t that green when I first made detective? She smiled wryly to herself. To be honest staying on the sidelines wasn’t her style. If she was going to be shafted she preferred to be front and center, where she could see it coming.

  *

  Roy’s Pit Stop was jammed and the atmosphere loud and boisterous. Most of the customers looked like they were attempting to soak up some of the night’s booze. A long counter ran along the left hand side of the restaurant. The remaining floor space was taken up by booths with blue leather seats. A party of eight arrived shortly after Louisa and stood waiting for a free table, their raised voices adding to the cacophony of shouts and laughter.

  Louisa spied Baz Waters seated in a booth at the back beside a man who looked to be around the same age and wearing a tracksuit top. A mop of unruly dark curls covered so much of his face you could barely see the pair of thick-rimmed glasses he wore.

  Louisa grabbed a high stool at the counter near the entrance as it offered a clear view of the pair. She leaned on the counter, covered her mouth with her hand, and spoke quietly into the sense band. ‘Suspect spotted. He’s with a male, IC1, late teens to early twenties.’

  ‘Acknowledged.’ DI Vaughn’s voice was loud in her ear.

  The restaurant reminded her of a cheap and cheerful twenty-four-hour place she frequented when she was still in uniform and working nights—a typical greasy spoon serving strong tea, fry-ups and bacon butties.

  For appearances sake Louisa decided to order something. It was only when she accessed the restaurant’s Portal interface on her terminal that she saw the establishment was actually the latest venture by Gabriel Cartwright, the screencast celebrity chef of the moment. It was part of his Basically British restaurant chain that aimed to serve ‘honest British food with a gourmet flourish’. His usual clientele were the well-off who thought it a great jape to be slumming it for the evening in a dingy cafe like a real working class person.

  Louisa blinked when she saw the price of a Full English. Seventy quid? She ordered a coffee. It was a strange place for Baz to be eating. Unless he’s pulling in a much higher income than outward appearances would suggest.

  Baz and his friend were tucking into a couple of hot dogs and fries. Their demeanour was amiable enough but Louisa was too far away to hear what they were saying. She would have loved to be wearing a set of contact lenses linked to her profile. She had a neat lip-reading extension which provided a reasonable approximation of what people were saying from a distance of up to thirty metres, but it would have been too risky to use. Portal lenses flashed red every few seconds to make it obvious when someone was using them. It leant the wearer a rather demonic air, and also made them easy to spot.

  A tired looking waitress with a grease-spotted apron slapped down a mug of coffee and a jug of milk in front of her. The mug’s contents sloshed over the sides and dribbled down to form a pool on the counter. Apparently slovenly staff with an attitude were part of the Basically British experience. Louisa took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. It was piss-weak. And I didn’t even get a biscuit.

  Baz slid out of the booth and headed for the nearby toilets. His associate left the table shortly after and walked towards Louisa. She kept her eyes averted as he passed and left the restaurant. They hadn’t made the exchange, Louisa was sure of it. Did I miss it?

  ‘The second suspect has exited the building,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Acknowledged. Stay with the primary suspect.’

  A waitress cleared the pair’s booth. Louisa swore under her breath. They must have paid up. She got up and walked halfway along the counter. There was a faded fire exit sign above the door to the toilets that hadn’t been visible from where she was sitting. Louisa got a sinking feeling. She decided to risk running into Baz and hurried to the door.

  A short corridor led to male and female toilets with a fire exit at the end. The female toilet was vacant. She pressed against the male toilet door. It was empty too. The cistern block of the toilet lay on the floor, exposing the water tank.

  ‘The suspect has left through a fire exit at the rear of the building,’ Louisa said. No response from the DI. He's leaving it up to me whether to pursue Baz or not. Louisa weighed the potential consequences of running into Baz and spooking him, or staying put and letting him get away. ‘I’m following him out.’

  She pushed open the fire exit door, making as little noise as possible. It opened onto a grimy narrow alley strewn with piles of bulging black refuse sacks. Baz was nowhere in sight. A few other buildings had back doors that led onto the alley but they were all shut. The alley terminated in a brick wall to her left so Louisa hurried in the other direction.

  The alley joined a side street that connected Wardour and Berwick Street. Left or right? Wardour Street was to the right. If Baz went that way he’ll be spotted quickly enough by the rest of the team. Louisa headed left.

  Louisa paused as she joined Berwick Street. It was as packed with people as Wardour Street had been. She stood on her tiptoes to see above their heads.

  There!

  Louisa spotted a man in a red hoodie maybe a hundred yards away. His hood was raised so she couldn’t see his face but she recognised the arrogant swagger. She spoke into her sense band. ‘Suspect is heading North along Berwick Street. I’m in pursuit.’

  After a short delay DI Vaughn’s voice sounded in her ear. ‘We established a sense perimeter around the restaurant as soon as Waters entered, Detective. Everyone who passed through has been positively identified. Whoever you’re following, it’s not the suspect. He's still within the perimeter.’

  Louisa stumbled to a stop, still staring at the man in the hooded top. DI Vaughn had sounded calm enough but she knew he’d be spitting bullets at the thought of losing Baz again. Correction—she had lost Baz. DS Louisa Bennett had eyes on the suspect and then—poof—another vanishing act. She could almost hear the knives being sharpened.

  But she was sure the guy ahead of her was Baz Waters. He was the same height, the same build. Louisa closed the audio channel linked to the case file and submitted a call request through to Rick. He answered almost immediately. ‘Sarge?’

  ‘Rick, patch me through the live sense feed from the corner of Berwick and Noel Streets.’

  She took out her terminal and accepted the incoming feed from the MET Subnet. Sense footage appeared, s
howing an aerial shot of the junction. The man had stopped at a zebra crossing. She panned the viewpoint down and angled it towards him.

  Her heart sank; it wasn’t Baz. This man was much older, maybe in his late forties, with a scraggly grey goatee.

  What were the odds of some guy wearing the exact same clothes as Baz being in the vicinity at the same time? Close to nil, surely. Was this how Baz managed to evade the drugs squad? Did he have accomplices who led the surveillance team away from his location so he could sneak away undetected? That would mean he was back at the restaurant, but there had been nowhere for him to hide, not in the toilets. Unless he’s hiding in the alley? Under the rubbish bags maybe? Or he entered one of the other buildings?

  Louisa was about to turn back when the man twisted around, looking up Berwick Street. Louisa’s eyes widened. It was Baz. But his face was wet, slick, like he’d smeared something over it. Then he looked directly at her. Their eyes met before Louisa had a chance to look away. He stood watching her for a few seconds, then bolted across the road, narrowly missing a car that had to slam on its brakes and swerve to avoid him.

  Louisa set off after him. ‘Rick, are you still there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The guy I was tailing. It’s Waters all right. He spotted me and legged it. I’m going to need backup.’

  ‘Are you sure, Sarge? He’s not coming up on the sense footage and the DI wants me to stay put until you get back.’

  ‘I’ll explain later. Get your ass over here!’

  Baz was pulling away so she picked up the pace as best she could whilst dodging people on the crowded pavement. Louisa managed to keep pace with him but he showed no signs of tiring as he reached Oxford Street and slipped through the slow-moving traffic. Just my luck to be chasing a healthy drug dealer. When had they stopped sampling their own merchandise and got fit?

  He tried to lose her by ducking down a few side streets north of Oxford, but each time Louisa managed to keep him in her sights. After a few minutes of running flat-out Louisa was feeling the strain. A stitch had formed in her side and her lungs burned. He can’t keep this up for much longer, surely. Baz glanced back at her and must have reached the same conclusion because he snapped his head to the side to look down each side street and alley he passed. Abruptly, he skidded to a stop and ducked under an archway between two large red-brick houses.