A Cursed Place

by Peter Hanington

He laughed again, then stopped. Something occurred to him.

  ‘Where’ve you been finding all this stuff out? You talked to someone?’

  ‘I looked it up myself. Trade union websites, other websites.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m capable?’

  Jags shook his head.

  ‘I know you’re capable.’ The trouble was that he knew what other people were capable of as well.

  49 Questions

  CAVERSHAM, ENGLAND

  McCluskey watched Carver work his way around the room, reading as he went.

  ‘So we’re working on the basis that maslih and all the other similar words in all these other languages refer to repairs now?’

  McCluskey nodded, noting with approval his use of we as opposed to you.

  ‘That’s right. Repairs and repairmen. It was thanks to Patrick that we managed to unpick that particular knot.’

  ‘Right. I knew the word maslih rang a bell, I just couldn’t place it.’ He scratched at his chin. ‘But looking at your wall here, it seems like that has raised as many questions as it’s answered?’ The wall looked even more confusing than when William had last seen it. McCluskey shook her head.

  ‘The way I look at it, we’ve got one or two main questions that need answering now – what is it they’re repairing? And fer who? It only looks more confusing because we’ve got a few more places in play now.’

  Carver nodded.

  ‘Myanmar, Manila, Chile … those are new aren’t they?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And Xinjiang? I should probably know, but where the hell’s Xinjiang?’

  ‘Way up in the north-west of China. The arse end of nowhere. It’s where the Chinese army have been doing all sorts to those Uighurs.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  He moved closer and saw that chunks of untranslated Mandarin text in this section were connected by thick blue marker pen to similar-looking chunks over in the Hong Kong section. He stepped back again and tried to get some perspective. ‘I’m not sure how much these lines are helping me McCluskey. It looks more like a huge bowl of blue spaghetti than a game of … what did you call it before?’

  ‘Pelmanism. Pairs.’

  ‘Right …’ The three pints he’d had at lunch, the last one courtesy of Elizabeth Curepipe, had slowed his thinking, but maybe that was no bad thing. ‘So how about we focus on just one thing for a moment? One location and one person. Let’s take Hong Kong …’

  ‘And Patrick.’

  ‘Yes.’

  McCluskey had put her collection of Hong Kong-related material right in the centre of the wall with Patrick’s name underneath.

  ‘So Patrick is helping you, he solves one part of the puzzle.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Even supposing that someone, somehow knows that. One of these repairmen … whatever the hell they are … there’s got to be more to it than that. Patrick has to have something that somebody wants. That’s the only way to explain things like Rebecca being followed and strange women turning up outside your kitchen window.’ He glanced at McCluskey. ‘You’ve not had anything else like that happen have you? No more odd threats? Attempted break-ins?’

  She shook her head. Her eyes firmly on the wall.

  ‘Nah. I’ve got this place locked up like Fort Knox.’

  ‘Good …’ Carver homed in on the Hong Kong section of wall. ‘Help me while I walk myself slowly through this McCluskey. So they think that Patrick’s got something, but they’re not sure either what it is, or whether he’s shared it with anyone else – you, Rebecca, whoever. For now, they’re guessing. Does that make sense to you?’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘So what do we know that they don’t? What is it that Patrick’s got? D’you know?’

  ‘I think so.’

  She told William about the dozens of interviews that Patrick had collected with individuals in the front line of the protests across the Middle East, North Africa and now Hong Kong. ‘He said he thought they were all too technical to be of much interest to anyone, but I’m not sure he’s right about that. It sounded to me like quite the collection.’

  ‘Where’s he put them?’

  ‘I told him it was too risky to send them my way. I advised him tae put them somewhere safe.’

  ‘I hope he was listening.’

  ‘Aye, me too.’ She paused. ‘He’s a good lad Patrick, I can see why you two got on so well …’ Carver made a harrumphing sound. ‘… and you obviously taught him plenty, but I’m not sure you taught him enough about how to be careful …’ She put a hand on Carver’s arm. ‘… and he really needs to be careful right now.’

  McCluskey left Carver to navigate his way around the rest of her painstakingly put together investigation and went down to the kitchen to make some food. She was peeling potatoes at the sink when he joined her.

  ‘That blue spaghetti of yours has given me a headache.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’ She pointed the potato peeler at a nearby cupboard. ‘There’s a packet of paracetamol in there, next to the tea.’ McCluskey broke away from peeling the spuds to pour him a glass of water. He sat down at the kitchen table, swallowed the pills and glanced looked around, something was missing.

  ‘Where’s that cat of yours?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘That tortoiseshell cat? The one that likes sitting on people? Her bowl’s gone.’

  ‘Oh aye, you’re right …’ McCluskey kept peeling although she already had more potatoes than she needed. ‘… I think she must’ve found someone else to pester. It’s probably just as well, I wasn’t so good at looking after her.’

  Carver frowned.

  ‘Really? It didn’t look that way to me.’ He finished his glass of water. ‘Shame, I was starting to like her.’

  ‘Aye. Me too.’

  50 Good Fortune

  PUBLIC SQUARE HQ, CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA

  ‘I can just sell you a new queen, Mr Curepipe, it’ll take a little while to bed in but that should fix things for you.’

  Fred hadn’t offered the bee guy a chair; if visitors stood and he

  stayed sitting behind his desk then meetings like this went off a lot quicker. He could have simply said yes to this suggestion and sent the man on his way, but he was interested.

  ‘Tell me how that works. Briefly.’

  ‘You betcha.’ It was a story of larvae and frames and cages and careful feeding. He gave the guy the go-ahead, dismissed him and turned his attention back to other matters. One of his Beijing-based clients had been in touch thanking him for the ‘user data relating to the messaging application address’. Fred shook his head. Why not just say Skype? One of his data scraper guys had done a good job in double-quick time. He’d found a list of calls to and from the address, duration and origin – or a pretty accurate idea of origin. The client wanted more – they wanted to know the content of the most recent call. Fred emailed back, warning them that this was a tall order, but offering some guidance on how it might be done. It was a case of old-fashioned, on-the-ground legwork rather than anything computer related. He signed off with Zhu hao yun – good luck or good fortune – and he meant it. Fred was as interested as they were in the content of that call.

  51 We & They

  BROCHU, CHILE, SOUTH AMERICA

  ‘What we’ve got here, Soledad, is a bad case of miscommunication …’ Jags handed the piece of paper back to her. ‘… this here looks a lot like a list of demands.’

  ‘It is a list of demands.’

  ‘That’s not the way this is going to work. You need to remember who you work for.’

  ‘I work for the people of Brochu.’

  ‘No you don’t. Take another look at your payslip. It isn’t the people of Brochu putting the big bucks into your bank account. They didn’t pay for that goat out there or any other of these other little home improvements. It’s us paying for all that and you need to remember that and stop fooling around.’ He didn’t like talking to
her like this, but it was for her own benefit. Her mother had retreated to the bedroom as soon as Jags started to raise his voice, but Soledad didn’t move.

  ‘I see. So what happened to doing well by doing good?’

  ‘We are gonna do good. We’re going to give you a nursery and a community centre and a museum for your freakin’ fossils. What they’re not going to give you is some kinda communist collective.’

  ‘They? Or we?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said we and then you said they.’

  ‘I meant we …’ He reached into the pocket of his bomber jacket. ‘… we got you this too.’

  ‘A new phone?’ Jags nodded. ‘I’ve already got a phone.’

  ‘Think of it as a free upgrade. You’ll use this from now on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we say so.’

  52 The Hunt

  KING CHUNG INTERNET CAFÉ, CENTRAL HONG KONG

  He’d walked up and down the aisles a couple of times already, staring over the shoulders of the King Chung café’s customers. A mix of gamers, people from the Chinese mainland chatting to family back home, and assorted oddballs who got nervous whenever he moved close. One of them was using the machine that he was looking for; the question was, which one? He walked once more around the café, formulating a plan. He would start at the back and work forward, up and down the desks of computer terminals, paying for the minimum fifteen-minute slot on each and switching after he’d checked each machine and the next nearest one came free. It would take a freaking age, but there was no alternative. The first thing was to draw a sketch of the place so he could cross off each terminal after he’d checked it. Sitting down at an empty terminal in the window, he saw something. Stuck to the side of the computer next to him, currently being used by a kid playing Mario Cart, was a stamp, a blue British second-class stamp with the Queen’s profile on it. He paid the boy twenty bucks to swap, logged in and attached an external hard drive. Now he’d found the right machine, the next part was easy.

  53 Fair Weather

  CAVERSHAM, ENGLAND

  Carver agreed to stay for dinner. McCluskey had made enough shepherd’s pie to feed an army and he liked shepherd’s pie. She opened a bottle of red wine too. They ate the dinner in the living room, from trays on their knees. McCluskey had the TV on and kept half an eye on it, while at the same time chatting away to Carver. As a concession to her guest, she kept the volume down low. First there was McCluskey’s favourite soap opera, then something about a middle-aged female detective based in a picturesque part of Scotland, followed by an American cop show. All of these seemed to revolve around issues of abuse of one sort or another.

  ‘Do you ever watch a TV programme that doesn’t offer the viewers a helpline number at the end?’

  McCluskey shot him a look.

  ‘I like gritty telly, so sue me. It looked to me like you were enjoying it.’

  He was enjoying it. She’d asked him to light the fire and after much fiddling around with twists of newspaper, kindling and logs, it was now burning strongly; he could see the flames reflecting from McCluskey’s collection of snow globes and the room felt cosy and warm. As different as it was from Rebecca and Patrick’s living room, it still seemed to William that the two rooms had something in common. McCluskey appeared to read his mind.

  ‘You never said how it went with Patrick’s wee girlfriend?’

  ‘Oh yeah, fine.’ He told her about his meeting with Rebecca, how well she’d dealt with the tail they’d tried to put on her. ‘She’s still being watched, some idiot approached me when I was waiting outside her flat. Her main concern is Patrick – how he is, when he’s coming home, what state he’s going to be in once he gets there. The usual stuff. She’s worried he might end up … well, like me.’

  ‘I see. Did she ask you to have a chat with him?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  ‘How many words would you need?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Are you not seeing a theme developing here Billy? All the people that you’re wanting to protect – Rebecca, Patrick … me. We’re all saying the same thing. I understand this whole Hippocratic oath thing, I get where it’s coming from, but the truth is we’d all be better off if you were away doing what it is you’re good at. You included.’

  The television was still on, but the sound was turned down. The fire crackled in the grate and they sat in silence for a while.

  ‘Even if I wanted to …’

  ‘You do want to go. I’ve known you long enough to know that … they sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  McCluskey pushed a hand through her candyfloss hair.

  ‘Nope. I cannae remember. I remember the lines, but not the folks that wrote them these days.’

  Carver nodded.

  ‘Even if I did decide to go. I can’t just up and leave …’ He put his glass down on one of McCluskey’s many occasional tables. ‘… I’d need my boss to sign off on it for starters. I’d need to find someone to cover my classes …’

  ‘Who’s your boss?’

  ‘Naomi.’

  ‘The Today programme woman? Well that’s not a problem then, is it? She’ll say yes in a heartbeat.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How about you sleep on it tonight, see how you feel in the morning?’

  ‘Nah, I don’t want to put you to any …’

  ‘Stay the night Carver. There’s already a bed made in the spare room and …’ She gazed out of the sitting room windows; she’d neglected to draw the curtains and her reflection stared back at her. ‘… anyway, I’d like it if you stayed.’

  Carver nodded.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Good man. Now what kind of nightcap shall we have? I’ve got Ovaltine, hot chocolate or there’s a twenty-five-year-old Glenlivet.’

  ‘Are you joking?’

  54 Ultimate Glory

  THE HEADLAND HOTEL, HONG KONG

  The last race of the day at Happy Valley was a close one. A horse called Ultimate Glory won by a nose and judging by the smile on the face of the top-hatted doorman, Mr Kip, this was a favourable outcome. It was Mr Kip who came to tell Patrick that the staff had completed their stocktaking work and Ada, the souvenir shop attendant, would be happy to help him now.

  Ripped-up facsimiles of Hong Kong Jockey Club betting slips littered the stockroom floor like confetti. The fax machine had been working overtime and it clanked and complained as it slowly ingested Patrick’s message to McCluskey and sent it on its way. The scribbled note, warning her that both the fax number and the Skype address that she’d given him might’ve been seen by someone else, seemed to take an age to send. He sat down at an old wooden school desk to wait for the confirmation note, telling him that it had arrived safely on the other side of the world. Once it had, Patrick relaxed a little. It was peaceful in the stockroom, fusty with the smell of old cardboard boxes and dust, but a good place to sit undisturbed. He glanced over at Ada, who was sweeping the old betting slips into a metal dustpan.

  ‘Excuse me Ada but do you think I could stay here and work for a while? Just half an hour or so?’

  She studied the Englishman; he looked tired. Mr Kip was in too good a mood to tell her off for any minor infraction of the hotel rules.

  ‘It is fine, yes. Half an hour.’

  She went back to work, leaving the door to the stockroom slightly ajar in case Patrick needed anything. He got his laptop out, connected to the hotel Wi-Fi and typed in the name Sammy Kwok. Now he’d done what he could to warn McCluskey, Patrick’s next priority was the promise he’d made to Eric. If he was going to persuade John Brandon to spend some time on this story – the real story of what had happened to Sammy and the tsunami of misinformation that had followed his death – then he needed to make sure that everything Eric had told him about the boy’s killing and what had happened afterwards was true.

  In the end he spent over an hour reading about Sammy. It was,
in equal parts, a confusing and depressing experience. The truth about Sammy’s death was not just hard to find, it was impossible, buried somewhere beneath layer upon layer of falsehood, ill-informed speculation and half-arsed reporting. Patrick was disappointed to find that the handful of BBC reports that mentioned Sammy had fallen into exactly the same traps as everyone else.

  He messaged Viv, who as luck would have it was still in the hotel, sitting in the lobby surrounded by camera equipment and waiting for John Brandon.

  ‘I seem to spend most of my waking life either waiting for Brandon or wishing he’d go away.’

  ‘I know the feeling. When’s a good time for me to have him work on a radio piece for me today?’

  Viv checked her clipboard and shuffled some of the television two-ways around. She had one more reporter now and there was a little more slack. They agreed that Brandon could be ring-fenced for radio early evening.

  ‘Are you taking him back down to Harcourt to get tear gassed?’

  ‘There’s actually another story I’m hoping to get him interested in.’

  ‘I see. You want to tell me what it is? Me being the boss and all?’

  ‘It’s about this kid that got killed, Sammy Kwok?’

  ‘That poor boy who had the asthma attack?’

  ‘Yeah. Or rather – no. There’s more to it than that.’

  ‘Is it something that telly need to know about?’

  ‘Probably not yet. I just want Brandon to do a sort of anatomy of a story piece. It’s gonna be mainly script and a little archive this time. It should work for you once I find the time to do some proper work on it. I need to speak to his mum and his mates and stuff like that.’

  ‘Okay. Well Brandon’s all yours this evening, but don’t forget you’ve got me and Dan coming over to yours for dinner later. You remember?’

  ‘Oh bollocks. Dan mentioned that did he?’

  ‘He mentioned little else. Eight p.m. Try not to forget, he’ll be devastated if it turns out to be just me he’s eating noodles with.’