A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Once again, our three contestants get the chance to earn a Breathing Bonus by demonstrating the talent that booked them their place on Dying to be Famous. In just a few bars, the music is going to kick in, and the one who mimes it best – decided by your votes on the website – will get that special bonus. Yes, they’re all competing for a prize of nothing but thin air. Just like being back on Bedroom Popstars! And making it interesting tonight is Anika, lagging behind on the O2. I’ve given all three of them a little extra air so that they can do some serious vogueing. The question is, though, especially in Anika’s case: take or gamble? Does she save her breath and hope tonight’s tally offers salvation? Or does she give it her all in order to secure that Breathing Bonus and get everybody talking – not to mention writing – about her tomorrow? Let’s find out right now on Mime Time!’

  Darcourt didn’t need to draw any extra attention to Anika, but Meilis is happy he did. The drop in frames-per-second on her feed indicates there’s more people viewing her than the other two combined.

  ‘I’ve not seen lag like this since the dial-up days,’ Meilis remarks.

  On the suspended monitor, Angelique sees Anika get to her feet. All three are trying to strike poses, looking ready to dance but holding off on any movement until the first lyrics commence. Angelique has seen many, many more brutalities and indignities visited upon people, but in a way this is the most sadistic, the most humiliating.

  The song proper begins. Anika tries to dance, though she looks like it’s taking all she’s got just to remain upright.

  Angelique looks at Meilis. ‘How much longer do we have to watch this?’ she asks.

  He holds up one hand – five? – while manipulating the mouse with the other. She wonders does he mean minutes or seconds, then gets her answer as the monitor showing Anika goes black.

  ‘Now watch the dominoes fall,’ Meilis says.

  The mirror sites for the Anika stream crash in quick succession, blanking off on other monitors around the Operations Centre, as people all over the net attempt to replace the lost feed. Then, once all three sources are down, the effect repeats on first Sally’s and finally Wilson’s stream as the ‘vicarious thrill-seekers and hypocritical lying cunts’ connect to the remaining feeds.

  There is an unnerving, tense silence throughout this busy room that seems all the more pronounced for its suddenness. Dale looks anxiously at Meilis, his unspoken thought the same as everyone else’s: Please tell me Darcourt didn’t find that suspicious.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Meilis says. ‘It worked even better than I hoped. I only had to artificially surge the first server, then network traffic did the rest. I thought we’d need to do it on each of the other two sources to get the ball rolling, but there were so many people suddenly trying to access the same feeds that the servers all crashed by themselves. From Darcourt’s point of view, it’ll just look like he’s a victim of his own success. Now he’ll just reset the systems and restore everything, but metaphorically speaking, he has to bend over to put the plug back in, and that’s when we can get a free boot at his arse.’

  Day five in the Black Spirit house. It’s seven am and the house-mates are all asleep; they’re also all alive, which is the good news. Anika won the Mime Time vote close to unanimously, with all but a handful of scumbags logging on to the message-board with the express intention of getting the girl some more air. She has since trumped it by coming top of the publicity tally, her plight eliciting sufficient discussion yesterday to knock Sally into second place.

  Meilis and his team don’t appear to have moved while Angelique was grabbing a few hours’ kip in the serviced apartment she’s renting, having been in what the alpha geek calls ‘deep-hack mode’. The bad news is that these Herculean efforts have so far failed to provide the location of Darcourt’s arse for the promised ‘free boot’, but Meilis believes they’re closing in. On each of their monitors is a patchwork of overlapping windows: scrolling lists of IP numbers, telephone exchange locations, postal addresses, maps, topological diagrams and code, code, code.

  ‘The problem is how little bandwidth is required at source to broadcast these three images,’ Meilis explains in between grateful mouthfuls of the Starbucks coffee Angelique brought with her. ‘It’s further up the stream that it gets mass-duplicated. We’ve been in a holding pattern for a couple of hours, but we’re circling a little closer on every pass.’

  ‘How big is the elephant’s footprint?’

  ‘Down to a square mile, but it’s a square mile of light-industrial estates near Walsall.’

  ‘Figures. An hour from London, and just off the motorway.’

  Just then, one of the other geeks’ mobiles rings, and he answers it instantly, in contrast to previous habits Angelique witnessed. While in this state of deep-hack mode, she earlier watched the same guy remain focused on his screen, his hands never leaving the keyboard, while the same phone scuttled manically around his desk, vibrating along the Formica to the tune of its Star Trek ringtone. She almost answered it herself just to silence the thing, before the caller finally gave up. Now, however, the guy is talking occasionally into his Bluetooth headset – though mainly listening – while still jostling the mouse and cross-referring whatever is on his screen.

  ‘Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Okay.’

  He pats the headset, gently pressing the disconnect button, then raises a hand to wave at Meilis.

  ‘My BT guy in Walsall just came through,’ he reports. ‘We’ve got a match, and the best part is, it’s a local spur supplying only five premises with active ADSL connections.’

  ‘Brilliant, Rog,’ Meilis says. ‘Somebody get it on the map.’

  ‘Already there, Jules,’ another geek chimes in: Adnan, if she caught his name right. ‘It’s in the Hillbank estate, north-eastern quadrant. Four places on Mowatt Avenue and one on Beckett Road.’

  Angelique glances at Meilis and he gives her the slightest nod. This is happening. She reaches for her phone, getting ready to call Dale.

  ‘What are these places?’ Meilis asks. ‘Get us some names.’

  ‘Just coming in now,’ Rog tells him. ‘Okay, we’ve got Cook & Co Lithographics, Jacobs Pool Table and Gaming Machines, McArthur Blinds, and a Parcelink dispatch depot: they’re all on Mowatt. The one on Beckett is... Hodges Bros Catering Supplies.’

  ‘Show me the map.’

  Meilis leans across and looks at Adnan’s monitor, which he has rotated to give him a better view. Meilis points, but Angelique’s angle doesn’t allow her to see where. ‘That one there. Which one is that?’

  There is a brief pause while Rog tabs through several different lists.

  ‘Parcelink,’ he informs them.

  ‘That’s it,’ Meilis declares.

  ‘Parcelink?’ Angelique feels compelled to enquire. They’re a major firm, practically a household name, and therefore an impossibility in terms of being a front company for someone like Darcourt to secure premises. ‘I know they’re slow, but do you not think even they’d notice if Darcourt was squatting in their warehouse?’

  Meilis smiles by way of acknowledging her query, but instead of an answer, he merely issues further instructions to Adnan.

  ‘Get them on the phone: that depot, not national enquiries. Make sure you’re talking to someone on-site, then ask them two things. One, do they have a wireless network. Two, if they stick their head out of the window, can they see an unlet and apparently empty building adjacent to their location.’

  Meilis turns to Angelique while Adnan calls. ‘In answer to your question, yes they’d notice if Darcourt was squatting in their warehouse. But they wouldn’t notice if he hacked their wireless network and piggybacked on to their connection.’

  Adnan completes his call.

  ‘Yes to both,’ he relays.

  ‘Yes plus yes equals go,’ Meilis concludes. ‘Time to take that free boot.’

  ‘I’ll just look out my steel toecaps.’

  Angelique is standing next to Dale, a
dozen more armed police taking up their appointed holding positions around the perimeter. She checks her watch. It’s almost noon. She feels disconcertingly exposed to be standing outdoors in the April sunshine holding a Walther and kitted in the full body-armourand-tech-headset regalia. They’ve checked the sightlines, though, like a conjuror in a new theatre. There’s folk working in buildings fifty yards away who will have no idea this happened until they see it on the news.

  ‘Here’s where we get to be the good guys for a change,’ she says to Dale, checking her firearm.

  ‘What, you saying the general public haven’t been unwavering in their appreciation for the protection we provide?’

  ‘Just a little. And the worst part is, often not without reason.’

  ‘I hear you. But they’ll be loving us for this.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Angelique makes it sound like a murmur of agreement to disguise its true nature as an expression of doubt. Dale’s right that they’ll all be painted as heroes if they successfully effect a rescue, and the thought of the spectacle she’s been forced to witness in recent days has her impatient to go kicking in some doors, but she can’t bring herself to believe that they’re going to get Darcourt so easily. To echo the note of caution Meilis sounded, he wouldn’t even have to be there to control his squalid little show: everything could be remotely operated, right down to Evian and Mars-bar dispensers attached to each cell door’s sealed hatch.

  ‘He might know a bit about computers,’ Dale had said, ‘but the bottom line is, if our geeks are smarter than him, he loses.’

  Angelique couldn’t argue with the logic, but nor could she imagine Darcourt missing it either. He had taken not a few risks to play out such a high-profile pantomime, but would he stake so much on avoiding electronic detection, and on the cops not calling his bluff with regard to his ability to intercept their traces?

  On the other hand, the arrogant fucker loved showing off, and it was his complacency and his desire to shove it in Raymond Ash’s face that had brought about his downfall last time.

  ‘You set?’ Dale asks.

  Angelique thinks about three adolescents gasping like landed fish, surrogate outlets for one narcissistic, self-obsessed psychopath’s jealous rage. That’s all that matters at this stage. If they have to play another game tomorrow, she’ll have a hot cup of coffee and suit up for that one too.

  ‘Good to go,’ she confirms.

  ‘Meilis, how’s it looking inside?’

  Meilis’ voice comes through Angelique’s headset after the briefest delay.

  ‘Hostages are all awake, all lying down, all safely positioned away from the doors.’

  Dale gives the order: ‘Go, go, go.’

  They emerge from cover like they’ve been teleported, swiftly traversing the grass and concrete, closing around the unlet and unlit building like a tightening knot. To the front, there is a blue-painted door at the left-hand side, and ten yards to the right of it a tilting aluminium affair large enough to permit vehicular access to a high-top van. Perfect for getting bodies in and out unobserved. Angelique is heading for the rear, her own request, wanting to be the person on-site if Darcourt tries to bail out the back door.

  She is less than twenty feet from contact when Meilis’ voice breaks in urgently across her radio headset.

  ‘We just lost two of the feeds, both gone black. Sally and Anika, just Wilson remaining.’

  ‘Fuck,’ says Dale.

  ‘Do we hold?’ Angelique asks.

  Dale takes a beat, a moment so silent and suspended it’s like his radio has died. ‘Get in there,’ he states. ‘Get in there fast.’

  Angelique signals to the two cops behind her, who are bearing a battering column. As they heft it for their first swing, they can already hear the impact of its counterpart around the other side.

  ‘Got video back,’ Meilis reports. ‘Both feeds. Each showing... I think it’s doors. Wait. Could both be the same door. Light is pretty dim. Can’t make out what I’m looking at. Oh fuck.’

  ‘What?’ demands Dale angrily.

  ‘I’m looking at you. I mean, whoever just came through the door.’

  ‘Are you in? Who’s inside?’ Dale asks.

  Angelique’s door buckles and suddenly swings in as though sucked by a vacuum.

  ‘McGuire, sir,’ reports a voice. ‘I’m inside. Place is empty.’

  Angelique walks through the gap, gun drawn, sees a deserted warehouse containing only more cops and, on a small table in the centre of the floor, a laptop computer.

  ‘Oh, Christ, what is this?’ Meilis says. ‘It’s freeze-framed, both feeds.’

  ‘We can see,’ Angelique reports.

  The laptop, she spots, has a built-in webcam embedded in the frame just above the top of the screen, pointing at the front door. On the screen are three windows, side-by-side: the live feed of Wilson in his cell flanked by two frozen images of officer McGuire’s face as he came through the door.

  Darcourt’s manipulated voice plays, tinny but distinct, over the laptop’s integrated speakers. Angelique is so used to hearing it that it takes a moment to register the significance of it being disguised: this isn’t live. He knew they were on their way, the only question is for how long.

  ‘What a capricious mistress is fame. Here we have one man who has been striving to achieve it, and though he doesn’t yet know it, he’s just been killed by someone who did not seek fame but will now have it thrust upon him. I do not know his name, but by tomorrow everyone in the country will: the unfortunate police officer, following the digital trace I expressly forbade, who was first to open the door and unknowingly trip the wire attached to my decoy computer.’

  Angelique looks to the side of the laptop and for the first time notices a second cable other than that leading to the power supply. She follows the fine black-insulated trail along the dusty concrete and sees that it is taped to the inside of the front door, terminating close to the top in a dangling, disconnected contact. At a corresponding height on the doorframe is a small plastic box, on the outside of which a red light is blinking.

  ‘The detachment of this wire has now triggered the release of the lethal gas contained in the canister on Wilson’s cell wall. What? You didn’t really think I’d keep the oxygen in there, did you? Far too small. Wilson will die quickly and painlessly, as this was not his fault. And after that, the show must go on.’

  Angelique watches Wilson’s eyes close. He just looks like he’s nodding off to sleep. She looks at McGuire, who is physically shaking with revulsion.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, somebody turn it off,’ says the cop who came in at McGuire’s back. He takes a step forward, but Angelique puts up a hand to order stop.

  ‘Nobody touch it,’ she says, though she wants to boot the thing against a wall.

  The two flanking images of McGuire’s face suddenly fade to black, and are replaced with live views of Anika’s and Sally’s cells. They both remain curled up on their blankets, showing no indication of knowing what has just taken place.

  ‘The canisters in all three cells contain this gas,’ Darcourt resumes, ‘rigged for release if anybody attempts to open the cell doors. The police were warned, and I will warn them again: do not attempt any further traces. You gambled once. The numbers do not stack up in your favour.’

  Angelique thinks he means the odds, but then the view of Wilson’s cell disappears, replaced by two sequences of digits. The second is today’s date, the first, she assumes, Wilson’s date of birth. The figures remain on view for only a few seconds, then reorder and change until a single sequence appears in their place: twelve digits divided into groups of three.

  ‘Oh, fucksocks,’ Meilis grunts.

  ‘What?’ asks Dale.

  ‘The numbers do not stack up in your favour,’ Meilis repeats. ‘The cunt just quoted us our own IP address.’

  A pub in Soho, appropriate given that they now appear to be in the entertainment business. A group of them retreated there after the debriefing in an act
of solidarity, wagon-circling and mutual wound-licking. The press conference was particularly horrible, but Dale acquitted himself admirably. He not only refused to name McGuire, but threatened to exclude any media outlets who subsequently dug around and published his identity. Everybody – McGuire most of all – knew it would be only a matter of time before it was public knowledge by one route or another, but the message it sent out was important.

  McGuire’s face is on the front of the Evening Standard, a split-frame image with him on the left and Wilson Gartside on the right. It’s everywhere: she can see four copies from where she’s sitting in the pub.

  ‘Only serving the public interest, I’m sure they’re telling themselves,’ Angelique remarks.

  ‘What can you expect,’ Dale replies. ‘It’s the metropolitan evening edition of the Daily Mail: by cunts, for cunts.’

  Someone at an adjacent table has the paper open. An inside headline reports that Anika is now the bookies’ favourite to win. Angelique feels a shudder when she catches herself wondering what the prize might be.

  It’s just her and Dale who remain. The ones with wives, husbands, partners didn’t dwell, headed off to the people they really wanted consolation from. Leaving only those with nobody to go home to.

  Dale mentions stories he’s heard about her from Shaw. It’s a prompt, a kind of cop therapy. You remind yourself of the successes, all your personal myths and legends, so you can pick yourself up after a bitch like today and face this shit all over again tomorrow. He smiles for the benefit of their mutual morale, but there is a sadness in his eyes. She’s seen it there all evening, same as she’s noticed him swallowing just a little too often, his face contorting mid-sentence as he disguises his welling emotion. He’s disguising it, but he’s still feeling it, feeling it all. He’s different that way: she’s seen way too many who’ve become emotionally cauterised by his stage. They still do the job, but they’ve long since ceased letting themselves feel what Dale still dares to. He’s a decent man, a good man. There’s a lot they recognise in each other.