The Vanguard

by SJ Griffin

Chapter Seven

  For the next few days I kept a low profile. Casino and Lola continued to prowl around, spoiling for a fight, until Casino absented himself again. I found myself spending more time away from the hotel, Roach and Minos seemed to be doing the same. It was hard not to finger Lola as the problem. She wasn’t coping very well with her new ability to see what was going on in people’s heads. We were all relieved that it wasn’t us, and our sympathetic tolerance must have been driving her mad. Madder. It was Haggia who had the brainwave and, once I’d persuaded Lola it was worth a try, Haggia made us an appointment with Mr Gru for the very next day.

  ‘Do you think it will work?’ Lola said.

  ‘Definitely,’ I said. ‘Definitely.’ Who knew? It was worth a try.

  The fading card next to the doorbell said Hypnotit, but Mr Gru was a hypnotist. Lola rang the bell and then wiped her finger on my jacket to remove whatever germs she had picked up.

  ‘What? It’s sticky,’ she said.

  Gru’s Hall of Hypnosis, which it wasn’t called but I thought it ought to be, was on a busy street near the Flyover. We could see it looming over the rooftops as it snaked its way into the city. Neither of us mentioned it, which is to say that neither of us mentioned it out loud, I was up to all manner of mentioning inside my head which Lola would have been party to, but for any of the hundreds of people pouring past there was no mention of the Flyover and the site of our accident. Not that I thought it was an accident any more. At long last the rattle of many bolts and chains being released came from behind the door and it opened to reveal a very, very tall man. He was also very, very thin so looked as though he had been stretched. His face was a study of professional detachment and reassuring calm.

  ‘Lola Capuzzo,’ he said, looking at me.

  ‘No, I’m Lola,’ she frowned at him.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ the man said. ‘I’m Mr Gru.’

  Mr Gru’s office looked as though it too had been flooded at some point and as the tide receded all his possession had been marooned at one end of the room. Two chairs were shipwrecked in front of a desk, Gru gestured that we sit in these as he sank behind the desk. We could just see the top of his head behind the piles of paper and every so often he would peer round the side of an old box-shaped monitor as if making sure we were still there.

  ‘You are friends of Haggia’s I understand,’ he said.

  ‘I am,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve never met her,’ Lola said. She was still glaring at Mr Gru for some reason.

  ‘Haggia’s said you might be able to help with a problem Lola is having,’ I said. ‘It’s a very strange problem and we’ve tried everything but nothing seems to work.

  ‘I see,’ Mr Gru said.

  ‘If you’re not going to concentrate then we’re not going to get anywhere,’ Lola said. ‘And neither of us is interested in seeing your feeble attempts at macramé.’

  ‘What?’ Mr Gru rose to his feet. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘You see,’ I folded my arms. ‘That’s a very good example of the problem.’

  ‘I can read your mind,’ Lola said.

  ‘Oh,’ Mr Gru sat down at speed, like he was leaping in reverse. ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘I would like to be able to not read your mind,’ Lola said.

  ‘Haggia said that you stopped her from doing something by hypnotising her,’ I said.

  Gru looked surprised. ‘Did she tell you what it was?’

  ‘No, but you’ve just told Lola,’ I said.

  Lola looked very surprised too, just for a moment and then raised her hand to indicate she wouldn’t say a word. I wouldn’t ask either. If Haggia had wanted me to know she would have told me. Gru looked like he wanted to be sick.

  ‘Can you help?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Gru said. ‘Once I have finished with you, you will never be able to tell what private thoughts anyone is thinking.’

  ‘I need to be able to turn it off and on,’ Lola said.

  ‘I see,’ Gru drummed his long fingers on the desk.

  ‘Possible or not?’ I said.

  Gru pulled open a drawer with a terrible creaking sound and after a brief rummaging held up a finger. A red rubber band was hanging from its tip. ‘Possible,’ he said. ‘You will have to wait outside.’

  I looked at Lola to check and she nodded.

  The first time I met Lola I took an instant dislike to her. She was in the back of a car with a man old enough to be her father but of entirely the wrong ethnicity to be said father. I noticed the car because it drove straight into me as it turned left at a junction that didn’t allow for left turning. It was one of the few accidents I’ve had that I could, hand on heart, promise wasn’t my fault. I spun across the road somehow dancing between the other cars like an ice skater. The driver hit the brakes and skidded after me on the slick, wet surface. I was already shouting the right mix of obscenities and street legalese to get their attention. I came to a halt on the road and found I’d lost most of the top layer of skin on my right arm. The woman who would turn out to be Lola lowered the electric window and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘The trouble with couriers,’ she got out of the car. ‘Is that they think they own the roads, when actually I think you’ll find he does.’ She pointed at the man who wasn’t her father. I recognised him from the news. Hippolytan did indeed own the roads. All of them.

  His face oozed into a smile. ‘Good morning. If you could peel yourself off of my road that would be great.’

  ‘You know what?’ I was tangled up in my bike, having difficulty getting up. ‘I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Maybe Sebastian could help you?’ Lola said. She was standing over me, hands on her hips like she was admonishing an errant servant.

  Sebastian climbed out of the drivers seat. It was like watching an albino orang-utan lumbering up a tree.

  ‘Let me help you,’ he put his hand round my throat and picked me up, shaking me free of my bike. He put me on the ground but didn’t let go. His fingers went all the way round my neck like I was an inconvenience inside his fist.

  ‘Now, about that compensation you were just suggesting you would be entitled to,’ Lola gave me a look I was no match for.

  ‘Was I?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘As you skimmed that red car.’

  ‘The red one?’ It was a tro-tro, but she wouldn’t have known that in her paper world. ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Maybe it was the concussion setting in?’

  We were causing a traffic jam. People had started sounding their horns and shouting.

  ‘Lola, darling?’ said the man in the car. ‘Let Sebastian punch her in the face a couple of times if she’s giving you trouble. They’re scum.’

  I smiled at her like she was my best friend and let my eyes slide off her, past the dent I’d left in the car’s wing, and onto the licence badge in the windscreen. I picked up my bike, it was a little bent but nothing I couldn’t fix. ‘I’m terribly sorry to have bothered you,’ I said. ‘Have a wonderful day.’

  ‘Lola, get in this car now,’ the man said. ‘Enough messing about.’

  As I turned to walk away I saw, just for a second, the bravado slip. She looked afraid.

  I hobbled home and Casino picked gravel out of me and patched up my arm while Minos found out where the car lived.

  ‘What did you say her name was?’ he said.

  ‘He called her Lola,’ I patted my bandage. Casino was an excellent first-aider, thanks to his own reactionary schooling.

  Minos clattered away at the keyboard for a moment and then her face appeared on the screen.

  ‘She’s a Capuzzo. The youngest. The black sheep of the family,’ he said. ‘Did a runner. Met the king of the roads at a party a few months ago.’

  ‘Capuzzo?’ Casino said. ‘Where do I know that name from?’

  ‘Most places,’ I said. ‘Where’s Roach?’

  We waited unt
il night fell and then lifted a van to take us to the Riverside Sector where Hippolytan and his car lived. He had a huge house on the north side, away from the river, four storeys hidden inside a large garden behind larger walls and an imposing gate. The arrogance of the man had led him to install only the most cosmetic of security systems which it took me a mere thirteen and a half seconds to disable. We climbed over the wall and Minos fell in a rose bush so we sat under a tree sharing a joint while he picked the thorns out of his thigh.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Casino said.

  ‘Just wait and see what happens,’ I said.

  ‘I just want to know what the plan is,’ he said. ‘Don’t be like that.’

  ‘No, I mean we’re going to wait and see what happens. That is the plan.’

  ‘It’s always the plan,’ Minos said. ‘It’s safest that way.’

  The lights were on in what must have been the living room. It was so big the fresco on the ceiling didn’t look ostentatious. There was a grand piano off to one side of the bay window. We were just about to get bored and wander around to the back of the house when the door to the room opened and Lola walked in. She was wearing a bathrobe and had a towel wrapped around her head. She got a cigarette out of a box on a small table.

  ‘Who keeps their cigarettes in a box?’ Minos said, his pockets full of loose tobacco and screwed up papers as usual.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ Roach said.

  It was Hippolytan. His face was twisted and red with rage and we could hear him shouting but couldn’t quite make out the words. Lola moved around the sofa in the middle of the room and held up her hands. He was over the sofa in a bound and threw the cigarette towards the window, it sparkled orange as it hit the glass then fell. Hippolytan took Lola by the shoulders and we held our breath. He was huge and she was tiny. He threw her on to the sofa but she scrambled to her feet, then he threw her over the top of the piano. She didn’t get up. He shouted for a bit longer and then stormed out slamming the door. No one said anything. Roach pulled me to my feet as Minos delved around in his bag then passed Casino a crowbar. Casino slid the window open and I climbed inside. Everything was quiet and Lola was lying in a heap on the floor by the piano stool, blood trickling out of her nose. I gestured for Roach to come inside. He picked her up and passed her through the window to Minos and Casino. I was about to climb through after them when I noticed the cigarette on the floor. It had smouldered a small black hole in the carpet.

  ‘Give me your matches,’ I said to Minos.

  He poked his head in the window and looked down. ‘Perfect,’ he said.

  The curtains caught light as we crept around the building looking for the back gate and as we carried Lola back to the van the house was glowing and people were shouting. It would burn to the ground because funding changes Hippolytan had helped approve meant there was no one left to put it out.

  ‘Where am I?’ Lola said when she came round a couple of hours later.

  We explained her location and a few ground rules. She stayed a week. Then another. A few years later she still maintained that we kidnapped her.

  Two hours I waited outside Gru’s office, two long hours. I stared at the cracks in the ceiling until I could make out line drawings of animals and then stared some more until they turned into ghouls.

  ‘He’s done it,’ Lola flung the door open. She was wearing the red rubber band on her wrist. ‘Think some things.’

  My mind went blank, but after a moment I thought about the layout of the ground floor of the hotel. Lola shook her head and then pulled the rubber band off her wrist and I thought about it a bit more.

  ‘You’ve forgotten about the cloakroom,’ she said and we did a little dance around the room.

  ‘So, another happy customer,’ said Gru from the doorway. ‘Put it back on.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lola said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And now the indelicate matter of reimbursement,’ Gru said. ‘How would you like to pay?’

  ‘Rice,’ I said.

  ‘Rice?’ Gru said. ‘You can get rice?’

  ‘Yes,’ I held my arms out wide to demonstrate the size of the sack Haggia had donated. ‘A bag about so big? Delivery tomorrow.’

  ‘Rice?’ Gru said. ‘It’s too wonderful to believe.’

  Lola wandered down the hallway with a blissful expression on her face. She waited on the pavement outside leaning towards passersby like she was listening in. She kept murmuring that she couldn’t read anything and I was unsurprised to see that people were staring at her.

  ‘Tell me,’ Gru said. ‘She only thinks that she can read minds, right?’

  ‘No, she really can,’ I said.

  Gru laughed. ‘You are joking, I see that little twinkle in your eye. Very funny.’

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  ‘I really am a textile enthusiast you know,’ Mr Gru said. ‘Are you interested in crafts at all?’

  ‘How long have you been a hypnotit?’ I said.

  He looked confused. I sighed and decided I would be sending Roach with the rice. I packed Lola off to see Stark, her blissed-out, mellow vibe was futzing up my hard-bitten cynicism, while I sloped off to Greasy Clive’s for a late breakfast. The money shop opposite didn’t seem to be doing the roaring trade that it had been before. There were people outside the shop but they were more in a huddle than a queue, and the only thing they had in their hands was the fetid air. I had some inside information that someone had hacked into the money shop accounts and moved all the credit that they had taken from people back into those people’s accounts. It hadn’t stopped there though, they had also redistributed the sizeable balance of the shop’s business account to all its customers so that the owners had not a penny to their name and the customers would be quite comfortable for a while. I got this inside information from myself, because it was me that had done it.

  ‘What are you chuckling at?’ said Clive as I sat down at the cleanest table.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said.

  He had run out of the kitchen as soon as he saw it was me, like he wanted to ask me something. His hair was escaping from beneath his hairnet and lank curls hung over his forehead. He didn’t look very appetising but he wasn’t on the menu. ‘Well, it’s good to see you happy, Sorcha,’ Clive said. ‘It really is.’

  ‘Right, what have you done?’ I said.

  Clive looked askance, flapping the bottom of his apron like he was chasing imaginary nuisances from the cafe, as if that would prove that he was innocent.

  ‘I’ll have the usual,’ I said.

  He hovered.

  ‘Today,’ I said. ‘With coffee. Your tea’s all funny.’

  ‘Right,’ he shuffled back off the kitchen. ‘It’s government tea. It’s not my fault. Get me some better tea if you don’t like it.’ Clive wasn’t a fan of constructive criticism.

  I watched as Enforce pulled up at the shop opposite. Inside information suggested that the owners hadn’t been able to make their protection payment and as usual Enforce had descended within hours of this unfortunate event. They had three cars, one armoured, and I watched as they clattered across the pavement, guns toted. They pulled down heavy face masks and one of them threw a sonic bomb into the shop. The boom lifted everything into the air by a few centimetres for a moment and Clive swore in technicolor among the crashing of pot and pans. The officers stormed into the shop in formation and reappeared moments later hauling the shop owners behind them like luggage. As I watched Enforce line everyone up, face down on the pavement, I could hear Clive talking to someone. This was odd given that with his temperament the rest of the catering industry had decided he was better off working alone. I leant to the left a little so I could see through the serving hatch. He was calling someone and that call involved a lot of nodding and the words she’s here. Other than me there was no one else he could have been referring to. I made sure that the location service on my wristset was switched on. I watched the red sauce and brown sauce shift themselves around
on the table, it was some comfort. I smiled at him when he brought the coffee, and he looked alarmed. The bell gave its familiar, cheerful ding as the door opened and a woman dressed in a raincoat came in. The amount of lipstick she wore and the fact that it wasn’t raining suggested that the raincoat was all she had on. I waited with bated breath and no small amount of anxiety but she ordered a tea to go and went. It wasn’t until I had finished my breakfast, Clive had taken my empty plate and insisted that I have another coffee on the house that his machinations came to light. A man I had seen somewhere before sauntered through the door. I caught him winking at Clive before he thought I’d seen him. Then he reeled in amazed recognition and sat down opposite me with a smile that came with a wattage rating.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I couldn’t place him but then he was so good looking every single thought in my head was busy thinking about that.

  He held out a manicured hand. ‘Agent Tourniquet. Remember? We met at my party.’

  ‘We didn’t meet,’ I remembered.

  ‘Our eyes met,’ he said, making them do it again.

  He was a step up from Mr Gru that was for sure, a whole flight of stairs.

  ‘Can I get you a beverage?’ Clive appeared at Tourniquet’s elbow.

  ‘What’s that?’ he pointed at my mug.

  ‘I think it’s supposed to be coffee,’ I frowned at Clive.

  ‘One of those, please,’ he said. ‘And a bun.’

  I stared at him, it wasn’t a hardship. He had one of those faces that got better the more you looked at it. It was perfect in that it wasn’t quite perfect. It was a fascinating face and the rest of him matched up, he was tall and slim, yet broad shouldered. He looked like he ran or something similar, not a cyclist, he wasn’t quite stringy enough, but there was, after all, something about him that wasn’t quite perfect.

  ‘Well, what brings you here?’ I said before I fell to the bottom of his huge brown eyes never to find my way back up again.

  ‘I was just passing.’

  I laughed. Even if I hadn’t witnessed his little exchange with Clive it would have been a hilarious lie. Men like Tourniquet didn’t come into the NW Sector.

  ‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘I was just down at Massey’s and he recommended a kebab shop up here, but it isn’t open.’

  ‘Massey?’

  ‘He said he knew you. Do you play?’

  Clive banged one of his beverages down on the table and hovered for eavesdropping purposes.

  ‘No, I don’t play,’ I said once Clive had slouched off. How on earth had my name come up?

  ‘I play for research purposes,’ Tourniquet winced as he burnt his pretty mouth on the coffee. ‘To stay in touch with what the real people are doing.’

  ‘The real people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you mean the little people?’

  He smiled and somewhere a rainbow appeared. ‘No, I mean real people, not like the administration wonks.’

  ‘And the real people don’t play at the legal houses?’

  ‘No, the Work and Labour people play at the legal house and already I know what they’re doing.’

  ‘They’re doing as they’re told,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Boring.’

  Somewhere inside me is a very sensible me who keeps an eye on me and looks after me when I am about to get in trouble. I don’t often listen to sensible me but it is a comfort to know that she’s there. Sensible me said it was time to go before I did anything silly, like dropping my heart into his coffee mug so he could drink it down.

  ‘Right, this has been lovely,’ I said. ‘I’ve got real people things to be doing.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Tourniquet said. ‘It’s been nice to meet more than just your eyes.’

  I made a very noncommittal sound.

  ‘If you get a yen to play a game you should pop down to Massey’s and immerse yourself in his new one.’

  ‘Should I?’ I said. So, he’d got his game but hadn’t needed our help with it. I would be dropping in to see Massey but not to play his stupid game.

  ‘Yes, I think it will appeal to you. You play as part of a gang of five, each with a different power,’ Tourniquet said.

  ‘A different power?’

  ‘Yeah, one is telepathic, one is omnilingual, one can do pyromancy, I forget the others,’ he said. ‘You have to save the world basically.’

  ‘Basically?’ I tried to ignore the way the sign on the door was spinning, saying open then closed, open then closed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s quite brilliant. It’ll be massive, I think. Massey said it’s already all anyone will play.’

  ‘And what character do you play?’ I said.

  ‘Not one of those characters. There’s another set of characters, they’re more political, more head then heart,’ Tourniquet said. ‘There are five of them as well. I play one of them.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘I guess I’m just more interested in strategy that running around setting fire to things. I don’t suppose you play chess?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Anyway, this game is interesting, very different somehow. It becomes more ambiguous the more you play. The way decisions stack up against you is fascinating.’

  ‘Sounds amazing, really it does.’

  ‘You should play,’ he said. ‘You’d love it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. And I don’t play the games. Only a fool would.’

  He smiled and sipped his coffee. ‘Are you calling me a fool?’

  ‘Yes, I think I am.’

  ‘Well, if the cap fits,’ the smile became a grin. ‘Listen if you ever do play it I’ve got a cheat code you can use. ‘

  ‘I won’t play,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s ATLSB-BNAMAH,’ he spelt the letters out at speed. ‘I bet you won’t remember it.’

  There was something about the way he said it that made me suspicious. It was just the kind of useless piece of random information I would be able to remember. I’d still be able to recall it in fifty years. Tourniquet laid down his challenge as though he knew that. I told Clive he could put everything on my tab as I strode through the door to get some air.

  ‘See you around,’ Tourniquet said and the happy bell rang out as the door closed.

  The day only got worse. Before I had a chance to get my jacket off and decide what to do about my new friend, Casino appeared.

  ‘Yum’s been looking for you,’ I said. ‘For some reason he thinks if you don’t answer when he calls your number you’ll answer when he calls mine. Repeatedly. At all hours.’

  ‘Sorry, Sorcha,’ he sounded anything but.

  ‘You will be if you lose your job,’ I said.

  He just disappeared.

  I walked off to the kitchen in search of comfort. I knew I would find some there, it was cake shaped, Roach had been baking. There was a definite improvement in food since Haggia appeared on the scene. She could get anything and she delivered.

  ‘Lola ate it all,’ Casino said as he appeared again. ‘I saw her.’

  I thought-slammed the cupboard door. ‘Could you not creep up on me like that?’

  ‘Don’t be so jumpy.’

  ‘We’ve cured Lola,’ I said. ‘Not that you’ll care.’

  ‘Can you cure me? That would be nice,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t need curing, you can just stay visible, can’t you?’ I realised I hadn’t spoken to him since the on-purpose, as I had started to call the accident. We’d talked but we hadn’t really spoken.

  I was friends with Casino before everyone else was, but that was true of everyone. I met people first then they kind of became part of the family. Other people drifted in and out, usually attached to Lola or Casino but they never stayed long. I used to drink at the Zombie Palace out west because their bar couldn’t read a particular kind of credit card. Every time you paid with it the machine would load it wit
h credit rather than take it off. Not everyone had one of these cards, only me and Minos, which was much more than just a coincidence. Casino worked behind the bar and was eagle-eyed enough to work out what was going on one particular night when he hadn’t been on shift long enough to get drunk. The Zombie Palace was really called the Zuzumba Palace but the staff were always so smashed it had been renamed.

  ‘Hello, Casino,’ I said reading his name badge. For some reason it had been written out twice, maybe because it was so blurred the first time they had to do it again. It also seemed to be animated which struck me as a little odd.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, leaning across the bar and the many empty glasses piled up there. ‘May I ask you a question?’

  ‘Of course you can,’ I said. ‘I might even answer it.’

  ‘How come we seem to be paying you to drink?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I said. ‘Paying me to drink? What a fabulous concept.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ he said and hurried off down the bar to greet a very pretty young man in a very silly pair of spectacles.

  I thought a tactical retreat was in order, so I made my excuses and wandered around trying to find out where they’d move the doors to. When I found them Casino was waiting outside.

  ‘You seem like fun,’ he said. ‘Fancy a drink?’

  ‘Yes, but not here, the bar staff are very suspicious,’ I almost said but didn’t due to the word suspicious being troublesome.

  A few weeks later he got me a job at Packet when my previous courier gig fell through. This wasn’t my fault, it was all due to an unfortunate incident with someone’s wife and an inflatable dinghy with a puncture. He’d been working two jobs to save up for a place to stay which seemed unnecessary given all the room we had access to, so we invited him to move in. You could always tell when people were going to stick, because Minos and Roach, who were part of the family at this point, didn’t chase them away. Casino fitted right in, like he was a long lost cousin or something, the offspring of some embarrassing uncle.

  Casino picked up an apple from a fruit bowl on the table and rubbed it on his sleeve. ‘I don’t think I can just stay visible,’ he said. ‘It’s addictive. It’s all the things you can do when no one can see you.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ he took a huge bite out of the apple.

  ‘I do understand. It’s like the time Lola bought home that guy who was addicted to the homebrew made out of rubber and he would wander off for days and then when he came back he’d pick fights and spy on people.’

  ‘He was a drunk.’

  ‘He was struggling with an addiction.’

  ‘I seem to remember you weren’t so sympathetic at the time. It was you insisted he had to go,’ Casino said.

  ‘I seem to remember he stole a load of Minos’s gear and then hit Roach with a baseball bat but if you’re seeing it through rose-coloured glasses that’s up to you.’ I realised, watching him eat that apple, that he always ate the core as well and that annoyed me. ‘Minos wants to know where his AV equipment has gone, by the way.’

  ‘Are you going to get rid of me?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said.

  ‘Because you could, you know, you could just say the word and everyone would think what a good idea it was and how clever you were and they’d do it. Roach would pick me up by the collar and throw me out for you.’

  He was still wittering on as I walked through the hotel, up the sweeping staircase. I hated arguing with people and he was, as I had pointed out, being ridiculous.

  I flung myself on my bed which groaned under the force of my fling. I had used telekinesis to slam the door. It’s not as dramatic as doing it yourself but it is easier and does, somehow, make you feel much better. Bad planning on my part meant that I had made a terrible error and found myself holed up in my room with nothing to eat or drink and it was the drink part, the alcoholic drink part, that I found most frustrating. I lay on the bed contemplating Massey’s new game and it’s similarity to Prophet’s jolly tale. I figured that it was a coincidence and if Prophet hadn’t said anything I would have thought nothing more about Tourniquet’s gaming habit. I knew there was something wrong with the logic of that but I didn’t care to work out what it was. My thoughts returned to the alcoholic drink and I wondered if perhaps I needed a break from drinking. Casino woke me up from a shallow doze by banging on the door. I told him to go away.

  ‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry,’ he said through the door.

  ‘Have you?’ I’d been had like that before. They say that and then you let them in and they carry on arguing.

  He opened the door and I just could see him standing in the hallway looking forlorn.

  ‘Shut the door,’ I said.

  The door shut.

  ‘I’m on this side,’ said a voice after a moment.

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  Something came and lay on the bed next to me and a depression appeared in the covers that was the shape of a reclining Casino.

  ‘You’re the second strange man to get in my bed in a week,’ I said. ‘At least you don’t snore as much as Prophet.’

  Casino appeared. ‘That is disgusting. But knowing you, you are just being crude and haven’t actually committed to anything as long term as a one night stand.’

  ‘I like my own space.’

  ‘Yes, we know,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have you know that a very handsome man tracked me down for coffee earlier,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, no one.’ I found I didn’t want to tell him about it.

  ‘Let me guess, you fell madly him love with him for five minutes and then crossing the road you saw someone on the way home and fell in love with her and then coming up the street to the hotel you saw someone else and...’

  ‘I thought you came to apologise?’

  ‘I did. I’m sorry.’

  ‘OK. You can go now.’

  He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand hard enough to leave a red mark. I watched it fade while he frowned at the ceiling. His dark hair formed a quiff as it fell back on to the pillow.

  He turned to me. ‘If you could make yourself invisible, what would you do?’

  I thought for a minute. ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘You didn’t.’

  He did.

  For three weeks or so the entire city had been Casino’s playground. There’s nothing you can’t see when you can’t be seen, but human nature dictates that once you’ve watched enough strangers fornicating, what you really want to see is an ex-lover humiliated. I arranged my face into an expression of non-judgmental blankness and agreed that he could tell me anything.

  Casino headed over to Queens where Yomo was shacked up with a rich club organiser called Enterprise Smythe. Yomo was one of the more important men in Casino’s life. Casino was like Lola in that he preferred an endless merry go round of medium term monogamy to my love them for a brief period and forget to mention you’re leaving them rollercoaster. Minos was so terrified of getting a girl pregnant that he couldn’t even talk to women he found attractive or that, and this I could never understand, found him attractive. Roach was above such things, he’d declared himself asexual at the age of fourteen. I would have loved to know why but the only time he’d got close to telling me I’d had to get him so drunk he’d passed out at the critical moment. If he’d only stayed conscious for another twenty seconds I’d have known.

  We’d all liked Yomo at first. He was laugh out loud funny, easy on the eye and didn’t ask stupid questions about things that were none of his business. Like why we had a swimming pool full of helicopter parts and five large barrels full of little blue sex pills in the executive suite. He was a dancer in an exclusive club in the Riverside Sector. Sure, we liked him at first. Then he started giving Casino the run around. He was seeing other people when they hadn’t agreed that was how things would be. Roach
sat Yomo down and gave him the talk. He kept it paternal the first time but the next time he addressed him with more menace, it was to no avail. Casino came home the following week in tears because Yomo had been seeing yet another dancer. Then another. Then another. It went on and on. Then it was goodbye Casino, hello Enterprise Smythe. Yomo decided not to tell Casino this. He thought it would be more appropriate to get Smythe to throw him a birthday party at the club Smythe part-owned and invite Casino so he could spend all night watching Yomo and his new boyfriend getting up close and personal in a club filled to capacity with six hundred clubbers hopped up on little blue sex pills. Casino arrived with arms laden with gifts and birthday wishes and left with ears full of jibes and scornful laughter. It seems that the one thing that really warms the hearts of rich people is other people’s public pain. Who would have thought it? We were full of cunning ideas for revenge but Casino wanted to let it go, to move on. We couldn’t work out why. Lola was full on for vengeance, Roach was keen to bang some heads together and Minos and I could have destroyed his entire life. Given an hour in front of the right databases we could even fix it so he’d never been born. It was high-risk but would have been worth it. But no, Casino was magnanimous and moved on. It seemed he was just biding his time.

  ‘They shouldn’t really live in Queens,’ Casino said. ‘They commute to the Riverside Sector to work. They’re traitors.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose the Riverside Sector would have them.’

  ‘They have a flat on the crossroads, the one where you go up to that blues club you like,’ Casino turned over on to his stomach. ‘I slipped in as they came out and spent a couple of hours setting up some surveillance equipment that I borrowed, I borrowed you understand, from Minos. Nothing complicated, just a hidden fixed camera that I could use to record a short film, I couldn’t carry anything big, it had to fit in my pockets. Then I waited for them to come home. Oh, I forget to say that before I did that I went to Enforce Headquarters.’

  ‘The main one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you got in?’

  ‘Yes, I just walked in behind some officers. I only went to check security and it’s really lax. Just a swipe card and a visual check. If they can’t see you, you can get in really easily.’

  ‘I guess they don’t know to guard against invisible people,’ I thought of all the missions we could send an invisible Casino on. I’d always assumed that the headquarters had the same legendary security that the Detention Centre had.

  ‘It was there I got my bright idea. I stole some Factor T45 from this massive warehouse they have. It’s like this enormous underground hangar full of equipment.’

  ‘What’s Factor T45?’

  ‘It’s that stuff they pump sex offenders full of to stop them from having urges.’

  ‘I see.’ Sex offenders was a very broad term, and one I didn’t approve of. It included pregnant teenagers, prostitutes, people with disabilities and a libido, the list ran on and on. Factor T45 was a chemical sledgehammer to crack the social peanut that was poor people having sex and enjoying it. There were public information campaigns that whipped up such hysteria you would have thought that the city was sinking beneath the weight of rampant sex pests and immoral women corrupting anyone they made eye contact with. As usual the actual problem was ignored so that the Administration classes could continue to attend their friends’ hardcore fetish parties without feeling guilty.

  ‘So, pay attention, I took the T45 to Yomo’s,’ Casino had sensed I had drifted into thoughts of politics and was determined I should not sink into despondency.

  ‘With Minos’s camera,’ I was paying attention.

  ‘Oh, wait. There was something funny at the warehouse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you know that Imagination Industries supply Enforce with equipment?’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Yeah, all the packaging is stamped with their logo, but not the products. I guess they want to keep that quiet,’ Casino said. ‘So, I waited for them to get back from work. They almost caught me actually because I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until I heard them open the door. So, they came in and poured some drinks and put on some porn. They aren’t getting on very well, I’m so sorry to report.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, I think Yomo is getting a bit fed up of Smythe’s roving eye.’

  ‘You reap what you sow,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. Well funnily, given my plan, Smythe told Yomo that if he wasn’t so good in bed he would have left him long ago. So, I poured some T45 in Yomo’s drink. And then I put some more in his next drink and then his next and so it carried on until they moved to somewhere more comfortable.’

  I grimaced. Casino laughed.

  ‘Poor Yomo, you can imagine his confusion when nothing worked as it should. The funny thing is that T45 doesn’t remove your urges, it just prevents the biomechanics from working properly. I didn’t realise that. His head still wanted to do it he just couldn’t get his body to join in.’

  ‘Then how does it work on women?’ I said.

  ‘I guess it doesn’t. They just think it does.’

  ‘Do Enforce know that? Maybe Imagination Industries are ripping them off?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anyway, the point of my story being that Smythe was furious. I wasn’t sure what I’d end up with footage of, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d get Yomo pleading with himself to behave. The bit where he begs Smythe to be nice to him because he might be dying is hilarious. You should watch it. I’ve uploaded it with captions because when he’s wailing it’s really hard to understand what he’s saying.’

  ‘That’s what Minos was talking about, he said Yomo was on the DarkNet chart, but I thought he was in some music video or something,’ I laughed. ‘He said it looked like Yomo but he wasn’t entirely sure.’

  ‘It only took off because so many people recognised his tattoo. It’s in a pretty intimate spot.’

  ‘And I suppose he’s done the dirty on so many people they’d all recognise it.’ It was a quite brilliant plan.

  ‘He’s always wanted to be famous,’ Casino said. ‘Now he is. Sometimes you just have to give the people what they want. I think playing it in the club helped. I put it on a loop and password locked it. You see, I have learnt something from you.’

  ‘In Smythe’s club?’

  ‘Yeah, eighteen screens over five floors. For hours and hours. Yomo can’t leave the flat because everyone starts laughing and impersonating him. There’s a certain catchphrase that’s very popular but I won’t repeat it because I know you have sensitive ears.’

  ‘Revenge is fun,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Casino said. ‘The rest of it though? That’s not fun.’

  I opened my mouth to say something but thought better of it.

  ‘You know what I think?’ he said and didn’t wait for me to say that I didn’t. ‘I think Prophet is insane and he’s just sparked something in your mad, twisted imagination and you’re running with it.’

  ‘I’m not imagining that you can make yourself invisible,’ I said.

  ‘No, but you are imagining the why. There’s no point to it, Sorcha. That hospital, the doctors, the waking up here, you know what I think? I think that we’re being experimented on. I saw the set up at Enforce headquarters, they’ve got medical people and scientists working on all sorts of things and some of it works and unlike T45 it works properly.’

  ‘So you think we’re guinea pigs for some Enforce trial?’

  ‘And your alternative is more likely?’

  ‘I don’t have an alternative. I never said that I did.’

  ‘Then what are you saying?’ Casino said.

  ‘I’m not saying anything, we’re waiting to see at the moment,’ I said. ‘We’re waiting for something to happen.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I don’t want any part of this,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help.’

  ‘I didn’t ask
for your help.’

  ‘You never do,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to. We’re like a pack of wolves, one’s in we’re all in.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re being like this.’

  ‘Because this is insane.’

  ‘At least it’s something.’ I said.

  ‘Are you that bored, Sorcha? That desperate for something different to do?’

  I didn’t trust myself to answer.

  ‘This is it for me,’ he said. ‘I’m out of here tomorrow.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘I don’t know. Anywhere. I can do anything I like now.’

  This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be part of the plan and I was clinging on to the idea that there was a plan. The idea that someone, somewhere had the faintest idea of what was going on. The redhead, I was holding out for her.

  ‘Give me a week,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  He looked at the floor for a very long time.

  ‘As it’s you, and only for you,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you three days.’