by Kevin Hearne
“Aye. But I assume I’ll no do most of them. Nothing tae do now but the sheep.” He blinked, realizing he may have given the wrong impression. “I mean, nothing tae do now but take care of the sheep. And the ducks and the farm and that. Shite, that didnae come out right at all.”
“It’s awright, I take yer meaning,” I said. “I’m in the printing business.”
“Flyers and whatnot?”
“Aye, but also books, magazines, bottle labels, ye name it.”
We chatted amiably the rest of the way into Arnprior, a village even tinier than Kippen, and I enjoyed the freedom of it. I would never see Hamish again after the ride, so there was no need for me to get out my phone to talk. He dropped me off a block away from the bus stop and caught my eye before I closed the door.
“Hey, Al. I can see ye’re on the run.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Fancy men with scratched faces dinnae hitchhike for the fun of it. I dinnae know which is the truth, so I’ll say it both ways: I hope ye get away if ye’re a good man who lost a fight with a bastard, and if ye’re the bastard, I hope they catch ye.”
“A wish for justice,” I said, nodding in approval. “Thanks, Hamish. I hope the micro-distilling goes well. But do stop shagging yer sheep, awright? They cannae give consent.”
I closed the door and grinned at him through the window. He was shouting something profane and raising two fingers at me. I laughed as he sped away and kept my hat carefully concealed beneath my coat. From here to home I’d be under surveillance. But I’d be a random person going to Glasgow from a point outside of where the mysterious glitches stopped happening. It was a good wait for the bus back to Stirling and then another train ride back to Queen Street station, and my three or four hours away had turned into six; it was late afternoon by the time I got back to the flat. Buck paused the show he’d been watching and stood up on the couch to peer over the back of it at me.
“Where ye been all this time, MacBharrais? Did ye stop for a pint or seven in Edinburgh?”
I fetched my phone from the counter where I’d left it and typed a reply. [No. I’ve been to Stirling and hitchhiked with a farmer who may or may not have been sober. Anything happen here?]
I meant anything dangerous, but Buck interpreted it as a request to be caught up on what had happened in the remainder of Hamlet, as if I was unaware. “Well, I’ve learned that if ye’re eavesdropping on people in a confined space, ye shouldn’t ever shout and reveal yer presence. And ye should run away screaming from any prince dressed all in black, unless yer name is Horatio. I mean, Hamlet flat out murders his so-called friends from school, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and he didnae have tae do so. He could have simply ditched them, but he made sure they got kilt, and at the end this old English guy comes in, everyone is tits up except for Fortinbras and Horatio, and he says that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are deid.”
[That’s the title of a brilliant play by Tom Stoppard.]
“Wot is?”
[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead retells Hamlet from the point of view of literature’s most hapless duo.]
“Why?”
[Many reasons. Meditations on theater and free will and absurdity and plenty of wordplay. Worries about identity and how much of it is self-generated and how much is assigned by others.]
“Hey. I chose ma own name. Buck Foi is who I am now. Not the old name assigned by ma parents.”
[That is true. You have surpassed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in that regard. They’re confused most of the time, conscious that something larger than themselves is happening, but unable to achieve the proper perspective to grapple with it, much less alter their destiny.]
“That sounds grim as all fuck.”
[Life tends to be. But it’s also a comedy.]
“Maybe I’ll watch that tomorrow, then. I cannae handle any more tragedy today. I need some light entertainment, one of those game shows where people get knocked down a lot.”
I found him a channel full of such shows, and he was guffawing soon enough at people sent tumbling into pools of icy water.
[I have to text my hacker and might have to go out again. Carry on.]
I opened Signal and asked Saxon if he was available to discuss a big job. He responded that he was, and I requested that he meet me at a pub rather than his place. The anonymity and noise of a crowd would suit us well.
We met in a dark footballers’ pub, where the game was on and nobody paid attention to us. I still wrote everything down on actual paper, typing nothing into a device.
“Awright, so what’s the job?” Saxon asked when we were seated and had our pints in front of us.
Need to find males who flew into Glasgow Airport and put a 571 area code into their reservation in the last three months. Most likely they would be flying out of D.C.
Saxon gave a low whistle and requested my pen to reply.
Hacking airlines is not going to be easy. It’s much closer to impossible, not to mention extremely risky.
I nodded solemnly and wrote, Can you do it, though?
“Maybe,” he said aloud. “If I get a list, then what do ye want?”
I wrote, Look them up and see which ones fit the profile you came up with. Government workers with connections to intelligence and an ax to grind.
“Jesus suffering fuck,” he said. He picked up his pint and chugged the whole thing. “Can’t answer now,” he continued when he set the glass down. “Need to figure it out first. If it can be done, I’ll Signal you with a price.”
I nodded, and he left. I used the candle at the table to burn the paper we’d written on, and a few football fans saw that and realized I must have burned something damning, because why else burn something when you could toss it in the bin? They regarded me uncertainly and I stared back at them, daring them to say something. They decided to ignore me and returned to their pints of Tennent’s lager and shouting at the television. Well done, sports fans.
I took my time with my pint, abruptly worn out and feeling miserable, my face throbbing. I worried that the scratches might be infected. I needed to draw some new healing sigils tomorrow, but mostly I needed sleep. I Signaled Nadia.
Going to be late tomorrow morning.
Get in when you feel like it. Or take a day off.
Thanks.
It was a slow walk back home, and when I got to the flat I told Buck I was knackered and just needed sleep. He turned off the telly and said that was fine by him.
“I don’t s’pose ye swung by the office and picked up any of those fine healing sigils?”
I shook my head. [Need to make more tomorrow. Haven’t had a string of injuries like this in a long time.]
The hobgoblin winced, gently probing the tender bits where the barghest had bitten him. “Do ye have anything to help me sleep, then?”
I nodded. [Get into bed and I’ll give you a sigil.]
He popped out of sight and immediately called from the bedroom, where he’d teleported. “Hurry up, ol’ man, I’m ready.”
I fetched two sigils from my study and took them into his room. I broke the seal on a Sigil of Restful Sleep in front of Buck’s eyes, and they immediately began to droop.
“Oh, that’s dreamy, that is…” And he was out. The other copy of that sigil was for me. Sometimes sleep is all ye need. Sometimes it’s not, but it will just help a whole damn lot.
* * *
—
When I woke in the middle of the next morning, there was a message on Signal for me from Saxon Codpiece, but it had been sent only a few minutes ago.
It’s done. But I need £20K and twenty sigils. You get one name. The right name.
It’s a deal, I replied. I’ll make the arrangements. Who is it?
Naw, payment first. I’ll draw up an invoice for the printshop. Make the draft to Tartan Industr
ial Supply.
That must be one of Saxon’s many shell corporations that he used to launder his hacking income. Right. Caffè Nero behind St. Enoch subway station, one hour.
I splashed water on my face and got dressed, taking time to check the many pockets of my topcoat to make sure that the sigils that were supposed to be there still were and noting which pockets needed refilling. I also made sure my official ID was safe.
Buck was knuckling sleep out of his eyes in the kitchen when I emerged from my room. “What’s up, MacBharrais? Feeling better?”
[Rested, if not well. Still aching and sore. You?]
“Same. What’s for brekkie?”
[Whatever you like. I have to go out quickly and meet someone and then go to work long enough to make healing sigils at the very least. I’ll try to get back early. Remember not to go out. Whoever sent those barghests might try to get us again, now that they can assume the hounds failed.]
The hobgoblin’s shoulders drooped, and he looked a bit forlorn. “Okay. Bye.”
I felt bad at leaving him so cooped up on his own, but I didn’t have a choice. He’d not have a reasonable assurance of safety until we broke up Gordie’s trafficking ring on all sides. And beyond that, he wouldn’t have a reasonable chance of surviving his acquaintance with me for more than a year if I didn’t find out who’d cursed me.
There was a Barclays bank not far from my flat. I had just enough time to walk there and then to Caffè Nero. My printshop account had enough padding to handle Saxon’s significant fee, but only just. I realized I might be able to replenish it with Buck’s help. Surely there was a massive corporation somewhere that wasn’t paying enough taxes on their profits. Draining some of those and laundering the proceeds as large press runs would do the public some good, as I was protecting everyone from invasions of Fae and other undesirables, and Buck’s mental health would be improved immeasurably if I gave him a to-do list that included stealing. Nadia was well used to adding ghost jobs to our presses and our books by now; I had a lot of strange expenses and stranger streams of income, and she juggled it all.
Once I got the draft, I stuffed it into an envelope and then spent a few minutes quickly drawing twenty Sigils of Sexual Vigor at the little station where people filled out withdrawal and deposit slips. It was probably the most sexual vigor ever displayed in a bank lobby. I couldn’t seal them with wax as I normally would—I had the kit in my coat, but banks tended to frown on candles and flames and the like—so a thumb’s length of Sellotape served instead. I crammed them into the envelope with the draft and slipped it into my left coat pocket.
The Caffè Nero behind St. Enoch station was housed in the old brick ticket depot for the tube, at once a crass repurposing of a lovely old building and a wonderful way to make sure the building got visited and loved. When I entered, I spied Saxon Codpiece sitting in a bench booth along the back wall and gave him the tiniest nod of hello as I got in line for coffee. I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink yet, and I needed to fortify.
Before I could make it to the counter to place my order, however, someone tapped my right shoulder.
“Mr. MacBharrais? Fancy meeting ye here. What a strange coincidence.”
I turned around and saw the smirking face of D.I. Tessa Munro.
There was nothing fancy or coincidental about it. D.I. Munro did not frequent this café, or I would have remembered seeing the grey hair before. The fact that she came in directly behind me meant that she’d had the place staked out—which suggested that she had done some significant investigative work on my habits already.
There was no doubt plenty of archived surveillance footage demonstrating that I liked this particular café. The staff knew me as a regular and asked me if I wanted the usual and all I had to do was nod and pay. It saved me the trouble of having to get out my phone to talk. Living with this curse meant that I tended to frequent places that accommodated me and provided the closest thing to a frictionless experience I could have. Habits like that made me easy to find, though. I gave her a tight grin and nod with a small tug on the brim of my sigil-free hat to greet her and turned back around, knowing that she wouldn’t be dissuaded from talking to me but making it very clear I didn’t wish to talk to her. If she wanted a conversation, she’d have to work for it.
“My goodness, Mr. MacBharrais, what happened tae yer face? Did someone rough ye up?”
I got my phone out of my right pocket and launched the text-to-speech app, still turned away. [I’m fine. Thanks for asking.] That reply didn’t answer her question, and I planned to give her that sort of answer as often as I could.
“Running a bit late to the office today?”
It was nearly ten A.M. I shrugged. Owner’s prerogative.
“I’m glad I ran into ye, actually. I have some more questions about your employees. It appears that Gordon Graham was not the first of yours tae die. Turns out that seven of them have died in the past eleven years, all very young people in their primes.”
I shrugged again. There had not been an actual question there.
“All of them were accidents, supposedly, but it’s an extraordinary series of misfortunes. A string of deadly accidents like that would make most workplaces shut down, don’t ye think?”
[If they had occurred in the workplace, sure.]
None of my apprentices had died on the job. I knew now that they had been indirectly murdered, and I wanted to know who was responsible even more than D.I. Munro did. We were on the same side in that regard. Except I had no ideas about who might be responsible for their deaths and she was obviously thinking I had something to do with them. I supposed she wasn’t wrong, since my curse had done them in, and I certainly felt my own share of guilt for it. But the true murderer was whoever laid the curse on me.
“Right, right. But ye look at the tragic ends of these young bright lives and the common denominator is you.”
[Their deaths weren’t part of a neat math equation, D.I. If anything, they demonstrate chaos theory,] I said. It was my turn to order, and the server smiled and asked if I wanted my usual. I nodded and stepped forward to tap my bank card on the pay terminal, then slid down past the pastry case to wait for my standard order, a medium hazelnut latte. I had about thirty to forty seconds before the D.I. would join me and ask another question, so I typed out something and waited for her to arrive. After she paid for her order and came down, opening her mouth, I pressed the little playback button.
[I contribute some scraps of information to D.I. Macleod occasionally and might be able to do the same for you. Would you be interested in some information about human traffickers if I could find some?]
“Macleod mentioned ye’d helped him out here and there. That makes me only more curious about ye. How does a printshop owner nearing retirement know so much about the criminal underworld?”
[I’ve cultivated a rich and varied garden of friends.]
“I’ll give ye points for horticultural metaphors. I like a fine bed of tulips ma self. Whatever information ye have, I could pass on tae someone who handles it. You’re intae human trafficking, then?”
[No, I’m not.]
“Neither am I. I’m intae murders. Solving them, that is. Have any of those lying about?”
[Celtic murdered Rangers last week at the football stadium, but that was to get back at Rangers for murdering them the year before. That’s all I know in the way of murders, D.I. Munro.]
My drink came up and I plucked it off the shelf, slipping my phone into my pocket, effectively ending the conversation. D.I. Munro noted this and smiled wryly.
“Right. Well, have a good day, Mr. MacBharrais. Do call if ye think of anything.”
I turned away and very purposely sat at a different table from Saxon Codpiece, giving him a tiny shake of the head. I removed my coat, draped it over the back of a chair, and then sat on the opposite side, where I could see th
e detective inspector pick up her coffee, raise it briefly in a mock cheers, and exit.
That encounter was entirely too strange. She hadn’t staked me out and confronted me just to get a coffee and bring up my dead apprentices. I mean, that was part of it, sure—she wanted me to know she’d been sniffing around me and would continue to do so. Buck had crunched his fist into her nose, and she remembered me being in Gordie’s flat and wasn’t going to let it go. A visit like this was likely intended to goad me into some action that would reveal secrets she was sure I was hiding. But that couldn’t be all. She was fishing hard. What had been her game there?
She sort of snuck up on me—oh. I blinked a couple of times, replaying the encounter and letting my paranoia work. I made eye contact with Saxon and held up a hand, telling him to wait. I fetched my coat from the table and began to examine it minutely, especially the shoulders and back. Nothing. But deep in my right-hand pocket, where I typically kept my phone, there was a little nugget of something. I had difficulty getting hold of it, for it was narrow and trapped in the crease, like a flexible toothpick. My fingers were able to detect its presence but not lay hold of it easily. I was patient and kept at it, eventually extracting a thin filament of something that wasn’t natural at all. It was a bug, one of the sleek modern ones. She must have slipped it in after I’d pulled out my phone and began typing replies to her. I placed it in the crease of the seat cushion behind me. Let them listen to a day’s worth of café noise and conversation.
I wasn’t satisfied, of course, that I’d found everything. I’d do a much more thorough search later. For now I’d conclude my business with Saxon. We needed to do it out of sight of any cameras, though. I tossed my head minutely, indicating that he should follow me, and he nodded. I put my coat back on and went upstairs to the bathrooms and waited. He came in less than a minute later. I removed the envelope from my left pocket and proffered it to him, raising my right finger to my lips. Once he took it, I texted him via Signal.
No words. I’m worried about bugs. He checked his phone and nodded, then opened the envelope to confirm its contents. Satisfied, he sent me a Signal back.