Proximity

by Jem Tugwell

  ‘I don’t drink.’ My health preferences were set to no alcohol, no caffeine and low-sugar, and that cut out loads of the bar’s drinks and juices. I scanned the filtered list of drinks left on my HUD. ‘Just still water, please.’

  ‘Still water and a pint,’ Clive said to the barman.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but you know I can’t give you beer while you’re on duty and you have an Excess Consumption Order. I can only serve you water or a zero calorie decaf drink,’ the barman replied.

  ‘Medical advice used to be that booze was good for stress relief,’ Clive tried.

  ‘No way that’s true, old man.’ The barman softened his tone. ‘I can send you some whale song music if you’re stressed.’

  Clive looked at me like he was trapped in some kind of parallel universe.

  ‘Fuck, what sort of pub serves whale music instead of beer?’

  ***

  We took two armchairs, sitting opposite each other with a round table and our iced water between us. Clive picked up his menu.

  ‘Everything good is greyed out,’ he moaned.

  I picked up mine. As it was a weekday, all the red meat options were unavailable. ‘Salads look tasty.’

  He swiped left and groaned. ‘Maybe for you. I don’t mind a chicken Caesar salad but my version’s got the cheese, dressing and croutons crossed out. It’s basically grilled chicken on plain lettuce. Food’s so boring.’

  I zoned out his complaints as I got a personal mail notification in my ear and brought it up on my HUD. The mail was from Mum, with next week’s menu choices. ‘If you find food boring, you should use the RBR collaboration site like we do.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s like a dating site for food but based on the menus from the Roux/Blumenthal/Ramsay kitchen. You put in your age, gender, and preferences. Then you select what foods you like and dislike, ideal preparation times, and technical ability level. You have to sign the disclaimer to let them see your health records so that they can plan for any allergies, restrictions on diet and calorie targets.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘You get a weekly choice of ten menus, and you choose the seven you want. It’s so easy. It only gives menus that you like and with the correct portion sizes.’

  ‘Do they send you a chef to cook it?’

  ‘Of course not. The raw ingredients get ordered and delivered automatically, then your fridge dispenses the ingredients and pushes the cooking instructions to your HUD when it’s time to cook.’

  ‘Great,’ he said, disinterested.

  ‘Choosing what to eat is always the hardest part of food shopping, and RBR minimises all of the wasted food that used to go past its sell-by date and get thrown away.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll take a look,’ Clive said.

  I was only trying to be helpful, but he couldn’t be arsed to improve his health.

  He looked at the menu again. ‘Chicken and lettuce it is, I suppose.’ He clicked to order and put his menu down.

  I chose a nice mixed salad.

  ‘This place used to be a proper pub. Booze and sports on TV,’ he said.

  ‘You can still get both here.’

  ‘I can’t get booze.’

  ‘Well no, not today. When does the order end?’

  ‘Two more days.’

  ‘That’s not long. Why ask for a beer today?’

  ‘You’ve got to try.’

  ‘Really?’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Well, there’s still sport.’ I nodded at one of the large screens around the pub showing the highlights of some football match. I hadn’t connected to the audio stream, so the players chased the white ball around the screen in silence.

  ‘That’s not football. Not like when I was a kid. I gave up watching when it went fully non-contact.’

  ‘I never followed it.’

  ‘To be fair, with all the diving the game was non-contact for years before tackling was banned for being too dangerous.’

  Next to me, a large man in builder’s clothes groaned, and I looked up. He was gesticulating at the TV, and I wondered what could be so annoying. ‘Put the fucking game back on,’ he shouted.

  ‘Boss.’ I grabbed at Clive’s sleeve so he could see the screen. ‘Look.’

  The newsreader looked shocked. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the banner underneath her on the screen said, ‘Junior Technology Minister Alan Kane Missing’.

  16

  DI Clive Lussac

  ‘How did the press find out first?’ I asked.

  Bhatt sighed. ‘He was meant to be the chair for a briefing multicast. When he didn’t show up, one of the journalists paid iMe for a signal trace.’

  Bhatt seemed about to launch into a tirade about journalists, but she forced herself to stop, and her office went still and calm. I thought Zoe and I had got through unscathed, but it proved to be a false hope.

  ‘Clive, find him, or there’ll be real trouble. Career ending trouble.’ Bhatt started again.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘I’ve had calls from the chief constable’s office and the prime minister’s office.’ She was repeating herself. ‘I’m at risk. They said my position was dependent on a successful conclusion to this. That means both of your positions are as well.’

  For the first time since I had known her, Bhatt looked worried. She started pacing and stopped to wash her hands for at least the fifth time.

  ‘The press are whipping up a real panic. They’re spinning it like it’s the end of the world. The end of iMe. It’s just as well they don’t know about Karina.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I hoped to find safety in silence.

  ‘I have a press conference in an hour, and I have nothing new to tell them. I’m going to get annihilated. You need to give me something, Clive. And quickly.’

  I searched the carpet for some familiar stains, hoping it would hide me somehow.

  ‘Clive,’ she snapped. ‘Haven’t you got anything to say? No help or information?’

  ‘To be fair, ma’am, we’ve only just been given the Alan Kane case. We’ve run the tracks and Kane’s signal stops after he got home.’

  ‘I know that, but it doesn’t help me.’ She shook her head in frustration.

  ‘Can we have more staff on the case to help?’

  She went back to her desk, still rubbing her hands, as if she would gain some comfort from the action. ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘I said I’m working on it.’ She shut me down with a swipe of her finger. ‘What’s your next step?’

  ‘We’re going to Kane’s house.’

  ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Call me to tell me what you find. Give me something to tell the press conference.’

  We left the office and headed for the car. Bhatt was only thinking about Alan Kane now.

  I couldn’t let them forget Karina.

  ***

  ‘Do you think that Alan and Karina knew each other?’ Zoe said when we were comfy in the car.

  ‘I like your thought process, Zoe.’ We hadn’t had time to look for a connection between the cases. ‘Do you mean as lovers?’

  Karina was pretty, and the news was full of Alan’s previous form with Esme, the intern. It would also give Dave a motive. ‘Check for links between them.’

  Zoe noted it but said, ‘That’s not what I meant. I meant a background check on both of them as individuals. Something or someone in their pasts.’

  ‘Good thinking, add that to our list.’

  Unlike the journey to Karina’s home to talk to Dave, I used this car journey to do some research.

  Alan Kane was one of the civil servants on the iMe pilot program, but still couldn’t resist temptation. Three years ago, the papers were full of calls for his resignation, and his wife telling of betrayal and infidelity. How could someone who knows the technology, take an intern to their hotel bed at the party conference and not think about their signal tracks? One tabloid had the trace from iMe and showed some image
s of Kane and Esme’s separate green signal dots enter the hotel bedroom. The dots came together and spent the night and morning moving around the bed. A TV show ran a mock investigation into why iMe wasn’t accurate enough to tell who was on top. Kane’s affair and divorce made a splash in the press, but the career dive made much bigger waves.

  Recently he had been on the comeback trail and back in the news.

  Now he was missing.

  ***

  I selected a few menu items on my HUD and then double clicked on the search warrant. Alan’s front door unlocked.

  The house was a soulless, sterile place. Alan had no pictures or personal items here; just drab rented furniture to match the bleak rented house. I tried not to see the similarities with my own flat.

  It was like Alan had moved in with a suitcase of clothes and hadn’t committed to life here. More likely, he was hoping the house would be a temporary base while he worked on alternatives. Who was he dreaming of though: wife and family, or Esme? Probably both.

  We checked through the house, and its small size meant that we were done almost before we started. Each room was the same bland box. He had made no attempt to leave a personal footprint anywhere.

  ‘We’ve got two signals we can’t see now. What’s happening to iMe?’ Zoe grumbled. She had asked so many times, and each time her hands clasped and unclasped.

  I shrugged. ‘Try not to worry. Focus on the here and now.’

  She wore grey today and looked diminished by the gloomy colour, like it had seeped into her skin. She scanned the room. ‘No sign of a struggle – just like Karina,’ she concluded.

  ‘Not quite. There’s something not right in here. Look again. Think about what you can see. Ask yourself what doesn’t look right or seems out of place.’

  ‘What? I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Stand by the front door and tell me again about the last few minutes of the signal. Overlay the signal with what you can see here.’

  Zoe’s hands typed on her HUD, and as she watched the signal trace again, I could see colour changes flashing in her eye, like being outside a dark room with a display wall playing a film.

  ‘Well, he came home and opened the door, stepped in and wiped his feet,’ she frowned, ‘then the signal goes jerky. Maybe he tripped and stumbled back into this room.’

  ‘Stop,’ I interrupted. ‘There was a spray pattern on the wall in Karina’s entrance hall. I didn’t think it was anything at the time.’

  We scoured the walls around Alan’s front door but found no trace of a similar spray.

  ‘Send a forensic drone to check the spray residue on Karina’s wall, and get one to scan this house as well.’

  ‘Sure, Boss.’

  ‘Carry on replaying the trace, Zoe.’

  ‘Alan turned around and went to that chair for a minute, then his signal stopped.’ She looked at the armchair: a nondescript thing, bought by the landlord, not for comfort or style, but for the price and all its compulsory health and safety stickers.

  Zoe brightened. ‘The chair’s been moved from its usual place – the feet don’t match the indents in the carpet.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘This section of carpet has been vacuumed. You can see the marks still. If you were cleaning, then why only do this little bit?’

  ‘To hide something or to clean something up. Look carefully at the carpet between the chair and the door.’

  ‘Is that a faint drag mark to the door that the cleaning didn’t remove?’

  17

  DI Clive Lussac

  The only redeeming feature of the PCU office was that we could treat it as our own. We had cleared an area around a display wall and started throwing images at it. The boundary of the space was made of unused desks, shoved into a rough semicircle. It gave us room to walk and think, and the edges of the desks made convenient ad hoc seats.

  The display wall showed the main page of our case file. Under the heading ‘Missing’, we had images of Karina and Alan. The emptiness of the rest of the case file shouted our lack of progress. Under the ‘Possible Suspects’ heading, only Art Walker, Manu Ameobi and Emma Bailey stared back at us. Pushed out to one side to reflect our uncertainty, an image of Karina’s boyfriend, Dave, made an appearance. I drew a question mark on Dave, grinning childishly as I placed it so that it looked like it hung from one of his dangling earlobes.

  Zoe tutted and shook her head.

  I stood back to look at the wall, taking in the sparseness of our efforts. ‘We haven’t got any real suspects.’

  ‘Who should we add?’ Zoe asked as she stepped forward and moved the question mark I had drawn away from Dave’s ear. I resisted the urge to move it back.

  ‘Alan’s wife and Esme, I guess, even though they probably couldn’t suppress Alan’s signal.’

  ‘OK.’ Zoe’s hand moved in front of her. She swiped right to create a new page on the wall, and, one finger extended, wrote in mid-air. Her notes automatically mirrored on the wall.

  ‘And, we can’t rule out iMe staff. Get a list of who works there. We’ll use it as a long-list and then narrow it down.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Another possibility is anyone with enough money and time, but that’s too long a list to be useful without a lead.’

  ‘Yep.’ She added more notes.

  ‘And check out any “I’ll bring the system down” type threats against iMe. Kane was linked to iMe and his going missing could be political rather than personal.’

  ‘Yep,’ she said again, her hand still out in front of her.

  ‘One person missing could be a bug, but two feels more contrived. The marks on Kane’s carpet looked like someone dragged him out.’

  iMe were looking into the ‘error’ option, so we needed to investigate the criminal possibility. I paced the corral of desks, dragging my finger across the dusty desktops, hoping for inspiration, but getting nowhere. My heart started beating a little quicker. In the old days, I would have been full of bravado and determination to find the victims and catch the villains. Now, I felt guilty about the excitement the challenge of the case brought.

  A call from Mary cut through my thoughts. ‘Clive, we’ve finally got the house valuation, and I sent you the divorce demand earlier.’

  I hadn’t even looked at the demand. I knew denial wasn’t really going to get me anywhere, but the demand felt so final. I headed for the far end of the office so that Zoe couldn’t hear.

  ‘Clive, are you listening?’

  ‘Sure, I need to action the divorce demand.’

  ‘Please do it now. Dragging it out will only make it more painful for us both.’

  ‘I’m sorry it went wrong,’ I said, regret in my voice.

  Mary was quiet for a moment, and her sadness resonated as she said, ‘Don’t start, Clive. All your second chances sucked me dry.’

  I knew she was right.

  ‘Bye, Mary.’ I hung up and opened the demand.

  I skimmed through the first few pages of legal terms and conditions until I could see the list of her grounds for divorce. It was a long list, including my repeated deviation from Model Citizen, untidiness, mood swings, not listening, incompatible menu choices, inability to adapt or to change. It went on and on.

  I clicked ‘Acknowledge’ and saw a page for me to enter my counter-grounds. It invited me to ‘Click all the things that apply’ but all I could really put a tick against was ‘Micro-management’ and ‘Bossy’.

  I clicked ‘Next’, and my HUD showed the financials page. As we had no kids or pets, we qualified for the auto-settle quickie divorce. Our only asset was the house, and its value showed at the top of the page. Underneath was the government’s 15% buy-back fee for the house. I winced at the amount, but it was cheaper and quicker than lawyers.

  I clicked ‘Apportion Blame’ and waited. The settlement page appeared. The result was 90% to 10% in Mary’s favour. My continual deviation from the Model was the main reason for the score. It was hard to disagree with th
e truth.

  Was this really the end of my marriage? Was an empty flat my future?

  I moved my hand past the ‘Click to Accept’ button and pressed ‘Save for Later’.

  ***

  Eventually, I joined Zoe in the research, and we stayed until 11:30pm. I checked the backgrounds of Karina and Alan and searched for any links between them. Zoe was looking at iMe and the history of the staff. I stretched and yawned, too tired to continue. ‘Let’s call it a night, Zoe. What have you got?’

  She looked exhausted as she rubbed at her eyes. ‘I’ve got some more iMe staff for our possible suspects list.’

  I looked at the images Zoe threw at the wall. She attached a name, age and job description to the bottom of each. She touched and moved them around, grouping the people by their job descriptions.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Be patient, Boss, there’s only me and I cancelled my friends to stay here.’

  ‘OK, sorry.’ I wasn’t sure if she was complaining about missing her evening out or the lack of help.

  ‘But there is something…’ She teased me by not finishing.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘While I was researching the staff of iMe, I took a look at the history of the company. You know that all the recent press about iMe is linked to Art. The story is written like he was the brains behind it. Like the whole thing was his idea.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Ever heard of Esteban Jimenez?’

  The name trawled up a hazy memory, but I couldn’t place it. ‘Um, I think so.’

  ‘Well, his name came up on a pre-iMe old news item, so I did some digging. It seems like he was in at the start of iMe. He was Art’s business partner.’

  ‘Wait, maybe…’ I squinted, trying to sharpen the image, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember. What happened to him?’

  ‘The reports I found hinted that he and Art had a bust-up about iMe being taken over and used by the government. He left or got kicked out – it’s not clear. The rumour is that he went off-grid.’

  ‘Off-grid? What does that mean?’

  ‘Apparently, he found a way to step outside the system when he wanted.’