by Ian Rankin
“It’s no problem then—”
“But I don’t want to leave any record on the computer that I’ve been through the files. That is possible, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure.” Pete thought again of Armorgeddon. All he needed were a few quiet weeks, perhaps three more months at the outside, and then he could leave this place forever. “I’m not sure it’s been done before,” he said, “not on this system. So I’m not sure that it can be done. Tampering with the memory . . .getting past the codes . . .I don’t know.”
“If anyone can do it, Pete . . .I have faith in your ability to worm your way inside the system. Will you have a go?”
Pete’s head felt as light as helium. He touched the computer screen, touched the place where the Orgone commander had been standing.
“Yes,” he said, “yes, I’ll give it a try.”
“I thought you might,” said Miles, pulling a chair over toward the desk.
SIX
NO ONE HAD BEEN KILLED, that was the miracle. But over the next ten days everyone became more cautious than ever. An empty shoebox could not sit for long in an open rubbish bin without one of the bomb disposal teams being summoned. It was a busy time for them. A busy time, too, for Miles Flint, sifting through what information he could find. He asked discreet questions of a few uninvolved colleagues, tracked as far as was possible the daily affairs of those closest to the Latchkey case, and was himself interviewed on three occasions by men from internal security.
He had been assigned to the Harvest surveillance, working with Richard Mowbray and his team in Forest Hill. This gave Miles the chance to apologize to Mowbray, then to pick his brains about what dirty dealings he thought he had uncovered. Most of these were simple paranoia.
Then one day, having driven the Jag home, Miles opened the door of his study and saw, jumping across his desk, the largest beetle he had ever set eyes on. Astonishment turned into panic when he noticed that the beetle was a joke-shop affair, with plastic tubing trailing from its rear to a point beneath the desk. Looking down, he saw a man there, bundled up like a fetus so as to squeeze into the space beneath the desk.
The man was grinning, and, letting go of the rubber beetle, he began to extricate himself from his cramped position. For a moment Miles wondered, who the hell is it? And he even considered the possibility of some outlandish execution before realizing that the tall young man was Jack, who now rubbed his shoulders as he stretched.
“Christ, Dad,” he said, laughing. “The look on your face!”
“Ha bloody ha!”
Miles hesitated, wondering whether to reach out and shake his son’s hand. The dilemma was resolved when Jack came forward and gave him a brief hug.
“So, what brings you home? Broke again, I suppose?”
“Summer hols, you know.” Jack walked around the room like an investigating policeman, or, thought Miles, like a caged big cat, impatient, larger than his surroundings. “I just thought I’d give you the benefit of my company for a week or so before I head back to Edinburgh.”
“What have you been up to all summer?”
“The usual.” He studied one set of beetles, trapped behind glass. “I worked for a few weeks in a café during the Festival, and before that I was on the dole. I took off up north for a while actually, wandering about the Highlands. If it weren’t all cliché, I’d say it was a consciousness-raising experience. You know, you can start walking across the hills up there and never see a soul from one day to the next. No houses, no electric pylons even. Lots of birds and animals, but not another human being. When I got back to Edinburgh, I nearly went mad. I was seeing everything differently, you see.”
Yes, Miles could see.
“How did the exams go?”
“Fine. A cinch, actually.”
“I don’t suppose Edinburgh’s changed?”
“You’d be surprised. New hotels and shopping complexes. A big drug problem in the housing estates. High incidence of AIDS. Child murderers running around everywhere.”
“I meant the university.”
“Oh.” Jack laughed. “It’s the same as ever. Nothing happening. Departments full of drunks and half-wits.”
“Do you mean the students or the lecturers?”
“Both.”
Miles had been surprised—pleasantly so—when Jack had decided to go to Edinburgh University, while the majority of his school friends had stuck to Oxbridge. But Miles could guess why Jack had not followed them: he was independent, stubbornly so, and he was just a little proud of his Scottish roots.
Miles had not set foot in Edinburgh for fifteen years, but he had a vivid memory of the city and its people, and he remembered the weather above all else, the relentless wind which chilled to the marrow, and dark winter afternoons that drove one indoors to study. Sheila and he had gone back just that once. It had been enough.
“It hasn’t been too quiet down here of late, has it?” said Jack now.
“You mean the bombings?”
“Yes. The IRA, isn’t it?”
“Apparently. It hasn’t affected us, though. Life has to go on, et cetera.”
Of course Miles had told no one of his proximity to the Oxford Street bomb. He would have been unable to justify his running away. That was what it had been, after all—running away. He told no one, and found flakes of glass in his hair and his clothes for days afterward.
“Have you seen your mother?”
“How else could I have got in?”
“Don’t you still have a key?”
“I lost it last term. God knows how. I thought it was on my key ring, but then one day it vanished. I’ll get another one cut.”
I’ll have to change the lock now, thought Miles. It was better to be safe than sorry. One could never tell . . .
“I will replace it.” Jack said this in such a way that Miles knew his thoughts had been showing. He smiled.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Come on, let’s have a drink.”
“Is there any tequila in the house?”
“Certainly not. Why?”
“Slammers are all the rage up north. What about bourbon?”
“You’ll drink best malt whiskey, my lad, and you’ll thank me for it. Do you know what they add to bourbon to give it that flavor?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. That’s reason enough to stick to whiskey, don’t you agree?”
They were laughing as they entered the living room, where Sheila sat with an Open University textbook on her lap and a pencil gripped hard between her teeth. She had been listening to their laughter as it left the study and came toward her, rumbling like some ancient beast. Her teeth bit through wood toward lead, and she could almost taste blood in her mouth. Did she want anything to drink? No, she did not want anything to drink. They seemed massive, father and son, filling her space and her peace and her thoughts with their bulk. When they turned their backs to her at the drinks table, she stuck out her tongue at them and felt better for it. Then they sat down, expecting no doubt that she would put away her work and listen to their conversation, rising only to make tea and sandwiches. She held the pencil fast, sucking back the saliva that threatened to drip from the sides of her mouth. She was the wolf, hungry, angry, and she watched as they sat in their woolly smugness, cradling their glasses as though protecting the tribal fire.
Then Miles asked her a question, and she had to choose whether to ignore him, answer with a grunt, or take the pencil from her mouth. She grunted.
“Yes,” said Miles, raising the glass to his lips, “I thought you’d agree.”
“What OU course are you doing, Mum?” asked Jack. She slipped the pencil from between her teeth.
“A bit of everything,” she said.
He nodded and turned back to his father. Their questions were politeness, she knew. The sort of things one would say to a child so that it wouldn’t feel excluded from the general conversation. She felt more isolated than ever. Then she remembered her secret.
So Harry Sizewell was born French and educated outside Windsor, and though he had never, so to speak, had a French thought in his life, it was hard—devilish hard—to throw off the tag.
For one thing, the media could always use it against him. Not that this bothered him particularly; there was little that could, to an MP, be termed “bad publicity,” even the nickname “Harry the Frog.” He had entered politics solely because his father had forbidden him to do so, and it was his misfortune to have been left an orphan before he gained his seat in the House. Still, he had it now, and his father would have been appalled by his quick and unhindered success. Appalled, the old socialist. The thought pleased Harry Sizewell, and he toasted himself with his breakfast tomato juice.
The morning mail—heavy as usual—gave little succor. Once, he had employed a secretary to open his mail for him and to send out the acknowledgments of receipt, but that had proved unsatisfactory: one could never be sure how open to misinterpretation or potentially incriminatory one’s mail could be. And so he had decided to start opening his own mail, most of which, however, consisted of bills.
The damage to his Rover was estimated at nine hundred pounds. Nine hundred pounds for a couple of dents and a scraping of paint. That bloody fool of a Renault driver, hurtling away from the lights like that when all he had wanted to do was squeeze through his own red light so as not to be late at the House.
The day ahead promised little; Parliament was still in recess and the conference season had ended. He loathed conferences, and spent too much time shaking hands with complete strangers and listening to tittle-tattle.
“I hear you’re on this committee that’s looking into defense funding,” someone had said over a cocktail at some grandee’s party.
“How did you hear that?”
“A little birdie told me. Well, one just does hear, doesn’t one?”
Yes, one did. It was surprising just how many strangers had known so much about him. Who were they all? Defense was a touchy subject these days. He would rather as few people as possible knew of his involvement, especially when one considered what else the committee was investigating. Political dynamite, it was.
“Oh yes, Sizewell, of course. I knew your father at university.”
“Did you, sir? You must be older than you look.”
“Flattery, Sizewell, flattery. Your father was known for it, too. A bit of a success with the young ladies when we were undergraduates together. I suppose you are too, eh? Chip off the old block.”
A success with the ladies . . .Hardly. The PM had dropped a hint, by way of an equerry, that marriage would improve Harry Sizewell’s standing within both the community and the party. It had not been a threat, just a suggestion . . .
Ah, but there had been other threats to deal with, real threats, not just the rumblings of disgruntled constituents. Yes, real threats, lucid, cogent, to the point. The telephone rang, and, his mind elsewhere, he answered it.
“Remember this, Sizewell,” the voice hissed. “I’m going to have you if you don’t listen to me. I really am going to have you.”
In horror, Harry Sizewell slammed down the receiver and stared at it, then lifted it off the hook quickly and set it down on the table. But the voice was still there, loud and clear as though from the next room, spitting out from the earpiece.
“You can’t hide forever, Sizewell. You can’t hide from me.”
“Go away!” screamed Harry Sizewell, running into the next room, slamming the door shut. “Just go away.”
SEVEN
PETE SAVILLE HAD A RECURRING dream, and in this dream he was trapped within Armorgeddon 2000, really trapped, twisted up in circuitry and flashing lights. The screen was there, real to the touch, and through it he could see the outside world, operating as normal. No one noticed that he was trapped within his console, that the game held him while the auto-play mode sent him reeling around his own set of maps and scenarios, trying to stop the ultimate war.
He never won.
Today’s dream, however, had a twist, for someone was sitting at the console playing the game. This was worse even than auto-mode, for the player made mistakes that sent Pete roaring out of existence or careering around the most deadly battle zones. Dragging himself up to the screen during a lull, he looked out onto the smiling face of Miles Flint, then collapsed.
He woke to utter exhaustion. It seemed to him that he was sacrificing his sanity for a game. It was all he lived for, night and day, day after night.
The phone rang, and he stumbled through the cold hallway.
“Hello?”
“Is that Peter Saville?”
“Speaking.”
“Peter, some of the security chaps would like a word.”
Pete felt his life crumbling like a crashed computer program. He held on to the telephone with both hands, his voice becoming a whisper.
“Oh yes?”
“Nothing very important, I daresay. They’ll be along about eleven.”
“What, here?”
“Of course not.” The voice seemed amused. “They’ll send for you at your office. You are going in today?”
“Yes, oh yes.”
“Good.”
And the telephone went dead. Only then did it occur to Pete that he had not asked who was calling; had not the faintest idea whose voice had brought him to this standstill. One movement, he felt, and he would flake away to nothing but dust, like a wall with dry rot. He was worried now all right, worried and mentally exhausted. It was a bad combination.
Miles and Jack made a weekend of it. On Saturday they watched Chelsea playing in a friendly. It was years since Miles had been to watch a football match, and he yelled with gusto, enjoying the catharsis. Jack watched in amazement as his father swapped banter with the fans next to them and gave vent to raucous indignation when Chelsea’s penalty claim was refused.
On Sunday, they visited the zoo. It was wet, and not many people were about. A nice change, thought Jack, from football. He had taken along a couple of apples and some old vegetables from the kitchen, which he fed to the pigs in the children’s area.
Later, following his father into the underpass, Jack thought about how the years had brought them closer together. He understood nowadays, as he had not when he was younger, that his father had achieved the right temperament for his own lines of work and life. Friends in Edinburgh might have attributed some Zen-like quality to Miles’s attitude. And Sheila? Well, too much yin, they would have said, too, too much.
“Not brought any excreta for your offspring, Dad?”
Miles had smiled, but seemed preoccupied. He was thinking not of beetles, but of moles. Moles and bugs, to be precise. A zoo seemed the perfect setting for his metaphors.
“I would think there would be enough of that lying around here already, wouldn’t you?”
Jack, sniffing the air, his nose wrinkled, nodded agreement.
Miles had made two visits to the hotel, and had not happened to meet the girl, which seemed to point to her complicity. His investigation was proceeding slowly—when it was proceeding at all—and he was becoming less sure of his suspicions. The smile had all but vanished now, as had the Latchkey case. He had been interviewed three times, Phillips and Sinclair twice. Miles, of course, was more suspect than they, for he had had no reason to be there, and it was he who had let Latchkey slip out into the night. There had been another meeting with Partridge and the old boy. The investigation’s findings had been read out, and, while pointing out that human negligence had resulted in a death, there were no recommendations regarding further action or reprimands. Even the media had walked over the whole thing without seeing it.
And that had been that. So why didn’t he just let the whole thing drop? Because
his own trust in his intuition was at stake. It was as simple as that.
On a wall in the insect house was posted a list of adopters and their adopted, and there was his name. Jack chuckled, patting his shoulder, and then they made for the glass case itself. There were around four thousand species of beetle in Britain alone, and this specimen was all his. The dung beetle, or dor beetle, dor being Anglo-Saxon for drone—the noise the beetle made in flight. Miles took off his glasses to study the case. Well, a ball of dung was there all right, but there was no sign of life. Miles knew that the beetle would be in there. No one would see it until it wanted to be seen. He nodded thoughtfully and turned away, while Jack tapped at the glass, attempting to coax the creature out of its darkness.
Back home, two messages awaited Miles on the answering machine. Sheila had gone out for the day with Moira. They were visiting an exhibition. Miles traced Sheila’s likes and dislikes by going around after her, examining what she had just been reading or otherwise studying. She had taken an interest in Francis Bacon, birdwatching, and Marxism, and in all these things she was aided and abetted by Moira, her old school friend. Moira was actually cleverer than Sheila, as well as being the more attractive. She was a bit of a splendor beetle, and whenever he was in her company, Miles felt like some old museum beetle again, bedded down in stuffed animals and relics of the past.
Sheila visited exhibitions often when Jack was at home. It was no coincidence. She did not shun him physically, but placed a sort of veil over herself when he was around, treating him like the son of an acquaintance rather than her own. She would give him everything except the acknowledgment of kinship. They had fallen out once five years ago when he had been in the midst of an adolescent fit. They hadn’t spoken to one another for days afterward, and their relationship had never really recovered.
“This is Partridge here, Miles. We’d like to see you tomorrow if that’s convenient. King’s Cross, platform four. Get yourself a platform ticket. See you at ten-thirty sharp.”
Partridge: that meant trouble, but of what sort? And why King’s Cross? Was Partridge going somewhere? And who might that “we” include within its wide parameters? It was all very mysterious, very cloak and dagger.