by Paul Watson
‘Did Rand get charged?’
‘There wasn’t enough evidence to charge him, but I headed up a unit that watched his activities. Rand moved on to internet fraud in the mid-nineties; both in the UK and over in the USA. Rand’s brother-in-law, a man called Bob Simpkin, shared a room with a man named Josiah Taylor Junior, at university. Taylor’s father made billions from computer hardware, back in the eighties. Taylor’s father moved into networking equipment, as the internet took off, and sent his son over to university in the UK, where I met him.’
‘You were at university with him?’
‘No, I didn’t go to university. The rector at Taylor’s college suspected fraudulent activity with grades and called the police. Taylor was bright, but lazy; he never attended lectures but achieved a double first. Simpkin was a computer whizz and had hacked the computer, changed Taylor’s grades and embezzled money from the university bank account. You couldn’t do it these days, security is too good.’
‘So how did that end up with you going to prison?’
‘During the lead up to Simpkin’s court case, I became suspicious when I submitted the case file to the CPS, and they threw it out. When I reviewed the file, the computer evidence was missing, and someone destroyed the original hardware and all the records. Our IT men traced a hack to the home of Simpkin, who was out on bail with Taylor, and I took a team with me to arrest him and seize computer equipment. When we arrived, I found Simpkin sat at a desk and a man with a headset on connected to a computer; the man looked like he was asleep; his eyes flickered.’
‘Was the man hooked up to the computer Taylor?’
‘No, it was another man, a fit athletic guy, not pasty and overweight like Simpkin and Taylor. I ordered my officers to seize all the equipment and arrested Simpkin for hacking the police computers. When we turned the hardware off, the man in the chair convulsed. It turned out he was on a drug, and when the electrical signals died from the headset, his brain compensated. We gave the man first aid, but he didn’t make it.’
‘Who was he?’
‘A friend of Taylor’s. Simpkin had developed a virtual reality game and drugged the player to improve a direct neural connection to the computer system through the headset. The jury deemed me reckless and convicted me of manslaughter.’
‘So, what’s this got to do with what’s going on now?’
‘Bob Simpkin was the man killed in the theatre on Friday night. I’ve been following Rand and Simpkin since I got released; a personal vendetta to collect evidence against them; hence my job at the garage where Simpkin parked his car. PKL has been funding much of Rand’s construction work; Ranto has built data centres all over Europe and America for PKL. We should call CID; it might be useful for them.’
‘You could ask Rob outside to call Mike Baker.’
Rob stared at his phone screen and rocked backwards with his fist clenched. Janet returned to Amy. ‘I’ll wait awhile; Rob looks busy.’
‘I’ll call Jamie; Jamie’s with Mike, you can tell him what you told me.’
Amy called Jamie and got voicemail. Amy then called Mike and got voicemail too, so she looked at the tracking app on her phone. Jamie’s last location was a PKL building, somewhere in the middle of Lincolnshire. Her head cleared, and Amy dialled the duty officer at the station.
‘I can’t get in touch with Mike Baker or Jamie, they’ve gone a long way off borough to make enquiries. They seem to be in a factory up in Lincolnshire, and they might be in danger.’
‘Hi Amy, I’ll call them, what makes you think they’re in danger?’ said the duty officer.
‘I’ve got a source that tells me that PKL is behind the killings on Friday and Saturday.’
‘All right Amy, leave it with me.’
‘When is the wedding?’ Janet said.
‘My mum has already booked the venue; there was a space available on a Wednesday in October. Most of our friends are shift workers anyway, so fine by me. My mum bought a binder ready to get it all planned; she enjoys organising.’
‘And Jamie?’
‘Jamie won’t want much input, but you never know, we’ll see when all this has settled down, and we’ve got time at home together. I’m more worried about telling my mum about my injury. My mum never wanted me to join the police, or wanted me to do anything, apart from getting married, having children, and marrying a man who would support me.’
‘Why did the man hit you on the crossing?’
‘Because I recognised him from the custody suite where he killed Jake Mcguire.’
‘Why did he kill Mcguire?’
‘I don’t know. Before Jake died, he seemed keen to talk.’
Rob grinned as he walked into the room. ‘Sorry for interrupting; we won. You two were the only people close by, and I had to speak to someone, realise that you’re not a football fan Amy.’
‘You said there was a penalty against us?’ Janet said.
‘The video referee asked for a review and overruled the original decision; the game ended in a penalty shoot-out, and we won. World champions.’
‘Rob, sorry to bring you back to the mundane,’ Amy said. ‘Did you watch that CCTV footage you took from the pub in Covent Garden on Friday night? I like football, but Wales didn’t qualify.’
‘No I booked in the CCTV recording; there was no reason to view it as it didn’t cover the scene of the attempted robbery, just the street around the back. CID sifted through the theatre coverage with a toothcomb, nothing on it.’
‘Would you mind bringing me the footage? I’ve got time to kill and want to do something useful.’
‘You’ve got your wedding planned already? Sure, I’ll get Tim to upload it to a link, you can watch it from your phone.’
‘Thanks Rob, congratulations on the win.’
‘Nothing to do with me, it’s down to our colossus in goal, with help from the video referee.’
THIRTY-FIVE
Mackey’s arm was now in plaster with his fingers poking out the ends; he’d dispensed with the sling. ‘I’ll take more care of you this time. This is for the broken wrist.’ Mackey kicked Jamie in the side. Jamie slumped in the chair; his hands were cable tied to the chair legs.
Mike sat across the room, also tied; there was no-one to hear him and Jamie if they shouted. The floor was concrete, and air conditioning units and water tanks surrounded them. One side of the room was open to the warehouse; a safety rail protected against falls over the edge. Jamie guessed they were on the third floor.
Julia entered the plant room from a door in the corner; she no longer wore the blue overshoes.
‘Sorry for having to wrestle with you downstairs. The last thing I want is for either of you to get hurt. Do you understand Mackey?’ The bear nodded. ‘My brother’s a police officer, and I never wanted it to turn out like this.’ A few tears rolled down Julia’s cheek.
‘Get us out of here, and we’ll do all we can to help you.’ Mike said. ‘Don’t make it any worse.’
‘It can’t get any worse; my stretch in prison would be lengthy. I’ll get out of here soon, and I’ll let you go.’
‘What are you doing? Do you have the missing boy?’
‘Yes, he’s here, safe for the moment, in the best place for him.’
Jamie found the heat oppressive. ‘How can this place be better than a hospital bed?’
‘We’ve got him down in the medical centre, in the basement. It’s cool, and he’s got a team looking after him.’ Julia wiped another tear from her eye and used a handkerchief to rub her brow.
‘Have you got children?’ Mike said.
‘Only one child. You’ll meet him soon.’ Julia walked towards the door to leave.
Mike tried to keep Julia talking. ‘Who’s the dead man downstairs?’
‘He’s a civil servant called Patrick Laws. He wanted to kill me, so I killed him first.’
‘End this now and plead self-defence in court.’
‘I killed Laws in cold blood, and there’s the kidnapping too, b
ut I’ve got a man who will help me disappear. It will be best for everyone.’
‘If we don’t check-in soon, people will look for us.’
‘That makes sense.’ Julia had stopped crying. ‘Would you like to make a call?’
‘Show us the boy and what you’re up to, and we’ll play along with you for a while.’
‘Tie their ankles Mackey, so they can’t run, and meet me downstairs.’ Julia disappeared through the door.
Mackey used the cuffs he’d taken from Jamie’s and Mike’s jackets to restrain their ankles. ‘Follow me,’ he said.
Jamie and Mike shuffled along and made their way down the steel staircase. Two men patrolled behind them, both armed. They arrived at a landing, passed through a door with a push bar, and were on the second-floor where men in overalls scrubbed the carpets.
‘We’ll wait here a while, we’ve arranged transport for you.’ Mackey stood looking at his two captives. Men with a gurney, carrying a swollen black body bag, pushed passed.
The elevator arrived a minute afterward. ‘Who’s first?’ Mackey said. Nobody volunteered. ‘You.’ Mackey took Jamie by the shoulder and pushed him into the chair.
Mackey secured Jamie’s legs and arms to the wheelchair. The lift came back a few minutes later, and transported Jamie and a minder to the ground floor, and then Mike and his guard joined them.
The minders stuffed their weapons in their waste bands and pushed the wheelchairs out onto the main floor. There were yellow walkways with different coloured lines running through them. Red and blue lines branched off, and orange and green lines joined, as the group weaved through the stacks of black humming machines. Jamie noticed that they followed the white path. The journey took about ten minutes, and Jamie used the time to rest. They moved towards the centre of the cavernous building.
The white line stopped at a circular cylinder, rising from the floor to the roof, amongst the racks of machines. Next to the cylinder stood a cube about eight feet tall and eight feet wide. A door in the cube gave access to stairs and a lift to basement level.
Mackey touched his pass onto the sensor on the cube, and the lift door opened. On arrival in the basement, Jamie gazed upwards and realised that the cylinder was a light well. Mike arrived a minute later.
Julia stood in the bright underground atrium.
‘Welcome to my bunker. I insisted on the natural light, I’ve spent a large part of the last few years in here and might have gone mad without it.’
‘Thanks for the tour, much appreciated,’ said Mike.
‘You won’t judge me when I show you my work.’ Julia turned and entered a room off the atrium.
Jamie and Mike followed, pushed by their silent guards. Mackey wasn’t with them anymore and must have stayed up top. The room they entered had a glass partition in the centre, and on the other side was Max, stood up and strapped to a vertical bed. A metal helmet enclosed Max’s head, and his feet were on moving steps, like a hill climb machine at the gym.
‘We’ve patented the bed. It rotates backwards at night, and we turn down the power, so he can get rest. In the daytime, the machine administers passive exercise. Max could live there in reasonable health for a month. There’s a phone across the hall, will you make the call now?’
‘I must know a little more first,’ Mike said. He saw the likeness to Andy in Max, tall with powerful shoulders. Mike guessed Andy would still win in a wrestle, but not long before the youngster would be stronger than his dad.
‘I’ll tell you why PKL built this place.’ Julia sat in a chair facing Mike and Andy. ‘An acquaintance of mine from university, called Josiah Taylor Jnr, had a theory we are all computer simulations. Have you been to the movies?’
‘Not for a while, but I know what you mean,’ said Mike. ‘Brains in jars, wired up to a computer that feeds us what we see and hear.’
‘That’s one way of describing it; others talk about advanced civilisations running artificial simulations with incredible computing power so that simulated beings experience consciousness. Taylor believed this; he learned of the theory in a lecture and tried to prove it. Taylor predicted with enough computing power, he’d be able to come up with the answer.’
‘But you don’t agree with this theory, I take it?’ said Jamie.
‘I don’t consider it an important question whether we’re simulated. I’m a scientist and comfortable with the fact we will always have ignorance. Since the middle ages, we’ve teased the truth from the universe like an archaeologist digs out pottery with a sharp tool. You don’t need a sledgehammer; time will do the job.’
‘So, what are you doing?’
‘I’m making baby steps in medical science. The brain has been the most difficult organ to comprehend, and we’re still a way from understanding its functioning. This building is a computer brain, built and working according to our current understanding of the human brain’s frontal cortex. We’ve established a way to connect the computer brain with the human brain.’
‘Why would you want to do this?’
‘Why did humans leave the chimpanzees in the jungle?’
‘Tell us please,’ said Mike. ‘We don’t need a Bond villain speech.’
‘If I told you, you wouldn’t understand. One thing I learned while teaching: you’ve got to let people figure it out for themselves.’
‘Humans can speak, that must give us an advantage over chimpanzees?’ said Jamie.
‘It helps us cooperate. We’re able to cooperate on a level that no other animal can, because of the processing power of our frontal cortex. With technology, we automate that co-operation further every day. We’re adapted to integrate with technology; our social nature glues us to our screens in search of a dopamine hit if someone likes our social media post. The next evolution is here; it’s cumbersome now, but you’ve seen computers from the sixties. Soon all this will fit in a laptop, and then in a phone, and then in a chip in our heads, it’s an engineering challenge, not science fiction.’
‘Why do it though?’ said Mike.
‘I worked with PKL to help people with damage sustained to the frontal lobe. We made an artificial cortex, a prosthetic; like an arm or a leg. We then investigated ways to enhance humans; if our evolutionary success is our ability to cooperate why not break down the barriers to communication? Why not share our memories and thoughts?’
‘Back to science fiction.’ said Mike.
‘It’s not. Max’s memories, his neural connections, the way he processes information, his personality, are all copied into the machines upstairs. We’ve not copied the animal part, the part that gets angry or worried.’
‘Why Max?’
‘Simple, I was on a deadline and didn’t have time to wait for Tichi to synthesise more of the neural enhancement drugs. Max was a ready-made guinea pig; I understand his father gave him the drug by mistake? Will you make the call?’
‘Not yet, will he be ok?’
‘Ah, that brings me to the most interesting part of the story.’
THIRTY-SIX
The Berlingo cruised towards Dublin; late afternoon became early evening. Roberts liked to keep things simple; the security at the ferry port would be less than at the airport, but his current ID would now be on a list, and he needed a temporary identity.
Roberts retraced the journey back to Dublin, this time clockwise around the M50 before turning South. He stayed North of the Liffey and rather than cross the bridge to Ringsend; he stopped and parked near a cinema.
The cinema was part of a leisure complex containing shops and cafes; a few people milled around in the square outside, but none of the men looked like Roberts. It was pointless trying the shops; men like Roberts wouldn’t be there, they’d buy their polo shirts and jeans online.
Inside the cinema’s bright foyer, Roberts gazed at the timber-clad columns which soared thirty metres between the glazed facade. Another building obscured the view to the Liffey, and Roberts looked at it for a few minutes; it seemed to be the main attraction toni
ght. It was an arena, and a queue formed outside it.
Roberts strolled through the public square and rubbed his neck; the midday sun had scorched him. He thought back to Kimnel: ‘Don’t come back though, please.’ Roberts had never intended to go back, but Eamon’s earlier invitation was welcome. The Kimnel dwelling had ended up just one more place that breathed a sigh of relief when Roberts left.
The queue outside the arena grew. As Roberts turned the corner, the line snaked around temporary fencing; a full house tonight, perfect.
The head of the snake disappeared between two pillars in front of an opening in the stone, with no way in without causing a disturbance. Roberts walked to the South of the building; it faced straight onto the Liffey, fewer people congregated here, and black railings blocked entry from the riverside.
Roberts jumped at one of the ten-foot stone posts. He kicked the pillar with his foot, caught the capstone with his hands and heaved himself to the top. Roberts jumped down on the other side, landing on the balls of his feet. He’d once seen a man get this wrong; the man had recovered a few months later.
Roberts was in a courtyard car park surrounded by locked gates; there were two or three people in the yard. The bystanders heard the thud, as Roberts landed behind a van, but were too busy checking their phones to take any interest. The South face of the building had glazed arches in the stone wall. One door in the glass was open, and Roberts walked through it.
He climbed stairs and stepped onto a bridge. There were other bridges to his left and his right linking the original stone facade with the new blockwork construction inside the building. Gunmetal panels clad the block walls and shifted in depth like terraced fields.
The bridge’s guardian was about six-feet-tall with a light build, wearing a dark suit. The steward had a radio with a microphone clipped to his ear.