NO SIGNAL

by Jem Tugwell

‘Tatsuko’s profile doesn’t show that she’s a champion of anything,’ Clive said.

  ‘But Sully’s does, and he really loves to big himself up in his messages.’

  Clive stared out of the window, seeing the lights from the houses of Windsor pass by. ‘It’s not definite that these four are here for a game, but Forbidden Island could fit a foreigner’s perception of the UK,’ he said. ‘It’s a strong enough link to follow up.’

  ‘If Lilou is Parkour179, then the rest must be in the game as well,’ Ava agreed.

  ‘Try that subscription link. Maybe we can find them that way,’ Clive said. ‘I’d have to get Bhatt to approve the spend, but let’s see what the price is now.’

  Ava clicked the link and a new window appeared. ‘Lists closed. We are oversubscribed and have a massive waiting list, you’re too slow.’

  ‘Crap,’ Clive said, banging the top of the car’s display much harder than he meant. The car said, ‘Any non-accidental damage will be chargeable.’

  Clive looked sheepish and was relieved to see no damage to the display.

  ‘What now?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Not sure,’ Clive said, turning his palms up to show he had nothing. ‘Tatsuko and Femi have no real history here. A few distant business contacts, but no real friends. What about yours?’

  ‘Lilou nothing, but Sully…’ Ava swiped her fingers so that the car’s screen redrew with his profile page. The same jumble of text and thumbnails at the bottom. ‘There was one picture…’ she said as she scrolled over the thumbnails. ‘There.’ She clicked onto the thumbnail.

  Now Clive was looking at a group photo. About thirty people arranged in rows. All in suits and all wearing smiles. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Sully’s university graduation photo.’ She pointed at the third name on the second row. ‘Davide Lombardi.’

  Sully’s name was the fourth on the same row.

  ‘And?’ Clive said.

  ‘I found him earlier.’ Ava flicked through some menus and opened a ‘UK citizen search’ window. She typed in ‘Davide Lombardi’ and pressed ‘Search’. The screen redrew to show a list of UK citizens called Davide Lombardi. Next to the sixth Davide Lombardi on the list were the words ‘Naturalised Italian’.

  Ava clicked the name and Davide’s Ministry of Well-being and Health’s page opened. Ava ignored his health details and found a section labelled ‘Education’. She pointed at some text. ‘That’s the same university and year as in the photo.’

  ‘Great work, Ava.’ Clive leaned forward in excitement. ‘Where is he now?’

  Ava brought up the iMonitor window. She pinched her fingers to pick up Davide’s profile, dragged it over to the iMonitor window and dropped it. She pressed ‘Search’.

  The screen redrew displaying a map of a hotel room. One green signal dot glowed at a table in a hotel restaurant.

  Ava zoomed out, and the display showed the Gretna Hall Hotel.

  ‘What’s he doing there?’ Clive said, feeling the first prickle of excitement. ‘That’s pretty close to Dumfries. Call the hotel and check he’s eating on his own. Tell them to be subtle and don’t let him know.’

  Clive leant back. This could be it, he thought. Catch Sully, and he can lead us to the others. He listened to Ava talking to the hotel and getting confirmation from the restaurant’s maître d’ that Davide was eating alone. She hung up.

  ‘Shall I send Uniform to talk to him?’

  ‘No, he’ll deny everything. And we need to find Sully.’

  Clive thought for a while.

  ‘It’s too much of a coincidence that he’s so close to Dumfries. Get a Uniform to the hotel in an unmarked car. Tell them to watch for Sully arriving or Davide leaving. And tell them to charge their car. We can’t afford any cock-ups with flat batteries.’

  ***

  Clive spent a restless night churning ideas and dreaming of one-handed gamers running around the UK. At 4am, he finally settled.

  A buzzing in his head dragged him from a deep and dark sleep. ‘Huh. What?’ he said, before he woke enough to realise that it was a call. He touched his jaw to accept.

  ‘Boss, Boss,’ Ava said. From the return of her bright and energetic tone, Clive guessed that she had slept better than him.

  ‘Ava, what?’

  ‘Davide’s on the move.’

  This snapped Clive fully awake and he jack-knifed up in bed.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Uniform called me. He drove about two hundred and fifty metres and parked at the back of a church. He’s still there.’

  ‘Any sign of Sully?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Get them to stay with him. Tell them to take their uniform jackets off and hide anything that makes them look like police.’

  ‘OK, Boss.’

  ‘I’ll meet you at the office.’

  ***

  Clive and Ava pushed a couple of desks nearer the PCU office display wall. Both perched on the edges staring at the screen, like they were in a private cinema.

  They were watching Davide’s signal trundle up the M74 towards Glasgow.

  ‘Are they sure that Davide is in the car on his own?’ Clive said.

  Ava rolled her eyes; it was the fourth time Clive had asked the same question.

  ‘As I said before, the Uniforms can’t be sure.’

  Clive could see the signals on the screen for the people in the cars in front and behind Davide. The Uniforms following Davide were five cars back. It was a shame they couldn’t get closer, Clive thought, but the cars decided their order in the line for themselves.

  Davide’s car was near the front of the pack, so at some time it might pull out and drop back, giving the Uniforms a closer look.

  Ava had searched all the recent messages and found Davide’s message to an old friend called Ruth who lived somewhere called Milngavie, to the north of Glasgow. She was now driving towards Glasgow and two Uniforms following her in a plain car were joining the train of cars she was in.

  ‘What’s your guess, Ava? Where’s the Row that Davide mentioned? In Glasgow?’

  ‘Could be,’ she said. ‘It’s the most obvious place.’

  As Clive’s HUD was connected to the PCU office display wall, when Ava started swiping and tapping on her HUD, Clive couldn’t see what she was doing.

  ‘There’s a park in the centre of Glasgow called Rottonrow Gardens and a road called Rottonrow. They could be going there,’ she said.

  ‘Why there?’ Clive’s rhetorical question hung in the air and died.

  Neither said anything. Davide’s car followed the M73 and as it joined the M8, it tacked onto the back of a long train of cars. The Uniforms’ car joined the same train, shuffling into the line. They were now eight cars back from Davide.

  ‘Crap,’ Clive said and jumped up to start walking back and forward.

  Half an hour later and Clive was still walking. Ruth was parked on Montrose Street that bordered Rottonrow Gardens. Davide’s car rolled on and turned into Rottonrow.

  ‘You were right, Ava. Get one of the Uniforms to follow Ruth on foot. Tell the other one to stay and watch her car.’

  Ava nodded and relayed the instructions, then said, ‘Boss, can you sit down? I can’t see properly.’

  Clive sat, and his leg jigged up and down. He leant forward.

  They watched Ruth’s signal move towards the centre of Rottonrow Gardens and followed Davide’s signal as he got out of the car.

  Ava touched her jaw and accepted an incoming call.

  Clive stared at her, waiting, hoping for good news.

  ‘The Uniform following Davide says that a second man got out of Davide’s car,’ Ava said. ‘He’s got no signal.’

  Clive punched the air. ‘Yesss. Sully.’

  ‘Shall I get the Uniforms to arrest him now?’

  ‘No,’ Clive snapped. ‘Let’s see what happens. Keep both sets of Uniforms on the line.’

  Ava nodded and they watched Ruth’s and Davide’s signals converge and then s
eparate.

  ‘Sully is following Ruth,’ Ava said, repeating what she was being told. ‘Davide is heading back to his car.’

  They watched Ruth’s signal approach her car.

  ‘Ruth and Sully got into her car.’

  ‘Sully’s arranged to be taken somewhere. They’ve handed him over to try and break the trail,’ Clive said.

  ‘What do I tell the Uniforms?’

  ‘Get the ones following Davide to arrest and hold him, but shut his HUD down now so he can’t warn Ruth.’ Clive thought for a minute. ‘Let Ruth go, but follow her. We’ve got nothing on the other three. Sully might be going somewhere that helps us. And get a second car on Ruth. We can’t afford to lose him.’

  Chapter 40

  As Sully settled across the seats in Ruth’s warm and dry car, Lilou was scanning left and right, crouching by the side of the road. Rain patted down onto the road and she wiped her hand across her brow before double-checking her map, using her body to shelter it from the rain. In spite of walking hard for hours, she was cold, and the wet was starting to seep through the waterproofing in her shoes.

  She’d reached Kerne Bridge and checked the display on her game controller. ‘Distance to finish – 42 to 45 miles.’ She’d travelled about thirty-two miles in sixteen hours – a slow two miles an hour. Disappointing if she had stayed on the roads the whole time, but she’d kept mostly to lanes and fields to avoid as many people as possible. When a car did come, she skulked in the bushes and hid. Doing OK, she thought and smiled despite the drop of rain on her nose.

  She needed to cross the River Wye and worried it would leave her exposed. As she crossed the B429 and followed the sign for Goodrich Castle, she shot a glance at The Inn on the Wye hotel. It’s so close to the bridge, but at least it’s quiet. The guests might be at breakfast, she thought. Her stomach rumbled.

  Lilou crouched by the tall gates to someone’s house and waited. The bridge had a hump in the middle that she couldn’t see over. She didn’t know if there were any people or cars coming in the opposite direction. Risking a few steps forward, she saw that on the far side the road approached from her left before it turned towards the bridge and she lost sight of it. Clear.

  With near-silent electric cars, she couldn’t hear anything coming, but she waited in case there was a car close to the bridge.

  She started a fast, half-walk, half-jog across the bridge, praying that she had waited long enough. Despite the pace of her walk, she held her breath and followed the upwards incline of the bridge. Lilou breathed out and laughed when she could see over the top of the hump. Nothing coming.

  She ran over the rest of the bridge. Where the walled sides of the bridge ended, steps had been cast in concrete down into a field. She turned off the road and skipped down the steps, past the ‘Private Fishing. No day tickets’ sign, and jogged along the edge of the field. Her easy stride was accompanied by squelching noises at each muddy footfall and the sound of her rucksack sliding across the waterproof material of her coat.

  The rain meant she wouldn’t look like a tourist out enjoying the fresh air by the river, so she sprinted the last few metres of the open field. The hill rose in front of her, covered in trees, but thankfully not so dense that she couldn’t keep jogging.

  ‘Get to the top of the hill, then breakfast,’ she told herself. She jogged on, breathing harder as the hill climbed. And kept on climbing. It was like one of her old training climbs.

  At the top, Lilou stopped and crouched down. She could see houses nestled in the trees on both the left and right. She checked her map and used a compass she had brought from France, trying to fix the next part of the route in her head. The map showed her that the river made a big loop ahead of her and there was a pinch point where the river almost touched the A40, with lots of buildings and businesses. Not good.

  She slipped the rucksack off and pulled out an energy bar. She broke off a quarter of it and stashed the rest back in the rucksack.

  Not quite the same as breakfast at the hotel, she thought, and popped the piece into her mouth. Chewing slowly, she tried to make it last and feel like a bigger meal. She twisted the game controller and pulled it off her mount to give the muscles in her left arm and shoulder a break from the weight.

  She thought through her route options. Maybe it was safer to take a big loop north and then west to stay safely away from the road and buildings.

  She was pleased with how she felt. Strong. Fit. Capable. No blisters or aches to slow her down. She thought she had learnt from her mistake of being too cautious in the first selection exercise.

  Lilou thought of the others again. Femi and Tatsuko were good, but she was faster than them. She was an Olympian. Sully was slow and lazy. No way he was ahead of her. She still hadn’t worked out how he won that first exercise and looked so fresh. He must have cheated somehow, she decided. Especially after how he was in the race to the rocket launch site.

  She clicked her controller back onto her mount and pulled at its fingers. ‘Merde,’ she said, seeing the display: ‘Game position – fourth’.

  Fourth? How could she be fourth?

  Perhaps she hadn’t learnt as well as she thought. Need to go faster. Take a few more risks.

  Lilou stood and decided. Shortest and fastest route – west across the fields and use the small road she could see on the map to get past the top of the loop in the river. Then stay tight to the river. Try and sneak past the back of the buildings.

  Hope not to get caught.

  She ran down the hill.

  Chapter 41

  Serge watched his Game Control window. Three of the gamers were playing the game, making good, if slow, progress.

  Sully was way ahead of the others and moving too fast. He must be in a car.

  All the betting money had dried up on the other three. Everyone was betting on Sully.

  Serge started coughing. He had stayed at his desk all night, watching the game and the rising balance on his Chile Gaming Services, Inc bank account. The bookies paid him a small commission on every bet as their cost of being in the game.

  And Sully was cheating, skewing the bets.

  Serge’s face flushed red with anger. He’d never liked him. All his boasting and confidence were based on Sully’s inflated opinion of himself. All based on a lie.

  Serge’s chest tightened. The anger and the stress, he thought. The lack of sleep couldn’t help.

  The first two puffs on his asthma inhaler didn’t make any real difference. His chest got tighter. He was finding it harder to breathe and get enough oxygen into his lungs.

  The next two puffs emptied his inhaler.

  His anger returned. This time directed at himself for forgetting to get his prescription.

  It felt like a giant hand was squeezing his lungs shut. He started to feel lightheaded and staggered to the bathroom, searching for his old inhaler.

  He found it and took a puff. Nothing.

  He peered at the date. Two years out of date, and when he shook it, it felt empty. He threw it onto the floor in disgust.

  The giant hand squeezed down harder on his lungs. Each desperate, wheezy breath pulled in a tiny amount of oxygen.

  He could hear his pompous doctor, ‘Mixing smoking and stress with your asthma is a recipe for a full asthma attack. Don’t forget your steroid inhaler every day.’

  But Serge never remembered the steroid inhaler.

  The muscles tightened in his neck and chest.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  He glanced at his fingernails. They were going blue.

  He needed to get help.

  Serge staggered out of his flat, coughing and wheezing and coughing again.

  Chapter 42

  Sully watched the clouds roll by from his inclined position on Ruth’s car’s seats. Every minute brought him closer to the finish, closer to glory, but he was conflicted. He churned another thought. The sense of unease he had first felt in Davide’s car was growing with each mile.

  Had he bee
n right to redefine the rules? To win the game on his terms?

  When he looked again at his game controller, he smiled. It pushed the unease to one side.

  ‘Game position – first’ it showed.

  He was going to win. The money and the BST hand would be his. He would return home a true champion.

  The ruler of the Forbidden Island.

  His online followers would be able to see how close he was to winning. They’d be putting money on him. Betting big on him to win.

  He toggled the game controller display. ‘Distance to finish – 5 miles.’

  So close. Who could stop him now?

  The unease crashed down onto Sully again.

  Serge hated him – he didn’t want Sully to win. He would be able to see that Sully was close. He would know that he had broken Serge’s rules. Would Serge give his position to the police?

  Sully glanced out of the window at the sound of a drone flying overhead. He started to shift his weight and peer out of the car window.

  ‘No,’ shouted Ruth, banging her hand down on her seat to emphasise the point. ‘There’s a police drone above us.’

  Sully dropped down in his seat. ‘Bastard Serge,’ he spat.

  ‘Wait. No, it’s a delivery drone.’ Ruth smiled. ‘The local ones are painted a lovely Scottish blue – like the flag. Very close to the colour of the police ones.’

  Sully sighed out his relief, but it didn’t release his sense of unease. His gut told him that something was wrong.

  What if he won and Serge refused to pay? What if Serge refused to give him his hand?

  Dread fought with unease and won easily. What if he had lost his hand for nothing?

  ‘Distance to finish – 4 miles’ showed on the game controller.

  ‘I need you to stop the car,’ Sully said.

  Ruth laughed. ‘I can’t simply stop.’

  ‘I need you to stop the car,’ Sully repeated, raising his voice.

  Ruth sneered at him. ‘I’m doing you a favour and you’re shouting at me. Is that fair?’

  ‘Stop the car. Now.’

  ‘Arsehole. Davide is a gent, but you’re a pig.’

  Sully stared and shouted, ‘Stop… the… car.’ Long pauses between each loud word. Making it an order she had to comply with.