NO SIGNAL

by Jem Tugwell

  ‘If that hand was real, we’d look like old time crooks sending a message to an enemy,’ Clive said, smiling at the image.

  The others stared back blankly, unimpressed by his attempt at a joke.

  ‘When’s the delivery drone here?’ Clive said, trying to break the mood of censure.

  ‘Five or so minutes away,’ Gregor said.

  ‘You’d better get the box to the pickup point,’ Alain said.

  Gregor nodded, scooped up the box in a giant hand and whistled under his breath as he stepped out of the office.

  ‘Let’s see what the military make of that game controller,’ Clive said, looking past Isla’s shoulder and out of the window. He thought he could see a small dark dot in the distant sky approaching the office. ‘It’s a wild story, having to use the machete,’ he said to the room.

  He got a reply of nodding heads.

  Even if Clive couldn’t imagine wielding the machete himself, the four in the game had used the promise of money, a BST upgrade, fame, and the challenge as motivation enough.

  ‘Alain, can you hold Sully in his cell until we hear back about the controller?’ Clive asked.

  ‘Sure, I can slide his case into the Anti-Terror holding rules without too much trouble.’

  Clive pushed his chair back and stood.

  ‘Ava and I are heading back to PCU while we wait for the military’s report on the controller.’

  ***

  Clive and Ava settled into another taxi. Clive being a commuter of habit, travelled facing the rear and saw the wave from Alain Robertson before the car turned onto the main road.

  ‘We’ve got one of them, Boss,’ Ava said. ‘Now we need the others.’

  ‘Sully was no help to us.’

  ‘No. It’s like they’ve deliberately kept all four gamers separate.’

  Clive scratched at his left wrist. Four firm, quick back and forth movements. The itch didn’t justify the severity of his attack. Maybe it was subconscious empathy? No, he thought. Frustration. A tiny show of decisive action when he had no leads and no ideas.

  He stared out of the window, watching Edinburgh suburbs roll by. He hoped that Ava would interpret him looking out of the window as a sign of his deep thinking about the case.

  If Ava wasn’t busy on her HUD, the slight lift of the corners of his mouth would have betrayed him. Clive replayed Isla’s last try all those years ago. The way she shimmied and left the English full-back grasping at air was pure genius. Shame she wore a blue Scottish shirt, but talent was talent whichever side the person played for. Clive had gone to that rugby match buzzing from an early morning arrest. They had cracked one of Doris Barclay’s drug cells and cleaned up all the members. Yet Doris had been too clever as always. Nothing led back to her, but the way Clive had followed the lookout to find the drug house, then from there to the money man, and finally to their supplier gave him an idea.

  It would need data and big search engines, but iMe had both. They boasted that they kept everything.

  ‘Any news, Ava?’ he asked.

  ‘Drone will be at the military site in about fifteen minutes. They’re standing by to look at the controller immediately it arrives.’

  ‘OK. Can you throw your HUD at the car’s screen?’

  ‘Sure, Boss.’ Ava flicked her hands and the screen redrew.

  ‘We obviously need to find the other three, but unless a Uniform sees our briefing photos and spots one of the gamers, we’ve got nothing.’

  ‘I’ll resend the photos to all regions. Give them the hurry up, but they’ve got all the protests to deal with. A random tourist walking around isn’t going to be their top priority.’

  ‘Maybe not, but there are still some good Uniforms out there.’

  Clive took a breath to try and shuffle all the ideas that were firing around his head into a pretence of a sensible order.

  ‘Sully said that the talk about this game started months ago. It must have taken a lot of planning. It would have needed people to find the four deserted butcher’s shops, plant the parcels, and do all the other stuff. iMe will have the signal history of anybody who went to any of the sites. I think this Serge guy will have expected us to trace the signals, but let’s check. The butcher’s shops would have the least traffic. We can start with one of those.’

  Clive watched the display screen as Ava flicked through some menus and brought up the Monitor window. She selected the location where Sully had separated himself from his hand. Next, she chose a period of six months ending immediately after Sully arrived. Ava pressed ‘Search’.

  Ava’s Buddy trailed out a banner that said ‘Searching’. After a couple of seconds, she packed the banner away, threw the search results onto Ava’s HUD screen and scampered off.

  No surprise that the report showed Sully’s signal as the last visitor. Prior to that, someone called Fahad Ahammad had visited twice, each time with a different person. Fahad’s first visit was four months ago and the second a month later.

  Clive was about to ask who Fahad was, but Ava beat him to it by moving the mouse over his name. A window showing Fahad’s details appeared.

  ‘He’s the estate agent, poor bloke,’ Ava said. ‘He did well to get two people to look at that dump.’ Ava moved the mouse over the names of the people who had been with Fahad. The details of two local property developers came up.

  ‘Did any of them go near the park where Sully got his parcel?’

  Ava selected the three names and ran a search on the area near the football pitch for the same time period.

  Ava’s Buddy unfurled a ‘No results’ banner.

  ‘Go back to the shop and widen the search area to a hundred metres.’

  Ava did, and the search returned over two hundred names. ‘It’s not a busy road, but maybe people use it as a cut through,’ she said.

  ‘Any of those people also at the football pitch?’ Clive asked.

  Ava selected all the names and ran the search near the football pitch. Her Buddy rolled out her ‘Searching’ banner and stood tapping her foot and checking a fake wristwatch. It was a big search and eventually she unfurled a ‘No results’ banner.

  ‘Looks like they’ve used different people for different jobs to stop us tracing them. That’s going to make finding them difficult.’

  They tried similar searches around the other three shops. They had a list of names, but no idea where the parcel pickup point was for the other three, so it didn’t get them any further. None of the names had been near Dumfries.

  ‘There are too many possible people,’ Ava said.

  Clive sat back in his chair. Hunching over the car’s display screen had made his back sore. The car slowed, and filtered off the motorway, heading towards the airport.

  ‘Let’s start at the other end of the problem. How did the game controllers get into the country?’

  ‘The ports and airports are all pretty tight. It’s unlikely that the hands could get past all the scanners and checks.’

  Clive shrugged. ‘Very unlikely, but we can ask the military to check when they have the controller. If they came in through a port or airport, then we’ve got no chance of finding who picked them up.’

  Ava chewed her bottom lip for a while and then said, ‘Could it have got flown over by drone?’

  ‘They get shot down by Coastal Defence.’

  ‘What if a drone dropped a package straight after it got over land and before being destroyed?’

  ‘It would be a big risk. There’s every chance that the drone would be destroyed first.’

  ‘Maybe it didn’t make a successful drop the first time.’

  Clive looked at Ava’s eyes. He could see the possibility of a lead burning in them.

  ‘Worth a try.’

  Ava shuffled around on menus, looking for the search she needed. She found a ‘keyword’ search option and clicked on it.

  A new window opened, and she selected the last six months. In the keyword box, she typed ‘drone’. She stopped and thought. �
�That’s going to find all the delivery drones as well. Millions of results.’

  She spent some time searching online for inspiration, and then changed the text in the keyword box from ‘drone’ to ‘drone destroyed’.

  ‘Go back a year,’ Clive said. ‘They needed time.’

  She changed her search and pressed ‘Send’.

  After a wait, the screen redrew to show a map of the easterly tip of Kent. Small yellow dots marked the site of each drone destruction by Coastal Defence. Not surprisingly, given the distance from France, most were between Dover and Folkestone, but some went as far north as Margate or as far south as Hastings. Most were over open ground, well away from people or towns.

  Aiming for secrecy, Clive guessed. ‘Can you find if there were people near the sites when the drones were destroyed?’

  ‘Don’t know, but I know a man who will.’ Ava touched her jaw to make a call.

  ‘Tech Support, this is Rob,’ the voice said.

  Ava told Rob what she wanted, and he talked her through a complicated series of options and secondary windows.

  The car had parked at the airport by the time that Ava was ready to press ‘Send’.

  The doors opened, but neither of them moved.

  ‘You have reached your destination. Please leave the car,’ the car complained. Clive imagined some frustration in its tone.

  They ignored it and watched Ava’s Buddy doing her thing with the wristwatch and tapping foot.

  ‘Your flight closes in twenty minutes,’ the car nagged.

  Clive and Ava shuffled forward to get a closer look at the screen when her Buddy finally threw the results at it.

  Seventeen names.

  Ava beamed. ‘That’s a workable number.’

  She snatched at the list and dropped them in the search window they had last used to search around the site of Tatsuko’s butcher’s shop.

  ‘Shit,’ Clive said at the ‘No results’ banner. ‘Try further out in case there were multiple couriers.’

  Ava frowned when the searches at five and ten miles resulted in nothing.

  ‘Yes!’ she shouted when she tried a fifty-mile radius.

  Only four names. Only four people had been at a drone destruction site and then near to Southampton.

  ‘Try Worcest–’ Clive said, but Ava was already pressing ‘Search’ for the four names within fifty miles of Worcester, where Lilou had been.

  Ava’s smile almost cracked her face. ‘Jay Evans was at the drone destruction site and in Chichester and in Dudley,’ she said.

  ‘Get Uniform to arrest him and bring him to PCU.’

  ‘Your flight closes…’ the car began, but they were already out of the car and running for the terminal building.

  Chapter 50

  ‘What’s that on your hand?’ one of the Uniforms screamed at Femi.

  The Uniform’s hand was on the handle of his gun. He was pulling it out.

  ‘It’s a controller for a game. No big deal,’ Femi said, trying a casual wave to stand the Uniforms down. It didn’t work. The other Uniform was now pointing his gun straight at Femi.

  ‘Looks like a fuckin’ big deal. Stand still.’

  All colour drained from Femi’s face.

  The game controller was still flashing red all over and showing ‘1st place – Winner!!’, but it was getting hotter.

  Why? Serge hadn’t mentioned the heat or the flashing. He had told them to get to the finish and wait for the game controller to tell him what to do next.

  Femi looked around, his vision tunnelling in, disconnecting from his surroundings. He could see the families with their loud children running around near the bottom of the steps, but he couldn’t hear them. The two Uniforms were edging closer, guns aimed at the centre of his chest. He couldn’t hear what they were shouting.

  He thought of home, Dinah’s loving smile, his parents’ warm embrace. He couldn’t understand why there were tears rolling down his cheeks.

  He’d won Forbidden Island. He was rich. He had secured his family’s future. He should be celebrating, but he was crying in Belfast with two Uniforms pointing guns at him.

  The game controller stopped flashing and the display changed: ‘Wait for instructions.’

  His hearing returned.

  ‘For the last time! On your knees or I’ll shoot,’ the Uniform screamed.

  Now all the tourists were staring up at Femi. Mouths open. Some pointing, some filming.

  Two mothers were rounding up their children far faster than any sheepdog could reach a stranded lamb. They were pulling their reluctant offspring away from the Uniforms.

  Femi stooped and dropped to one knee. Then the other.

  ‘Hands high in the air,’ came the next barked instruction.

  The shadows of two guns reached Femi, then the shadow of a body. The Uniforms stood over Femi. Guns still pointing at him.

  They looked at each other. The second Uniform’s left eye greyed as something came up on his HUD. He switched his gun to his left hand and used his right hand to swipe and double click. ‘Sarge,’ he said. ‘Message broadcast from PCU. Look at the second photo. It’s him.’ He transferred his gun back to his stronger hand.

  The first Uniform repeated the process. ‘Looks like it. Call it in.’ He pointed at Femi’s left hand. ‘What is that?’

  ‘A game controller.’

  ‘Where’s your real hand.’

  ‘I had an accident.’

  ‘What kind of – never mind. What does it do?’

  ‘It has a display in the palm.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Femi slowly lowered his left hand, not really trusting a Uniform with a gun in his face. He twisted his wrist to show the Uniform the palm of his controller.

  The screen still said, ‘Wait for instructions.’

  ‘Take it off,’ the second Uniform said.

  ‘I’ll need to lower my right hand… OK?’

  ‘Go.’

  Femi lowered his right hand and grasped the game controller, flinching at the heat of it. He pushed and twisted, but it didn’t move. He tried again, but it was so hot he could barely touch it.

  ‘Take. It. Off,’ the second Uniform shouted.

  ‘I can’t… I’m trying.’

  ‘Try harder,’ he snapped.

  The game controller beeped when Femi touched it again. He checked the display: ‘Game Controller locked.’

  Femi twisted his hand so that the Uniforms could see the display.

  They shot each other a scared glance and turned.

  They started running. Their haste ripped through the watching tourists. Femi heard screams and watched them panic and start to run.

  He turned the game controller so that he could see the display.

  It was too late. He couldn’t get the controller off. He couldn’t run from it.

  A strange calm rolled in over him, like pulling a soft duvet over himself on a cold evening.

  At the top of the display showed the words: ‘Whoever your God is, now is a good time to pray.’

  Underneath it: 00:03, clicked to 00:02.

  He thought of Dinah.

  00:01.

  ‘I’ll wait for you, my love,’ he called.

  00:00.

  Femi’s world flashed an intense, blinding white.

  The light enveloped him.

  Obliterated him.

  Chapter 51

  There was still no reply from Sophia when Clive and Ava’s plane touched down back at Heathrow. How could he make things better? The dread weighed Clive down, but as soon as the doors opened, they were off and running through the terminal.

  They had to slow to a walk to avoid startling the alert mechanisms in the immigration checks. In single file, they walked through the glass booth. A small beep of acceptance was their only acknowledgement, and they were running for the car pickup point.

  ‘Where’s Jay?’ Clive asked.

  ‘Uniform’s last position update was that he’s on holiday at Land’s End.
Local Uniform are going to get him, but it’s getting late already.’

  ‘OK. Tell them to go and hold him now, and then get him to PCU for nine tomorrow morning,’ said Clive. His breath was more ragged from the running than he would have liked.

  Ava scanned around the airport terminal, searching for something. ‘I did book you a “fragile traveller meet and greet”, Boss. Can’t see them though.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Clive said. ‘Wait till you get to my age.’

  ‘You’ve got forty more years until retirement, Boss.’

  Clive groaned and straightened up. ‘Don’t think I’ll make it,’ he said, and headed for the exit. Not a run anymore, but a walk, taking deep breaths, trying to keep them silent. He didn’t want to give Ava any more ammunition to fire at him.

  ‘Boss, report of a possible sighting of Femi at Stormont. Two armed Uniforms approaching him.’

  ‘That’s brilliant. Just the luck we needed. Two down, two to find.’ He beamed at Ava. ‘Maybe Jay can help us find the others. Going to be a great day from here.’

  He didn’t know how wrong he was.

  Chapter 52

  Serge banged his apartment’s front door shut.

  His breathing was back to normal. Not good clean breaths, but his normal distant rattle. He had got to the hospital quickly enough and been treated as an emergency on a nebuliser. After ten minutes on the machine, he was breathing again. Then he had wasted hours when the doctors refused to let him go without more checks and lectures about smoking.

  He almost ran to his computer and woke it up.

  He logged-in and opened the game’s master window and stared at the status.

  The window was split into the usual four quadrants, one for each player.

  Femi’s quadrant showed a chequered flag, and the display underneath showed the controller was locked onto its mount and there were only seconds left on the automated self-destruct sequence that started when the controller recognised it had reached its finish point.

  He watched the last few seconds of Femi’s life tick away, wondering how he had won. Sully had been way ahead.