“Oh man,” said Sym, “you sure have some bad taste in porn, Albert.”
He walked across the small, poorly lit office and opened a drawer, taking out a lined notebook full of scrawled handwriting.
“If you used your computer for anything other than porn,” said Sym, flicking through the pages, “you’d have spared me the indignity of having to take over your body like this. I mean, come on, Albert, don’t you have any self-respect? When was the last time you washed? This is like having to take a crap in the public bathroom on the third day of a music festival.”
The entries in the notebook were, at least, in date order, and Sym quickly found what he was looking for. Only three rooms had been rented that day. Albert’s memory was sketchy on which room he had rented to the limping paramedic with blood on his face, but he remembered the man himself, because he’d scared him half-witless. Albert had looked into his eyes once, when handing over the key, and it hadn’t been an experience he’d ever wanted to repeat. Sym extracted one other piece of information from Albert’s brain before going upstairs. The back entrance to the hotel was kept padlocked shut, only being opened when the Council performed the annual fire inspection. The injured man couldn’t have used it, because Albert had hung his ‘Back in ten minutes’ sign on the office door and gone to the pub for the rest of the day, hoping a large quantity of alcohol might help stop him from shaking.
Adam must have found another way out.
It had taken Sym seconds to pick Adam up on CCTV and track him to the hotel. The paramedic’s uniform made him easy to find, once Claire’s memories had given Sym the right location to check. When he’d seen the limping figure on camera, he’d been pleased to see how painful his progress looked.
Adam had checked in to the hotel, but he’d never checked out. Only one camera covered the hotel entrance, and Sym had reviewed the footage thoroughly. Over the twenty-four-hour period after Adam had checked in, no one matching his description had left. Even with his unmatched resources, Sym couldn’t enhance the footage enough to confirm the identity of all hotel guests who had exited the building during that timeframe.
He must have left some other way. Or he was still here. Either way, Sym needed to know. He took three keys from the rack on the wall. The first two rooms were unoccupied, their grimy windows inaccessible behind iron bars. A quick scan of Albert’s brain revealed that all rooms on the first three floors had similarly barred windows. Sym looked at the number on the last key: 412.
Sym unlocked the door and walked in.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” he said to the blonde woman, and the fat man she was straddling. They both looked on speechlessly as Sym walked across to the window and threw it open. The rooms on the fourth floor had no need for iron bars, as he quickly confirmed when he stuck his head out and looked down. The drop was probably not quite high enough to kill, but it would certainly break some bones, and the two big, hungry-looking dogs in the yard would dissuade anyone desperate enough to risk it.
“Shit,” said Sym. The fat man’s hands were still frozen in place on the blonde woman’s breasts as Sym walked back to the door. Sym gave him a wink, and was about to leave, when he paused.
“You guys smell that?” he said. The hotel was filthy. Sym doubted housekeeping amounted to much more than a change of sheets and towels, a mop around the bathroom and a cursory pass with a hoover elsewhere.
He backed slowly into the room and walked toward the bed. The fat man was still motionless, but his paid company had regained the capacity for speech.
“Hey!” she said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? We paid for this room, you old perv—,”
“Shh,” said Sym, and dropped to his knees. He lifted the counterpane and looked under the bed, his nose wrinkling in distaste.
Albert wasn’t a particularly strong specimen, so Sym had to temporarily divert blood from his legs to his arms and increase his adrenaline levels dangerously in order to get what he wanted. He reached under the bed and pulled, straining, until what he was gripping slid into view.
It was the naked body of a woman and—judging by the quantity of cheap makeup applied to her features and hiding the beginnings of decomposition—in the same line of business as the blonde two feet above her.
As the blonde caught sight of the body and started to scream, Sym reached back under and pulled out some clothing. It was a paramedic’s uniform.
“Fuck,” said Sym, with some feeling.
Back at the computer, Sym left Albert and re-entered the network, wishing the digital equivalent of a good, hot shower was an option.
He watched the footage one more time, following everyone who had exited the hotel. He used nineteen nearby CCTV feeds of varying quality. Identification was straightforward for most possible suspects. They either went back to their own vehicles—registered to them online—or used an ATM. Or they simply turned on their phones. Any of these actions gave Sym all the information he needed.
Two suspects remained. Sym lost one in an Underground station, unable to work out how it was someone could enter a station, be clearly picked up on six cameras, but never get on a train or come back out. A quick cross-reference with news sites cleared up that mystery. The guy had jumped in front of a train.
That left one possibility. A heavily-bearded man who had left with two hookers. One of the hookers carried a backpack which might have been the one Adam had brought into the hotel. Both women were leaning heavily on the bearded guy as they all weaved along the street. Drunk. Or pretending to be, to fool anyone watching the footage.
The bearded guy looked to be about Adam’s build, but heavier. The three of them had climbed into a cab, getting out—according to the taxi records—in a well-heeled area in Notting Hill. A street that was now part of a gated community. No security cameras once you were inside the walled district. The residents, wealthy, famous, or both, valued their privacy too highly. Sym was in too much of a hurry to care.
He found the control center of the exclusive neighborhood and jumped into the body of a Notting Hill security guard, gaining access through his headset. Two minutes later, he was pounding on the doors of the street, one by one. It was 6:25am. Outraged residents soon scuttled back into their houses and double-locked their doors when he told them an intruder was at large.
The fifth house he knocked at, he got lucky. A sleepy-looking bearded man opened the door and looked up at Sym. The security guard Sym had hijacked was six feet, three inches and had played rugby for his county. Perfect for his purposes.
“Hey,” protested the bearded man as a huge meaty hand pushed him back into his own hallway. He slipped and fell on his ass.
Sym grabbed the front of his robe and lifted him to his feet before pinning him against the wall. This guy wasn’t Adam.
Sym snarled and the man whimpered.
“I have some questions for you,” he said.
There were a variety of technical ways Sym could have established the identity of the terrified looking man he was currently pinning to the wall, but sometimes old school was the best. He grabbed a handful of beard and pulled. Hard.
“Ow! What the fuck?” It was a real beard, well established. Couldn’t have been grown that fast by the clean-shaven Adam. He pulled the man’s hair to make sure.
“SHIT, what are you doing?” Tears in his eyes, now. Real hair, too. Not bald. Not Adam.
So where the hell was he?
Sym dragged the crying man through to his kitchen and pushed him onto a bar stool. He found vodka in the freezer and handed the guy a large measure.
The man gulped all of it down, took a deep breath and looked at Sym. His pupils were pinpricks. He was high on something. Sym had spent time in the brains of chemically-confused individuals before. It made it very hard for him to take control and get what he wanted. He was going to have to do this the hard way.
“What’s your name?” said Sym.
“Greg,” he said, gulping air. “Please don’t hurt me. I have some
cash, a laptop, but I don’t keep much here. I’m mortgaged to the hilt, just because I live here doesn’t make me rich, you know, I’m barely getting by, I—”
Sym raised an eyebrow, and he stopped talking.
“Shut up, Greg,” he said. “I don’t want your money.”
If anything, the man managed to look even more terrified. He pulled his dressing gown more tightly around himself.
“Oh, please,” said Sym. “Don’t flatter yourself. I want to ask you about a night four weeks ago. You brought two hookers here from that shit-heap of a hotel?”
“How dare you?” said Greg, drawing himself up a little straighter. Now that Sym had assured him his money and his body were safe, he had regained a little courage. “You can’t come around here making accusations about my private life like this. I’ll have you know that I happen to be a close friend of…” His voice trailed away into nothing as he watched Sym taking each of his Japanese steel kitchen knives in turn, examining them, then laying them next to each other on the counter.
“Ok, ok,” he said, tripping over his words. “I’m sorry. Ok. Yes, there were two of them. Skanky. Nasty. But, well, sometimes you fancy a couple of burgers rather than foie gras, you know?”
“No,” said Sym, looking steadily at him. “I don’t.”
“Ah. Righto. Um. Well, I, er, yes. Thought we might try a bit of role-play. They’re the teachers, I’m the naughty schoolboy, that kind of thing. You know what I - um, no. Never mind.”
Sym had a sudden, sickening thought, made worse by the fact that he should have considered it much sooner.
“Was one of them injured?” he said, picking up the smallest knife and holding up to the light.
“Yes, yes, of course. I remember. Yes. Her leg. Bandaged. She had to lean on me.”
Sym held a finger up to his lips.
“Answer these questions carefully, Greg, and I’ll leave you alone. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Greg nodded, not daring to speak.
“Good. Why did you bring them back here? To your home?”
Greg’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t tell you any more,” he said. “I had to bring her. Had to do what she said. She took pictures at the hotel. Said she’d post them online. My political career is just beginning to take off. I’ll be ruined. Please. I can’t.”
Sym picked up the knife. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said.
“Oh, thank you, thank you.”
“But I am going to torture you until you tell me what I need know. I’ll start by removing your toenails. Far more painful than your fingernails. That’s just in the movies. If you turn out to be tougher than you look, I’ll have to get creative. You Jewish, Greg?”
White-faced and sweating, Greg managed to shake his head.
“Excellent. Would you like to be?”
“She took my car,” said Greg, babbling in his haste to pass on the information. “I said she could have it. Haven’t reported it as stolen. Then the police found it abandoned. Bloody nightmare.”
“Where did they find it?”
“Up north somewhere. I don’t know. Please don’t let her release those pictures. Please.”
“Car registration?”
Greg told him, and Sym waved a hand over a section of the kitchen wall. A screen glowed into life.
“Get me in.”
Greg half-fell off his stool, then stood in front of the screen, allowing his retina to be scanned. The lock-screen image disappeared to be replaced by a photograph of the Houses of Parliament. Sym pulled up a stool, sat down and leaned forward, his hands over the counter that contained the computer.
Milliseconds later, a tiny golden spider sank into the counter top. As Greg watched, the security guard’s head rolled forward, his chin resting on his chest, eyes closed. He didn’t move for a few minutes, after which his breathing deepened, and he began to snore.
Sym found the car and the police report. The Jaguar had been abandoned and torched on the outskirts of Newcastle, about ten minutes’ walk from the bus station. Over three weeks ago.
He called the island. The line was dead.
He spent the next few seconds exploring every possible method of getting to Innisfarne, an island with no technology that he could exploit.
And Adam was either on his way or already there.
It was 7:12am.
46
Innisfarne
At breakfast that day, Joni decided it was time things should begin to return to normal on Innisfarne. Mum still seemed tired and drawn, but Joni was hardly surprised given recent events. Not only had Mum killed Adam, she had spent time with Sym, which was the closest she’d come to meeting Dad in nearly two decades. No wonder she was still twitchy and unsettled.
She walked up behind her mother and rubbed her shoulders. Mee leaned into her, smiling.
“What are you saying, Jones? Am I too tense?”
“You know it. But I have a cure.”
Joni took Mum’s hand and led her out of the dining room and up the back stairs. There was only one room that was used up there, and Mee hadn’t climbed these stairs for nearly two months.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mee, “I’m not sure if—,”
“I do know,” said Joni, as she reached the end of the corridor and pushed open the door, “and I am sure.”
The small room was sparsely furnished. There was a faded sofa in one corner, and a stained coffee machine on a small table. The remaining space was dominated by a large table pushed against a wall. A mixing desk, an old quarter-inch reel-to-reel recorder and a small keyboard were on the table, two wall-mounted speakers positioned so that the person sitting on the only chair would be in the acoustic sweet spot.
Joni pushed Mee gently down into the chair, walked to the corner and flicked on the power, grabbing a guitar and handing it to her mother. Next, she went to the microphone in the corner, taking off the dust sheet, shaking then folding it. The mic was surrounded by heavy drapes hanging from hooks screwed into the ceiling. Joni smiled. She could remember sitting on the floor of this room before she could walk, playing with instrument cables and an old, stringless ukulele while her mother sang behind those drapes. There were a few seconds in one recording where you could still faintly hear the ukulele being chewed, but Mee had insisted it added character to her performance.
“Jones, don’t think I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m not sure I can write anything just now.”
Joni produced the bag of ground coffee she had brought with her. Walking into the bathroom next door, she rinsed and filled the jug, then crammed the filter with rich grounds and flicked the machine on.
“Write something for me, Mum,” she said. She could see Mee was about to protest, so she spoke over her.
“Please,” she said, and waited until her mother had picked up the headphones and put them on before backing out, shutting the door gently behind her.
Mee watched her go. She sat with the guitar on her lap for a few seconds, thinking. Penelope was off the water for a week for annual maintenance, so no one was expected. The old man in the crofter’s cottage was still maintaining his reclusive existence, the three women were inching toward healing at their own pace. Sym had promised to monitor any unusual interest in Innisfarne.
Joni was right. She could barely remember the last time she worked on a song.
She looked at her watch. 8:40am. She could spare a couple of hours.
She strummed a couple of chords, winced at the sound, and started tuning the guitar.
John changed the sandpaper he’d been using for one with a finer grain and gave the edge of the picture frame a few final passes. He’d been working on it for the past few days, making sure it would be ready for Kate’s birthday. It was made from driftwood washed onto Innisfarne’s shore. Joni had contributed most pieces, beach combing while out on her walks. She’d even found a frayed piece of netting from a passing trawler, and the corner of a packing case, which clearly read Sa
n Juan.
He’d already hammered three ancient, rusting nails closer into the wood and had sanded the sharpest edges, wary of splinters. The rest he’d left as it was; weatherbeaten, still rough in places, worn smooth by time, wind and waves in others. He knew the flaws were what had drawn him to it. He thought Kate would feel the same.
There was a quiet knock at the door, and John looked around for a place to hide the frame before he relaxed as Joni’s face appeared.
“You got it finished, then? Looks great. She’s going to love it.”
“I hope so. You stopping for a coffee?”
“Nope. I’m walking. In the woods today, I think. It all smells so great in Autumn. Or Fall - I love the way you call it that. So descriptive of the season.”
“Funny. I was gonna say how much I love the word Autumn. It’s a word that only means one thing. Kinda poetic.”
John looked at Joni, then brushed an imaginary wood-shaving from the side of the frame, trying to sound casual. “You still resetting regularly, hon?”
“Yeah. I hardly think about it, now. It’s become a habit.”
“Good. That’s good. Enjoy your walk.”
He watched her go, following her progress as she headed towards the trees. He understood Mee’s caution, and he shared it. But as long as Joni was resetting, she had a defense no one could anticipate or easily overcome. He still couldn’t quite shift an uneasy feeling, though. He’d shared headspace with a psychotic genius for many years, and knew it would be a mistake for any of them to relax their vigilance. Adam might be dead, but John thought it had all gone down just a little too easily. He’d feel far more comfortable when another six months had gone by without incident.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 91