by Will Wiles
Where’s the fire? I asked Tamesis.
The Bunk logo spun in thought.
Where are you? Tamesis asked.
I looked at the Bunk logo. The all-seeing B.
Belt and braces.
I dialled a number. I had been so excited when this number had been sent to me, in an email months before. Another age – I had felt myself up against collapse back then, not knowing how much further I could stagger without falling. Were more months ahead of me? Not a chance. Getting this number, a direct private line, had been a great boon, a way of holding back the coming … whatever was coming.
‘F.A.Q.’
‘Francis, hi. It’s Jack Bick.’
‘One moment, Mr Bick.’
That’s how you know you’ve arrived – having someone to answer your private direct line. Was that efficient male voice the young assistant who had been with Quin when they found me in the pub on Tuesday evening? His cover? Or could it be – the background noise had changed, a shift perhaps no more than the bearer of the phone moving from one room to another, or perhaps I was talking to a machine, a discreet piece of software that could screen calls on the basis of voice print and other inscrutable factors.
In any case, I was let through.
‘Jack Bick,’ Quin said, drawing out each word of my name as if I were an old friend and my call had prompted a rush of happy memory. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Francis,’ I said. ‘I, er, wanted …’ What did I want? What were my three wishes? Or one wish? Magic away my problems, oh genie of the app. No, the monkey’s paw was more like it – there would be a price. ‘I wanted to thank you for your kind words on Tamesis the other day. It was …’ It was creepy and alarming and I was still trying to divine the meaning of it. ‘It was generous of you.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ Quin said, in the same warm tone he had used to greet me. Even when we had been arranging his interview, he had not been this effusive. ‘It was good to run into you like that. And to clear the air.’
I felt a flicker of anger. To run into you like that – like what? He knew like what, the mechanisms he had abused to find me, and I did not. And as for clearing the air, what had been done to clear it? It did not feel clear; what would that mean? A balance between us, a settled account? However it stood, it was not in my favour, I knew that.
‘Yes,’ I said cautiously. ‘I’ve been using Tamesis a bit more lately.’
‘That’s great,’ Quin said. ‘You’ll find that the more you put in, the more you get out. The more it learns, the better the results.’
‘I’ve been a little suspicious of it in the past,’ I said. I had a way to approach the topic, and I tried to keep it in mind. An interviewer evolves these skills. ‘You know, it can be a bit spooky at times, like Google knowing where you are and what you’re doing …’
Quin chuckled. ‘Yes. But spooky is good! I count spooky as praise. Spooky means that it’s working. Wrong isn’t spooky. Unhelpful isn’t spooky. Spooky is getting it right. I love spooky.’
‘It knows so much …’
‘It doesn’t know, it deduces,’ Quin said. ‘Location and time tell us so much. You’re in a restaurant at lunchtime, we can safely say you’re eating there. You’re on a certain street at a certain time of night, we can assemble the rest …’
Time of night? Why would he say time of night? Was he making an oblique reference to my walk with Pierce? It was troubling, but it was exactly the kind of snooping that I wanted to exploit. If he had meant my evening activities, he had not been able to resist mentioning that he knew – that unwise desire to flaunt his capabilities was what I was relying on.
‘I was wondering if you might be able to help me with something.’
‘I’m already helping you,’ Quin said, amused. ‘Don’t you remember?’
I didn’t remember. I had the sense of descending an unfamiliar flight of stairs in the dark, and believing I had reached the landing one step too soon: a sickening void and plunge where there should have been a footing, then a jarring impact. But what would it look like to admit to a blank spot in my memory? Could he be referring to something that I did know about? The Tamesis post? The decision to let my plagiarism slide? One of those. ‘To help me with something else,’ I said.
‘Go on.’
‘I need to find someone,’ I said, lowering my voice. Mohit was engrossed elsewhere. I could not see Kay. I had come to the crucial moment, but found it was difficult to articulate what I needed. ‘Alexander De Chauncey. I’d like to get an idea of where he is going to be over the next couple of days.’ No. That wasn’t enough. Push. ‘This afternoon. I want to find him, and I don’t know where he is. This afternoon, ideally.’
A breath on the other side. A thoughtful sound. ‘I know Alexander a little,’ Quin said. Why wasn’t I surprised? ‘Interesting fellow. Busy. You understand, I can’t just share location data from Tamesis. That would be a terrible breach of trust. Not to mention against the law.’
‘Of course,’ I said. I understood that there was another game to be played, a fiction to be co-written.
‘But some information is public, or semi-public,’ Quin continued. ‘It simply resides with particular audiences, and not others; it has not been restricted, it has simply not been distributed. The delineations may be arbitrary. If we tweaked the audience of that information, fractionally expanded it … Well, you could call that journalism.’
‘Well put,’ I said. Again, I checked to see what the others were doing. They were preoccupied, but I softened my voice another decibel or two. ‘And speaking of journalism, I know that you are taking a keen interest in my profile of Pierce, and if there is anything you want to contribute that might ensure its accuracy …’
‘Accuracy is so important,’ Quin purred. ‘How is it going with Pierce?’
‘Pierce is very committed to doing the profile his way,’ I said. I tried to sound tired, which came easily.
‘Yes,’ said Quin, concern in his tone. ‘I believe he would rather not do it at all.’
‘I wish I could make him understand that interviews are not written for the benefit of the interviewee,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. ‘They are written solely for the benefit of the reader.’
‘Mmm,’ Quin murmured, hesitant, not confirming or contradicting.
I needed to make myself plain. ‘I want to get the story right. Pleasing the reader is my only concern.’
‘Well—’
‘You are the reader.’
A satisfied exhalation was carried across the city’s ether. ‘Oh, I see. Well. That’s good to hear. How can I help?’
‘What proof do you have of Pierce’s fraud?’ I asked. ‘He told me that you stumbled across evidence while uploading his research into Tamesis …’
‘Not quite,’ Quin said. ‘I must have been close. We were looking at his notes relating to Night Traffic, that’s true. Not prying – they were scattered everywhere in his files, no system at all. Pierce … it’s a harsh thing to say about anyone, but his data architecture is simply woeful.’
‘And you found inconsistencies? Evidence that he had invented the story?’
‘No!’ Quin said, with a laugh. ‘Inconsistencies, that suggests intent, pattern, composition – no, Pierce’s notes were simply garbled. Word salad. I was concerned and mentioned it to him, and he became very agitated and upset. Then he confessed. Told me the whole story. Said I was the only one who knew, apart from himself.’
My gut cramped. ‘He led me to believe that you found out because of data analysis, punching everything into the Bunk mainframe …’
‘I dare say we would have done eventually,’ Quin said. ‘We already had a lot of data relating to Night Traffic entered – “punched in”, if you want to be antique about it. No killer proof, though. But it doesn’t matter now, because of your superb work. You have the proof. It has all worked out.’ Another stirring came down the line – a muffled voice, perhaps? ‘Jack, it’s been a pleasure, fantast
ic to hear it’s all going so well, but some people are waiting for me. Let’s later this. See you on Tamesis.’
And he was gone.
I lowered my phone. It was blood-hot and my palm was sweaty. But my insides were chilled. I had imagined that Quin had a grail, a smoking gun, an iron tabulation of Pierce’s errors and inventions that I could use to back up my story in the absence of cooperation from the author. But perhaps no such dossier existed. Quin had been relying on me for proof. I had betrayed Pierce by promising that I would write the story the way Quin wanted, while lacking the proof needed to actually write that story, thus running the risk of betraying Quin. It was entirely possible that through my fumbling they would both end up furious with me. And all that was predicated on actually writing something, anything, and that didn’t seem any likelier than it had earlier in the week. I had gone behind Pierce’s back for nothing – possibly worse than nothing.
Unless. I woke the phone and brought up Tamesis. What I expected, I don’t know. A glowing icon on the map showing the precise location of Alexander De Chauncey, like in a spy movie. Here’s the arsehole, marked with a brown star to match the blue Bunk star.
Nothing like that. The screen was merrily filling with information: nearby cafés and restaurants in which I might want to have lunch. Nearby pubs. The city glowed hot around the office – multiple T-plus contacts in the vicinity. My colleagues. I thumbed over to Wolfe / De Chauncey’s Shoreditch office, only a few streets away, but there was no tell-tale emblem or pulse there.
All the air was going from the room. I picked up my aluminium bottle, but it was empty. When had that happened? The last sip of beer had dried to glue inside my mouth. The meeting in the aquarium had broken up at last and it was empty, door open. Outside my bubble of misery, this had released some of the tension in the atmosphere, and the office felt busier and more relaxed with Eddie and Polly back at their desks, Eddie on the phone, Polly chatting quite normally with Kay. Already, it was lunchtime – I could sneak out and recharge.
But Polly was on guard. As soon as I left my seat and put on my coat, her eyes were on me; when I made for the door, she at once broke off her conversation with Kay and hailed me.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked.
‘Oh, you know,’ I said. ‘Getting there.’
But she hadn’t meant how’s it going, she had meant where are you going. ‘It would be great if we could see something this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Ready for the meeting tomorrow. Going to lunch?’
She said it with a smile, but I picked up the implicit warning, and could imagine her making a mental note of the time for later addition to her clipboard, ready to be compared to the time of return.
‘Uh, yeah,’ I said. ‘Just going to get something in.’
Kay had been watching this exchange, impassive. Hearing this, she returned her attention to her screen, a touch of coolness in her demeanour.
‘Great. See you soon.’ The threat lay near the surface.
I did not dare to go to the pub, not even for one, not even for a half. Instead I went straight to the sandwich shop, where I bought a BLT and a bottle of water to go. But the water was a depressing weight in the little brown paper bag they gave me. I needed a proper drink. I went to the nearest convenience store, a little hole in the wall I usually avoid for fear of running into someone from work. The cans were sold individually, each with a little luminous sticker bearing its steep price. I put the cans in a battered basket and added a couple of vodka miniatures. The spirits were OK because I wasn’t drinking them on their own; relying on them, that was a slippery slope – I was just using them to fortify my beer. Two cans went into each outside pocket and the minis went into an inside pocket.
The aluminium bottle made all this possible – it really was proving a boon. I should bring it in every day. But my plan – plan was really too grand a word – had only come together in the sandwich shop, and I had left the bottle on my desk. Discreetly decanting the cans would be a logistical challenge.
It had started to rain. The thick cloud almost reached street level, but still the plume was there, a foul swatch of crisp, peristaltic filth against the opaque, even grey of the winter storm. No more ambiguity: it was closer. The question of why, or how, would have to wait. There were higher priorities.
I returned to the office, grimly aware of every clank and jangle that issued from my overweight coat, feeling like a cross between a poacher and a primitive robot from a 1950s movie. And getting into the office was only the start of it. Somehow I would have to get the bottle and decant the cans into it, when I was sure that my moves would not be closely watched. For the second time that day, I found myself stalled in the area between the lifts and the office, trying to figure out what to do next.
Fate came to my assistance. While I had been out, the lunch exodus had taken place. On a normal day I would have left before it started and returned after it had returned, so I had forgotten that it happened at all. But our part of the office was almost deserted – no Mohit, no Polly, no Rays, no Kay. Eddie was inside his stockade and Ilse was trying to burn holes through her vast Mac screen with a kind of focused horror. Neither was likely to pay me much heed. Keeping my coat on, I put the paper bag containing my sandwich down on my desk and picked up the aluminium bottle. Then I turned and left, going to the toilets, heart pounding in my chest. If I was discovered, explanations would be difficult and suspicions would be confirmed. Why take that risk? I did not have a ready answer to that – just that the unbearable pain of carrying on was, for today, better than the unknowable pain of stopping.
I had to use a cubicle, for privacy, and that presented more difficulties. The only flat surface was the seat, the cisterns were behind the tiled wall. The bottle would only fit two cans, so half of my purchase would have to wait until later, and I would have to repeat this whole ridiculous operation. I hung my winter coat on the back of the cubicle door and opened a can. The crack of the seal breaking seemed aberrantly loud in the confined space of the cubicle, and it hissed and spattered seething beer over the back of my hand. It had been bouncing around in my pocket, getting agitated, they all had, and I would need to be careful. Foam continued to well up, splashing onto the floor, so I put the can to my lips and slurped away the excess, desperate to stop the loss.
The cold beer touched me like a benediction, immediately banishing the vileness and dryness that had gathered in my mouth. But with its spreading, quenching coolth came fear. I had not checked the other cubicles when I came in. There were three. I had rushed to the end one, furthest from the door, considering it most discreet. But I had not checked the others to see if they were occupied.
I held still, listening for any sounds of occupation from the neighbouring cubicle – a sniff, a breath, a scuff of shoes on tile. Nothing came. The partitions had wide gaps at the top and bottom – I dipped down to see if I could see feet. Nothing. Safe, I was fairly sure. Fairly.
Continue. I poured the beer into the bottle, where it gurgled and frothed but behaved itself. Then I added the contents of one of the miniatures, before taking out a second can. This time I was more careful. I pulled back the tab with care. The beer began to push and spit through the small fracture.
The toilet door opened, and someone walked in.
The beer was still hissing and hawking, sounds that seemed deafeningly loud in the confined space. White spume was filling the lipped area on top of the can.
They paused, whoever it was who had come in. Were they checking themselves in the mirror, opening their fly, or pondering over the strange noises coming from the far cubicle? It was, at least, a plumbing kind of sound, the sound of a spluttering tap or a limescaled cistern trying to refill itself.
But the beer would spill if I did nothing. I put my lips to the circular white puddle that had formed on top of the can and tried to quietly drain some of it away. The spitting changed pitch. I prayed that the newcomer stayed out of the cubicles, but feared it made little difference.
Urine splashed into the urinal. I used the cover of the noise to slurp more greedily at the beer. The pressure within the can had eased and it had stopped its tell-tale whispering, but I couldn’t pull back the tab all the way without an unmistakeable report in the echoing hush of the lav.
Whoever finished his business and washed his hands. Then he exited. Perhaps he had never known of my presence. I poured the second can into the bottle, but made the mistake of hurrying, so the foam rose up the neck and ran out over my knuckles. Sticky residue would be left everywhere – I would have to run the bottle under the tap. And I was not quite finished. There was a problem I had not anticipated: the empties, two cans and the plastic bottle of the miniature. I didn’t like the thought of carrying them around in my coat pocket – they might be lighter, but they would rattle more, and drip and smell.
There was a litter bin in the toilet, a good deep flip-top bin, but I was wary of leaving the cans on top of the rubbish, in case they were seen. So when Eddie entered the bathroom, he found me digging around in the bin, trying to bury them, and although he saw nothing specific his nod of greeting was accompanied by a deep frown of obvious suspicion.
He went to the urinal, and I went to wash.
The cold water was too cold – I was shivering. Or rather, my hands, pale as blobfish dredged from the deepest ocean, were shaking. I turned the water to hot and squirted soap onto my palm, hoping the rubbing of one hand against another might steady the tremor and burn up the time until Eddie left.
Eddie joined me at the sinks and soaped his own hands, eyeing the energetic lather than I had generated.
‘We never really finished our talk about Alexander,’ he said.
Part of the flimsy scenery of my life came crashing down. The strength was going from my legs, getting sucked into an abyss of unconsciousness and collapse. I had eaten nothing in more than twenty-four hours, and the consequences were coming, the horizon was closer than ever.