by Will Wiles
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Off the record, then,’ De Chauncey said, a Bulgari sparkle in his eye. ‘The tenants don’t know they’re dealing with a machine. As far as they’re concerned, their landlord is a small-time buy-to-let guy, that’s who they’re emailing. The algorithm writes its responses like a person – like some random slob who owns a couple of flats on the side to top up his pension. It says “yeah” and “cheers” and so on. It even puts in typos. If it replies at all. That’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t always reply, less than half the time, and it never replies immediately. Just like a real small-timer. It’s fantastic. It soaks up all the tenant’s frustrations, and only occasionally logs jobs for attention, depending on the level of tenant anger, potential risk to the fabric of the property, cost versus yield, and legal liability. Amazing what it can do, what it can decide. They think they’re dealing with Dave Stockton, but in fact they’re emailing HAL 9000. HAL, only lazy.’
I watched wind-snatched raindrops fall on my phone screen, splashing rainbows in its light. ‘Dave Stockton,’ I said, mouth dry.
‘Yeah, we give them all generic names, Frank Smith, Susan Roberts, Ahmed Khan, Dave Stockton. It’s all the same program. “Dave” was one of the first.’
‘So—’ I began, and I had to stop to try to work some moisture back into my dry mouth. ‘So Dave Stockton is an algorithm? A computer?’
‘Like a voice assist thing on your phone, but over email. Bunk built it, we just advised on how it should behave and what we wanted from it. But what’s clever is that Cortana and Alexa and Google Assist and all those have to be very sophisticated because people expect them to be helpful and useful and fast. No one expects that of Dave, the buy-to-let landlord. They expect him to be a bit shit.’
‘Isn’t it dishonest?’
De Chauncey shrugged, tipping a spray of water off his umbrella. My phone was still recording. I stared at the jerking line, watching it keep rhythm with the drumming of the raindrops against the material above me and the swish of passing cars. That was what I clung to, hoping that it still contained a link to a form of reality. Not my wet feet or the obvious, morbid biology of my coldness, tiredness and sickness. The phone.
‘You say dishonest, I say disruptive,’ he said. ‘It gives people what they want. Tenants are a group with very low expectations. As they should be. The software manages that, as well; it records the number and tone of complaints, balances that against the cost of setting things right, and when a threshold is reached, it triggers eviction. We’ve automated the hardest job a landlord has to do. Such a difficult decision, and we’ve taken it entirely out of human hands. The emotional labour, and its drag on investment value, is eliminated. You can imagine the peace of mind that creates, knowing that you won’t have to deal with a situation of that sort. Beautiful.’
‘For the owners,’ I said. The journalist’s temporary access to the higher lifestyles might look, at times, like corruption – at times, it is corruption. But it also has a strange camouflaging effect. The gilded ones who dwell in the Zebedee hotel, who don’t have to give their names to the clipboards, can mistake you for a more elevated element, simply because you are in their space – an owner among owners. They would never guess your actual salary, your actual living arrangement. They would be appalled.
I didn’t want to do the interview any more. Damn Eddie and Polly. I had the Pierce story, almost, I could make something out of that. But what would be the point? Another month’s salary into the bank, to be electronically deducted hours later to whatever Cayman Islands vault lay behind the artfully demotic syntax of ‘Dave Stockton’. The sickness wasn’t just in me, it was all around, in my bank account, at work, in the shaking walls of my flat. It had spread out into the world. Like the Need, in fact – it had the same cold implacability to it. Shutting down the options. One deathly Need had revealed another: the need to work at all costs and make rent, the impossibility of stopping or pausing.
On instinct, I glanced up at the plume. I hoped it was serious, that it was spreading, that it took the whole city away. We had been walking at speed through the maze between Great Eastern Street and Old Street. It was a place I knew intimately, but it was as if the storm and the winter darkness had washed the familiarity from it, made it featureless and dead. I had to take time to fix myself in space, but somehow the plume was exactly where I looked, just over the next line of dark Victorian attic windows. It churned and toiled and looked back at me. Smoke without fire.
All week I had seen it as the result of something that had happened. A tragedy, far but near, that had a beginning and continued and would end.
Now I saw that it was the sign of something yet to happen. It was not moving towards me. I was moving towards it.
‘Here we are,’ De Chauncey said. We were outside the flagship branch of Wolfe / De Chauncey, a warm slab of light held behind sheet glass. The office was closed, the spots over the desks were dimmed, but the LED-rimmed properties in the window shone like an inaccessible constellation containing habitable worlds. The glass-fronted fridge, a doll’s-house version of the store that contained it, still displayed its soldier ranks of San Pellegrino and Cobra. Its blue glow revealed the Street Art wall and the quieted mixing decks where DJs strutted during the day, laying ambient beats over property transactions.
‘Home sweet home,’ I said. I didn’t want to do the interview, but I did still want the lift. I could just grit my teeth and let him talk.
‘Cars are parked round the side,’ De Chauncey said. Next to the office was a narrow alley, lit only by what reached it from the main road.
As I turned into the alley, the side wall of the office was caught by the sweeping headlights of a passing car. My foot caught on a cobble and I stumbled – my phone slipped from my hand and clattered onto the ground.
A giant cockatoo was waiting in the alley. It stood two storeys tall, feet apart, the yellow feathers on the back of its head raised in a fan. It scowled down at me.
I fell into a crouch, wanting to retrieve my phone from wherever it had fallen, but also to tear myself away from this vast apparition, daring to be certain that it would be gone by the time I looked up. My phone had not broken or landed in a puddle, but the voice recording had stopped. I tried to wipe the dirty water from its screen but succeeded only in redistributing it.
The cockatoo was still there. Its attitude was disapproving, but unchanged. Not a feather had shifted. Another strafe of headlights showed, under its feathers, the texture of the bricks it had been painted onto.
‘Do you like our pet?’ De Chauncey asked. ‘Mascot, really. We sponsor some street artists – they can do amazing things for the image of an area, and values. This was painted by Drabble.’
‘Drabble, yeah,’ I said. ‘I know him.’ There was a giant possum, its back swarming with young, near the magazine’s building.
‘Hold these,’ De Chauncey said, handing me the gift bags he had been carrying. Once unencumbered, he took out his car keys and point-clicked. Lights flashed further back in the gloom and an alarm hiccupped. We walked towards the lights.
‘Hey,’ a voice said behind us.
We turned. A bulky figure was standing at the mouth of the alley, silhouetted against the lights of the street.
‘You all right, mate?’ De Chauncey said after a moment.
The newcomer walked towards us, purpose in his step, hands thrust into the front pocket of a black hoodie, hood pulled down over the eyes, shoulders shining with rain.
‘Is there a problem?’ De Chauncey said. There was an edge of warning in his voice, but I wondered if it was covering something else. With my hands full of gift bags, I felt acutely vulnerable. Although I had no idea what was going to happen, I knew what was going to happen.
‘No fucking problem,’ the figure said. A hand withdrew from the hoodie, bringing a sharp metal point into the second-hand light of the alley. Another rush of white headlights caught his lower face in profile: unshaven, jowly.
> It was Pierce – I had known right away, before he spoke, from his build and his gait and his intentions. When he spoke it removed all doubt, though he had tried to roughen up his voice. Just like his writing, I thought, with the reflex of a laugh – but it was like trying to move a limb that had been amputated. I could not laugh, I could not do anything. I knew what he wanted to do, but that was not what paralysed me. I was frozen because I did not know how much he was capable of.
‘Pierce,’ I said, the word muffled by numb lips. Pierce, it was Pierce. I had to say the name, to say the word, because I had been reminded of something Pierce had said when we first met. He had said that names had power, that they steered their bearers. And he was Pierce – was De Chauncey about to get pierced?
De Chauncey glanced at me, but quickly turned his attention back to the hooded form. ‘Yeah, peace, brother. We’re all just trying to get home.’
‘Home,’ Pierce growled. ‘What do you fucking know about home? How many people have you made homeless?’
De Chauncey scowled at the accusation, indignant but confused. I saw his eyes flick to one side, to the car, covered in the funky Wolfe / De Chauncey branding. He must have wondered, for a moment, how this stranger knew his business, and with that sideways twitch of the eyes I saw him draw the logical, obvious, entirely wrong conclusion: that he was being targeted because of the car. Guilt by automobile association. But the wrong conclusion was the safe conclusion as far as I was concerned. I was in double danger. It had been a mistake to say Pierce’s name, it had just slipped out, and De Chauncey’s mishearing had been a lucky escape. I did not want him to know that I knew Pierce, that we were all connected. That would make me an accomplice – it would look as if I had been walking De Chauncey into a trap.
Which was, I realised, pretty much what I had done. I’m waiting, Pierce had messaged. Where are you? Never mind. Waiting. He had been outside the hotel, watching people leaving, watching me wait for De Chauncey, trying to guess at my movements, thinking them all part of the plan – my plan. And how had he known I was here? Via Tamesis, and my RSVP. Quin didn’t even have to nudge that connection, it could have happened entirely organically, if ‘Olipi’ had been snooping on my profile.
Pierce took another step towards us, and another. I had been giddy with fear at the volatility of the situation, its ability to turn into any number of horrifying outcomes. But I felt myself steady a little with a realisation: Pierce didn’t know what he wanted to do. He had been so vague in outlining the scenario. He had no template to work from. The situation was blank: it could be inscribed.
‘Stop,’ I said.
Pierce stopped.
‘What do you want?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said De Chauncey. ‘What do you want? Money? Phone? Watch?’
‘Shut up!’ Pierce spat. He was looking at De Chauncey, angling the blade at him. ‘I don’t want your fucking money!’ In a couple of quick strides he closed the remaining distance between himself and the estate agent, coming so close they were almost chest to chest. He had the knife out, not held almost hidden as it was before but thrust forward, point only inches from De Chauncey’s gut.
‘Are you afraid?’ Pierce asked. His tone was flat rather than mocking or angry, but that only made it more threatening.
De Chauncey certainly appeared afraid. His chin had withdrawn and he looked like he was holding something in his mouth. He closed his eyes, as if offering a prayer, opened them again, and nodded.
I could defuse this, end it perhaps. I could say, Stop, stop, this man is a literary novelist, he’s not dangerous, he knows Lauren Laverne. I could pretend it was an art project, a stunt gone wrong. Maybe it was, how would I know? But I said nothing, fearful of incriminating myself.
‘You’re afraid,’ Pierce said gently. ‘Good. That’s it. That’s what I want.’
He took a step back and his manner changed. Whereas before he had been wound tight and tense, now his stance was everyday, almost casual. The knife was pointing at the ground, and he returned it to his pocket, embarrassed by it. I half expected him to extend his hand, to say, Hi, I’m Oliver Pierce, sorry about that, pleasure to meet you.
‘That’s it,’ he said again, this time to me. ‘That’s what I want. That’s what they need.’
A police siren whooped – the one-off attention-grabbing whoop, not the continuous call. All three of us in the alley jumped, and I looked towards the road. I was afraid again, afraid that the way out would be blocked by the fluorescent flank of a patrol car and strobing blue lights, afraid that Pierce would be arrested and there would be questions, and answers, there would be the truth. But no car appeared.
Pierce wasn’t risking it. He turned and ran, making surprising speed for a sedentary man his age and build.
I was left alone with De Chauncey amid the trickling rain.
‘Jesus,’ De Chauncey said.
We were quiet a moment, and unmoving.
‘I thought he was going to, for a moment,’ De Chauncey said. The colour had gone from his face. He shook his head. ‘Look, I … let’s do the talking another time. The questions. Not sure I can focus right now. I’ll drive, but … Jesus. I can’t do it right now.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said. It didn’t seem to matter.
ELEVEN
A squawk of siren roused me. My eyes were open at once, my body rigid, and I waited for the next noises: car doors slamming, the chuckle of radios, heavy shoes on the concrete steps down to my flat, gloved knuckles banging on the front door.
De Chauncey had not wanted to contact the police. ‘What would they do?’ he asked me. ‘It was just one of those things.’ These words were spoken with no bravado; on the contrary, De Chauncey made no effort to disguise how shaken he was. We spoke little when the drive home began, but around King’s Cross the silence had become uncomfortable. A backwash of the fright, I guess, the reabsorbed adrenalin making us voluble.
‘I don’t want to rake over it all again with the police,’ he said, as if it had happened years before, not twenty minutes ago.
‘I reckon you’re probably right,’ I said. Naturally I didn’t want to encourage De Chauncey to involve the police.
‘The police won’t do anything anyway,’ De Chauncey said. We had been caught by a succession of red lights, and the car rarely moved faster than its thumping windscreen wipers. He started to count off the reasons for his assertion, raising fingers off the steering wheel one by one, little finger first. ‘One, no one hurt. Two, nothing taken. Three, no CCTV.’
‘No CCTV?’ I said, hoping no secret rejoicing showed through a poker face. ‘That’s a shame.’
‘We keep telling the landlord, but …’ De Chauncey said. ‘He’ll be long gone by now, anyway.’ Evidently I was not the person that he was trying to convince. ‘He saw the car and thought he’d try it on. Just a passing scumbag.’
He drummed his hands against the wheel, keeping time with the labouring wipers. ‘What gets me is that it’s not even right. I mean, I’ve been blessed, but I worked my way up from nothing, almost nothing. Next to nothing. I’m an immigrant, my dad came over from Cyprus in the seventies. De Chauncey, that’s not even my name, my birth name. I’m Alexander Charalambous. I thought De Chauncey sounded a bit more … Well, you know. You have to create an impression, in business. You’ve got to be, I don’t know …’
‘Plausible,’ I said.
‘Plausible, yeah. I’m not playing the victim, mind. I fucking hate that, I know life’s been good to me – the city, this city, it’s been good to me, it opened up to me and embraced me.’ As he said this, the lights turned to green, a nod of agreement from the silent giant. ‘And I guess it just hasn’t for that bloke. On drugs, do you think?’
‘Obviously not well,’ I said.
‘If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else, maybe someone who didn’t deserve it.’
‘The mugging?’
De Chauncey flashed a frown at me. ‘What? No. Success. Anyway, he sees th
e car, the suit, he thinks … he gets it wrong. It’s not the whole story, anyway. Maybe that’s how we should do this piece? Get away from all that front, all that performance, all that Apprentice bullshit. Because, you know, it worries me. I’m not blind to it. The mood’s changing.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said. And he was right, that was a great angle. All of it. But it didn’t really matter.
Perhaps he had gone to the police after all; perhaps that was them outside now. With considerable effort, I turned my head towards the window. The curtains were closed. All was quiet, but there was something, something in the light, a bluish flicker …
A long, low groan sounded. At first I thought I might have made the sound, but it had come from the fabric of the house. These Victorian terraces made many mysterious noises, mostly when the central heating switched off and they started to cool down.
I snapped from miserable reverie, mind half in last night, to fully awake. If the central heating was off, I was late – late for the Friday meeting, late for the unmissable, utterly mandatory Friday meeting. I snatched up the bedside clock and stared at its treacherous little face. It was a few minutes after nine o’clock. I was late, and more than a little late, but not unsalvageably. If I left immediately, I could be at work at about ten – and possibly the meeting wouldn’t have started yet, and I could squeak in.
Urinating in the bathroom, I saw that a crack had appeared in the white-tiled wall behind the toilet cistern, fresh and sharp-edged, running along the grout lines in between the tiles. When had that happened? The place was coming apart. I made a mental note to email Dave – and remembered, a sickening rising bubble, that there was no Dave, just a few thousand lines of software. Software with the power to evict me. What could I say to log the repair without triggering the termination of my tenancy? What were the words or phrases to include, or avoid? Was this the future, then – trying to second-guess the machines overseeing our fate?
I returned to the bedroom and dressed, the Dave question festering away. But there was no time to really dwell on it. If I left right away, I could make the meeting, maybe only snipping the opening pleasantries. I could at least plead my case. There must be a path to redemption, or Eddie and Polly would not have strung me along so far. But what could I say?