All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Until Bett rang the doorbell.

  ‘Grab what you need – absolute basics and essentials,’ he said, once she’d sufficiently recovered from her shock to step aside and let him stride through the door into her hall. ‘Something’s come up, time-sensitive. Rebekah’s prepping the Little Prince.’

  ‘Do I need overnight stuff? I mean, like, how long?’ she managed to mumble.

  ‘Just put on something you didn’t sleep in and bring whatever brain capacity isn’t currently online, which doesn’t appear to be much. Come on.’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ she said, going to the bedroom to change her underwear and pull on a fresh T-shirt and some jeans. She was indeed still wearing what she’d slept in last night, or fairer to say she’d slept for a while in what she was wearing when she started work. ‘I just need a second,’ she called out. ‘I didn’t know you were coming. Why didn’t you page me?’

  ‘I did,’ he replied, with testily over-pronounced patience. ‘Twice. After that, I had ascertained you were likely to be Glasgow Coma Scale four in front of that monitor and was on the verge of calling Armand instead, but as you were the first person I thought of when this thing came up, I set off in the hope of having greater success via your doorbell. For your information, you had approximately twenty more seconds before I kicked the door in and dragged you physically away from the computer.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. It was the Lisbon project. I figured out a way to get beyond this impasse between—’

  ‘Relevance suspended. Get your laptop. We’re going back to Deimos.’

  That last word echoed around Lex’s head as she descended the stairs and followed Bett out to the street, where his Porsche was waiting. She’d no idea what this was about yet, and no rational reason, therefore, to make any assumptions, but merely hearing the name again was enough to unsettle her. Marledoq hadn’t gone away. She may have cached the evidence and covered her connection to it, but there was no way of knowing what might have been set in motion when she handed over those files.

  Bett’s other remarks did little to quell her unease, and she was wary of how they piqued her curiosity. You were the first person I thought of when this thing came up. Why, she wondered, though her desire to vocalise this question was tempered by the returning fear that in doing so she might give something away. Would it sound strangely defensive for her to ask this, or would a lack of curiosity be more suspicious?

  She wasn’t cut out for bare-faced deceit. Stealth and subterfuge, sure thing, but not this. Trying to remember what ought to be natural, what she should or shouldn’t appear to know, was never something she’d enjoyed much of a facility for. Not offline, anyway.

  Happily, Bett saved her from making the decision; less happily, his words did anything but allay her anxieties.

  ‘We’re not going back to Marledoq itself,’ he explained, pulling away on to the quiet, narrow street, ‘but to Chassignan, where a lot of the workers live. However, the job should nonetheless provide you with an opportunity to redeem your little lapse there in December.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, as neutrally as her acting talents would allow, then remained silent, not because she reasoned it the best policy, but because she’d be struggling to keep the tremble from her voice if she said anything else.

  This was one occasion when it was definitely the right stance to sound like she knew what he was referring to, even though she didn’t. If by her lapse he meant her spot of privateering, then it was wisest to play it straight and thus play it down. ‘Oh yes, that, sir. I was wondering when you’d bring it up.’ But realistically, he wouldn’t be this calm if that was what he was talking about. Not unless he was being truly, dispassionately sadistic, a thought too frightening to contemplate. Her stilted answer precluded finding out what other lapse he could mean, but to do else would alert him that there was more than one lapse to consider; or, almost as suicidal, suggest she couldn’t immediately think of any flaw in her performance that she needed to make up for.

  They arrived in Chassignan a few hours later, Rebekah on air-chauffeur duty and evidently not much else given that Bett had begun briefing Lex in the passenger cabin and thus excluded their pilot from the discussion. Lex lapped up the information, sparse as it turned out to be, because every detail was further reassurance that Bett’s agenda was something other than that which she feared.

  ‘One of their staff has gone missing,’ he said. ‘And not the janitor, as I’m sure you can guess.’

  Bett told her the name and she nodded, disguising the fact that it meant nothing to her. This in itself was not significant. Names were seldom the thing that stuck about people Lex met; stories, yeah, mannerisms, sure, hair, relative height. Not names. Everybody had one. Online handles were a different story, because at first they were all you had to remember someone by, but out in the Big Room, other aspects usually proved more memorable. In this case, then, it was no surprise she was drawing a blank. She’d only been to Marledoq for less than two hours three months ago, and as her principal interaction with most employees had been shooting them with tranquilliser darts, none of them had much time to make an impression, far less tell her their names.

  Except one. Ah. And now she had it: not just who Bett was talking about, but what her ‘lapse’ had been. The feeling of relief – that he meant the lab-geek who’d got the drop on her – lasted for roughly the time it took to remember why the guy had been able to catch her off guard.

  ‘He’s in Research and Development, presumably working on something rather important. In my experience, there are few companies sufficiently concerned about employee welfare as to bring in professional help when one of their wage-slaves takes an unannounced mental-health day, and weapons manufacturers would be well down that list. If he was replaceable, they’d already be hiring.’

  ‘So how missing is missing? Has he been gone long?’

  ‘Details are sketchy, and I wouldn’t expect them to get much clearer any time soon. What you’ll have to keep in mind throughout this business is that we are dealing with the arms industry. These people are secretive and disingenuous when they’re asking you to pass the milk over breakfast. Just because they need our help and they’re paying us doesn’t mean they’ll actually tell us what we need to know in order to get the job done.’

  ‘And why do they need us to get the job done? I’m guessing they don’t want the police involved—’

  ‘Very good, you’re learning.’

  ‘But this isn’t exactly our speciality either.’

  ‘Quite. The police won’t get involved in a missing-person case unless there’s firm evidence of criminal activity, and if there is firm evidence of criminal activity, you can be damn sure Industries Deimos won’t want the police getting involved. They came to us because we are a known quantity. We have a relationship with them and they trust us. Two seconds to identify the error in that statement.’

  ‘Arms companies trust no one.’

  ‘Correct. So in this context, by trust I mean they believe they can control our involvement and remunerate us sufficiently to guarantee our discretion after the fact.’

  ‘And would the cache of gizmos we stole from them in December for Som to play around with constitute a down payment on this remuneration?’

  ‘Not as far as Deimos are aware. The loss of such items merely highlighted the prevalence and ease of pilfering from the facility under such lax security conditions.’

  Lex blanked out the more paranoid interpretations of this remark.

  ‘I guess they wouldn’t have called if they knew otherwise,’ she said, thinking of the true extent of that night’s theft.

  ‘Oh, they might, they might. In the grand scheme, quite probably. If they needed us enough, they wouldn’t let something as trivial as that get in the way. And they do need us. However, the main reason they’ve come to us pertains to the main thing we need to know and the last thing they’re going to tell us.’

  ‘Which would be what?’

  ‘Whate
ver they’re afraid of. Locating a missing person is, as you said, not our speciality. So I’d be surprised if Deimos haven’t also engaged the services of others whose forte it most certainly is; freelance investigators, maybe the odd cop who’s on backhanders. But I would predict that tracking down the missing scientist will prove less than half the battle. They came to us because they suspect that even once located, their quarry won’t be easily retrieved. And retrieving what is guarded and hidden, my dear Alexis, most definitely is our speciality.’

  They landed in a field outside of the village, and were met by Nicholas Willis, who’d been waiting for them by a large silver Mercedes. Willis was a tall, gaunt, middle-aged guy, bald of pate with trimmed patches of white hair above his ears. He was dressed in a suit and a greatcoat, but Lex pictured him wearing a cravat and frilly cuffs on his days off. He looked like ‘Old Money’, as her monetarily preoccupied (and not a little snobbish) grandmother would have approvingly observed.

  Rebekah killed the engines but stayed with the helicopter while Lex followed Bett to the car. Bett got into the passenger seat, Willis chivalrously opening the rear driver’s-side door for Lex. Bett and Willis exchanged pleasantries but avoided the matter in hand, like they didn’t want to prejudice the experiment. Willis would have already told Bett all he could, or all he was prepared to, leastways, so there was nothing much to add prior to seeing the apartment. They spoke in English, Willis sounding even more Old Money than he looked.

  Some people’s accents altered in response to certain others’: hardening and running to the colloquial, softening to accommodate an unaccustomed ear, stiffening in formality. Sometimes it was a relaxation, other times a courtesy; it could be a posture or a statement, and it could be entirely subconscious. Bett’s accent did not alter one micro-nuance. This at least provided some suggestion that English wasn’t his first language, but no further clues to his provenance. Chalk another one up to Mr Impervious.

  The journey took less than three minutes. Chassignan was a pleasant but mousy little place, not so much sleepy as in chronic stasis. A small gas station was the only immediate exemplar of twentieth-century construction on the tree-lined main street, otherwise flanked by tall, well-maintained and uniformly shuttered apartment buildings. Lex’s own place dated from the early nineteenth century, and these looked of a similar period or older. Closer examination of a few shop windows broke the fairy tale spell: recent DVD posters in the tabac, Microsloth and Macintrash logos looking out through the glass of an internet café. They had broadband ISPs and they had Vin Diesel flicks, so the village knew there was good progress and bad progress, but she couldn’t imagine much had really changed around here in a couple of centuries. Had to be an abduction, she thought, sarcastically. How could anybody leave all this?

  Fleming’s apartment was one street back from the main drag. It was on the fourth floor of five (or the troisième étage, the way the Europeans counted it), up a bright and airy stairwell with broad stone steps and wide, solid landings. Willis led the way on long, spindly legs, the hard leather soles of his shoes tapping loudly on the stone with each step. They looked and sounded expensive; the gait and footwear of a man unafraid to announce his approach. Lex glanced at her scuffed training shoes, their impacts dampened almost apologetically by chunky man-made grips. There was a good reason people called them sneakers.

  Bett walked at the rear on Doc Marten patent Airware. The soles cushioned his steps, but his frame carried enough muscle for his footfalls to reverberate with a formidable sense of presence she could feel as well as hear. He was looking around as he ascended, scanning, analysing, evaluating, filing. Lex knew she could look in the same places and see no more than a staircase, which made her wonder what use Bett expected her to be when they reached the flat.

  Willis pulled a set of keys from his greatcoat pocket, delicately undoing the lock before turning the handle with a grimace, as though he was opening a wound.

  ‘Where did you get the keys?’ Bett asked.

  Willis stepped aside from the door.

  ‘Oh, from our property manager. It’s a new lock. He put it in to replace the other one, which was ruined.’

  Bett had a look at the doorframe. ‘It wasn’t forced,’ he observed.

  ‘No, drilled, he said. Drilled through.’

  ‘And you told me on the phone that nobody in the building heard anything?’

  ‘Property manager believes it was a …’ Willis mimed turning a crank. ‘You know?’

  ‘Yes. Stealthier, but slow. You own the building?’

  ‘We own the apartment. We have a few dotted around. If you want to headhunt gifted staff, you have to be able to accommodate them immediately. Some stay just until they find a place themselves, but others …’

  ‘How long was Fleming here, then?’

  ‘Two years. Shall we …?’ Willis invited, with visible reluctance and distaste.

  They stepped into the small hallway, which was little more than a conduit between three rooms, the largest of which was an open-plan kitchen and living area.

  ‘Have you been in here before?’ Bett asked. ‘I mean, since …’

  ‘Yes. We tried not to disturb anything. I don’t find it particularly comfortable, to be frank, being in someone else’s home without his say-so, but the buck stops here, as they say.’

  Lex could sympathise. It was not a comfortable place to be. The feng shui was all off. The sofa, for instance, was at a psychologically jarring angle (upright was more calming), and, in her judgement, pot plants worked best when they weren’t lying sideways across the floor.

  ‘Alexis, the camera,’ Bett reminded her. She pulled it from a pouch on her laptop satchel and began taking shots of the scene, snapping as she picked her footsteps carefully amid the mess. The only clutter-free areas were the shelves and bookcases, because all of their contents had been scattered about the floor. CDs lay fanned-out like fallen dominoes, next to books, DVDs and magazines. Pictures had been pulled from the walls and left on the floor, though Lex noted that the glass was intact on each of them. The only wall-hung decorations remaining were glossy pin-ups in two clusters: one in the kitchen and one next to the computer. Soccer players, tour posters, some movie stills.

  A flat-screen monitor sat on a desk by the farther of two broad windows, the PC itself nestling underneath, surrounded by piles of blank and used printer paper, stacked like kindling. A pale green light indicated activity.

  The kitchen area was a real treat. Rice, pasta, flour, salt, breakfast cereals, washing powder and dishwasher tablets had been emptied out on to the floor and their containers discarded on top. Pots and pans had been pulled from cupboards and now lolled like grounded ships upon the banks of powder and grain. Supermarket ready meals lay around the foot of the fridge-freezer, contents spilling out where the plastic film had broken, their cardboard sleeves dotted randomly about the floor. Four bottles lay undisturbed on a wine rack atop the work surface next to the sink, and Lex noticed also that no crockery had been broken.

  In the compact little bathroom, the contents of a mirrored cabinet had been dumped into the basin directly below, bottles of shampoo and shower gel tipped into the bath. Again, the shelves and surfaces were clear, including the cistern lid, which was slightly askew.

  The bedroom was the same deal. The place had been tossed, not trashed.

  ‘How did you find out he was missing?’ Bett asked.

  ‘Didn’t you ask me this before?’

  ‘For the benefit of Miss Richardson here, and to refresh my memory.’

  ‘Rather undramatic, initially. He failed to turn up for work, although that was fairly remarkable for him, I suppose. He’d seldom lost a day before that. When the road has looked like being closed in the winter, he’s often slept at the lab because he’d rather be stranded that end. When he didn’t call in by midday, somebody phoned here, to no reply. Couldn’t get him on his mobile phone, either. Then the property manager got a call from one of the neighbours who’d noticed
the door was ajar and the lock damaged. She’d rung the bell, then stuck her head inside when there was no answer. When she saw what she saw …’

  ‘And you came here yourself? Right away?’

  ‘I realised that Mr Fleming could have been incommunicado because he was with the police, reporting a burglary, but if that wasn’t the case, I knew there was no time to lose. I had to see for myself.’

  ‘Who spoke to the neighbours? You said nobody heard anything.’

  ‘I did. I mean, I didn’t go round the whole building, just, you know, next door, above and below. Nothing.’

  ‘What did you tell the woman who noticed the door? She’ll be wondering why she hasn’t seen any police, to say nothing of not seeing her neighbour.’

  ‘I think she thought I was the police, to be honest.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her you were,’ Bett said, with a note of caution.

  ‘Oh, no. I see where you’re going. No. I just didn’t tell her I wasn’t, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Bett knelt down and picked about among the mess. He opened a couple of CD cases, revealing the silver discs to be in place within. Then he lifted up one of the pictures, a photo collage.

  ‘This is Fleming, right?’

  ‘Yes. That’s him with the little girl.’

  ‘Not his, I assume.’

  ‘No. Family.’

  ‘Can I take this?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. I mean … I don’t like giving …’

  ‘I understand. But so will Mr Fleming.’

  ‘Indeed. I’ve also got some personnel file photos of him in the car.’

  ‘Alexis, can you have a look at the computer?’ he ordered.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she assented, her gratitude at having a recognised purpose only marginally diminished by having no idea what she should be looking for.

  Functionality would be a start, she decided, so she gave the mouse a wiggle to see whether the system would wake up or required a full boot. It proved to be the latter; the absence of fan noise had suggested this, but you could never assume. Not every machine was cursed to sound like a Spitfire readying for take-off, just every machine she’d owned. She paused over the switch, considering whether there might be a logic-bomb in the start-up folder, primed to trash the hard disk whenever the machine was turned on; in fact merely booting the thing up normally would obscure a few of the previous user’s tracks. Instead, she undertook a little hardware surgery, connecting her laptop to lift an unadulterated image of the hard disk.