The London Project (Portal Book 1)

by Mark J Maxwell

  They didn’t have to wait long. CADET responded with a match almost immediately. Ben’s face was shown on the screen with a green border indicating CADET had matched the facial and iris scans to sense strip data.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Rick said.

  ‘Really?’ Ben sounded distinctly unimpressed. ‘I thought you were supposed to know everything about people using Portal. It doesn’t even have my name.’

  Louisa smiled. ‘We can run a history graph against the match if you’d like to see what Portal knows about you.’

  Ben nodded eagerly.

  Louisa brought up the CSCA waiver form. ‘Read through this and press your thumb at the bottom.’

  Ben started to read the first few lines of barely comprehensible legalese and then lost patience and started flicking through the pages. He pressed his thumb at the bottom of the document.

  ‘Great.’ Louisa buried another flash of guilt as she saw Rick grinning beside Ben. No Londoner would even think of freely giving up their CSCA protections, not without a court order. Everyone had something to hide, and even if they didn’t, they erred on the side of caution.

  The form was processed and CADET compiled the history graph all within the space of a few seconds. Because Ben had waived his rights they didn’t even need to involve a SIU officer. The resulting graph wasn’t as comprehensive as it would have been if Ben had owned a profile, but the sense strips had logged his location each time he was scanned. She displayed the resulting map.

  ‘What are those lines?’ Ben pointed at the messy grid of red lines.

  ‘They indicate your movements over the last week,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Whoa, cool,’ Ben said.

  ‘Yeah, it’s pretty cool all right.’ He’d stayed in and around Camden, with only a few trips south into town. Ben hadn’t been anywhere near where they’d found Claire during that period. ‘Let’s try and find the fast-food restaurant you were talking about.’ She dropped a pin on Oxford Street and activated the case file’s sense explorer extension. She set the timestamp to the first of October and a sense capture window opened showing a still image looking down on Oxford Street, near Marble Arch. It was midnight but the street was still busy with pedestrians and vehicles, although the traffic mostly consisted of Portal taxi capsules.

  ‘No, it’s at the other end of the street,’ Ben said.

  Louisa moved the map pin and the sense window footage zoomed along the street.

  ‘There.’ Ben pointed at the screen. ‘That’s the burger place I last saw Claire.’

  Louisa altered the view so they were facing the restaurant from the middle of the road and looking down from a height of ten feet. ‘Now we instruct the case file automation to run through the footage from this vantage point and scan for your biometrics.’

  Louisa tapped in the instructions and the view changed from a still image to a full sense capture. It started playing at normal speed but quickly sped up until the people walking past and entering and leaving the restaurant became a blur. The timestamp parameter flicked through the days at a rate of one every thirty seconds.

  By the time they’d reached the twenty-seventh of October Louisa was starting to suspect Ben had got the date wrong, but then the footage froze and a red outline appeared around a figure at the edge of the view frame.

  ‘That’s me,’ Ben said. The pavement was thronged with shoppers but Ben’s face was visible through a gap in the crowd. ‘I went in to get a burger and then Claire met me outside.’

  Louisa forwarded the sense capture a few minutes to when Ben had exited the restaurant. He sat outside on the pavement, opened the paper bag and started to eat. Louisa’s eyes were on the pedestrians passing by, darting from face to face, scanning for Claire. Why hadn’t CADET picked her up using the scans from the crime scene? The question had been bugging Louisa since yesterday. But it didn’t matter now. Once they tagged Claire on the sense footage they could track her with SIU’s help. Even if Portal couldn’t identify her for some reason, they could follow her manually, frame by frame, if need be.

  A figure detached from the mass of pedestrians and stopped in front of Ben. Louisa couldn’t see who it was as they had their back to the viewing angle. They were wearing an oversized green parka with a fur-lined hood covering their head. Then they pulled down the hood and blonde curls spilled out.

  ‘That’s her,’ Ben said, ‘that’s Claire.’

  Louisa paused the playback and panned the view down to street level. Then she angled it around until they were looking directly at the girl.

  ‘Wait.’ Ben looked up at Louisa. ‘That’s…that’s not her. Who is she?’

  Louisa shook her head, bitterly disappointed. Ben was right. It wasn’t Claire. She looked a few years older and her face was carrying more weight than the frail girl at the crime scene. There was a slight resemblance but nothing more.

  ‘You tell us, Ben,’ Rick said. ‘You’re the one talking to her.’

  ‘I don’t know who she is.’

  ‘You’d better not be wasting our time here,’ Rick said.

  ‘I’m telling the truth. I don’t care what your crappy Portal says. I was talking to Claire, not her.’

  ‘Ben,’ Louisa said, ‘if your friend has gone missing as well, we can help. You don’t need to pretend she’s the girl we’re looking for.’

  ‘I’m not pretending!’ Ben’s face turned red.

  He was upset, Louisa saw, not angry. Louisa was suddenly aware of just how young he was.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Louisa paused then said. ‘Ben, did Claire have anything on her face? Maybe something that made her face shiny, or wet, like she’d been caught in a rain shower?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘It was dry all day, I think, but it was cold.’

  ‘Have you ever tried Trance, Ben?’ Rick asked.

  Louisa shot Rick a warning glare, but the damage was done. A spark of anger flashed briefly across Ben’s face and then slid away. He looked to Louisa. ‘I want to leave now.’

  ‘Maybe we could look at another time you were with Claire,’ Louisa said, but even to her it sounded lame, like she was humouring a petulant child.

  ‘Can you take me back, please?’

  Louisa hesitated, then nodded. ‘Sure, Ben.’

  *

  During the drive back to the centre Louisa turned over the case in her head, trying to make sense of things. Ben was sitting beside her in the passenger seat. He hadn’t uttered a word since they’d left the station. Could Rick have been right? Was Ben a Trance user whose recollection had got all twisted up? The drug affected people in different ways. Memory distortion was a common side effect. It was entirely possible a user could transpose a memory of someone from their past with a different person. Some addicts constructed completely fictional lives for themselves. But it wasn’t something casual users experienced. Ben was too together to be a long-term user—too sharp.

  Louisa had left Rick with the job of contacting any medical clinics which conducted human trials. Even if Ben was mistaken, Claire could have ended up in one.

  Louisa pulled up outside the centre. It was quiet now. Still a couple of hours until the evening meal drew people back.

  ‘Tell me about her, Ben,’ Louisa said.

  Ben eyed her suspiciously. ‘What?’

  ‘Really, I want to know more about Claire. How did you two meet?’

  ‘It was outside Victoria Coach Station. She’d got off the bus from Manchester.’

  ‘She must have been scared. All alone in London.’

  ‘She looked so lost. Like she hadn’t a clue where she was or what she was doing.’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘Girls like her…they attract the wrong sort of attention. As soon as she stepped outside the station she got hassle from guys. They target new arrivals fresh off the bus, offering them food and a place to stay, but then you never see them again. I walked up to her and I was like—hey, what took you so long! I gave her a hug like I was her brother or her boyfriend. You should
have seen her face.’ He smiled. ‘The creeps cleared off pretty quickly after that.’

  ‘So you took her under your wing?’

  Ben nodded. ‘I showed her the ropes. Where to get a free meal. Where’s safe to get your head down—the usual stuff.’

  ‘It sounds like you two were close. Was she your girlfriend?’

  Ben reddened. ‘Yeah. But we were taking things slow. We talked it over and decided to try and get somewhere proper to live together before we got serious. It’s hard enough on the streets without having a kid to look after. I’ve seen girls try and cope with raising a baby and it never ends well. No-one cares about them when they’re pregnant but once the baby is born the Social come and take their kid away. I didn’t want that for Claire.’ Ben sniffed and rubbed his nose. ‘She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met.’ He looked straight at Louisa, his eyes moist. The raw emotion in his voice was almost painful to listen to. ‘Look, I did some Trance when I first got to London, but I stopped when she arrived. I wanted to look after her, but I couldn’t if I was using all the time.’ A single tear slid down his cheek and he swiped it away. ‘I don’t know who the other girl was, but Claire was with me that day. It was the last time I ever saw her. I don’t care if you believe me or not, but I’m telling you the truth.’

  He flung open the car door and stumbled out onto the pavement. Louisa was about to call after him but he slammed the door. And then he was gone, running off down the street.

  ‘I know Ben,’ Louisa whispered. ‘I believe you.’

  Louisa sat for a long time staring at nothing in particular, a numb feeling creeping up her arms and neck. The tears surprised her when they came on, sharp and without warning. A convulsing sob erupted from her throat and she clasped a hand to her mouth before another ripped free. Her shoulders shook uncontrollably and for what seemed like an age it was all she could do to suppress the convulsions wracking her body. When at last they subsided she closed her eyes and leaned back in the car seat, taking deep, ragged breaths, afraid she would start crying again if she moved or allowed herself to think about anything.

  Her terminal chimed—an incoming call request. She rubbed her eyes and peered at the screen. It was from Ed.

  Oh, God. I must look a state. She sniffed and rubbed her eyes again before accepting the call via audio only.

  She cleared her throat. ‘Hi Ed.’

  ‘I’ve been looking into the profile issue you were having on Sunday night,’ Ed said.

  ‘Did you find anything?’

  ‘Your profile was accessed from a source external to Portal right before the other feed came in.’

  ‘External? As in…?’

  ‘External to Portal’s network. From the global web. That’s as far as I got. I was tracking down where the other feed came from when your profile got reset.’

  ‘What do you mean, reset?’

  ‘I mean put back to day one. You won’t notice any difference yourself—all your personal data like scans and documents are still there, but any trace of past activity, including what happened that night, has been wiped.’

  ‘But…how could that have happened?’

  ‘Beats me. SIU can’t do it, that’s for sure. Either it was an accident or Portal reset it.’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Louisa grimaced in frustration. ‘Okay, thanks Ed.’

  ‘I’ll keep looking, but until you get me something more to work with I think we’ve reached a dead end.’

  Louisa terminated the call. She lashed out at the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. Shit, shit, SHIT!

  It was gone—the only lead she had to Claire’s whereabouts before she died. She needed to find out why Portal wiped her profile. Someone in the MET should have connections inside the company. Maybe she could ask around.

  She was mulling it over when a loud knocking on the window beside her made her jump. A man stood outside the car. He was dressed in dark blue jeans and a white cotton shirt. The man looked to be in his late thirties at first glance, but the laughter lines around his brown eyes added another five years. It was the dazzling smile however that captured Louisa’s attention. She knew the smile, and knew its effects firsthand from when he’d been a DI. She wound down the window. ‘Simon?’

  ‘Nice to see you again, Louisa,’ Simon Carlyle said with his thick Scottish accent. ‘Sorry, I mean Detective Bennett.’

  It had been four years since Simon left the force. A high flyer at the time, he’d been one of the youngest DIs in the MET and had even been her boss for six months in SCD1, heading up a number of Murder Investigation Teams. Within a short period of time he’d made quite an impression on Louisa. He was one of the few bosses she’d really respected.

  He left in the first big wave of voluntary lay-offs after Portal went live. Talented officers like Simon were the first to leave, confident in their ability to find work in the private sector. Now, after four consecutive years of redundancies, most senior officers left still working in the MET were a mixture of the institutionalised and the barely competent.

  Simon grinned at her shocked expression. It had the dual effect of both lifting her spirits and making her acutely aware of her appearance—flushed with blotchy skin and red-rimmed eyes. Some women could cry all night and still look stunning but if she squeezed out even a few tears she immediately looked wretched.

  ‘How have you been, Simon? I haven’t seen you since your leaving drinks.’

  ‘I’m great. And didn’t you leave early that night?’

  Louisa shrugged. ‘I had to get back to the kids. You know how it is.’

  ‘Not yet, I don’t.’ Simon laughed.

  Louisa’s eyes flicked down to his left hand before she could stop herself. No wedding ring. He’d always been something of a ladies’ man, DI Carlyle. A few female officers had tried to nab him but he never managed to get pinned down. ‘What are you working at now?’

  He sent across his Portal ID and her terminal pinged in response.

  Louisa’s mouth fell open when she read the card. ‘You’re working for Portal?’

  ‘That’s right, head of corporate security.’

  Head of Portal corporate security, and he just turns up out of the blue? ‘This isn’t a coincidence then, you bumping into me.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I wanted to talk with you about something I’m looking into.’

  ‘Oh? Which is?’

  ‘An external breach in the Portal network.’

  Louisa tried to keep her face blank. It had to be related to her Profile being reset. But it struck her as odd Simon would be involved in such an investigation. When he worked for the MET he never appeared interested in Portal, otherwise he’d have pushed to be moved to MET Subnet Support. ‘I didn’t figure you for a tech-head, Simon.’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not. I leave the technical stuff to those better qualified. No, I get involved when my team identify someone they believe has tried to compromise network security.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Louisa was interested now. ‘Do they know who the culprit is?’

  ‘Well, actually they came up with your name, Detective.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Portal headquarters, a slender pyramid of polished steel and reflective glass, stabbed forty stories into the London skyline. Any sunlight which managed to pierce the city’s semi-permanent blanket of cloud was accepted as a gift and radiated back a thousand-fold, transforming the structure into a sparkling, incandescent stiletto.

  Now an iconic London landmark, it attracted tourists from around the world. Their holiday snaps wouldn’t be complete without them standing at its base with a wide grin while the camera operator tried to fit as much of the building as possible into the frame. Tourists weren’t allowed inside but Portal constructed a smaller, squatter version of the pyramid in the adjacent pedestrianised square and turned it into a gift shop selling t-shirts, mugs and other branded souvenirs.

  Beside th
e gift shop a section of the square was fenced off by a series of linked waist-high barriers. It was here the remnants of the pro-privacy (and anti-Portal) movement maintained their vigil. They were a rag-tag bunch of bright-eyed activists dressed in a mixture of tie-dyed and faux-military attire. It must have been break time because their area was deserted apart from one woman whom Louisa assumed was left to guard their placards. The woman was leaning on a barrier, tapping away on a terminal.

  Portal didn’t mind the protestors camping out in front of their headquarters. They actually allowed them to use the staff canteen. The rest of them were probably there—fetching snacks for their lunch. The activists served a purpose whenever anyone in the government started making worried noises about Portal’s near-absolute monopoly on news distribution. It didn’t take a genius to realise Portal had the potential to steer public opinion in a direction of their choosing purely through the use of their newscasts and advertising. ‘We welcome dissenting opinions’, the Portal public relations consultants would counter in response, ‘look at our headquarters, people are protesting there right at this minute, completely freely and without restriction’.

  Louisa had tailed Simon to the building’s automated parking bay. Once she deposited her car in a specified area it was swallowed down into the bowels of the building and her profile received a parking receipt.

  Louisa was looking forward to seeing inside Portal’s HQ. She had to admit, one of the reasons for her agreeing to meeting on Simon’s turf was to see inside their headquarters. The company was notoriously secretive about its internal workings.

  Simon led her through a revolving door into a cavernous domed space more suited to an airport terminal than a modern office lobby. The foyer was busy with Portal staff rushing back and forth. The majority was in their twenties and casually dressed. It reminded her more of a students’ union than a place of business. The youthful Portalers exuded such a potent mixture of confidence and vigour Louisa’s own mood lifted as she inadvertently absorbed some of the atmosphere. Like the Adam Walsh Community Centre’s offices the interior was flooded with soft white light. Staring up at the smooth curve of the dome Louisa was struck by the almost spiritual impact of the space. It was like a temple dedicated to Portal—light from the heavens beaming down a blessing on all those who Portal deemed worthy enough to work for the most successful company in the world.