Edge

by Blackthorne, Thomas

  "Here."

  "Couple of days back, he came around. I gave him a sweatshirt."

  "A green sweatshirt?"

  "Actually, yes. Why?"

  "It's all right, nothing's happened. Someone spotted a kid wearing green, might have been Richard." He did not want to discuss hacking into surveillance data. "You don't know where he's hanging around?" he went on.

  "No, I don't."

  "Shit."

  "Look… they disappear," said the woman. "Runaways, they always stop showing up, sooner or later. But recently, it seems to have hit the young ones more, you know?"

  "Is this something the police are aware of?"

  "Not so you'd notice, officially. But some of the officers who work the streets are good people, including my partner. They know, for all the good it's done."

  "Does your partner work locally?"

  "Sometimes, but not as a rule. You wanted to give me a copy of that picture, is that it?"

  "If you think it would do good," he said. "Unofficially."

  "Meaning you don't want it on the system."

  "That might cause questions for your partner."

  "My partner is honest and good at the job."

  "I'm sure she is," said Josh. "I'm on Richard's side. There's nothing dodgy in that."

  The woman blinked.

  "You're pretty sharp," she said.

  "My best friends are lesbians and witches."

  "Huh." She held up her own phone. "Give me the details. And I'm Viv."

  "Pleased to meet you, Viv." He redfanged the data. "And I'm making you a promise."

  "Which is?"

  "I won't put him back in danger."

  Viv looked at him for almost a minute, then held out a thick-fingered hand.

  "Good to meet you, Josh."

  "Likewise, Viv."

  Her grip was dry, solid and strong.

  Carol Klugmann was waiting in the coffee shop, larger than life, with the staff already in thrall. Suzanne shook her head as Carol called out: "Harry, my friend'll have a latte, full-fat and big as you can do it. None of that skinny shit, all right?"

  Behind the counter, one of the baristas grinned, then nodded to Suzanne. "I'll bring it over," he said. "Just for you."

  "You mean, because you're frightened of Carol."

  "Not so much frightened," he said, "as terrified."

  She sat down, opened her handbag, took hold of Carol's phone and popped it inside, then snapped the bag shut. After putting it down on the floor between her feet, she smiled.

  "This has been an education," said Suzanne, "in police procedures."

  "You got something to hide, honey?"

  "I don't think so, but I don't know what you're about to say. My phone is in Elliptical House, but there's spycams here, like everywhere."

  "Conspiracy theories now?"

  "No. Broomhall senior is high-profile. People want to keep an eye on him."

  "So why haven't the police found his son, if he's that well known?"

  "Maybe because he hasn't murdered anyone," said Suzanne. "I don't know. So why did you want to talk? Am I suspended yet?"

  "Broomhall's lawyers made the petition. No one's doing anything without a hearing, and that's not even scheduled yet. Early days."

  "Wonderful."

  "He did get a private investigator on the case. Cumberland. Did you met him yet?" A smile made Carol's face even rounder. "We got ourselves a private dick. A gumshoe."

  "Josh isn't a–"

  "Oh ho." Carol stopped as Harry came over with Suzanne's latte. "We'll settle up later, OK, big boy?"

  "You got it."

  "And no wonder," said Carol when Harry was gone, "you want to talk in private. What's he like, this Josh? Show me pictures."

  "It's not like that."

  "Uh-huh. Your pants are on fire, Dr Duchesne, but not cause you're a liar. I think the incendiary reason has the initials JC."

  "Jesus Christ."

  "Really not who I was thinking of."

  "Carol…"

  "What's he like at undercover work? You have been under the covers, I take it?"

  "For God's sake."

  "Oh, you haven't. Well, maybe it's best to keep your minds on the job." Carol's eyes flickered up to her right. "Keep focused on finding Richard."

  "So I am in trouble."

  "Let's just say, it would be better if he came back with a reason for running away that's nothing to do with you."

  "Back up, Carol. If it was my fault he ran, then what are you saying? That it's best for him to be found, or stay missing?"

  "That depends on whose viewpoint we're looking at it from. Right now" – Carol patted Suzanne's hand – "if we can maintain enough doubt, show possible reasons beyond the scope of what your session was to address, then you might get away with it."

  "And from the viewpoint of a fourteen year-old runaway with no street survival skills?"

  Steam hissed from the big espresso machine. It was solid and dependable, as you would expect in an oldfashioned coffee shop, never thinking about the pressure building up inside, or its scalding potential. Harry worked the device with practiced skill.

  Then Carol answered, "Someone needs to find the poor little bugger."

  In theory, Richard was back working in the bicycle and gek gear shop; in practice, he was sitting somewhere that Brian could keep an eye on him, and whether he got any programming completed seemed to be irrelevant. He worked with a gek-gauntlet plugged in to a non-phone workstation, the gauntlet's source code open in half a dozen display panes. Two panes were stepping through instructions in debug mode. Even so, he could not see the problem's cause.

  "You all right?" asked Brian.

  "I guess."

  "You need a break."

  Actually, he had achieved nothing to take a break from. There was no sign of Cal, the owner, who perhaps would have expected more.

  "So, let's see what's happening." Brian pointed his phone at the wallscreen, taking over the display. "Maybe Fat Billy has resigned as prime minister. Or maybe he's made himself pope."

  News item thumbnails formed a snowflake pattern around a central article, their distribution representing their degree of interest for Brian, grouped by subject. One pie-slice portion represented local news. Brian tapped a link, zooming in.

  "Well," he said. "Greaser Khan, imagine that."

  "What is it?"

  "Something nasty happened to a nasty man. Never mind." Brian made the article disappear. "He probably deserved it."

  "Is he dead?"

  "Well, yeah… You don't know Khan, do you?"

  "I thought he… I thought he took Jayce."

  "Maybe he did. Police shut down a virapharm house the other day, which is why Khan was on the run. Except he wasn't running anywhere. He'd already been chopped into pieces, like meat in the butcher's shop. Nasty."

  "Vira–"

  Something expanded inside Richard's throat, while a huge invisible hand squeezed his heart and lungs into stillness.

  Skin, beneath the cases, the metal slab, masked spectres and the scalpel glistening as it comes down, slicing flesh so it falls apart, with the sucking sound from hungry tubes–

  "Hey." Hands, Brian's hands, holding him upright. "Richie, what's wrong?"

  "Can't. I'm… sorry."

  Puke came bubbling up from inside him.

  Not again.

  And spattered on the floor.

  "Bloody hell," said Brian. "Cal's going to kill us."

  The incoming call was anonymous. Josh accepted it as read-only, sending nothing back, until he saw that it was Petra. Grinning, he enabled full comms.

  "Nice to see a friendly face," he said. "I've been walking the streets for hours. Not getting anywhere."

  "I'll bet you're loving it. Met any interesting characters?"

  "Well, there was a young lad working in a newsagent's who's lived in seven different countries in the past six–"

  "See what I mean? You always find interesting people t
o talk to. You're the only person I know who can do that."

  "Uh, if you say so. So how are you doing?"

  "Fine. I like to watch the local news. A bad guy called Khan made it big in the newsworthy topics list. A couple hundred pieces of him made the news, in fact."

  "Nasty."

  "We narrowed it down to three possibilities: a pissedoff supplier, a pissed-off customer, or a pissed-off rival."

  "So you're closing in." Josh hoped his voice was level. "You've ruled out everyone who didn't know him."

  "Anyway, it's just a professional tip I thought I'd pass on, that little habit of mine."

  "Say what?"

  "Reading the news. Did Suzanne keep you up all night, lover? You're a little slow today."

  "The news."

  "Sometimes it's the business section that's interesting, believe it or not. Give that girl a hug from me. And Josh?"

  "What?"

  "Be careful. Really careful."

  "That's a strange thing to–"

  "With Suzanne, be careful with her."

  "She's not dangerous, for God's sake."

  "No, but you are. Hurt her, and I'll have your balls for earrings."

  "That doesn't–"

  The display went shiny black.

  What the hell?

  So much about Suzanne Duchesne was a mystery. Was he truly fascinated with her, or just reacting to Maria and Sophie and everything? Was he spinning out of control? Enough of the Regiment guys, whether from Ghost Force or other squadrons of the SAS, had ended their lives in spectacular ways after Army service, trying to find meaning where they had been taught to look for it: right on the edge, the more risk and adrenaline the better.

  In the Regiment, you learned to accept what your comrades told you, because sometimes they can see a problem that you don't. Petra's brother Andy had been particularly good at it, just one reason why he'd been such a great troop leader, before the Siberian debacle. Good times, spent sipping tea around campfires and–

  Forget the history. Look for Richard.

  There was a greasy spoon on the corner. Josh went in. There were workmen polishing off great plates of sausages and chips, others with falafel or locustburgers. Josh was tempted to ask for a lightly tossed salad and Dom Pérignon, but maybe not today.

  "Cheese bap and a mug of tea," he said. "And have you seen this lad, by any chance?"

  The guy behind the counter was young and dark skinned. Unlike some others, he took care checking the image; still, he shook his head.

  "Sorry, man."

  "Never mind."

  "Eat in or take away?"

  "Here, please. I'll sit in the corner."

  His table was at the rear. Incense smells drifted from out back. He sat leaning against the wall, pulled up the business news and searched for Broomhall. A tiny overlay pane checked for new sightings of Richard, finding nothing. The main pane showed thirteen recent items, none mentioning Philip Broomhall directly, all featuring companies he owned. Every one of them was facing a shareholder revolt or some other indication of possible hostile takeovers. Put together, it was an allout corporate attack on Broomhall's interests.

  Shit, I hate this stuff.

  There are salespeople whose idea of aggression is to sell things more cheaply than their competitors. Business writers couch their narrative of corporate manoeuvres in the language of battlefield and military strategy. Without limbs being blown off in boardrooms, AGMs being rife with sucking chest wounds, and seventy percent burns on voting shareholders, the analogy was an insult. Or perhaps he was one with the limited viewpoint.

  A related comment piece, one that did mention Philip Broomhall, described him as looking "unusually selfabsorbed." Worried about his son?

  Maybe he loves Richard and just can't show it.

  "Cheese bap. Tea." It was a young woman who delivered the food. "Here you are."

  Her gaze was dull and her shoulders slumped, and she shuffled back toward the kitchen with little interest in what was going on. Congenital, or worn down by her situation? But saving the world was beyond him: witness his inability to find a single fourteen year-old boy.

  The bap tasted dry and floury. Chewing, he scrolled through his phone's contacts list, found Viv, and pressed. He forced down the food as her image appeared, with the homeless shelter in the background.

  "Hi, Josh. I haven't heard anything definite, before you ask. But there was something I was going to follow

  up before calling you."

  "What kind of thing?"

  "Just a maybe… The lad might be friendly with some gekrunners."

  "Any particular location?"

  "No, sorry."

  "Viv, you've given me the only piece of meaningful information I've had today, maybe this week. So thank you."

  "Well, you're welcome. Look, we're busy at the–"

  "Sure. Take it easy."

  "You too."

  So, gekrunners. He could fire off querybots to research their movements locally, see which places they haunted, perhaps even backtrack to where they lived.

  His attention snapped outwards as seven young guys, aged around eighteen, filed in and sat around the window table. The large workmen had departed; only two solitary men were left, finishing their lunches. The gang – all white, some with motile tattoos: a swastika rotating on one guy's neck, or flowing lines of tears from eye to jawline – ordered tea, then sat waiting for everyone else to leave.

  The dark-skinned man behind the counter shuffled his feet. His gaze kept moving towards the gang, then sliding away, while his hand repeatedly went to his phone, drew back.

  Josh shut down his own phone.

  First guess: five were armed.

  "Tea tastes like piss," one of them was saying.

  "We need to ask for our money back."

  "With cash interest, like."

  "Fuckin' dark skin cooks their brains, don't it? Absorbs heat, right?"

  They sniggered.

  "Need a piss," said one.

  "Got a magnifying lens you can borrow. Help you find it."

  "Fuck off."

  It was Rotating-Swastika Guy who went past Josh, heading for the small toilet at the back. Meanwhile, some of the others were on their feet, slapping each other's arms, all part of the ritual. The two men who'd been lunching both drained their cups and left, heads down, trying to maintain a fiction: that nothing was about to happen, that what went on around them was none of their business. Finally, Rotating-Swastika came back grinning. Chairs scraped as the remaining gang members stood up. Rotating-Swastika stopped at the till.

  "You got cash in there, intya?"

  "That's nothing to do with you."

  "Seein' as how you served us piss, it fuckin' does, pal."

  "Please leave now."

  The others were gathering in a semi-circle, one-deep, behind Rotating-Swastika. When Josh stood up, all seven of them were in front. The tables on either side would make it hard for anyone to outflank him. They thought they outnumbered everyone; in fact they were lined up, targets for him to drop.

  "Oh, sorry, mate." One of the guys with drippingtears tats had noticed him. "After you."

  The thug's sweeping, ushering gesture, encouraging Josh to leave, was not courteous: it was passiveaggressive. In court, he could claim he was being polite; uneducated witnesses would find it hard to describe the intimidation.

  Except I'm not playing.

  As Josh breathed from his diaphragm, his voice came out deeper than normal.

  "I'm in no hurry to leave."

  Dripping-Tears Tat and five of his mates straightened, eyes widening. Only Rotating-Swastika Guy failed to react, immersed in mouthing off to the lad behind the till. But the others were frozen, their brains processing unconscious alarms, primal senses re-evaluating the violent potential here.

  One of them grabbed hold of Rotating-Swastika and yanked him back.

  "Come on, you dick."

  Those nearest the door were already leaving.

&
nbsp; "What–?"

  "Police officer, come on."