by Simon Fay
Jogging through the rain, his feet splash and scatter the orange streetlight a hundred different directions. The car beep-beeps to welcome him back and he jumps into the driver seat. Water is washing over the glass and he finds himself saying a word out loud.
‘People.’
If that guy hadn’t cheated on Susan he might have been talking to her now. More than that, maybe she could have told him something he needed to hear. He might have found out about her pushing the doctor’s story in the office. About Ava’s promise to champion her cause only to bury it. Lost in the dark he can only make guesses. It’s because of this he’ll be observing a computer test that tells him something he doesn’t need to know, but which everyone else insists is imperative.
When he gets home, the lights are off in the house, and he wonders what time it is. It feels like midnight but it’s probably later. He pushes his key in the lock and lets the door drift open, paces into the hall and shakes himself off. There’s a towel draped on the stairs which he wipes his face with as he saunters into the kitchen where he finds a sandwich prepared. Then, walking into the sitting room, he sees his bed for the night. His wife has made the couch up for him. The message couldn’t be more clear – how nice for them life could be, and how bad things really are. Their future is in his hands.
Losing his appetite, he leaves the sandwich on the coffee table, peels his clothes off, the wet socks doing their best to cling to him, and slides under a blanket, yelping as he feels a sharp poke against his legs. It’s the corner of a toy. Picking it up he’s tempted to break it in his hand. Instead, a current of malaise pulls him under and he turns into the couch, curling up, trying to find relief that isn’t there.
Fired over email, cheated on by a friend, and left the country without a goodbye. Some people, Dylan wonders at them all. The things they do.
***
As far from each other as the buildings they occupy, connected only by the length of fibre optic cable they’re channelled through, a pair of disembodied voices speak. With no faces to accent their emotions, the language being sent over the line is just that, packets of thought to be registered, analysed, and responded to. The first distracted sounds are Ava’s who, painting her toenails, is having to wedge the phone between her shoulder and ear. ‘You’ve caught me at an awkward time.’
She’s talking to Alistair. The man is spitting venom. ‘Considering what happened to me today, you’re lucky I’ve only caught you by phone.’ After the detectives visit, he’d abandoned caution and sped to her apartment only to find that, besides not answering his calls, she wasn’t at home. Spurred by the death of Francis Mullen, people throughout Dublin were locking themselves in and here he was scrambling from one end of the city to the next only to find a dead end. He’d contemplated kicking in the door and waiting for her in an armchair. Hands suspiciously covered by leather gloves, he would remove the things on her sighting of them. All he wanted was for her to understand how angry he was – not with the detective’s prodding him, but at her ignoring it, essentially putting him into isolation until he was less of a contaminant. In the end, he’d stood there in her corridor, chagrined, aware that a broken door would hardly go unnoticed. Much to his regret, lock picking was not one of his clandestine talents. ‘I should have made another visit to your office.’
That’s a threat.
‘You’re not the brightest, are you Alistair?’ Ava asks, sedate. ‘We shouldn’t even be talking. If I was in my right mind I’d hang up.’
‘Well why don’t you?’ he challenges.
‘Alright...’
‘You clearly don’t want to talk about it. No interest whatsoever as to why a homicide detective might have visited me, in work no less, under my secretary’s nose.’
‘I thought you’d be able to take a hint.’
There’s a long pause in the dark as he struggles to understand what she might be suggesting. Her tone flat, it gives him little indication. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean, Alistair, is I don’t want to talk. I mean that I’m annoyed I have to spell it out for you. I don’t want any links existing between us. The past is a thing best forgotten. I thought you knew that. Let’s both of us just concentrate on our respective futures, uncertain as they are.’
The allusion to the investigation and what it could mean for them, though it’s what he’s wanted to talk about all day, and certainly has a huge baring over how the rest of his life will unfold, is of no interest to him now.
‘You’re dumping me?’
Impatient, she corrects him, ‘Dumped, Doctor Evans! Past participle. It’s already happened, you just haven’t figured it out.’
‘You can’t dump me.’
‘All evidence to the contrary?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Alistair, please,’ she stops, expecting him to understand that he’s embarrassing himself, but finds that she needs to spell it out. ‘Haven’t you noticed that the weather has changed? Let’s say you were summer wear and now I’m on the lookout for something more current. I’m hardly an appropriate fit for you at the moment either. I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss about it. Is it the ChatterFive access you’ll miss? I’ll still do a write up on you in a few months if it means you’ll leave me alone.’
Enjoying the banter, and having him squirm under foot, Ava is still hoping that he’ll agree with her reasoning without putting up much of a struggle. She bites her lip as she awaits his reply, concentrating on the wet brush that runs over her little toe. Satisfied, she examines the results.
‘You think I don’t know what happened?’
That’s another threat.
Without allowing time for the implication to sink in, she replies, ‘You don’t know anything, Alistair, you weren’t there. Don’t let your imagination get to you. I’m sure you know better than to spout ignorance, which could put us both in a tight spot, over the phone. Why is it anytime I dump a guy they go crazy? Other people manage to have amicable breakups, don’t they? Is it just me? How do I meet you loonies?’
‘You’re not dealing with a full deck,’ he spits.
To the doctor’s surprise she takes a hit from the comment. Even without a face to see, he can sense her attention leave her toenails and go to a point outside her window.
‘Excuse me?’
Hesitant, he tries to push forward, but afraid of losing his advantage, he elaborates, ‘You’re missing a card.’
Ava is heard smiling, seemingly understanding where he might have picked up the phrase. ‘That Wong guy really got to you. Is that all he was looking for? A card?’
Alistair doesn’t know what to make of her response. His comment, meant to ridicule, was one picked up from the detective. There’s nothing particularly revealing about it. Clearly, Ava has demonstrated otherwise. Somehow she managed to make the connection, and now, with his silence he’s confirmed it for her. Glum, he gives up on imagining what it might mean and tries steering the conversation back into territory he can control. ‘Among other things, Ava. Anyway, you’re missing the point of all this.’
‘Oh?’
‘Your life is in my hands.’
Clicking her tongue, she goes back to painting her toenails. ‘And yours in mine, Doctor Evans...’
Alistair’s dumb response is taken as evidence that he doesn’t know what she’s implying.
‘Listen, do you think I wanted it to end between us? Like this? At the instigation of other people’s problems? It frustrates me too. I’ve never been so angry. But it would be silly to pretend there’s another option. All of this drama in the office is seriously becoming a chore, but I’m taking it in my stride. So, before you go and have one of your hissy fits, take my reaction as an example of appropriate behaviour and remember, if one of us goes down, so does the other. You can’t hurt me without hurting yourself.’
‘Mutually assured destruction,’ he sneers.
‘That’s right.’
‘You really are untouc
hed.’
Stillness on her end of the line betrays her concern. It’s the only thing he’s said that worries her. ‘You know I used to be so good at making people laugh, Alistair. You wouldn’t believe it, would you? When I was a kid, that was me, the class clown. I’m not really into jokes, but people are just so easy to tickle...’ Up to this point, everything Ava said was something for Alistair to compete with, now though, she sounds almost human to him, something to be granted empathy. If he was in the same room as the woman, Alistair might see her mind’s eye go inward in search of answers about herself. Coming up with nothing though, she’s provoked back to reality. ‘Then I got older, and well, who needs to be funny when you’re beautiful, right?’
‘You’re not all that special,’ Alistair jabs at her childishly. ‘Why are you telling me this sob story? If you’ve dumped me I shouldn’t have to listen to this stuff.’
Not hearing him, she mumbles, ‘The whole office is being scanned tomorrow.’
‘The newsroom?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But if you get tested and they say you’re UPD...’
‘Mhmm,’ she sing-songs. ‘It will all connect back to you.’
Digesting the fact that his interests are on the line tomorrow, the first thing that occurs to him is to return to her apartment and cut off the head that might be scanned. The only thing he’s unsure of in this plan is whether or not a severed brain can be analysed as UPD, though the concern is quickly dismissed as he decides that it can’t be that hard to hide a head, after all, it’s not like he’d have to get rid of the whole body. A sports bag and a brick would be enough to sink it in the canal.
Reading his mind, Ava takes some pride in revealing that she predicted such a reaction, ‘I’m not so stupid as to stay in my own place tonight, Alistair. I had a nice massage earlier and I’m about to order room service. You could ring around Dublin searching all the hotels, but it’s not likely that I checked in under my own name. I suggest you just wait with the rest of us and see what happens. I don’t like it anymore than you do, but this is where we’re at.’
Taking this roundhouse punch, the doctor is left seeing stars.
‘You can keep the watch Alistair, I’m sure you’ll do well with it.’
Disconcerted, he falters backward. The future is out of his control, but surely the present is still within his grasp. ‘You can’t dump me!’ he shouts, panicked, ‘I decide when it’s over! You think a message is enough to end it? We have a connection! It’s special! If you don’t think so, I’ll make you! You know I can, you know what I can do! You’ve heard about the people I’ve killed. I’ve done more than that. And I can do a lot more. I know what happened! Don’t think I can’t make life hard for you, Ava, I can do very bad things when I’m angry, you’ll be lucky if I don’t cut your face off after this, run a knife into your spine, I can do it, and more, you have no idea–’
‘Alistair,’ Ava says, taking pause at the outburst. The words spilled from him with such ease it’s as if he’s been nourishing them from the start, that all this time she has merely been distracting him from the desire and that truly his secret joy would be to revel in slowly killing her. ‘I’ve recorded everything you said. Leave me alone or I’ll have it find its way into the open.’
‘You little snitching cunt! That’s not going to stop me doing whatever I fucking want! I’ll rip your throat out of your neck, Ava, you bitch, I’ll, I’ll–’ He goes on for a while longer, until after a time it’s apparent that she hung up some while ago and that he’s been attempting to terrorise a dial tone. Like a dog barking at the moon, nothing has been accomplished but his own ego reassured. She’s frightened of me, he tells himself, that’s why she’s hiding. Well, to hell with her. Tomorrow everyone in her office will be scanned, and not a single soul, least of all Ava O’Dwyer, can escape it.
CHAPTER 20
On arriving at work, the dishevelled journalists discovered that the office they knew, while unaltered from the day previous, was now an altogether different environment, one in which amnesty was in short supply. In sharp morning light, the fetid sentiment grew – the newsroom was no longer their own. Agent Myers had set up the hardware for UPD scanning in the conference room. A laptop, a hand sized pad, and box of disposable attachments made up his inventory. Nobody had seen anything that looked like electric shock equipment, but it was in there – somewhere – and none of them were thrilled with the idea. Agent Myers, seen now through the glass, is pacing, on call with somebody, snickering, then stoic as he arranges himself at the laptop, puts on a theatrical air. In other workplaces he had processed, the social agent could always depend on complete privacy in the hours leading up to a scan shift, to the point that even with an open door, nobody would poke their head in with transparent excuses such that they were looking for papers, lost pens of sentimental worth, or even a water cooler they knew very well was by the main entrance. But Agent Myers has never operated in a newsroom and in the time he has taken to prep, all of these things have happened, one after another, like children taking turns to peep into a haunted house, they tiptoed around him and legged it off in nervous excitement. The urgent reports they brought back were confirmations that they have been invaded, and all of their remarks, spread in a game of Chinese whispers, trickled their way to Joanne, who, a nervous wreck in her office, is in danger of dying of a nicotine overdose. Clad in a black blazer, she’s dressed for a funeral, expecting it’s going to be herself toppled into the grave being dug.
‘This must be a relief for you at least,’ Ava warms up to Detective Wong.
‘How do you mean?’ he smiles in spite of himself.
‘I’d expect it takes some of the pressure off.’
Just the opposite, he thinks. ‘You seem more relaxed yourself.’
‘It should sort out a few things, shouldn’t it? I don’t know why we couldn’t have just skipped to the scan in the first place. It would have saved us all the bother.’
Tiredly deciding to indulge her, Dylan explains, ‘Invasion of privacy. Probable cause is needed. The results of personality tests are generally the means of attaining it. Things having panned out the way they have, well–’ he shrugs, jaded at calling to mind the death of Agent Mullen to justify all that is to happen. ‘You wouldn’t let somebody strut into your house without a warrant and sit by as they inspect your living arrangements. Why let them into your brain?’ They stand for a time, watching the social agent, and pass no comment on the elaborate process in which he shows such flourish. When they lose interest in the act, Dylan remembers he had something to quiz Ava about. Scratching the spidery stubble under his nose, he asks, ‘I don’t suppose you thought Susan Ward had anything against Agent Mullen?’
‘Who?’ Ava pouts in an attempt to recollect.
‘She was let go. I heard you two were close.’
‘An intern, I suppose. You do a favour for one of these kids and they never forget it. I couldn’t guess how many of them think I’m going to help them hit the big time,’ Ava smirks, and brightened, she brushes the detective’s arm. ‘I’ve been so glad you’re here during all of this. You’ve covered every detail, it’s been a pleasure to watch. Everything was such a mess until your arrival. We should have a chat when it’s all over. Get acquainted under more convivial circumstances.’
The invitation is hardly one he can miss, however understated her phrasing might be. Normally, Dylan would know to back away from such a suggestion, it’s just that he has been spending a lot of time on the family couch of late, and her bed is probably a lot more comfortable... Silly thoughts. If nothing else though, he’s grateful for the distraction. ‘Maybe,’ he says, putting off the decision for now.
‘To be continued,’ she says and strolls her editor’s direction.
Titillated, Dylan can’t help thinking what an unusual woman she is. Placidly observant, she seems set on registering the subdued nervousness simmering in the room. If he was to choose a word to describe her mood, he’d probably settle on
exhilarated, but then everybody is on edge in one way or another. He doesn’t have to go far in search of the reason. The obvious explanation is the imminent scanning process to which they’ll be submitted. What seems to separate her from the rest though, is an awareness of the key change which has crystallised today. The detective who once dominated the investigation, is now sitting dejected in a chair by the break room as Agent Myers takes lead. Dylan is finished. The picture he’d managed to draw in the short time he was allotted featured a plethora of suspects but even more dead ends. Barry Danger’s warning blooms freshly in the detective’s memory: I wouldn’t put it past anyone in here. Not a single person had been ruled out, and in a job where most of the work is eliminating possibilities, this left him with nothing but the unconfirmed sighting of Joanne at Agent Mullen’s flat in the days before he died. If Dylan had a day or two more he would happily pull at that loose thread if only to cross her off his list. Such luxury is not allowed the modern policeman. The word had come down: Let Agent Myers do his work in peace. Dylan tossed and turned throughout the night, frantically putting together theories until, disgusted – it all stank of the conspiracy theory of a lunatic – he forced himself to close his eyes, and if not sleep, at least stop thinking. He is exhausted. Lost in the folds of the case, it is going to be down to a computer and the man who operates it to tell them who to put on trial. When the suggestion from his department chief arrived on his phone, that the ball was in the UPD services’ court, he took it for the order it was. His presence in the office today is a joke, and he would have skipped it altogether if only for the insistence of his superior. The Garda are still in charge of this case, is the message Detective Wong is to send. Like a toothless old lion’s roar, it seems more like a yawn.
In this spirit, Dylan has been accompanied by four low ranking police officers. Presently, two of them are escorting Barry to the conference room. The gawky English journalist is the first to be tested. Agent Myers is standing at the door to offer a welcoming hand into the room. As he gets frisked for weapons, Barry is short on things to say for once, his face even becoming obscenely flushed as the office watches. To disguise his embarrassment, when the Garda nod that he’s clean and Agent Myers allows him entry, he jerks around and shouts, ‘My Dad always said I needed electro shock therapy. I’ll get him to turn it up to eleven!’