‘Dennis Letchford, thirty-one, quiet guy, keeps himself to himself. One day he walks into work complaining of something in his head and blows away one of his co-workers.’
‘Which sounds like mental illness to me,’ du Bois said.
‘So I ran a check on the guy, his online history. He goes to the darkest parts of the net—’
‘S-tech?’
‘No, torture porn, grim stuff, sick art. He’s even posted photo-manipulated images of co-workers and other people he knows. He was flagged by West Midlands Police’s intelligence unit, but they never did anything because there was no child porn involved.’
‘So he’s a sick bastard—’
‘So it’s fucking intuition, okay!’ Grace spat, exasperated.
‘Grace, every time we get involved we risk exposure,’ du Bois started.
‘But it’s all right to exercise your problems with authority?’
‘My problems with authority? You’re a punk!’
‘You don’t even know what that means!’
They were glaring at each other now.
‘Fine,’ du Bois relented. ‘What’s your plan?’
‘You go in there and talk to him while I sneak up on him,’ Grace said.
‘That’s it! That’s your fucking plan?’
‘And no is the answer to your next question.’
‘What?’
‘We’re not killing this guy. We need to take him alive.’
Du Bois shook his head. Grace was glaring up at him fiercely.
‘You know we’re going to get someone killed, right?’ he asked.
Du Bois pushed the fourth-floor fire escape door open as Grace crawled into the open-plan office and made straight for the cover of one of the desks. Du Bois walked in slowly, hands held high, thinking that he wouldn’t be surprised if this action alone got him shot. He was wondering how many police marksmen had him in their sights at that moment.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Letchford’s scream sounded like it would have been at home on some of the music Grace listened to.
‘My name is Malcolm du Bois. I’m with the police. I just want to talk to you.’
He couldn’t see the man yet but thought he glimpsed movement deeper in the office. He glanced down at the desk Grace had crawled under, but she’d already moved on.
‘I’m moving forward. Please don’t shoot.’
Malcolm continued walking into the office, feeling very exposed. He now had a clear view of the body lying against the glass wall overlooking the central lobby. The man was missing most of his face. He could hear sobbing from a number of different people. The police had put the hostage count at an unlucky thirteen. There was a smell of faeces in the air.
As du Bois moved closer to the frenetic, nervous movement he’d glimpsed, he heard a dripping noise. He rounded one of the office partitions and saw another body lying over a desk, wrists and ankles cable-tied to it. A kitchen knife was embedded in the desk next to the body. The person had been gutted, the midriff little more than a red cavity.
Looking around, du Bois counted about a dozen people crouched on the floor, also cable-tied to the desk legs.
‘Are you armed?’ Letchford appeared from behind one of the partitions, keeping low. He was wearing a smart dark-coloured business suit and black leather gloves. The suit was soaked with blood. He had shaved his head, clumsily – chunks of his scalp were missing – and shaved off his eyebrows, then painted his entire head pitch black. For an absurd moment he reminded du Bois of Mr Brown, though he was much shorter and had a considerable paunch. Even through the black face paint, du Bois could see that Letchford was sweating heavily. He looked jittery, nervous. And he was holding a double-barrelled twelve-gauge shotgun.
‘I am,’ du Bois said. He held his leather coat open and let Letchford see his holstered Accurised Colt. 45 automatic and sheathed tanto. ‘Would you like me to put them somewhere out of reach?’
Letchford started pacing backwards and forwards, twitching, before turning to du Bois.
‘Yes!’ he screamed.
‘Okay, where do you want me to put them?’
Letchford gestured with his shotgun towards a nearby desk. Du Bois unclipped the holster and the sheath from his belt and placed them on the table. Letchford gestured for him to move away from the weapons. Du Bois backed off, hands in the air. Letchford strolled towards the table and glanced at the knife and the pistol. The shotgun was pointing vaguely in du Bois’ direction. Du Bois considered closing the distance and taking the shotgun from Letchford, but success wasn’t a certainty. He decided to wait for Grace’s play.
‘Cool,’ Letchford said, looking at the pistol and the Japanese fighting knife. Then he looked at du Bois. ‘But you’re a dumb fuck!’
Du Bois wasn’t entirely sure he disagreed. ‘It’s Dennis, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Don’t … use … my … fucking name! Teachers, fathers, employers – all want to use my fucking name!’ The prisoners flinched away from him as he paced back and forth and ranted, his lips coated with spittle. Du Bois noticed an open sports bag on one of the desks.
‘Okay, so what are we doing here? Why have you taken these people hostage?’
Letchford stopped pacing and looked confused. ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded.
Du Bois raised an eyebrow, then pointed at the man’s co-workers cable-tied to the desks.
Letchford leaned towards him. ‘What makes you think they’re hostages?’ he asked quietly.
‘I’ll admit that was an assumption,’ du Bois said.
Letchford pointed a shaking finger at the gutted body lying on the desk. ‘Does that look like a hostage? These’ – he gestured at the hostages, who cringed away from him, some sobbing even more loudly – ‘are sacrifices.’
Well, shit, du Bois thought. He resisted the urge to look around for Grace. ‘Who to?’ he asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.
Letchford stared at him. ‘Well, me, of course,’ he said, as if it ought to be obvious.
‘Oh, of course,’ du Bois said. ‘I’m going to lower my hands and sit down, okay?’ Du Bois didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled out a chair and sat, then reached into the breast pocket of his leather coat.
‘What are you doing?’ Letchford screamed, moving forwards and brandishing the shotgun at du Bois.
‘Relax.’ Du Bois drew out his cigarette case and showed it to Letchford. ‘You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?’
‘I hate smoking!’ Letchford’s scream was somewhere beyond histrionic.
‘Stop fucking antagonising him!’ one of the sacrifices hissed. Du Bois lit a cigarette, then made calming motions towards Letchford and the sacrifice.
‘I’ll be honest, Dennis—’
‘Don’t call me Dennis!’ Letchford screamed, drool dripping off his chin.
‘I’m not very good at this. You’re obviously a lunatic with social skills that would make the average politician pity you, but what I’d really like to know is – what set this off?’
Letchford’s eyes went wide. For a moment it looked as if they were bugging out of his skull. Then he calmed down, but it was a twitching sort of calmness.
‘There was a tall man. He came to me,’ Letchford said. Then he raised the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed it straight at du Bois. This might really hurt, du Bois thought. ‘He knew what was in my head. He said he’d heard it while he was sleeping. Then he put something in my head. He stole my warm red thoughts. This,’ he said, glancing around at the office and the sobbing potential sacrifices, ‘this is nothing compared to what I could have been before he took the dreams.’ Du Bois nodded as if he understood. ‘You’re just like him, aren’t you?’
Du Bois went very still. ‘What did he look like?’
‘You should—’ Letchford spun around and fired one of the barrels of the sho
tgun through an office partition. A cry of pain rose from behind it. Letchford swung the shotgun back, aiming at one of the potential sacrifices, the one who had admonished du Bois. A red hole appeared in Letchford’s face, then another, and finally a third. Letchford slumped to the ground. Du Bois was still sitting down, his cigarette smoke mixing with the bluer cordite haze drifting from the shrouded snub-nosed .38’s suppressor. Du Bois stood up and walked over to Letchford, keeping him covered. The .38 had slid smoothly out of his coat sleeve on the custom-built hopper. Its twin was still nestled safely up his left-hand sleeve.
He checked Letchford. The man was dead.
‘Why didn’t you do that in the first place?’ the man who’d admonished him for antagonising Letchford spat.
‘For someone who’s just been rescued, you complain a lot,’ du Bois said without looking at the man. He walked over to the partition. Grace was a bloody mess on the other side. The shotgun blast had caught her in the torso.
‘Did you have to shoot him?’ she asked. Her internal systems had dulled the pain, and du Bois could see the wounds already closing, flesh knitting together. She would need to eat soon, he knew.
‘Sorry, force of habit,’ he said. ‘What happened?’
It wasn’t actual pain that caused the pained expression on Grace’s face. ‘I really don’t know,’ she said.
Du Bois wasn’t happy. Grace was too good to make mistakes like this.
‘He went for one of the hostages,’ du Bois pointed out. ‘He didn’t try to take me out.’
‘Suicide?’ she asked.
‘Or he wanted to create suffering.’
Grace grimaced and forced herself to her feet. ‘This skirt’s ruined!’ she complained.
‘Why aren’t all your clothes laced with armouring nanites?’ du Bois muttered as he wandered over to the open sports bag and looked inside. The intended hostages/sacrifices shrank away from him as he passed. The bag contained more knives and cable ties, handcuffs, a Taser, various chemicals, gloves, make-up and spare shells for the shotgun.
‘This is a murder kit,’ du Bois said, glancing back at Letchford. He flicked open the cylinder on his .38, emptied the spent rounds and reloaded three more Glaser bullets.
‘He’s a spree killer,’ Grace said. ‘Unless it’s a bag full of guns, a murder kit’s a serial-killer thing.’
‘Or he’s just a psycho. We’ve done our good deed for the day – let’s go.’
‘You could let us go, too?’ one of the hostages suggested hopefully.
‘As soon as we release you the police will be up here,’ Grace said.
‘You’re not going to take us hostage as well, are you?’ the same woman asked.
‘So?’ du Bois asked, ignoring the hostage.
‘Something’s not right here,’ Grace said. Du Bois looked at the gutted sacrifice victim cable-tied to the desk and then back at Grace with a raised eyebrow.
‘Close your eyes, everyone,’ Grace said to the hostages as she drew one of her knuckle-duster-hilted fighting knives from the sheath under her arm. A few of the hostages let out little cries. Grace knelt down next to Letchford’s body.
‘What’re you—’ du Bois started. He heard the sound of bone cracking. ‘Really? In front of all the—’ There were more cries from the hostages, then more cracking sounds followed by a wet slurping noise. ‘That’s disgusting.’ One hostage threw up, then another. Grace threw something at du Bois. Despite his better judgement, he caught it. It was covered with blood and lumps of bone and grey matter. It was still moving. Tendrils were being sucked into wriggling legs. The stinger tried to puncture his flesh, but du Bois’ skin hardened. He found himself looking down at a tiny bronze scorpion.
‘Are you changing?’ du Bois asked. Most of the blood had disappeared, the matter reclaimed through the skin, but her clothes were a torn mess.
‘Why? Am I showing too much flesh for your puritan tendencies?’ Grace asked through a mouthful of cheeseburger.
Du Bois looked over at her in the passenger seat of the Range Rover as they made their way down Alcester Road towards Kings Heath. He was more than a little irritated. He hated people eating in his car. Even with a blood-screen hunting down scent molecules, it always took for ever to get rid of the smell of processed meat. On the other hand, Grace needed to eat to replenish energy and rebuild the matter she’d expended when she was shot.
‘Sorry,’ Grace said. ‘I’m being a bitch.’
‘You are,’ du Bois agreed. ‘And can you get your feet down off the leather?’ Grace removed her motorcycle boots from the Range Rover’s dashboard. ‘What’s wrong?’ There seemed more to her current attitude than her normal attempts to wind him up.
‘He shouldn’t have got the drop on me like that.’
‘Agreed. Now tell me what’s really wrong.’
Grace didn’t answer for a moment. Instead she took another bite of hamburger. Then: ‘You know …’ she said, her voice sounding small.
Dead family, dead friends. Made to feel helpless, Du Bois thought.
‘I hate these guys,’ Grace said. ‘It’s almost like the madness is an excuse. They think their fantasies are more important than other people’s lives.’
‘He was different, though,’ du Bois said as Alcester Road became Kings Heath High Street. Du Bois pulled off the High Street and onto a road lined with narrow terraced houses and cars parked bumper to bumper. He looked for a place to park. They would have to do this expeditiously. He’d made some phone calls as they left Baskerville House, but chances were that the police would be less than pleased about the mutilation of Letchford’s body.
Du Bois found a parking space and squeezed the Range Rover in. He had to shunt the car in front forwards but was sure the Range Rover’s armoured body could handle it.
‘You really are a Range Rover driver, aren’t you?’ Grace said.
Du Bois ignored her. Instead he opened the armoured compartment in the central console and pulled his phone out. The bronze scorpion was attached to one end of it, inert now, like a pinned insect. Du Bois tapped commands onto the touchscreen. It was isolated from external communications while it analysed the bronze scorpion, which was clearly an S- or L-tech derivative.
‘Well, the good news is we killed it,’ du Bois said as he speed-read the result of the invasive analysis.
‘Was he just another zombie?’ Grace asked, then answered her own question. ‘No, that doesn’t work. His Internet history shows he was a sick fuck long before Silas appeared on the scene.’
‘It’s a transmitter,’ du Bois said. ‘Basically it’s a sophisticated electroencephalograph that can transmit Alpha and Theta waves.’
Grace was staring at him. ‘Causing dreams?’ she asked.
‘No, more like stimulating the imagination.’
‘This is Silas, right?’ Grace asked. ‘Silas did this?’ Du Bois stared at the tiny brass scorpion and nodded. ‘Letchford wasn’t supposed to be a victim, right?’ Du Bois nodded again. ‘Can we trace the transmissions?’
‘Not now we’ve killed it,’ du Bois said. ‘We should speak to Control, but frankly I’m not even sure what we’d look for.’
Du Bois pulled the inert bronze scorpion off the end of his phone and dropped it back into the armoured compartment, which he closed and locked with a thought. The pair of them climbed out of the Range Rover.
‘Well, you’d think his landlady would have noticed,’ Grace said, looking around at Letchford’s room.
The room was oppressive, he felt like it was closing in on him. The dark curtains didn’t help. Neither did the wallpaper of imagery: cut-outs from magazines, printouts from the Internet. Most of the images were pornographic and/or violent. Here and there were pictures of people du Bois reckoned Letchford must have known. He was pretty sure he recognised a few of the hostages, their images mixed in with the rest, often manipulate
d or modified to form part of the collage of violence.
Letchford’s bed was in the centre of the room, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers the only other furniture. There was a laptop on the bed.
‘I think he lived through that,’ du Bois said, pointing at the computer.
‘I’m almost too frightened to search this place,’ Grace said.
Du Bois was concentrating. The laptop actually had quite sophisticated security, but it was no match for the tech they used. Letchford kept his computer sanitised. He’d wiped his browsing history and then run custom programs to try and wipe out further traces, but du Bois was able to find indications of what Letchford had been looking at. It had been hundreds of years since such material last shocked him, but he wasn’t so desensitised that it didn’t still disgust him. What he’d never understand was how someone could wallow in it.
Meanwhile Grace had found a locked metal box in the bottom of the chest of drawers. She drew one of her knives and cut the tip of a finger open. She pulled the motorcycle key out of her pocket and smeared some of her blood on it before closing the wound with a thought, then pushed the tip of the key against the box’s lock. The key changed shape and oozed into the lock. She opened it with a twist.
‘Flash drives,’ she told du Bois. She chose one at random, steeled herself and then plugged it into the bottom of her phone. She began skimming through the contents in her mind’s eye. ‘I need to bleach my brain,’ she said grimly.
‘What?’ du Bois asked. ‘And just tell me – don’t transfer the file to me.’
‘Some images and films. Precious ones, I guess. Looks like he believed they were real-life torture or snuff, not simulated. I don’t want to think too much about that. Needless to say he’s got excellent security by normal standards. And then just lots of text.’ Grace concentrated a bit longer as she speed-read some of it, disgust crawling across her face.
‘What you’d expect?’ du Bois asked.
‘Yes,’ Grace said, although she sounded slightly unsure. Du Bois gave her a questioning look. ‘Well, how do I put this? He’s actually quite good.’ That wasn’t what du Bois expected her to say. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s power-fantasy bullshit that screams inadequacy and he’s a sick fuck, but if he’d been eighteenth-century minor nobility he might have had a writing career.’
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