Good. And his father?
Died when Frank was eleven.
He rated family and friends low on a scale of “things important to him.” Why was that?
Because he found people in general troubling and intrusive.
Good, good. And did he have trouble getting served in shops?
Sometimes, yes.
Did people sometimes barge in front of him in queues without apologising?
That had happened, yes.
Did he often find himself standing alone in the corner at parties?
He didn’t get invited to too many parties.
And so it went for three long, gruelling hours, and at the end of it Frank was sent to sit out in the hallway while the Personnel administrators conferred. He slumped on a chair, feeling like a wrung-out dishrag. Some time later, he wasn’t sure how long, he was invited to come back in, and was told that his personality profile was ideally suited to Tactical Security.
Embarrassed by his ignorance, he asked what Tactical Security meant, exactly, please.
Store detection, he was told. Would he consider training to become a Ghost?
Not entirely sure that he wanted to spend the rest of his life as a store detective, and a little hazy about what the job entailed, Frank was nevertheless not so stupid as to turn the opportunity down, reasoning that if things didn’t work out he could always go back to night portering or, since it appeared that he had a bent for law enforcement, apply to join the police force. He told the administrators yes, went home and told his mother what had happened (she, predictably, was underwhelmed), went to the hotel and handed in his notice (the manager there was considerably more impressed and encouraging), and almost immediately embarked on the year-long course of Ghost Training.
The first six months of Ghost Training took place at the Academy, a fenced-in compound on the outskirts of the city, situated in one corner of the spacious grounds of the mansion owned by Septimus Day. There, at the hands of a team of instructors made up of former Ghosts, Frank was taught the basics of self-defence, use of sidearms, and the technique of guttural ventriloquism known as subvocalisation. He learned how to recognise the flagging signs that identify a shoplifter and was instructed in the methods the more inventive professional boosters employ, such as carrying a box with a false side for slipping stolen goods into, or pushing a hand through a slit in a coat pocket in order to pillage shelves under cover of the coat flap.
Once he had mastered those skills, he was initiated into the mysteries of congruity – the art of blending into the background, of appearing just like anyone else and therefore like no one. In this his natural drabness helped him greatly. Since childhood Frank had always been one of those people who are overlooked, whose face no one remembers, whose name slips out of people’s memories and lodges on the tip of their tongue where they can’t find it. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, a nobody, and naturally this was an attribute he had always considered a drawback, but his Ghost Training showed him that it could also be a virtue. He was taught to cultivate a bland, abstracted air and never let his face show what he was thinking; to avoid making sudden, erratic gestures which might mark him out as an individual; in short, to damp down of what little spark of personality he possessed until it was no more than a infinitesimal wink of light, dimmer than the farthest star. By the end of the six months he had refined his innate innocuousness to such a degree that he could, if he wanted to, walk through a crowded room and pass entirely unnoticed.
Halfway through his training his mother died. He was given time off to organise the funeral, which he did in an efficient but perfunctory manner. At the ceremony itself, in the company of a handful of estranged relatives and his mother’s semi-estranged friends, he felt some sadness, but not much. Perhaps this was a by-product of his training, perhaps not. For a long time there had been a distance between him and his mother, a drug-chilled void. Death only made that distance slightly more remote. In many ways losing her came as a relief. It shaved further complications from his personality, helping to strip away the emotional ties that stood between him and full Ghosthood.
On average, only a tenth of the trainees at the Academy develop congruity sufficiently to go on to become fully-fledged Ghosts. The rest are advised to seek an alternative career. Frank was singled out by his instructors as being an exceptionally apt pupil. Without much difficulty he graduated to the second part of the course: six months of practical experience on the shop floor.
Donald Bloom, who himself had been a Ghost for only a little over a year, showed Frank the ropes. Under Mr Bloom’s affable tutelage he learned the ins and outs of the store, tramping the floors (all seven of them, because this was back in the days before the brothers commandeered the Violet Floor for themselves), going over and over the same ground until he had the location of all seven hundred and seventy-seven departments securely locked away in his memory. At the same time he further refined the skills he had acquired at the Academy. Side by side with Mr Bloom he drifted behind customers and lurked where he was least likely to be seen but where he could see as much as he needed. The two of them loitered without intent, lingered with langour. It was Mr Bloom who helped Frank make his first official collar, and that was a moment of achievement whose sweetness Frank will never forget.
By the time the year of Ghost Training was up, the metamorphosis was complete. Frank had become a living cypher. A professional nonentity. Congruous. A Ghost.
And in return for effecting that transformation, Days offered him a gun, a Platinum account with the performance-related possibility of promotion to Iridium, and a job for life.
It is hard to believe now that he could have thought this a fair trade, but then how many sane twenty-year-olds would turn down the offer of a generous salary linked to a secure career?
In short, Days made him who and what he is today. Days took a shy, introverted young man and stripped him of any last vestige of personality he might have had. His Ghost Training hollowed him out like a rotten tooth, and since then the only means he has found of filling the emptiness inside him is by buying expensive things that he has little time or desire to enjoy.
And the worst of it is, all this was done with his consent. He has no one to blame for how he is but himself. Days merely capitalised on a natural asset, and he willingly allowed the exploitation.
At least the imminent sale gives him something to think about other than himself. With his intimate knowledge of the store it doesn’t take him long to work out the quickest route to Dolls, and off he goes. East through Private Surveillance, filled with all manner of bugs, phone taps, body wires, and miniaturised recording devices – a therapeutic playpen for paranoiacs. North through Oriental Weaponry, where sales assistants dressed in black ninja garb have almost finished resurrecting the folding screen of shuriken. North again through Military Surplus, the department for the professional mercenary and for anyone who can’t get through the night without a camouflage hot-water bottle cover. And once more north, this time through Classic Toys.
He arrives at the passageway connecting Classic Toys to Dolls just as a phrase of seven notes chimes out over the store’s PA system, followed by a female voice announcing the lightning sale in the stern yet seductive tones of a dominatrix.
“Attention, customers. For the next five minutes there will be a fifteen per cent reduction on all items in Dolls. I repeat, for the next five minutes only, all items in Dolls will be marked down by fifteen percent. Dolls is located in the north-eastern quadrant of the Blue Floor and may be reached using the banks of lifts designated B and C. This offer will be extended to you for five minutes only. Any purchases made after that period will retail at full price. Thank you for your attention.”
The hush that descends on the store for the duration of the announcement is absolute. Then, as the seven-note phrase is repeated, shoppers begin to move. They drop whatever they are doing, and hoisting up their handbaskets or swinging their trolleys around or stamping down on the Go pedal
s of their motorised carts and spinning the steering wheels, they make for Dolls. Never mind that few of these people, if any, had the urge to buy a doll until now, and never mind that a fifteen per cent discount hardly amounts to the offer of a lifetime, a lightning sale is a lightning sale, and it summons bargain-hungry customers like an aid convoy summons the starving.
To those awaiting them in Dolls, the sound of their approach starts out as a distant whisper that shivers through the air like the wind before a storm. The expressions on the faces of the thousands of pieces of merchandise in Dolls remain unchanged but the expressions on the faces of the sales assistants and guards become apprehensive as the whisper increases in volume, deepening to a rumble like far-off thunder in the hills, the noise of wheels on carpet and of hundreds of pairs of feet beating the floor.
The sound grows and grows, exploding to a crescendo as the first customers spill into the department. They rush in by all four entrances and swiftly fan out among the displays, plucking items off the shelves and scrutinising price-tags, their mouths wide open in avaricious rictus grins.
Frank has to leap smartly aside as a motorised cart comes hurtling past him through the passageway, missing him by a whisker. The driver is a hunched, withered old woman, ninety if she’s a day, with brown, broken teeth, a jet-black pompadour wig perched on her head, crimson lipstick smeared roughly in the vicinity of her mouth, and a manic gleam in her eye that would perturb a psychopath. Frank recognises Clothilda Westheimer, the multimillionaire heiress.
Waving a walking stick in the air like a cavalryman’s sabre and tooting on the cart’s horn at anyone careless enough to get in her way, Clothilda Westheimer careers around the aisles until she almost collides with a florid-faced, heavy-set man who is examining a box containing a lifelike plastic replica of a six-month-old baby. Brakes whine, the cart grinds to a halt, and Clothilda Westheimer screams at the man to move, using language that would make a sailor blush. The man’s startled response is to hold up the baby in front of him as if its production-line innocence will somehow ward off this cursing, haranguing crone, but Clothilda Westheimer merely snatches the box out of his grasp and aims her cart for the nearest cash register.
A regular customer since the day the store opened, Clothilda Westheimer buys all her groceries at Days, and also buys extravagant gifts which, having no one else to lavish them on – she has disowned her relatives and has remained unmarried, despite the attentions of a stream of suitors – she lavishes on herself. She has an unmatched eye for a bargain and, as she has just proved, an unequalled skill at getting what she wants.
And on they come, flooding in by the dozen, more customers and yet more, barging, shouldering, elbowing one another out of the way, seizing merchandise off the shelves like a rabble of looters. All pretence of civility disappears, the rules of etiquette are abandoned, as they battle for bargains, dive into the displays, emerge with their prizes, and then join the crowd around the cash registers, there to brandish cards of all hues from dull grey Aluminium to pink-tinged Rhodium. Knowing they only have a limited time in which to secure a purchase and grimly determined not to leave the department without the doll they didn’t know they wanted so desperately until now, the customers clamour for the sales assistants’ attention and squeal like frustrated infants when other, less deserving individuals are given precedence.
Keeping to the shifting perimeter of the crowd, careful to stay out of reach of jabbing elbows and butting shoulders, Frank watches for suspicious behaviour, but all he sees is a collection of well-dressed, well-heeled men and women behaving like ravening animals. He sees two middle-aged men in lounge suits tussling over a purple-haired troll, each insisting, with mounting indignation, that he saw it first. He sees a rosy-cheeked porcelain Bo Peep, one of a collector’s series based on characters from nursery rhymes, being used as a club by its prospective owner to batter a path through the heaving throng. He sees a small boy clasping a khaki-clad action figure to his chest and bawling raucously while his mother tries to force both him and herself through the crush of bodies to the cash registers. At one point the top half of the largest of a nest of Russian dolls pops clear of the mêlée and goes rolling across the carpet to fetch up at Frank’s feet, its painted babushka face gazing up at him plaintively, as if begging him to intercede in the madness.
Disagreements degenerate into arguments. Queue-jumpers are dragged back by the scruff of the neck. A rough kind of frontier justice holds sway.
And all the while the harassed, wand-wielding sales assistants process the purchases as fast as is humanly possible (but nowhere near fast enough to satisfy the baying, demanding mob), and the overhead cameras, under manual control from the Eye, wheel and nod, viewing the activity below with a lofty, lazy curiosity.
A glance at his watch tells Frank that the sale has less than a minute to run, but the frenzy shows no sign of abating. If anything, the customers become more agitated as they sense the seconds slipping away. Pushy latecomers are given short shrift. Competitive jostling gives way to blatant shoving.
Then, at last, the seven-note sequence chimes out again and the female voice, with incisive calmness, pronounces the sale at an end. There is a collective sigh of disappointment from unsuccessful customers as they turn away from the cash registers, disgustedly discarding the dolls that only seconds ago they were frantic to buy. Those who were lucky enough to make a purchase leave the department hugging their booty, boasting to anyone who will listen how much money they saved. Arguments peter out, the antagonists coming to their senses as though awakening from a trance. They blink at one another in confusion, suddenly no longer sure what all the fuss was about. Some even exchange apologies (they don’t know what came over them).
Slowly, in dribs and drabs, the crowd departs, leaving behind a litter of débris, dolls of all shapes and sizes lying everywhere, limbs twisted, like corpses in the aftermath of a nerve-gas attack.
The sales assistants, glad it’s over, set about tidying up. The guards, shaking their heads in weary disbelief, stroll away.
Frank is just turning to go when a voice buzzes in his ear.
Mr Hubble?
Hubble here.
A guard’s made an arrest in Optical Supplies. You’re in the vicinity. Can you get over there?
No problem.
Cool. The screen-jockey breaks the connection.
Optical Supplies: two departments west, one south. Frank sets off, wondering if the rest of the day is going to be this busy and rather hoping it will. At least that way the hours will pass quickly.
10.07 a.m.
THE GUARD IS a young, petite, wiry-looking woman with dark eyes offset in a slight cast. Her black hair is pinned up at the back of her head in a tight bun. Frank knows her face, and her ID badge reminds him that her name is Gould.
He introduces himself – “Hubble, Tactical” – and casts a cursory glance over at the arrestee, who is sitting in a chair with her back to the wall, slumped and gazing abjectly at her hands in her lap as if they are the ones who have committed the crime, independently of her. She is – to judge by the fine striations that star her mouth and radiate like lines of magnetic polarity from the outer corners of her eyes to her temples – in her early fifties, and she is dressed in a pair of dark slacks and a maroon mohair jersey with a gold-and-diamanté brooch fastened at her collarbone. Her hair is a rich, dark-chocolate brown shot through with streaks of silver. Although some effort has been made to organise it, it looks matted and unkempt. Her slacks are rumpled and in need of pressing. In fact, the overall image she presents is a curious blend of customer and baglady, but despite this it occurs to Frank – a thought beamed down from an alien planet – that she is far from unattractive. In the right clothes, the right situation (which this abundantly is not), she could be quite striking. There is no ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, an absence Frank notes because it is a store detective’s task to be alert to such details and not for any other reason.
“What did she t
ake?” he asks Gould, drawing out his Sphinx
“Just this.” Gould holds up a bottle of contact lens solution. “Between you and me...” She moves closer to Frank for a confidential whisper. Frank recoils a fraction, but Gould does not appear to notice. “She’s one of the clumsiest shoplifters I’ve ever seen. I mean, she might as well have walked in carrying a placard saying, ‘I Am Here To Steal Something.’ Even without my training I would have known she wasn’t kosher the moment I clapped eyes on her. She was trembling so badly I thought she had some kind of condition, you know, Parkinson’s or something, but then when she spotted me, she jumped like a scalded cat, turned away, you know, like this.” Gould ducks her head to one side, hunching her shoulders and raising a hand to shield her face. An exaggeration, surely, and looking over at the arrestee again, Frank is pleased to see that the woman is still contemplating her hands and has not witnessed Gould’s tactless impersonation.
“So I kept an eye on her,” Gould continues, “and sure enough, not two minutes later she boosted. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly get the thing into her pocket. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic,” she concludes with a grim twist of her mouth.
“Did you get her card off her?”
“She says she doesn’t have one. Says she lost it.”
“Then how did she get in?”
“I have no idea. We’ll find out downstairs, but I need you to make the arrest formal before I can take her down.”
“Of course.”
Frank goes over to the shoplifter. As he draws near he catches a strong scent of perfume emanating from her. Several different perfumes, in fact, a mingling of musks intended to disguise the smell of bodily secretions but, like a white sheet draped over a patch of wet mud, not wholly effective.
His nose and forehead wrinkle simultaneously.
At his approach the woman raises her head, and he sees that her eyes are inflamed, their whites crazed with capillaries, their lashes slick with moisture, all of which adds to her general look of haggardness and disarray. The rest of her well-shaped face, though, is serene, resigned, perhaps even hopeful.
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