The elevator pinged, then the doors slid open. Twenty-seventh floor: Offender Management Department—South. Will and Jo stepped off the escalator into plush, beige carpeting. A medium-sized trundle case followed them, squeaking along on juddering caterpillar tracks as they made their way to the long, low reception desk. Six people manned the desk, all of them talking into fingerphones, the low murmur of their conversations barely audible through the sonic dampening. When a mousy blonde finally deigned to look his way, Will pulled out his ID and smiled.
‘Will Hunter: Network. I’d like to speak to someone in records please.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but all those lines are busy right now.’ Her left eye faded from glossy grey to spider-veined pink, the iris shining, vivid and yellow as she took off her fingerphone.
‘I called earlier: case of severed halfheads need identifying. I have a list of the ID numbers, so if you could just—’
‘I’m sorry, sir, we can’t give out any details without formal identification taking place. All remains have to be signed over for identification.’
Will nudged the trundle case with his foot. ‘That’s why we brought them with us.’
‘One second.’ The receptionist slipped the blue plastic sleeve back on her index finger, then pointed at her own face. Her owl’s eye went grey again, lights flickering in the depths. ‘Steve? It’s Marjory, listen I’ve got some bloke from the Network here and he wants some halfheads ID’d…Yes…Yes, I told him that, says he’s got them with him…’ She swung her finger around, pointing at Will instead. ‘…Yeah, that’s what I thought too…’ And then she was pointing at herself again. ‘OK, thanks Steve.’
She dragged out a datapad and made Will sign half a dozen different forms in triplicate, then summoned a tattooed youth to take the trundle case away. As it disappeared through a door marked ‘Private’ she nodded at a small waiting area over by the floor-to-ceiling window. ‘If you’d like to take a seat someone will see you shortly.’ And then her eye went grey again, and she was off.
Will settled into a chair that was a whole lot less comfortable than it looked, Jo easing herself down beside him. From here they had a perfect view of Glasgow’s main transport hub—shuttles, Groundhuggers, Behemoths, all in the process ofcoming or going. Little one-person Bumbles vwipped through the air, following complicated holding patterns, twisting and turning like flocks of starlings as a huge blue Behemoth slipped its mooring and lumbered up into the sweltering morning.
Two minutes later it was just a distant silhouette against the dirty-yellow sky.
DS Cameron, stretching out in her seat. ‘How long you think we’ll have to wait?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
Fifteen minutes later they were still there.
Jo turned in her seat and scowled back at the reception desk. ‘All they’ve got to do is scan the codes into the computer. How hard can it be?’ She fidgeted. ‘Can’t you just stick your ID back under that frumpy wee cow’s nose and pull rank? You’re the sodding Assistant Section Director!’
‘Wouldn’t make any difference: Services are a law unto themselves. Far as they’re concerned they run the city. Everyone else is just window dressing.’
‘Hmmmph,’ Jo folded her arms and slumped back in her seat, ‘and there was me thinking it was just us Bluecoats that never get any respect. Joined-up government my arse. Tell you: I had my way we’d slap the bloody lot of them in the Tin for obstruction. Bunch of tight-sphinctered, penny-pinching, halfwit—’
‘Excuse me?’ DS Cameron’s favourite ‘frumpy wee cow’ was waving at them. ‘Someone from records can speak to you now.’ She pointed to a short corridor next to the lifts. ‘Booth number three.’
The cramped cubicle contained two seats and a narrow shelf bolted beneath the large screen mounted on the wall. Will and Jo squeezed in and closed the door. Thirty seconds later the screen flickered into life and the someone from records they’d been promised appeared: a man with a huge head, wild cloned hair and a trendy pixel tattoo that made abstract patterns as he spoke. ‘This going to take long? Only I’ve got a conference call in five minutes.’
Will tried not to sound as pissed off as he felt. ‘I just signed over seventeen severed halfheads for identification: I need names, postings and dates to go with them.’
‘And you are?’
‘William Hunter. Assistant Network Director William Hunter.’
‘How nice for you.’ He looked off the bottom of the screen for a moment, and the sound of a keyboard clicked out of the speakers. ‘One moment.’ The screen went blank.
Jo muttered something under her breath that would have made the Marquis de Sade blush.
Three minutes later he was back. ‘And are these the same halfheads that a…’ Pause. Frown. ‘Detective Sergeant Campbell enquired about this morning?’
‘DS Cameron. That’s right.’
The man on the screen sighed. ‘As we explained to DS Campbell, we can’t give out that kind of information over the phone.’
Will gritted his teeth. ‘We’re not on the phone, you are.’
‘Have you signed over the severed halfheads to a representative from resourcing?’
‘I told you that at the start, remember?’
‘Until they’re signed over to a representative from resourcing we can’t give out any details.’
‘We signed them over!’
‘I see. And have you received notification of identification?’
‘No, that’s why we’re sitting here. I want you to tell me who the halfheads were!’
‘I’m sorry I can’t give out that information over the phone.’
Jo couldn’t contain herself any longer.
‘Listen up you scribbly-faced bag of shite, either you get your finger out and—’ She was cut off by a beep from the speaker.
‘I’m sorry, our time is up.’ And with that the screen went blank.
‘What the fuck?’ She slammed her palm against the screen, making the whole thing shake. ‘WE’VE BEEN HERE HALF A BLOODY HOUR!’ Jo turned to Will. ‘Can you believe this shite?’
‘Watch the door.’ He pulled a small, flat pack from a hidden pocket in his Network-issue jacket. It was full of wire tools, a tube of metaliglue, and a battered cracker. Will slid one of the thin metal slices into the joint between the screen’s control panel and the wall, then twisted. The panel popped open, revealing a small chip rack and a rats’ nest of wires.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
He pulled a pair of wires from the jumble and slapped a connector onto each. ‘Most security systems are designed to stop people hacking in from the outside. So if you want to break into them, do it from the inside…’
The cracker’s keypad rattled beneath his fingertips as he inveigled himself into Services’ local network. ‘Makes the guardian AIs a lot less sceptical.’
Two minutes, thirty-seven seconds later the cracker bleeped. Will grinned. ‘We’re in. Who’s first?’
Jo checked her notes. ‘S R dash O dash nine six two dash nine five eight.’
Will punched the code into the cracker, and the room’s main screen filled with personal details.
‘Thomas Simpson, thirty-seven. Convicted of serial rape eight years ago, been missing for four. Working at Brewster Towers when he disappeared. Next?’
‘M H dash D dash five three two seven dash eight eight seven.’
‘Hold on…Alison Campbell, forty-five: multiple homicide. Halfheaded three years ago. Went missing from Sherman House.’
It didn’t take long to see the pattern: Allan Brown liked to hunt close to home, only taking halfheads sent to clean the four connurb blocks that made up Monstrosity Square. Preying on a steady diet of murderers and rapists. There was even a serial killer in the collection of severed heads—a cannibal called Iain Foreshaw who’d butchered seven nursing students and two prostitutes. It was a fittingly ironic end to a predator’s life: brought down and eaten by one of its own kind.
/>
In his own twisted way, Allan Brown had put himself at the very top of the food chain.
Now all they had to do was find out who’d killed him.
The mop slops dirty water from one side of the toilet to the other, back and forth, back and forth. Greasy ribbons of filth making patterns on the grubby tiles. The smell doesn’t really bother her any more. It did when they’d dropped her off here this morning, bundling her out of the Roadhugger with a mop and a pail, speaking to her like some sort of trained monkey: ‘Go in. Clean. You come back when called. Understand? I said, do you understand?’
Patronizing bastard.
For a moment she thinks about taking her mop, snapping it in half, and using the splintered end to gouge the man’s face into tattered, bloody ribbons. Pluck the eyes right out of his head…
She has always loved eyes. They look so pretty, lying in the palm of her hand.
It takes a lot of control to squash the desire. She hasn’t had her medication and it’s getting more and more difficult to keep it buried deep inside where it can burn bright and fierce. But somehow she manages. She nods and trudges into the connurb block like all the other good little halfheads. Trembling inside with bees and broken glass.
The morning passes in a reek of human waste and disinfectant, memories flickering in and out like a distant firework display. The sparks too far away to taste properly. On the tip of the tongue she doesn’t have any more.
Some time around noon the front pocket of her jumpsuit starts buzzing and she stands staring at it. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Busy little bees. Buzzing against her broken glass chest.
Hungry.
She drops the mop and walks out into the baking sun, following the other halfheads. The pig and his friend are there with their bright yellow Roadhugger. They plug a tube into her arm and fill her full of intravenous nutrients, but it doesn’t ease the gnawing ache.
Then the ugly men are gone again, and she’s left to clean and mop.
The afternoon is more lucid. Thoughts are starting to stay in her head where she can focus on them, follow them. Plan.
Food will be the biggest problem. If she disappears, the man who looks like a pig won’t feed her any more.
She stops mopping, frowning at her reflection in the dirty water. Remembering soft-green walls, squeaky flooring, men and women in long white coats. Where every room smells like the stuff they put in the buckets. The smell of safety.
She’d have smiled then, if she had enough face to do it with.
‘OK,’ said Will as they pushed their way through the crowded lobby back at Network Headquarters. ‘What do you want to do now?’
‘String that Services shitebag up by his goolies.’ A gaggle of children in garish school uniform stopped right in front of them, so they had to detour past a bus party of OAPs ogling a Cézanne.
‘I meant about the investigation.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Lot of murders in that bit of town go unsolved. Thousands of potential witnesses, but no one ever admits to seeing anything. From the state of the body, I’d say whoever did it, this wasn’t their first time. Won’t be their last either.’
‘Pretty safe bet.’
‘I dumped all the crime scene data into the system this morning, MO’s pretty damn distinctive so we’re bound to get a match.’ She grinned, eyes sparkling. ‘Nice to have the resources to really go after a case like this for a change, instead of just handing it over to the Future Boys…No offence.’
‘None taken.’
They slipped into one of the staff lifts and punched the button for the fourth floor.
‘You know,’ said Jo as the doors closed, shutting out the noisy lobby, ‘I was wondering…You’ve got a kind of reputation—Urrrgh…’ She staggered, face screwed up in a grimace, teeth bared.
Will grabbed her, holding her upright.
‘Damnit!’
‘You all right?’
‘No…’ She stayed where she was—wrapped in his arms, eyes closed, breathing deeply. In and out.
Will looked down at the top of her head. ‘What the hell was that?’
‘Coffin dodger. Someone’s gone missing.’
It might have been the confines of the lift that made Will feel suddenly uncomfortable, or it might have been the sensation of Jo’s breasts rising and falling against his chest as she breathed. Whichever it was he could feel his temperature rising inch by embarrassing inch.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. ‘Thanks. They’re supposed to put out a warning on the comlink before they do a broadcast. Give us a chance to prepare.’
Will let go. Stepped back. Cleared his throat. Stuck his hands in his pockets, hiding his embarrassment. ‘No problem.’
‘Jesus.’ Jo shuddered. ‘Nothing like a transmitter going off in the base of your skull to put a shiner on the day.’ She rubbed a hand over the patch of shiny new skin at the back of her head. ‘Why they can’t just send the bloody signal out to the poor bastard they’re looking for, I don’t know.’
‘Is it always that bad?’
‘Caught me off guard that’s all. They broadcast the “come in number six: your time’s up” message to every Bluecoat in the city and the things in our heads jump about like it’s Hogmanay. Doesn’t matter if you’re number six or not. System was meant to be selective, only trip the locator in whoever’s gone missing, but the IT company fucked the installation up and we haven’t got the budget to fix it.’ She stopped and frowned at him. ‘You don’t have them do you?’
‘Nope: security risk. It’d be too easy to spot an agent when they’re undercover. Network doesn’t care if it can’t find our dead bodies.’
‘Lucky bastards.’
The lift arrived on the fourth floor with a small, metallic ‘ping’. Will slapped a professional smile on his face as the doors slid open, but left his hands in his pockets.
‘Well…I have all that lovely paperwork to get back to. Let me know how you’re getting on with the case, OK?’
‘Yes, sir.’ She snapped off a salute, turned on her heel and marched away.
As the lift doors slid slowly shut Will closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Bloody hell.’ He was definitely getting too old for this.
Six people sit around the dinner table: two men, three women and one little girl, all are dressed up in their Sunday best. Which is funny because it’s not Sunday, it’s Tuesday.
Their suits are all neat and clean, shirts ironed, ties tidily tied, shoes shined, party hats on their heads. Everyone is smiling. One big happy family. No arguments. No temper tantrums.
No one moves. No one says a word.
The silence is beautiful.
Full of love.
The sound of running water comes from a room off to the side, interspersed with snatches of VR jingles: Fruity Pops. Poppa Steve’s Family Pizza. CheatMeat—the tasty cloned treat. The singing isn’t loud: just someone entertaining himself, whistling along softly to the bits between the words. Whistling while he works.
Through in the bedroom there’s a stain, exactly eight pints of O rhesus negative wide. There’s another one on the hall carpet, next to the cupboard. The rest is slowly disappearing down the plug hole, in a froth of pink, soapy water.
And last, but not least, there’s the birthday girl. She lies curled up in front of the VR terminal, hands and feet tied behind her back, a wire in the back of her sinful head. She stopped struggling half an hour ago; now she just lies there, shivering and sobbing while a wholesome, computer-generated fantasy flickers inside her retinas.
Eighteen years old.
Filthy, dirty, impure…lovely…
She’s not as lucky as the ones sitting around the table.
For her death is still a long, long way away.
8
Outside, on the roof, the heat was overpowering. Three steps off the escalator and sweat was beading on Will’s forehead. Over to the west, clouds were beginning to form: the rains were coming. About bloody time. After the oppressive, drawn-out s
ummer, it would be nice to come up here and just stand in the downpour. Let everything wash away. But right now it was like standing in a frying pan.
He hurried along the rooftop walkway, heading for landing bay twelve: where Lieutenant Emily Brand and a nice cold beer were waiting.
She was standing with her back to the hangar door; dress uniform replaced by a plain, concrete-grey jumpsuit, the sleeves knotted round her middle, showing off neon-red sports webbing, muscled arms and broad shoulders. He watched her pull a Shrike from the Dragonfly’s port weapons pod—shifting the heavy air-to-target rocket as if it were made of papiermâché.
She was every trooper’s fantasy: early thirties, five foot six, athletic, strong chin, freckles, button nose…Her team took great delight in winding up newcomers: fanning the fires of their ardour, knowing full well that Emily would only put up with so much before beating the crap out of the poor sod. The last one ended up with a broken arm, three missing teeth, and concussion.
Emily might scrub up well, but she was not the sort of person you messed with.
Will stepped into the shade of the hangar. It wasn’t that much cooler in here, but being out of the sun made him feel less like a slice of bacon. ‘It’s half five: where’s that beer you promised?’
She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, towards the Dragonfly they’d taken to Sherman House yesterday. ‘Help yourself.’
Will unlocked a hatch on the Dragonfly’s hull marked ‘WARNING: ENGINE COOLING SYSTEM’. A six-pack of brown plastic tubes nestled in a homemade hammock between the coils and the burner. It had taken Emily about two months to get it positioned just right. Too close to the coils and you got beercicles, too close to the burners and you got an engine compartment full of boiling foam and melted plastic.
He popped two loose from the mesh and threw one over.
Emily caught it and held the cool container against her forehead. Sighed. She ran the tube through her close cropped hair and down to the nape of her neck. ‘Can’t remember summer ever going on this damn long…’
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