by AD Davies
“Really?” I said. “Oopma-Loompas? That’s a new low, Roger, even for you.”
He shuffled uncomfortably. I expected my presence was keeping him from some meeting or phone call or eating another baby.
“Adam,” he said, “do we have to go through this sermon again? It was pretentious hippie nonsense two years ago and it’s pretentious hippie nonsense now. I don’t force the world to be like this. I just happen to make money from living in that world.” He gestured toward the door. “Now why don’t you go back to Um-Bongo-Land or wherever you’ve been?”
I unclasped my hands and placed them in my pockets. “If I pay to use DDS, the money goes back into the company and it gets used for more death and more corruption and—”
“Damn it, Adam!” He strode to his desk and retrieved a thin sheaf of papers, a prop he no doubt prepped when I announced my visit. “You are not running this company. I have the executive mandate. I control DDS.”
“You have executive control,” I said, “but I still know every pissy secret about this company. And you know my pretentious hippie nonsense doesn’t prevent me from burning this place to the ground if I have to.”
Gorman glared. “You couldn’t do the jail-time. Way too pretty.”
“I could be out of the country and in the wind an hour after leaving this building. Don’t forget I’m also privy to the ‘special services’ you provided for the Collinson Armory Corporation. And don’t get me started on conspiracy to bribe some dodgy psychiatrist.”
He held himself as if about to assault me, but the pudgy old fart wasn’t stupid.
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly deeply grateful to the criminal forcing me to work for him. “I have evidence of your plans on that front. So don’t even think about trying it.”
He slowly paced back to his desk and dropped what he thought had been his trump card in a drawer. “When did you get to be so bloody sanctimonious?”
Better a sanctimonious know-it-all than a … shit.
I argued frequently with friends about my views on various subjects. One minute I was a naïve, pompous lefty, the next an over-simplified blood-and-thunder rightist; I simply saw myself as a guy who liked to do the right thing.
I said, “I built this company as a means to find people who needed finding. DDS might be illegal, but when used correctly it—”
“And blackmail? Can you really not see your own hypocrisy?”
I finally took the seat and relaxed into it. “Blackmail’s actually pretty cool when it’s done for the right reasons.”
As he settled into his own chair, his oddly-tuned brain worked behind that mahogany mask he called a face. “Fine, Adam. What’s the deal?”
“I’ll be treated like a freelancer, operating under the legal privilege which—I’m assuming here—but you being a lawyer and all, we still have that confidentiality clause?”
“You assume correctly.”
“I’ll work to PAI rules, which will ensure I’m not in breach of my non-compete clause, but will also furnish me with all the legal clout PAI commands. I’ll feed DDS as soon as I have the details.”
I stood and allowed the chair to slide back messily to the side. A little childish, but what the heck. Who didn’t enjoy messing with pricks like Roger Gorman?
After leaving the office, I wandered down to the Tech-Hive, a pocket of the building housing thousands of terabytes of data and software on banks of bespoke servers. Here, Jessica Denvers sat cross-legged on a tall stool, watching the door as I entered. Surrounded by the organized chaos of tablet computers, audio and video bugs, phones and assorted surveillance hardware that made up her lab, she was already holding out a smart-phone.
She said, “I figured if you blind-copied me in on an email to Roger Gorman that you’d be coming back to work. Here. You’ll no-doubt need this.” It was about five inches, far bigger than phones had been two years ago. “The latest operating system,” she added in something of a monotone. “Syncs with the PAI mainframe. The ‘Family Moments’ tile is the link to DDS. Four-G network, naturally.”
“Naturally,” I said. “That’s a lot of initials.”
“Pay attention, Double-oh-Seven.”
A hint of the humor I remembered.
“I always pay attention,” I said. “You’ve changed your hair.”
“About eight times since you last saw me.”
She was currently rocking a platinum-blond look with a purple streak, held back in a glittery Alice-band. It shouldn’t really have worked on her honey-colored skin, a mix of her white-British and Jamaican parentage, but her hair possessed more Caucasian genes than African, so it was easier to style.
She said, “The link takes you to a video website similar to You Tube or Vimeo. Tap on the ‘About Us’ option and hold for three seconds. This links to the DDS live section where you input your target’s details. If you have something in front of you like a credit card, just snap a photo. It’s a fifty mega-pixel camera.”
“You’ve improved the interface.”
“Even more times than my hair.”
I played with the tiles, zipping them around, until I noticed Jess hadn’t moved. “You okay?”
“Am I okay?” she said. “Am I okay with being dumped in this hole? Am I okay with Gormless Gorman firing three-quarters of my staff, doubling my workload and not giving me a pay rise for two years? Or am I okay with a guy I thought was my friend as well as my boss upping sticks and buggering off to God-knows-where without even a goodbye text?”
Harry often teased that Jess had something of a crush on me, but I didn’t believe it. She was dedicated and brilliant and ten years my junior, which wouldn’t be so bad, but she was the sort of person who alphabetized her CD collection, while I preferred to store them by color, starting with white at the left, building up through the spectrum to black on the right (yes, some of us still have CDs). Besides, a guy like me simply wouldn’t be good for her.
Unwilling to reveal my gentlemanly thoughts, I tried glib again: “Are they my only options?”
“Do you need anything else?”
“Your number and twenty-four-seven access to your brain.”
She took off her glasses and pointed with them. “You, sir, are pushing your bloody luck.” She turned to her pile of junk and picked up what looked like an iPad but was nothing to do with Apple.
“It’s a girl,” I said. “Missing four weeks. An outside chance of kidnapping.”
I recruited Jess straight out of uni, back when Park Avenue Investigations was still just me and a personal assistant. Her savant-like work with technology—both operating and developing it—was instrumental in expanding my business, and while we were doing “good” work she was happy. But, like me, she had misgivings about corporate espionage and supporting firms who exploited child soldiers. I convinced her to stay on with a promise that I’d get us away from those people.
I said, “The police aren’t investigating and someone is covering up Sarah’s movements.” I stood closer to her. “I need your help, Jess.” Then I ladled on some Hollywood cheese: “She needs your help.”
Jess put down the not-an-iPad. “While I was waiting for you to come back and fight it out, Gorman made all us specialists sign non-compete clauses, like yours. I can’t quit, and I blame you entirely.”
“Sounds familiar.” I nodded. “But alright. Help me with this case, and when it’s over … you’re fired.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Eager to get started, I hurried to the lobby and hit the elevator’s down button. The receptionist said, “Mr. Park? There’s a man here to see you. Says he’s your dad?”
A man in rich-guy-casual clothes stood up from the sofa. “Step-dad,” he said.
Stuart Fitzpatrick. Also known—by me, anyway—as “Sleazy Stu.”
“Adam,” he said. “I heard you were back in town.”
“Well,” I said, “you can piss right off,” and strode towards the stairs.
Chapter Six
; My actual father had been a plumber of generous girth and massive heart, a heart my mother loved so much that even when Sleazy Stuart Fitzpatrick tempted her with an extra-marital affair, she still could not bring herself to leave him, or our terraced house in a street where we strung washing across the road to the home opposite, and where one family’s Union flag spanned the length of their property, emblazoned with “Leeds Utd AFC.” These patriots, though, not only did they refer to it incorrectly as a “Union Jack,” but they rigged it upside-down, and no one dared correct them on either mistake. We lived without the trappings that made my school-friends’ lives complete; no games-console or flashy sound system or holiday in Greece. Perhaps it is because of their marriage’s near-miss that I never resented doing chores for pocket money. In fact, when it was time to clean the caravan, Dad and I laughed and splashed one another and generally treated it like a family excursion. Sometimes, I was even allowed to use the hose. He always promised we’d spend a whole summer in the caravan someday, not just here, but in France, maybe all the way to exotic Spain, if our fifteen-year-old Volvo would hold up.
However, a fortnight before my seventeenth birthday, while repairing the TV cabinet for the umpteenth time, Dad collapsed, having suffered a massive heart attack. He died before my mother even picked up the phone.
After a couple of months of scraping together enough money to eat and get me to school, Stuart Fitzpatrick came back a-calling. He swept my mother straight off her feet and into a four-bedroomed house in the sort of area where if you left a sofa in your front garden, the neighbors would call the police rather than waiting for a family of rats to move in, compelling the council to shift it on bin-day. My mother told me to be grateful.
“No more compromises,” she said.
For her sake, I tried. I really did. In fact, the fortnight Stu took us sailing on Lake Como and taught the seventeen-year-old me how to pilot a powerboat, it gave me such a charge, I almost forgot to hate him. Almost. Our shared time behind the wheel of a throbbing water-bound rocket probably informed my only long-term love—adrenaline—but to this day, even as I fled his presence in the office I built from scratch, I could feel nothing around him, except the urge to turn my back and take myself somewhere else.
The two floors directly below Park Avenue Investigations had, for many years, been occupied by recruitment consultants, but these had now closed and the properties were being renovated. The constant drilling and banging would annoy the crap out of the other residents but you wouldn’t hear anything on my floor due to the insulation that Roger Gorman insisted upon. Today, the only sounds emanating from the sites were the wind blowing through the empty space and the snapping of plastic sheeting used to protect the building’s shell from the British weather.
I emerged into strong sunlight, stretched my arms to tease the bruise in a pleasantly-painful way, and I slowly became aware of something not quite right. This area attracted people with Porsches and Aston Martins, sometimes the odd Jag, but rarely did an old Ford Mondeo show up in the lot. From a couple of hundred yards away, the blue car’s driver was indistinct, but I swear he was looking straight at me. I wondered about Benson’s surveillance, about whether he would be so blatant.
Then I forgot about him, concerned only with the man who’d just caught up.
We walked, Stuart and I. The office complex was built in a crescent, backing onto the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, and we seemed to be heading that way. I knew exactly why, so I texted Harry to inform him of the change in venue for our chat.
We passed under the archway at the back of the crescent and over a small iron footbridge to the towpath, and we strolled some more until we entered a residential area, a gated community of barges with fun-tastic names like Dun-Roamin-Gone-Boatin’, Home-from-Home, and my personal tragi-favorite Bat-Boat, owned by a bachelor aged forty-four who lived there permanently and, yes, had painted it in the Adam West-era Batman colors, with added “Splash” and “Whoosh” decals.
After a while, Stuart said, “It’s not even that valuable.”
“So you keep telling me,” I said.
“I’ll do her up, get her back to the standard your mother maintained.”
“I know.”
“Would your mother really approve?”
“She didn’t consult me when she married you.”
Wow, could I sound any more like a stroppy teenager?
It was close to four years now since my mother was struck by a boat whilst swimming off Stuart’s yacht on Lake Como, an accident no one could have avoided except, perhaps, the inexperienced helmsman who didn’t see her, or even my mother herself if she’d heeded Stuart’s warning to not venture out too far. I may have hated Stu’s smarmy guts for taking advantage of a widow’s grief, but I didn’t blame him for her death ... even if he did.
We’d come upon the Miss Piggywiggy, named after my mother’s favorite childhood toy, a canal barge she bought herself with the sale of our house. Once emerald green with red stripes and black trim, now the paint was peeling and crusted, the windows caked with grime, and the body shuddered when you sneezed too close. It now set me back a few hundred a month in mooring fees.
I said, “Make your offer.”
He nodded. “I’m seeing someone. She’s called—”
“I can’t believe you haven’t twigged to the fact that you actually mean nothing to me. Just make your offer. Then piss off.”
“A hundred and fifty thousand,” he said. “Straight cash. No conditions.”
One hundred and fifty thousand pounds for a barge worth more to the council on Bonfire Night than as a functioning vessel.
No more compromises, she’d told me. Damn right.
I said, “No deal.”
“Fine,” he said, and held out his hand for me.
I had never shaken it, but he always held it there for a few seconds longer than someone with real dignity ever would. He withdrew it and walked slowly away, leaving me alone with my mother’s boat, and something of a headache, reminding me how early I rose that morning, of the lunchtime beer, and of how much caffeine I consumed to drag myself past two p.m. I wanted to get to work on finding Sarah Stiles, but now armed with the DDS software, I needed the information Harry was bringing me.
I boarded the Miss Piggywiggy and ducked into the galley. The barge creaked under my weight, and the air clawed, hot and musty. The whole furnished interior felt damp. I opened every window I could, and took a six-pack of mineral water from the deactivated fridge, only one of which was missing. The bottles were glass, so I had no worries about them being out of date. I downed one and felt marginally better, but with still no sign of Harry, I stepped into the bedroom where a mattress with no bedding waited.
The air was even more oppressive in this, the smaller space, much like a three-dollar-a-night room in a hot country. No window, no fan. You get used to it eventually; the humidity, the heat, the lack of breeze. Right there, lying down with my hands behind my head, the residue of Mikey’s fist slowly lifting, I could have been back in Thailand or Columbia or perhaps some village in Senegal. Whatever I was thinking, whatever I was remembering, I floated down, gently, into a deep sleep.
Then I awoke almost immediately to a clattering noise. At least I thought it was immediately. I sat up. Assessed my surroundings. It was still light out. I checked the time: quarter to three. Just a power-nap. Whatever—I was on the barge and someone was banging about in the galley.
“Bloody hell, Adam. Where do you keep the milk?”
I opened the bedroom door.
Beard turning to grey and a rumpled manner that suggested he’d make a great tramp one day, Harry Riley had found the kettle and some cups and a jar of brown granules. He held up the jar, grinning like an idiot. “Coffee, sir?”
“Just water, thanks. That jar is at least four years old.”
“You’re such a bleedin’ snob.” Harry unscrewed the jar and sniffed. “Smells like coffee.”
“Wow,” I said. “The life of Riley. Glamor
ous. You should invite the queen for afternoon tea.”
“If I’m havin’ tea with the queen, she can stump up for a Starbucks.” He held a mug under the tap, turned it on. A mass of brown sludge plopped out.
I picked up two of the glass bottles and handed one to Harry.
He opened his and sniffed it. “This ain’t some expensive vintage is it? Cos I won’t appreciate it.”
I tossed my lid in the bin and downed half the bottle in one. When I breathed again, Harry had taken a sip and was now looking at me, fingers working around the bottle.
“Curtis Benson.”
“Dodgy bloke,” I said.
“I’ve done all the legwork as far as he’s concerned. No need to go pokin’ round there.”
I rubbed my chest and when Harry clocked the movement I quickly dropped my hand.
He said, “Already been to see him then? Idiot.”
This wasn’t like Harry. I said, “They scared you, didn’t they?”
“Not at first. But later, yeah. Got a phone call emphasizin’ I weren’t allowed in the club anymore, and blah blah blah, casually mention Jayne’s name and where we live.” He produced a Taser from his coat pocket, the sort you press against someone and hit a button, sending anywhere between one and ten-thousand volts through their body.
“Jayne know you have that?”
He put the weapon away. “Jayne’s talkin’ divorce just for sendin’ Caroline to find you. Said I should let you stew ’til you’re ready to come home, sort things out like a man.”
“Is Jayne here?”
“You think she can’t wait to welcome you home? Nah, she knows you’re busy. Says if you need her help, ask. Otherwise, she’ll see you when you bring Sarah back safe.”
I dropped into an armchair. Dust erupted around me. I pretended I wasn’t surprised. Harry lowered himself slowly into the one next to me.
I said, “She doesn’t understand.”
“No, and neither do I. Run into problems, so you abandon yer business and bugger off cowabunga-ing around the country. Very cool, dude.”