by Oisin McGann
‘My dad wouldn’t kill himself. He was no victim!’
‘I wasn’t suggesting—’
‘He’s wanted for murder. He’s on the faggin’ run, okay? Did he come here or not?’
The cleric put his hands up opposite sleeves and regarded Sol with a patient expression.
‘No. We’ve had no one stay here in the last few weeks other than our officiates. And our open meetings are held on the platforms. He might have been present at one of them, but I couldn’t be sure. We get large numbers turning up these days.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ Sol pulled up his hood and started for the door.
‘Mr Wheat?’ Mr Hessel called after him.
‘Yeah?’ Sol turned back to look at him from under the edge of his hood.
‘If your father hasn’t told you where he is, perhaps it’s because he doesn’t want you to find him. Have you considered that?’
‘Sure. But who says he’s got the right to leave me in the lurch?’ Sol replied.
‘I mean, maybe he’s trying to protect you, as well as himself.’
Sol thought about all that had happened over the last week.
‘Well, then he’s doing a crap job of it,’ he grunted, and walked out.
When he emerged from the sanctum into the alley, he was feeling pent up and frustrated. Slipping his bag onto his back, he set off at an easy jog, eager for some exercise. He could go up a few levels and run along one of the walkways on the way back to Ana’s apartment. He was late anyway. An elevator took him to a promenade level, where he ran past the couples out for a stroll, and the adscreens that relentlessly offered domestic servants, sun-shaft time, out-dome trips and any number of other things he didn’t need. He ran to relax, to empty himself out, losing himself in the flow of adrenaline and the hypnotic rhythm of his feet on the walkway.
When he felt as if he had cleared his head out enough, he made for a nearby elevator. While he stood in front of the doors, waiting for the lift to arrive, he let his breathing return to normal, and his eyes fell on the webscreen on the wall next to the elevator doors. It was flickering, and the advert that had been looping as a screensaver disappeared, to be replaced by a message in heavy block capitals against a plain white background. It read:
WHO ARE THE CLOCKWORKERS? WHY DO WE FEAR THEM? DO YOU CARE ENOUGH TO FIND OUT?
Looking out over the railings at the city below, he could even see it on some of the giant screens in the main shopping streets. He shook his head in complete bewilderment.
‘What’s going on with this?’
‘Where is he, Ms Kiroa?’ Inspector Mercier asked.
‘I don’t know. He disappeared off after the funeral – he knew we were supposed to be talking to you.’
Ana folded her arms across her chest and stuck her chin out, unwilling to be intimidated by the inspector. He wasn’t very threatening anyway; more tired and bureaucratic. They had caught up with her outside the school. She had been collecting some work from her room, and the officers did not realize Sol’s class was having a weekend Monday.
‘Where did you last see him?’ Mercier was gazing patiently at her.
‘At the Earth Centre. He went outside before the ceremony was over.’
Mercier looked to his sergeant, Baiev, and the other man nodded and moved away to speak into the commlink on his wrist. Mercier smoothed his little moustache and said nothing for a moment.
‘Ms Kiroa, I believe Solomon is staying with you at the moment, is that correct?’
‘Yes. His flat was broken into and he was attacked. And since you lot seem intent on ignoring his civil rights, I thought it would be safer if he stayed with me until his father was found. He doesn’t have any other family.’
She felt suddenly uncomfortable, conscious of how it might look to a stranger for a young female teacher to have one of her male students staying in her flat.
‘Quite.’ Mercier put his hands behind his back. ‘I wonder if we might go there now and have a look through his things. To see if there’s anything which might help us find him.’
‘No, we can’t,’ Ana snapped. ‘You need a warrant for that and you know it. He’s barely been gone an hour. It’s not like he’s “absconded”—’
‘Ms Kiroa, I’m afraid that that is exactly what he has done.’ The inspector sighed. ‘He knew he was to meet the police at a certain time, and he has wilfully avoided us. “Absconded” is the appropriate word. We can get a warrant if we have to; I was hoping you’d co-operate. The Industrial Security Section are still letting me handle this part of the investigation, you understand. If they take over completely, things are going to get a lot more complicated. And we are not the only people looking for Solomon. It would be better if we took him in before others did.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Ana frowned suspiciously.
‘Before Gregor Wheat disappeared, he made some kind of bizarre wager with a man by the name of Cortez, a man who has some very violent people working for him. One of his enforcers was seen at the Earth Centre today. His name is Enrique Romanos.’
The policeman took a palmtop from his pocket and pulled up a display. He showed the picture to Ana. It was a head-and-shoulders shot of a man with a neck that was thicker than his head.
‘He is known as “Necktie” Romanos, because of his favourite method of killing.’
‘A necktie?’
‘A garrotte, Ms Kiroa. Now, could we please see Solomon’s things?’
Back at Ana’s apartment, Sol stared at his face in the bathroom mirror. His nose was still a bit swollen, but the faint bruising around his eyes was going down, turning a sickly yellow. His dark hair was getting quite long, coming down over his ears, and he had the beginnings of a downy moustache that he had never got around to shaving. He looked pathetic. The teenage grit staring back at him had the face of a victim – the kind of kid who always got pummelled in the boxing ring.
On an impulse, he reached for his wash bag. He had brought his father’s straight razor with him, and he took it out, unfolded it and scraped the edge down over part of the hair on his upper lip. The blade was well honed, and the hair came away clean. Without bothering to use any soap, he shaved away the rest of his adolescent moustache. The skin felt bare and tender underneath, but it made his face look better, cleaner. More intense too.
Continuing to stare at his reflection, his gaze wandered up to the tousled black hair on his head. There was a pair scissors in the cupboard behind the mirror, and he took them down. Holding tufts of hair out between two fingers, he started snipping. When he had cut it all close to the scalp, he turned on the tap and rubbed the bar of soap between his hands until he had enough lather to cover the top of his head. Pulling the razor over his scalp in slow, awkward strokes, he scraped one swathe of hair after another from his head. The blade cut his skin several times, and he winced as blood mixed with the soap and water, but he kept shaving. Slowly, he took all the hair off his head. He rinsed it clean until the water came away without blood in it, and then dried his bare scalp. Cleaning up the hair clippings, he wiped down the sink before studying himself in the mirror once more; he nodded with satisfaction. He definitely looked older now – harder too. Not like somebody you wanted to mess with.
Out in the living room, he opened the bag that held all the stuff he had brought from his apartment. The webscreen in the corner of the room was asleep, just showing the time: 4.28 p. m. He had missed his meeting with the ISS. Too bad, he decided. He pulled out a heavy jacket, the kind rarely worn in the upper levels of the city, and put it on. He needed big, baggy pockets. Taking the gun from his school bag, he slipped it into the jacket and tried drawing it quickly from the pocket several times. Good enough. He checked to see that he could take the safety catch off with his thumb without looking at it, and then put it away.
Solomon could feel the change in himself – a new sense of grit and determination. He knew the names of three different gambling dens that his father frequented. Two of them were in the F
ilipino District. He was going down there to find out what he could, and if anybody tried to get rough with him, he was going to shoot them.
When Ana got to her apartment with the two police officers, there was a man with a badly shaved head walking away down the corridor towards the exit on the other side of the building. She glanced at him again for a moment, then went to unlock her door. Mercier and Baiev paid him no attention.
Inside the apartment, the two men walked through to the living room. Ana showed them Sol’s bag, and Baiev started going through it.
‘I’ll just use your toilet, if I may,’ Mercier said to her, and she pointed him towards the bathroom.
The inspector seemed less interested in using the facilities than in perusing the finer points of the décor. He had left the door open, and Ana peered in to see what he was doing. She could feel moisture in the air and there was condensation on the mirror. Mercier ran his finger around the rim of the drain and looked at it.
‘Baiev!’ he shouted, pushing past Ana. ‘That was him outside! He’s shaved his head. He’s definitely on the run – call for back-up!’
They charged out into the corridor with Ana chasing after them. A sense of outrage kept her on their heels; they were chasing Sol as if he were the criminal. Hissing through her teeth, she ran with the policemen as they crashed through the fire doors and into the side street. They split up, each taking a different direction, but there was no sign of Sol. Standing where she had come out, Ana took panting breaths.
The fact that Sol had escaped brought her a little gleam of satisfaction. The younger rebellious side of her enjoyed seeing the police evaded. Even if it was for the wrong reasons.
‘An unfortunate turn of events.’ Inspector Mercier sighed, walking back to her. ‘If he’s still in the vicinity, we should apprehend him. Otherwise our young Mr Wheat is on his own.’
Section 9/24: Fear
AFTER LEAVING THE building, Sol descended some steps to a lower street level, intent on catching a tram towards the city centre. He wasn’t very familiar with the Filipino District and he wanted to take the main route in. It was after five p. m., and the streets on this level were clouded in shadow. Water was draining from a leaking pipe somewhere, the sound loud in these narrow, echoing spaces. Bats’ droppings coated the ground beneath a low bridge. A homeless drunk was lying wrapped in a foil blanket, propped up in the doorway of a closed-down nightclub. There was graffiti on the walls; the usual complaints about life, as well as tags from the young hoods competing for territory.
A tram passed overhead and, somewhere nearby, a mechanical press was thumping in time with the shudder of a conveyor belt. He passed an open window and saw a factory floor where overalled workers were standing at benches, operating hand-cranked machines that broke down and recycled the soles of shoes. The men and women chatted as they worked; dirty jokes and petty small talk passed across the worktops over the whirring clank of the machines. People content to be busy.
Solomon should have been in training by now. Saggs would be wondering where he was; he rarely missed a session. Seeing the people at work, he was reminded of how many of the jobs in the twenty-first century had been taken over by machines. That had been changing back over the last two centuries. Muscle and bone were becoming valuable again, now that so much of what was made had to be salvaged from something else. He started to run at an easy pace, enjoying his strength, light on his feet. Jabbing the air with quick, loose fists, he mixed combinations, working on his breathing and his timing.
His mind was in the ring, sizing up his opponent, circling, doing the little dance like Muhammad Ali used to. He wished Ana would come to one of his fights, then she might see him as something more than a student. His imagination filled the hall, lit the floodlights, called his name from the speaker and sat Ana in the front row. That was why he didn’t notice the car pulling up behind him, or see the two figures waiting under the shadow of a walkway arching over the street. The car swept past him and he looked up, surprised. He was walking past the two men at that moment, and one of them stepped out in front of him, swinging a punch at his face. Already psyched up, Sol blocked it and was about to counter when the other man slammed something hard and heavy against the back of his head. Lights exploded in his vision, and the world spun over on its side. His left arm went up to guard reflexively, much too late. But he wasn’t out of it yet. His right hand went into his pocket even as he fell. One of the men bent down to hit him again, and he untangled the gun from his jacket and fired without aiming. His head was filled with dark confusion, his vision gone crazy. The gunshot was deafening, and the recoil kicked the weapon right out of his limp fingers. He heard a cry of pain, which he had time to note with satisfaction before something hit his head again and—
The first thing to register was the pain in his wrists. Then the pain in his head introduced itself as an old acquaintance who had returned to visit. His head was hanging forward on his chest and, when he lifted it, the pain raised its voice. As soon as he realized his position, he tried to support himself on his feet. He was hanging from his wrists, bound in what must be handcuffs. The metal bit into the flesh and bone, and he gripped the cuffs to try to ease the pressure. His toes pressed against the ground, taking some of the strain off his arms, but he was hanging too high to get his feet all the way down. He tried raising one foot to feel around, and discovered his ankles were chained to the floor. Sol opened heavy eyes, but saw nothing. There was some kind of material over his face; he could feel it tied around his neck.
‘Our little pugilist is awake,’ a voice said.
Somebody untied the material around his throat and pulled it up over his mouth, leaving his eyes covered.
‘Can you hear me all right, Mr Wheat?’
Sol struggled to regain his senses. He couldn’t remember what had happened. He could vaguely remember being attacked . . . again. Nothing more. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t recognize the voice. This wasn’t the police station, he was quite sure of that. Somebody else had him. A hand smacked him across the head, arousing his headache’s temper. He groaned.
‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ he mumbled. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You’ve been captured. We have taken you somewhere you won’t be found, and you won’t be getting out of here unless you give us the answers we’re looking for.’
Solomon felt breath on the skin of his face, and smelled cheap aftershave.
‘You were one of the guys who jumped me in the flat.’
‘Hear that?’ the man said to someone else. ‘The kid’s sharp! How’s that nose by the way? Did I break it that time? Here, let me top that up for you.’
A fist struck him right on the bridge of the nose, and he cried out in pain. His eyes filled with tears as he struggled vainly against the handcuffs, but any movement caused him to lose purchase with his toes, increasing the strain on his wrists. It forced him to keep as still as possible.
‘That only hurt you a little,’ the man whispered menacingly. ‘We’re going to be doing much more than that. By the way,’ he continued in a brighter voice, ‘what’s with the haircut? You look like you scalped yourself. You trying to start without us, or what?’
Another voice somewhere behind him gave a sardonic laugh. The sound told Sol something about the size of the room. It was small with a low ceiling. It probably had very solid walls.
‘What do you want?’ he gasped.
‘We want to know who your father talked to last Wednesday.’
‘I don’t know,’ Sol said, his voice trembling. ‘I don’t know where he is or anything.’
The hand pulled the material further up his face so that he could see down towards his feet. His gun was brought into view.
‘Then where did you get this?’ the man asked. ‘This kind of hardware’s not easy to get hold of. It wasn’t in your flat when we searched it, and you weren’t carrying it. So you’ve picked it up since then. Where’d you get it? You shot my pal here in t
he ear . . . shot his earlobe right off. Whole body to aim at and you shoot a man’s earlobe – what are you, some kind of idiot? So, anyway, where’d you get the gun?’
Solomon was shivering, his throat tight, constricting his breathing. He didn’t want to tell them about the note from his father. They wanted Gregor and he couldn’t betray him, even if the little he knew wouldn’t tell them anything.
‘Who gave you the gun? You’re not going to tell me you got it yourself? Not likely, kid. Who was your father in contact with? He has passed on information and you are going to tell us who to, or we’re going to put you through a lot of pain. Do you understand me?’
Sol started shaking. He couldn’t stop. The tension from trying to stay up on his toes was racking his body, and his calves were cramping up. Any time he let his legs relax, the cuffs bit into his wrists, and his shoulders began to ache. But now he was terrified too. He knew if he spoke, he would start crying.
‘I want to show you something,’ the man said to him. ‘I’m not going to tell you what I’m going to do to you. I just want you to look at this and use your imagination.’
Through the tears in his eyes, Sol saw a pair of pliers being held up in front of him. He stifled a sob.
‘That’s not going to help you, so stop the blubbering right now. Just tell us what we want to know, and we’ll make everything all right.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Sol screamed. ‘I haven’t seen my father since he disappeared! He left the gun with a note in the flat while I was asleep! I don’t know where he is, or who he’s been talking to – I don’t know anything!’
‘That’s a start,’ said the man. ‘In a few minutes you’ll be telling us everything you know. It’s a good thing that you’re loyal to your father. I’d expect the same from my own son, if he were in your position. But you’ll break as soon as the pain starts, so why not just tell us now and save yourself the hassle, eh?’
Sol gaped in disbelief.
‘That is all I know,’ he protested. ‘I swear to God! What else can I tell you? I don’t know anything more!’