Déjà Vu: A Technothriller (9 page)

“Not long enough, sunshine.”

“You should let me go,” David said. It was an effort. The words would not come fast enough. “I should have a lawyer.”

Garrel laughed. “Do you even know where you are?”

“No. Where am I?”

“You’re in deep, twenty-four carat shite.”

David put his hands on the table. That stopped his fingers shaking. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s quite simple, Dave. You’re a terrorist. You like to use bombs and kill people. We’ve got special rules –” he leaned in – “special rules for fucks like you.”

“This isn’t legal.”

Garrel slammed his palms on the table. David felt like his head and come between two crashing cymbals. He gripped the table, concentrated, forced his mind to turn from the nausea. “Legal? You want legal? How about ‘murder’ for a legal term? You like that one?”

“I told you, I made sure that...people were evacuated first. The fire.”

Garrel grabbed his chin and tilted it upward. The light was blinding. “Why should I believe you? Tell me.”

David tried to pull away but he was too weak. Garrel seemed to be pinching a nerve under his chin. “I wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“Wouldn’t hurt anybody?” Garrel released his grip and walked away briskly. It was a small room. When he reached the wall, he whirled around. “What about Bruce Shimoda? Remember him? What do you think your bomb did to him? Gave him a light dusting?”

“He was going to die horribly. Eaten alive by creatures you don’t understand. He asked me to kill him.”

“Ah, we’re back to shark story. Sharks that swim on land. Just when you thought it was safe to go for a walk.”

David breathed deeply. Despite his tremors, he could feel that the effect of the drugs had begun to subside. His mind became clearer. “These aren’t fish, damn it. These are animals. They only look like sharks. They’re made of metal.”

“Well, they’re not made of anything, are they? They’re just figments of that computer. And now that the computer’s about as functional as a bag of spanners, where’s your evidence? Because let me tell you, Davie boy, the only evidence I see is that you just murdered a guy, and risked the murder of more than a dozen of my men.”

“I told, I made sure my computer checked that.”

“Your miniature computer. A computer that can hack into an army network. A computer that happens to come with enough explosive to demolish a block of flats.”

“The computer is a prototype. I developed it along with Marquis Future Computing. I do consulting work for them. It’s a new model. I already told you this.”

Garrel leaned against the wall. His energy, like his drugs, began to fade. He now switched from ball of fire to iceberg. David observed the transition. “And this new model comes complete with remote access capabilities and, in case the man on the street needs it, a shit-load of explosives.”

“No. I added the explosives myself.”

“From where?”

“I told you. A man I met on the internet.”

“Any name for this man?”

David sighed. “Yes. He was called Hypno.”

“Did Mr Hypno leave an address, perhaps? A phone number? Webpage?”

“This guy was an arms dealer. He doesn’t work that way. We always met in private chat rooms on the internet.”

“What type of explosive?”

“It’s a liquid-based explosive smuggled from China. It doesn’t have a name yet.”

Garrel laughed and ran his hands through his hair. “At the risk of sounding cynical, how fucking convenient. How did you get the explosives?”

David closed his eyes. He felt much better now, but he wanted to look worse. “Courier.”

“Name?”

“Don’t remember. Anyway, it was a series of couriers, one after the other, each one given a false name and address. No one courier carried the explosives. They all carried components. Dropped them off at the school of chemistry in Oxford addressed to a Professor Macbeth, who does not exist. I collected them at the weekend, on the quiet. Took them back to my house. I assembled the explosives in my garage.”

“How?”

“Instructions from Hypno.”

“When?”

“Three days ago.”

“Why so recently?”

“I’ve only known that Bruce was here since Wednesday, five days ago. When I received that information I knew that was would I would have to do.”

Garrel stubbed out his cigarette and lit another one. “Do what?”

“Kill Bruce.”

“So you came here to murder Bruce.”

“No. Euthanise him. I needed to be prepared.” David was calmer now. It made the lying easier.

“Why such an elaborate method?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know any other way to do it. This way, I could kill Bruce – knowing that was bound to die anyway – quickly and almost painlessly. In the same way, I could destroy the computer. Destroy the technology that made it possible. The technology that, ultimately, killed Bruce.”

Garrel stroked his chin thoughtfully. He drew on the cigarette. “Interesting. I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“Come on, Dave. You have medical training. Even if you didn’t, you’re clearly a resourceful individual.” David smiled inwardly. Garrel was playing the compliments game. Soon he would become the ball of the fire again, and the dance would go on, cha-cha-cha. “You could think of more and better ways to kill Bruce than that. What about an injection of morphine? Or a chloroformed pad over the mouth? Or a bullet through the brain? This is the second time this place has been bombed. Both centred on your own project. Coincidence? My arse. And as for your crusade against technology...frankly, I don’t believe it. Especially not from someone involved in the design of cutting-edge computer agents.”

They spoke for the rest of the day. Garrel softened. He no longer administered drugs. He asked fewer questions, though they were all on target. David managed to glean that they had not found any pieces of Ego. They believed his account of McWhirter’s death but he would be charged with the murder of Bruce and Caroline. The first by bomb, the last by...they were working on it. They leaned on him. They raged a storm around him. At the centre, David was quite calm.

She rose at six when the sky was blank, unwritten. The night before, she had sipped a martini on her balcony. In the middle distance, the casinos had sent up multi-coloured searchlights, fountains of water and balloons: the Aurora Las Vegas. She had read that Las Vegas was the brightest man-made object visible from space. She preferred the day. The dawn over that. A blank sky, unwritten.

David dreamed.

It was a place full of dark, winding stairs, suits of armour and secret panels, flags of heraldry hanging high on walls and portraits of long-forgotten ancestors following him with dead eyes. Lightning struck nearby and illuminated a monstrous creature.

It moved towards him. The monster was short. It walked clumsily. It walked like a person balancing on their hands. Somebody said, “Look, isn’t he pleased to see you? Isn’t he pleased?”

The legs. They sagged in a way that suggested the skin was loose. He looked closer. The legs were prosthetic. It had a fat, distended belly and a small torso, all covered with a little summer dress. It was a little girl, perhaps built by aliens from the body parts of a girl, aliens who had never seen a whole one.

David was nearly sick. His stomach cramped and heaved. The creature was close now. It held out its arms to embrace him. It smelled of hospitals, plastic and unwashed bed clothes.

“Isn’t he pleased to see you. Isn’t he pleased.”

Statements, not questions.

Her eyes narrowed. She had waited too long for her hug and she knew it would never arrive. She sensed his disgust. The eyes turned, changed, became lifeless buttons. And David knew, the dreaming David knew, that she hated him. She would never have her love returned and so it was transmuted, coloured red, to became hate.

David knew he was dreaming, but he could not wake himself.

“Isn’t he pleased?” asked the voice.

“He isn’t pleased,” said the creature.

The dream raced on. He saw himself in a family. Always present, but never speaking, was the creature. She made sure that she sat next to him at meals. She entered his room at night and watched him breathe. In company, she said nothing. When they were alone, she produced a knife and showed it to him, her little secret. There was hate in her eyes. She wanted to kill him. She could wait.

David knew that nobody would believe his suspicions. One day, when he least expected it, that little stiletto would slip into his side and he would look down, gasping in surprise, to see the creature.

He rolled in his bed but there was nowhere to go.

And Saskia dreamed.

Her eyes opened on darkness. She took a step across the dusty floor. There was no light, and then, quite suddenly, there was a torch in her hand.

She was on a case. She had a team of co-workers. She had been in love with one of them. She couldn’t remember his name. It began with ‘u’. He had been murdered and hidden in her fridge. There had been a scrap of paper in his cold fist. The warehouse’s address.

Somebody said, “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”

She took another step.

She replied, “The witches, the Fates: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she determines its length. Atropos, she cuts it.”

The space was vast. Her shoes rapped to an echo.

Her torch caught something reflective. She approached and saw that it was a shop mannequin covered in a transparent sheet. It looked at her with dead eyes. She sighed with relief. She had thought, maybe, it was alive.

The mannequin moved.

She ran. She couldn’t hold the torch steady and she tumbled over barely-seen, shadowed objects, unidentifiable things, upturned chairs, tables. She fell through a door.

She was in a small office. There were bodies hanging on the wall. Her co-workers. They were all dead. There could be no rescue. They had been impaled on the wall with long pieces of metal that extended from their necks. Each of them wore an impression of absolute horror. At the end of the gallery was an empty skewer.

Behind her, she heard a single footstep.

She turned and saw the murderer in the doorway. It stood tall, languid, dressed in black. Its head was nothing more than a skullish silhouette. A bony finger reached and pointed towards the empty skewer at the end of the row of bodies. As she watched, the finger became darker, grew hairs of muscle, which knitted, smoothed and grew skin. It was like watching a time-lapse film. A fingernail sprouted from the end. It was red with varnish.

It pointed at the empty skewer. A greater darkness fell.

On the Monday night, David was transferred to a small police station in a town called Whitburn, some miles to the east of the research centre. He was led to a cell and locked in. The police did not interview him. He saw no lawyer, no bail and no cigarettes. He wore orange paper overalls. His toilet folded from the wall. On the second night, he was given a mattress for good behaviour. He exercised for two hours a day: he watched the rain from the corner of a concrete forecourt without a cigarette.

Opposite his cell there was a man who screamed for his wife. Constantly. Elsewhere – left or right, he couldn’t tell – there were singers, drug addicts, and a darts player from Glasgow who had thrown his darts at the crowd. All the while, David sat on his mattress and drummed his fingers. He drummed prime numbers, re-invented Morse code and listened to perfect guitar concertos in his head.

They came for him on the morning of the third day.

The shutter opened. “Stand facing the back of the cell. Place your palms on the wall and cross your legs.”

David did so and felt the cold air on his slippered feet. He heard footsteps. His hands were locked in shackles that closed like stocks. From the middle of the cuffs, a chain was looped around his knees and tied to another set of cuffs around his ankles.

He turned around. There were only two people. One was a short, attractive WPC carrying a telescopic truncheon and CS gas. No gun. The other, who had spoken to him, wore a civilian version of the same uniform. He was a jailer. The only weapon on his belt was a can of CS. He had a chain with a huge number of keys. “Shall we, sir?”

The politeness was baffling. It had been three days since David had had a conversation. “Shall we what?”

“Shall we go?”

As they walked out, the WPC said, “I’m Mary. This is Jonathon.”

“Hi Mary. Hi Jonathon. Sorry if I don’t shake your hands.”

His captors led him to the front of the police station where a van was waiting. David had guessed that he would be loaded from a secure courtyard, but the scene was the utterly mundane West Main Street. Twenty years ago, he had lived on an estate less than a mile away. He watched the cars, the shops, children led by their parents, the cold Scottish sunshine, the hubbub of life. He felt saddened.

He had been denied his phone call or email. He had been under the tightest security. The police at the station had no idea what crime he had committed. He was certain of that, because he had seen the sergeant’s charge sheet. His name was not on it.

“What day is it?”

“Thursday. Step into the van, please, sir.”

Awkwardly, David clambered inside. It was warm and smelled of diesel. He imagined his autopsy report. Suspect falls awkwardly: dies from crushed windpipe. Suspect enters van: dies from accidental exposure to exhaust gases. Mary and Jonathon got in too. “Shit, stinks in here,” Mary said. The spell of fear was broken.

There were two benches running each side of the van. David sat down and they fed his leg chain through a study hook in the floor. It seemed to be connected to the chassis.

“How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Ten minutes?” she asked Jonathon. He nodded and fastened his seatbelt.

“Sorry?” David had assumed they would cross into England. Down to a court in London. He closed his eyes but still saw them leading him into the woods, telling him to take a piss, loading their guns, blowing his brains out, burying the body.

“The church. Five or six miles away, I reckon.”