Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (15 page)

In Ray’s experience, the quintessence of what was so infuriating about dealing with the polis was the incomparable frustration of being patronised by a stupid person. Naturally, mentioning what happened at the airport didn’t help. He hadn’t meant to; might even have made a point of not doing so if he’d retained any control over what he was saying. Once he started talking though, it just sort of fell out, along with everything else, as though the cop’s half‐
interested promptings had opened some kind of narrative fuselage.

‘You said you’d just come home from work. Were you aware of anyone following you then?’

‘No, but I didn’t come home directly. I went via the airport and to be honest I was a bit freaked after that so I wasn’t paying … I mean I wouldn’t have noticed if someone was following me.’

‘What were you doing at the airport? Seeing someone off? Picking someone up?’

‘I went there to buy a magazine. I did see someone, I mean I thought I saw someone I knew but it wasn’t, I mean it couldn’t have been so I suppose I didn’t see him.’

‘I’m sorry, you say you went to the airport to buy a magazine?’

‘Well, it’s kind of on the way home and the parking’s about the same as in town and there’s not such big queues to get on to the M8 at that time of day.’

‘And to confirm, you did or didn’t see someone you knew there?’

‘I didn’t. I thought I did but it couldn’t have been. It doesn’t matter.’

‘You say you were “a bit freaked” after visiting the airport. Why was that?’

‘Just as I was telling you. It was the person I thought I saw – I couldn’t have seen him because he’s dead. Died in a plane crash.’

‘And you think you saw him.’

‘No, I thought I saw him, as in momentarily.’

‘Right. What was his name?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s best if we have a comprehensive record, Mr Ash.’

‘A comprehensive record including the name of someone I definitely didn’t see tonight? What about the people I did see? The ones with the handguns.’

‘We’re looking into it, Mr Ash, but we’ll need a full statement from you, especially as you seem to be the only witness at this point.’

‘At this point? It only happened less than two hours ago.’

‘PC Mackay was close to the area at the time, and he’s down there now, making enquiries at the flats overlooking the Cart bridge. You’re right, it’s early days, but so far we’ve had no reports of anybody seeing anything suspicious, or of hearing shots being fired.’

‘They were using silencers, I told you.’

‘Right. So you did. And there was no‐
one else in the vicinity of the bridge or the path throughout this incident.’

‘No. It tends to be quiet round there that time of night.’

‘Of course.’

And so on, until:

‘A new baby in the house, you say?’

‘Yeah. Three months.’

‘Got two myself. Grown up a bit now, though. Nine and six. You sleeping much?’

‘Not really.’

‘Stressful time, isn’t it? Especially the first one. You’re never sure you’re going to cope. A new job too. How long have you been there?’

‘Couple of weeks.’

‘That can’t be very easy on you either. Lot of pressure, lot of stress, not much kip. Difficult combination.’

Go fuck yourself. What would you know about it.

‘It’s the kind of thing that can make you feel … People can want to cry out for help, but they don’t quite know how.’

‘Are you saying you think I’m making this up?’

‘I’m not saying anything, Mr Ash, just trying to make you weigh up the possibilities. People under stress can do irrational things. I can’t say you didn’t see these men; I’m sure you saw something, but maybe it wasn’t what you thought you saw, like the other thing you thought you saw, at the airport.’

‘Listen, I’m not in the habit of jumpin’ into fuckin’ rivers on my way out for a takeaway. I was shot at tonight by two men who confirmed my name before they opened fire, and you’re tryin’ to be my fuckin’ shrink? Are you gaunny take this seriously or should I just go home?’

‘Calm down, Mr Ash, please. We will be conducting a thorough investigation, but I have to caution you that wasting police time is a serious offence. In the meantime, I’d recommend you get back to your wife and baby and get yourself a good night’s sleep.’

In an exchange generously endowed with understated sarcasm, that parting shot really took the honours. By the time Ray got back into his car, the usual nightly fatigue was taking hold, augmented this evening by his exertions and the after‐
effects of so much adrenaline flooding his system. Combined with his humiliations at the hands of Sergeant Bawheid, the cumulative effect was to dissipate his sense of self to the extent that he was beginning to doubt the veracity of his own account. The men had been there, unquestionably, but like Simon at the airport, had he projected something, mentally filled in the blanks in a way that made sense to his stressed and paranoid brain? Something similar used to happen when he was playing way too much Duke Nukem, back in the days when people thought the Build engine created a realistic 3D perspective. Any time he saw a ventilation grate or a fire extinguisher, he’d automatically think ‘switch to pistol’ with the intention of blowing a hole through to the next room. Then he’d remember he was standing in the Marks & Spencer’s food hall, and the nearest thing to a weapon in his current inventory was a tub of low‐
fat houmous. Still, despite years of playing his way through every 3D‐
shooter, every sequel and every mission pack, there remained no precedent for imagining that ordinary people standing in front of him were actually holding guns. Nor was there any explanation for the fact that they’d known his name.

Complicating it further was the fact that if they knew his name, they would almost certainly know where he lived too, and if so, why hadn’t they just come up to the door? Why did they ambush him on the bridge? And having failed, why weren’t they waiting there for him when he made his soggy way home? These were questions that had kept him awake despite his exhaustion, and that presented themselves again upon his confirmed return from a depressingly fleeting visit to the Land of Nod.

Possibly worse than the continued absence of plausible answers and the hanging shadow of mortal threat was the heart‐
sinking realisation that despite all of it, he still had to go to fucking work. There was no choice, no option for respite. Corn to be earned, offspring to be provided for, pursuing murderers or the onset of insanity notwithstanding. What was he going to do, get a sick note? ‘Please excuse Raymond from school today because he has dioroa diarro dihor is being hunted down by hired assassins.’

Maybe Sergeant Bawheid was right. Maybe it was a cry for help, a smuggled note from inside this prison of responsibility, this forced march through the long‐
term career gulag at the order of a diminutive despot. Making it worse was the knowledge that he was trapped by his own decisions, confined through his own free will, and the road to his personal hell had been paved with only the best intentions. He’d given up The Dark Zone voluntarily, and it would have been difficult, even for Ray, to miss the developmental significance of preparing for fatherhood by moving on from a venture that attempted to provide a living through playing games. Choosing instead the role of teacher – mentor to the real children – merely underlined his subconscious intentions.

The Dark Zone hadn’t ever really been a career move anyway. It had been a pub conversation that got out of control, a drunken idea that unexpectedly failed to look daft in the cruelly honest light of dawn. Bloody Id Software, that’s who was to blame. Saint Paul would never have made any glib mutterings about putting away childish things if the bastard had played Doom. That was what changed everything, or at least the beginning of what changed everything; what changed computer games from a diversion to a lifestyle, a sub‐
culture and even, he’d thought, a career.

It was on 24 February 1996 that a ravenously awaited piece of code named qtest was released on to the net by Id. Div, with no wife or girlfriend needing use of the phone, got a complete download at around two in the morning of Sunday, 25 February. Ray was round at his house by two‐
thirty, with his machine and a serial cable.

After the usual start‐
up bugs and tweaking, Ray and Div played for nine solid hours, pausing only for toilet breaks and to make fresh coffee. It was an early test release with a small number of maps and a large number of glitches, but it was enough to demonstrate that computer games were about to be revolutionised. Not only did it look 3D, rendered in textures so detailed you could almost smell the slime on the walls, but it was negotiable in 3D, whether you were climbing stairs, riding lifts, swimming through pools or tumbling from castle walkways.

All of this was unprecedented, but what truly changed the face of gaming and had a fair crack at taking over Ray’s life was Quake deathmatch. Up until then, the appeal of computer games was in an interactive experience that was nonetheless narrative‐
based and in many ways comparable to cinema or television. Multiplayer Quake, with its solidly tangible physics and a 3D engine so realistic it could induce motion sickness, provided an experience comparable to sport.

Even Ray wouldn’t have argued that it was the new rock’n’roll, but he would make a case for comparisons with Punk, with its DIY ethos and a sense that it belonged to the participants. Every day saw the release of new maps, new models, and whole new modes of play, from ‘Capture the Flag’ to ‘Catch the Chicken’. Players formed themselves into ‘clans’, and from there leagues sprang up amid thousands upon thousands of websites, the photocopied fanzines of their day. Friendships and enmities were forged, as well as relationships and even marriages. (Divorces too, no doubt, but most likely in households where only one spouse was a Quaker.) All life was to be found on the servers and chatrooms, but you could usually tell from clan‐
tags what a person’s attitude was likely to be. Someone who played for Anorak Death Squad [ADS], Hash Bandits UK [HB‐
UK] or Cows with Fluff [CwF], for instance, was unlikely to be throwing tantrums if he or she got gibbed; whereas a more egotistical approach was suggested by names such as Elite Alliance [EA], or the labouring‐
too‐
hard‐
in‐
search‐
of‐
a‐
desired‐
acronym Extremely Violent Intelligent Lollipops [EVIL].

Everyone fantasises about somehow making their hobby their job, though the route was more obvious (if no less easy) for those whose hobbies were playing golf or football. The pastime of blowing people to pieces with absurdly powerful weapons in virtual environments did not yet have its Tiger Woods. What it did have was an ever‐
growing number of participants, a great many of whom had their enthusiasm for their games tempered by the frustrations of trying to play them over the erratic and unstable Internet. The only way to host a truly fair competition was to network a bunch of PCs so that everyone was the same negligible distance from the server. It was something he and a few pals had occasionally done over a winter weekend, and it was one such Sunday night, once all the machines were packed away again, that the pub postmortem spawned something more than the usual arguments over whose flat should next play host to this retarded‐
development self‐
help group.

At the time, he had been working for Div’s firm, Network Transplant. They dismantled, transported and reinstalled PC networks during office relocations, ensuring that all of the machines made it from A to B, and that they still did what they used to when somebody hit the On switch. Div’s relations with systems managers all across Scotland meant Ray had been able to tap into a valuable supply of second‐
hand hardware, the rate of depreciation in the computer business being steep enough to make a Ford Focus seem like a gilt investment.

He found a low‐
rent basement premises just off Victoria Road, there being few businesses for whom a lack of natural light was regarded as a locational advantage, and minimised decor costs by painting the place black from floor to ceiling. Thematic highlighting came in the form of promotional posters the games’ distributors were happy to throw in when you were buying a dozen copies at a time, and after that it was merely a matter of hanging his hand‐
painted sign outside, sticking some Sonic Mayhem on the sound system and he was ready for action.

He’d toyed with calling the place The Level Playing Field, but Kate’s marketing judgment prevailed as she opined that it sounded like a sports shop and lacked a certain futuristic resonance, or as she put it, ‘it’s not nearly geeky enough’. He opted instead for The Dark Zone, which scored high on the target geek‐
identification scale (you could never go far wrong with the word ‘zone’ when you were pitching to the SF/fantasy demographic). The fact that the place was like an experimental environment for inducing seasonal affective disorder may also have been a subconscious factor.

He recruited a couple of part‐
time assistants and launched in September with a free‐
play evening, leafleting the SF bookshops and hobby stores, student hang‐
outs, metal/
indie‐
inclined pubs and games retailers. The winter months were pretty good, word‐
of‐
mouth having spread around throughout the autumn. December even saw office parties descend on the place as a novel supplement to the traditional programme of turkey lunch and photocopying each other’s arses. Watching a respectably dressed professional woman in her forties clench a fist in her colleague’s face as she yelled ‘Eat that, loser’ almost made Ray feel that his work on this Earth was done.

The lighter evenings, however, heralded a dramatic downturn. Even what passed for summer in Glasgow was enough to tempt much of his target market outdoors to have a go at games based on the Real Life(tm) engine, usually teamplay mods such as Football and Cricket, or that ever‐
popular two‐
player pursuit marketed variously as Dating, Winching and Lumbering. By the end of August, he was well into the red and, even more depressing, having to turn business away because customers were wanting to play new games that he didn’t have the cash to buy, let alone the new graphics cards needed to run them.