Déjà Vu: A Technothriller (25 page)

The shopkeeper nodded goodbye as he left. Once outside, he removed his old jacket and lay it across a homeless person. The recipient appeared to continue his sleep – not easy with the sharp north-easterly – until a tanned hand snaked out from underneath and gave David the thumbs-up.

He walked on. He bought new clothes, item by item, and gave their old counterparts away. Nothing was to be thrown away. Ego was insistent. In a gentleman’s outfitters he bought a suit. In another he bought a beige leather briefcase. He bought a pair of tinted glasses, a shaving kit, some paper overalls, a wedding ring, and a hugely expensive belt. In each shop he lamented the loss of his bankcard and shrugged wistfully at the need to carry so much cash. The shopkeepers made little clicking noises and were sorry to hear that, sir, and said no more. Finally, he bought some aftershave and a universal storage crate for the bike. Bemyguested by the sales assistant, he stuffed his shopping into the box. Both he and the assistant stared at the crumpled suit for moment.

“Travel iron, sir?”

“Yes please.”

David wandered back to the bike. The universal box was not quite as universal as its manufacturers had enthused. It took fifteen minutes to attach. Once done, he sat on the bike and felt the old bruises meet their angles on the seat. David rode away with his new clothes and his bike that was nearly green. A different person.

Different enough?

He was still a man on a bike.

“Ego,” he said, pulling into light traffic.

“Yes?”

“Does it strike you as odd that I haven’t been captured?”

“Repeat that, please.”

David lowered his voice. Because Ego listened to his voice via vibrations through the earpiece, the bike engine made communication difficult. “I have not been captured. Discuss.”

There was a pause. “Yes, you have been lucky, but it is not surprising that you have evaded capture. I have been monitoring the internet and the radio. It seems there is an All-Points Bulletin for your arrest. However, the description is inadequate because it is rather average. I have read two more espionage novels in the past hour. I do not believe that the British police have the manpower to locate you unless you make a serious mistake: that is, break the law. They do not know your location, your destination, your purpose, or your correction physical description. So, if you continue to ride under the speed limit and use minor roads, your chances of reaching locker J327 are good.”

David snorted. “I’m sure I broke the speed limit once or twice.”

“No, you did not.”

“Hmm. Maybe up near Sheffield. I was going pretty fast.”

“I can testify that you have not broken any speed limits.”

He turned onto the southerly road, out of town. “Testify? You sound like a witness.”

“Indeed. I have taken the liberty of recording all our conversations. I have also interfaced with the motorcycle’s rear- and front-mounted cameras. Your journey has been recorded.”

David said glumly, “You’ve saved me.”

“I do not understand.”

“Like a data file. Saved.”

“It is a precaution designed to provide an objective source of information. It will guard against evidence tampering and deliberately fictionalised scenarios by antagonistic parties. Perhaps I may also act as a ‘black box’ in the event of an accident. The probability of my survival is many hundreds of times higher than your own.”

“Ego, how much battery life do you have?”

“Thirty hours.”

“Switch off for now. Recharge.”

“I am still monitoring ten radio stations and several internet sites.”

David revved the engine and accelerated. It was time to break the speed limit. “Switch off. Now.”

Saskia asked to be excused. Hannah gave her a questioning look, but she waved him away. The headache was strong. It could be a migraine. Did she get migraines? She walked into the toilet, which was, incredibly, colder than the office, opened a cubicle and collapsed on the seat. She held her head and pushed at her temples. If she pressed hard enough she could override this pain with another.

Somebody walked in. She wore heels. They tapped on the tile floor like a knife against a glass to call polite attention. Saskia’s eyes sprang open. She had heard that sound before. Where?

The hawk that returned.

“Which hawk?” she asked. “What returned?”

The footsteps stopped as the owner paused to listen. Saskia watched the shadow. It began to move again. The owner just washed her hands and left the room.

Spin, measure, snip.

She closed her eyes. What did these things mean? Think, Detective Brandt. Detect. The memories were islands. They were an archipelago. She could only access them when she had a bridge: the Zippo lighter in Hannah’s hand, the statue of Prometheus at the West Lothian Centre. Phrases. More memories returned: the smell of smoke. Cigarette smoke at first, which changed to acidic, burning-plastic smoke. A building was on fire.

The hawk that returned.

Somewhere in the boiling mist of yellow-red, somewhere in the blood in her eyelids, she saw a flame. The flame grew. Underneath it was green cloth. The cloth was on fire.

Ute.

Snip.

Snip snip snip.

“Detective Brandt?”

Saskia gasped. She looked around. Still in the toilet cubicle. Not in...

...in Cologne.

“Detective Brandt?”

She made a fist. A victory. The fire had taken place in Cologne. It had involved burning green cloth. Green curtains maybe, or a suit. There were men there. One of them had a lighter. He had said something. Saskia smiled.

But what was she remembering?

The scene of the crime. Her crime.

Her murder.

The smiled switched off.

“Detective Brandt, are you OK?”

It was Charlotte from the office.

“Yes, Charlotte, I am fine. Is there a problem?”

“DI Hannah says that he’s organised the flight. You have to leave right away.”

“I’m coming.”

David sneezed, and when his head rose he could not remember the past few hours. He did not know what time it was. He thought about midnight. Why did he need to use minor roads? Perhaps he could be spotted more easily on a motorway, but it was not certain. It was just a probability.

Each year he gave a seminar to the psychology undergraduates at Oxford about fractals and chaos, a prelude to questions about machine intelligence. Each year, he would ask them: How long is the coastline of the British Isles? One or two would usually know the official figure. Aha, David, the Professor, would say, isn’t that a rough approximation? What about if you looked a little closer, a little deeper into the nooks and crannies of the rocks? Wouldn’t that increase the estimate of the coastline’s length? Well, yes, they would say. But it goes on, David would reply. More detail, more length. More detail, more shapes, different shapes. A vastly detailed shape. The coastline of Britain? Longer than the distance between the earth and the moon, or the earth and the sun, or the earth and the centre of the universe.

Perhaps he should get back to the motorway.

A voice from the back of his mind, like a prompter from the wings, whispered, Don’t think. Don’t make decisions. You’re in no state. Go with the flow, Joe.

“Stick with the plan, man,” he said aloud.

David began to sing. He sang old Beatles tunes. The Beatles, whose star was falling. Less and less talked about, less and less famous. Losing detail. Losing edge. Becoming smaller. A new generation with a new culture.

“Lovely Rita, meter maid, lovely Rita...”

It was 5:15 p.m. Saskia reached into the pocket behind the driver’s seat and found a blister sheet of travel sickness pills. Three seemed a good number. Four better. She slapped them into her mouth and crunched them to a bitter dust. Hannah was beside her. He gripped the handle above the door, unconcerned.

She felt the back tyres lock. The car skidded then regained its traction. Shops and people flowed by. It was dusk. The two police officers in the front of the car exchanged a glance. In the back, Hannah gave Saskia a wink. She smiled humourlessly. “I do not believe that I have often experienced cars with human drivers. It does not feel safe.”

Hannah rolled his eyes. “I’ve been driving for thirty years and I’m still alive.”

“That does not mean it is safe.”

“What about the flight over?” he asked through gritted teeth as the car banked. “That plane was flown by a human.”

“Yes, but he is a professional.”

The driver looked around. “Hey, I’m a professional too.”

Saskia pointed. “Bloedmann, the road is in front.”

The airport was about ten kilometres away. In the early evening traffic, it would take half an hour. The co-driver activated the siren intermittently. “Come on, Mike,” Hannah shouted, “you can do better than that.” The driver pulled out and drove down the middle of the road. “That’s the stuff,” Hannah muttered. Saskia blinked and bent the handle. It wasn’t the stuff at all.

Before she saw an airport sign, they turned right into a road that was marked ‘Airport Cargo Only’. It was empty. The car accelerated into the space.

When they reached the entrance, Hannah said, “Straight through, they’re expecting us.” The guard waved and lifted the barrier. They drove into a huge fenced enclosure. Planes were parked in rows. Saskia examined them carefully. They seemed flimsy. The car braked to a stop.

“This is where you get off,” said the driver. He reached

round to shake Hannah’s hand, but the DI had already left the car.

Saskia shook it on Hannah’s behalf. “Congratulations.”

Outside, the air was chilly and redolent of fuel. The airport was a constellation of itself. Lights marked the terminal building, the roads, the wire fences, and the multi-coloured patterns of the runway. As she watched, a jet landed. Its exhaust blurred the air. She felt the vibration in her teeth.

“Saskia, get a move on,” Hannah called, and she ran to catch up.

They climbed into a small four-seater aircraft. Hannah collapsed into the back and Saskia took her place next to the pilot. It was too dark to see his face. “Finally,” he said. He handed Saskia some headphones. “I’m Sam. Sam Langton.”

“Saskia Brandt,” she replied.

Hannah rasped, “Did we make it?”

“Your timing is impeccable,” Sam said. He gunned the engine. Through her headphones, she heard him say, “Control, this is Golf Tango Foxtrot Two-One-Two requesting clearance for take-off, over.” There was no reply. “Roger, Control, I’m taxiing to runway two, over.”

“We appreciate this,” Hannah said.

“No problem. I was flying back anyway.”

“Send the invoice to St Leonard’s.”

“Yep.”

Saskia settled. The darkness was reassuring. “There’s a blanket between your legs,” Sam said as they rolled forward. “Careful not to touch the control column.”

“Do you not have anything more nourishing?” Hannah asked.

“Take a look behind you.”

Saskia listened to Hannah’s exertions. She settled the blanket over her legs. “Latest weather report shows poor visibility over South-East England,” Sam said. “There’s a low pressure front moving north.” He switched on a red reading light near the door.

He held the column between his legs and noted the time in a small logbook. Saskia watched for traffic on his behalf.

“How long to Heathrow?” she asked.

Sam laughed. “We’re not going to Heathrow, love.”

“Oh?”

“I’d need to sell the plane just to afford the landing fee. No, we’re going to Farnborough.”

Hannah tapped her on the shoulder. “Sandwich?”

Saskia looked back. Obligingly, Hannah peeled back the skin of white bread and displayed the filling. Sliced sausages.

“English sausages?”

He nodded. Her stomach turned. “The best,” he continued. “Plenty of brown sauce.”

“What is brown sauce?”

Hannah shrugged. “Good question.”

“You don’t know?”

“Why should I?” He took a bite. “Must be one of the fun things about foreign travel. New foods.”

The pilot laughed. “How long have you two been married?”

“Too long,” she said. She read his log book. “Please tell me where Forborough is.”

“Farnborough,” the pilot said. “Three hundred miles to the south. In new money, that’s about five hundred kilometres. They expect us for 9 p.m.”

Saskia closed her eyes. She opened them again before they became airborne. She watched the runway lights stream by. She became drowsy. She could hear a stream of English inside her head. They were nonsense words. She supposed that part of her brain that processed language was still working. She let it and fell asleep.

David recalled a phrase from his youth: ‘highway hypnosis’. Strange how phrases drifted into a language, took a bow, and left again. Most were fleeting clichés. But highway hypnosis was apposite. The feel of road: the warp of objects and contours as the world flowed past, slower in the middle and faster towards the edge; ideas that could only feed on the thoughts of a few moments before, feed on the same things, over and over, like the bike wheel turning, over and over. Midnight was far away.

The Grantham, being a light aircraft with no oxygen cylinders, could not climb above the weather. It flew low where the air was thick and contrary. The rain was a constant. It was 9:30 p.m. before they touched down. Saskia had not moved since she had climbed aboard, but when she stepped onto the concrete of the holding lot, she almost collapsed with fatigue. “Thanks, Sam,” shouted Hannah above the propeller noise.

“No problem. I have to park. See you.”

Saskia gave him a little salute and searched for a terminal building. She could see none in the fierce rain. The area was flat and huge. It was full of small aircraft. “Where now?” she asked. She ducked to avoid the wing as Sam taxied away.

Hannah pulled his suit jacket over his head. “There’s a blue light over there.”

They watched as a traffic patrol car approached. It weaved cautiously through the still aircraft and came to a stop ten metres away. A uniformed officer jumped out with an umbrella. He ran across and opened it over Hannah. “Piss off,” Hannah said. They climbed in the back. The men made conversation. It was a twenty-minute journey to Heathrow. Saskia fell asleep against the window before the car pulled away.