And then there was the Internet. Once he was in the Interzone he was away. A spider ghost in the World Wide Web. The way he described it, when people cruised the Web, they thought they were in their own little virtual bubble, their own private cyber car. That, he said, was bollocks. It was more like they were in a taxi, a black cab. You’d type in your web address and click, and then get in the cyber taxi and it would take you to your destination.
Recording all your information on the way.
Who ordered the cab.
Who got in the cab.
Where it picked you up. Where it dropped you off.
Diston used to tell stories, his face mad and rippled in the flames from a tramp fire. Stories of governments and corporations. Of cyber-tracking and data surveillance. He used to tell ghost stories too. About people who built clone cabs, cabs that navigate the Interzone without detection. About people who became the taxi driver rather than the passenger.
He was a scary boy, Diston. I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t like him, but he knew what he was talking about when it came to computers. He taught me all about C codes, and UNIX, and open-source hacking. He taught me how to spirit-slide behind legit apps and about mirror protocols, and mimic programs. Really, it’s quite simple once you’re into the groove, so to speak. It’s like anything else; it’s just a matter of application.
It’s not fucking art, is it?
Anyhow, that was then, when I wasn’t what I am now.
Branching off the main tunnels are little alcoves,
cul de tunnels
. They’re twelve metres long and kitted out with polymer racking systems to allow maximum storage. There are big, square, silver condensers bolted to the alcove roof with concertinaed tubing snaking away to remove the moisture and prevent corrosion.
I walk in, open up my satchel, and grab a couple of high-end laptops with solid-state delivery, and a bunch of mid-level phones. Most smart phones these days have a GPS chip soldered directly onto the board so the phone can be tracked, but you can still find units that only have it as an add-on, but are still ok for Wi-Fi hot-spotting. I also pick up some external drives and some Bluetooth headsets.
All the stuff down here in the tunnels isn’t registered yet, cos half the staff are on the steal. It doesn’t actually get on any books until it goes front-of-house. Perfect for me. I take a couple of prestige pieces to sell and then shadow-walk my way out of there, through the system and back to my crib.
For a while I toyed with buying stuff off the Silk Road before it got shut down. And then off BMR. I kept one laptop solely for subbing through the Dark Web: the web hidden under the Web, used by criminals and hackers, and art-terrorists and, for that matter, real terrorists. The BMR is a kind of eBay for Dark-webbers. I thought I could get my hardware there. Maybe some guns.
Well I could have, but the whole system was so full of spooks from all the covert security agencies that it was like scuba-diving through police sea, so I sacked it.
When I get back to my crib I do the rounds, making sure everything’s safe and secure, and then I hook up my new gear to my speakers and cue up the
World Service
. It’s late and there’s a programme on about the formation of matter. I tune out my head, and wash myself down, and do my business.
Then I drink down a protein shake and go night night.
Nothing to see here.
Brooks Military Antiquities is the kind of shop in the kind of alley that demands dark skies and even darker conspiracies. From the moment they come out of the tube station at Leicester Square and walk down St Martin’s Lane, DI Loss is filling up with foreboding. The sky is a seething mass of grey, and black, and blue, and as low as if London had a ceiling over it. His phone vibrates in his pocket: a text. He pulls out the phone and opens it up.
‘Jesus!’
‘What, sir?’
‘The footage of Lily-Rose’s rape, which kept on being posted on all those revenge-porn sites that we failed to shut down cos they never show faces and are not controlled in this country, and God knows what else … it’s been replaced with footage of the mayhem on the tube.’
‘Good.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t mean good as in it was good what happened to those boys. I just mean good as in I’m glad the Lily-Rose images aren’t there anymore. Just because no one was identifiable, well, it’s still going to be understood by all those kids on the estate, isn’t it? And now they’re seeing those boys who did it.’
‘Allegedly.’
‘Whatever. Now they’re going to see them get fucked over. So “good”.’
Loss replaces his phone, feeling as if control is not so much slipping away from him, as running full-pelt. The air of the capital is hot and humid, and the bombardment of smells coming from all the street vendors makes him both nauseous and light-headed. The noise is incredible: tourists armed to the teeth with electronic gadgetry, clicking, and whirring, and flashing, all shouting at each other. The locals no better; many speaking a language he can’t understand, either because he’s too old and can’t decode the intonation, or they aren’t speaking in English. Almost half have strange contraptions in their ears and are shouting at the air in front of them. Amazingly, his DS seems to be enjoying herself. She even stopped and bought them each an ice-cream from a vendor working out of a rickshaw with a cooler-box attached to the back.
As they stroll down the lane towards the Coliseum Theatre, a deep throb of thunder pulses across the sky, as if it’s being fracked. Loss is having difficulty walking. He isn’t sure whether it’s because he is so tired, or because the pavement has begun to melt in the heat. The entire city is becoming surreal to him as though he’s a few seconds out of sync. A permanent shudder in reality. Stone stops suddenly, and grabs his arm.
‘What?’ he asks. Stone smiles at him and points. Loss looks at what she’s pointing at.
‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
Between the theatre and a music shop is an alley, no more than fifty centimetres wide. Spanning the gap, attached to both sides of the narrow street, is a lamp, making an arched entrance-way.
‘Brydges Place, sir. I believe this is us.’
The day is now so dark that the lamp marking the entrance sputters into life. As they walk single-file under it and into the alley, Loss briefly wonders if he has gone back in time. Steam seeps out of the walls in front of him through cracks in the mortar, and he feels as if the walls are barely staying upright that, at any moment, they might close up and crush him. He is dizzy with hunger, sleep deprivation, and claustrophobia. If it weren’t for the narrowness of the lane he might very well fall down.
After ten metres the alley opens up into a tiny courtyard, and Loss feels the constriction in his chest ease slightly, although his sense of displacement increases. The courtyard has a scattering of tables and chairs; an outside extension of the Marquis of Granby pub. In one corner sits a ragged dust-coated scarecrow of a figure, playing a violin, with an upturned bowler hat at his feet. Loss doesn’t recognize the tune, but it sounds vaguely eastern European. The only other occupant is a pavement artist, chalking a winged figure falling from the skies. From his perspective Loss can’t make out much of the picture, but he suspects that it’s Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. From where he is standing Loss can only see the back of the artist and he can’t tell if they are male or female.
‘Over here, sir.’ Stone nods her head at a dark blue door to their left. Above it is a painting of two antique duelling pistols, and a brass plaque next to it:
K Brooks
Military Antiques and Ephemera
By appointment only
Next to the plaque is a brass bell-pull. The DS gives it a firm tug. After a moment a cultured voice enquires after their business. Once the DS has given the required information there is a click as the door is remotely unlocked, and then they walk inside.
‘Hello? I’m up here!’ The same cultured voice rings out from above them, and urges them up a steep staircase. The stairs are old and the bare wooden treads are not flat, making them difficult to climb. The narrowness of the staircase, coupled with its seemingly random twists and turns increases Loss’s claustrophobia. By the time they reach the glass-walled garret at the top of the building Loss is so out of breath he thinks his heart is going to explode. His vision is just colours with no pattern or meaning to them. He feels himself falling.
‘Oh my poor chap!’ A tall scruffy man, his appearance at total odds with his voice, is quickly at his side, a firm hand on his elbow. He studies the DI, concern printed on his tight-skinned face. ‘Do sit down.’ He ushers Loss into an over-stuffed armchair.
After a few moments his vision settles and he is able to take in his surroundings. He blinks several times and wonders if perhaps he is drunk. Pointing directly at him is a cannon. Next to the cannon is a pirate brandishing a flint pistol at his DS. It’s only after some moments that DI Loss realizes it is a waxwork model.
Following his gaze, the scruffy man beams brightly. ‘I got him from Madame Tussaud’s. I think he’s supposed to be Calico Jack.’ The gaunt man is standing by the armchair holding a glass of iced water. He hands it to Loss, who drinks it down gratefully, and gazes around the room.
The walls are covered with weaponry of all kinds; from pistols to blow-pipes. There are esoteric potted plants everywhere, and the dry smell of them, mixed with the shadows they create from the enormous amount of light streaming into the room through the glass roof and walls, gives the feeling of a tropical forest. Loss wouldn’t be surprised if a Pigmy reached up and grabbed the blowpipe off the wall. The room is divided by glass exhibit tables. Loss stands up and peers into the one nearest him. The proprietor comes to stand beside him and looks into the case. Resting on red felt, and neatly labelled, are two wicked looking axes, about thirty centimetres long.
‘Those are Egyptian quarter axes, popular around 1500 BC,’ the man beside him says. ‘The first ones were made out of bronze, of course, but they were so useful in combat that they lasted right up to the Iron Age. I’m Kavenagh Brooks, by the way,’ he grabs Loss’s hand and gives it a single, dry pump. ‘I understand you’ve been looking for information concerning these.’
From out of another case the antiquarian produces a slim box and places it on the display glass in front of the detectives. When he opens it Loss feels a slick of saliva flood his mouth. Inside are two scythes, identical to the ones he’d last seen separating flesh from bone on a tube train, not very far from here. Beside him his DS gives a sharp intake of breath. Loss sways slightly.
‘Steady on, old chap.’ Mr Brooks places a concerned hand on the DI’s arm.
‘Where did you get them?’
‘These are one of two sets I brought back with me from Burma. Actually, it’s quite remarkable to find one pair in such good condition, let alone two.’
Loss can’t take his eyes off the knives, at the wicked curve of them, and the way they seem to sliver the light into flat silver snakes.
‘And who did you sell the other set to?’
Mr Brooks strokes the knives gently, as if he is putting them to sleep.
‘Why, the British Museum.’
Lily-Rose is getting dressed. Her clothes are too big for her now, and when she wears them, the impact of her recent experiences comes into sharp relief. She is a ghost inside her own skin. She puts on a pair of scuzzy old jeans, and uses a dressing gown cord threaded through the belt loops to keep them up. She doesn’t need a bra beneath her ripped black Joy Division tee shirt – since she stopped eating her breasts have almost completely disappeared. This is one of the reasons she still eats so little. She does not want her breasts to return. She does not want to be a sexual being. Over the tee shirt she wears a Russian army jacket with the collar cut off, and on her feet, a pair of Doc Martins. She does not look at herself in the mirror. She has broken all the mirrors.
When the police returned Lily-Rose’s computer she did not touch it. She was not sure if, when she started it up, knowing that everything on it had been examined, she would feel violated again. She wasn’t worried about them finding anything incriminating; the girl she met in the Pollyanna chat room was obviously very good at covering her tracks. But just the fact that strangers had electronically thumbed through her hard-drive. Her photos. Her texts. Her life.
Herself.
She wasn’t sure she could cope with it all.
In the end, she decided she couldn’t and, instead, used her iPad to re-connect to the Interzone. She created a new email address, which she gave to no one. Of course she didn’t. There was no one to give it to. Since her assault she has systematically shut down all her contacts with the school and the estate. It wasn’t hard. Most of her friends have abandoned her, seeing her as broken: damaged goods. Or worse, blaming her for bringing down trouble onto the estate. Her rape was in some way a difficulty that reflected badly on them. An inconvenience; rocking the boat, and allowing the corpse of fear to surface.
She collected all the information on the web concerning the girl the media were now calling Tuesday. She re-entered the anorexia/self-harm forums, the scar-bars she haunted after she was raped, searching for her.
This morning she received an email. It had no IP address and seemed to originate from nowhere. She opens it up and reads it.
The words make her break out in a shivering sweat but she reads it to the end.
Once Lily-Rose has finished dressing, covering her hands with a pair of fingerless grey mittens and wrapping a black keffiyeh round her throat, she leaves the house for the first time since her attack, and heads into town.
When Loss and Stone leave Mr Brooks’ premises, the sky is a ribbon of boiling black above them, and the busker and street painter have disappeared. Seeing the scythes at close quarters has brought home to the detectives just how much pain and fear must have been in the carriage on the night they were used.