Edge (24 page)

    "I promise to use my powers only for evil," said Suzanne. "Er, I mean good."

    "Witch, witch, witch."

    At the service area they pulled in, plugged the car in to recharge, used the facilities then carried cappuccinos back to the vehicle. Inside, he put music on. After ten seconds, it was replaced with a shushing sound.

    "That's odd," said Suzanne. "Has the channel gone offline?"

    "No, it's anti-sound in the chassis and windows. There's one-way silvering on the glass as well, now that I've changed the polarisation."

    "Er… Are there onboard missiles? Machine guns?"

    "I think that's next year's model. And your phone's blocked, by the way."

    "Oh." Suzanne had velcroed her phone around her wrist. "Right, it's dead."

    "Standard anti-surveillance. I don't want you flagged as of interest, or no more than you already are, by associating with Broomhall."

    "Associating?"

    "Or whatever. Anyway, let's see the footage."

    Both segments were short, and he set them up to loop simultaneously in two panes. In one, the pinpointed youth walked along a street past piled-up bin bags – a moving shadow might have been a rat – while in the other segment, a youth in a green sweatshirt – maybe the same person – crossed a road to avoid a group of larger teenagers.

    "That's him." Suzanne kept watching. "In both loops, that's Richard."

    "Right." Josh blanked the display, then called up the map. "Depending on how far he tends to move at night… if he's settled in somewhere, he's in Wandsworth, maybe Brixton."

    "Settled in. Asleep in a doorway. Poor Richard."

    "Maybe not asleep." Josh did not want to mention nocturnal predators. "But trying to keep out of sight and warm."

    "So you're not likely to find him if you start looking now."

    "But if we–"

    "We both need sleep."

    "OK, but we make an early start," said Josh. "Or at least I do. Richard might sleep until noon, but he might have to clear out from where he's hiding before people start work."

    "Is the car charged yet?"

    "Not quite."

    "Take me home, so I can sleep in my own bed. Since I haven't been home for two nights."

    "You're wearing different clothes," he said.

    "Very observant, for a man. Pardon the stereotyping. My clothes are different because I went shopping."

    "Speaking of gender stereotyping…"

    "Uh-uh. I own four pairs of shoes and two handbags, no more."

    "Whereas I made a whole career of firing big guns. I mean really massive."

    "In order to make up for…?"

    "Oh, that. Well" – Josh held thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart – "we are talking tiny in other departments. Minuscule."

    Suzanne was laughing.

    "You are a bad man, Josh Cumberland. Take me home."

 

At 5.30 am Josh was out running, past Earl's Court and through the Gothic cemetery, making a long loop back to his hotel, a white-painted cheapish place he had used before. There was parking for guests, and he thought he might leave his car here today. Back in his room, he showered fast, drank protein shake, and left ten minutes later. Soon he was riding a bus to Vauxhall, sipping from a take-away cappuccino. A few minutes before eight, he walked past the first place where Richard Broomhall had passed through surveillance. Which way would the lad have gone?

    Up ahead, a group of grimy-looking individuals stood with cardboard cups and rough-cut sandwiches in hand. They were on a gravel lot in front of a dilapidated concrete cabin, some small business long gone to ruin. Several volunteers were setting out plastic chairs. One was a thickset, square-jawed woman with short grey hair. She looked capable.

    Josh called up his clearest image of Richard Broomhall, and held out his phone as he advanced.

    "My name's Josh. And this is Richard, in the picture."

    "We don't talk to the authorities, didn't they tell you?" The grey-haired woman continued unstacking chairs. "Not about individuals."

    "Sure." Josh picked up a chair one-handed and set it down. "I'm not exactly official, just helping the family. The kid could be in trouble."

    "They all are. So what kind was he in before? What did he run away from?"

    "I… don't know. Not completely."

    "So why would you drag him back there?"

    "Look, the streets are hardly safe. He comes from a well-off home, good school."

    "And your point is?"

    "Shit." Josh looked at his phone. The kid was four years older than Sophie. "If it was my daughter, I'd tear the city apart to find her."

    "So what's the boy's father doing right now?"

    Josh blinked. This was his week for being off-balanced by strong, knowledgeable women. "Counting his money, I should think."

    At this, the woman gave a snort and a half-laugh. "Show me the picture again."

    "Here."

    "Couple of days back, he came around. I gave him a sweatshirt."

    "A green sweatshirt?"

    "Actually, yes. Why?"

    "It's all right, nothing's happened. Someone spotted a kid wearing green, might have been Richard." He did not want to discuss hacking into surveillance data. "You don't know where he's hanging around?" he went on.

    "No, I don't."

    "Shit."

    "Look… they disappear," said the woman. "Runaways, they always stop showing up, sooner or later. But recently, it seems to have hit the young ones more, you know?"

    "Is this something the police are aware of?"

    "Not so you'd notice, officially. But some of the officers who work the streets are good people, including my partner. They know, for all the good it's done."

    "Does your partner work locally?"

    "Sometimes, but not as a rule. You wanted to give me a copy of that picture, is that it?"

    "If you think it would do good," he said. "Unofficially."

    "Meaning you don't want it on the system."

    "That might cause questions for your partner."

    "My partner is honest and good at the job."

    "I'm sure she is," said Josh. "I'm on Richard's side. There's nothing dodgy in that."

    The woman blinked.

    "You're pretty sharp," she said.

    "My best friends are lesbians and witches."

    "Huh." She held up her own phone. "Give me the details. And I'm Viv."

    "Pleased to meet you, Viv." He redfanged the data. "And I'm making you a promise."

    "Which is?"

    "I won't put him back in danger."

    Viv looked at him for almost a minute, then held out a thick-fingered hand.

    "Good to meet you, Josh."

    "Likewise, Viv."

    Her grip was dry, solid and strong.

 

    Behind the counter, one of the baristas grinned, then nodded to Suzanne. "I'll bring it over," he said. "Just for you."

    "You mean, because you're frightened of Carol."

    "Not so much frightened," he said, "as terrified."

    She sat down, opened her handbag, took hold of Carol's phone and popped it inside, then snapped the bag shut. After putting it down on the floor between her feet, she smiled.

    "This has been an education," said Suzanne, "in police procedures."

    "You got something to hide, honey?"

    "I don't think so, but I don't know what you're about to say. My phone is in Elliptical House, but there's spycams here, like everywhere."

    "Conspiracy theories now?"

    "No. Broomhall senior is high-profile. People want to keep an eye on him."

    "So why haven't the police found his son, if he's that well known?"

    "Maybe because he hasn't murdered anyone," said Suzanne. "I don't know. So why did you want to talk? Am I suspended yet?"

    "Broomhall's lawyers made the petition. No one's doing anything without a hearing, and that's not even scheduled yet. Early days."

    "Wonderful."

    "He did get a private investigator on the case. Cumberland. Did you met him yet?" A smile made Carol's face even rounder. "We got ourselves a private dick. A gumshoe."

    "Josh isn't a–"

    "Oh ho." Carol stopped as Harry came over with Suzanne's latte. "We'll settle up later, OK, big boy?"

    "You got it."

    "And no wonder," said Carol when Harry was gone, "you want to talk in private. What's he like, this Josh? Show me pictures."

    "It's not like that."

    "Uh-huh. Your pants are on fire, Dr Duchesne, but not cause you're a liar. I think the incendiary reason has the initials JC."

    "Jesus Christ."

    "Really not who I was thinking of."

    "Carol…"

    "What's he like at undercover work? You have been under the covers, I take it?"

    "For God's sake."

    "Oh, you haven't. Well, maybe it's best to keep your minds on the job." Carol's eyes flickered up to her right. "Keep focused on finding Richard."

    "So I am in trouble."

    "Let's just say, it would be better if he came back with a reason for running away that's nothing to do with you."

    "Back up, Carol. If it was my fault he ran, then what are you saying? That it's best for him to be found, or stay missing?"

    "That depends on whose viewpoint we're looking at it from. Right now" – Carol patted Suzanne's hand – "if we can maintain enough doubt, show possible reasons beyond the scope of what your session was to address, then you might get away with it."

    "And from the viewpoint of a fourteen year-old runaway with no street survival skills?"

    Steam hissed from the big espresso machine. It was solid and dependable, as you would expect in an oldfashioned coffee shop, never thinking about the pressure building up inside, or its scalding potential. Harry worked the device with practiced skill.

    Then Carol answered, "Someone needs to find the poor little bugger."

In theory, Richard was back working in the bicycle and gek gear shop; in practice, he was sitting somewhere that Brian could keep an eye on him, and whether he got any programming completed seemed to be irrelevant. He worked with a gek-gauntlet plugged in to a non-phone workstation, the gauntlet's source code open in half a dozen display panes. Two panes were stepping through instructions in debug mode. Even so, he could not see the problem's cause.

    "You all right?" asked Brian.

    "I guess."

    "You need a break."

    Actually, he had achieved nothing to take a break from. There was no sign of Cal, the owner, who perhaps would have expected more.

    "So, let's see what's happening." Brian pointed his phone at the wallscreen, taking over the display. "Maybe Fat Billy has resigned as prime minister. Or maybe he's made himself pope."

    News item thumbnails formed a snowflake pattern around a central article, their distribution representing their degree of interest for Brian, grouped by subject. One pie-slice portion represented local news. Brian tapped a link, zooming in.

    "Well," he said. "Greaser Khan, imagine that."

    "What is it?"

    "Something nasty happened to a nasty man. Never mind." Brian made the article disappear. "He probably deserved it."

    "Is he dead?"

    "Well, yeah… You don't know Khan, do you?"

    "I thought he… I thought he took Jayce."

    "Maybe he did. Police shut down a virapharm house the other day, which is why Khan was on the run. Except he wasn't running anywhere. He'd already been chopped into pieces, like meat in the butcher's shop. Nasty."

    "Vira–"

    Something expanded inside Richard's throat, while a huge invisible hand squeezed his heart and lungs into stillness.

    
Skin, beneath the cases, the metal slab, masked spectres and
the scalpel glistening as it comes down, slicing flesh so it falls
apart, with the sucking sound from hungry tubes–

    "Hey." Hands, Brian's hands, holding him upright. "Richie, what's wrong?"

    "Can't. I'm… sorry."

    Puke came bubbling up from inside him.

    Not again.

    And spattered on the floor.

    "Bloody hell," said Brian. "Cal's going to kill us."

The incoming call was anonymous. Josh accepted it as read-only, sending nothing back, until he saw that it was Petra. Grinning, he enabled full comms.

    "Nice to see a friendly face," he said. "I've been walking the streets for hours. Not getting anywhere."

    "I'll bet you're loving it. Met any interesting characters?"

    "Well, there was a young lad working in a newsagent's who's lived in seven different countries in the past six–"

    "See what I mean? You always find interesting people to talk to. You're the only person I know who can do that."

    "Uh, if you say so. So how are you doing?"

    "Fine. I like to watch the local news. A bad guy called Khan made it big in the newsworthy topics list. A couple hundred pieces of him made the news, in fact."

    "Nasty."

    "We narrowed it down to three possibilities: a pissedoff supplier, a pissed-off customer, or a pissed-off rival."