The Annihilation Score (12 page)

And besides, she's got a point. Even if it falls perilously close to blaming the one person who isn't present at the meeting.

“Yes.”

“Fine!” She switches on a smile so manic that I'm certain the last pixie dream girl she mugged is in need of a face transplant. “Does that mean you agree that the potential exists for us to construct and maintain an arm's-length business relationship based on team values, mutual esteem, and peer-to-peer respect for our complementary abilities? One that's free from any incursion of bedroom politics and green-eyed jealousy?”

Oh for fuck's sake.
If I could mend fences with Ramona I ought at least
try
to get along with Mhari without sucking her soul out through her eyeballs with my violin. As long as she keeps her fangs out of my neck and Bob out of her bed, I can probably do this. “Jealousy is such a nasty word,” I say. Then I narrow my eyes. “But I have a question for you. Why are
you
so keen to work with
me
?”

Mhari rolls her eyes. “Because, in business terms, you just parachuted straight into the CEO's seat of an entrepreneurial startup that bypassed the incubator and angel rounds and went straight to a juicy Series A term sheet.” Some of the tension has leached out of her shoulders: the handbag sits limp on her lap, her knees aren't clenched as tightly, she no longer looks—
good Lord, she was
terrified
!

“You probably think I'm an ambitious greasy-pole climber. If so, you'd be absolutely right. You might just have noticed that I have special dietary needs:
expensive
ones. The Laundry will find a way to feed me, no questions asked, as long as I make myself useful.
You
might be a workaholic who lives for the job, but if
I
don't work, I don't get to live. Not dying is a wonderful motivating factor, don't
you think? So I need to make myself indispensable, or at least too useful to put down.”

She relaxes infinitesimally as she gets into her pitch, but her expression remains intense. I have the uneasy sense that I'm getting a window on the real Mhari's soul, one that she doesn't draw back the curtains on very often.

“In business, the fastest way to the top is to join a new organization in the early days and make it grow under you. If you join an established company, you have to fight your way up through all the accumulated dead wood. Unfortunately, new banking start-ups don't come along very often. The Scrum was going to be my ticket to the boardroom, but then PHANG happened. So, anyway, speaking as an ambitious management bitch, my plan is simple: get on board a new org chart early, push for growth, Series B, Series C. There is no IPO when you're part of a government agency—the usual breakout in the age of privatization is to be spun off as a GovCo, then sold to one of the big service corporations—but there
is
a plateau of stability when the growth curve stabilizes, at which point the executives can run out the gangway and waltz back over to rejoin their parent organizations at a
much
higher level than they were at when they left, a comparatively short time ago. Take you, for example: if this works, your new department won't last forever—but if you go back to the Laundry, you'll take your new grade with you.”

Wow.
If this was a marketing presentation, it would be standing ovation time. Her intensity is terrifying: it makes me want to pin a notice on her power suit saying FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY. An idea for how to harness her dangerous energy begins to percolate up from the depths of my subconscious. I keep a lid on it for now—the interview isn't over yet—but it bears exploration, just as soon as I've cleared up some loose ends.

“Okay, I hear where you're coming from. I have a couple of follow-on questions, though. Does your condition mean you'll have difficulty keeping regular office hours or appearing in public? And what are you doing about, um, eating in the short term?”

“My condition is
my
problem,” she says tartly. “You might want
to bear in mind the civil service policy guidelines on respect for disabilities in the workplace before you ask such questions. But, since you ask: in the absolute worst case, a full traditional
hijab
and
niqab
will keep me from frying, and in overcast and twilight conditions I can get away with theatrical face paint and sunglasses. So yes, I can be on hand during core office hours, although I'll need to have blackout blinds fitted in my office. Point
deux
: I still mostly eat normal food. The question of how to provide a regular supply of my special dietary supplement is being dealt with by a committee chaired by Dr. Wills.” For an instant I see a flicker of something that might almost be grief cross her face, but the pancake of latex and foundation she's wearing makes it hard to read micro-expressions. “Again, may I remind you of our policy on disabilities? Other people have equally distasteful needs. It's only relatively recently that individuals with growth hormone deficiency gained a source of somatotropin that wasn't harvested from cadaver brains, for example.”

“I—I—I—” I restart: “You've made your point.”

I stand up, slowly, and warily make my way around my desk—and she stands up, her posture defensive.
Fight or flee?
I suppress a panic-shudder and stop a meter away from her, just outside her personal space. Then I force myself to raise my right hand.

“Welcome aboard,” I say. After a second, she raises her hand, too. We shake, very gingerly. Her nylon-sheathed fingers are slippery and cool.

“No back-stabbing,” she says. Maybe it's an offer.

“No annoying personal shit,” I counter-offer. “Let's keep it one hundred percent professional.”

She nods, unsmiling. “All right. Now what?”

I exhale slowly, still shuddery-shaky from my initial reaction to her. “Tomorrow, at two o'clock, I'm holding an all-hands. I'm supposed to deliver a briefing, with concrete proposals, to the Home Secretary on Monday morning.
Everything
is secondary to that. We're going to be working in crunch mode until then—we've got a looming first deadline, and if we don't make it, we are dead in the water. So dead there won't be a hole deep enough to bury us in. So it's going to be
sixteen-hour days and working all weekend if necessary. Unfortunately I've
also
got some off-site stuff to do—stuff that is so time-critical it can't wait, because it may feed into the HomeSec's briefing—so I need you to keep an eye on the analysts and manage the new intake of staff while I'm out of the office.”

She bites her lower lip, still keeping her canines discreetly out of sight. “Do you have a strategy?”

“I do indeed.” I reach over to the desk and spin the notebook round so that we can both see the screen. “Let me talk you through it . . .”

AN EXCITABLE BOY

I stumble through my hotel room's doorway just after eleven o'clock, bone-tired and shaky from the post-adrenaline crash. I'm still only half-certain there's a chance that my paper plane will leave the runway. Mhari and I put in nearly four hours on the key strategy proposal and my presentation, and she kicked the tires
very
thoroughly before she handed me the metaphorical air hose. If she can be trusted to hold up her end of the deal, we might be able to make it fly. If.
If.
Ah well. I may not trust her personally—actually, I can barely hold back my fight/flight impulse in her presence—but I can't fault her motivation.

If
I can learn not to break out in a hot flush (or get the shudders or random stabs of ossified reflexive jealousy) when she walks in the door—and if she can learn not to jump out of her skin when I pick up my violin case (as she did when we were leaving, and then she tried to make a shaky-voiced joke of it)—we can make policy faster than a speeding bullet and leap tall buildings full of paperwork.

But it's going to take practice and a lot of patience.

Once I crawl between the sheets, I go out like a lamp. Sleep is dreamless at first, but some time in the small hours I awaken just
enough to do the bathroom sleepwalk shuffle—and when I go back to bed I start to dream. I'm on that monochrome dance floor again, whirling in the arms of my white-clad faceless lover. This time it's no waltz; I'm gothed up like my mid-teenaged self's vision of her aspirational adult persona—all rather jejune, with way too much black lace: what can I say, it was a phase I was going through—as we dance to a New Romantic/eighties synthpop beat. There's a band between the columns of speakers, faceless men in suits surrounded by a wall of ancient Korg and Yamaha kit. “The Damned Don't Cry,” “Enola Gay”: as we whirl to the dance floor beat I feel like a machine, as soulless as my partner.

Who leans towards my face and whispers, ***You could have taken her soul.***

“You say that like you think I should want it.” His voice is autumn leaves blowing through the doorway of an open crypt; mine is toneless.

He pulls me closer. ***You
should
have taken her. She lied to you.***

“I can't kill people just because they lie to me. Or because I don't like them.”

He laughs and whirls me in a tight circle. I lean backwards, relying on his arms around me for support. ***You've killed people you didn't like before. Firouz the Pasdaran lieutenant, in Vakilabad. The nest of idiot goat-worshipers in Amstelveen. Your—***

“Shut up and dance.” It's not a very goth dance, it's
far
too intimate. I break out of his grip, sway sidelong away, then catch the rhythm: grab the bat, hug the bat, drop the bat.
Work
those hips, raise your arms: big box, little box, big box, little box. Back to swaying on the spot: grab the bat, hug the bat, drop the bat, kick the bat across the dancefloor. Then I grab the bat again and suddenly find my arms filled by my dance partner, his arms wrapped around me like the steel bars of an impossible cage.

***Love is all you need,*** he whispers breathily in my ear, and runs his tongue down the side of my neck to the base of my throat.

The rasp of his flinty tongue strikes a spark that sets me on fire. I
wrap my arms around him and play intimate chords of power on the fingerboard of his spine. He shivers eerily and lifts me, and I wrap my knees around his hips, then—the logic of dreams holds no brief for zippers, underwear, or hook-and-eye fasteners—his teeth are locked around my painfully taut right nipple as he lowers me onto his sound post.

I become one with the sound as we whirl around the dance floor in a frenzy of pleasure, pulses rippling through me as we “Fade to Grey.”

*   *   *

I come to my senses in a pile of cold, sweat-drenched sheets, shuddering in the receding wake of the most powerful orgasm I've had since
no, stop, that's
far
too long ago
. I try to roll over—
no, too soon
. According to the alarm radio it's a quarter to seven.
Not fair.
I reach for the light switch and glare bleary-eyed at the violin case on the hotel room desk. Why does it seem to look smug?

“Bastard,” I mutter as I try to sit up. I feel obscurely guilty. It was just an erotic dream: I don't cheat on my husband. At least, I don't think I do . . . do imaginary violins count? To my sleep-clouded eyes, Lecter's case seems slightly flaccid, slowly pulsing. Or maybe it's just the arteries in the back of my eyeballs.

I take a long shower, mainly because I crave the sensation of washing ghostly adulterous fingertips off my skin. I have to lean against the wall, my knees are so weak: it was positively tectonic. I close my eyes under the warm rain and wish Bob was here to hold me in the afterglow.

I dress in my second-best work suit, the houndstooth check Jaeger one. It's a bit frumpy, if I'm perfectly honest with myself, maybe
too
frumpy—but even though my work wardrobe needs an overhaul in light of my new job, I am damned if I'm going to get into a sartorial arms race with Mhari. Before she became a PHANG she was merely pretty; now she could take up modeling, if it wasn't for the slight bursting-into-flames-when-exposed-to-bright-lights problem. I go with the lowest heels and the least office makeup I can get away with:
I've got a lot of walking to do today. I don't bother with the vile hotel breakfast. Instead, I collect Lecter and I'm out the door by eight thirty, straight into the comfortingly anonymous rush-hour crowd and on my way to the first appointment of the day.

Nobody sane drives in London: I take the bus. By the time I get to my destination I've lost most of my early-mover time, but I've had a chance to come fully awake, meditate for a few minutes, and go over my agenda three or four times in search of holes. I can't spot any. I fend off flashbacks as I walk back along a stretch of pavement that rings under my heels with echoes of the other day's walk-to-the-scaffold experience. I'm reasonably centered again, back in my professional sweet spot, and more importantly I know what to expect today. So I am feeling reasonably confident when I march up to the front desk of Belgravia Police Station and say, “Dominique O'Brien to see Chief Inspector Sullivan. I have an appointment.”

For a moment I'm afraid the desk sergeant is going to succumb to my middle-aged invisibility field, but then his roving eyeballs land on my warrant card and his pupils dilate slightly as it snags the surface of his mind. “Yes, ma'am.” He doesn't exactly snap to attention—his attitude is more like one of suppressed annoyance at having his routine interrupted by the urgent need to perform hand-holding duties for a senior officer who ought to know better—but suddenly he's all over the switchboard. “DCI Sullivan, please: a Dr. O'Brien is waiting for you . . . Where? . . . I'll send her over right away, ma'am.” He looks back at me. “She's in the custody suite, ma'am. The special one. Is that where you're expecting to find her?”

I nod. “Which way is it?”

He grabs a constable who is hurrying past: “Julie, would you be a dear and show the superintendent here to the special custody suite? DCI Sullivan is waiting on her.”

Julie, suffering the be-a-dear in professional silence, leads me through the badger's sett that is the back side of the police station—scuffed white paint, flickering overhead tubes, and a pervasive smell of stale coffee—and then down a concrete stairwell to a heavy steel door overlooked by half a dozen cameras in armored enclosures.
“This is the old custody suite, ma'am. The main one's on the other side of the building—we were using this to store the riot kit until they repurposed it for the differently empowered three months ago. Have they filled you in on that? The special handling requirements?”

“I'm here to see Jo Sullivan about it,” I reassure her. “She'll fill me in.”

“Great. May I go? I was on my way to a briefing when—”

“Go on”—pause—“and thanks,” I call after her rapidly receding back. Then I turn to the heavy steel door, the like of which one normally only finds in bank vaults and other places that store stuff that really shouldn't be allowed to escape. There is a very prosaic white plastic doorbell stapled inexpertly to the wall next to it. I push the button.

A minute later, there is a squeal of inadequately lubricated gears as the door slides open a crack. “Dominique? Good to see you again.”

I cross the threshold and shake hands with Jo. (The threshold is about ten centimeters thick and cross-hatched with yellow stripes and warning stickers showing the grisly things that will happen to you if you happen to be standing in the doorway when the powered door closes.) “So this is the superhero lock-up?”

“Yeah. One of them.” Jo takes a step backwards and gestures me in. As I follow her the huge vault-type door whines shut behind me. It closes a lot more smoothly than it opens: there's a
thunk
of steel bolts sliding home, then I notice the background hum of the air conditioners. “The interview suites are over there, that corridor leads to three cells, that one leads to Facilities, staff restrooms, custody officer's room, and a ready room. They're only Cat-B secure—we can't store über-villains here—but it's the best we can do this close to the center of town, at least until the CrossRail TBMs come available to dig the deep London lock-up they've been talking about. How about a coffee while we discuss your request?”

Uh-oh.
“A coffee would be great, thanks,” I say, and she leads me to the ready room. It does not escape my attention that the entire underground custody suite seems to be embedded in reinforced concrete and has its own air supply. “What is this, a former nuclear bunker?”

“Yes, that's exactly what it used to be.” She switches on the
battered kettle. “Most of the central London police stations built before 1970 have them. Anyone trying to use them for shelter probably didn't stand a prayer, but they'd still be structurally sound after the rubble stopped bouncing, unlike most of the other buildings, and we'd have needed somewhere for the surviving officers to use as a station. The cells were to be used as dormitories and arms lockers.”

“Why? Wouldn't you have needed them as, well, cells?”

Jo shakes her head. “Not after a nuclear war, Mo. Think martial law and firing squads.” She grabs two chipped mugs from the cupboard and sloshes coffee and milk into them. “Be glad it never happened.”

I fear that we might yet end up going that way if we can't get a handle on CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. I take my mug and sit down. “Has he coughed yet?”

She's a stand-and-pace type. “Alas, yes. Unfortunately our little canary has gone Section 2 on us. He's absolutely Upney;
*
halfway to Dagenham, in fact. We're keeping him here because he's not deemed a hazard to himself, but so far he's confessed to assassinating Margaret Thatcher—”

“But Maggie died of natural causes—”

“Yes, exactly. He's also confessed to conspiracy to rob the Bank of England, which is flat-out impossible because he was in custody right here at the time he says he did it. He's delusional about other subjects as well. The duty psychiatrist spent some time assessing him yesterday and thinks he's unfit to stand trial; he's raving about conspiracies and Mad Scientists trying to take over the world and radio receivers in his head. We did some background legwork and found he was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic four years ago. Looks like he'd been off his meds for some time and was already going downhill fast—he was Sectioned twice in the past nine months—when he came down with an acute attack of superpower-itis.”

“Oh dear.” I take a mouthful of coffee. It is, if anything, even
worse than the hotel buffet brew. When my eyes uncross I take another gulp: the last thing I need is a caffeine headache. “Well, since I've come this far I suppose I ought to interview him anyway . . .”

“You'll be lucky to get anything out of him. Listen, I've talked to more than my fair share of paranoid schizophrenics over the years, and you get a handle on them after a while. Most of them are lovely people, they just can't stop
hearing
things. And they get mood swings and medication side effects and obsessive-compulsive tics. Spratt's different. His powers mean he expresses his delusions, sometimes violently, on whoever's around him. And something about him doesn't feel
right
. If I was a shrink, I'd say he's under the influence of something else—but the duty doc took bloods and he's clean.”

“So what you're saying is, you don't expect me to get anything out of him?”

“Yes. Also, about that: you know we're going to have to do the rules of evidence tap dance and haul the duty solicitor in if Laughing Boy so much as looks like he wants representation?”

“Oh hell.” I take another mouthful. “Well, my cover can't get any more blown than it is already, and I'm not held to the same rules of evidence as—”