The Annihilation Score (35 page)

“We don't get to sit at the high table or attend the big meeting,” Jim murmurs to me. “How about we go up the road and give things a last run-through over coffee?”

“That'd be great,” I say fervently, and allow him to usher me along the covered walkway leading to the entrance, past the front desk, and up to the canteen. Where we drink enough coffee to wake the dead, go over our presentation one last time, double-check that the laptop's battery is up to the job, and cool our heels until it's time to go up to the eighth-floor briefing rooms that ACPO has booked for the breakout sessions after the principals finish with their main meeting.

The presentation:

About sixty Very Important Police Officers have converged on ACPO HQ and the Yard for the day. They're here to discuss important policy matters affecting multiple forces, to chat one-on-one about matters of professional concern with their peers from other forces, and to attend briefings from a variety of agencies and organizations: the Crown Prosecution Service, newly outsourced forensic laboratories, HM Revenue & Customs, the National Crime Agency . . . and us. Because these are Very Important Police Officers and their time is valuable, they have carefully planned which seminars and presentations to attend: consequently we get the undivided attention of just fourteen of them. The extra seats are filled by the folks from the CPS, outsourced forensic laboratories, HM Revenue & Customs, the NCA, and other agencies who aren't actually giving presentations of their own at the same time as us. It could be worse: they're not our core target audience but we're getting the message out, and that's what matters.

I'm not going to bore you with the presentation itself. You've probably sat through enough management PowerPoint pitches to write it yourself: open by defining a problem (the power curve showing the increasing frequency of superpowers over time), then introduce an organization to deal with the problem. Add a mission statement and an org chart, rhapsodize about your agency's values, describe the
future rollout of services, outline a protocol whereby your audience may send up the bat-signal to request your assistance, and finally thank them for their attention and reassure them that as valued stakeholders you welcome their feedback. Credits and curtain call.

The audience, as always at this sort of off-site summit/mini-conference, is far more interesting than the presentation itself. The front row is mostly middle-aged white men in senior police uniforms (one woman, one nonwhite: not even the most optimistic commissioner will deny that the UK's police forces have some catching up to do on diversity, especially at higher ranks). But appearances are deceptive. You don't get to Assistant Chief Constable or above without being a habitual overachiever with a razor-sharp mind. Half of them have doctorates; the other half had to work even harder to get there, whether at thief-taking or politics. We allowed five minutes for questions and I'm still answering them when one of the organizers pops in through the door to wave us out to make room for the next speakers.

“Well,
I
think that went well,” Jim confides as we emerge into a hallway where our hosts have set up a table with coffee supplies.

“I hope so.” I pull out my compact to check my hair's under control and my mascara isn't running. “They really had me sweating at the end.”

“What, John's grilling about training and professional standards?” Jim is busy with the refreshments.

“Yes, that—no, all of them.” My face having neither melted nor exploded, I put the mirror away and accept the cup of coffee Jim hands me. “John was right: it normally takes three months to train a PCSO, and two years for a probationary constable—and we're trying to rush through candidates who didn't originally want a career in policing?”

“It's not quite that bad.” I can't tell whether Jim's speaking of the coffee or the training program. “We're running a specialist unit that gets called on as backup in response to specific events. The superpowered don't need training in everyday policing tasks that don't fall
within their remit: they'll never be deployed in a situation where they don't have a responsible officer in charge. They just need to keep their noses clean and follow instructions. And I don't think anyone is ahead of us on the learning curve in our field, so there's nobody for us to look bad in comparison to.” I take a cautious sip of coffee as I wince. Jim's perspective is blunter than usual: perhaps it's the uniforms on all sides making him open up. “That's probably what they're thinking, even if they're more polite to your face,” he adds. “Join me for lunch after the next talk? I think I can promise you an eye-opener.”

I sit through the next half-hour slot (a woman from the CPS discussing new procedures for handling cases involving serious financial malfeasance—not my thing
at all
although I can see it's useful to the intended audience), using the time to decompress. In due course I tag along with Jim behind a clot
*
of uniformed senior officers as they make their way towards the canteen at New Scotland Yard—because it's necessary for them to be seen there, canteen culture being what it is even today.

There's a side room waiting for the top brass, although the door's open so that everyone can see that they're just regular coppers who eat and drink the same food as everyone else. Even if it's a buffet and there are starched linen tablecloths waiting for them. Jim walks straight in—as an ACPO staffer it's his right—and I tag along, hoping nobody calls my bluff.

My middle-aged invisibility seems to come in handy—at least at first. I find myself sitting opposite Jim, sandwiched between an assistant chief from South Wales, Graham Walton, and his opposite number from Humberside, Chris Norton. They seem to know Jim (he's probably on their radar as young and ambitious, possible future competition for a top slot), but the conversation is friendly enough:
almost collegiate. So I do my best fly on the wall impersonation as they politely grill Jim about my organization.

“. . . So we're particularly worried about the public order angle,” Graham is telling Jim. He has a sausage impaled on the end of his fork and gestures with it while he speaks, knife poised ready to scoop a mashed potato shroud atop it when he finishes and has time to chew: “Not your outliers, but the low-end troublemakers who come out to play at chucking-out time on a Saturday in Cardiff. Your two-sigma tanked-up chav with a skin full of Bucky can raise Cain on the early watch, but what if we're not covered? Because you've only got the one team—”

“We're working on it.” Jim's gaze flickers my way, then slides away as he looks at Chris Norton to see how his response is going down. “We're still working up to operational status from zero across the board, Graham”—a sidelong glance at his Welsh interrogator, who is now demolishing his plate—“but we have to get the back-office system in place first. Currently we're focusing on intelligence-led operations, starting by compiling a register of all known high-end offenders. We're also working up a team of PCSOs with three-sigma or higher capability who can be brought into play by field commanders who need backup—”

“But what about the leadership culture?” Chris pushes in. “I know you're overstretched already with your ACPO brief, but what other officers do you have on-force to provide mentorship in a progressive policing environment?” I clear my throat, but he doesn't stop: “There's just one of you, and from that org chart you showed us earlier the TPCF is already up to twenty staff and growing rapidly—too rapidly for organic promotion from within. Do you plan to advertise senior positions for recruitment from other forces?”

“Excuse me—” I try to cut in.

“No need for that,” Jim replies, without giving me a chance to answer. It's really annoying: I expected better of him. “We have a management skeleton already in place: people drawn from the Security Service who are on loan to the Home Office. It turns out the MoD already has a lot of experience handling superpowers. The real issue
is building a Police culture within the organization, not finding high-quality administrative support and management personnel.”

“Excuse me—” I say, but as Graham finishes chewing, he leans towards Jim.

“But surely you'll be wanting training standards officers and cadre who already have front-line experience?”

It's as if I'm not even here. I give up and stir my salad listlessly with my fork. “Gentlemen,” I say quietly, “don't mind me. Feel free to pretend I'm not here—”

“You'd have to ask my director,” Jim replies to Graham. “She's in charge of all senior staffing decisions, although she defers on them to her head of HR.” He doesn't look at me. It's like he's forgotten I'm here. He smiles ingratiatingly: “You could ask her.”

“Maybe later.” Graham goes back to ploughing through his lunch.

“The real problem, it seems to me”—Chris Norton speaks quietly, almost inaudible against the background chatter and the sound of canteen cutlery—“is the overall trajectory of the epidemic. We have to assert control now, before the structures we rely on for the reinforcement of societal consent break down.”

“Which structures in particular?” Jim asks, in a mild tone of voice I've come to recognize as his Socratic sucker-bait.

“Authority,” Chris states. “Yes, yes, Peelian principles are all very well. We police by consent, the public are the police and the police are the public, and so forth. But that growth curve you showed us is troubling. It seems to me that if we have a major ongoing outbreak of superpowers, the entire structure of public consent may be dangerously weakened. We rely on most people obeying the law of the land most of the time because it's the right thing to do—and when that fails, we rely on them obeying because they must, because we can always out-escalate them. But superpowers will undermine that. If it's just a handful, we can muddle through with backup from TPCF and good intelligence. But heaven help us if it hits ten percent of the population and the hard core of regular troublemakers cut loose.”

“We're going to need a bigger stick,” Graham agrees, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.

“So where's the bigger stick?” Chris asks Jim, disarmingly candidly. “One team of extraordinary PCSOs isn't going to cut it, if you don't mind me saying. We really need something better. The Met should provide leadership on this one.”

“We're working on it,” Jim says defensively. “There are plans afoot.” His gaze flickers past me as if he's forgotten I'm here. “But nothing I can really discuss in public yet.”

Chris puts his knife and fork down. His plate is as spotless as his uniform. “Well, I just hope it's ready when we need it.” He smiles. “Well, gentlemen: we have fifteen minutes until the next session starts. If you'll excuse me?” He rises to leave; Graham Walton follows his example. Jim watches them leave.

“Well, that was illuminating,” I mutter.

Jim glances at me, then suddenly twitches as if seeing me for the first time. “What?” he asks, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“What indeed?” I look at him. He looks slightly flustered. Embarrassed, even.

“Uh, Dr. O'Brien, I'm sorry, I didn't—”

“Oh, don't mind me.” I smile, thin-lipped. “I can handle it. Canteen culture, eh?”

He nods. “Canteen culture.” But I have an inkling that it's something more than that.

*   *   *

I barely notice the rest of the week, I'm so busy. I'm bogged down in a sea of minutiae, fully occupied juggling a huge brief: team recruitment operations, budget estimates, our continuing research into individual cases and general superpower threat projections. I don't have time to be upset or angry about the way the ACPO delegates virtually ignored me, as if I were invisible. Developing invisibility as my superpower: wouldn't
that
be something? (Something
hellishly annoying
, if you couldn't control it . . .)

Our failure to find Freudstein is eating away at me. I've also got a horrible feeling of near futility, coupled with a sense that I'm spinning my wheels, that however hard I run I'm not gaining on our
workload, that CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is closing in, and that a tidal wave of horror is surging towards us, still unseen, just beyond the horizon—

Let's just say I'm not sleeping very well.

I continue to hope HR will deliver something more about Jim's background. I try to be patient, but if Alison can't get results within a week, I'm going to have to escalate my enquiries. I put this to Dr. Armstrong at our Friday morning confessional in the New Annex, and he gives me absolution. “I understand your concerns, Mo. I believe you've taken the correct action with respect to Jim. Under the circumstances, it would be indiscreet to enquire too openly about his capabilities. As for Bee, Torch, and the others—”

“They're a known quantity,” I point out. “I can refer them to Dr. Wills directly, get them checked out weekly if necessary. We've got protocols for dealing with K syndrome. My real concern is that Jim is a special case. As you yourself said. Anyway, where
did
that armor come from?”

The SA is imperturbable. “You might as well ask where Ramona's vessel came from.”

“BLUE HADES, but—” I stop dead. “I first met Jim at the reception during the treaty negotiation sessions up north.”

“Jolly good.” The SA nods.

“Is that why you're suspicious of him? You think BLUE HADES gave him the armor? Why would they do that?”

“Why would they loan us Ramona and her chariot?” He raises an eyebrow expectantly.

“Somebody asked?”

“Yes, somebody asked. In the case of Ramona, somebody asked if they knew anything about the superpower problem: that's when they offered to send us a liaison officer and some specialized equipment. The trouble with dealing with the Deep Ones is that sometimes something is lost in translation . . .”