Death & the City Book Two (9 page)

He heads out through the utility room, grinning over his shoulder.

"You can have a play in the office if you want," he says. "Might find something you like on the computer."

The door to the garage slams behind him. I hear a click at hip height, and realise I'm leaning on the dishwasher as it starts, having heated up the water already. I hear Connor's car start just after, and move away from the worktop back into the living-room, where I can see him disappearing down the long drive, through the glass doors on the far side.

I switch on the TV. Joel Schumacher's
Batman & Robin
is on, and a 50" plasma screen close-up of Chris O'Donnell gives me a mild start.

"How are we supposed to work together if you don't trust me?"
O'Donnell's 'Dick Grayson' rants, before storming off.

That's
who Connor reminds me of. Only ginger. Taller, and sort of better-looking - to me, anyway. It's kind of eerie. My psychosis imagines Connor, still in the room, watching me through the TV. That would be quite a neat trick.

It's like having a simultaneous interpreter parallel to reality, instantly translating the world into something that makes sense somewhere else, in some other psychotic Universe populated by justifiably paranoid schizophrenics. But it's not currently powerful enough over me to make me switch off the TV. I leave
Batman & Robin
, and wander into the study. Connor's desktop PC is idling, with a rotating text screensaver that says KARMACHANIC in chrome 3-D lettering.

I touch the pad, and it disappears, replaced with an aerial photograph of the Blue Mountain region that he's mentioned once before. Looks quite pretty. I click on his hard drive icon, and skim through recent files. There's nothing much there. He doesn't seem to use it. There's very little history on his internet either, just online encyclopaedias, medical websites, science, and
National Geographic
. When I trace recent pages I find a few on supernatural sightings, headlines on group hysteria, suicide cults, and research pages into OCD, psychosis and eating disorders.

I don't know what I expected of Connor. Definitely not porn. Wildlife and Pest Control statistics. NLP, hypnosis, psychodynamics counselling techniques, with (hopefully not, in my opinion) their application in getting women into bed. I wasn't expecting urban social psychology and medical case studies. It seems to indicate he's preoccupied with things entirely different to either his work, or anything else I had suspected - or worried myself about. Instead of devious and manipulative, what's on here looks like the working mind of someone somewhat more logical, straightforward and down-to-Earth.

I sit down in the leather-backed chair, and swivel thoughtfully. Presently the screensaver reappears, and KARMACHANIC tumbles slowly around the screen.

I wonder what that means.

There's a big spherical amber paperweight on his desktop next to the monitor, with a half-opened chrysalis inside it. Must be worth quite a bit. I pick it up to take a closer look, and see that the chrysalis and what's partially emerged from it isn't alone. It has some sort of parasitic infection or mould growth. Meaning that whatever was meant to be developing originally is mutated, and probably wouldn't have survived anyway, acting as a host or surrogate to something else. Like a living hermit-crab-shell donor.

Like the computer and its content, I'm not sure if it belongs to
this
Connor, or the other one.

Chapter 24:
Undercarriage Of Events

"So you're looking for where the cracks might start to appear before they do?" Warren asks. "That suggests you're normal now, anyway."

"I'm just cautious," I shrug.

Warren is going over the bodywork of my car with a scanner, in one of the old RAF hangars. They've got a small piece of the destroyed grey FTO scanned into a computer, and are analysing the differences between the two.

It's a coincidence that we're discussing cracks. What I actually just asked him, finally, is if there's a psychological profile on Connor. Not because I'm concerned, like before - but because I'm interested.

"There was no detectable chitosan in the grey paintwork, or undercoat, on the FTO," Warren muses, preoccupied. "That's a biological crab-shell derivative in the paint on yours which reacts to sunlight, and stabilizes minor fractures before they can become vulnerable. It looks like lack of this element meant the FTO had hairline scratches from normal driving, which exposed enough of the compounds in the undercoat eventually, to make it go ballistic."

"Cool," I say, the logical side of my brain turned on by science.

"Plus it looks like it was washed frequently, which wore away the food-grade shellac in the varnish which was its only stability otherwise, and waxed with something which got into the hairline fractures, and reacted with or fuelled something else in the undercoat, acting as an accelerant," he continues. "You're better off as you do just waiting for it to rain, and only adding a bit of pH-neutral soap."

"I'll put it on my shopping list," I agree, trying to remember what the pH-balance of Xiannu Liquid is, which is what my car usually sees every few months if it's lucky.

"The way you're being cautious now, anyone would think you'd had a relationship before. So it's a good enough illusion of being normal," he admits. "Obviously, everyone gets monitored carefully. But some of you need less watching than others. Jason Green, they'd like to keep him on because he's a privacy freak and a diligent sort, which is good, but has more women after him than Elvis, which is not good. Plus he's still overawed by money in the world that he doesn't have yet, making him immature and likely to be fickle - but money that he does have, from his regular income, house, bills, insurances etc, are all up-to-date and secure, meaning that in the real world he can handle responsibility. So he needs watching all the time, because you don't know when he's going to be weakened - by the prospect of any of his fantasies coming true getting in the way of the common sense that he does have. Adam Grayson researched us first and dropped a lot of creative hints on the internet. He stalked you on a number of occasions and kept a diary of how he would have done things differently, and covered his tracks better. So he pretty much walked into the job. How he knew you were doing it, is still a mystery. It's possible he went to a police psychic once in the United States, because he also wrote his dreams down and had a small reading list on the subject of remote viewing and psychometry, and was interested in spiritualism and Tarot etc. Head office are going to be interested in any suggestions he has about work in the future, because although he seems to start with pure theory and inspiration instead of facts or evidence, he's got a good instinct and his speculations were all accurate. Also his attitude fits the job. Exorcizing personal demons in his family background aside, he feels it's vocational. But he still needs watching, because a guy who does what his dreams suggest to him can also be unpredictable, unless he's got a very strong moral base. Which is what you and Connor have in common. Both of you can at times be aggressive, volatile, prejudiced and split personality. But both of you are morally secure meaning you don't act without proper facts, research, evidence and information. That's why Connor's being promoted to Forensics, and they want you moved into Psychological Profiling. Which I know to you feels the same as old school stuff."

It's quite a list of revelations, but I don't find any of it surprising. Even hearing that Adam followed me. I guess he just considered that he owed me a bit of stalking. I just feel relieved that he didn't try to interfere.

"For one thing, you're still asking questions about the guy, before deciding whether it's safe to get more involved with him," Warren continues, and grins at me across the car roof. "So you're doing most of the psychological profiling for yourself already."

"Yeah, when head office want it done, though, they expect to get the answers from five minutes' observation of someone across a crowded room," I grumble.

"Yes, but that's because you're the best," he remarks. "Don't add any stickers or vinyl decals to your car. Sunlight, remember."

"What about heat transfer from the engine and electrics?" I ask. "Any concerns about the bodywork heating up and cooking the paint from the inside?"

"Could have happened in the FTO," he agrees, giving me a slightly surprised glance. He picks up the piece of rogue FTO, and passes it to me to have a look. I get the impression he's a little impressed by my input, and isn't above deferring a conclusion or two. "That's a cross-section of your paintwork magnified on the screen now. Microscopic crystalline cultured metallic rods in the primer and topcoat speed up heat dissipation to the surface, plus you've got a sort of Kevlar mesh skin bonded on underneath the paint which increases proportional internal to external bodywork surface area for heat transfer and hugs the car like a body stocking, increasing over-all stability."

I look at the reverse of the fragment.

"There's something there," I point out. "Looks like they tried to insulate it from heat on the inside with a reflective coating or something. The engine must have run really hot with limited heat transfer to the outside."

Warren clicks on another image on the computer screen, and points to a satellite image of the FTO.

"Bonnet vent," he says. "That explains why that was added. Trying to cool the engine. It certainly wouldn't have made it go faster."

"In the woods around here, more like a dead leaf vac and bug scoop," I joke.

"Yeah," he ponders. "Anyway, the bodywork detonated the live rounds in the trunk, as well as what looks like additional detonator electrics running through the rest of the car set up for some sort of small missile or rocket-launcher, but no arms signatures found for those, so either it wasn't loaded or designed to fire something else. Like a harpoon or net-launcher. Can't put a missile in a regular car anyway. Not unless you want to completely invalidate the warranty on your tyres, and the burglar alarm to go off and trigger all sorts of other problems."

"Not to mention the
Scotchguarding
guarantee on the upholstery would automatically expire," I agree politely.

"And don't even get me started on what would happen to the sub-woofers and tweeters," he chuckles.

"What if it had a flamethrower?" I suggest. I'm looking over his shoulder at what the computer has simulated as the blast radius. "Something created an instant fireball which burned itself out just as quickly. Any evidence of gas tanks?"

"Not yet." He shakes his head and taps the twisted fragment with a pencil. "We only found this bit so far, because it fell out of a tree on Sparky's head while he was metal-detecting for bullets on the ground. But Forensics could test soil and plant samples for chemical evidence of a gas. I'll get them to send your boyfriend down there with the team to do a bit of
Gardener's World
. A few walking wounded animal casualties are coming in. Most with gunshot or shrapnel wounds and minor singeing. Drury's been over at Forestry Rescue logging them in, if you stop by and see her afterwards, you can find out if any have sustained what look like gas burns."

"Why do you think someone's making these?" I ask. "Is it just the next step up in banger racing or something sinister?"

"We've had it before," he sighs. "You get these little Apocalypse-based cults who think the world's about to go horseradish-shaped, and start building themselves nuclear bunkers, stockpiling dry food, and occasionally arming themselves to defend what they believe will be their sustenance. This is typical
Mad Max
syndrome, guys who watch too much robot-war, pimp-my-scrap-yard TV. But there's a different sort of escapism emerging from the current recession. Not to mention what Charlie and Sparky used to refer to in their old days as a hippy cull. Cutting out dead wood and freeloaders. Kind of like the local Councils sending in the building inspectors, and closing as many old people's homes as they can to save money, without being accused of shifting them out into the open to die."

"Attack being the best form of defending one's shares in supply?" I query. "That's very cynical, as viewpoints go."

"I think they justify it more as a kindness," Warren says. "Old, sick, weak, diseased, or even tramps, as you may have observed. Haven't you noticed on the
News
, about cancer patients having their medication axed as well? Everywhere they can, little life support systems are being reduced or cut to save money, in the hope that the problems will go away once people die from their complaints instead of live with them. People aren't just afraid to grow old any more, or be out of work. They're afraid to get sick. Which means there's a small contingent out there looking for alternatives to getting old and sick, and another contingent who don't want to see that happen either. Think it goes against nature. But then, it's still all about money and what people can and can't afford, of what's currently available. That's the reality. The rest, is down to each individual's interpretation of reality."