Halfhead (10 page)

Will and Emily stepped off the escalator and into the crowded lobby of Sherman House. Thursday morning, and the huge room was loud and sweaty, packed with sullen faces, all lit with the greasy green light that filtered in through the mould-covered plexiglass. A couple of halfheads pushed floor polishers across the atrium, redistributing the dirt. Someone nodded past, the sound of a cheap sub-dermal music player echoing out of his mouth. Bitter smells of stewed coffee, the dusty scent of mildew, the sweet tang of aerosol narcotics.

Will rubbed his palms dry on his trousers.

Nothing to worry about. He could do this. Deep breath. He could definitely do this. Nothing to worry about.

Why was it so damned hot in here?

He hauled at the collar of his eclectic rags—rescued from a seedy, second-hand shop on Nesbit Road—a patchwork of clashing colours and patterns, the trailing edges flapping as he moved. Emily wore hers like a native, but he looked like someone’s dad in fancy dress. It had been years since he’d gone undercover and it showed.

‘Relax,’ she said, scanning the crowd. ‘Everyone’s going to think someone shoved a dead cat up your arse.’

‘Feel like a bloody idiot.’

‘Look like one too.’ Emily frowned at him. ‘You might as well be carrying a six-foot placard saying “Undercover agent, please shoot me!”
Relax
for God’s sake.’

Will slouched, letting his arms dangle as they sauntered carefully across the crowded atrium.

‘Better. But still crap.’ She pulled the tabs on the two beers they’d bought at a little off-licence vending machine at the Martian Pavilion, and handed one over. ‘Try to look more vague. If anyone says anything just mumble incoherently, I’ll tell them you’re on Tezzers.’

‘Thanks a heap.’ He took a gulp from the tube, grimacing as the fizzy liquid burnt on the way down. Too much to drink last night: toasting the dear departed bitch’s memory with Emily and Brian in a variety of pubs, ending up in a pretentious little freezy joint on Sauchiehall Street. Where the drinks were every bit as ridiculously overblown as the music.

‘OK,’ he said, stifling an acidic belch, ‘how do you want to play it?’

‘You’re my half-wit, good for nothing boyfriend. I am a strong, independent woman and you follow me about, like some sort of smelly Alsatian.’

‘Woof.’

‘Good boy.’ She set off for the lifts, Will shambling along behind her, still trying to get into the part. Hunched up grunting obscenities under his breath.

About a dozen youths were gathered around the bank of lifts, dressed in the skin-tight formal wear that was so fashionable three years ago. Some were staggering about, giggling, others slumped back against the wall with big wet grins and eyes the colour of tarmac. The outskirts of the pack looked jumpy, as if they were waiting for their turn to go off to cloud-cuckoo land, but didn’t have enough money for the bus.

Emily leant over and whispered at Will, ‘Think they’re on Tezzers?’

‘More like H, or Mouse. They’ll be turning over anyone who looks like they haven’t already swallowed their daily allowance.’

He hooked an arm though hers and staggered slightly, blinking slowly, trying to look as if he’d just swallowed a whole week’s ration of government-issued narcotics. ‘You want to take the escalator instead?’

Emily shook her head. ‘We’re too close. If we turn round and go the other way it’ll look like we’ve got something worth having.’

‘And they’ll try and take it.’

‘Got it in one.’

They reached the outer edges of the group. One of the jumpy kids stepped in front of them. Sharp features, squint teeth, a monocle tattooed around his right eye. ‘Gotta pay the taxman, yeah?’

Emily stared at him. ‘Get to fuck, you wee radge.’

Monocle smiled. And that’s when Will realized that the young man’s teeth weren’t squint—they were filed to points. All the better to eat you with…

‘“Get to fuck,” is it?’ Monocle turned and held his hands out. ‘You hear what the bitch says to me? Eh?’ When he turned back there was a six-inch serrated knife in his hands. ‘You know what? For an old bird you’re pretty fit…’ He ran the knife blade up and down the colourful tatters on Emily’s sleeve. ‘Bet you like it rough, eh? Bet you’re just fuckin’ gaspin’ for me and my mates to take you round the back and bang the shit out you. Yeah?’

Will stepped forwards. ‘Who do you think—’

‘Shut it, Grandad.’ Now the knife was an inch from Will’s throat. ‘We won’t forget about you, you know? Malcolm here likes breakin’ in auld mannie’s arses for them. Don’t you Malcolm?’

A fat youth with pimples and a shark’s-tooth-grin nodded. ‘Fuckin’ gay you up
brilliant
, man.’

‘Aye, so…’ Monocle looked back at Emily. ‘You got a dirty mouth, bet I got something that’ll clean it for—ulk…’

The knife wavered, then dropped to the tatty floor. The kid’s eyes bulged in his head, lips twitching, face turning pink. Emily had her hand buried in his crotch, twisting cloth and skin and testicles into a tight fist.

‘Ahhh, Jesusfuckfuckfuck…’

She smiled. ‘“Bang the shit out of me”?’ She screwed her hand around another quarter turn and Monocle’s knees gave way. Emily wrapped her other hand around his throat, keeping him upright. ‘I’m out of your league, Funshine.’

And then she let go.

Monocle collapsed, curled into a ball, and made a high-pitched keening noise. Like a deflating balloon.

Emily turned to the rest of the troupe. ‘Anyone else?’

They all took a step back, leaving a clear path to the open lift doors.

‘Didn’t think so.’

Inside the graffiti-covered compartment, Emily stabbed the button marked ‘47’ and settled back against the scarred metal wall. As the doors slid shut, the youths stood and stared at Emily with something close to hero worship.

The lift lurched to a halt on the second floor, and a handful of people got on. Then it was off again, the sound of squealing metal marking the time between floors. More figures in colourful tatters got on at the seventh. A couple left at the ninth.

Then the destinator pinged for the thirteenth floor and a large woman squeezed into the crowded lift.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit!

Will grabbed Emily and pulled her against his chest, engulfing her in a deep, groping kiss. Her back went rock-hard beneath his fingers…and then she loosened up, weaving her hands into his hair and making happy little moaning sounds.

On the other side of the lift, the large woman scowled, her green eyes flicking like razorblades across the faces in the car. Big-boned rather than fat, with ginger hair and tribal scars, dressed in the same set of multicoloured rags she’d had on when Will shot her in the chest with Stein’s Zapper.

Floors passed, and each time the lift juddered to a stop more people squeezed their way out of the car, doing their best not to brush against the big woman. Keeping out of trouble.

Twenty levels later the doors slid open and the redhead stomped off down the corridor. Now Emily and Will were alone in the lift, and as the car began to rise again, he pulled back from Emily’s lips.

‘Why Mr Hunter,’ she said with a smile. ‘How impetuous of you.’

Will grinned and let her go. ‘Thought she was never going to leave!’

The expression on Lieutenant Brand’s face didn’t alter much, but it took her a heartbeat before she said, ‘Who was it?’

‘She was the first of the mob to reach Allan Brown’s place. I had to zap her.’ He slumped back against the handrail and scrubbed his face with his hands. Heart still thumping. ‘Sorry about jumping on you like that. It was the only thing I could think of at the time.’

She kept the smile on her face and straightened out the tatty hem of her tunic. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just try to give me a bit more notice next time. Maybe dinner and a spot of dancing. Something like that.’

She stands there in the storeroom, with a brand-new reader in her hands, the packaging torn and discarded at her feet. The reader hums as she runs it across the barcode above her left eye. And then it bleeps. It knows who she is.

Holding her breath, she lowers the device and reads the words on the small screen: ‘SAMPLE 1. ID: SH-O/D-10286’

Disappointment.

She tries again, but all it says is, ‘S
AMPLE
2. ID: SH-O/D-10286’

What good is that? How is that supposed to help?

She was expecting a name, something that would trigger her memory. Something that would tell her who she was.

‘S
AMPLE
3. ID: SH-O/D-10286’

The reader explodes when she hurls it to the floor. She stamps on the plastic fragments, kicking them away into the store. All she wants is a name, is that really so much to ask for? Is it?

IS IT?

She closes her eyes, taking deep shuddering breaths.

Calm down. Calm. Slow breaths.

Stay in control.

Bees and broken glass…

She stares off into space, tapping her fingetips gently against her exposed teeth. There will be records in the system somewhere. They halfheaded her in one of the theatres upstairs, they will have her records on file. What she needs is a doctors’ terminal: one with direct access into the hospital’s secure patient database.

Maybe she’ll find someone to satisfy her
other
needs on the way? Someone to while away the hours with. Someone to spread across the floor like raspberry jam…

Just as long as she’s careful. Just as long as she stays in control.

That’s what went wrong before: she stopped taking her medicine, because she thought she didn’t need it. She stopped taking her medicine, because she thought she could control herself without it. She was wrong. She needs her medicine…but she can’t take her medicine—can’t remember what it is.

But once she finds out who she is, everything will be all right.

She will take her medicine.

She will be good.

She will behave.

She promises herself that.

Carefully, she slots her mop into the bucket she stole yesterday and wheels it out through the storeroom door.

Cool. Calm. And in control. Dragging a cloud of bees behind her.

The elevator doors slid open on the forty-seventh floor of Sherman House. There was a faint, lingering smell of burned bacon as they walked up the scorched corridor. Fresh graffiti marked the wall in shiny red paint where Stein had caught fire: ‘O
NE
—N
IL
!’

Allan Brown’s stinking nest had been boarded up since they were last there; large plasticboard sheets welded over the entrance. Two doors down, flat one twenty-two was safely locked. Will punched in the entry code and scowled as the lock went ‘clunk’ at him.

‘Problems?’

‘Code’s been changed…Hope they haven’t assigned the place to new tenants.’

He knocked and they waited. Then knocked again.

No answer.

Will popped the cover off the lock and thirty seconds later they were standing in the empty flat. The place was exactly as he’d remembered it: tidy, but shabby.

Emily stared at the faded yellow-and-green wallpaper. ‘This isn’t the place on the recording. It can’t be.’

‘It is. I double, triple and quadruple checked. And then I got Brian to do the same. This is where Kevin McEwen slaughtered his family.’ Will walked from room to room, retracing his steps. There was no sign of blood anywhere.

‘If the place’s been cleaned, how come it looks so tatty?’

‘Exactly.’ Will rubbed a hand across the wall nearest the kitchen. ‘Scrub that much blood off the walls and you’ll take half the wallpaper with it. I wonder if they’ve…’ He took a step back. Frowned. That couldn’t be right. There was no
way
that could be right.

‘What? What have you found?’

He pointed at a shadow on the wall—ingrained dust showing where a picture had hung for years. The grime framing the rectangular silhouette was made up of tiny dots of cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

‘The dirt’s not real, it’s been printed on…’ He lurched to the other side of the room. There was a little stick-figure family scribbled on the wall in red crayon. The smiling figures were made up of the same magenta and yellow spots. Everywhere he looked, he found more and more counterfeit squalor.

Emily announced that the kitchen was full of the same fake grime, but Will wasn’t really listening. He’d positioned himself in the middle of the room, just where the SOC team’s scanning equipment would have sat. The computer reconstruction was full of holes, blobs of no data, and as he stood there he got the nasty feeling he knew why. The blobs hid the upper corners of the room, just where you’d put surveillance equipment if you wanted to keep an eye on the flat’s occupants.

‘This gets weirder,’ said Emily emerging from the kitchen, ‘there are damp patches under the sink and they’ve been printed on too. Inside a cupboard! Who in their right minds…What are you doing?’

‘Give me a leg up.’

Emily braced herself into the corner, hoisting him up as if he was barely there.

Will peered at the join between the walls and the ceiling. It looked normal enough, but then it would, wouldn’t it? Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out Brian’s Palm
Thrummer, twisted the little canister open, and set it on minimum. It burred in his hand, numbing his fingertips as he carefully stripped the upper layers of wallpaper and plasticboard away, turning them into a cloud of grey dust that billowed out into the room.

There was something in there…

Will took a deep breath and blew, clearing the fog away. Two sonic probes and a small jammer were bolted into a little metal box, mounted behind the plasticboard. The whole array was lit up: the probes grumbling away to themselves as they recorded him and everything else in the room.

‘Shit!’ Will leapt to the ground. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Now!’ He grabbed Emily and hauled her towards the door.

‘What the hell’s got into you?’

‘How long have we been in here?’ He pulled back his tatty rag sleeve and glanced at his watch. ‘Five minutes. Shit, shit,
shit
!’

Will slammed the door of the apartment behind them, and hurried down the corridor, back towards the lifts, muttering all the way. ‘Come on, come on…’