Halfhead (7 page)

DS Cameron smiled at him. ‘Please, if we’re going to be friends you’ll have to call me Jo.’

‘Jo…’ George sighed. ‘Lovely.’ He stood there with a soppy look on his face for a moment. Then blinked and frowned, as if noticing Will for the first time. ‘Suppose
you’re
here for those halfheads?’

‘Where are they?’

The pathologist sniffed. ‘You see what I have to put up with, Jo? No “hello”, no pleasantries, no nothing. Man’s got no manners at all.’ He dug a hanky out of his pocket and made splattery noises into it. ‘Still, I bear it because I am a gentleman.’

He snapped his bloody gloves into a cleanbox, then wandered over to a large trolley, draped with a sheet.

‘Tada!’ George whipped off the cloth, revealing three rows of severed heads. Most of the skin was still wrinkled, the close-cropped hair making them look like mouldy prunes, but their foreheads were smooth and shiny. The barcodes perfectly clear.

Jo squatted in front of the partially mummified features, stroking one of the heads. ‘Wow: how did you manage that?’

‘Ah…’ He winked at her. ‘That would be telling!’

Will lent forward and sniffed. ‘Hand cream?’

‘Hand cream?’ George stuck his nose in the air. ‘Don’t be
ridiculous
, why on Earth would I use hand cream on severed heads? Hand cream…pffff.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s face cream. Been slapping it on since yesterday.’

‘George, you’re a star.’ Will grabbed a reader from the
worktop behind them. There was something red and glutinous on the handle, but he didn’t notice until it was all over his hands. ‘Oh for God’s sake…’

The pathologist shrugged. ‘It’s strawberry jam. I dropped my sandwich.’

Will handed the sticky piece of equipment to DS ‘call me Jo’ Cameron and went to wash his hands. By the time he’d finished she was running the reader over the last head in the row. It made a reassuringly positive beep.

She nodded at him. ‘Got ID numbers on all of them.’

‘Right,’ he said, drying his hands on the back of George’s labcoat, ‘now we need some names. Get onto Services: tell them to run a match.’

‘Hoy!’ The little pathologist snatched his coat-tails away. ‘You’re very welcome, I’m sure!’

‘George, you know I have nothing but the utmost respect for your phenomenal professional acumen.’

‘Bollocks. Jo, it’s been a pleasure having you again, feel free to pop in any time.’ George bent and kissed her jam and face cream flavoured hand before turning to Will. ‘But you can bugger off and never come back.’

Services ran their operation—and most of the city—from an imposing tower of foamcrete, pink marble, and green glass. An unattractive wart that had gone slightly mouldy.

The elevator pinged, then the doors slid open. Twenty-seventh floor: Offender Management Department—South. Will and Jo stepped off the escalator into plush, beige carpeting. A medium-sized trundle case followed them, squeaking along on juddering caterpillar tracks as they made their way to the long, low reception desk. Six people manned the desk, all of them talking into fingerphones, the low murmur of their conversations barely audible through the sonic dampening. When a mousy blonde finally deigned to look his way, Will pulled out his ID and smiled.

‘Will Hunter: Network. I’d like to speak to someone in records please.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but all those lines are busy right now.’ Her left eye faded from glossy grey to spider-veined pink, the iris shining, vivid and yellow as she took off her finger-phone.

‘I called earlier: case of severed halfheads need identifying. I have a list of the ID numbers, so if you could just—’

‘I’m sorry, sir, we can’t give out any details without formal
identification taking place. All remains have to be signed over for identification.’

Will nudged the trundle case with his foot. ‘That’s why we brought them with us.’

‘One second.’ The receptionist slipped the blue plastic sleeve back on her index finger, then pointed at her own face. Her owl’s eye went grey again, lights flickering in the depths. ‘Steve? It’s Marjory, listen I’ve got some bloke from the Network here and he wants some halfheads ID’d…Yes…Yes, I told him that, says he’s got them with him…’ She swung her finger around, pointing at Will instead. ‘…Yeah, that’s what I thought too…’ And then she was pointing at herself again. ‘OK, thanks Steve.’

She dragged out a datapad and made Will sign half a dozen different forms in triplicate, then summoned a tattooed youth to take the trundle case away. As it disappeared through a door marked ‘Private’ she nodded at a small waiting area over by the floor-to-ceiling window. ‘If you’d like to take a seat someone will see you shortly.’ And then her eye went grey again, and she was off.

Will settled into a chair that was a whole lot less comfortable than it looked, Jo easing herself down beside him. From here they had a perfect view of Glasgow’s main transport hub—shuttles, Groundhuggers, Behemoths, all in the process ofcoming or going. Little one-person Bumbles vwipped through the air, following complicated holding patterns, twisting and turning like flocks of starlings as a huge blue Behemoth slipped its mooring and lumbered up into the sweltering morning.

Two minutes later it was just a distant silhouette against the dirty-yellow sky.

DS Cameron, stretching out in her seat. ‘How long you think we’ll have to wait?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

Fifteen minutes later they were still there.

Jo turned in her seat and scowled back at the reception
desk. ‘All they’ve got to do is scan the codes into the computer. How hard can it be?’ She fidgeted. ‘Can’t you just stick your ID back under that frumpy wee cow’s nose and pull rank? You’re the sodding Assistant Section Director!’

‘Wouldn’t make any difference: Services are a law unto themselves. Far as they’re concerned they run the city. Everyone else is just window dressing.’

‘Hmmmph,’ Jo folded her arms and slumped back in her seat, ‘and there was me thinking it was just us Bluecoats that never get any respect. Joined-up government my arse. Tell you: I had my way we’d slap the bloody lot of them in the Tin for obstruction. Bunch of tight-sphinctered, penny-pinching, halfwit—’

‘Excuse me?’ DS Cameron’s favourite ‘frumpy wee cow’ was waving at them. ‘Someone from records can speak to you now.’ She pointed to a short corridor next to the lifts. ‘Booth number three.’

The cramped cubicle contained two seats and a narrow shelf bolted beneath the large screen mounted on the wall. Will and Jo squeezed in and closed the door. Thirty seconds later the screen flickered into life and the someone from records they’d been promised appeared: a man with a huge head, wild cloned hair and a trendy pixel tattoo that made abstract patterns as he spoke.
‘This going to take long? Only I’ve got a conference call in five minutes.’

Will tried not to sound as pissed off as he felt. ‘I just signed over seventeen severed halfheads for identification: I need names, postings and dates to go with them.’

‘And you are?’

‘William Hunter. Assistant Network Director William Hunter.’

‘How nice for you.’
He looked off the bottom of the screen for a moment, and the sound of a keyboard clicked out of the speakers.
‘One moment.’
The screen went blank.

Jo muttered something under her breath that would have made the Marquis de Sade blush.

Three minutes later he was back
. ‘And are these the same halfheads that a…’
Pause. Frown.
‘Detective Sergeant Campbell enquired about this morning?’

‘DS Cameron. That’s right.’

The man on the screen sighed.
‘As we explained to DS Campbell, we can’t give out that kind of information over the phone.’

Will gritted his teeth. ‘We’re not on the phone, you are.’

‘Have you signed over the severed halfheads to a representative from resourcing?’

‘I told you that at the start, remember?’

‘Until they’re signed over to a representative from resourcing we can’t give out any details.’

‘We signed them over!’

‘I see. And have you received notification of identification?’

‘No, that’s why we’re sitting here. I want
you
to tell
me
who the halfheads were!’

‘I’m sorry I can’t give out that information over the phone.’

Jo couldn’t contain herself any longer.

‘Listen up you scribbly-faced bag of shite, either you get your finger out and—’ She was cut off by a beep from the speaker.

‘I’m sorry, our time is up.’
And with that the screen went blank.

‘What the
fuck
?’ She slammed her palm against the screen, making the whole thing shake. ‘WE’VE BEEN HERE HALF A BLOODY HOUR!’ Jo turned to Will. ‘Can you believe this shite?’

‘Watch the door.’ He pulled a small, flat pack from a hidden pocket in his Network-issue jacket. It was full of wire tools, a tube of metaliglue, and a battered cracker. Will slid one of the thin metal slices into the joint between the screen’s control panel and the wall, then twisted. The panel popped open, revealing a small chip rack and a rats’ nest of wires.

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

He pulled a pair of wires from the jumble and slapped a
connector onto each. ‘Most security systems are designed to stop people hacking in from the outside. So if you want to break into them, do it from the inside…’

The cracker’s keypad rattled beneath his fingertips as he inveigled himself into Services’ local network. ‘Makes the guardian AIs a lot less sceptical.’

Two minutes, thirty-seven seconds later the cracker bleeped. Will grinned. ‘We’re in. Who’s first?’

Jo checked her notes. ‘S R dash O dash nine six two dash nine five eight.’

Will punched the code into the cracker, and the room’s main screen filled with personal details.

‘Thomas Simpson, thirty-seven. Convicted of serial rape eight years ago, been missing for four. Working at Brewster Towers when he disappeared. Next?’

‘M H dash D dash five three two seven dash eight eight seven.’

‘Hold on…Alison Campbell, forty-five: multiple homicide. Halfheaded three years ago. Went missing from Sherman House.’

It didn’t take long to see the pattern: Allan Brown liked to hunt close to home, only taking halfheads sent to clean the four connurb blocks that made up Monstrosity Square. Preying on a steady diet of murderers and rapists. There was even a serial killer in the collection of severed heads—a cannibal called Iain Foreshaw who’d butchered seven nursing students and two prostitutes. It was a fittingly ironic end to a predator’s life: brought down and eaten by one of its own kind.

In his own twisted way, Allan Brown had put himself at the very top of the food chain.

Now all they had to do was find out who’d killed him.

The mop slops dirty water from one side of the toilet to the other, back and forth, back and forth. Greasy ribbons of filth making patterns on the grubby tiles. The smell doesn’t really
bother her any more. It did when they’d dropped her off here this morning, bundling her out of the Roadhugger with a mop and a pail, speaking to her like some sort of trained monkey: ‘Go in. Clean. You come back when called. Understand? I said, do you understand?’

Patronizing bastard.

For a moment she thinks about taking her mop, snapping it in half, and using the splintered end to gouge the man’s face into tattered, bloody ribbons. Pluck the eyes right out of his head…

She has always loved eyes. They look so pretty, lying in the palm of her hand.

It takes a lot of control to squash the desire. She hasn’t had her medication and it’s getting more and more difficult to keep it buried deep inside where it can burn bright and fierce. But somehow she manages. She nods and trudges into the connurb block like all the other good little halfheads. Trembling inside with bees and broken glass.

The morning passes in a reek of human waste and disinfectant, memories flickering in and out like a distant firework display. The sparks too far away to taste properly. On the tip of the tongue she doesn’t have any more.

Some time around noon the front pocket of her jumpsuit starts buzzing and she stands staring at it. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Busy little bees. Buzzing against her broken glass chest.

Hungry.

She drops the mop and walks out into the baking sun, following the other halfheads. The pig and his friend are there with their bright yellow Roadhugger. They plug a tube into her arm and fill her full of intravenous nutrients, but it doesn’t ease the gnawing ache.

Then the ugly men are gone again, and she’s left to clean and mop.

The afternoon is more lucid. Thoughts are starting to stay in her head where she can focus on them, follow them.
Plan
.

Food will be the biggest problem. If she disappears, the man who looks like a pig won’t feed her any more.

She stops mopping, frowning at her reflection in the dirty water. Remembering soft-green walls, squeaky flooring, men and women in long white coats. Where every room smells like the stuff they put in the buckets. The smell of safety.

She’d have smiled then, if she had enough face to do it with.

‘OK,’ said Will as they pushed their way through the crowded lobby back at Network Headquarters. ‘What do you want to do now?’

‘String that Services shitebag up by his goolies.’ A gaggle of children in garish school uniform stopped right in front of them, so they had to detour past a bus party of OAPs ogling a Cézanne.

‘I meant about the investigation.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Lot of murders in that bit of town go unsolved. Thousands of potential witnesses, but no one ever admits to seeing anything. From the state of the body, I’d say whoever did it, this wasn’t their first time. Won’t be their last either.’

‘Pretty safe bet.’

‘I dumped all the crime scene data into the system this morning, MO’s pretty damn distinctive so we’re bound to get a match.’ She grinned, eyes sparkling. ‘Nice to have the resources to really go after a case like this for a change, instead of just handing it over to the Future Boys…No offence.’

‘None taken.’

They slipped into one of the staff lifts and punched the button for the fourth floor.

‘You know,’ said Jo as the doors closed, shutting out the noisy lobby, ‘I was wondering…You’ve got a kind of reputation—Urrrgh…’ She staggered, face screwed up in a grimace, teeth bared.

Will grabbed her, holding her upright.

‘Damnit!’

‘You all right?’

‘No…’ She stayed where she was—wrapped in his arms, eyes closed, breathing deeply. In and out.

Will looked down at the top of her head. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Coffin dodger. Someone’s gone missing.’

It might have been the confines of the lift that made Will feel suddenly uncomfortable, or it might have been the sensation of Jo’s breasts rising and falling against his chest as she breathed. Whichever it was he could feel his temperature rising inch by embarrassing inch.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. ‘Thanks. They’re supposed to put out a warning on the comlink before they do a broadcast. Give us a chance to prepare.’

Will let go. Stepped back. Cleared his throat. Stuck his hands in his pockets, hiding his embarrassment. ‘No problem.’

‘Jesus.’ Jo shuddered. ‘Nothing like a transmitter going off in the base of your skull to put a shiner on the day.’ She rubbed a hand over the patch of shiny new skin at the back of her head. ‘Why they can’t just send the bloody signal out to the poor bastard they’re looking for, I don’t know.’

‘Is it always that bad?’

‘Caught me off guard that’s all. They broadcast the “come in number six: your time’s up” message to every Bluecoat in the city and the things in our heads jump about like it’s Hogmanay. Doesn’t matter if you’re number six or not. System was meant to be selective, only trip the locator in whoever’s gone missing, but the IT company fucked the installation up and we haven’t got the budget to fix it.’ She stopped and frowned at him. ‘You don’t have them do you?’

‘Nope: security risk. It’d be too easy to spot an agent when they’re undercover. Network doesn’t care if it can’t find our dead bodies.’

‘Lucky bastards.’

The lift arrived on the fourth floor with a small, metallic ‘ping’. Will slapped a professional smile on his face as the doors slid open, but left his hands in his pockets.

‘Well…I have all that lovely paperwork to get back to. Let me know how you’re getting on with the case, OK?’

‘Yes, sir.’ She snapped off a salute, turned on her heel and marched away.

As the lift doors slid slowly shut Will closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Bloody hell.’ He was definitely getting too old for this.