In the Company of Ghosts (12 page)

‘So much in common.’ Agatha led Spads down the corridor and opened the living room door. Inside was a worn terracotta-pattern sofa in front of a television hanging on the wall, a multi-slot Blu-ray recorder below the entertainment screen, but that was the only free space. The majority of the room was given over to transparent crates of gleaming disks and removable storage drives connected to a pair of desktop computers. The space was made even smaller by the weighed-down shelves that had been erected across every spare gap. She could see from the way his eyes lit up that he appreciated the computers’ custom set-up.

‘Well then, Spads. I presume you’re here with news from the office, although you’re welcome to stay for Vincent’s Moules marinière.’

Spads rummaged around in his courier bag, pulling a file of papers out from behind his laptop. Agatha took them from him, and called to Bouche to bring her reading glasses. The Frenchman appeared with Agatha’s spectacles, then left the living room as she speed-read through Helen’s write-up and examined the photographs of Simon Werks’ flat. Spads’ notes on locating a hidden feed broadcasting Werks’ surveillance footage to an external location was a breakthrough she hadn’t been anticipating.
No less the welcome for it. God bless the world’s blackmailers.
She allowed a smile to settle on her face as she read about the murdered billionaire’s recent conversion to born-again Christianity. ‘You’ll find no atheists in foxholes.’

‘That’s exactly what Helen said.’

‘Of course she did, she’s a clever girl. Now then Spads, have we received permission from ControlWerks to access Simon Werks’ financial records?’

Spads shook his head. ‘They are in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The company says they are private, part of his estate. We need to speak to his lawyers.’

‘Do you
need
permission?’

‘Banks have a way of doing things. It’s always the same, their protocols. Bank compliance manuals are thick, but static. Staying static is never a good thing. Evolution is.’

He seemed to be speaking in a wider sense than just software, but Agatha bit back her curiosity. ‘Well then, I would say they’re probably asking for it, don’t you think? I would be specifically very interested in any large donations to charity, religious or otherwise, made from Simon Werks’ estate in the last year.’ She handed the file back to Spads. ‘And I would suggest deleting the photographs of the living room tomorrow when you check in at the office.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s where the most valuable antiques are on display. Before and after photos are highly sought after by insurance investigators.’

Spads had the courtesy to blush, confirming Agatha’s suspicions. From the kitchen came the muffled noise of one of
The Doors
’ albums being played too loud. Bouche only played music that loud when he was sulking. It was amazing; it was as if he could actually sense Agatha extending a dinner invitation to their visitor.

‘I’ll be going back to the office later,’ said Spads. ‘I’m close to completing the IP chain trace for the hidden feed. That should lead us to the missing security guard, Luke Wilder…’

‘Something to keep you and Helen out of mischief, then. Helen a little more than you. I doubt if collecting objects d’art is at the forefront of the our absent security man’s mind right now.’

‘Frank Ludington helped me track down the secret router. You were right about him.’

‘You need to have people around who you can rely on, who you can trust, who will stand well against your back. Especially when you’re working for the office, in our field of expertise.’

‘Is that a lesson?’

‘I believe it is.’

Spads reached for a quaintly analogue paper notepad with a pencil jammed into its spine. It must hold precious content indeed for even Spads not to trust it to his PDA or laptop. Agatha pushed the hand holding the notebook gently back into his canvas bag, but not before getting a glimpse of a list that looked suspiciously like it had been copied from the advice pages of a woman’s magazine. ‘You don’t need to write that down. Simply remember it.’

Spads stared towards her shelves, asking the question that had obviously been nagging him since he entered the living room. ‘Why do you collect so many discs when you can download shows on demand?’

‘There’s a sadness in old television shows, don’t you think?’ said Agatha, standing up and brushing a row of disks labelled
M.A.S.H
. ‘All those people, tuning in every week to catch the latest episode. Discussing which character they like best with their friends. Blogging about plots and updating their social networking services with ideas of where the stories should head. And then the series
are
gone. Just a memory, a few lost zeroes and ones on a video-streaming server. Nothing you can leave for your children. Hardcopies lasted for centuries, Chaucer and Shakespeare handed across the generations as a legacy. But who remembers
Callan
or
Kojak
? That’s what our world has become, not enough attention or memory left in our crowded world to sing of the
Wombles
around our tribe’s campfires.’

‘But why record them?’ he said, indicating her banks of humming storage devices. ‘Create an offline mirror?’

‘It’s an almost impossible task, to rewrite and conceal history written on paper pages; even more arduous to tamper with every book at the same time. But after you’ve digitised your memories, why, then there’s only the charge of an electron spin separating Stalin as Monster from Stalin as Saviour. I’m taking snapshots of our humanity, our knowledge, and the value isn’t in what’s recorded. It’s in locating what’s might be erased, or already has been. You think this is a clutter of storage devices, trying to capture the digital river? It’s not. You can’t capture the river, the river is flow. My room here is pure Zen. I’m making use of what is no longer there.’ She reached over and waved her hand through the doorway. ‘Just like the space that allows us to enter the room. What’s not there is as important as what is.’

‘I
so
don’t understand,’ said Spads.

‘At the office, most of the work that’s done is absorbing the secrets people no longer care to know, storing them away for a rainy day that will never come. You might say this is the opposite face of that task, preserving the truth rather than merely hiding it. Pro bono work, carried out in way of my penance.’

Spads shook his head, examining the contents of the shelves as if they might help him. ‘
ChiPs
,
Airwolf
,
F Troop
,
Daktari
,
Rising Damp
,
My Favourite Martian
,
The Rockford Fil
es.’ He recited the obviously unfamiliar titles like Latin at a Mass. ‘Are they the truth?’

‘More than you might think.’

‘Did God tell you to preserve them?’

‘Actually, it was Frank Sinatra. Let’s just say we both have our peculiar little ways, Spads. In my case, it’s one of the perils of Mister Doyle cancelling my sectioning order at this country’s most secure mental institution.’

‘Doyle. I almost forgot. He asked me to tell you that you and he have an interview tomorrow morning with the head of Greenrock Capital. It’s arranged in his club in London. He’s called William T. McCarley. His fund wants to buy ControlWerks.’

‘So I hear. Fast work indeed. Could you gauge from Mister Doyle how willingly the firm granted the interview?’

‘Doyle didn’t look happy. He never seems happy.’

‘Making people happy isn’t his business, friend,’ said Agatha. She grinned. ‘Let’s see how unhappy we can make your, well… flatmate.’

In the kitchen,
The Doors
album was rising to a crescendo, Jim Morrison opining on the majority of the children being insane.
You’re not wrong, Jimmy.
It was time for dinner for three, four if you included their pig. And that was just the guests who were alive.

***

Doyle kept a wary eye on his car’s sat-nav, a piece of twenty-first century high tech intruding on his classic’s dash, checking for a little flash of red on the screen that would indicate an available parking space in the area. The seat next to him still had the boy’s car seat strapped into it, the boot too full of junk to stow the chair and Agatha Witchley hovering behind his shoulder in the back, leaving him feeling far too close to the chauffeur in
Driving Miss Daisy
.

‘There we are,’ said Mrs Witchley, pointing to a car pulling away from the curb, leaving an empty space along the Mayfair street. It was under an oak tree, the white splatter of bird shit on the roofs of the nearby Porsche four-wheel drives nearly enough to put Doyle off from pulling in, as were the litter of acorns fallen on top of the cars. He resigned himself to some tissue wiping of his beloved Chevy Nova later on. He manoeuvred in manually, parked up, then swung the door out into the pavement. The parking meter was book-by-phone, and at Mayfair prices, Doyle also had to resign himself to taking out a second mortgage to pay for the time the two of them would spend interviewing the head of Greenrock Capital.

‘Real men don’t use autopark,’ said Mrs Witchley, in a tone warm enough he could almost believe she wasn’t being sarcastic.

‘You get a chance to read up on William T. McMoneybags last night?’ retorted Doyle.

Mrs Witchley shut her door and turned to look at the sweep of white stone, iron railings and faux temple columns fronting the building they had parked alongside. ‘I believe I was somewhat side-tracked by the history of the institution we’re meeting him in.’ The entrance to the Plato Club was six steps up to an open set of double doors at the front of the wide three story Georgian façade – a black silhouette of the Greek philosopher’s head enamelled on a discrete brass plate, not even the club’s name, just the words
subscription library
under the head’s contours.

‘Yeah, he’s sending us a message by meeting us here. The
Big I Am
. Davos for the people that get invited to Davos. This place is so far beyond exclusive, that they’re having a laugh. British Prime Ministers get turned down for membership at the Plato Club.’

‘Only the ones who are no longer in power,’ said Mrs Witchley. ‘It wasn’t so much the exclusive nature of the membership that had me entranced – all of London’s gentlemen’s clubs play that game. No, it is the genius of portraying the club’s headquarters as a subscription library.’

‘That’s not genius, love, it’s fake snobbery. We’re so clever we read books; on actual paper, hand-bound in the leather of rare endangered goats. You won’t find JK Rowling’s latest pot-boiler on our shelves, but you will have to pay the equivalent of a garage full of new Mercedes every year to join.’

‘You can’t put a price on good company, Mister Doyle. But that’s not the genius of this place. The club’s characterized as a
library
. In the last London riots, six million pounds worth of electronic goods were taken and nearly as much in designer trainers and clothes. Bobbins, even pound stores were cleared out and set on fire. But not one single bookshop or library was looted. Not
one
. Nobody steals books. Nobody puts a brick through a library. You are either too educated to do it, or not nearly educated enough. The only protesters a library ever sees are mobs of local pensioners when they hear it might close. This—’ she indicated the building, ‘—is the world’s most exclusive stealth building. Rendered invisible by the use of two simple words. Yes, I would call that genius.’

Doyle watched in growing impatience as Mrs Witchley bent down by the side of his Nova, opened her handbag and started scooping up handfuls of acorns from the gutter into her handbag. I know I’m going to regret asking, but…’

‘My pig has rather a fond tooth for the common acorn, Mister Doyle. He can’t get enough of them.’

‘Well, that’s all right then. You really are two cards short of the complete Pokemon set, love.’

‘I don’t suppose it will help if I told you that Churchill visited me last night after I finished taking a rather splendid supper with young Spads. Call it a coincidence, but he mentioned acorns, too. Churchill that is, not Spads.’

‘See the future too, then, can they, without even reading tea-leaves? That’s versatile.’

‘I don’t think time moves for the passed in the same way as it does for us. I did question one of them, once. All I was told was that being afraid of what happens
after
you are dead does you about as much as good as being afraid of not being around
before
you were born.’ She stopped filling her bag, lifted up a single acorn, removed her little set of steel teeth, and used the hole punch-like device to pierce a cavity in the oak nut. Agatha held up the acorn to the light, the morning sunlight filtering through the little triangle she had punched through it. You’d think she was a jeweller who’d found a diamond in the street. She chuckled to herself as she wedged the acorn in the groove of Doyle’s engine bonnet and dropped the little device back in her handbag. ‘What was it Winnie said to me, again?
Who knows what English oak shall grow from little acorns
.’

‘You want to feed the birds, Gypsy Jen, you can wipe off my Nova afterwards. The little tweety bastards are going to whitewash it under the leaves here as it. You’ve missed a few acorns on the top of that Lamborghini Aventador behind us. You want me to help bag them for you, or shall we go and see if William T. McMoneybags is bloody bumping off company founders so his fund can clean up?’