The Age of Scorpio

15. Now

Maude had held her as she sobbed while Uday, his expression difficult to read, had made her hot chocolate liberally laced with cheap whisky. They were near strangers to her, and her sister had hurt them – Uday certainly had no reason to trust her – but they looked after her. Made sure she was okay.

Later Maude was curled up on the sofa snoring gently, her head in Uday’s lap. He was stroking her hair as she slept. Being held had become too much for Beth and had just made her cry more, so she had moved to the ancient but still comfortable armchair, bringing her knees up to her chest as she sipped another Irish hot chocolate. Her face was still streaked, her chest still hurting from crying. Some tough ex-con, she thought. Then more bitterly, If it had been the other way around, the only crying Talia would have done would have been to call attention to herself.

Uday reached under the sofa, making Maude stir in her sleep, and pulled out the bayonet. The blade was clean. Uday held it in front of her.

‘I don’t like this being here,’ he finally said.

‘It was my great-grandfather’s,’ Beth said. She wasn’t sure why.

‘I don’t want violence brought here. Do you understand?’ He was still holding the bayonet, staring at the blade.

Beth looked down. ‘I’m through with it. She’s dead. There was some weird stuff… There’s nothing I can do.’

‘Arbogast,’ Uday said quietly, not wanting to wake Maude. Then he handed the bayonet back to Beth. ‘I almost wish you’d killed him. Piece of shit.’ There was a barely restrained fury in Uday’s whisper.

‘You knew him?’

Uday shook his head. ‘I was just around to try and help Maude pick up the pieces afterwards. Oh, it wasn’t rape – too genteel and manipulative for that. May as well have been for what it did to her self-esteem. All the bullshit justifications from your sister dearest. Look, I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m glad your sister is out of our lives, her and all those other Black Mirror arseholes.’ Uday lapsed into a brooding silence. Maude had shifted on the sofa but was still asleep.

‘It was bad enough after she turned a trick – days sitting in here just sobbing, a couple of attention-grabbing pieces of suicidal talk, but it was when someone at uni found the film she’d made with Talia. Because of course their Internet porn habits are just a reflection on the dirty girls in the films,’ Uday spat bitterly. This was anger that had been stored up and nurtured, Beth thought. ‘Of course, Talia revelled in the notoriety. Made it out to be some kind of a statement of how clever, interesting and nonconformist she was.’ A tear leaked out of Uday’s eye. ‘A different story for Maude. All the looks in lectures, in the corridors. The guys deciding she was easy, so they could say what they wanted to her and she would jump into bed with them, somehow forgetting that the porn industry exists because of people like them. All the girls sitting in judgement. A slut to some, a threat to others, or just a poor example helping to objectify the sex. Everyone just so pleased that they weren’t the target, and we’re supposed to be the clever ones. University’s supposed to be a place to experiment. It’s the twenty-first century and apparently a gal’s reputation is still what matters. What a load of shit.’

Maude was moaning in her sleep. Uday tried to calm himself, stroking her hair as she settled down.

‘Nobody?’

‘Oh there were some, the understanding ones, as if they knew. Sometimes I think they were the worst. Every sympathetic look a reminder. I know we’re all supposed to talk about our feelings, but sometimes you just want to forget about your mistakes and move on. And let’s be honest, she’s fragile, arguably too easily led, but she is an adult and has to take responsibility for her actions as well.’

Beth tried to imagine what it had been like for them. They had clearly developed something of a siege mentality. In her mind’s eye she could see Maude in tears while Uday verbally went for some bitchy girl or sleazy guy who’d upset her.

‘They don’t give you a chance, you know? You fall down, make a mistake – suddenly you’re public property and everyone wants their pound of flesh.’ Tears were rolling down his cheeks now. Beth said nothing. There was nothing to say for now; he just needed to get this out.

‘That was Talia for you,’ Beth finally said after a long silence. Uday looked over at her. ‘She was like a virus. Everything she touched got infected.’ Beth reached for what she was trying to say, trying to give words to a half-formed thought. ‘I think the more people she hurt, the more she thought it meant that she mattered…’ She wasn’t sure she had managed to get across what she was thinking, but Uday was nodding. More silence. The pair of them lost in their own thoughts.

‘I’m going to have to tell my father that his only daughter is dead,’ Beth said. It was self-pity. She knew it was self-pity. It was also true. Uday just looked at her. The silence drew out awkwardly. Beth looked down at the threadbare carpet.

‘I know it probably won’t seem like it sometimes,’ he finally said, ‘but your parents don’t hate you. They probably just do the best they can with what they know.’

‘Parent,’ Beth said. ‘My mum died when we were both young. What about your parents?’

‘What about them?’

‘What do they think?’

‘About what?’ Uday asked innocently. Beth got embarrassed and was not sure what to say. ‘What, because I’m Asian and a fag?’ Uday started laughing. ‘I’m just playing. Mother is in major denial, keeps on trying to introduce me to nice girls. Father’s also in denial. I think he’d rather I meet some less nice girls; I suspect he prays that I’m sleeping with Maude.’ Uday looked down at Maude, still asleep and looking peaceful. ‘Brother and sister are supportive. The problem’s cousins and some aunts and uncles.’ Uday looked away, but Beth saw the darkness creep over his face. She recognised the sign of old pain.

Maude stretched and opened her eyes, looked up at Uday.

‘I fell asleep,’ she said drowsily.

‘On the sofa again,’ Uday agreed.

‘I need bed.’

Uday nodded.

‘Tomorrow we go to the pub and we can pretend we’re normal, as unpleasant as that sounds,’ Uday said. Maude smiled and nodded. She stood up and stretched dramatically before giving Beth a kiss on the top of her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said sympathetically.

No, I’m sorry, Beth thought, for what my family helped do to you, but she just nodded.

Beth wondered if it was as simple as pretending that you were just like everyone else for long enough that you eventually became so. She sat on the sea wall just outside the amusements, looking out at the water towards the Isle of Wight. To her left along the front was some kind of tower, beyond that was Old Town and then Gosport. It was ridiculous how exotic Portsmouth felt to her, but then she’d never really been anywhere except Bradford and prison. Well, Leeds as well, she supposed.

It was a cloudless day, bright blue sky but fresh and windy. She had her leather zipped up tight, her hat pulled down over her ears. She took another sip from the mug of hot sweet tea.

This would be okay, this would be enough, she thought. Time for a change. She wanted to get away from Bradford and live by the sea. Stay away from the clubs, the bouncing and all the violence. Live in a place where not everyone knew you and your business.

The work was menial and repetitive but that didn’t matter. When she was finished she could see a clean floor, or an oiled ride, or a happy punter, well more or less, and could measure what she’d done.

She would have to go back and tell her dad face to face what had happened first. It would devastate him and he already needed care, but he had made his choice. He had made it clear that he didn’t want her around, that he blamed her for something, though she’d never known what.

She heard his huffing breath as he shuffled towards her a long time before he said anything.

‘I’m not paying you to eye up the Isle of Wight,’ Ted said sternly.

‘I’ve done all the floors in the arcade and the caff before it opened. I helped Jimmy with the ghost train and I’ve worked the tombola all morning. I was just having a quick tea break.’ When she turned around, however, Ted was smiling.

‘I know. I know when people work and when they slack. I know everything. It’s the rides themselves – they talk to me. I’m like a fairground shaman,’ he said. Beth was smiling, trying not to laugh and shaking her head.

‘You’re so full of shit.’

It was Ted’s turn to laugh. With difficulty he manoeuvred himself onto the sea wall and offered her a cigarette. She was about to take one when she realised that she didn’t smoke and didn’t need them to buy stuff and trade for favours any more.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The sea,’ he said.

‘Isn’t that the Solent?’

‘Have I ever told you about my time in the merchant marine?’

‘It’s my first day,’ Beth protested. Ted’s chuckle was a rasping wet noise that threatened to become a cough. ‘You shouldn’t smoke so much.’ Or eat all the shit you obviously do. He had the look of someone who had a full English breakfast every day of the week.

‘This is what a real man looks like,’ Ted said, slapping his belly. It was avoidance but Beth had to grin. ‘I heard you had some trouble this morning?’

‘Just some kids trying to tip one of the machines.’

‘Little shits.’

‘Nah, I was worse when I was their age. Just bored and skint. I don’t like those tracksuits they all wear though.’

When she looked back up she saw that Ted was studying her intently. Beth wasn’t sure why. Ted had worked the amusements for many years. When punters came to the stalls he had learned how to read them. He knew people. Beth didn’t realise it, but how she responded to kids was a test. She didn’t hate them or resent them, she just saw them for what they were.

‘Lot of people try hard their first day, their first week, their first month and then slack off.’

Beth shrugged. ‘You don’t think I’m working hard enough, just fire me.’

‘You keep this up you can stay as long as you like,’ Ted told her and pulled out his wallet. He took a fifty out of it. Beth started to protest. ‘I told you I won’t have desperate people working for me. It comes out of your pay, but it’ll tide you over until the end of the week. Understand?’

‘Thanks.’ She finished her tea and Ted watched her head back towards the amusements.

He hung in the murk, the particulate matter floating all around. He could not imagine how once he had thought that this was not a good place to come. He did not feel the coldness now. He did not care about the lack of visibility. He did not need to see her to know that she was there. He could hear her sleeping song calling to her lost daughter somewhere in the city he and the others had forsaken. Lost for generations but so close.

He was but a child to her. A servant. The daughter would bring freedom. The daughter could wake her. The water felt warm, quiet and subdued like the womb. Everything was loud, painful and so dry on the land, in the city. In the city every street was a reminder, fragmenting memories played out like an old film. They might as well have belonged to someone else. On dry land it felt like you could reach up and touch reality, pierce through it like a membrane to where madness and hate waited.

He swam down. He would do his duty, but first he needed to touch her, be with her, join with her, and inside her he would try to cease to exist so there was only her.

Heavily sedated and on as much pain relief as he was, Arbogast couldn’t stop the tear trickling from his eye as he saw McGurk, resplendent in shell suit and bling, the cane, the latest phone in hand, flanked by muscle, making his way through the ward towards him.

The other patients and the staff watched him walk by. If they didn’t know who he was, then they knew what he was. The constant chewing and the wild amphetamine stare didn’t help.

McGurk walked into Arbogast’s room and stood at the bottom of the bed, looking at him with contempt. Trevor remained behind McGurk while Markus went and pulled the curtain shut across the window that looked out onto the ward. Then he closed the door.

McGurk looked down at the bandaged stumps where Arbogast’s fingers used to be and then back to the tear running down the pimp’s face.

‘Do you know what I hate most?’ he asked. Arbogast dared not answer. ‘Fucking weakness.’ McGurk moved quickly but with the jerky movements of a habitual speed freak. He grabbed Arbogast’s wounded hand and got up close to the pimp’s face. Over the sterile and sickness smell of the hospital and through the fugue of sedatives and painkillers, Arbogast could smell spearmint over something rancid on McGurk’s breath. McGurk put his hand over Arbogast’s mouth. Arbogast wet himself. He was sure it was over.

‘I want to test the limits of modern medicine’s ability to relieve pain,’ McGurk told the pimp. It was something cool to say that he’d thought of on the way over. McGurk squeezed the stumps of Arbogast’s fingers. The dressings turned red. ‘Don’t you cry! Don’t you fucking cry, you bastard! You owe me an explanation.’

McGurk was wiping his hands with a paper towel when the doctor burst in flanked by security.

‘It’s okay. We’re leaving,’ he told them.

‘We’ve called the police,’ the doctor told him. McGurk turned to look at the whimpering ball of pain on the bed that used to be William Arbogast.

‘He doesn’t want to press charges, but you do what you think is right.’

Trevor made a path for them through the security and they left.

‘You believe that shit?’ Markus asked as they made their way through the ward.

‘City’s getting weirder.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to know who the fuckers in the masks are. I don’t want any of the cunt with a gun – he sounds like some super-plod, Special Branch, something like that. Find me where the sister is, though.’

Caitlin felt like she had bled onto the page today. Sometimes it just wouldn’t come, but today it had been pure stream of consciousness. Poetry wasn’t cool or interesting to most people any more. Caitlin felt it was difficult to do well and with relevance to the modern world, but today line after line had come out of the platinum-nib fountain pen given to her by proud parents and onto the yellow legal pads. She felt like she was talking to something else, listening to the beat of the city or the world, channelling the words. Normally she hated her work immediately after she’d written it. Sometimes it was hard not to tear it all up and burst into tears, but not today. Today she even took pleasure from the shape of the words on the page, wishing she could publish them in her handwriting rather than through some soulless word-processing package. She was the biggest critic of her work. If she liked it then she knew it was good.

The inspiration had wiped her. The invitation to go out had been half welcomed and half not. She could do with leaving her flat after such an intense day, seeing some actual people, but she felt drained. The answer had been obvious, a little chemical pick-me-up. After all, she was following a trail blazed by hedonists of all stripes.

Red-haired and unconventionally attractive, a little too tall for the more insecure male, Caitlin didn’t stop a room when she walked in, but some attention was inevitable. Single, she was keeping an eye open, but she didn’t panic when she was on her own, like some of her friends. Tonight she just wanted to dance but she needed some fuel.

It was something new. Caitlin was initially suspicious as it looked like an acid tab with a dot of red on it. The girl dealing in the ultraviolet-lit toilets had assured her that although it provided good visuals, it was all about the dancing. Caitlin had let herself be talked into it.

Dancing. Moving to beat and bass. Trying to find that perfect moment. The modern shamanic experience. The lights above her becoming stars, light refracting through the dry ice becoming glowing gaseous nebula. Dancing on the edge of a spinning spiral galaxy. Joy. This was why she did it. This was the moment. To transcend the club. The music receding. She felt something wet under her eye, coming from her ear. She tasted copper in her mouth. She touched her face. Her fingers came away wet. She looked at the other dancers. They were covered head to foot in blood. Above her, space started to seethe like angry bacteria consuming everything.

There wasn’t even time to scream.

Du Bois lay on the bed in his room in Fort Southwick. He liked the room. It was another faceless barracks room. He had felt at home in places like this since he had lived in his first preceptory. His room was part of the officers’ quarters for the contingent of Royal Marines who guarded the facility.

Fort Southwick was one of the grand Victorian forts built on Portsdown Hill at the behest of Prime Minister Lord Palmerston for an invasion that had never come. The huge, squat, red-brick edifice had been used for Operation Overlord during the Second World War, as a NATO communications centre during the cold war and was now part of the Admiralty Research Establishment.

He had the information sent to his phone. He could have had the information downloaded straight into his brain, but he preferred to watch and read and then assign data to his augmented memory. He received the information shortly after he had used his phone’s systems to interrogate the control nanites he had found in Arbogast’s blood.

He hadn’t understood some of the words. Or rather he had understood them but struggled to make sense of how they fitted together. He had learned new terms like RLK, which apparently meant real-life kill. He understood those who killed for belief, profit and pleasure. He didn’t understand insanity, but appreciated it as a motivation. What he didn’t understand was how humanity had become so jaded. Perhaps they deserved their inevitable destruction. He had never felt so old, so divorced from everyone around him, so out of his time.

They were called the DAYP clan. This stood for Do As You Please. They had taken their name from Carroll. Du Bois was of the opinion they should give it back. He understood their criminality. What he couldn’t understand was how it connected to their games. As if it was all part of a computer simulation and they could do what they wanted to whoever they wanted. As if none of it was real and therefore none of it mattered. How had they become so divorced from reality?

They had started life as an elitist gaming clan. Something called an uberguild, apparently. It had taken a while for du Bois to realise that the weapons they were dealing were effectively electronic game pieces for computer games and not real weapons. Even longer to realise that people would pay for these virtual weapons and for high-level characters. This was how the fledgling DAYP had financed themselves. Virtual weapons dealing and organised league game E-sports, where they were known for domination and bullying.

Their first connection to real-world criminality was with a Korean game gang that they contracted out debt collection to. This was also their first connection to offline PKs – player kills.

According to Control, the DAYP recruited from top-echelon game nerds. The super-intelligent, many of them dropouts from top universities. They were recruited online after the DAYP used gameplay to psychometrically measure them, targeting excluded, disaffected sociopaths capable of doing the sort of things that would be required of them. Recently their games had become more sophisticated and capable of influencing people towards such behaviour.

It would almost be funny, except that through dealing in experimental software, hacking, upmarket games discovered via industrial espionage and experimental hardware, the DAYP had come across S-tech and L-tech. Worse, they had learned how to utilise it.

Then the DAYP started seriously hunting for it. They searched the most accurate conspiracy sites, the darkest, dangerous and often most secure parts of the web, looking for info on the tech. Each time they found it, they attempted to replicate it, augment themselves and their technology and then sell it. They were close to controlling the black market in S- and L-tech.

Their dominance of this black market had required a degree of ruthlessness. Initially, influenced by a type of computer game called a first-person shooter, they had used external contractors to do their dirty work and secure the tech for themselves. These contractors were normally security companies who used ex-special forces personnel. However, with access to such a high level of technology, they had started to augment themselves and do their own dirty work with violent enthusiasm.

They were implicated in thefts, murders, rape, slavery and numerous other crimes. Du Bois had seen men given licence to do what they wanted before, but they had not been given the power of near-gods on earth. The DAYP were thought to be based in America, though it seemed that some of them at least were operating in Portsmouth and interested in Natalie Luckwicke.

Du Bois was angry that he had not been briefed on them. Control had told him that his direct experience had made him more useful in dealing with the City of Brass and agents of the Eggshell, though more and more du Bois was starting to believe that the Eggshell was a myth. If they had ever existed they were long gone. It hadn’t been so long ago that the Circle would have never allowed such parasites to get their hands on S- and L-tech. He wished that he had been allowed to deal with these spoilt, evil child fantasists a long time ago.

He got up, poured himself a healthy measure of Scotch and moved to the window. He leaned against the frame, his face lit up by the harsh sodium lights that illuminated the wet concrete and brick of the base. He could see one of the later buildings that had been added to the military facility. Despite being a typically ugly utilitarian design, there was something of the art deco about it. It reminded him of a film he had seen many years ago about a failed utopia. This thought made him smile humourlessly. Beyond that he could see the lights of the city.

Did it matter? Yes. What the DAYP did was wrong. He was not a righteous man, not any longer if even a shred of what Hamad had said was true, but even if the Circle was corrupt they were not unnecessarily cruel. There was no pleasure in the suffering of others. Like every animal they did what they had to, to survive. Though it looked like that was over. If the prodigal had been here it looked like she was dead.

Du Bois took out his own phone. A normal phone. This one wasn’t filled with liquid soft/hardware many iterations in advance of what was thought to be the cutting edge of computer and communications technology. He knew that Control monitored his ‘private’ phone as well. It was more a symbol of separation between his work and what he could only jokingly call a private life.

He cycled through the few names on his contact list and stared at Alexia’s. He put his thumb over the dial key. His work phone sent the text straight to his internal systems, flagged as very urgent. He narrowed his eyes, his vision magnifying the city below him. He could make out the flashing lights from the emergency-services vehicles.

Some of her co-workers had told her that the fish and chip shop on Castle Street, just down from the Colonial Arms, was the best in the city. Beth had practically run down Elm Grove to Campbell Road, where Uday and Maude’s flat was, to stop the three fish suppers she’d bought from getting too cold.

It was a funny thing about Portsmouth and Southsea that Beth was coming to realise. Perhaps it was because it was an island and space was limited, but it didn’t seem to be a case of good neighbourhoods and bad neighbourhoods, it wasn’t even a case of good streets and bad streets. It was more good house, bad house. Everyone was mixed in together. Students lived next to ‘nice’ middle-class families, who lived next to drug dealers and other career criminals.

With a can of one of the better bitters, the fish and chips had tasted amazing to Beth. Uday had looked at the greasy food with some disdain but Maude had teased him until he’d eaten it.

Both of them had then taken some considerable time to get ready – much to Beth’s amusement. Beth practically had to fight off Maude’s attempt to put make-up on her. The getting-ready process had involved booze from the off-licence on the corner of Outram Road and Victoria Road North, because it was cheaper than drinking in the pub, and a volume war between Maude and Uday’s disparate musical tastes. Beth tended to side more with Maude but only a little.

Then on to a crowded pub on Albert Road. They had to shout to be heard, and spent the first hour standing up until Beth managed to intimidate some kids off a table, much to Maude’s embarrassment and Uday’s amusement. Several rounds in, Beth had stopped worrying about how much of the money that Ted had given her she was spending and how she didn’t recognise any of the music, and was starting to believe the fiction of normality she was trying to construct.

Beth was studying the wooden panels on the wall, each filled with pictures of butterfly statues, girls with rabbit heads, VW Beetles… They were odd but Beth was slowly coming to the conclusion she liked them. She liked that someone cared enough to take the time to decorate the pub like this. Though she wasn’t sure it justified the price of drinks in the place.

Beth had noticed Maude get a few looks and there had been whispers behind hands. Maude had pretended not to notice. Uday had looked relieved when some drunk arsehole came over to the table and asked Maude if she was the porn girl, and Beth had been the one to see him off with some serious threats. Beth guessed Uday usually had to do that. She suspected Uday’s comments would have been more cutting.

‘… and then we can find a nice girl for Beth.’ She hadn’t been paying any attention, but the sound of her name broke into her art appreciation.

‘I’m not a lesbian,’ she said just a little too loudly, getting some looks of amusement from nearby tables. She was a little pissed off but saw Uday was smiling mischievously.

‘Are you sure? Then why’d you dress like one?’ he asked.

‘Stop it!’ Maude scolded him.

‘Perhaps clothes and make-up and stuff aren’t as important to me as they are to other people.’

Uday clamped his hand to his heart dramatically. ‘Oh my gosh, you are so right. I am so shallow. I shall immediately change my ways and start wearing dowdy things. What is that, homeless chic?’

Beth felt herself colouring. She hated conversations like this. She flicked Uday a V-sign.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Maude told Beth between giggles. ‘He’s just being a bitch.’

‘He certainly is,’ Beth muttered.

‘Oooo! I know!’ Maude said, grinning and clapping her hands. Beth was watching the young goth with suspicion. ‘Makeover!’

Uday’s eyes widened with glee. Beth suspected it was more out of pleasure at her discomfort than sharing Maude’s genuine enthusiasm.

‘Maude, what a marvellous idea! It’ll be like a gruff Yorkshire Pygmalion!’

Beth shifted defensively, like she was getting ready for fight or flight.

‘I will beat up both of you,’ she warned. Mostly joking.

‘Darling, not everyone can be as pant-creamingly beautiful as the likes of Maude and I,’ Uday began. Maude smiled graciously at Uday, who gave her a mock bow in return. ‘But with some effort even the dowdiest caterpillar can become a beautiful butterfly.’ Uday considered his own statement while studying Beth. ‘Well, a beautiful moth anyway.’

Uday was enjoying Beth’s discomfort but Beth didn’t like where it was taking her. She had never liked the way she looked. Neither had anyone else, so it seemed, so she had made it unimportant to her.

‘Look, the whole being-pretty thing, it’s really not me. That was more Talia’s kind of thing,’ she said, then turned away, taking a mouthful of her drink. Uday looked awkward, apologetic, Maude concerned. Then Maude smiled again.

‘I think you’re pretty,’ she said. Her apparent sincerity almost made Beth believe her.

‘And I concur. There is beauty there, no doubt, though we may need to dig deep to find it.’ Beth gave him the finger this time. ‘But I am, after all, the archaeologist of gorgeousness.’

From all over the pub came the sound of bleeping as people received text messages almost simultaneously. Uday’s phone sounded. He took it out of his pocket, a look of concern on his face. He opened the text. In the distance they could hear the sound of sirens.

‘What is it?’ Beth asked as Uday read the message, his face darkening as he did so.

‘Someone’s just blown up Weightless,’ he said. Horror crept over Maude’s face.

‘Weightless?’ Beth asked.

‘It’s a club on Guildhall Walk,’ Uday said quietly. ‘We’ll know people who were there tonight.’ A pall was settling over the pub.

‘It’s happened again, hasn’t it?’ Maude said. Beth looked at her. ‘It’s like what happened to Talia.’

‘Maude, we don’t know. Anything could have happened.’

‘How do I get there?’ Beth asked.

There was rubble and a hole in the shadow of the neoclassical Guildhall where a building used to be. The hole was illuminated by the multiple flashing lights of numerous emergency vehicles and inhabited by police, ambulance people and fire officers, all of them vastly underqualified to deal with the situation.

Was this how it started? du Bois wondered. One small morsel at a time. No, this was too localised, too specific. He tried to murder the feeling of hope; he wanted to connect this to the prodigal. It was too much of a coincidence for there to be two incursions in such a short period of time.

He supposed he should do something. Find out who was in charge and throw some weight around. At least get them away from the hole before they dosed themselves with lethal levels of cosmic radiation, though it was probably too late. They were in there because they were hoping for survivors, trying to help people. Sometimes we seem worth saving, he thought.

Control would start putting the cover story in place. Another terrorist incident. He felt sorry for whichever community was the scapegoat this time around. There would be response teams on their way from Porton Down to seal the area. He already knew what they would find.

If Natalie wasn’t dead, then he needed to find her. He looked around the street. There were a number of CCTV cameras. Du Bois sent instructions to his phone. If the CCTVs were attached to the net in any way, he would be able to download the footage and run it through sophisticated intelligent facial-recognition software. Moments later he received a message saying that nobody fitting Natalie Luckwicke’s description had been anywhere near the club for the last week. Du Bois sighed, though he had known that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

He turned to look at the crowd. Many of them were drunk or high, clubbers evacuated from the clubs along Guildhall Walk. A lot of them were sailors, du Bois guessed. Something caught his eye – someone backing into a narrow alleyway between one of the pubs and a Chinese restaurant. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it except the figure moved furtively, suspiciously, and there was something off about it. Something about the glimpsed figure suggested that it was misshapen in some way.

Du Bois ran to the alley, drawing looks from some of the assembled police. The passage ran for about twenty feet, ending in a high fence with a gate in it. The fence was topped with broken glass. Du Bois tried the gate. It was locked. Feeling slightly absurd, he drew his pistol and kicked the gate in. It led into a small courtyard at the back of the restaurant. Some of the restaurant’s employees came out of the open back door to look at him but said nothing when they saw the gun.

Du Bois shook his head and returned to the street. Scanning the crowd again. Disconcerted. Then he found at least one face in the crowd that he recognised.

Uday and Maude had gone home. Maude hadn’t wanted to add to the chaos at the scene. They would use social networking sites to try and find out if the people they knew were okay.

Beth had circled the taped-off police perimeter trying to get the best view. She’d ended up leaning on one of the lion statues on the steps that led up to the Guildhall itself. She’d watched the blond man run into the alleyway and then reappear moments later with a gun in his hand. The man had been scanning the crowd. He stopped as he looked in her direction. Beth felt like he was staring at her, though she thought she was too far away for him to make out her features. Nevertheless she ducked behind the statue of the lion.

‘I think your sister’s been here, don’t you?’ The bag lady’s face was inches from Beth’s. Sweat, piss, stale smoke and cheap alcohol emanated from her. Beth’s face crumpled in disgust. It was the same woman she’d seen on Pretoria Street.

‘What do you mean? My sister’s d—’

The bag lady blew smoke all over her. Beth coughed, her eyes watering, and turned away. By the time the smoke had cleared, the woman was nowhere to be seen.

Beth sat down hard on the steps. It was just a weird coincidence, she told herself, the ramblings of someone with mental health problems. Her sister was dead. This had nothing to do with her. She could work hard, get on with her life and be normal. At the back of her mind, the question What if Talia is alive? just wouldn’t leave her in peace.

‘Well?’ Baron Albedo asked. Both of them had their hoods up. They liked the look and were only peripherally aware that it would draw attention to them rather than away.

‘Our journey might not be quite the waste of time that the pimp made it out to be,’ King Jeremy mused. The pair watched the response to the destruction of Weightless. It was kind of cool because it was like a disaster movie, but a bit lame because it was British, which made it look low-budget.