Rule 34

straight back. The Gnome looks concerned. “What kind of way is that to treat a pint?” he asks, then pauses, laboriously taking note of your face. “Ah, I see. Would you be in need of another?”

You nod. He makes himself scarce in the direction of the bar (despite those stumpy legs, he can shift when he needs to) and you put the remains of your first pint down on the table and try to shove away the enormous hollowness behind your breastbone. It won’t budge. You glare at the pint. There’s maybe an answer of sorts to your dilemma hidden in the glass, but you’re not sure how to frame the question. To get blootered, or not to get blootered? (Bibi’ll scream at you if you come to bed legless and stinking of alcohol, but right now you don’t really care about that: plenty of time to shrug it off as an aberration later.) The real question is—why?

A new glass, clone of the old one, appears under your nose. You nod. “Thank you.”

“What’s the story?” the Gnome asks, not ungently.

“My cousin Tariq’s dead,” you tell him, wanting the words to sting.

Instead, the Gnome perks up. “Was it you who killed him?” he asks with pseudoprofessional cheer.

“The Polis think it was murder.” You finish the first pint. The Gnome deflates, humour hissing away.

“Oh, lad . . .”

“I had a visit from one of Colonel Datka’s people this afternoon. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

“Shite.” The brass-necked gears are turning behind his eyes. “What makes you say that?”

“Tariq gave me a little job yesterday.” You take a first mouthful of the second pint. Your lips feel comfortably numb. “Testing a chunk of a web app, off-line.”

“That’s no kind of connection, lad.” He pauses. “Coincidences happen.”

You feel like punching him for a moment: “Coincidences like someone murdered him? Right after he gave me a wee job? While I have the attention of our friends from Bishkek?”

You have the distinct sensation that Adam is giving you the hairy eye-ball. Wondering if you’re reliable. “What do you think the web app’s part of?”

“Honey trap, front end for a botnet, something like that.” You take another sip. “Grow your penis, cheap off- license gene therapies for that annoying melanoma, holidays in the sun with added drivethru liver transplants, the usual.” In other words, it’s the same the usual that put you inside Saughton for a year.

“And now Tariq’s dead? What happened?”

“I don’t know. Got a call from Bibi, who heard it from Aunt Sammy, who found him. When I went round, I walked into a cop convention. They figured out soon enough it wasna me what did it.” You ken where this is going. “Don’t worry, I didn’t breathe your name. I had to cough to working on the side for Tariq, but I figure what he gave me isn’t majorly incriminating, and anyway, it’s a murder investigation. They won’t be blabbing to Mr. Webber.”

The Gnome turns an even whiter shade of fish-belly pink than is his wont. “I’ll thank you for doing that much.” He raises his glass and drinks deeply. “Do you know how Tariq died?”

“No.” The ignorance burns your throat. “They wouldn’t tell me anything, except that—except—” You can’t bring yourself to finish it.

He leans forward. “Tell me about Colonel Datka’s man.”

Adam is treating the shrapnel of your life like some kind of puzzle game, you realize, just like Inspector Butthurt. The momentary flash and sizzle of resentment nearly throws what’s left of your beer in his face. But what stills your hand is knowing that he’s trying to help, in his slightly askew borderline aspie way. Help: You need it. So you tell him.

“He scared the shit out of me—even though he was polite. Eyes like a detective, you know? Only with a drum of unset concrete instead of handcuffs if you fucked him off.”

“I do believe fear reveals your hitherto-unplumbed poetic depths.” The Gnome is scrutinizing you like he’s got you under a microscope. “What did he want?”

“A padded envelope from the office safe. And a bag of bread mix.” You shiver. “He opened the envelope— there was a baggie in it, with a passport. Other papers. And he gave me a suitcase to take home. It’s got a combination lock. Said he may need to stay with me for a couple of days from tomorrow.” You shudder again. Those eyes.

“Well, you’re in it now,” the Gnome observes calmly.

“In what?”

“That remains to be seen.” He leans forward. “But I’ve got a fair idea it means the end game is in train. Listen, can you lay your hands on five grand? Put it on credit if you have to, but you won’t be able to pay it back for a month.”

“What has that got—”

“It’s time to cash out.”

“Eh?” You think fast. There’s the two grand you staked Uncle Hassan a couple of years ago, back before everything caught up with you—he’s probably good for at least one. Maybe more. You’ve still got your credit card, but in these deflationary times, you can only draw five hundred in cash against it. You could pawn some of Bibi’s jewellery to cover the rest, but she’s bound to notice, and she’ll want to know what you’re doing with the money. And hurrying right behind the hamster wheel spin of your financial calculations is your native suspicion of anyone asking you to cough up cash on the barrel for something too good to be true. “Why now, Adam? What’s the sudden hurry?”

“The sudden hurry, dear boy, is that your employers didn’t go out looking to hire honorary consuls at not- inconsiderable cost on a whim; they obviously had a purpose in mind, and with a purpose goes a plan, and with a plan goes a time-table. I’ve been waiting for a sign that they were getting ready to go to the end game, and the arrival of your colonel’s man means things are about to get too hot for you to stay in the bathtub—you’ll be wanting out while the water’s still clean enough that the Polis aren’t taking an interest. So it’s time to cash out.”

“And how precisely am I going to do that?”

Adam bares his teeth at you. “You’re going to do as I tell you and short a particular national bank’s bonds. Trust me, you’ll make a killing . . .”

There is no solace to be had in getting stinking drunk with the Gnome. So you take your less usual route home, up the hill and through the graveyard in search of a casual shag.

There is a younger man up there, short-haired and heavily accented: a small-town incomer, escaping from the usual, but with his feet under him enough to know the places to haunt. You make brief small-talk before he leads you round the back of an overgrown crypt, then it’s hard up against the lichen-encrusted stone, tongues grappling hungrily and his hand down your trousers, squeezing your cock. He tastes of stale roll-ups and sweat, and when you go down on him, he washes away the memory of the day’s horror with furtive joy.

After he sucks you off in turn, you stumble away in disarray, drained and feeling curiously vacant. You’re late, and you feel like a complete fraud. Some family man you are, with the touch of another’s lips on your bell-end. But at least Bibi isn’t there to stare at you in silent irritation or chide you for drinking again.

When you get home, it’s quiet and empty. Your wife is off auntsitting and has taken the kids to run errands or something. There’s an uneaten portion of rice sitting in her fancy rice-cooker, and she’s left some daal in the karai, to go cold for you in silent reproach. You fumble through the kitchen drawers until you find what you’re looking for—a pair of plastic chopsticks (Bibi likes a Cantonese take-away once in a while)—then climb the stairs with heavy tread, pull down the attic hatch, and ascend, wondering what you’re going to find.

Adam’s slid a dagger of curiosity between the slats of your misery and paranoia. Investment opportunities aside, it’s time to find out what the little fuck’s playing with.

Your den is suffocatingly over-warm from the summer evening sun, and you feel ill at ease, as if your personal space is under siege. The stranger’s suitcase squats in the corner like an enemy garrison, a forbidding reminder of ill-advised treaties. Tariq’s old pad sprawls out from behind the fridge. You stretch the metaphor until you see the fallen tombstone of a forgotten soldier and shiver despite the heat. The brewing bucket lies where you left it, under the beam of early-evening sunlight sluicing through the Velux: There’s a yeasty smell in the air like