Rule 34

It’s like that inevitable, deterministic scene in every horror video you’ve ever lost two hours of your life to: the dawning sense of wrongness, of a life unhinged. From the subtle absence of expected sounds to the different, unwelcome noise from upstairs in the bedroom, all is out of order.

“Hello?” you call up the stairwell.

There’s no reply, but you hear footsteps like a herd of baby elephants on the landing. Angry footsteps. Your stomach clenches. They are Bibi’s angry footsteps, and now you know what is wrong: All that remains is to find out why.

You tiptoe past an obstruction in the hall and look up the stairs. “Is everything alright?” you call.

There’s a muffled thud, a wail of pain, and some most unladylike swearing. Then there’s another thud, louder. Bibi hauls into view on the landing, leaning to one side, the big yellow suitcase dragging at the ends of her arms like a boat anchor. Her glare of effort silences you as she levers it onto the top stair-tread. It must be full, to be so heavy. The suitcase is a hundred-litre monster, sized for that month-long family excursion to Lahore that never came. Ever since, it has lurked under Naseem’s bed like a bright plastic chrysalis from which someday a holiday will hatch. It’s nearly bigger than Bibi, and for a heart-stopping moment, you think she’s going to be crushed by it. But no: It rocks heavily on the stair, then she’s behind it, gripping it by the tow handle and leaning backwards as she lowers it towards you like a juggernaut of wrath. Finally, it hits the hall carpet and sits there, and Bibi pushes it past you, breathing heavily.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

“What does it look as if I’m doing?” There’s an odd, lilting note in her voice, almost devil-may-care.

“Is it your mother?”

“No, Anwar, it’s you.”

“I don’t—” You’re about to say understand, but for a cursed moment your tongue freezes. “Where are the children?”

She pushes the heavy bag past you, forcing you to step back against the wall. She’s on the other side of it, using it as a shield. “What’s in the bucket?” she asks tensely. “Where did you get that suitcase?”

She’s been up the ladder.

Oh shit.

“I, I can explain! It’s work—a man from head office, from the Foreign Office, he is coming to stay, just for a couple of nights—”

“Shut up, Anwar.”

You focus on her nostrils, on the tip of her nose. They’re flared wide, as if she smells something awful, something vile. She’s shaking slightly. Fear? Anger? You’ve always found it hard to read Bibi. The long silences, the elliptical comments, the woman’s expectation of insight, as if you’re expected to read and parse the invisible code written on the inside of her eyelids. Contempt?

“What’s wrong?” you ask.

“I’m leaving,” she says, as calmly as if announcing she was going to work.

“What?”

While you stand, perplexed, back up against the wall, she shoves the suitcase past you to stand beside the smaller bag that obstructs the hallway.

“When are you coming back?” you ask, feeling lost.

She grabs the smaller bag by the handle. “That’s up to you.” She drags it up to the open front door, then stops, straightens up, and glares at you. “Get rid of that stuff. Get help. Then you can email me.”

“But what—what stuff?” None of this makes sense. “I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t.” Her contempt is withering. “I’ve put up with a lot of not understanding from you, over the years. Not understanding what it is about obeying the law, Anwar. Not understanding that you’re going to get caught if you carry on. And I’ve been giving you a lot of not understanding in return. Not understanding about the pubs and the late nights. Not understanding about your boy-friends and the condoms. I could even manage to not understand your brewing experiment in the attic, or the dodgy business deals. But the other thing? I can’t not understand that. Promise me you’ll get help, and we can talk. Chat. IM. I won’t tell the police.” Her shoulders are shaking. “But. If I catch you near the kids, I’ll tell everyone.” She turns away.

“Tell everyone what?”

But you’re talking to a receding back, hunched under the weight of too much baggage. You blink against the daylight, mouth hanging open, unable to grasp what’s happening. There’s a sour taste in your mouth and a ringing in your ears, and a terrible tension in your head: the injustice of it all! If you were a real man of your father’s generation, you’d chase after her and drag her back and thrash her soundly. (If you were a real man of your father’s generation she’d call Social Services on you.) Where’s the honour in this? What does she think you have done, to be so offended?

The bucket. The suitcase. Oh God.

The front door slams closed behind you as you scamper for the staircase as if all the hounds of hell are chasing you. (She’s been upstairs. And it’s not the bucket.) You pull down the loft ladder and scramble up it, gasping for breath, surface in the attic like a mole in a lawn suddenly come face-to-face with a roller.

The bucket is where you left it, but Peter Manuel’s suitcase sits open on the floor, in the middle of the puddle of daylight admitted by the dormer window. Bibi must have forced the lock, you realize. A small, pale-skinned arm rests just over the zippered rim, as if a wee bairn is sleeping inside. Then the arm twitches, flailing for a grip.

A little girl, about three years younger than Farida, sits up in the suitcase. Blonde tousled hair and button nose: blue eyes and puppy fat. But there’s something wrong with her. Her face is expressionless and paralyzed, her mouth gaping so wide you think for a horrid moment that her jaw is dislocated—her skin doesn’t seem to fit properly. And she’s naked. Naked, and in a suitcase.

Then she looks at you with undead eyes and speaks without moving her mouth:

“Will you fuck me, Daddy? I want you. I’ve been so lonely without you . . .”

LIZ: Dominoes Fall

You don’t normally come out of an interview with a material witness blinking at the light and wondering which way up your world goes; twice in twenty-four hours is something of a personal record. Nevertheless, you take one look at Kemal’s face and feel a twinge of recognition. You step aside for a stranger entering the building as the grimy glass door swings shut behind you, distracted by the need to marshal your thoughts. “Did you get anything out of that?” you ask.

Kemal shakes his head, not in negation but in weary acknowledgment. “The future is here today, unevenly distributed,” he misquotes. “I do not think the doctor is a murderer. Not a knowing one, of course.”

You keep your thoughts to yourself for a moment as you look around for the car. It’s missing. “Hold on.” You ping the front desk back at head office: “Where’s our ride?”

Sniffy McSluggard takes her own sweet time getting back to you: “CID telled it it was needed elsewhere, Inspector. You’ll be wanting to charge for a bus ride.”

Which is just bloody typical. “Come on,” you tell Kemal, and head down Buccleugh Street towards the short- cut through to South Clerk Street. “What makes you think the doctor’s in the clear?”

“I do not think he’s innocent,” Kemal admits. “His speech stress is uneven. He hides something, yes. And the spam connection, and the, the cognitive engine, the use of distributed networks— that is significant. But I don’t think he’s a killer.”

“Why not?” you needle.

“He is a coward.” Kemal pauses next to a rack of council recycling bins. “That is a technical term,” he adds. “He is a thinking man and an overplanner. He anticipates hazards before they emerge, and avoids them. Risk- averse.”

“That’s how I pegged him,” you aver. So why did Dodgy Dickie want you to interview him? “I think we should do some more digging. If someone is using ATHENA to locate targets, that would