professional ventures.
She covered her eyes with her hand, like a woman shielding herself from the sun. ‘Blake was really snide, Tony. He implied that my reasons for choosing to consult you are grubby and corrupt. He knows that I’m your tenant, and he made it sound like there was more to it than that, that we had something sordid to hide.’ She turned her head away and drank more water.
It was hard to understand why a man in Blake’s position would choose to undermine one of his most effective officers before he’d even seen for himself what she was capable of. But undermine her he had, and he couldn’t have chosen a more effective pressure point if he’d consulted Tony himself. With any other pair of people who shared their history, the assumption that they were lovers would probably have been right on the money. But the emotional bond they’d shared from the earliest days of their professional connection had never spilled over into the physical. Right from the start, he’d levelled with her about the impotence that had consistently blighted his relationships with women. She’d had the good sense not to decide she was the woman who could redeem him. But in spite of their unspoken agreement to keep their feelings on a limited leash, there had been times when the forces pulling them together had seemed strong enough to overcome his fear of humiliation and her anxiety that she wouldn’t be able to hide her disappointment. But each time, the world had thrown obstacles in their path. And given the atrocities that were commonplace in their world, those were not obstacles that could be overcome lightly. He’d never forget the one time she’d let her guard slip because of him, and the darkness it had unleashed. For a while, it had looked as if she could never make her way back from that particular abyss. That she had was, he believed, no thanks to him and everything to do with the power the job had over her. Tony doubted whether Blake knew anything real about their history, but the gossip factory had provided him with enough information to use him against her. He hated that that was possible. ‘Stupid bastard,’ Tony said. ‘He should be making alliances, not alienating the likes of you.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘Not that there are many like you.’
She shifted in her seat. He thought she probably wished she smoked so she would have something to occupy herself with. ‘Maybe it’s time I thought about moving out. I mean, we both only ever meant it to be temporary. While I decided if I wanted to be back in Bradfield.’ She raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘While I decided if I still wanted to be a cop.’
‘You seem to have settled both those questions,’ he said, trying to hide the sadness her suggestion had provoked. ‘I can see why you might want somewhere that feels more like your own place. A bit more room. But don’t feel you have to go on my account.’ A lop-sided smile. ‘I’ve almost got used to having someone around I can borrow milk from.’
Carol’s smile was pained. ‘That’s all I am to you, is it? A source of midnight milk?’
A long pause. Then Tony said. ‘Sometimes I wish it was that simple. For your sake as much as mine.’ He sighed. ‘I really don’t want you to move, Carol. Especially if we’re not working together. Living in different places, we’d hardly see each other. I’m not good at holding on to people and you work insane hours.’ He stood up. ‘So, do you fancy a glass of wine?’
Gary Harcup licked the grease from his fingers then wiped them on his jeans. The pizza had been cold for at least three hours, but he hadn’t noticed. He ate from habit, he ate as a pause for thought, he ate because the food was there. Savour had nothing to do with it. He loved that he lived in a world where you could have food delivered to your door 24/7 without even having to pick up a phone. A click of the mouse would see him supplied with Chinese, Indian, Thai or pizza. Some days, he only left his computer to take in deliveries and to go to the bathroom.
In the community he inhabited, Gary’s life was far from unique. Most of the people he knew lived a variation of his daily existence. Every now and then they had to emerge blinking into the daylight to interface with clients of one sort or another, but if they could avoid it, they did. If they’d been a separate species, they’d have died out in a couple of generations.
Gary loved his machines. He loved moving around in virtuality, travelling through time and space without ever having to leave the womb of his small, smelly flat. He found immense satisfaction in solving the problems his clients offered up, but he also knew the deep frustration of occasional failure.
Take this job for West Mercia. A lot of what they wanted from him was the product of simple number- crunching. Tracking down the whereabouts of particular machines, for example. It was the sort of thing where you keyed in information and set the software off and running. A child of five could do it.
But trawling through the scattered detritus of deleted files, that was a different matter. Pulling out fragments, identifying which belonged where, fitting them together like a vandalised jigsaw - that was man’s work. After a cursory exploration, he’d reluctantly had to admit that his software wasn’t up to it. He needed something better - and he knew just where to go. Over years of working in this twilight zone, Gary had built a network of allies and contacts. Most of them he wouldn’t have recognised if they’d been sitting next to him on a train, but he knew their screen names and cyber-IDs. For what he needed today, Warren Davy was his man. Warren, the man who could almost always come up with the goods. When it came to masters of the virtual universe, Warren was one of the best. They’d known each other since the earliest days, back before there had even been an internet, when the only way for teenagers like them to communicate in the ether had been bulletin boards populated by hackers, phreaks and geeks. Warren, in Gary’s view, was the man.
A quick email, then he’d have a shower. It had been a day or two, and he’d noticed he was itching in the places where a man welded to a computer chair inevitably overheated.
When he returned to his desk, dressed in clean boxers and T-shirt, the reply was already there. You could always rely on Warren, he thought. Not just one of the smartest tools in the box, but one of the most open-handed too. It was thanks to Warren that Gary had a lot of the software that allowed him such free access to other people’s information.
Good to hear from you, Gary. I’m stuck in Malta on a security set-up job, but I think we’ve got something that might do the trick for you. I can let you have it at cost. It’s called Ravel and you can download it from the DPS site. Use code TR61UPK to login, we’ll bill you at the end of the month as usual.
You’re right, there is something newer and shinier coming down the pike from SCHEN, but it’s going to cost you about three times what Ravel does. I know Bradfield Police are beta-testing it, so maybe West Mercia could get you a deal when it’s up and running.
Good luck with the trawl.
Gary gave the screen the thumbs-up, relieved that he was going to be able to put on some kind of a show for Patterson. Warren had come through. But even though Warren was so on top of things, he had a pretty rose-tinted view of how closely cops co-operated. Whatever the deal was with SCHEN and Bradfield Police, Gary knew there was no way West Mercia would be getting in on the ground floor with it. SCHEN were totally notorious for playing their expensive cards close to their chest. Gary had been aware of them for years. He even knew the guy behind them used the screen name Hexadex. But he’d never been able to get alongside him. All he knew was that the guy had developed some shit-hot analytical software over the years and that he had some kind of deal with Bradfield cops, who always seemed to be the ones beta-testing any crime-fighting apps of SCHEN’s new kit.
Gary sighed. He’d never had the kind of creativity that had propelled SCHEN to gigabucks and Warren to megabucks. But at least he had his clutch of steady clients who didn’t know that he wasn’t one of the big dogs. And
