Halfhead

17

Will dragged himself out of bed and groaned his way to the bathroom in the dark. There was a fuzzy shape in the mirror above the sink. A rough, hungover outline that wouldn’t stay in focus.

‘Lights.’

The whole apartment exploded with brightness, driving red-hot knitting needles into his eyes and out through the back of his head.

‘Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgh! Down! Down!’

They dimmed to something less head-splitting and Will stood there, blinking and swearing till he could see again. God…he looked as bad as he felt. His face was grey-green on one side and purple-green on the other.

He grabbed the edges of the sink and retched. But nothing came, and gradually the swell of nausea passed. How much did he drink last night? The last thing he could remember was singing rude songs with Brian in the curry house. After that it all became a bit of a blur.

There was an open packet of blockers in the medicine cabinet, courtesy of his hospital visit yesterday. He fumbled one out and popped it into his neck, then let his head thunk against the cool mirror, waiting for the chemicals to work their magic.

By the time he walked into the lounge all traces of pounding headache and churning stomach were gone.

Will told the room’s controller to open the curtains: they slid back, revealing yet another wet, dark morning. The lounge reeked of stale beer, garlic and greasy meat. Seven or eight empty plastics of Greenmantle were lined up on the coffee table beside a half-eaten, ill-advised kebab.

Abandoned dataclips made an abstract mosaic on the carpet between the couch and the controller. They were all Janet’s: her favourite cookery books, films, the birthday message she’d recorded one year as a surprise, wearing nothing but his old suit jacket. Carefully, he placed them back on the shelves. It’d been a while since he’d been drunk enough to go looking for her.

He said, ‘Music,’ and the controller bleeped softly-the opening bars of Alba Blue sparkling into the air. Janet’s favourite opera, the one they’d played at her funeral. He left it running and went to make breakfast.

An hour later he closed the door on a tidy apartment; he’d even thrown his new clothes through the cleanbox. Seemed a shame not to give them a second outing.

Director Smith-Hamilton had told him to take a couple of days off, but hadn’t said he couldn’t spend it doing a little ‘unauthorized data access’. Whoever Ken Peitai worked for they had to keep records of some kind. The only problem was finding them. The easiest way would be to hack into the files from Ken’s underground laboratory, but there was no way of getting in there without arousing a lot of suspicion.

Unless he took Ken up on his offer of lunch…?

Will grimaced. The idea of having to eat with the slimy little turd was bad enough, but if Smith-Hamilton found out he’d gone back to Sherman House-and she would-the repercussions would be a lot more severe than a couple of days’ enforced leave.

So he made his way downtown instead.

Central Records was an imposing mock-Victorian pile of red brick and sandstone, straddling Cadogan Street. For some reason known only to the planning department, it didn’t have its own shuttle station, so Will had to slog through the rain from Wellington Street, stopping off to pick up a plastic of wine for the evening; this morning’s hangover totally forgotten. He squelched in through the front door, submitted to a geometric scan, and found himself a quiet corner with a private study booth.

The monitor buzzed and crackled into life. He spent a couple of minutes entering convoluted search criteria, before sending the system off looking for old ministerial directives. It didn’t matter if they found anything or not, he just wanted to make sure there was a record of him doing something legitimate.

Rule Number One: always establish your alibi before you do anything wrong.

While the machine plodded away, searching and cross-referencing, Will slipped the cracker out of his pocket and popped open the service panel under the table. He checked to make sure no one was watching, then teased a pair of wires out of the main data trunk and slapped the cracker over them. Then hacked his way into the main system and started doing a little searching of his own.

Three hours later he switched the cracker off and stifled a yawn. Ken Peitai didn’t work for any of the biotech companies, none of the big conglomerates, or any government department. His National Insurance Number didn’t connect to anything-no driver’s licence, passport, or pension. The man was a ghost.

The only record Will could find was a bonus payment made half a dozen years ago in the PayFund database. It was a considerable sum of money, which was the only reason he’d found it: large payments had to be approved by the PayFund Manager, and that meant there were records. It also meant Peitai really did work for the government…or at least he had six years ago.

The payment record was staggeringly short of detail. Will had been hoping for a home address, bank account, phone number, but no joy: whoever Ken worked for back then, they kept their information well away from the main channels.

Will stretched the knots out of his back and checked the time: twelve fifteen. Lunch. Brian wasn’t answering his phone and neither was George, and unless hell had frozen over in the last twelve hours, there was no point calling Emily. It’d be weeks before they were on speaking terms again.

He raised his eyes to the large stained glass window at the end of the records hall. He could hear the rain hurling itself against the multicoloured panes. Still chucking it down…but he wasn’t that far from the West George Street Bluecoat Stationhouse-where Jo worked when she wasn’t at Network HQ. Maybe she’d be in?

That’d be nice. More than nice, actually.

Will ran a hand through his hair and checked his reflection in the study booth’s monitor. He still looked like crap.

Ah well, too late to worry about that now, wasn’t as if he could do anything about it.

OK…

He rubbed his palms on his trousers. No problem. Not like he was asking her on a date was it? Just two work colleagues having lunch together.

He closed his eyes and murmured, ‘Just try not to make an arse of yourself…’ Then he pulled out his mobile, called the Bluecoat switchboard, and asked to be put through to DS Cameron. Three minutes and twenty-seven seconds later Jo’s face appeared on the tiny screen, one eye an opaque, milky grey.

‘DS Cameron, can I help…’ A small crease appeared between her eyebrows. ‘Who is this?’

With a small start Will realized he was sitting there with his thumb over the phone’s camera. She’d be looking at a blank screen. ‘Ah, sorry,’ he moved his hand so she could see his face in all it’s bruised glory, ‘force of habit. It’s Will, Will Hunter.’

The frown disappeared, but didn’t quite turn into a smile. ‘Afternoon, sir. Why the anonymous act?’

‘I’m over at Central Records and I was wondering if you’d like to have lunch.’ He shrugged. ‘Thought you might be hungry.’ He paused. ‘As it’s…er…lunchtime.’ He cleared his throat. So much for not making an arse of himself.

She stared at him for a moment, then said, ‘Where?’

‘Downtown?’

‘When?’

Will did his best to look nonchalant. ‘Look, if it’s a bad time it’s not a problem, I can-’

‘Chiswick’s: fifteen minutes.’ A smile flickered across her face and then it was gone, disappearing into a little grey dot as she cut the connection.

Will put the phone back in his pocket, then caught sight of his reflection, grinning away in the monitor screen like a hormonal teenager. The smile slipped. He’d spent the wee small hours looking for his dead wife’s memory, and now look at him.

Lunch, with a side order of guilt.

Fourteen minutes later he was sitting at a corner table, examining the menu. Chiswick’s was small, cheap, and just close enough to the West George Street nick to attract a handful of blue uniforms.

‘This seat taken?’ There was a bright flash of colour and Detective Sergeant Jo Cameron slid into the chair opposite. Electric Lime and Volcanic Orange: gathered in tight at the waist. The jacket was surprisingly flattering, hugging her chest like a…Will tore his eyes away from the area in question. He’d not been on many dates in the last six years, but he was pretty sure that staring at a woman’s breasts wasn’t the way to make a good impression.

And then she took off her jacket, exposing a fashionably clingy emerald top.

‘Nice bruises,’ she said.

‘Thanks. Picked them out specially.’

She laughed. ‘So what have you been up to today then?’

‘Not much.’ He nudged the plastic of wine in its bag under the table. ‘Just getting a few things in for tonight. You?’

‘Loads. We took your advice and grabbed all the cleaning stuff we could find at the Kilgours.’

‘Lemon-scented bathroom cleaner?’

‘Yup: three partials and one perfect thumb print. They don’t belong to any of the family or the cleaners. We’re ninety-five percent certain it’s our boy.’

‘Any luck on a match?’

‘Not yet.’ She grabbed a menu. ‘We’ve got the system churning through every record for the last twenty-five years. If he’s been tagged we’ll get him. Just a matter of time.’

‘Good.’ He watched her reading the menu, the little pink tip of her tongue poking out between her lips from time to time. That clingy emerald top stretching every time she breathed. Will tried really hard not to stare.

‘See anything you fancy?’

‘I…em…’ He could feel his cheeks flush. ‘Er…whatever you’re having.’

Jo smiled, and Will couldn’t help smiling back. Even if he did feel like an idiot.

She punched their order into the tabletop. ‘What did you do to Brian last night? He’s done nothing but eat pickled onion crisps and swig coffee all day.’

‘Ah, the Agent Alexander patented hangover remedy. We got a bit hammered last night; kind of drowning our frustrations.’ He fiddled with the tomato sauce. ‘Director SmithHamilton’s banned all return visits to Sherman House until things calm down over there.’

‘So we can’t go anywhere with the Allan Brown investigation.’ She scrunched her face up. ‘Arse…’

‘Sorry, Jo.’

‘Damn it. I thought this time we’d actually be in with a decent chance of proving something.’ She sat back in her seat and sighed. ‘Like I said, it’s pretty clear one of the Road-hugger crew did it, but still…Be nice to get closure for a change. How long’s it off-limits for?’

‘No idea. The whole square’s under quarantine till further notice.’

The starters arrived-two bowls of Cullen Skink-and they ate their soup in silence. Slowly the mood began to lighten. They talked about old cases, movies, made fun of the sour-faced passers-by scuttling between the puddles. The main course was barely on the table before Jo sat bolt upright in her seat, her left eye going from golden brown to milky grey. ‘Sod it…’ She dug a bright-red fingerphone from her jacket pocket and slipped it on. Pointed it at herself.

‘DS Cameron, go ahead.’

Will paused, fork halfway between a bowl of ruby-coloured goulash and his mouth.

‘Negative.’ She pushed her plate away. ‘I’ll be at the station-house in about thirty seconds. Fire up a Hopper, we’ll meet them there.’

Jo stuck the fingerphone back in her pocket and stood. Will followed her. ‘What’s up?’

‘Got a match on the Kilgour prints.’ She dragged her green and orange jacket back on. ‘Pickup team are waiting for me.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Oh no you don’t: you’re confined to barracks, remember?’

‘But-’

‘No buts.’ She pushed him gently back into his seat. ‘Stay. Eat your dessert. I’ll let you know how we get on.’

Then she was gone, running out of the door and into the pounding rain. Will watched until her brightly coloured suit was swallowed up by the drenched crowd. A minute later the café’s windows rattled and the roar of a Hopper’s engines cut through the lunchtime rush.

Slowly he sank back into his seat and looked down at the plate of clotting, dark-red lumps. He just wasn’t hungry any more.

The hospital’s hum has become as familiar to her as her own breathing, warm and reassuring. She sits in her cosy nest of toilet paper, with a datapad on her lap, doing a little light reading. Her personal research notes have always been part of the PsychTech files, hidden away amongst the endless records of bed-wetting, insomnia, shoplifting, father-hatred, mother-love, sibling-rivalry, and all the other mental debris of the people she and her team interviewed.

But her files aren’t like the other PsychTech files: her files are secret, hidden away in an obscure subdirectory. Password protected, and encrypted.

PsychTech. She headed up the project for five happy years, monitoring a cross-section of Glasgow’s most vulnerable citizens, making sure they didn’t become a danger to themselves or others. Of course it was all her idea. She campaigned for it, pushed it through committee, dazzled them with her dedication and brilliance. Made them see that if you knew what the criminal mind looked like, you could start going through the population, picking out people who fitted the profile. People who might not have done anything wrong yet, but had all the right screws loose to do so in the future.

And who knew more about the criminal mind than her?

So she rose up through the ranks, her budget and remit snowballing as she climbed. It was a Ministry for Change flagship project-a vast psychological experiment designed to make Glasgow a better, safer place.

She wriggles deeper into her nest.

They didn’t have a clue about her own special project: Harbinger.

Her fingers stroke the datapad, opening the secret research notes…Opening…She stops. Frowns at the screen. There’s something not right, something that tugs at the holes in her memory.

Something…

Never mind, it’ll come to her in time.

Dr Westfield works her way through the case notes, following her children’s progress from the first time she saw their parents. There’s a lot to read through; some of them weren’t even born when she started to mould their psychological development. When the Ministry shut down the PsychTech programme they cut off her children. No therapy, no analysis, no one listening to their problems and twisted little fantasies. Six years without her guidance and advice.

Such a waste.

There are twenty-seven of them: boys, girls, and some not quite certain what they are. The girls are the most challenging to work with: they don’t mould as well as the boys do, female killers being more suited to the spree than the serial. The uncertain ones were the easiest; sexual dysfunction is a wonderfully fertile playground for the seasoned psychologist.

Gently she taps the datapad against her exposed teeth. Six year is a long time. Who knows what mischief they’ve been getting up to.

Twenty-seven opportunities for beautiful carnage. Twenty-six of them still out there, primed and ready to explode.

At the trial they’d thought Alastair Middleton was the only killer she’d created. Poor Alastair: her first real success. Just a shame he hadn’t been a bit more careful in his choice of prey. If he had she wouldn’t be sitting here with half her face missing.

This is his fault: if it wasn’t for him she’d have a seat on the Ministry board by now. All because that stupid shit couldn’t keep his fucking dick in his trousers. Filling her world with broken glass, turning her into a mutilated freak. ALL HIS BLOODY FAULT.

She pulls another ampoule of medicine from the pack and snaps it into her neck with trembling fingers. Calm. Calm. Deep breaths.

It’s no one’s fault. It’s no one’s fault.

The chemicals rush through her bloodstream. Alastair was only doing what she’d taught him to do.

Calm.

It was bad luck, nothing more.

Calm.

Her eyes drift back to the datapad in her hands.

Six years. Most of her children would be in their late teens or early twenties by now. Perhaps Alastair Middleton wasn’t the only one who’d achieved his potential. Perhaps his wouldn’t be the only halfheading she’d find in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary database. Dr Westfield punches her children’s names into the hospital search engine and settles back to wait.

The results, when they come back, are encouraging.

Three have suffered minor breaks-nothing serious, just arms and legs. Four are getting treatment for psychotic disorders and she spends a happy hour or two reading through the psychiatrists’ notes. Of course the questioning isn’t anywhere near as insightful as her own would have been, but then she has a unique perspective.

Five of her children are already dead: two stabbings, one shot during a ‘Police Action’, one suicide, and one cut up so badly in a public toilet that they needed a DNA match to identify him. Details on the two stabbings are slim, little more than post mortems, but the shooting victim is a lot more interesting. Duncan Clark, multiple Thrummer wounds to the face and head. His post-mortem holos are a 3D treat in vivid red and purple; his head looks as if it’s been skinned then sandblasted. She calls up the NewsNet, runs a search for ‘DUNCAN CLARK’.

An entire documentary pops up. Duncan Clark is a success story.

The presenter speaks to Duncan’s neighbours and mother-who looks every bit as deranged as she did when Dr Westfield got her hooked on Tezzers. Addicts are so very malleable.

There’s even footage of the hostage drama that marked the start and end of Duncan’s campaign to silence the voices in his head. He’s wearing black-and-grey urban camouflage, with an assault weapon over his shoulder. And then there’s the naked woman. He’s got a handful of her hair, holding her up while she screams and sobs and struggles, blood trickling down between her legs. Duncan presses a serrated knife to her throat, shouting at the Network pickup team, his pale, blotchy face speckled with targeting beams.

And then he slashes her open from ear to ear. Blood sprays out in glorious slow motion. The woman’s eyes bulge, her knees buckle, then Duncan’s face explodes in a cloud of pink mist. There’s just enough of a breeze to let the camera record every last beautiful detail as his features are boiled away. It only takes a second.

He falls on top of his victim-probably the closest he’s ever been to a naked woman-twitching. Muffled screams come from the ragged, bloody hole where his mouth used to be. There are no eyes, no cheeks and most of his jaw is gone.

The documentary goes into maudlin detail about the seventeen other people in the fast food joint: fathers, wives, sons, daughters. Not one of them survives the trip to the operating theatre.

Well done, Duncan. You’ve made mummy very proud.

Dr Westfield rewinds to the point where he cuts the woman’s throat, then pauses, her fingers caressing his evaporating face.

So pretty.

If only she could have spoken to him in the run up to that spree, could have found out what finally pushed the buttons she spent so many years setting in place.

There’s no NewsNet coverage for Allan Brown-the one they had to ID from his DNA-but his post mortem reads like the inventory of a butcher’s shop. There are a lot of holos in the file: close-ups of his hands, face, genitals, and belly, all torn and shredded. It’s beautiful workmanship. Strangely familiar…

Still, none of that matters. The important thing is that the remainder of her study group, all twenty-one of them, are still out there. Shrouded in the brittle comfort of bees and broken glass. Ready for that little push to send them right off the edge.

She has a lot of catching up to do.

Four hours later and the rain was still hammering down. Will stood on the edge of Blythswood Square, dripping quietly as he watched the halfhead.

It was dragging a buggy along behind it, picking up sodden litter from the drenched streets. It speared a discarded crisp packet and transferred it into the buggy’s bin. Strange to think that the thing cleaning the square had been human once. A creature of violence and destruction.

Now look at it.

Will stepped out from beneath the tree he’d been sheltering under, wincing as he crossed the square towards the figure in orange and black. Doc Morrison had told him to keep moving or he’d seize up, and now he knew what she meant. It was as if he’d come down with a bad case of rigor mortis. That’s what he got for spending all day sat in front of a monitor looking for Ken ‘The Invisible Man’ Peitai.

In the end he’d had to admit defeat: if there was any information on Peitai out there, Will couldn’t find it. Instead he’d just ended up thinking about Jo and whether or not Janet would have liked her, wondering if his dead wife would approve of his seeing another woman.

Then he went looking for Alastair Middleton. It didn’t take long when you knew which databases to hack into.

The halfhead didn’t even look up as Will walked up to him and stood watching yet another bit of sodden rubbish disappear into the bin. There was something almost peaceful about halfheads. Something timeless and serene. There was never any rush. They had nothing left to worry about.

‘Afternoon, Alastair,’ said Will, shifting his grip on the carrier bag with his shopping in it. ‘Long time no see.’

If Alastair Middleton heard him, he didn’t give any sign, just went on picking up the trash and depositing it in his little buggy.

‘Been thinking about you a lot over the last couple of days. Your old mentor’s dead. Did you know?’

Alastair didn’t say anything, but then again he couldn’t: his mind and lower jaw had been taken away long ago.

‘Got burned to death in a Roadhugger that crashed. Just like that. No more Dr Fiona Westfield.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. ‘Don’t suppose that means an awful lot to you though, does it? She just used you the same way she used everyone else: wound you up and let you go.’

Water ran down the truncated features and dripped off the exposed upper teeth, making the thing that had once been Alastair Middleton glisten.

‘You know, I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t have been kinder to kill you when I had the chance: boil your chest away just like you did to Janet. What do you think? You happy as you are? No longer a menace to society?’

A group of about a dozen schoolgirls-all of them clearly stoned out of their heads-staggered across the square, giggling and tittering in their long red cloats. Will watched them jump from puddle to puddle, shrieking with the joy of being young and off their faces.

‘Yeah, well,’ he said when they’d gone. ‘Just wanted you to know she was dead.’

Will didn’t wait for a reply-there wasn’t any point-he turned his back and squelched his way to the nearest shuttle station.

Brian and Jo would be in the pub by now, having the traditional booze-up to celebrate catching their bad guy. And God knew Will could do with celebrating something.

There was no sign of the pickup team in the Dog and Diode, so Will dragged out his mobile and called Brian’s. No response, so he tried him at home.

The little screen crackled and fizzed for a bit before Brian’s face swam into focus. Will was on his best behaviour. Didn’t even obscure the camera.

‘Brian, how…God you look terrible!’

Agent Alexander’s face was pale and baggy, his eyes bloodshot, his nose red. He sighed. ‘Will.’ That was it, no niceties, no hello, no merry banter.

‘Are you all right?’

‘No.’

‘Jesus, Brian, what happened?’

He rubbed at his eyes. ‘You don’t want to know. And I really don’t want to talk about it.’ He took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I’m sorry Will. I’ll…I’ll talk to you later. I can’t do this right now.’

Someone appeared at his shoulder and Will recognized James’s voice as he wrapped Brian up in a hug. ‘Shhhh…Come on. Let it go. It’s all right.’

Then the connection went dead.

Will frowned at the flashing ‘CALL TERMINATED’ icon. It wasn’t like Brian to let things get to him. Not like that.

Will called the West George Street Bluecoat station. A harassed-sounding sergeant told him he could go screw himself if he thought they were going to hand out a DS’s private number to some wanker in a pub, before slamming the cut-off switch. Will was left with the ‘CALL TERMINATED’ icon again.

He could always dig Jo’s number out of the Bluecoats records when he got home. And anyway, he had a plastic of wine and a pizza delivery menu waiting for him. Who could ask for more?

She pushes the datapad away and stretches. It’s taken her most of the day, but she now has addresses for all her remaining children. Surprisingly, most of them live in the same place. Three stay out in the lower suburbs, but the other eighteen are all bundled up, nice and snug, in Monstrosity Square. Strange that fate made them gravitate together like that. Strange, but convenient-visiting them will be nice and easy.

She’ll have to get herself a little insurance first. Pick up a few choice items from one of her weapons caches. Wouldn’t do to fall prey to her own children. That would be too ironic.

Dr Westfield rolls out of her nest and drops to the supply room floor. Sadly, no one’s come to visit since Kris and her friend. No one to see the excellent job she’s done cleaning away the evidence. But that’s probably just as well: they might wonder about the two jars, resting against the back wall, full of preserving fluid and body parts. She likes to take them down from their shelf and dance around the room with them. Hold them up to the light and watch as it flickers and dances between the strings of flesh. Pop open the lids and…

She stops, one hand on the lid, one on the cool plastic container. She just had to open them. Her case files should have been locked tight. Passwords. Encryption.

The jar drops from her hands. It hits the concrete floor and bounces, spilling eyes and testicles and ovaries in an explosion of bitter-smelling liquid. Bouncing back up from the floor, it spins, spraying out the last of the preserving fluid, before sinking back to dance and skitter to a halt at her feet.

She shouldn’t have been able to just open up the Harbinger files. She’d erased all open versions when that Network bastard came snooping. Everything else was hidden. Stored. Compressed. Booby-trapped. The only way those files would be accessible was if someone had unlocked and disarmed them. And she sure as hell didn’t do it.

Someone has been tampering with her work. Someone has been meddling.

Someone is going to pay.

The front door bleeped at him, and Will put down his keyboard and stretched. The twinges were back, but he only had a couple of blockers left and wasn’t going to waste them. Instead he took another sip of wine and slouched through to the hall to pay the DinoPizza delivery girl for his twelve-inch Cheat-Meat feast.

He stuffed a slice into his mouth, settled back on the couch and pulled the terminal closer. Hacking into the government network didn’t take long-their security was a joke. If he weren’t in the habit of using it to sneak into other, more suspicious, systems he would have said something. The main Bluecoat computers weren’t any better, and he spent a couple of minutes skimming their arrest records to see if any names would leap out at him. They didn’t. So he pushed on-through the firewall surrounding their personnel files-and called up Detective Sergeant Josephine Cameron’s record.

Most of it he’d seen before, but he read through it again: commendations, verbal warnings, an impressive enough arrest list. Three applications for transfer to the Network. He’d not seen those in her public file. No wonder she’d jumped at the chance to act as liaison officer, it was a back door into the service for her. Three or four knock-backs weren’t unusual; the Network liked to make sure new agents really wanted to be there.

Her disciplinary record wasn’t too bad-the most recent entry was over two years old, so it looked as if she’d learned to play the game. Politics: the bane of law enforcement agencies everywhere. It wasn’t enough to be good at your job, you also had to be sensitive to the machinations of your sup eriors.

Will took another bite of pizza. It was getting cold, the cloned pepperoni greasy, the cheese beginning to congeal.

He moved on to her personal details: address, mother’s maiden name, height, weight and home number. He punched it into the phone and settled back on the couch, only remembering at the last minute she wouldn’t be able to see anything because he’d killed the camera.

‘Damn.’ Never mind, it was too late to do anything about it now.

It rang and rang and rang and rang. In the end the answerphone clicked on and he was confronted with a pre-recorded DS Cameron telling him that she wasn’t able to come to the phone right now, but if he felt like it, and didn’t expect an answer anytime soon, he could leave a message after the beep. Will hung up.

He washed a chunk of pizza crust down with a mouthful of wine. Just because no one wanted to talk to him, it didn’t mean he couldn’t find out what happened today. If Jo had submitted any paperwork it would be filed on the Bluecoat mainframe. He dragged the case reference out of her day log and went hunting.

He was almost there when the doorbell went. Twice in one evening, something of a record.

Cursing, he shut the screen down, slipped the keyboard back under the coffee table, then answered the door.

He barely recognized the woman on his doorstep. There was no sign of the trademark eye-melters she normally wore, instead DS Cameron was clad in sombre blues and greys. Freed from its usual asymmetric bun, her hair hung round her face like a mourning veil, hiding her eyes, curling in round her cheeks in tight, black curls. There was a lot more of it than he’d suspected.

He smiled at her. ‘Hi.’

She didn’t say anything.

Will tried again. ‘You OK?’

‘Can I come in?’ Jo’s voice was thick and a little slurred. Not much, not falling-down-pissed-as-a-fart, just enough to let Will know that she’d been drinking.

‘Em…Yeah, of course.’

She followed him through to the lounge. ‘Got your address out the files.’

Will frowned. ‘My address is in the public files?’

She shook her head and a small smile flickered across her lips. ‘Nope.’

So she’d been up to the same thing he had.

‘You want something to drink? Got some cold pizza I could reheat.’

‘Drink’s good.’

He popped a couple of tumblers out of the cleaner and onto the countertop; somehow Will got the feeling this wasn’t an occasion for wine. A generous glug of whisky was accompanied by the briefest splash of water.

Jo took a deep sip and rolled it around her mouth. Her eyes were pink and swollen, just like Brian’s had been.

They sat side by side on the settee making stilted small talk. The weather, Will’s bruises, the view from his apartment…When the change of subject came, Jo’s voice faltered.

‘We found Jillian Kilgour,’ she said into her glass.

Will settled back and waited for her to tell it, but she didn’t. Instead she bit down on her bottom lip and her shoulders started to tremble. There was no noise at first, just a gentle rocking back and forth and then the tears started. They balled up in the corners of her eyes like tiny fists and rolled down her coffee-coloured cheeks. Then she dragged in a ragged breath and bit down again. Will placed his glass on the coffee table and put his arms round her shoulders.

‘It’s OK,’ he said as she buried her face in the crook of his neck. ‘It’s OK.’

He held her until she had no tears left.

The mess is all cleaned away, mopped and polished until there is no sign of spilled preserving fluid or body parts.

Broken glass and bees. Filling the storeroom with their incessant, sharp-edged buzzing.

Someone has been in her files.

Some bastard has been interfering with her work.

For a moment she comes close to exploding; it would feel very good to start smashing things. But she can’t do that. The storeroom’s internal sensors will notice that much destruction, someone will be sent down to investigate. She can do nothing to draw attention to herself. Nothing.

So she sits on the edge of a pile of surgical gowns and seethes. Someone has hacked into her Harbinger files. Someone has been rifling though her research. Someone…

She stops and looks at the monster reflected in the polished steel of the central unit. Only one person has ever managed to get into her files. A long purple scar winds its way across the left-hand side of his face. He wears a dark-blue suit.

Dr Westfield scowls at the datapad in her hand-the open Harbinger files. He should have known better. She won’t let him get away with it a second time.

Her fingers dance over the datapad, accessing the Network admissions sheet for the last three days and there he is. Three broken ribs, cranial trauma-nothing too serious-and a follow-up appointment made for four thirty tomorrow. The bastard will be right here in this very building…

She closes her eyes. If she goes after him now she risks everything. With trembling fingers she snaps an ampoule of her medicine into the soft skin at the nape of her neck.

Calm washes through her on a chemical tide.

Soon her cloneplant will be ready and Stephen will make her whole again.

She’ll be whole again and Assistant Section Director William Scott Hunter will begin his new, painful life.

She calls up his personal information and copies down his home address.

They’ll spend some quality time together. Just the two of them and a scalpel, a bone hammer, needles, blades, screams, blood. His lovely face…Death is fast and permanent. But with the right treatment, The Man In The Dark-Blue Suit can suffer for years.

She picks a dissection blade from a pack of twelve. It feels nice in her hand, comfortable, heavy, shiny. Mutilating him will be therapeutic. And she has always known the benefits of good therapy.