Off the Rails

∨ Off the Rails ∧

14

The Letter K

John May checked his vintage Rolex for the fifth time. He was seated at the bar of the St Pancras Grand, a restaurant on the upper level of the vast, airy St Pancras station. He was waiting for Rufus Abu. Like a pixilated image on a TV screen, Rufus was infernally difficult to keep in focus. He left a ghost track across the city’s security network, and never stayed longer than a few minutes in any public place. May tried contacting him on every electronic device he owned, but there had been no answer. All he could ever do was send a call-sign into the ether and wait for him to appear at a pre-arranged spot.

The police remained unconvinced that the teenaged hacker was working on their side. Rufus was still wanted for extradition by an American intelligence agency operating in London, because he had slipped under the tracking defences of a U.S. insurance company and exposed their vulnerability to cyber-attack. The fact that Rufus was merely intending to highlight the firm’s security issues revealed his greatest weakness; the hacker was driven to try and change the world for the better, without realising that he would always make the wrong people angry.

“Don’t make me eat here.” May turned and found Rufus standing beside him at the counter. “Just get me an OJ. I have my own alcohol.”

“I knew you wouldn’t stay long enough to have dinner,” May replied. He had picked the venue because there was only one surveillance camera in operation, by the door, and he was blocking its view. “How are you doing?”

“Copacetic, John, staying fly and dry. Cotchin’ down in the South Bank until the fudges pass. Buncha drag-ass cholos in old-school Pumas looking for a face-up.” May had trouble deciphering Rufus’s retro-slang, but vaguely recalled that a fudge was an idiot because the initials stood for low examination grades. For once the hacker was dressed like a regular teenager, in jeans and a black sweatshirt, instead of looking like a miniature version of a suburban nightclub manager. “Sorry your 187 ‘scaped.” May gave him a blank look. “Your killer, man. He’ll pop again. Listen, I need your help. Can you get me off the grill?”

“You’re wanted by the CIA, Rufus, what do you expect me to do? Maybe I could talk to someone, but you’ll have to do something for me.”

“Spell it, I’m listening.”

May waited while Rufus added homemade gin to his orange juice, then took the plastic sticker from his pocket. “Have you seen anything like this around town?”

Rufus studied the sticker. “Where’d you catch it?”

“From the back of a dead woman. There’s a chance the killer might have marked her with it for some reason. We’re running checks on her friends and family, going through her apartment, the usual stuff, but I don’t think we’ll get much. If you have a fight at home with someone, you don’t wait until they’re boarding a train to take a pop at them.”

“Wait, I have an IRC CyberScript giz for this.” Rufus pulled out a white plastic stick no thicker than a ballpoint pen, and extended an antenna the width of paper-clip wire. He ran it over the sticker and jacked the other end into a slender white credit card. “We ‘steined this from some military defence pattern recog software, simple stuff, just creates a rolling design database.”

“We?” said May. “There’s more than one of you?” His question went unanswered.

“Man, this station’s Wi-Fi is dragging. Give me a minute.” Rufus shook the box impatiently. “One ID trace-over. It’s a bar.”

“A bar? What does that mean?”

“A bar, a drinking establishment.” The young hacker turned the screen around and showed May the logo of the Karma Bar. “Corner of Judd Street and Tavistock Place, so it’s the nearest bar to UCL apart from the college union lounge. Either your vic chilled there, or you’re looking for someone who hung with her. UCL suggests a student.”

“Rufus, you’re a genius. I owe you one.”

“So pay the debt. Call off the CIA before they cap me.”

“I’ll try, Rufus, but you know I can’t promise. I’ll do what I can. Don’t worry, they’re not going to shoot you.”

“I can’t keep running, John. I’m getting too old. There are faster guys comin’ up under me.” May looked at the small-boned West Indian boy, noting that his oversized sneakers barely reached the lower rung of the stool. He tried to imagine what a faster, younger generation of computer hackers would be like, but the idea was quite beyond his grasp.

♦

He could easily have arranged for someone else to cover it, but May headed for the bar because he had nothing better to do. He felt bad about April. His granddaughter had been doing well at the Unit until the traumatic events surrounding DuCaine’s murder had unseated her. Refusing to talk to him, she had folded a few clothes into a suitcase and left. For a girl who cited phobias whenever she became stressed, he thought it odd that she had no qualms about getting on a plane. All that hard work with her, he thought, and I’m back where I started.

The newly divorced Brigitte was back in Paris for the week, visiting her two sons. He wanted to stay in her rented apartment in Bloomsbury, to slouch on her ridiculous beaded floor cushions drinking fierce red wine and talking until all the street traffic had died away. He couldn’t survive as Bryant did, with only his books and his disapproving landlady for company. John May had long been considered a ladies’ man, but now the advancing years made the idea unseemly. There’s nothing less attractive than an ageing gigolo, he thought. Brigitte might be the one I could settle down with, but she doesn’t seem that interested. She only calls me late at night, when she’s been drinking.

So he defaulted back to work. The K Bar was marked by a small steel sign featuring the logo found on Gloria Taylor’s back. Beside the entrance, a bouncer with a head shaped like a stack of bricks stopped him and searched his bag. “Give me a description of your child,” he suggested, “and I’ll go and see if she’s inside.”

“Very funny. Let me in or I’ll arrest you.” May flashed his badge.

“Right-ho.” The bouncer swung aside.

Inside the doorway, stacked with various club flyers and student special offers, were pages of the same plastic circles, eight to a sheet. May was assailed with doubt. If the design was that familiar, it was likely to be stuck on posters all over town. Taylor had probably leaned against one and accidentally transferred it to herself.

He found himself in a pleasant, dark-wood barroom surrounded by counters of illuminated white glass. When the barman set his beer bottle down, digitised silver ripples pulsed out around its base. The sound system was playing ‘Jazz Music’ by the German funk band De-Phazz, a personal favourite of his, but surely an old-fashioned choice for a student bar. We had nowhere like this to hang out when I was a kid, May thought with a twinge of jealousy. Mind you, we didn’t have to borrow money for our education, either, so it’s swings and roundabouts.

Once his eyes fully adjusted, he could see that the place was crowded with students sprawled across low brown leather seats. Except that they didn’t look like his idea of students. Monochromatically attired, calm and quiet and faintly dull-looking, they could have passed for trainee accountants. Did they still march, squat, riot, rally, fight? Or did they only communicate through screens and share their opinions with strangers? It was hard to know what the young honestly thought, because the barrier of years increasingly blocked his way.

“This symbol, do you know what it means?” he asked the barman, pointing to the logo.

“I don’t know, it’s just a design for the bar. I don’t think it means anything.”

“You get mostly students from UCL in here?”

“They get a discount.”

“Any trouble?”

The barman realised he was talking to a policeman. He stiffened imperceptibly. “It’s not that kind of a bar.”

“What kind is it?”

“What is it you want?”

“One of these stickers was found at a crime scene. I’m just checking it out. Hang on.” He pulled out a photograph of Gloria Taylor. “Ever see this woman in here?”

“No, no-one like her, and I’m on most nights. You can talk to the girl who designed the sticker, though – she’s over there. The one with the hair.”

The first thing May noticed about the girl was her height. She was folded over a sofa that didn’t seem long enough to contain her. Her head was close-cropped, except for an immaculate blond centre braid that made her look like a virtual-reality version of herself. She was talking with two Asian boys who, from May’s attenuated viewpoint, looked about fifteen years old. When May introduced himself, she shook his hand in a curiously genteel fashion which made him warm to her.

“I’m Cassie Field. Can I help you?”

“I understand you designed this logo.”

“Yeah, and the brewery never paid me for the job.”

“So you’re an art director, a designer, what?”

“Visual artist. If you can work in the media these days everyone assumes that you have rich parents and tries to avoid paying you, like designing isn’t real work. I ended up covering the print bill myself. And I don’t have rich parents.” She gave a throaty laugh. “I run this place – well, four nights a week. I split-shift with another manager. It’s paying for my tuition.”

“What are you studying?”

“English civil war documents at the British Library; they’re for an educational videogame project. I can give my eyes and brain a rest here after I’ve been working on my laptop all day.”

“So you must know most of the regulars.”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty familiar crowd.”

“I’m interested in these stickers.” May held up the one removed from Taylor’s body. “The K is for Karma, right? Not Kaos.”

She looked at him properly now, intrigued. “Not necessarily. Show me.” She took the bagged sticker from him and examined it. “This one’s been coloured in. The man’s body, see? Day-Glo orange marker. The originals are lighter.” Bryant had not noticed, in the dim light of the bar. “I’ve seen a few around like this.”

“In here?”

“I suppose so. I can’t think where else. A lot of different tribes come in. Emos in that corner, bless ‘em, Goths over there. The rest are mostly – to tell the truth, I don’t know what they are anymore. It evolves, you know? Mostly they’re just students. Quite a few Japanese kids. All they do is talk about work. The idea was to get people to customise the stickers and put them on their bags. The bar owners told me to make sure they didn’t end up on walls. It’s illegal to flypost around here.”

“Since when were students worried about legalities?” May asked.

“Since their education could be cancelled,” Cassie replied tartly.

“Could you do me a favour? Keep a lookout for any stickers shaded in this fashion? I have a number you can call if you see anything.”

“Sure. Why do you need to know?”

“One of them has been found in connection with a murder in the underground.” He handed her his PCU card, then thought for a moment. “Actually, don’t just call if you see the sticker. Call if you see anything unusual, anything at all. It might seem insignificant to you at the time, but make a note and ring me.”

“There’s a group that comes in…” She tapped a frosted white nail against her teeth. “They’re here most nights of the week. Something funny about them. I don’t know…”

“Funny in what way?”

“I guess they’re just really focussed. They don’t like to mix with anyone else. I think I’ve seen the orange-coloured stickers on their bags. They huddle together in the corner at night, working on their PDAs.”

“So what makes them funny?”

“I guess it’s just that they’re too intense, working as if…”

“What?”

She gave a shrug. “As if their lives depended on it. Hang on – there’s someone here who knows them.” A tall, smartly suited young man stood at the bar rummaging in a black leather briefcase. “Theo!” Cassie called out. “Over here.”

“Hey, Cassie.”

“Don’t you ever pick up your voicemail?”

“I was away visiting my folks. What’s up?”

“Mr May, this is Theo. He may be able to help you.”

John May shook Theo’s hand, taking note of a tanned wrist and an expensive-looking Cartier watch.

“Theo, those guys with the red sports bags are your flatmates, aren’t they?”

“Geek Central, yeah. The loser patrol. Have they been causing you any trouble?”

“No, but Mr May is trying to track down these.” She showed him the sticker. “They have them on their bags, don’t they?”

“Yeah, I think so. Don’t you give them out here in the bar?”

“Not coloured in like this.” She turned to May. “Can I say who you are?” she asked politely.

“I’m a detective,” said May. “Maybe I could talk to these friends of yours?”

“I think ‘friends’ is overdoing it. We share a house. Actually, it’s my house and they pay me rent. I can give you the phone number there.” Theo flipped out a pen – another Cartier – and scribbled on a card. “I don’t think they’ll be too thrilled to hear from the police, though.”

“It’s a long shot,” May confided. “Right now I’m ready to try anything.”

Cassie had a killer smile. “I’d get you a drink,” she suggested, “if you weren’t on duty.”

“I’m not,” May replied promptly, “and make it a whisky.” He wondered how much he should tell her, but figured it wouldn’t do any harm to mention the case. The PCU had fewer restrictions on information than the CID. “We have a dead woman with one of these stickers on her back.”

“And you suspect my flatmates?” asked Theo, incredulous. “That’s brilliant. Oh, that’s genius.” He started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” May asked.

Theo’s smile broadened to match Cassie’s. “You’ll find out when you meet them,” he answered.