Something Coming Through

27. Seriously Strange Shit

London | 10 July

Chloe and Henry spent the night in a hotel hard by the M25. The kind of blandly anonymous place where salesmen meet their clients and companies hold away days. Generic toiletries, triple-glazed windows that couldn’t be opened, a restaurant with rattan screens, bamboo stems in glass tumblers as table centrepieces, and the choice between watching a TV screen tuned to a sports channel up in one corner or a view across the motorway to fields of oilseed rape while you enjoyed the ‘eclectic’ menu of microwaved Indian and Thai food.

They’d driven there from Norwich after picking up a Nissan people carrier at the station car park, delivered by an extremely polite young man in chinos and a blue windbreaker.

‘I want you to make sure my old motor is recovered,’ Henry said, as he signed for the vehicle. ‘It’s parked in the long-term car park by Acle harbour. The police might be looking out for it by now — the Disruption Theory crew have probably given up everything they know. So whoever picks it up should watch their step.’

‘I’ll take care of it personally, Mr Harris,’ the young man said.

He exchanged sets of keys with Henry and handed him a new phone, then lifted a folding bicycle from the back of the people carrier and pedalled off.

The stuff they’d left behind at the pub in Martham was waiting for them when they arrived at the hotel. Chloe imagined a cadre of smart young men and women operating out of some kind of Acme distribution centre, supporting clandestine operations with every service and necessity. A thought both absurd and chilling.

While she picked at soggy spring rolls and an insipid vegetable stir-fry, Henry fielded several calls on his new phone, told her that Sandra and her people had extracted themselves without difficulty, said that the Prof’s lawyers were working on getting Daniel and the others released on bail.

‘It shouldn’t be a problem. They aren’t really the target.’

‘Meaning that I am.’

‘The others are a way of getting close to you. You may be the way to getting close to the kid. But we’re still good. We’re off the map, and Sandra’s people have set up a false trail.’

There was a moment when Chloe could have told him about sending Gail Ann to check out the gym where Max Predator trained, but she let it pass. She wanted to know what Gail Ann had found out first, and she still wasn’t certain that Ada Morange’s plans coincided with the best interests of Fahad and his sister.

She slept surprisingly well, woke to an alarm call at six, showered, and, sitting at the edge of the bed wrapped in a towel, used the room’s phone to call Gail Ann.

It rang a long time, long enough for Chloe to become worried.

‘Now you’re calling the new phone,’ Gail Ann said, when at last she answered. ‘Took me an age to find it.’

‘Did it go okay yesterday?’

‘I didn’t even know this time of day existed,’ Gail Ann said. ‘Before I even try to answer that, let me at least start making coffee.’

‘I kind of need to know if you found out anything useful,’ Chloe said.

‘Didn’t you get my messages?’

‘I’m in a hotel. Using the room phone.’

‘They still have phones, in hotel rooms?’

‘It controls the TV, the air conditioning…I think this call is costing like two pounds a minute, but I can’t be sure my phone isn’t bugged or something. I used it to call you yesterday because it was all I had. How did it go at the gym?’

‘It was interesting in all kinds of ways. But first, did you hear about Disruption Theory’s offices?’

A fire had broken out in the offices late last night. There’d been a brief mention about it on BBC London’s news feed; Gail Ann had found several references on Twitter and Facebook, including a photo taken from a neighbouring block of flats. A long-distance shot and a little blurry, she said, but it was definitely Disruption Theory’s building, the top floor lit up by flames.

Chloe felt hot and then cold. She said, ‘This is my fault.’

‘Section 808 claims to have firebombed it,’ Gail Ann said. ‘They said that the place was harbouring dangerous alien technology.’

Section 808 was an extremist group which had broken away from the Human Dignity League after it had entered the political mainstream.

Chloe said, ‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘Not according to the BBC.’

‘That’s right. Everyone was arrested.’ Chloe wondered if Henry knew about this. Of course he did. She said, ‘This is all down to me.’

‘You can’t hold yourself responsible for what extremists do. Let me tell you about my little adventure at the cage-fighter gym,’ Gail Ann said. ‘I know it will make you feel better.’

‘Did you find Max Predator’s manager? Did you talk to him?’

‘It was a her, actually. Just a sec. There. Now I have coffee.’ Gail Ann slurped some, said, ‘Oh my.’

‘Does she know Fahad? Does he hang at the gym?’

‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ Gail Ann said. ‘Let me start at the beginning. So the gym? It was sort of tacky and sad. These bodybuilders grimly working away at their machines, lifting weights, whatever. And all these mirrors so they can admire their gross mods. Horns and fangs are popular. Also claws, and these hooks, they call them spurs, at wrists and elbows. There was one guy with little horns growing out of his forehead. There was another guy with bright red skin and a kind of spiny ruff. Sort of like a lizard. And tattoos like you’ve never seen. One guy had tattooed eyeballs. It’s some kind of Jamaican thing, apparently.’

‘What about Max Predator?’

‘He wasn’t there. So I hung around until the gym’s owner turned up. She’s also Max’s manager. Judith Elborough, this tough old broad with a posh accent, sounds and looks like a racehorse trainer from the Home Counties. I checked her background afterwards. She inherited the business from her husband, who skipped out of the country when his investment company turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. He’d bought a share in the cage-fighting business, put in their son’s name, and she took it over—’

Chloe said, ‘But does she know Fahad?’

‘She knew Fahad’s father. But I didn’t get that from her. She wouldn’t talk to me. I said that I was working for Ada Morange. Which isn’t a total lie, seeing as you do. And she said that Professor Morange’s people had already seen her. I said I was doing a follow-up, thinking on my feet—’

‘Wait. She talked to Ada Morange’s people?’

‘They beat me to it. I suppose they noticed that poster too.’

‘What did they ask her?’

Chloe was wondering what else Henry hadn’t told her. She knew that she would have to confront him; also knew that he would tell her only as much as he thought she needed to know.

Gail Ann said, ‘I don’t know. The Elborough woman called my bluff.’

‘Shit.’

Gail Ann said, ‘Luckily, I’d already talked to some of her fighters while I was waiting for her to show up. They aren’t fighters, by the way. They’re, get this, warriors. One of them, a big hairy guy who calls himself the Warewolf, asked me out. Told me that he was going up against his big rival in a couple of days, said I should sit ringside and bring him luck. Only it isn’t a ring, of course. It’s an actual cage. Once you’re inside it, you don’t get out until you win or you’re down. Wolfie has some amazing scars. And fur all over his body. Grey, with a vee of white on his chest.’

‘Sounds like you had fun,’ Chloe said.

‘It was definitely interesting. I might even go see him fight. There’s a story in it. Not my usual thing, but it’s good to be stretched. Anyway, I told him about your runaway artist. Explained why you wanted to get in contact with him, and so forth. And it turns out that Wolfie knew his father. You know how mods work?’

‘I know it’s Elder Culture tech,’ Chloe said, beginning to wonder when Gail Ann was going to get to the point.

‘They’re derived from these like alien creatures, biochines. You take fragments from their hides — proteins, collagen, or whatever — and treat them in various ways and stick them under your skin. Different ones grow different mods.’

‘And Fahad’s father was involved in this.’

‘He supplied antagonists that suppress side effects, and stop the mods growing when they’ve grown enough. Wolfie told me some gross horror stories about mods going bad.’

‘So Sahar Chauhan worked for Judith Elborough at some point. Making these antagonists.’

‘According to Wolfie, he worked for these tasty geezers—’

‘Tasty geezers? He really said that?’

‘Really. He’s an East End boy, his parents have a café in Poplar they’ve owned for like fifty years? Anyway, Sahar Chauhan treated people who’d been given new mods. He’d do blood tests, use them to work up the right mix of antagonists.’

‘And did Sahar ever bring Fahad with him?’

‘Now we’re getting to the good part,’ Gail Ann said. ‘Wolfie said that Sahar used to come to the fights, visited backstage several times with his son. Who was a huge fan of Max Predator. Wolfie claims that the names are deliberately cheesy. The punters love it. So I guess that’s where Fahad got the signed poster you told me about.’

Chloe said, ‘Has Fahad visited the gym recently? Looking for work. Trying to sell some of his art…’

‘Wolfie said he doesn’t know. I think he was telling the truth, too. But here’s the really good part. Are you sitting down?’

‘Why don’t you just tell me?’

‘After I left the gym, a couple of hours later, I got a message from someone who not only claims to know Fahad, but says that Fahad wants to meet up.’

‘With you?’

‘No, sweetie. With you.’

Henry was in the hotel’s restaurant, looking up from his plate of sausage and beans as Chloe sat down. ‘Here’s someone who got out of the wrong side of the bed.’

‘We need to talk,’ Chloe said. ‘Get everything in the open.’

‘Would this be about the fire at Disruption Theory, or your friend’s visit to the gym?’

‘We could start by talking about everything you haven’t been telling me.’

‘We both saw that poster in the fort. We both followed it up. After Sandra and her boys got out, they went to the place where Mr Predator works out and talked to the woman who manages him. Meanwhile, you asked your journalist friend to snoop around. Did she find anything interesting?’

‘I know that Sahar Chauhan was making stuff, antagonists, which cage fighters use. I know he took Fahad to the fights.’

‘And Fahad came into the gym a couple of months ago, looking for work. Janet Elborough told us that she gave him some cash and got rid of him, because she knew that his father’s employers were looking for him. Did your reporter friend tell you about them?’

‘Not yet.’

‘The McBride family,’ Henry said. ‘A long-established criminal firm. They own the shrimp farm in Martham, and the company that sent Sahar Chauhan to Mangala. And now they’re looking for Fahad. The Elborough woman says that she didn’t tell them about his visit to her place. Maybe she’s telling the truth, maybe not. She relies on them for those antagonists, and they might be into her for other stuff.’

‘But she talked to your people,’ Chloe said.

‘Sandra can be very persuasive. You should be flattered, really,’ Henry said. ‘This thing you started has the Prof’s full attention.’

‘Then why do I feel that I’m being sidelined?’

‘If you were being sidelined, you wouldn’t be here with me,’ Henry said. ‘Listen. The Prof has a profiler working for her. The kind of shrink who works out the home lives of serial killers from the way they operate. He says that you and the kid are a complementary pair. You both lost your mothers, have absent fathers. You have a reputation — the wiki, that move you made trying to protect the Jackaroo avatar. And now you’re actually wanted by the Hazard Police. You’re on the run, just like him. This profiler thinks you can use all of that to get the kid’s trust. So you’re still in this, for as long as you want to be.’

‘But no more secrets. No more withholding information.’

‘Didn’t I just tell you what we found out? And listen, I’m impressed that you were able to find out about that kid’s connection to that gym so quickly, but no more stunts like that, okay? You could have put this thing of ours at risk. Not to mention your friend.’

Chloe said, ‘I found out something else. One of Fahad’s friends has been trying to get in touch with me.’

She explained that the friend had sent a text message to Gail Ann after she visited the gym. ‘She left her contact details with some of the fighters. Either this friend is one of them, or they work there and heard Gail Ann asking about Fahad, heard her mention my name. They sent her a message, asking her to ask me to check my messages.’

‘They sent you a message?’

‘Two days ago. I didn’t see it because my phone has been turned off. Mostly turned off. When I checked, there were about two hundred messages in my inbox. Almost all of them were from reporters, but there was one sent anonymously, asking me to reply to it if I wanted to talk to Mangala Cowboy. That’s the name—’

‘The tumblr thing. How did they know your phone number?’

‘Apart from the fact that just about everyone in the world seems to know it? I left my card in Fahad’s door when I visited the displaced-persons village.’

She watched Henry think about this. He said, ‘I hope you didn’t reply. Your phone is compromised.’

‘I was hoping I could use yours,’ Chloe said.

Henry thought about that, saying at last, ‘But it might spook them if your reply came from a different number. Give me your phone.’

She handed it over. He thumbed through the phone’s inbox, aimed its screen towards Chloe. ‘This is the message?’

‘That’s it.’

‘It could be a con. A game run by the Hazard Police.’

‘How would they know about Gail Ann?’

‘Because they’ve probably made it their business to find out about everyone you’ve called with this damn thing.’

‘I used it yesterday,’ Chloe confessed, ‘because you threw the other one away. And I used the room phone to call Gail Ann this morning.’

‘By which time her phone might have been compromised.’

‘I called her other phone. A new one I gave her when all this started.’

Henry smiled. ‘That’s almost smart.’

‘That’s almost a compliment.’

Henry weighed the phone in his hand, then tapped out something with his thumbs and set it on the table. ‘Done. Have you eaten yet?’

‘What did you say?’

‘That you wanted to talk. Get some breakfast inside you. We have an appointment.’

‘What kind of appointment?’

‘A hospital appointment. Your friend Eddie Ackroyd got himself beaten up.’

Chloe was working her way through a latte and a bowl of fruit and yoghurt when her phone started to buzz. She and Henry looked at it; Henry picked it up.

‘Four o’clock, the Reef’s free market,’ he said, reading off the screen. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’

‘I know where the Reef is. I used to hang out there a lot when I was freelancing. Is that it?’

‘Short and sweet,’ Henry said, and switched off the phone and pocketed it. ‘Eat up. We’ll visit your friend Eddie first, then work out how to play this.’

They drove to London, to the Whittington hospital. Another polite young man in a blue windbreaker was waiting for them in the car park, told Henry that so far no one had been to visit Mr Ackroyd. ‘The police interviewed him when he was admitted to casualty, but they haven’t been back.’

Henry said, ‘The local police?’

The young man nodded. ‘Mr Ackroyd suffered a ruptured spleen. He was operated on yesterday. Now he’s in a recovery ward, awaiting discharge. Apparently there is some dispute about the bill. So far there is no indication that the Hazard Police know his whereabouts.’

‘Good to know,’ Henry said. He handed Chloe’s phone to the young man and said that he wanted the message from Fahad’s friend traced, then told Chloe, ‘Let’s get this done. I’ll do the talking. You look sympathetic.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ Chloe said.

But she did feel a small and unexpected pang when she saw Eddie Ackroyd in his raised bed, looking smaller and older in a hospital gown, grey hair neatly combed back from his bruised and bandaged face. His eyes were swollen and his nose was taped; one arm was in a cast from elbow to wrist. He was sitting up and reading a paperback book, looking up from it at Chloe with a kind of dull resignation. Perhaps it was fear, or perhaps he’d been fed some kind of elephant tranquilliser, but he lacked his usual sarcastic edge.

While Henry fetched two chairs, Eddie said to Chloe, ‘Who’s your friend?’

His mouth was bruised too; at least two of his teeth were missing.

‘He works for Ada Morange.’

Eddie took a moment, lifting a paper cup, spitting into it. There was blood in his saliva. ‘He looks like police.’

‘We’re here to help, Eddie. Listen to what he has to say.’

Henry got straight to the point, telling Eddie that he knew about his interest in Fahad Chauhan and the client who left mysterious clues in a folder in the editors’ board of the LFM wiki, but wanted to hear his side of the story.

‘Why should I tell you anything?’ Eddie said.

Henry took out his phone, dialled a number and told the person at the other end to go ahead with the payment, and said to Eddie, ‘For a start, we’ve taken care of your hospital bill. Check it out.’

Eddie took the phone as if suspecting a trick. ‘Who is this? I see. I see. No, I suppose that’s all right…’

Henry took the phone back. ‘You’ve got yourself in a bit of a pickle, Mr Ackroyd. But we’re willing to help you if you help us. We’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed here. No unexpected visitors. We’ll pay all your medical expenses, including reconstructive dentistry. And we’ll pay a finder’s fee, too.’

They dickered about the price, but Eddie’s heart wasn’t in it. After a couple of minutes he agreed on about half what Chloe had expected him to demand. It wasn’t much of a story, he said. He was only trying to make a living, like everyone else.

‘Why don’t you tell us about the people who beat you up,’ Henry said. ‘Was it in the street, or did they pull you into a car and take you somewhere?’

Eddie said that they had been waiting for him in his house. ‘Two of them. One about your age, the other younger. They tied me to a chair, and they started to snap records in half. I collect early opera records. 78 rpm.’

‘Really? I still have some of my dad’s old LPs,’ Henry said.

He was, Chloe could tell, having fun.

He and Eddie discussed the merits and demerits of digital v. analogue for a couple of minutes, Henry expressing interest when Eddie explained how he used steel needles to play his records, then steering the conversation back to the main topic.

Eddie said, ‘Luckily, they didn’t know which ones were valuable. I have several early Carusos, recorded before his voice changed, including Trimarchi’s “Un Bacio Ancora”. I have a near-mint copy of Alessandro Moreschi on G and T singing “Ave Maria”. One of the last castratis, the only one ever recorded.’ He paused to spit into his cup. ‘They missed those, but they broke twenty-two others, right in front of me. I told them I would answer their questions, but they broke them anyway. Because they could. And then, after we talked, they beat me up.’

He said that he’d told them everything he knew.

‘I mentioned my client to you,’ he said to Chloe. ‘That’s who they were mostly interested in. I explained that I’d never met him. That he feeds me tips and I follow them up, interview the people involved, get their stories. That’s what he’s interested in. Their stories.’

Eddie said that he’d done it seven times now. Always the same, he said. First a clue to send him to the general area. When he found the people who were getting ready to break out, he’d document them as fully as possible. After he uploaded everything, he’d be paid in shellcoin, the African digital currency. Completely untraceable.

‘The one in Dagenham, I noticed the flyer, followed it up. The boy, Fahad, wouldn’t give me the time of day, but I knew he was the focus of the breakout,’ Eddie said, and delicately spat into his cup again. ‘And I knew he was holding out on me, that he had a potent artefact, or had been exposed to one. You noticed it too, that’s why you’re here. But I saw him first.’

Chloe said, ‘I guess I’m losing my edge.’

She felt a little sorry for Eddie, punished because he’d been caught up in something he didn’t understand.

Henry went over the business with the client. Eddie stuck to his story, saying, ‘I’m telling you what I told them. He always contacted me. Afterwards, I’d send the video clips and the interviews, always to a different email address.’

He didn’t have the addresses. The thugs had taken his tablet and his phone.

Henry asked Eddie if he knew who they worked for. ‘Are you certain they weren’t police?’

Eddie said, ‘I know police. I was part of the Occupy movement when I was a student. I marched against breaking up the health service, privatising universities…It seems foolish now, but at the time we really thought we could change things. I know police. And they weren’t police.’

Chloe said, ‘How did they find you?’

Eddie shrugged, one hairy shoulder bare in his hospital gown.

Henry said, ‘He put some of Fahad’s pictures up for sale on eBay.’

‘They’re mine, fair and square,’ Eddie said.

Chloe said, ‘You bought them off Mr Archer, didn’t you?’

‘Just doing what I do,’ Eddie said. ‘Trying to make a living any way I can.’

‘You beat me on that hustle, Eddie,’ Chloe said. ‘I’ll give you that.’

‘And look where it got me.’ Eddie spat into his cup, looked at Chloe. His eyes were bloodshot, the bruised flesh around them beginning to take on a yellow tint. He said, ‘Be careful out there. What we’ve walked into, it’s some seriously strange shit.’