A Quantum Mythology (41 page)

‘There was a tall man. He came to me,’ Letchford said. Then he raised the shotgun to his shoulder and aimed it straight at du Bois.
This might really hurt
, du Bois thought. ‘He knew what was in my head. He said he’d heard it while he was sleeping. Then he put something in my head. He stole my warm red thoughts. This,’ he said, glancing around at the office and the sobbing potential sacrifices, ‘this is nothing compared to what I could have been before he took the dreams.’ Du Bois nodded as if he understood. ‘You’re just like him, aren’t you?’

Du Bois went very still. ‘What did he look like?’

‘You should—’ Letchford spun around and fired one of the barrels of the shotgun through an office partition. A cry of pain rose from behind it. Letchford swung the shotgun back, aiming at one of the potential sacrifices, the one who had admonished du Bois. A red hole appeared in Letchford’s face, then another, and finally a third. Letchford slumped to the ground. Du Bois was still sitting down, his cigarette smoke mixing with the bluer cordite haze drifting from the shrouded snub-nosed .38’s suppressor. Du Bois stood up and walked over to Letchford, keeping him covered. The .38 had slid smoothly out of his coat sleeve on the custom-built hopper. Its twin was still nestled safely up his left-hand sleeve.

He checked Letchford. The man was dead.

‘Why didn’t you do that in the first place?’ the man who’d admonished him for antagonising Letchford spat.

‘For someone who’s just been rescued, you complain a lot,’ du Bois said without looking at the man. He walked over to the partition. Grace was a bloody mess on the other side. The shotgun blast had caught her in the torso.

‘Did you have to shoot him?’ she asked. Her internal systems had dulled the pain, and du Bois could see the wounds already closing, flesh knitting together. She would need to eat soon, he knew.

‘Sorry, force of habit,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

It wasn’t actual pain that caused the pained expression on Grace’s face. ‘I really don’t know,’ she said.

Du Bois wasn’t happy. Grace was too good to make mistakes like this.

‘He went for one of the hostages,’ du Bois pointed out. ‘He didn’t try to take me out.’

‘Suicide?’ she asked.

‘Or he wanted to create suffering.’

Grace grimaced and forced herself to her feet. ‘This skirt’s ruined!’ she complained.

‘Why aren’t all your clothes laced with armouring nanites?’ du Bois muttered as he wandered over to the open sports bag and looked inside. The intended hostages/sacrifices shrank away from him as he passed. The bag contained more knives and cable ties, handcuffs, a Taser, various chemicals, gloves, make-up and spare shells for the shotgun.

‘This is a murder kit,’ du Bois said, glancing back at Letchford. He flicked open the cylinder on his .38, emptied the spent rounds and reloaded three more Glaser bullets.

‘He’s a spree killer,’ Grace said. ‘Unless it’s a bag full of guns, a murder kit’s a serial-killer thing.’

‘Or he’s just a psycho. We’ve done our good deed for the day – let’s go.’

‘You could let us go, too?’ one of the hostages suggested hopefully.

‘As soon as we release you the police will be up here,’ Grace said.

‘You’re not going to take us hostage as well, are you?’ the same woman asked.

‘So?’ du Bois asked, ignoring the hostage.

‘Something’s not right here,’ Grace said. Du Bois looked at the gutted sacrifice victim cable-tied to the desk and then back at Grace with a raised eyebrow.

‘Close your eyes, everyone,’ Grace said to the hostages as she drew one of her knuckle-duster-hilted fighting knives from the sheath under her arm. A few of the hostages let out little cries. Grace knelt down next to Letchford’s body.

‘What’re you—’ du Bois started. He heard the sound of bone cracking. ‘Really? In front of all the—’ There were more cries from the hostages, then more cracking sounds followed by a wet slurping noise. ‘That’s disgusting.’ One hostage threw up, then another. Grace threw something at du Bois. Despite his better judgement, he caught it. It was covered with blood and lumps of bone and grey matter. It was still moving. Tendrils were being sucked into wriggling legs. The stinger tried to puncture his flesh, but du Bois’ skin hardened. He found himself looking down at a tiny bronze scorpion.

‘Are you changing?’ du Bois asked. Most of the blood had disappeared, the matter reclaimed through the skin, but her clothes were a torn mess.

‘Why? Am I showing too much flesh for your puritan tendencies?’ Grace asked through a mouthful of cheeseburger.

Du Bois looked over at her in the passenger seat of the Range Rover as they made their way down Alcester Road towards Kings Heath. He was more than a little irritated. He hated people eating in his car. Even with a blood-screen hunting down scent molecules, it always took for ever to get rid of the smell of processed meat. On the other hand, Grace needed to eat to replenish energy and rebuild the matter she’d expended when she was shot.

‘Sorry,’ Grace said. ‘I’m being a bitch.’

‘You are,’ du Bois agreed. ‘And can you get your feet down off the leather?’ Grace removed her motorcycle boots from the Range Rover’s dashboard. ‘What’s wrong?’ There seemed more to her current attitude than her normal attempts to wind him up.

‘He shouldn’t have got the drop on me like that.’

‘Agreed. Now tell me what’s really wrong.’

Grace didn’t answer for a moment. Instead she took another bite of hamburger. Then: ‘You know …’ she said, her voice sounding small.

Dead family, dead friends. Made to feel helpless
, Du Bois thought.

‘I hate these guys,’ Grace said. ‘It’s almost like the madness is an excuse. They think their fantasies are more important than other people’s lives.’

‘He was different, though,’ du Bois said as Alcester Road became Kings Heath High Street. Du Bois pulled off the High Street and onto a road lined with narrow terraced houses and cars parked bumper to bumper. He looked for a place to park. They would have to do this expeditiously. He’d made some phone calls as they left Baskerville House, but chances were that the police would be less than pleased about the mutilation of Letchford’s body.

Du Bois found a parking space and squeezed the Range Rover in. He had to shunt the car in front forwards but was sure the Range Rover’s armoured body could handle it.

‘You really are a Range Rover driver, aren’t you?’ Grace said.

Du Bois ignored her. Instead he opened the armoured compartment in the central console and pulled his phone out. The bronze scorpion was attached to one end of it, inert now, like a pinned insect. Du Bois tapped commands onto the touchscreen. It was isolated from external
communications while it analysed the bronze scorpion, which was clearly an S- or L-tech derivative.

‘Well, the good news is we killed it,’ du Bois said as he speed-read the result of the invasive analysis.

‘Was he just another zombie?’ Grace asked, then answered her own question. ‘No, that doesn’t work. His Internet history shows he was a sick fuck long before Silas appeared on the scene.’

‘It’s a transmitter,’ du Bois said. ‘Basically it’s a sophisticated electroencephalograph that can transmit Alpha and Theta waves.’

Grace was staring at him. ‘Causing dreams?’ she asked.

‘No, more like stimulating the imagination.’

‘This is Silas, right?’ Grace asked. ‘Silas did this?’ Du Bois stared at the tiny brass scorpion and nodded. ‘Letchford wasn’t supposed to be a victim, right?’ Du Bois nodded again. ‘Can we trace the transmissions?’

‘Not now we’ve killed it,’ du Bois said. ‘We should speak to Control, but frankly I’m not even sure what we’d look for.’

Du Bois pulled the inert bronze scorpion off the end of his phone and dropped it back into the armoured compartment, which he closed and locked with a thought. The pair of them climbed out of the Range Rover.

‘Well, you’d think his landlady would have noticed,’ Grace said, looking around at Letchford’s room.

The room was oppressive, he felt like it was closing in on him. The dark curtains didn’t help. Neither did the wallpaper of imagery: cut-outs from magazines, printouts from the Internet. Most of the images were pornographic and/or violent. Here and there were pictures of people du Bois reckoned Letchford must have known. He was pretty sure he recognised a few of the hostages, their images mixed in with the rest, often manipulated or modified to form part of the collage of violence.

Letchford’s bed was in the centre of the room, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers the only other furniture. There was a laptop on the bed.

‘I think he lived through that,’ du Bois said, pointing at the computer.

‘I’m almost too frightened to search this place,’ Grace said.

Du Bois was concentrating. The laptop actually had quite sophisticated security, but it was no match for the tech they used. Letchford kept his computer sanitised. He’d wiped his browsing history and then run custom programs to try and wipe out further traces, but du Bois was able to find indications of what Letchford had been looking at. It had been hundreds of years since such material last shocked him, but he wasn’t so desensitised that it didn’t still disgust him. What he’d never understand was how someone could wallow in it.

Meanwhile Grace had found a locked metal box in the bottom of the chest of drawers. She drew one of her knives and cut the tip of a finger open. She pulled the motorcycle key out of her pocket and smeared some of her blood on it before closing the wound with a thought, then pushed the tip of the key against the box’s lock. The key changed shape and oozed into the lock. She opened it with a twist.

‘Flash drives,’ she told du Bois. She chose one at random, steeled herself and then plugged it into the bottom of her phone. She began skimming through the contents in her mind’s eye. ‘I need to bleach my brain,’ she said grimly.

‘What?’ du Bois asked. ‘And just tell me – don’t transfer the file to me.’

‘Some images and films. Precious ones, I guess. Looks like he believed they were real-life torture or snuff, not simulated. I don’t want to think too much about that. Needless to say he’s got excellent security by normal standards. And then just lots of text.’ Grace concentrated a bit longer as she speed-read some of it, disgust crawling across her face.

‘What you’d expect?’ du Bois asked.

‘Yes,’ Grace said, although she sounded slightly unsure. Du Bois gave her a questioning look. ‘Well, how do I put this? He’s actually quite good.’ That wasn’t what du Bois expected her to say. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s power-fantasy bullshit that screams inadequacy and he’s a sick fuck, but if he’d been eighteenth-century minor nobility he might have had a writing career.’

‘He had a prodigious imagination?’ du Bois asked.

‘Dear old Dennis had a pot of boiling snakes where most people keep their reason. This guy was a serial-killer-in-waiting. I don’t know how he was functional day-to-day.’

‘And Silas wanted his thoughts,’ du Bois said. He could hear sirens in the distance.

‘His imagination. The odd thing is that serial killers and spree murderers have different pathologies. Whatever happened knocked him off course.’

The sirens were getting louder.

‘Well, from what he was saying, I guess he met Silas,’ du Bois said. Grace didn’t answer. She’d hacked Letchford’s records a while back and sent the police to the wrong address. Presumably they’d managed to speak to someone who knew where he actually lived. ‘I think we should leave, give our Home Office influence some time to smooth ruffled police feathers over corpse mutilations.’

If Grace felt repentant, she didn’t show it.

‘Silas strike you as the kind of guy who’d run out of ideas?’ Grace asked as they climbed the steps towards the Malmaison’s reception.

‘He really didn’t,’ du Bois replied.

‘C’mon, we’ve had a hard day. I got shot and everything. Let’s have a drink.’ Du Bois couldn’t think of a good reason not to agree so they made their way to the hotel’s bar. It was comfortable, illuminated with subdued lighting, mood music playing softly in the background and stocked with overpriced drinks. Grace got carded and had to show fake ID to prove she was over eighteen.

‘Hello, Malcolm.’ The voice was feminine and sensuous.

He’d just taken the first sip of his Glenmorangie. The whisky turned sour in his mouth. He turned around to look at his brother.

Alex was now a female-identifying hermaphrodite. She went by the name Alexia and looked like a stunning, dark-haired, statuesque woman. She was wearing a pair of black jeans, a suit jacket and a fitted T-shirt advertising some kind of heavy-metal band. Du Bois was vaguely aware that his brother/sister had been involved with the music scene, in one way or another, since the late sixties.

‘Whatever it is, I don’t have time for it. I’m working,’ du Bois told her, his face set in an angry expression.

‘Nice way to greet your sister,’ Alexia said. She tried to take his rejection lightly, but du Bois could tell she was hurt.

Grace looked up at du Bois. ‘You monster,’ Grace admonished. ‘I invited her here. She can help us.’ Then she went and hugged Alexia.

‘Seventy-seven? Was that when Malcolm had to stop you assassinating the Queen?’ Alexia asked. They were sitting at a table next to the window looking out over the busy Suffolk Street Queensway. It was a grey day outside, raining, but the bar felt warm and cosy.

Alexia and Grace had been talking so quickly as they attempted to catch up that Malcolm had struggled to follow their conversation. Though if he was being honest, he was sulking a little bit. He did not like the easy way his strange and unnatural brother had always got along with everyone else but still managed to be nothing but trouble and pain for him.

‘The Queen?’ Grace said. ‘The whole lot of them. I was convinced there were hidden messages in “God Save the Queen”, and that the whole family were baby-eating Naga infiltrators.’

‘What on earth made you think that?’ Alexia asked.

‘Well, I’d reprogrammed my filters so I could better enjoy the jubilee and then went and got ergot poisoning from some dodgy amphetamines.’