Halfhead (4 page)

‘No, I’m his boss. Assistant Section Director.’

‘Ah…’ She raised an eyebrow.

‘Brian and I came up through the ranks together.’ That wasn’t strictly true,
he’d
come up through the ranks, Brian’s career had stalled at Special Agent.

‘You two aren’t an item?’

‘Don’t think Brian’s husband would approve.’ Will settled back against the cluttered desk. ‘So, how come you got lumbered with the liaison job?’

‘They stuck the posters up a fortnight ago, thought it sounded like a good idea. Put my name down.’

‘You’ve known about this for
two weeks
?’

‘Yeah. Why?’

Will closed his eyes and had a swift mental fantasy involving Director Smith-Hamilton, a seven-foot skewer, an open fire, and some barbecue sauce.

‘No reason.’ He forced a smile. ‘So, shall we start your induction DS Cameron?’

‘Sir, if you’re the ASD you have to call me Jo.’

‘Sir?’ Not what he’d been expecting after this morning’s run in.

‘Just because I’m a Bluecoat, doesn’t mean I can’t follow the chain of command. And anyway,’ she shrugged, ‘I might want to join the big N some day.’

They went through the building from the top down: toured the rooftop landing zones, walked the corridors of power on the seventh floor; pointed at the other Assistant Section Directors on the sixth; glided past the Special Agents on five, four and three; poked their noses in on the juniors and trainees on two and one; stuck their heads round the control room door on the ground floor; did more pointing at the famous paintings in the public areas; sauntered through the legal department, briefing rooms and operation zones on the first sub level; ignored the canteen and VR reconstruction suites; and ended up deep in the building’s bowels. Outside the mortuary.

Will didn’t take long to warm to his task as tour guide. DS Cameron was likeable, bright, and she’d joined in when he’d poked fun at the tourists gawping their way around the ground floor.

‘Quite some place,’ she said. ‘Beats the crap out of the clapped-out Victorian pile I work in.’

‘City Central?’

‘Yeah, for my sins. Than and the occasional jaunt out to Monstrosity Square: keeping an eye on the termites.’

‘Termites?’ He stopped with one hand on the mortuary door. ‘They’re not insects, they’re people.’

Her chin came up. ‘You’ve never been in a fire-fight down there, OK? So don’t tell me—’

‘Virtual Riots. Sherman House. We were three days out of the Academy.’

‘Oh…’ She blushed.

‘Dehumanizing them doesn’t help, Jo. Trust me.’ He pushed through the tinted double glass doors into the mortuary’s reception area. A pretty blond in tight-fitting patent leatherette looked up from a datapad and smiled as they stepped onto the immaculate marbled floor.

‘Assistant Director Hunter!’ The receptionist bustled out from behind his desk, arms out as if he was expecting a hug. ‘How
nice
to see you again.’

‘Afternoon, Duncan.’ Will turned to introduce DS Cameron and stopped when he saw the expression on her face: cheeks twitching, eyes all sparkly. Making little snorting noises. ‘Is George in?’

The shiny young man nodded. ‘Popped out earlier, but he’s back now. If you like I can give him a shout? Ask him to come out and meet you?’

‘It’s OK, we can manage.’ There was no way Will was going to hang around here with DS Cameron for any longer than was strictly necessary. Not when she was on the verge of the giggles.

‘God, did you
see
his suit?’ she said as the mortuary door hissed shut behind them. ‘I’ve not seen anything that shiny since I worked vice!’

Given the neon-green monstrosity she was wearing, she was in no position to criticize.

Will led the way along the long, antiseptic corridor to a door marked ‘S
TORAGE
& E
XAMINATION
’. Someone had stuck a cartoon up beneath the sign: a hunchback and a mad scientist on the beach, playing volleyball with a brain. Frankenstein’s monster sat by the net, the top of his head open like a pedal bin. It was captioned: ‘I
GOR’S
D
AY
O
FF
’. And just in case that was too subtle, the word ‘IGOR’ had been crossed off and ‘G
EORGE
’ written in its place. It was a surprisingly good likeness.

The man in question was sitting on one of the slabs, drinking a mug of something that sent sweet-lemony-menthol steam into the cold, circular room. His lunch was spread out on the stainless steel beside him, and as they crossed the floor he popped a slice of CheatMeat in his mouth and made blocked up chewing noises.

‘Supposed to be teriyaki swan,’ he said, voice echoing off the metal walls, ‘but it tastes more like old socks.’ He polished off another slice. ‘Who’s this you’ve brought with you?’

‘George: Detective Sergeant Jo Cameron. She’s going to be
with us for a while, helping coordinate Network-Bluecoat investigations and resources.’

‘A veritable vision in green…’ A smile pulled at George’s podgy face, making his cheeks swell and his eyes disappear into little wrinkly slits. Like a short-arsed Buddha on an off day. He reached out and took the hand Jo had stuck out for shaking, turning it at the last minute to kiss the back. ‘What’s a lovely creature like you doing hanging around with Mr Misery Guts here?’ He beamed up at her, apparently having no intention of giving her hand back.

Indecision flitted across DS Cameron’s face and Will got the nasty feeling she was about to punch the pathologist’s teeth down his throat. But she didn’t. Instead she performed a graceful little curtsey and batted her eyelashes.

‘Well now…’ she treated George to the full strength of her smile. ‘How else would I get to meet a man as handsome as yourself?’

George just giggled and blushed.

‘If you two have quite finished.’ Will marched over to the centre console and brought up the file on the mangled remains they’d retrieved from Sherman House that morning. The lights dimmed and an old holo projector flickered into life: 3D shots of the victim’s remains crackling in the air as the carousel started to turn—its long mechanical arms selecting the appropriate bodypod from the pigeon-holes lining the walls.

An examination slab creaked up out of the floor and the carousel clicked the metallic canister into it, retreating back to the roof as George waddled over and unclipped the tabs. With a faint poom of trapped air, the tube fell open, revealing a collection of pale-yellow body parts, all neatly labelled and categorized.

George had forgotten to put the top of the skull on, exposing a nasty interior view of their victim’s head. ‘Oops.’ He popped the hairy lid back in place and secured it with a squirt of
skinglue. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Mr Allan Brown.’

‘You got an ID?’ Will was impressed. ‘How the hell did you manage that?’

‘Ah.’ George tapped the side of his nose, scrunched up his face, and sneezed explosively. Then snorked into a scabrous hanky. ‘Mr Brown was part of the PsychTech programme. They kept full records: dental, retina, DNA…you name it they kept it.’

PsychTech. Jesus, even the word was enough to make Will’s stomach churn. He swallowed hard, wondering why it suddenly felt hot in here.

The little pathologist waved a hand at the holo image. Nothing happened, so he did it twice more, cursed, then stomped back to the console, kicked it, and stabbed a couple of buttons. A naked child appeared next to the cutting slab, fizzling in and out of existence. A little blue tag, floating next to his head, said ‘A
LLAN
B
ROWN
—5 Y
EARS
O
LD
’. The image lurched as the child grew, the counter increasing with every holographic scan. The last one in the series showed Brown at eighteen, six years before someone decorated a stinking toilet cubicle with his innards. An unremarkable young man with nothing but pain and death in his future.

George hauled a transparent plastic bag from the canister. There was a large, unmistakeable, gelatinous-grey lump sitting in a puddle of yellowy liquid.

‘You’re not going to like what I got out of his brain.’

Will forced a smile. ‘Can’t be any worse than the stomach contents.’

‘You’d be surprised.’ He waved at the display again, and this time it worked: a large schematic of the victim’s brain appeared, bright green, yellow and red bands glowing in the dim mortuary light. ‘See it?’

Will frowned, trying to work out what the different colours meant in terms of neural chemistry. He’d only ever learned
to recognize two patterns: one was the distinctive mark of the confirmed serial killer, the other was far more dangerous. Right now he was looking at a combination of the two.

‘You’re right. I don’t like it.’

‘There’s more.’ The little man pulled a datapad from his pocket and typed in a rapid stream of numbers. Another naked figure flickered into life beside Allan Brown, only this one looked like a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces were missing. ‘Mr Kevin McEwan, he came in day before yesterday. They found bits of his family all over the apartment. Wife and two children.’

A second brain appeared, turning slowly in cross section. Large chunks of it were missing—most of the back where the brainstem should have been was gone—the edges all torn and frayed.

‘Doesn’t have the same level of prefrontal lobe activity, but everything else is the same.’

DS Cameron stared up at the floating brains. ‘I don’t get it…What are we looking at?’

Will pointed at the one on the right. ‘This is the guy we scraped off the toilet floor at Sherman House this morning. You see the yellow banding? That’s caused by a lack of serotonin and glucose; it means a loss of activity in the prefrontal lobes. When that happens, you get someone who has a great deal of difficulty controlling their base urges. More often than not they don’t even try. It’s a classic indicator of a disorganized serial killer.’

She nodded. ‘So this could be a revenge thing: our victim—’

‘It’s also indicative of something else.’

‘What?’

The pathologist pulled out his hanky again. ‘Remember the VRs?’

‘You’re kidding!’

George blew his nose, then sighed. ‘I wish. The brain
patterns are almost identical. I started looking for a connection as soon as I got an ID on the stiff you brought in. They’re both from Sherman House. Lived two apartments away from each other.’

Oh shit…This was
not
good. This was not good at all.

Will stared at the ceiling for a moment. Took a deep breath. Swore. ‘We’re going to have to go back there, aren’t we?’

DS Cameron turned on him. ‘What do you mean, “
we
”? This is
my
investigation, you were only there for SOC backup. All that bollocks you spouted about cooperation, and first chance you get you steal my case!’

‘I don’t have any choice, OK?’ Will ran a hand across his eyes. ‘If this really is an outbreak of VR syndrome it’s a Network matter. Fuck…’ He kicked the nearest chunk of machinery. Didn’t make him feel any better: his stomach was still full of snakes. ‘Better grab your coat DS Cameron: we’re going on a little field trip.’

High above the streets lazy, golden clouds drifted slowly westward. A pair of Scrubbers floated in the stale air: huge rusty metal shapes, dripping condensation from their swimming-pool-sized filtration units onto the buildings below, where it evaporated as soon as it hit the hot concrete. The advertising hoardings bolted to the Scrubbers’ sides juddered, the pictures out of sync; misaligned and fuzzy. What was the point of fixing them? No one looked up any more.

If anyone had, they’d have seen a Network Dragonfly jinking past the out-of-focus displays, heading for the south side of the city. Half a mile out it dropped to street level and banked right, roaring between the huge connurb blocks.

And there was Monstrosity Square: dead ahead.

Will watched it growing on his monitor. Calm. Stay calm. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Nothing to worry about. Everything was going to be fine. They were OK this morning, weren’t they? In through the nose, out through the mouth.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

In the next bay, Detective Sergeant Jo Cameron lolled against her harness, fiddling with the Thrummer she’d
borrowed from the armoury. She was whistling to herself, something cheery and upbeat that Will could almost recognize over the Dragonfly’s engines. She didn’t look worried about going back to Sherman House, but then she hadn’t been there eleven years ago. She’d been too young. She’d been lucky.

Will unclipped his Whomper from the recharging rack and checked the battery for about the twentieth time: still fully charged.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

‘Right, listen up, campers.’
Lieutenant Brand’s voice was curt and businesslike.
‘They’ve already had two visits from the Network this week; chances are they’ll be getting restless. So keep it tight! I do not want this turning into another episode of “Everyone Gets Their Arse Shot Off”. Understood?’

The trooper in the bay opposite crossed himself as he and his colleagues barked, ‘Ma’am, yes, ma’am!’

‘Good. ETA: forty-five seconds. Buckle up, people, it’s going to be sudden.’

At the last moment the Dragonfly leapt, twisting almost vertically to climb the side of Sherman House. Jo shrieked and laughed; Will closed his eyes and tried not to throw up. As the gunship fishtailed to a halt on the building’s roof, he released his death grip on the supports and unsnapped his safety harness, watching as the bays around him erupted into life.

‘First team: GO!’

The rear ramp swung open, exposing the rooftop in all its tatty glory. When the connurb blocks were new this was all lush, vibrant gardens, arranged around the building’s central well. Twisting paths for romantic walks, picnic areas, and sports facilities. Now it was an unkempt jungle, punctuated by the blackened circles of forgotten bonfires. Drifts of rubbish slouched in every corner like dirty, lumpy snow, and here and there, the tumbledown ruins of community buildings
were visible through tangled rhododendrons and brittle brown ivy, their walls crumbling and vandalized.

The first team sprinted out into the undergrowth, searching for an entrance to the lower floors.

Huddled in the safety of the drop bay Will looked out on the blocks that made up the other three corners of Monstrosity Square. Two hundred and forty thousand people were crammed into these four huge, ugly buildings. No jobs, no hope and no future.

No wonder they’d all gone crazy.

From here, sixty storeys above the roasting streets, Glasgow was laid out like a vast, concrete cancer. It stretched in every direction, further than the eye could see, grey and dirt brown, sweltering in the evening light. Home sweet home.

A voice sounded in his ear, making Will jump:
‘Entryway is secure.’

The second team burst out of the Dragonfly, taking up positions. And then Beaton and Stein lumbered after them, dragging the bulky scanning equipment through the scrub. The bashed and dented canister trundled along on tiny wheels that quickly became ensnared in the yellow grass. They swore and cursed all the way. Amazingly their grasp of the profane was nowhere near as comprehensive or inventive as DS Jo Cameron’s.

Will checked his Whomper’s battery one last time, then stepped into the sweltering afternoon. In through the nose and out through the mouth…Everything smelled of dust and dry earth.

He scanned the landing zone, finally spotting DS Cameron meandering along the edge of the roof. She had her Thrummer slung casually over her shoulder—like a long, deadly handbag—her hands in her pockets and a smile on her face.

Will shook his head and joined the advance team.

They’d found one of the minor access escalators: a small plexiglass bunker squatting on the building’s roof. The trans
parent panes were all scratched, covered with fading graffiti tags, the plexiglass swollen and blackened in one corner, where someone had tried to burn the place down. The moving steps were gone, exposing a ramped tunnel that disappeared into the depths of the building.

Will looked down into the hole. ‘This the only option we have, Sergeant?’

Nairn nodded. ‘Aye, sir. If we want to steer clear of the main access points it’s this or we go down the outside on wires.’

Will tried not to shudder—there was no way he was going out over the edge of Sherman House on the end of a body-wire ever again.

Nairn gave the orders, sending Privates Dickson and Wright scurrying down the ramp into the darkness. He gave it a count of ten, then waved at the SOC team. ‘Beaton, Stein: you’re next. And keep the noise down this time! I don’t want every psychotic wee lowlife in the place using your bloody scanning equipment as a homing beacon.’

‘What do you mean “our scanning equipment”?’ Stein slapped the battered canister. ‘Just cos we’ve been lumbered with this shite four times in a row don’t mean we’re makin’ a career out of it!’

‘Shut your cakehole! You will hump that bloody scanning stuff about and you will like it. Or I will connect your rectum to your bloody ears with my boot!’ There was no smart reply from Private Stein, he just picked up his end of the SOC canister and clambered into the tunnel. Nairn nodded. ‘Better. Rhodes, Floyd: you’re on rearguard.’

Will picked his way carefully down the slippery ramp. Six feet in, the track twisted back on itself, doglegging around a support pillar, and as he turned the corner Will’s innards clenched. The toilets downstairs had been bad enough. But this was…This was…Jesus.

The breathing exercises weren’t working any more.

Stupid. It was just a building. Nothing to worry about.

So how come his legs wouldn’t move?

Inside, Sherman House hadn’t changed much in the last eleven years: dingy corridors, lined with silent, shuttered apartments. All the horrors locked away and secret. At least this time the carpets wouldn’t be sticky with blood.

Grubby plastic spheres lined the passageway, giving off a pale, insipid glow that did more to exaggerate the shadows than illuminate things. More graffiti lurked in the gloom, covering the beige walls like cheap tattoos. People trying to leave their mark on a world that had already forgotten about them.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder and Will flinched. ‘No offence, sir,’ said Sergeant Nairn, ‘but think we could get a move on? I’d kinda like to get out of here before the natives go apeshit.’

‘Right. Sorry…’ Will cleared his throat. ‘Good point.’

He forced his feet to move again, following DS Jo Cameron down the broken escalator into the depths of the building.

‘You know,’ she said as they passed the fifty-first floor, ‘you seem a bit tense.’

‘Really.’ Will frowned in the darkness. It stank of mildew in here, stale air, and something sickly sweet and floral—not quite covering up the sour background smell of damp carpet.

‘Yeah, ever since George showed you those brain scans you look like you’re holding a hand grenade between the cheeks of your bum. I’ve visited Sherman House dozens of times, it’s not as bad as you think any more. Honestly.’

Will turned the next corner—looking out at another identical corridor. ‘Think we could just focus on the job in hand?’

‘If you don’t want to talk about it, just say so.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

She shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

It seemed to take forever to work their way down to the forty-seventh floor.

Will hadn’t seen a single living soul since they’d arrived on the roof; nearly sixty thousand people lived in Sherman House and there was no sign of any of them. Like the place wasn’t creepy enough.

DS Cameron stepped off the escalator ramp, took one look at the shabby hallway, and summed up all that human misery and squalor in five words:

‘Can you smell cat pee?’

Stein and Beaton were hauling their scanning equipment along the threadbare carpet, swearing their way towards the late Allan Brown’s last known address. Past them Will could just make out the faint glimmer of a Whomper’s telltales: that would be Private Wright, standing guard. The sinister shape of Private Dickson and her Bull Thrummer lurked down the other end, cordoning off the whole area. Anyone wanting to cause trouble would end up missing a large part of their anatomy.

From the outside, flat 47-126 didn’t look like much: just another shabby brown door in a long line of shabby brown doors. Nairn motioned Floyd and Rhodes into position on the opposite side of the passageway, their weapons trained on the flat’s door at chest height. The sergeant reached into his mouth and pulled out a wad of chewing gum, rolled it into a sticky ball, then pressed it over the spyhole. He flattened himself against the wall next to the door, nodded at everyone, then reached out and knocked…

No reply.

Nairn pointed. Rhodes?’

The trooper clicked a button on the chunky oblong strapped to the barrel of his Thrummer, peered into the weapon’s sight. Pulled his head back. Frowned. Slapped the oblong twice. Then went back to the sight again, sweeping the Thrummer back and forth. ‘No sign of movement.’

Nairn turned to Will. ‘You want us to force it?’

He was about to say yes when DS Cameron walked over
and crouched down in front of the keypad lock set into the wall beside the door. She popped the cover off with a pocket knife, pulled a thin piece of bent wire from her asymmetrical hairdo and stuck it into the circuitry. As she fiddled about, the display panel flashed warning red. Then ten seconds later a small bleep sounded and the lights went as green as her suit.

‘Open Sesame.’ She pushed the door open on silent, plastic hinges, revealing a small, dark hallway.

Will stared at her. ‘I don’t believe you just did that. A hairgrip?’

‘Yeah, well.’ She stood and worked the impromptu lock pick back into place above her left ear. ‘That’s technology for you.’

‘Unbelievable…’ He stepped into the tiny hallway, opened the door on the other side, and walked into a nightmare.

A fug of hot air washed over them, bringing with it the stench of rotting garbage. Like a bin bag left in the sun. The windows were covered with broad straps of black plastic. Slivers of light found their way through the gaps, falling across the cramped space in horizontal bars. One wall was given over to a collage made up of little bits of paper scrawled with dense handwriting, all glued together to form the life-size silhouette of an angel. Only this angel didn’t have a harp, it had a sword. A big red sword that dripped blood. But that was nothing compared to what sat in the middle of the room.

The paper angel stood guard over a pile of severed heads. Severed halfheads to be precise.

‘Oh—my—God.’ Jo Cameron stared at the mound. ‘So
that’s
where they all went to!’ There were at least fifteen of them, possibly more, all neatly arranged in a heap.

Will dug a reader out of his suit pocket and pressed it into her hand.

‘Get the barcodes.’

Biting her bottom lip, she reached forward and slid the
electronic eye over the nearest disembodied head. The reader gave a disapproving clunk. She scowled at the display. ‘Non sample error. Must be all the wrinkles: thing looks almost mummified…’ Jo snapped on a pair of thin, blue plastic gloves and tried smoothing out the skin on the forehead. Then had another go with the reader. Clunk. ‘Come on you little sod…’

Will left her to it, picking his way through the rest of the squalid flat. Rubbish spread out from huge piles in the corners of every room, hiding the floor from view. The kitchen was awash with green, hairy mould. He opened the fridge door, gagged, then slammed it shut again, bathed in the unmistakeable sickly sour smell of rotting meat. Holding his breath, Will tried again, one hand clamped over his nose. In with the bloated plastics of milk and black slimy vegetables were thick cuts of pale meat, with a fatty, goose-pimpled rind. The flesh a nasty greenish-grey colour, speckled with black mould.

The light didn’t come on. Power was probably dead, which explained the smell.

Will closed the fridge door, then hurried through to the bedroom before he had to breathe in again.

It was a dark, cramped little room, stuffed with rubbish. Another six-foot angel collage dominated the wall above the bed, just visible in the gloom. Mr Brown had done a much better job of taping over the bedroom’s tiny window. Will punched the lightsight on his Whomper up to maximum, bathing the room in its eerie green glow. It leached away all the colours, turning the whole scene into a monochrome landscape of half-seen garbage.

He stepped forward and felt something crunch underfoot. He froze. Please don’t let it be what he thought it was…Gingerly, he lowered the Whomper’s barrel, spotlighting the refuse beneath his feet.

Emerald light glittered back at him from dozens of cracked
plastic cylinders. It was just discarded HotNoodle tubes, their biodegradable plastic littering the nest like gaily patterned animal bones.

He waded through the filth to peer at the angel and its blood-soaked sword.

Each bit of paper in the collage bore the same handwritten quotation:

‘And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, Ifany man worship the beast and his image, and receive his markin his forehead, or in his hand,

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation;and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever:and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast andhis image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.’