Bad Aji

by Simon H Scott

Bad Aji is the 50,000 word novella that I wrote when participating in the 2006 National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. I thoroughly recommend taking part as the exercise of keeping to a daily word count irrespective of quality, of forging ahead with something and resisting the temptation to go back and edit demonstrates how much one can achieve in such a short space of time. My writing rarely hangs on its plotting, so the decision to write a conspiracy thriller was challenging too. I tended to write myself into a corner and then struggled to find a way out of it again. Naturally I had grand plans for the ms; a reworking, a fleshing out, a more lucid explanation of the conspracy and a cleaner execution of the "bad aji" notion that drives much of the tale, but of course I have done none of it. What follows is the version as it stood on the 30th of November, all ablush in its petticoats.

“…so I’d just like to say, thank you again for all your hard work and commitment, and I wish you every success for the future.”

The eight people crowded into the mailroom applauded mutely as Hal Jennings handed John Stoole a gaily wrapped and wine-bottle-sized package and card.

“Thanks, Hal, really. This is too much.” John lifted the tabs of the wrapping as deftly as the last two months of opening other people’s mail would allow him and lifted the flap of the box. Inside was a bottle of the red wine that the building’s caterers supplied. John estimated it probably cost the firm about £3 a bottle, and the caterers about a tenth of that.

“Oh!” John said, in mock surprise, before turning to the assembled. “I’d just like to say what a pleasure and a challenge it has been working with the team over the past few weeks, and I’m very grateful for what I have learnt in my time here, both personally and professionally. I hope the team goes from strength to strength despite, or maybe because, of my absence. Thank you.” There was a polite laugh at John’s feeble attempt at humour, and his speech closed to the same mute clapping as before. The assembly dissolved, in that curious undefined way, ceasing to be a group and suddenly becoming a disparate collection of individuals. Some moved over to the two trays of sandwiches and St Michael tubs of chocolate minirolls. Others moved towards John to shake his hand, pat his back, and then leave.

“So,” Hal began, and for John the dread set in, “Are you going on to something, workwise?”

“No.” John said, his voice tracing a well-practiced inflection, “my agency reckons it may have something soon, but nothing confirmed.”

“Ah! A man of leisure for a while then?”

“Yep.” Silence grew dark between them. Then John said “Well, I’d better…”

“Okay,” Hal held his hand out, “thanks again.”

John shook it, lifted his bag, and headed out of the door.

So it was.

So it always was.

John wandered past the permanently employed, all beavering away at their desks over rushed reports and slipshod spreadsheets. He always got a strange feeling once one of his assignments had reached completion, anxiety about his growing overdraft, but sheer pleasure at a slate wiped clean.

But now, he had approximately three to five days of doing nothing. And before that, a bottle of wine and an evening of solitude.

“A time for reflection,” he said out loud, nodded to the ever-changing security guard and felt the embrace of the cold November air. It ought to further his unnerving that this assignment had drawn to a close so close to Christmas. He was most often called in to tread water while a replacement for an abrupt and cloud-covered leaver was found, but with Christmas on the horizon, the permanently employed would knuckle down, sniffing the carrot of Christmas bonuses and the stick of morally imperative consumerism. However, he seemed curiously buoyant, and as his feet hit the pavement he half imagined them dangling, as he floated along New Bridge Street, bobbing between the work-shackled on the way to Blackfriars station. Balloon, he thought to himself. Balloon. He mouthed it now, enjoying the roundness of the word.

The train, when it arrived, was four carriages too short, but Stoole didn’t mind the crowding. Tonight he had decided to savour the crowding, to bend to the will of the crow, and allow himself to be sandwiched, manhandled, elbowed and groped, as each station made its exchange of commuters. His eyes darted from the Evening Standard, headlining with Race Clash At Old Baileys, and the ragged blocks of colour of the train’s corporate art. Usually Stoole would find the visions of countryside idyll insulting, but today the ironic sense of the crowded carriage and the woodland tableau appealed to him. He wandered into the image, imagined the red tower before him was his own, a dwelling far more pleasing than the squalid but affordable flat his letting agency had found for him.

He lived by agency – for employment, for residency, and it was an arrangement that suited him. London was an odd place, so impermanent, anonymous. John felt that if he tried to hang on to anything it would merely lead to stress. He decided, he forgot how long after he’d moved to London, that he should give up finding a permanent work, or a mortgage. At first he convinced himself that he was merely shopping around for the right work, while earning rent at the same time. At first he convinced himself that he was merely waiting for the house market to collapse before he pursued the ownership of property. But the more assignments that John got through, and the further and further out of reach local property prices grew, John began to see the weaknesses inherent in wanting either. He felt now that there was a greater happiness and security in the ability to walk away from the minor commitments of temporary work and rented accommodation than he would under the weight of a permanent job and a mortgage.

It soothed him that tonight Hal would find himself thinking of how to darn the gap in the workforce. It soothed him more to ponder what Hal would do when the logsheet database John had designed for him finally fell over. Did that make him cruel? He didn’t think so. He liked to think that he demonstrated his own value in every job he was given, and if that value was overlooked, and it usually was, then that was the responsibility of management. Besides, John would be long gone by that point, two or three assignments down the line. What is more, the agency would have long since received Hal’s glowing feedback sheet, too. It was almost a con.

John liked a takeaway when he’d finished at a firm, especially in a job he despised. He had this fantasy that if he acted recklessly with his money, this would somehow lead to the agency receiving work for him. It was superstitious and irrational, and John knew that, but he didn’t care. He had come to enjoy such rituals, and saw them not as any powerful piece of magic, merely something that leant his life a little structure, and in a life of leaps from flat to flat, and job to job, he needed a little of that.

He unlocked the deadbolt, and the Yale, and slipped inside his flat. On the floor was the usual slurry of pizza menus, come-ons from the local Estate Agents, and official looking letters from residents passim. These he scooped up as he wandered into the kitchen, placing the wine on the table and the mail in the bin. He kicked off his shoes, undid the top button of his trousers, and wandered into his lounge-cum-bedroom. Slumping on the sofa he removed from the envelope the leaving card that he had briefly glanced at in the mailroom. By the look of it they’d sent Frap, the New Zealand receptionist, out to buy the card, a crudely drawn cartoon girl, tears streaming, and the slogan “Sorry you’re leaving.” Clinton Cards genius. He flipped it open and read the messages as uninspired as the card’s design, most of which had been written by people who he only knew from his rounds with the mail wagon. He often puzzled at why the companies he worked for chose to give him a proper send off. It meant little to him. It was a “one to many” relationship. Most managers he worked for had fewer temps than he had had managers; he wouldn’t mind too much if he just went home of a Friday in the same way he went home every Friday, and simply never returned. In most cases he would prefer it, to avoid the awkward questions asked by the permanents, to have to feign the emotional register associated with someone leaving after a much longer service than a few months. He’d decided, in the end, that it simply came down to guilt and vanity on the part of the managers. It wasn’t so much the urge to say goodbye to him “properly” but to be seen to say goodbye to him properly, to not appear cold.

John finally reached for the well-thumbed Chinese Takeaway menu, dialled the number, which he didn’t need to look at, but nevertheless required the number in front of him, and listed his phone number and menu choices to the girl at the other end. She for her part feigned the writing down of the order, so familiar it was to her. This John realised only by knowing he would do the same thing in her place. He was told it would be about thirty to forty minutes, which he knew already, and the phonecall was ended.

John stood, wandered over to his bookcase and took down another, almost identical leaving card from the uppermost shelf, replacing it with the latest piece in this collection of empty gestures. He wandered back into the kitchen, pressed down the pedal of the bin, glanced at the mess of signatures lining the card and dropped it into the bin. Washing up to The Archers, he thought.

Warm hands immersed in water to a backdrop of the implausible extramarital affairs of dairy farmers. Some days he resolved to make the switch, to wash up after he ate, rather than before, but somehow a full stomach stood between him and the sink every time. As the sink was draining, and the Archers theme was undercutting the drama of the final scene, his phone began to ring. Drying his hands, he retrieved the receiver but all that was to be heard was the dialling tone. Fucking NTL, he thought, returning to the kitchen to cork the wine. Breathing cheap red wine was an odd business – the time being determined more by John’s desire for inebriation, than any requirement of his palette.

Hal had reached the end of his tether. His wife had left him two months ago, taking his three-year-old daughter with her. He hadn’t let on to anyone, of course – couldn’t afford to give management any excuse for an attack; the joy of being utterly dispensable, a job secured by employment law as strong as dental floss. The house, stripped to a few sticks of furniture, seemed vast without the sound of his daughter, or the warmth of Julia. The phone gave up ringing and switched to a steady tone. He depressed the cradle and hit redial. Stuck to the wall by the phone the letter she had left, cruel, blunt, short; an instrument of torture.

The Chinese lad at the door had been delivering dinners to John for as long as he could remember, always hurried, and strangely self-conscious. He’d never learnt his name, but he’d often wanted to. It was similar to the commuters he shared a train with, usually for only a couple of months at a time, until his agency moved him on. He’d watch them in the reflections in the windows, imagined their lives beyond the carriage, judge them by that life. He’d often see their lives so clearly he had to remind himself that it was just his fantasy, that the reality of them lay out of reach. Oddly, he couldn’t imagine any kind of life surrounded the boy. He watched the lad scrabble around in his pouch for change, and wondered if he was studying, what his aspirations might be.

“£1.60 change.” The boy said.

“Thank you.” John replied.

Forty minutes later, John lay replete, a half-empty bottle of red by his side. He was dozing slightly, watching weak comedy play out to a curiously generous audience. The phone rang again, and again no-one was on the other end. John replaced the handle, lifted it again and dialled 1471. The automated voice informed him that the last person to phone him had done so at 2pm that day and had withheld their number. He sighed, and hung up. So much for that service, he though, and struggled to his feet. Strong wine this. TV flicked to standby, he rolled onto his bed and allowed himself to doze off, looking forward to a few days of nothing, so long as he didn’t let himself worry. As sleep overtook him, something began to niggle, a thought nagging at his mind like a mosquito, but its whine was no match for the cheap red.

“Vladimir!” the figure before him said, gleefully, and from a dozen different places in the rain slick alley took up the cry “Vladimir! Vladimir!” and a chorus of giggles followed close behind.

“What do you mean?” John said, voice smudging its way treacle-slow through the air.

“Vladimir!” the figure said again, before turning tail and scuttling into the dark.

“Wait.” John pursued, but too slow, much too slow. Waves of darkness seemed to ripple before him. He held his hands before him, but they seemed unreal, idealised, like the smooth and featureless fingers of a mannequin. He looked up, and watched the ripples make their way along the alley. After each wave of darkness, the light seemed to return all the stronger, and he saw now that the alley ended in an impenetrable wall. The small figure seemed to have vanished. There was nothing there save for a palette leaning against the wall, and a newspaper blown into pieces, drifting as if to emphasise the fact that John was alone. John was always alone. The banging of wood on wood could be heard, and underneath it the sound of someone laughing under their breath. John saw now (how could he have missed it) that there was a darker darkness beneath the palette. His taunter was hiding. John fought against the intimidation, and approached, pulling the rough-hewn wood from the wall.

“Vladimir?” He asked, attempting to limit the question to a single word. The figure raised his head, eyes streaked with tears. John’s brow furrowed.

“Hal?” he said. “Hal…Jennings?”

The sound of wood on wood, but louder this time. John started awake, rubbed the back of his neck and squinted at his radio alarm clock. 3am. The noise sounded out again, and in shock, without thinking, he called out “hello?”

The banging stopped, and a knot of tension rose in John’s stomach. He looked around for something weapon-like, but there was nothing. A few books, which would hardly suffice. Nor would his television. He held his breath and listened. He could hear nothing now, but knew how little that might mean.

Swallowing, he rose to his feet, trying hard to make as little sound as possible, and made his way to his bedroom door. Steeling himself, he lurched into the corridor and across into the kitchen. Light streamed in from the streetlamp outside. The window was open, and the gusts of November air was rocking it in its frame. John finally relaxed, walked over to the window and closed it. He screwed the holding bolt into place, and it made little screeching sounds that reminded him of something that he couldn’t automatically place. Ah yes! The chattering laughter of the strange creatures in his dream. And what was it they had said to him? Vladimir. Why did that name seem familiar?

He wandered back into his bedroom and looked at the weeping cartoon girl. He lifted the card down and flipped it open. Mystery solved – there amongst the names was a strident signing of the name Vladimir. He replaced the card, but in so doing knocked another off the shelf. This he lifted from the floor and idly glanced at the signatures. There, again, was the name Vladimir, and beneath it the phrase “You’ve escaped!” Quickly he snatched a third leaving card from the shelf, and a fourth, and a fifth. Each one had the same name, in the same handwriting, and the same message. “You’ve escaped!” He took the last card down; Vladimir, and staggered back, letting the cards fall to the floor. What did this mean? What did this signify? In a daze he wandered back into the kitchen, this time drawing the blind. He turned on the kitchen light, opened the bin with his foot, and retrieved a seventh card from beneath the remains of his takeaway. Brushing off the strips of green peppers and water chestnuts, he opened the card, knowing before he did so what he would see. “Vladimir!” and underneath “You’ve escaped!” Was this some kind of joke? Someone from his employment agency somehow getting to the card. Perhaps he was being stupid, and this was actually some sort of procedure from the agency that he hadn’t picked up on, like that lunch they had bought him when he received his first payslip.

He dropped the card back into the bin. He knew he should sleep, but the various Vladimirs seemed to be standing in the way of any rest tonight. He swigged wine from the bottle, but it tasted sour to him now and so he poured it down the toilet, flushing it back into the water supply. He replaced the cards, one by one, on his bookshelf, and lay back down on the bed.

He would phone his agency in the morning, ask to speak to Vladimir, and that would be that, because what else could there be? A bizarre cabal set up to play a mindless trick on him that flew so far below his radar that it was in danger of stopping traffic? But still there was something worrying about it, and as much as he tried to dismiss it from his mind and sleep, he would find his thoughts returning to it, like a hand unconsciously returning to a half-formed scab. Underneath it all was that squat, dark figure, gleefully shouting the name out to the night. What was behind that glee? Why, if his subconscious was so insistent on him making the connection, did his dream take on the shape it did?

John sprang up, rushed into the kitchen, sprung the blind up, and opened the window.

“Vladimir!” he shouted to the night, laughing at himself for doing so. “Vladimir!” he shouted, and felt, for a moment, as though he had escaped, but he still had no idea from what. When he returned to his bed, he found sleep welcomed him with open arms.

Chaddick’s arms were aching, a sure sign that he had been overdoing it. Good, then, he thought. I should be overdoing it. He flicked the keyboard underneath the monitor, and stood. His office was windowless, a security measure he had been advised not to fight, and so he had insisted that the four CCTV cameras on the east side of the building be fed through to four plasma screens on one wall of his office. London never stopped. It went to bed, certainly, but the roads were always with traffic, be it pedestrians or cars. People arriving, people leaving, people about their business. He sighed, and wandered over to the screen that depicted the corner of Vauxhall Bridge, where a woman in a full-length coat had been waiting for some time. Periodically she checked her wristwatch; her mobile phone. He reached out to the screen, and stroked the line of her.

A gentleman approached her, from behind. She turned, arm raised to her heart as if shocked. Then she lowered her arm, approached the man and kissed him. Good, Chaddick thought, and smiled,

“She’s a whore.”

Chaddick turned to see his aide standing in the middle of the room.

“You didn’t knock.”

“It’s late, I thought you may have nodded off.”

“What makes you think she’s a whore.”

“We know she’s a whore, sir. We managed to isolate a frame of the CCTV to run against the index. She has previous.”

“Sometimes it’s nice not to know such things.” Chaddick said. The couple were departing, arm in arm. “They seem so young, so full of love. I bet they don’t even know they’re being watched.”

“We’ve had a shift change.”

“A shift change? An action?”

“Yes sir. We didn’t have much choice.”

Chaddick sighed. “As you see fit.”

“Are you okay, sir?”

“Tired, Cabbs. Just tired. I don’t suppose there’s been any news about our… our quarry?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“And this whore of yours? Will you have her followed? Have someone pick her up?”

Cabbs just shrugged. “Not our brief, sir.”

“And how long did it take you to find her in the index?”

“About an hour. That’s not reflective of the time it will take when the system goes live, of course, but it does demonstrate progress.”

“So you can find out the… the dress size of a stranger on the street outside in an hour, but you can’t find fact one about my brother’s killer?”

“I’m… I’m sorry sir. The scene was cold. All we’ve ever had to go on is rumours and rumours of rumours, and they’ve all come to nothing.”

Chaddick stepped towards his drinks cabinet, ran the top off of a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a couple of fingers.

“You want something?”

“To drink? No sir.”

“No, that’s right, you don’t.” Chaddick said, keeping his tone neutral, hoping that his aide wouldn’t be able to tell if he was merely remembering the fact or issuing a dictum.

“I have some paperwork that needs signing. It can wait ‘til tomorrow.” Cabbs dropped a manila folder onto Chaddick’s desk.

“What are they?”

“Information releases. We’ve exposed about 300 cases in the past year that would have been easier to investigate if certain lines of enquiry were open to us. Library records, supermarket loyalty schemes, that sort of thing.”

“My God. Everything will come through us in time.”

“It is inevitable.” Cabbs said, and wandered over to the screens. “I took the liberty of putting some of the case notes in with the paperwork.”

Chaddick slipped the paperwork out of its folder. Murder, rape, molestation, weapon trade. Cabbs looked over and smiled.

“Grim reading,” Chaddick said.

“It’s what we’re up against now, sir. Quite a change from your days in the field, I bet?”

“It seems so, Cabbs.” Chaddick said, and reached for his pen. Chaddick was an old fashioned fellow. There were those that said he was too soft. Cabbs had spoken in the past of eavesdropped conversations, of cowardly accusation of cowardice in the line of duty. Chaddick knew then that he’d have to sharpen up or be thrown to the dogs. Lucky then, to have found an aide such as Cabbs, someone with a nose for the kind of business his life had become. His standing with the firm changed almost overnight, and if his conscience had been pricked at all, those pangs were put paid to when his brother was killed. Someone had waited one morning in the grounds of his brother’s house. As his brother had driven towards the gates, the car had been riddled with bulletholes and then set alight. A meaningless killing and the person responsible was still at large. This confused Chaddick. Every action that he was required to authorise, every push at opening up further data sources, gave him new hope that the data would lead to an advance in the case of his brother’s murder. This he kept to himself. He feared that if he voiced these beliefs, even if it were just to his aide, then it would lead to trouble, that he would be put out to pasture.

He passed the paperwork back to Cabbs, who methodically checked each signature. That done he clicked his heels, turned, and left Chaddick to his ruminations. Chaddick took a swig of whiskey and turned back to the monitors. Dawn was still hours away, but the IR sensitivity of the cameras gave the illusion that sunrise was just moments away, He looked out to the horizon, as if to take in the whole of the city.

“You’re out there somewhere,” he said, and downed the rest of his drink.

John had had a rough morning. The wine, still unfinished, had taken far too great an effect on him and he was left with a clawing hangover. His mouth felt as if it were lined with grease, and his head was pounding. He stumbled into the kitchen, downed paracetamol with milk drunk from the carton. He finished the milk, and as he binned the container, remembered the revelation of the previous night, the recurring name in his token leaving cards, a mystery buried in false sentiment.

He still resolved to check with his agency, to determine if there was a Vladimir amongst them that would account for the repeated name, but he was in no state to talk to anyone as yet. He finally sloughed his work clothes, and staggered into the bathroom. He caught his reflection, grey and stubbly. He parted his dried lips, took a fearless look at his gums and teeth, still discoloured from the night’s drinking. He brushed his teeth – mint-foam and blood, and swilled his mouth out. This did nothing for his stomach, but rid his mouth of the phantom kebab. He shaved, nicking himself in several places, and then showered in water he kept marginally too cool for comfort. Tingling he dried himself off, and crowbarred himself into his “ice-cream” clothes, so named because of his habit of lounging around at home in them while eating icecream.

Again he delayed making the phonecall. The day was bright and cloudless. Brisk. He decided a visit to Brockwell Park would be the order of the day, a stroll to blow the cobwebs free, and he could make his enquiries afterwards. He had the door of his flat open when the phone rang. He answered it.

“Hi John?” a familiar voice sounded out.

“Hi Fiona. How’s you?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Good good.” Conversations with his agency were as scripted as the rest of his working life, but he didn’t mind that so much. It allowed him to take a stand back, sometimes.

“John, you’re not working at the moment are you?”

“No, no I’m not.”

“Okay, will you be available for a position starting on Monday?”

“I should be. What is it?”

“Mailroom again, I’m afraid. Would that be okay?”

“Sure, sure. Keeps the wolf from the door.”

A well practiced laugh from Fiona. “It’ll be on the 15th floor at St Andrews Tower, which is just a short walk from-“

“No, Fiona. I think you’ve made a mistake there. I just finished two months there.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It should be on my record. I mean, I’m pretty sure they don’t need anyone, but if they do, then I’d be happy to go back. It just strikes me as odd, that’s all.”

“Okay. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll go back to them and see what the story is, and get back to you to let you know where we stand. There’s probably been a breakdown in communication somewhere.” Fiona laughed nervously.

“I dare say.” John said. “Oh, while I’ve got you, do you have a Vladimir working for you?”

“Vladi-” Fiona said, not finishing the name.

“Yeah, a memorable name, I’d’ve thought.”

“Not that I’m aware of. Look, I’ve got to let you go, I’ll get back to you about this Andrews Tower business, soon as.” And with that she hung up. John shrugged, and headed back out again.

The park was as picturesque that morning as he’d hoped, and with the painkillers finally kicking in, he began to feel the grip of his hangover easing. Joggers made their way along each path, and the keepers’ vans made slow progress along the perimeter, changing the bags in the litterbins. It was quite for a London park, but John would make a game of how many people came there. He would make his way out to the middle of the park, stare at a verge of grass, and usually within a minute or two someone would cross his view. Today, though, John was happy just to wander. He had dressed deliberately lightly, in just a t-shirt and jeans, and let his walking and the sun provide him with warmth. It had taken John several visits to the park over the past few months for him to see all that the space had to offer. The most surprising discovery was the dirt BMX track, which seemed too large to have been missed the first time he had gone there. He headed there first, but kept his distance. A lone man, he felt, always seemed to make people suspicious, and this was no more true when it came to the keepers, who he felt kept constant watch over him whenever he was there.

His mobile rang, but the number didn’t show. Rather than take the call and disturb his day, he refused it, and switched his handset off. He took a deep breath of air, felt it cold in his lungs. It was as if he was still in the shower, that his cleansing still continued. He moved on, listening to the thwack of tennis balls. Above him a plane made its way across the sky, and to John even that progress seemed strangely idle. If only every day could be spent like this; in pursuit of happiness. He felt a sadness then, but not an unpleasant one, as his mind drifted towards forthcoming work.

He offered a cheery good morning to an elderly couple that were gripping the chain link gates to the community greenhouse, and walked on. He liked to make his way to the middle of the park. Dead centre, the city seemed kept at bay. He closed his eyes, and faced the sun. In his mind he was back on the train, looking at the redbrick building surrounded by trees and fields. How long would he have to work before he could afford such a place. The grey commuters either side of him bled away into nothing. Even the carriage became less real, and the crudely laid out blocks of colour seemed to him almost concrete. He pictured himself there, imagined the park grass beneath his feet grew from the earth at the foot of a house that he alone kept, and far from the madding crowd, the odd abstract jobs, chasing pieces of data around dark buildings, with each move making more data, each move adding more work to someone else’s load.

He headed now to the small white picket fence that belonged to the curious model railway track, the latest of his discoveries. Someone had chalked up “rides 10:30-15:00” but he’d never seen the train running. He straddled the track, a colossus, stooped, closed an eye, and watched the tracks draw closer together the further away they ran from him. He followed the track along, where it split off into two sidings. He ducked down the path that ran between the end of the diminutive railway and the lido, closed for a winter of renovations, its walls peeled back. He crossed the road, headed up past the blocks of flats, the Prince Regent, and turned onto his street.

As he approached his house, the traffic noise seemed to fall away. This happened with a happy regularity in Herne Hill, and John liked to make the most of it when it did. He stood still, a hundred yards or so from his door, and listened to what could be heard, birdsong, the laughter of children too young for school, even the kind of over-the-fence chitchat supposedly long-dead. His eyes flitted up and down the road, and then he saw them, two people sitting in a car and staring at his house. No sooner had he seen them than he made eye contact with the driver. Realising they had been spotted, the driver slapped his mate, who started, and followed his gaze. The car screeched away at speed, and John turned to watch it leave. As the car left his view, he was instantly annoyed at himself for not noting the license plate.

Nervous now, he approached his front door, opened it, and stepped inside. He was reminded of his fears of the previous night, the noises emanating from his kitchen. He thought for the first time as to whether or not he had actually left the window open. With a chill, he realised he had no recollection of opening it. He felt an urge he’d not felt for a very long time. An urge to run.

Cabbs was in his office, working his way through a Double Whopper. Cabbs liked junk food, it was his only vice, save for power, and he felt that they both reflected each other quite nicely. Cabbs was a man of beliefs, and chief amongst these was the belief that big was beautiful. Big government, big business, big burgers. It all amounted to the same thing as far as he was concerned. He had, in his youth, expressed a certain degree of fear and trepidation as he began encountering large organisations. He, like most people, had been on one or two occasions the victim of an administrative error that had led to a degree of hassle and discomfort, but unlike most people this had given him a thirst not to rid himself of the intervention of large and unwieldy organisations, but to join them, to worm his way into them, and use his position for his own protection.

A phone masked by a square of greaseproof paper chirruped. Cabbs flopped the burger down and punched the speaker button.

“Speak” he said.

“It’s Hunter.”

“What have you to report.”

“The action. We’ve a hiccup.”

“Define hiccup.” Cabbs asked, and stood up. He had a feeling he would have to be outwardly aggressive, which he found distasteful but occasionally necessary, and much easier to pull of when standing.

“It’s CASM1735.”

“What of him.”

“We couldn’t get to him last night.”

“That’s not a problem, is it? He’s got no plans. You could have had him sorted out by the morning.”

“We tried, but he got the jump on us. I don’t know how. And… he’s seen us.”

“Seen you?”

“Yes.”

“And that is a problem why?”

“He’s seen us before. That can cause us problems.”

“So you fear you’re fearful symmetry has provided him with a mnemonic trigger?”

“It happened before.”

“So we’ll get him lifted by someone else. Where is he now?”

“We… we don’t know. We felt it would be prescient to leave the area.”

Cabbs sighed, sat down, and took a bite.

“Sir? Sir?”

“What’s he saying?” Husband asked.

“He’s not saying anything.” Hunter replied. “Sir?” he asked into the phone again, and then to Husband, “I think he’s… I think he’s eating.”

Husband put his hand to his face.

“Right,” Cabbs said, finally. “This is what’s going to happen...”

John couldn’t say why he had the urge to run. He never liked being watched. One of the few virtues of the city was that it afforded him anonymity. All that seemed to have gone now. He fished a holdall from the bottom of his wardrobe and stuffed it with underwear. Paranoia was welling up in him, and whereas he’d often recognise paranoia in himself and dismiss it as such, he was finding it more difficult to discern between foolish fears and those with real grounding. He grabbed a pair of trousers, balled it up and shoved it in. He ran over the events of the past few days, and everything took on a troubling hew; the phone calls, the opened window, the wine. He paused for a moment, then grabbed the leaving cards and put those in the bag too. Where could he go, though? His city friendships were short-lived, and usually built around work. He knew no-one he felt he could ask, and if his presence might bring with it the attention of dark forces, then it was all the more an imposition. Best to get out of the city all together, he decided. Not with family, somewhere random but familiar. He thought back to his school days, pictured the almost prison-like school gates. A decision then, he’d go to Marlow, maybe the distance and the time would put all of this into perspective. He reached for his phone. Still off. He allowed his thumb to hover over the power button, but then thought better of it, placing the handset, still off, into his pocket, before heading for the station.

No easy journeys now for John. No daydreaming his way into corporate watercolours. He took in every face, judged everyone without any shade of guilt. He felt trapped, and that sense of entrapment was made no easier as he struggled against public transport. He was being followed, being watched, of that he could be sure, but much was that pursuit worth to his pursuers. He couldn’t tell. As his train to Victoria is stopped outside the station, he had to bite down and bite down hard on a growing panic. He was sure he’d not been seen at Herne Hill, simply by virtue of the fact that the platform was all but empty, and had someone been interested in stopping him, then they could have done so with ease. He watched a fox, curled up in the undergrowth beyond the fence, clenched and unclenched his jaw, not feeling any kind of relief as the train finally arrived. But the train wasn’t boarded, it merely allowed another train to pass, then continued its way into Victoria. He walked briskly through the station, stepping through the opened turnstyle, and made his way across the concourse. Again, his eyes flitted from face to face to face, most concern being paid to the early morning drinkers sitting at the Mezzanine. He was paying so much attention to them that he wandered into the path of a bearded blind man, hurrying towards the platforms, his guide failing to keep pace. As the man collided with John, he clucked loudly at him, an eerily accurate impression of a chicken. John let out a whimper, and felt sweat prickle his forehead. Gritting his teeth, he turned his back on the councourse and hurried into the underground. Planned engineering works muddied his journey further, forcing him onto the street and a replacement bus service. By the time he reached Paddington he was sick to the stomach, and on the verge of turning back. Had it not been that he’d have to run the same gauntlet to get back to the privacy of his flat, he probably would have turned tail. As it was he had reached Paddington in once piece, and seemingly unobserved. As he slumped into a loose cushioned seat of a Maidenhead train, he consciously decided to relax. At this rate he would have a cardiac arrest by the time he reached Marlow.

Cabbs made a call.

“Stand down. We just recorded 1735’s Oyster card going through the underground turnstyles at Paddington.”

“He got past me?” the agent asked,

“I don’t think so. Your colleagues must have spooked him.”

“So what now?”

“He could be anywhere. We’ll have to trawl through his record, see if anything leaps out at us. Return to the Grue house, before you’re missed.”

Cabbs replaced the receiver. The morning’s antics had left him hungry. He punched at his keyboard and pulled up a map showing routes out of Paddington. Clicking his intercom, he put in a request for lunch, and the file on CASM1735, Time to get his hands dirty.

John was struck with how quickly the map of his childhood returned to him. Unprepared as he was for this trip back to Marlow, a snug, if slightly pretentious village on the Thames, as soon as he stepped from the train he could recall which way to reach the town centre. He passed the barbers where he had had his hair cut through his youth, and on to All Saints Church. He wandered down to where the graveyard met the river, and sat on a wooden bench that was located there. He watched people come and go on the far bank, in the grounds of the Compleat Angler. It had been thirteen years, he had worked out, since he was here last night, and what struck him was how little things had changed. Having finally stopped moving, he now realised he had done little to formulate a plan of action. If there were answers to be found, they lay back in London, not in this sleepy province. But nevertheless, here he was. He imagined that he had slipped off of someone’s map, managed somehow to take himself out of the reach of some shady organisation or other, but saw now that what little freedom that had engendered did not leave him with many options. But freedom he did feel, and as if to prove this to himself, he stood, wandered over to the river, and leapt from the graveyard to the canoe club, a distance of only a couple of feet, but a jump he’d never had the bravery to make in his youth. From here he made his way round to the park. He punctuated his life with parks, he realised, found in them a peacefulness where he could reflect on his situation, and get in touch with himself. No resolution came now, however. The problem he faced now seemed too vast, too nebulous to be dealt with. He pushed on, made his way up the highstreet, and left onto West Street, wishing to see his old school. So strange, he thought, to be of an age where school was his entire world, such a microcosm. He had, since leaving, faced the same strain of individuals that he had encountered whilst at school, and had realised that school had not really prepared him for dealing with them. But somehow the fact that he had survived school offered him some kind of hope that the problems he faced now were not insurmountable.

But as he drew nearer he began to feel as though something was wrong. The familiarity that had greeted him stepping from the train began draining away. And as he drew nearer, the sickness that he had felt in London returned to him. Where his school should be there was a row of terraced houses. A field lay behind the houses, which ought to have matched the sports field on which he had been humiliated in enforced team sports, but even that seemed disjointed. He wandered along the row of houses, hoping he could convince himself that maybe the school had been closed down, and the land sold for development, but it was no use. The houses had clearly been standing for some time. As if to drive home this truth, a blue heritage plaque was nailed up next to one of the first floor window, stating that Jarvis Cocker had finished writing The Pride Of Bingy Boo on the premises whilst residing their in 1975. John felt his hope snatched away from him once more.

He hurried back to the highstreet, ducked into the local branch of smiths and bought a notebook and a pen. With it he began writing everything he could remember about the school, from the year of its establishment and its motto to the names of his classmates, friends and foes alike. Page after page he filled, as if in a fugue state, and with this done, he began to grow in confidence that the school was real. It was too detailed for him to have somehow conjured it up out of nowhere. But then why was it not where he could remember it being? How could he be sure of its existence when he was clearly in the wrong as to its location? If the school was real, then it had to be out there somewhere, and if he could find it, then maybe he could establish some clue as to what was happening to him, maybe he would begin to find answers.

His headache was starting to return, and the evening was drawing on. He needed to find a place to rest, and soon. Wary of using his cashcard, he spent the last of his cash on a night’s stay at a bed and breakfast.

He was glad of the face of the old dear that took his money and showed him to the room(en suite sink; coffee-making facilities), he was glad of a face he felt he could trust, and even though the room smelt damp, even though the sheets were not entirely comfortable, the curtains in the room were pleasingly thick, and drawing them gave him the welcome illusion of placing an opaque, impenetrable barrier between him and whatever strange cabal seemed to have formed against him. Nevertheless sleep evaded him. His mind was ablur with the events of the previous thirty-six hours and he felt as though he was floundering blindly about in the darkness, with nothing certain to cling onto, no purchase to be had. He closed his eyes only to see the small figure in the alleyway, the one whose cry of Vladimir had sent him on his haphazard journey into the depths of uncertainty.

He turned over, held an arm over his face, and willed the figure away, but no sooner had it vanished he saw where he was. The gates of his old school. They opened slowly, and the darkness within seemed to reach out for him. He shuffled forwards, to terrified to turn from the gate, too terrified to enter. The darkness receded slightly, and he began to pick out details; the bicycle sheds, the palm court, the old wooden door leading into the cloisters. The wind rattled at it until it opened, catching on the red and black tiled floor. Stoole stepped forward, reaching out with an infant hand to better guide him. He wandered along the corridor. The moon seemed so bright tonight, would be full in a matter of days. In the quad he could see, hugging their knees on the floor, seven boys, laid out in more or less a figure eight. Four of the boys wore black shirts, the remaining three white. The figure wandered quick-slow up the path towards him. Jonathan stood his ground. “Vladimir?” he said. Two of the cowering boys glanced up and tittered. The creature silenced them with a glare, then returned a softer gaze to Jonathan. It smiled but shook his head.

“Ko,” it said.

“Ko?” Jonathan asked. It was not a name at all familiar with him.

“Ko.”

It turned again to face the seven boys. An eighth came forth out of the shadows, white-shirted, and took his place in the arrangement. One of the black-shirted boys stood, and wandered dejectedly from the group. The creature turned again to face Stoole.

A tuneless buzzing niose, wake-the-dead loud near deafened Jonathan and he shot out of bed. He found himself in the middle of the room, arms raised in front of him, heart pounding, before his gaze turned to the flashing red digits of the digital alarm clock set into the head of his cot. He caught himself, let out a slight whimper, and deactivated the alarm. He took a towel from the cupboard, pulled on last night’s trousers and tee-shirt, and made his way to the communal bathroom, where he exchanged a functional but uncomfortable nod with a gruff looking fellow, bushy of whisker, as he made his way from the steamy confines. A warm shower this time, hot water a miracle in such a modest establishment, and Jonathan lathered himself liberally with the soap provided. All the while he said “Ko” over to himself, hoping that its repetition would lead to meaning. As he stepped out of the shower and into a stiff towel, he dismissed the word. A dream can still be a dream, he decided, even in the middle of this confusing mess.

Over a full English breakfast he wandered through the notes he had made the day before, as much to assure himself of the reality of his memories as to find any further clues to the school’s disappearance. Here and there he made additions, details that had appeared in the dream and in so doing had jogged his memory further. Yet the further he pursued this mental voyage, the more he began to sicken. As undoubtedly real the place and the memory of it was to him, he found it difficult to place himself within it. He could recall the buildings, the classrooms, a teacher or two. He could conjure up the smells of the place, the texture – the ragged edges and smooth surfaces of the wooden school chairs, yet he could recall lessons, or school friends, or anything that would place him there. It was as though he was merely recounting scenes he had watched a hundred times in a favourite movie, not episodes from his own life. Chewing on a fried slice of bread, he focused on the blanks then, pushed himself towards imagining a child, any child, within the cloisters, or traversing the quad, or filing into the breezy chapel. Slowly, as if coagulating out of mist, someone did start to form. Indistinct he was, but in the black and red splashes of colour, Stoole began to build a school uniform. The boy’s face (he supposed it was a boy) remained a blur, but blazer was there, and jumper, tie and trousers. The tie was patterned with the same badge that adorned the blazer pocket, two arms gripping a horseshoe, and below it… below it… the school motto. Te digne sequere. Te digne sequere.

Stoole scribbled the words, meaningless to him, in his notebook, slurped down the still too hot coffee and left the table. Within minutes he had found his way to an internet café in a building that once housed, if his memory served him well, the old post office. He launched google and keyed in the motto.

Chaddick was irritable. Cabbs had descended on him no sooner had he reached his office with a relentless series of briefings, debriefings, requests and questions. To make this experience worse, Cabbs had arrived reeking of onions, his breath the victim of his junk food diet. After two hours of it Chaddick could not contain his restlessness, stood up, and jingled the keys in his pocket. Cabbs had been mid-sentence, and did not break off speaking for a few words.

“You alright Mr Chaddick?” he didn’t answer, merely stared at his aide.

“I can come back and do this later if you prefer, it’s just I really want to get the ball rolling on some of these actions.”

“I fancy some air. Let’s say we break off for a few minutes, take in the river?”

Cabbs looked around the office, but for what Chaddick couldn’t surmise.

“Sure,” he said.

Minutes later Cabbs was walking uncomfortably alongside the old man, and Chaddick enjoyed the discomfort he was inflicting, forcing the young blood to slow its pace a little.

“Wonderful weather today, don’t you think?” He asked.

“I guess,” Cabbs said. “Is that why you brought me out here? To discuss the weather.”

Chaddick smiled at this. “Do I need a reason? And would that be an unreasonable one?”

“I suppose not.” Cabbs said, and fell silent. Chaddick stopped walking, looked out to the Houses of Parliament. There had been a time when he had felt that the building had stood for something; that it was a meeting place for idealists, labouring hard at preserving something noble and worthy. Years of clandestine manoeuvring and gesture politics had worn that view down, in time. He wondered, and not for the first time, exactly what his function was,

“Why do you do what you do Cabbs?” Chaddick asked.

“I’m sorry?” Cabbs replied.

“Why domestic intelligence? What draws you to it?”

“I just believe in giving something back, sir.” Cabbs replied.

Chaddick laughed loud at this. Bullshit, he thought.

“You want to know why I went into it?” Chaddick said.

“Sir.” Cabbs replied.

“Lyndsay Jarvis.” Chaddick replied. “The prettiest girl of all time.”

“Sir?” Cabbs asked.

“She was a joy to watch, Cabbs. She’d walk into a room and time would hang, just for a moment, as though the heart of the universe skipped a beat.”

Cabbs stared at Chaddick as though he were insane, which merely made him laugh.

“Well, if I can’t be a little poetic at my age, when can I be? I had a great many designs on her, but she was always so serious. In the end I tried to match her seriousness, boned up on the Suez crisis and signed up for the ministry. But of course, by the time I was in a position where I felt I stood any kind of chance with her, she’d gone.”

Chaddick watched the duck-ride, the amphibious vehicle ride, chunder its way up the side of the bank, children bouncing and squealing as the vehicle jettisoned the water it had taken on, whilst there mothers tried, with barely contained terror, to keep them in their seats.

“What happened to her?” Cabbs asked.

“Oh, she died. Trying to save the world. Be wary of serious women, Cabbs.”

The vehicle drove the rest of the way up the slip and turned onto Albert Embankment. A chirruping noise emanated from Cabbs pocket. He withdrew a pager and read from its scrolling LCD screen.

“I have to take a call.” He said, and headed back towards the entrance. Chaddick remained within the embattlements, amongst the curious, almost religious castellation. Oh, Lyndsay, he thought to himself. What path did you set me on? Where have I ended up. Not a single day had gone by without his thoughts turning to her at some point. He had known her so well, it was as though he carried her around with him in his head. Every action he took he could show to her, and watch her smile or tut-tut at him. Recently the smiles had declined.

Every anniversary of her death, he would meet up with his brother, who had been just as smitten with her, if not more so, and they would drink a toast to her, and drink themselves into a shallow oblivion. But now his brother was gone too; another of the great and good struck down by the tyranny of the world; and who was left now to share in his toast to Lyndsay? Cabbs? Cabbs was just another drone. The longer he had stayed on with the agency the more he had come to recognise the way in which it stripped people of their characters, wore them down, twisted them out of shape, and all to the ends of the agency itself. Sometimes he felt that the agency was a living breathing entity, a vast consciousness striving for its own survival. And what then, Chaddick wondered, was he to it? For all his power little more than a flea.

“Speak” Cabbs said, as soon as he reached the confines of his office. The inane conversation with Chaddick had irritated him more than he thought possible. The crazy old goat was obviously getting close to the end, which meant Cabbs would have to do a serious amount of work if his grand plan was to come off. He was in no position to inherit the department just yet. He would have to sharpen his knives.

“We think we’ve got him,” said the voice at the other end of the phone.

“Where, and how?”

“Marlow, Buckinghamshire. We’ve been monitoring web-searches on various tags associated with 1735’s memory set. Part of his base programme is a school memory. It’s pretty much Shenton’s school, over in Oxford, we just transferred it over from his record. Someone in Marlow just searched for the school motto, ah, Te Digna Sequere. Gibberish to me.”

“Follow the path that is worthy of you.” Cabbs said. “Do we have anyone in Marlow?”

“No. We have someone in Maidenhead, though. We could watch for the connection.”

Cabbs stopped to think.

“What if he’s not heading to London? You said this school was in Oxford, right?”

“Either way it’s a change at Maidenhead.”

Cabbs thought some more.

“Okay, do it.”

Stoole raised his head from the cool porcelain. What had he been expecting, he wondered, before another wave of nausea brought a heave from him. He knew the school was gone, why should it be such a surprise that it should appear somewhere else? He pulled the handle, and the flushing water chilled the air, refreshing him a little. He wiped the bile from his mouth and took to his trembling legs.

He ought to go to Oxford, but he was beginning to lose hope of finding answers. He had spent a good half hour running through the school’s website but finding little comfort. The familiar and the unfamiliar rubbed up against each other without any kind of logic or pattern. What would he learn if he physically went there? But the only other path led back to London, and that was no more welcome a prospect. One of the peculiar shocks he had experienced stepping outside of London was the relative paucity of CCTV cameras. Save for those pointed at the children’s playground, the roundabout at the top of the high street and the station, there were hardly any. Watching his step, and hiding himself from unseen voyeurs was an easy thing here, but if he were to return to London he would rarely be out of sight of their unblinking lenses. That said, it was slowly dawning on him that if answers to his questions lay anywhere it was there, in the lion’s den.

To add further worry to his situation, he was now out of cash, and the only way of getting more would involve him using a cashpoint. He was certain that, as soon as he did this, his enemies would have him. The frustration of it was that he still had no idea as to the scale of what he was up against. His confused memory suggested an organisation with powerful means, but the only intervention he had seen involved a clutter of leaving cards, a possibly drugged bottle of wine, and two spooks parked outside his door. It was, he realised, a presumption that the organisation, however able to play with his mind, could gain access to his bank account.

“Fiona’s here.” Cabbs’ intercom blurted.

“Good, good. Show her in.”

A trouser-suited woman in her late twenties walked nervously into Cabbs’ den.

“Please, take a seat.” Cabbs gestured to the chair.

“It seems… Fiona?”

Fiona nodded. Cabbs always liked to feign an uncertainty as to the identities of the subordinates. It reminded them of their insignificance in the organisation.

“It seems, Fiona, that you were the last person to talk to CASM1735. Is that the case?”

“Yes, sir. I contacted him yesterday morning to advise him of his, erm, his new position.”

“New position.” Cabbs smiled, which made Fiona comfortable enough to allow herself a self-conscious smile of her own.

“Yes, except when I’ve spoken to him before, he’s been oblivious about it all.”

“As he should be.”

“Right, but he knew straight away that he was going back to the same place.”

“I’m afraid, Fiona, that some of your colleagues have not been quite as efficient as your good self.”

Fiona smiled her self-conscious smile again.

“Was there anything else you noticed about him?”

“Well, I didn’t really have much to go on. Protocol stipulates that if the memory wipe appears to have failed we are to terminate the conversation as quickly as possible and notify our line manager. All of which I did.”

“No-one’s doubting that, Fiona. Now think, anything at all that might help us track him down.”

Fiona thought for a moment. “His tone,” she said, finally. “The CASMs are usually so docile when you speak to them. He seemed different. As soon as I said the address he cut in; he was certain there had been a mistake. I mean, CASMs are never assertive are they? That’s the point of them, isn’t it?”

“Quite.”

“Oh, and of course the question he asked me. It’s all in the report.”

“Yes, that has been rather alarming. I trust that you have kept your word and not mentioned it to anyone other than your line manager.”

“I have, Mr Cabbs. Protocol is quite explicit.”

“Indeed. Well, I won’t keep you from your duties any longer, Fiona. You’ve been very helpful.”

Fiona rose to her feet. She had a look to her that Cabbs knew of old. A hundred questions were no doubt burning away inside her that she could never ask, That will fade, with time, thought Cabbs. And if it doesn’t, then Fiona would be due a career adjustment. It would be a shame, but that was the way of it. Cabbs opened the door for her. Vladimir was already in the antechamber, and gave Fiona a puzzled look as she filed past. Fiona did not meet his gaze.

Jonathan stared with no little trepidation at the cashpoint, his card gripped in a sweaty hand. A yellow box had been painted on the floor marking out an area people were encouraged not to enter should the cashpoint be in use. It provided no comfort.

“Are you using it or what?” a teenaged girl behind him asked.

“Ah. Feel free.” He said, making a gesture towards the machine. “Forgotten my PIN.” He said, and forced a smile. The girl rolled her eyes and made a show of pushing past him.

Too quickly she had completed her withdrawal, and Jonathan was faced again with the emotionless screen. It ought to be simple really. If he could gain access to his account, he would take out all the cash that he could and make a dash for the station. If he couldn’t then he would make the dash for the station just the same, and pray that he wasn’t caught. But there was a monumental fear in him. He was uncertain, but there was a comfort in that uncertainty, in the not knowing. He knew that when he inserted his card, keyed in his pin, that uncertainty would vanish. But he was backed into a corner, and his fear served no purpose. He gritted his teeth, and stepped into the privacy zone.

“Do you know what I like about large organisations, Vladimir?” Cabbs asked. He sat on the corner of the desk, legs crossed at the ankle, pelvis tipped towards the boy’s face.

“Hierarchy?” Vladimir said, glibly.

“No, not the hierarchy. It’s the hive. A thousand tiny little brains beavering away in their own cells, oblivious to what is happening around them. They’ve got their tiny little task to be getting on with, and they get on with it. Everyone else does the same, and great and wonderful things happen. The hive takes on a life of its own. It recognises its own objectives, and puts them into practice at the speed of thought, and all based on everyone doing their bit. Everyone pulling together, mastering what little aspect of the whole they have been given to take care of.”

“I see, sir.”

“You see. Good. Except you’re not a busy little bee, are you? Oh, you started out well – breaking your targets, feeding back the right kind of information to management, keeping your head down.” Cabbs held open a folder and read from it “You were an ‘efficient and ambitious operator,’ a ‘good team player.’ Didn’t you even start up a football team amongst your colleagues?”

“Disbanded sir. Security risk.”

“Ah yes. I remember signing the order.” Cabbs dropped the folder onto his desk. “Are you happy, Vladimir?”

“Happy, sir?”

“Working here. Does it make you happy?”

“It… it did sir. Like you say, at the start it did.”

“But something crept in?”

“It’s… it’s just that it’s all the same, sir. The numbers come in, we analyse them, we push them up to the next level. It’s all just abstract.”

“Abstract and…”

“Abstract and boring, sir.”

“Abstract and boring. Indeed. You could have pursued promotion, Vladimir. You were well on your way.”

“Promoted to what though, sir? It’s just more of the same.”

“Oh dear me. So what route do you propose to utilise, to escape the boredom you are facing?”

”Sir?”

“How will you relieve the tedium of your existence, Vladimir?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Cabbs picked up another folder, and from it plucked out a pink and orange rectangle.

“Do you know what this is, Vladimir?”

Vladimir looked at it and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Cabbs set it on his desk.

“It looks like a leaving card, sir.”

“It does look like one doesn’t it. Leaving card with…” Cabbs raised his fingers to his nose and sniffed long and slow. “ginger, green peppers, onions.” He lowered his arm, rested it on the desk. “That card was retrieved from the kitchen bin of operative C.A.S.M.1735 yesterday morning. Now, why do you think I would make such an order, do you think?”

“I don’t know, sir.” Vladimir said, gaze levelled squarely at the card’s lurid design. Cabbs reached out and opened the card.

“This give you a clue? I could read it out to you if you like. ‘Vladimir! You’ve escaped!’”

“Sir, I can explain. I was just… I’d had a really bad day, and I was given a load of cards to sign for the CASMs. It just seemed such a pointless exercise.”

“Signing them?”

“Giving them, sir. I mean, they’re not leaving, are they? And they won’t remember that they’ve had the cards.”

“The kind of memory manipulation we use is a very delicate procedure, we need to maintain a very specific structure to their work cycle. The leaving cards are window dressing for that structure. The leaving cards, the office gossip, the slow perception of change, all go to preserve the fiction that they’re living. Your juvenile little protest has disrupted that balance, and now we’ve got a rogue operative. I’m in the ridiculous situation where I’m having to move heaven and earth to recoup a fucking mailroom worker.”

“Because I signed a few cards with the same message?”

“Hard to believe isn’t it? But unbelievable things happen when you fuck around. That’s why we rather prefer it that our operators, and I want to make this very clear, don’t fuck around.”

Vladimir stared at his hands, crossed in his lap. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t want you to say anything, Vladimir.” Cabbs said, as he picked up a small black box and opened it. “I just want you to sit back and relax.”

A box popped up on a monitor, light green and blinking.

“Gotcha!” The seated operator put down his coffee and punched a couple of keys.

“Is that 1735?” a syut approached, leaned in to better see the screen. “Where is that?”

“HSBC, Marlow, Buckinghamshire. You want me to contact Cabbs?”

“No, I’ll do it. You know how much of a stickler for protocol he is.” The suit reached for his phone, keyed in four digits.

“Speak.”

“We’ve got him, sir, Stoole. Bank transax in – where was it? Marlow.”

The operator waved to get the suit’s attention. “He’s wanting to make a withdrawal. Do I withhold funds, or what?”

The suit began to relay the question, but Cabbs interrupted.

“I heard.” He said. “Let him have the cash, for all the good it’ll do him. Besides, he spooks easily, and I want to run him out a little further before we reel him in.”

The suit nodded to the operator, and the operator hits return. Somewhere in Buckinghamshire an ATM ejects £400 pounds in twenty pound notes into the adrenalin soaked hands of Jonathan Stoole.

“Now what?” The suit asked of Cabbs.

“Now we see which way he jumps.”

Breathless now, body afloat, Stoole ran to the station, bolting his way through near-closing doors, and collapsing into his seat. He let out a whimper and, without any kind of warning slowly began to weep. Two deep and shuddering breaths, a wipe of the nose and he composed himself, looked up and down the carriage to check he wasn’t bringing attention to himself. The carriage was empty which, instead of calming him, made him all the more nervous. A few seconds of worry was all that he allowed himself before holding himself in check. The fear he had faced in withdrawing as much cash as his card and account would allow him, fear which he could not classify as needless, had left his system flooded with adrenalin and now he had no outlet for it save for his continual anxiety. Stuck he was on the train now, his destiny a single path before him from which he could not feciate. At least not until he reached Maidenhead.

Vladimir sat slumped in a chair in Cabbs office, legs twisted around as his unconscious weight brought the chair slowly to the left. His eyes were glazed over, and a single string of saliva ran from the boy’s slack mouth.

“That’s the ticket,” Cabbs said, staring into those unthinking eyes. He slid a drawer out and removed a near hemisphere of cloth, run through with a marble pattern of shiny black wires. He walked over to Vladimir, turned the chair slightly, and pushed the boy’s head forwards. The cap went on without much fuss and Cabbs took a step back to admire his handiwork. His phone began to chirrup.

“We’re in position.” His caller stated.

“Good,” Cabbs said and smiled at the zombified operator before him. “Call me as soon as you’ve made contact.”

“Are we to apprehend?”

“Just observe. I don’t think Stoole’s flight poses too many problems, and this could be the only chance we get to observe someone coming out of the process in an open environment.”

“We’ll let you know as soon as he’s sighted then.”

“Very good. Auf wieder horen.” Cabbs recradled the receiver and sat down. He was feeling oddly buoyant as though his initial concerns at 1735’s flight had turned into a game; one that he was winning. Vladimir omitted a moan.

“What’s that, Vladimir?” Cabbs said, eyebrows raised. The boy stared on.

“It seems,” Cabbs continued, “that your colleague is having quite the adventure. I do hope we don’t break him when we finally bring him in,”

Vladimir’s leg began to kick, slightly at first, but soon with an arrhythmic determination.

“Don’t fight it, boy.” Cabbs admonished. “So much better if you don’t fight it.” The kicking slowed, stopped, and Vladimir was at rest.

“We will shortly be arriving at Maidenhead,” a recorded voice, stern but slightly sensual, announced to the empty carriage. Here it was, then, Stoole thought grimly, do or die. He felt not unlike an actor must feel, taking to the stage following an interval and a lousy first act.

Stepping down from the train he quickly surveyed the faces of those assembled; college kids, young mothers, fatigued factory workers returning home from an early morning shift. Oxford, Stoole decided, and with a hand in his pocket, thumbing the corners of the notes he held in a roll there, joined the queue at the ticket office.

It wasn’t that he saw them. It was more a feeling. Just as the Oxford train began boarding he felt he was being watched. Glancing down the platform his gaze met that of a slightly portly but otherwise well-turned-out man in a long coat. The man turned a shade too quickly, as though he’d received a shock, and then made a passable impression of aimless wandering. The door of the train stood before him. What was he to do? He stared at the gap between the train and the platform, before glancing again at his tail, who now stood still, back turned towards him, doing nothing. Stoole allowed himself a grim smile then, feeling as though his actions were causing a fearful paralysis in his pursuers. It was clear, however, that he was being followed not to be intercepted but merely to be observed. This realisation at once told him what he had to do. He boarded the train.

“Fiona?”

Fiona all but pulled the headset from her such was the shock at hearing Stoole’s voice. Quickly she waggled her mouse, dispensing with the screensaver so she could check that the call was being recorded.

“Jonathan!” She said, with a pleasure that was only half artifice, and a volume designed to alert the attention of her line manager.

“Hi Fi. I was just calling in to see if there was much work about. Also I’ve been having phone trouble lately, so just wanted to touch base with you.”

“Oh, right, um, well it’s kind of slow, to be honest. You know how November can be like.”

”Don’t I just.” Stoole replied.

“I’ll let you know as soon as anything comes in.” She looked desperately to her line manager who was making expansive gestures with her hands.

“Ah, so, Jonathan, have you been making much use of your time off?”

“Oh, you know,” Stoole said with a smile in his voice, “visiting a few old haunts, that sort of thing. Look I’ve got to go. Ticket inspector. Speak soon, I hope.”

“Sure, sure.” Fiona replied to the click of the call’s termination. She turned and shrugged at her line manager, but she was already placing a call through to Cabbs’ office.

Stoole stared at the glowing screen of his mobile and grinned. How strange it was, he thought, to have a plan. What a difference it made. He still felt he was cut off somehow from reality. He was still brutally aware he had only the scantest idea of what was happening to him, but now he felt he suddenly had direction, even if it was just for a time. He had moves he could make, and if he played them well, he might just be able to afford himself enough slack to unpick the tangle his life had become.

The boffins were thoroughly pleased with themselves. Cabbs watched as a red bead blinked and flashed its way slowly across a map of the United Kingdom.

“Let me take you in closer.” Jenson said, and flicked his mousewheel forwards a few notches. Place names bhlossomed around the bead as the window focused in on a smaller and smaller area of the country.

“It came online a few moments ago.”

“Yes, Jenson, I know.” Cabbs said. He had received a call from the CASM switchboard operators only a few minutes ago to tell him that Stoole had been in touch, so Jenson’s arrival had not proved too much of a surprise, nor the news that he was now able to track Stoole by way of his mobile phone.

“The unit that Stoole has, how reliable is it?” He asked.

“Very reliable. Failure rate is almost non-existant. We can’t afford one.”

Cabbs had spent the last two days struggling to gain a fix on the fugitive Stoole, yet within the space of an hour he had the man’s motivation, destination and position all land on his plate in quick succession. However Stoole had complained of phone problems to Fiona, and phone problems there were doubtless none. It was convenient to Cabbs to think that he, and the rest of the agency, had misread Stoole’s disappearance. It was not behaviour common to 1735, but it was possible he had just decided to make use of the time he had between assignments. The news should be welcome, and there should be no reason for Messrs Hunter and Husband to avoid paying Stoole another visit with cloche and needle just as soon as the AWOL operative returned from his peregrinations.

But Cabbs had grown up without much trust for convenient truths. In fact he had spent much of his working life engineering the right convenient truths for other people in order to shade actions, both his and the agency’s, from the world at large. Cabbs felt as though he were swallowing a fiction of his own devising. He could see in painful detail what was about to happen, and was also aware that there was very little he could do about it. The train was virtually at Oxford now, and all he could do was wait for the events to unfold, take stock of the mess he was doubtless left with, and then make his best move from there. That sense of elation he had had only moments ago had transformed into something he had not felt for a long time; unease.

Something was bothering Hal. He sat in the diminutive mailroom office and drummed his fingers loudly on his uncluttered desk. He had long completed his daily duties, had given the mailroom boys their daily briefing and all that was left for him to do was to respond to the few phone calls that came to him. This sense of being at a loose end, however, only counted for a small scintilla of his currently disturbed state of mind. He stopped his drumming and scratched his leg, which had begun to itch quite violently. The itch vanished only to reappear a mment later on his shoulder. He transferred his attentions accordingly and the itch moved down to his right buttock. He stood abruptly, annoyed with himself, and moved towards the lockers with which he shared what little office space he had.

He was caught in as loop, he realised. His placeless irritation was now feeding back into itself. He felt that urge to escape, and considered the possibility of leaving for the day. He wandered out into the mailroom and watched his six team members beavering away at their respective tasks. He surveyed them over and over. He felt he was on the verge of a significant discovery but it remained tantalisingly out of his grasp. It was almost as if there was a seventh person before him, darting around with such stealth and speed that he remained always at the edge of Hal’s vision. Hal crossed the room, sat down, and rested his head, which had begun to pound to the dull rhythm of his heart. All at once the pain ceased, and the room seemed to get lighter, as though the sun had suddenly emerged from dark clouds.

Hal stood.

“Jonathan Stoole” Hal said, almost belching the words out, a welcome release of troubling wind. The workers stopped working and stared at him. He looked from one to another before saying it again.

“Jonathan Stoole. Has anyone seen Jonathan Stoole?”

The workers blinked for a moment, looked at each other, and frowned. One of the girls clutched her forehead, staggered slightly on her feet, then sat down.

The red bead drew closer and closer to Oxford station, and the knot of tension in Cabbs stomach grew tighter, balled up like a bony fist.

“We’re going to have to stop the train.” He said, and reached for the phone.

“We’ve been stuck here for thirty bloody minutes. I’ve travelled halfway round the country to be at a god-damn meeting I am now not going to make.”

“I assure you sir, we’re doing everything we can to get the train moving, but for the moment I do ask you to please stay in your seat. I hope to have some news for you very shortly.”

The businessman actually quivered, so apoplectic with rage he was, but regardless of this, he turned on his heels, and sat firmly down. The ticket inspector glanced out of the window. He had been told that the car would not be marked, had only been told as much so that he not be alarmed when it finally did show up. He had been stuck on a train like this before, albeit under circumstances less cloak and dagger. He had had the misfortune of working on a train that had failed in the height of summer, too close to the station to allow passengers to disembark. They had been kept waiting for hours before being walked into the station, and in the meantime there had been much noise and fury. Windows had been broken to make up for the defunct air conditioning, and one woman had fainted dead away, before selling her “train hell” story to the next day’s Evening Standard. The revenue protector wondered, not for the first time, why the Government had not renationalised the railstock as soon as it had got into power.

The businessman was tapping away at his blackberry, no doubt emailing every PA he had listed to inform them not only of his absence from whichever meeting he could not get to, but also of the gross incompetence of the train company he had chosen to do business with. He clicked on send, and an egg timer appeared on the screen. Usually it was but a glimmer as the Blackberry connected, discharged its mail, and disconnected. He barely even saw the egg timer under normal circumstances but there it was, spinning away. He watched it and felt his exasperation grow. His fingers tightened around the box as the Blackberry finally gave up, warning him that a connection could not be made. He let out a growl of frustration before slinging the useless box into his briefcase. He stood, then, pushed open the window and glared out at the free world. An RV pulled up beside the train, and two men got out.

“Finally, some action!” the businessman declared, as the driver dropped onto the tracks and made his way over to them.

“Is this going to take long?” the driver asked. “My customers are getting difficult to handle, and I don’t know what to tell them.”

“We’ll take as long as we take,” Hatchet said. “And as for what you can tell your customers, that’s your problem.”

“Why don’t you tell them what you usually tell them,” Hinckley said with a smirk, as they began to walk the length of the train.

“Leaves on the track,” Hatchet said.

“Wrong kind of snow,” Hinckley said.

“Points failure.” Hatchet said.

“Signal failure.” Hinckley said.

“Oo, how about, ‘due to an earlier train’? Always been a favourite of mine, that one” and the two of them laughed. Hinckley held a small box which he waved along the length of the train. It emitted a wavering whine.

“What’s that?” the driver asked.

Hinckley stared at it a moment. “That’s classified.” He said, after a moment’s consideration.

“Look, we’re going to be a little while. Why don’t you go back and sit in your little box ‘til we come and get you?” Hatchet asked.

The driver turned, and made his way back towards the front of the train. “Wankers,” he muttered, under his breath.

“Don’t think we didn’t hear that!” Hinckley shouted after him.

“Too harsh?” Hatchet said to him, quietly.

“Absolutely!” Hinckley said with a grin.

The pair moved further along the train, and the whine increased.

“So, whose dropped a bollock this time, d’you reckon?” Hatchet asked.

“We don’t drop bollocks,” Hinckley replied, with a smile, “but my money is this is full on, top level fuck up.”

“Yeah?”

“Heads will roll, Hatchet. Heads will most definitely roll.”

The pitch grew and grew, then suddenly began to diminish again.

“Hello!” Hinckley said. He waved his arm forward and back, and the whine peaked once more.

“Shall I go and get his nibs?” Hatchet said.

“I think so. And be nice to him, Hatchet. You were a little offhand with him before.”

The carriage held about fifty people. Hatchet and Hinckley moved along the aisle, followed closely by the ticket inspector, who had been instructed he was, under no circumstances, to allow “this pair of arseholes”, out of his sight. Nevertheless, he was keeping his distance. As the one that was called Hatchet had clambered onto the carriage, his jacket had gaped slightly, revealing a holstered gun. His eyes had met those of the inspector, and something had been communicated between the pair of them, something that sat between promise and threat. Now Hatchet held back slightly, thumb tucked into the waistband of his trousers, while his colleague waved his device about and took in each of the passengers in turn. The passengers for their part acted with an understandable level of unease, one which was in no way soothed by the manner of the two spooks. One passenger in particular stood out from the rest. A pallid sweat had broken out on his face, and he had started uncontrollably to wring his hands. He was the furthest passenger along, and his composition deteriorated the closer they came to him. Finally, Hinckley reached the man, waved the box over him, and removed his earpiece.

“Hatchet,” Hinckley said.

“This him?” Hatchet asked.

“Looks like it.” Hinckley replied.

Hatchet opened his jacket, flashed the weapon that hung against his chest. “No trouble.” He said, as if stating a plain fact. The man nodded, and moved forward on numb legs.

The inspector watched as the man was taken from the train, handcuffed, and pushed into the back of the RV. As the car turned to make its way down from the track, Hinckley waved to the driver, who responded with an extended middle finger. Hinckley recoiled in mock horror, and Hatchet laughed uproariously. A few minutes later the train was finally given clearance to proceed, and made its way into the station. Meetings were missed, meals were skipped, but the world carried on.

The Mailroom was in chaos. One by one Hal’s team had succumbed to headaches, nausea, vomiting and seizures. Hal’s moment of clarity had receded, and he found himself once more confused by the world he found himself in. Suddenly he remembered his training. For reasons that had never been made clear to him, the mailroom faced the risk of malicious parcels. For this reason, a large and oppressive looking x-ray machine, an uglier version of those found at airports, sat in the middle of the room. All incoming mail passed through and were checked by one of two of the team members, who would yay or nay the packages based on their appearances. In all the time he had spent doing this job, he had never once witnessed anything untoward coming into the office, but he now had a very clear reason to suspect that not only had something untoward come in, but that it had managed to get past the security devices in place. He remembered his training, walked over to the wall and struck the Big Red Button. Alarms sounded, lights flashed, and an impossible number of security officers rushed into the room.

The three of them sat around the table and stared at the mobile phone that sat between them. Hatchet got up, walked over to the door, opened it, and glanced up and down the corridor. He hated using police stations to carry out these interrogations. Too many unknown quantities – nosy constables, conniving CID officers. He much preferred abandoned buildings, as counter-intuitive as that seemed. The openness of them appealed to him, the ability to take in at a glance whether anyone was approaching. What is more, abandoned buildings most often afforded more privacy than a locked room. People, he had realised long ago, generally behaved themselves. Save for kids and squatters, who were generally easy to deal with if encountered, people tended to avoid places they knew they were supposed to avoid. Terrified they were of being labelled as ne’er-do-wells. Terrified they were of encountering a tableau close to Hatchet’s heart, the simple aesthetic of a man tied to a chair, one suit interrogating, the other holding back, maintaining the security of the area and at the same time suggesting a bigger, nastier gun that was being held back. Hatchet had long ago abandoned nice cop nasty cop in favour of quiet cop, nasty cop. It let the interviewee make up his own mind whether quite was nice or nastier still.

He closed the door, turned to the pair of them. He made eye contact with Hinckley, and nodded towards their captive. Hinckley raised his eyebrows, looked at the fool before them, stood up, and punched him in the face. The man fell, then, tried instinctively to break his fall by raising his arms, but they were cuffed behind him, and he succeeded only in ensuring his head and shoulder hit the floor with even more force.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Hinckley said, and lifted the man back onto the chair. “I think I may have interrupted you mid-sentence. Mid Sentence?” He smiled at the man, stared into his eyes as though he were an errant dog, then gently slapped his cheek a couple of times.

“Please,” the man said, his eye beginning to blossom into a bruise. “This is not my phone. Truly!”

Hatchet sighed.

“You want me to hit him again?” Asked Hinckley. This made the captive start crying.

“Nah. Fun as this is, we’d better call this in.” He withdrew a mobile, and pressed a few buttons. “George,” he said, “I’m gonna take your photo now. Are you going to give me a smile.”

“What?” George said, through his tears.

“Oh come on now. Let’s get rid of those tears.”

Hinckley fished a clean handkerchief from his pocket and mopped at the man’s tears. George took a breath.

“Now. How about a big smile?”

George tried his best to smile, but could only manage a grimace. His head began to shake. Hinckley stood behind him, held his head steady and angled it towards the lens in Hatchet’s phone.

“Say cheese.” He said.

Cabbs watched as the picture formed on his monitor. It wasn’t Stoole. He’d expected Hatchet and Hinckley to turn up the phone abandoned, tucked, perhaps, into a train cushion, or dropped out of the train window. George had been a bit of a surprise. It also added to the mix the headache of what they would now have to do with George, but that was a problem for someone else. Right now all Cabbs could care about was tracking Stoole down. He could be reasonably confident that Stoole could not leave the country. He was passportless, and border controls were on the look out for him. But that was small comfort, as was the faintly malicious act that may or may not have taken place on the train. The story George had provided Hatchet with was that Stoole had sold him the phone for ten pounds. Cabbs had before know had Stoole down as an innocent, a do-gooder. How on earth, Cabbs wondered, could you remain on the lower rungs of the career ladder, the property ladder, the everything ladder unless you were unable to play the game? Yet Stoole was playing now, and this worried Cabbs no end, not least of all because of the complete breakdown of the CASM mailroom. The lab had the staff under sedation, but had yet to begin their interrogation of them. If they began to recover memories of their former lives, then the assumption that Stoole’s flight served no threat was unaffordably erroneous. Again Cabbs was left waiting, uncertainty creeping into his predestined, planned, black and white world.

Stoole felt more alive than he had ever felt in his entire life, although as he pedalled on he realised that what he could remember of his life did not count for very much at all. With each downward thrust of his legs, he felt the stress he had been under slip away. The dark clouds that had gathered above him were dissipating and he could feel the warm sunlight on his face.

He felt a small twinge of guilt. He had interfered quite dramatically with the lives of two people, two strangers towards whom he held no hostility. It was a shame, then, that his current and no doubt fleeting freedom was founded on two acts that had effectively oppressed others. His intention had been to merely ditch the phone, to merely leave it on the train, but he had grown concerned that if the phone was being monitored as he’d hoped, its lack of movement once it reached Oxford would have given him away, and he was desperate to buy as much time as he could. If he was being totally honest with himself he would have to admit to a certain level of pride in managing to sell the phone so quickly. He had selected his customer with care, and done a decent enough job of presenting to him a feasible story – the sudden need for cash, a handset he was due to replace anyway, that the sale of the handset for ten pounds seemed perfectly reasonable, and their remained the possibility that he was mistaken, and that the phone wasn’t being monitored at all. Either way, he felt with greater certainty that he was slipping from the clutches of whichever power was so interested in keeping tabs on him.

Whatever legitimisation he could allow himself for selling on the phone (and after all, it was not he who was monitoring the phone, it was not he who commanded the individuals monitoring the phone, so whatever happened to the phone’s new owner, Stoole could hardly take that much of the blame) he could afford very little when it came to the theft of the bicycle on which he now pedalled. He had wandered into another carriage after dispatching his phone, and had alighted at the next station. His nervousness had remained, but he realised that because that nervousness was now yoked to some specific purpose, it became an energy and a strength. He strolled confidently across the platform, crossed over the footbridge, and walked into the carpark. He’d hoped to find an unchained bicycle, but to his dismay all of them were secure. As he turned to think of an alternative mode of transport he could use with some degree of security, a lycra-wearing cyclist pulled up beside him. Without time to think, he pushed the cyclist, crouched down, a chain at the ready, such that sprawled onto his back. Stoole deftly swung his leg over, and pedalled away, not daring to turn his head, even when he heard the cyclist turning the air blue behind him.

“I’m very sorry!” Stoole shouted out, but could not help allowing himself a chuckle. With each kick of the pedal he felt the distance between himself and his pursuers grow.

He stayed off the main roads, which added distance to his journey, but meant he would appear less frequently on traffic cameras. He expected to feel fatigue set in and quickly, but his body surprised him, matching his ambition step for step. What surprised him too was his apparent independence from any conscious navigation. He had anticipated the requirement of a map at some stage, fancying himself getting lost up labyrinthine country roads, but at each turn in the road he found himself confidently taking a left or right, and sooner than he thought possible found himself nearing London.

His decision to abandon his investigations in Oxford had been made for him by the spook at the station. Even if he could have shaken off his pursuers before he reached Oxford, it wouldn’t take them much effort to know of his intended destination. It would be the easiest thing in the world, he surmised, for them to people the place with spooks. He’d be tagged and traced within an hour of setting foot in the city. So he would have to turn and face his enemies. He knew that things were probably going to get more difficult, which was perhaps why the cycle journey had brought him to such a state of elation. The pleasure and freedom he experienced was all the sweeter for being ephemeral and tempered by melancholy. He hit the Camberwell Road. Quite by accident he realised he was drawing dangerously close to his flat. He could not say for certain, but he assumed that were he trying to catch someone, and he had agents at his disposal, he would station one at his quarry’s place of abode. He revised his route accordingly, taking himself off into Brixton, an ideal place to leave the bicycle.

Brixton was heaving, as ever, but he felt a welcome security in the crowds. Police were dotted about the place, and the crowd bobbed and dodged under the ever-present eyes of CCTV cameras, but somehow by being part of a crowd, he could blend in, pass unnoticed amongst them. He wandered into ______, bought a hooded top, a jacket he had found in the sale, and a bag. He’d left what clothes he had brought with him to Marlow back at the bed and breakfast, so keen he was to escape, and now all he had was what he stood in. He found a bar with News 24 on, got changed in the toilets, bought himself a well-earned lager, and watched the world go by.

The screen showed wobbly footage of a train stranded outside a station, the distant figures of two gentleman emerging from a vehicle and approaching the train. The entire screen was suddenly filled with orange, and as the picture zoomed out, this orange was shown to be a high-visibility vest worn by a railway security guard. The guard urged the camera crew back, and the picture faded to a live image of a reporter stood at Oxford station, speaking to members of the public who had no doubt been stuck on the much delayed train, but still had enough time to appear on television.

The subtitle changed from “train horror” to “terror suspect removed from Oxford train,” causing Stoole to wince, and glare at his pint. “Sorry mate,” he said to himself.

He switched from lager to lemonade as he watched darkness descend on London. He resolved to get close to his flat, to try and ascertain whether or not it was still under surveillance. He suspected it almost certainly was, if his subterfuge on the train had evidently been discovered. He made his way up Railton road, crossing over as he reached his street so as to afford himself a reasonable and nonchalant glance in the direction of his flat. As he watched, he saw a light in his flat turn off. Interesting, he thought. It would appear that whoever had been posted to watch over the flat was doing so from within the building itself. This made a sick kind of sense to Stoole. The realisation that this was the case, though, meant that he could cast himself as the watcher. He clearly had nowhere to sleep for the night, and to that end had plenty of time to kill. He meandered down to Herne Hill station before doubling back on himself, following Dulwich Road up to the opposite end of his street. That sense of nervous excitement that had once been his enemy, was rapidly becoming an old friend. He wondered idly as he turned the corner and stopped, whether he was becoming addicted to the chase, this cat and mouse game he was at the centre of. He wished he still smoked.

He took up position at a point he knew could not be seen with any clarity from his apartment, but afforded him a reasonable view of what little remained of the front garden. He raised his hood, thrust his hands deep into his pockets and waited. After twenty minutes a familiar car pulled up into an available parking space some 300 yards from his front door, and a young Chinese boy got out. As he made his way towards the front door, Stoole ran, fast and low and shadowed, along the row of parked cars and ducked down behind the delivery boy’s beaten up Escort. Stoole chose his moment well. The boy glanced back at his vehicle, then turned as the door was opened by yet another spook. John popped the back passenger door open, got inside, and closed the door again. He dared not check to see if this entry had been seen. Instead he buried himself amongst the folded paper bags and prawn cracker fragments that littered the floor. A moment later the driver door opened, and Stoole felt the vehicle rock slightly as someone got in. A phone beeped a could of times as keys were pressed.

“Suze, it’s me. I’m done here. We got anything else to go out?”

A muffled voice, too indistinct for Stoole to make out, followed.

“Okay – see you in a bit.”

The car started up, and began to move. Blindly, Stoole started on the next phase of his journey.

Chaddick had decided to pull another late night at the office. The new file system that Cabbs had convinced him would make a valuable contribution to the work of the agency had so confounded him that he again found himself almost entirely reliant on Cabbs’ assistance in keeping up with what was occurring in the agency. He had kept things to himself, of course, but he was beginning to realise that this was exactly what Cabbs wanted, for Chaddick to be demoted to little more than a rubber stamp, wielded by his aide who remained quite free to show or hide whatever information, report, guidance or decision that was required of him.

Chaddick took a casefile from one of the many buff folders that littered his desk, keyed in the code number, complied with the prompt for his pass code (which he transcribed from his pocket diary, so convoluted and ever –changing it was) and hit return. The screen sat dolefully, the cursor blinking. Chaddick drummed his fingers, felt as though he was sinking in the quicksands of a world that made no sense to him any more, until finally the screen changed, regurgitating a series of facts and figures. Chaddick only required a moment’s glance over the information before he realised an error had occurred, and that he was looking at a completely different record. He closed his eyes, sighed, and reached for the phone.

“Cabbs, when you’ve got a moment.” He said, before scrolling through the information before him. It had appeared on his screen unbidden, but it was such a rarity for Chaddick to be able to get any kind of information out of the newly installed databases that he thought he could at least pay it some attention, how ever arbitrary its selection process. The notes referred to a series of fruitless interviews given to members of the mailroom staff in the St Andrew Street building. It meant little to him, so he dismissed it.

Cabbs glided into the room.

“You’re working late tonight.” Cabbs said, brightly.

“I know.” Chaddick said. The pair fell into silence.

“Is that all, sir?” Cabbs said, finally.

“Don’t get cocky, Cabbs. I’m still your superior, however much you manage to wrap me up in this technological bilge.”

“Bilge, sir?”

“Bilge, Cabbs. Can you kindly explain how it is possible for us to sink several million pounds into developing a secure database that is about as much use as a string condom?”

“The database has been a great success, sir. Our data entry’s up, the background analysis is smoother than its ever been, and the system we’ve developed for prioritising actions is already beginning to have a genuine impact on results. We’ve managed to infiltrate and destroy several terrorist cells within two months of the system going live.”

“That’s all well and good, Cabbs, and I’ve seen the reports, so I’m fully aware of the marked improvement this system supposedly has, but how can it be that, two months on, I am still unable to gain access to the information that I require to at least show some pretense that I have the first scintilla of a clue as to what is going on beyond the door of this building.”

“Sir?”

”Would it be possible for you to divert that fantastic and ruthlessly ambitious energy of yours to discovering why it is that I cannot access the reports that I need to? I’m to appear before a select committee in a couple of weeks, and I would like very much to have read up on the pertinent files before I go in there.”

“I can brief you, sir. It’s really no bother.”

“Oh but it is, Cabbs. I require assistance, but I oughtn’t be helpless. We’ve spent a small fortune of tax-payers money in order to render me an invalid.”

“I’ll… I’ll contact the contractors tomorrow and have them look at it for you. I imagine there’s some issue with the user permissions.”

Chaddick nodded with incomprehension.

“Any way, Cabbs, why are you here so late? Not got a hamburger restaurant to get to?”

“Oh, just going over a personnel issue.” Cabbs smiled, “nothing too worrisome. One of the mailroom boys failed to turn up.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you.”

“Very good, sir.” Cabbs said, and left.

“Very good, sir.” Chaddick grimaced, and span himself slowly in his chair.

Cabbs slumped into his chair, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then reached over to his mouse. He brought up the camera in Chaddick’s office. Chaddick was on his feet watching those bloody screens of his. He was beginning to suspect, that much was clear, but how long would that give Cabbs to perform his coup? If Chaddick left he could easily bring Cabbs down with him, and even if he didn’t it would be a massive setback if Cabbs had to begin working on another director from scratch. And all this was a distraction from the more immediate threat posed by Stoole. The mailroom invalids were starting to recall things that everyone had long assumed were buried away, and although Cabbs had seen that Stoole’s memory was scrubbed out that much more closely than the others, he now had no confidence that those memories were gone for good. And with Stoole’s now off the map, the possibility of Cabbs undoing was very real. There was only one place that Cabbs liked to go to at times like this. He always experienced anxiety as heat, could even now feel himself prickled with sweat. It was a wonder he had managed to keep his cool with Chaddick, so sickening he found the old fool. The feeling, Cabbs glibly realised, was becoming mutual. What gratitude Chaddick had shown him for turning around his office was now falling away. Cabbs cut his own thoughts off, as neatly as though he had done so with a scalpel. He rose to his feet.

Everything about the server room appealed to him. It was the coolest part of the building, and in the incessant low roar of the air-conditioning he found a strange inner calm, a steady tone against which to meditate. He would often come here to escape the pressures of his situation, to plan the next stages. He’d even arranged it so that no-one could enter or leave the room without his proviso, meaning that it was the one room in the building in which he could be assured an absolute degree of privacy. The intelligence community had long ago turned in on itself, watched itself endlessly for signs of weakness or infiltration. Here in the cool of the server room, there were no eyes.

The lights were triggered by changes in the infra-red spectrum, so if Cabbs stood long enough in one spot, the lights would turn off, and he would be alone in a dark peppered with the artificial stars of a hundred green LEDs. He had removed his clothes, leaving them in a neat and tidy pile by the inner door of the dustlock. He took up position before the main server bank. It was through this unit that all the information fed to the agency, from the internet, from Echelon, from the other members of the JISC encountered one another, colliding in a tempest of supposition, of perhaps. A tireless array of pattern recognition algorhytms sifted through the data, matching like against like, before flagging any kind of significance on the monitors of the army of operators that staffed the site. Cabbs was not a religious man, but if he wished to choose a god, it would be the ever-running behemoth before him. He raised himself up on the balls of his feet, stretched his arms as wide as he could, and spread out his fingers. The cool air embraced him, and after a few moments, hamstrings straining, Cabbs was plunged into darkness. Cabbs closed his eyes, allowed his thoughts to get lost in the roar of the air-conditioning. He fancied, not for the first time, that messages were embedded in the slight clicks and mis-steps in that steady stream of noise. He fancied, not for the first time, that he could hear a voice, a low and urgent whisper, speaking to him in a long-lost language he alone could understand.

“Soon,” Cabbs said. “Soon.”

Stoole was struggling to keep awake. The low rumble of tyre on tarmac, and the too-quiet voice of the talk radio station his unwitting chauffeur was listening to were providing a gentle lullaby to the slow rocking of the car in which he travelled. He tried to focus intently on the words that were being spoken, some nut waffling on about the internet becoming some kind of emergent consciousness too complex for mere humans too understand. How satisfactory, Stoole thought to himself, to come up with such a belief and place its proof beyond the capabilities of science. The car pulled up on squealing breaks. This slow push had come to shove.

As the delivery boy was busy gathering together the gratuities he had received from his latest round, Stoole rose up from his hiding place. The boy jumped, his cry being knocked short as his head collided with the car’s low ceiling. Stoole placed a hand over the boy’s mouth.

“It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you. You recognise me?”

The boy’s eyes, wide-open as he fought against his terror, finally relaxed. He nodded.

“Right. I’m going to take my hand away, and you’re not going to call out, okay? I just want to talk.”

The boy nodded again.

“Okay,” Stoole said, and withdrew his hand.

“What the fuck are you doing in my car?” The boy said at once. “What the fuck!” and delivered a cool and precise blow to Stoole’s chin. Stoole was knocked clean on his back, and when he struggled back up, saw that the boy was busily struggling with the keypad on his mobile phone. Stoole at once knocked the handset.

“I really don’t have time for this.” Stoole said, and grabbed at the boy’s shoulders. He at once struggled free, and popped the driver door open. Stoole attempted to open his, but the unfamiliar door and inadequate light forced him to fumble for the catch. This gave the boy more than enough time to activate the central locking. Stoole heard it go, eyes widening, and scrabbled at the hole wherein had sunk the locking buttons. He frowned at the boy, thumped a couple of times against the window, then at once stopped. The boy had made an attempt to run, but had faltered. Now he stood and stared at his captive. Stoole calmed himself, ran a haggard hand through his hair and smiled a piteous smile.

Cabbs smiled and understood. Stoole was in a prime position for running to ground. In the right place he could stay hidden in perpetuity, even once the National Identity Register rumbled onto its inexorable path to failure. And if Stoole was capable of hiding, then Cabbs was just as capable at flushing him out. As for the threat Stoole represented, Cabbs could neutralise it in an instant, drawing a single simple line from A to F and waving it under the right nose.

The boy neared the car window. Stoole looked up at him. The boy could easily now make good his earlier attempt at calling the police, but was choosing not to. Stoole supposed, and supposed correctly, that the boy had questions. Reaching forward, Stoole wound the sunroof open just enough for his voice to escape the car.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

”Lee.”

“Well, Lee, where do we go from here?”

“You’re the guy on Wilmot Lane, aren’t you?”

“That’s me. John. My name’s John.” Stoole smiled at the awkwardness of an introduction made to someone he had spoken to countless times before.

“You always order the same thing, Chicken Satay, King prawn fried rice, prawn crackers and pork balls.”

“That’s my order.” John smiled.

“Big eater, huh?”

“Not really. I usually end up ditching half the rice and most of the balls. Always order them though.”

“So who’s that new guy then? Boyfriend?”

John chuckled at this. “Boyfriend/”

“Well, you never know. He seems right at home.”

“Truth is, Lee, I don’t know who that guy is, but I’m damned sure he knows who I am.”

The theme from Mission Impossible suddenly cut through the conversation. Lee reached for his pocket, then looked up at John.

“Mobile,” Lee said, and gestured with his hand. John leaned forward, grabbed the mobile from where it had been thrown. He looked at the screen.

“Suze?” Stoole asked.

“That’s my sister.” Lee said. Jonathan shrugged and pressed the green button.

“Where are you, you cretin? If you’re lost again…”

“Hang on. This isn’t Lee. I’ll just get him.”

Jonathan wound the sunroof open further, and popped the mobile up through the roof.

“I’m trusting you, Lee,” he called out as the boy took his phone back.

“No I’m not lost. That? That’s Jonathan. 73 Wilmot Lane. Yeah.”

John watched, waited for his fate to hang in the balance.

“No, sis, I’m outside. We’ve got a bit of a situation. Come out and see.”

A moment later, emerging from a door, was a Chinese girl in her late twenties, dressed to lightly for the cold November night. She hugged herself as she approached the car.

“What’s happening here?” she asked her brother, who by way of explanation nodded towards the car. Jonathan made a pathetically light-spirited wave.

“You’ve trapped one of our customers in your car? He not tip you?”

“He never tips me. I got back here, and he just springs up out of the back seat at me. I managed to get out and lock the door, and that was just about when you phoned.”

“You a car jacker, Mr Wilmot Lane?”

“My names Jonathan Stoole, and I’m not a car jacker. Please, can we go somewhere private? I need to talk.”

“Is a police cell private enough for you, Mr Stoole?”

“Hey, come on! Give me a break! Please.”

“You’re asking us to trust you, but you’ve just tried to steal our car.”

“I wasn’t trying to steal it. I… I just need someone I can talk to. I’ve been… I’ve been running from something I don’t understand, and I’m worn out, and I stink, and I just need to rest and work out where I have to go from here.”

“And you need us for that?”

John looked up at her then, her eyes angry and accusing. He was, he began to realise, asking the impossible.

“Please,” he asked of her, “somehow you two are the only people I have any kind of contact with in this city. Just, just listen to what I have to say. If you want to call the police after that, then that’s fine, do that, but please, give me a chance to explain.”

Suze, took a step back, and turned away from the car. Lee looked between his sister and the familiar stranger in the car.

“Am I right in saying that you want this conversation to take place in our home?” She asked.

“There is nowhere else.” John replied. “Not now.”

“Okay,” Suze said, and John’s face brightened. “Take off your clothes.”

“What?”

“You want us to trust you, take off your clothes. You can pass them through the sunroof.”

“What will getting me naked achieve?”

“”It’ll stop you running. Lee, give me the car keys and hold the front door open.”

Lee did as he was told. Jonathan muttered under his breath, but struggled his way out of his hooded top and tossed out through the sunroof. Suze caught it and approached the vehicle.

“Shorts too.” She said.

“A lady wouldn’t have found out if I was wearing shorts.”

“I’m no lady.” Suze said taking his trousers and underwear from him.

“Right,” she said, “when I count to three, I am going to unlock the car. You are going to get out, and you are going to run in through that door there. You will run up the stairs, my brother will follow you closely from behind. You will enter the lounge, which is the second door on the left. There you will wait with Lee for our little chat. Understood?”

“Sure.” Jonathan said. He sidled over to the car door, cupped himself, and waited for Suze to begin the count.

“One… two… three.” A low whine emitted from the car doors, and the lock buttons popped up. John did as he was told, gritting his teeth against the icy cold that robbed the souls of his feet their feeling. He darted into the hallway, barely registering the steamy bright ground-floor entrance to the kitchens. Instead he ascended the stairs, and turned into the lounge. Suze closed and locked the car door, walked businesslike back into her home, and followed the rushing figure of her brother as he kept pace with the naked interloper.

Stoole stood in the lounge, hands cupping his privates, at a loss how to respond to his surroundings. Lee for his part was also unsure of what to do. He was used to his sister making sometimes rather odd decisions, something that, in the arrogance of adolescence, he had taken to be a sign of her stupidity, but as he had matured, now took to be a sign of her intelligence.

“Nice place.” Jonathan said. Lee didn’t so much as crack a smile. Jonathan padded over to the far wall to take a look at the montage of family photos that hung there.

“These your folks?” He asked. Lee stared on. Jonathan couldn’t determine whether his silence was supposed to represent a hard front, or if the boy was simply embarrassed by the situation. From the next room, the sounds of clashing cutlery could be heard.

“That Suze?” Jonathan asked.

“She’s hiding the knives.” Lee said, and smiled.

“Nice.” Jonathan replied.

“If I know my sister, she’s probably keeping one back, too.”

Suze walked briskly in. Jonathan noticed at once that she was no longer carrying his clothes.

“Where are my-”

“Put this on.” She said, and flung a silk dressing gown at him. Despite himself, he caught the garment with both hands, allowing himself a grimace only as he turned to the wall and struggled into its small dimensions.

“So.” Suze said, sitting down, curling a single leg beneath her. “You wanted to talk, now talk.”

Jonathan sat in the opposite chair. He was at a loss as where to start. He tried again and again to formulate a sentence that would give him a way into describing what had happened to him over the past few days, but whenever he tried, the words seemed to turn his situation into a deranged fantasy. A minute passed by; then another.

“Shall I just make that call now?” Suze said, leaning forward as if to stand.

“No! No, sorry. I’m trying, really I am.” He took a deep breath. It made sense, he finally realised, not to start with the leaving cards, or the spooked watchers, or the relocated school. It made sense to start with them, with Suze, Lee and himself.

“I started ordering food from you, what? Three months ago, right?”

Suze chuckled, “yeah, and the rest.”

“What?” Jonathan asked, confused.

“You’ve been calling us every couple of weeks or so for three years.”

“Three years?”

Suze sighed and looked up at the montage of photos, as if seeking guidance from the muted family portraits.

“Okay, no that’s good, that’s useful. You see, I remember… that is to say I have a memory of moving into the flat on Wilmot Street three months ago.”

“Three years ago.” Suze said, returning her gaze to him.

“I’m not disputing that I’ve been there for three years. All I’m saying is that I can only remember moving in three months ago. As far as I can recall, I moved there three months ago, and before that I…” Jonathan reached for the memory of his previous residence but found it missing.

He crumpled.

“Where do you work now?” Suze asked.

“I... till a few days ago I was working at St Andrews Tower in the city. 213, St Andrew Street.”

Suze crossed over to a bookshelf in the corner of the room and extracted a laptop. She plugged it in, and fired it up.

“What did you do there?” She asked.

“Just... just mailroom stuff. Nothing really.”

“What sort of mail did you have coming through?”

“I don’t know, a lot of internal stuff. We had a lot of these weird plastic boxes with combination locks on them. Other than that the usual stuff.”

A fanfare announced the laptop’s launch.

“Okay, so you say you can’t remember much of the last three years. What does that mean?”

“It’s like I’m not aware that stuff is missing until I think about it. But other stuff I can remember clearly, only it turns out to be wrong. I tried to find my old school but it wasn’t where it should be. Then it turns up in a place I know I’ve never been to.”

Suze began tapping away at the laptop.

“What was the company you worked for?”

“Hm?” Stoole said. “___ Tech.”

“No you didn’t.” Suze said, and swivelled the laptop round. On its screen was a picture of St Andrew’s Tower etched out in bold and foreboding lines. Above it the slogan “Behold, the Ministry of Love?”

“This,” Suze said, “is one of the key MI5 buildings in London. By the sound of what you say they’re responsible for some kind of paper archiving of classified information. That’s where you’ve been working for the past three years.”

“That can’t be right. It was a marketing firm. We bought and sold information about customer purchasing patterns; that sort of thing.”

“Oh, they trade in information alright, but I don’t think it’s how many yoghurts we buy at a time.”

Stoole sat there in silence, eyes closed. He knew he was being watched and followed, and knew that whoever was doing so had a large enough array of resources for them to have Government backing and funding, but in his heart he had hoped for different news. In his heart he had hoped to find out that it was not the authorities behind his current persecution, but some crime syndicate or terrorist cell, someone from whom the authorities could be in a position to protect him.

“Lee, get Mr Stoole a glass of water.”

When Jonathan opened his eyes, he saw that he had been weeping.

“Please, Suze. Don’t hand me over to the police. I need to find out what they’ve done to me. I need to find out who I am.”

Suze sighed and rose to her feet.

“We’ll talk more in the morning.” She said as Lee re-entered the room, glass in hand.

“He’s staying the night?” Lee asked.

Suze nodded. “He can take my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“You don’t believe his story do you?” Lee asked. Suze silenced him with a glare.

“Stoole, the bathroom’s across the way. Why don’t you take a shower. Can’t have you stinking out my room.” Stoole creaked and cracked his way to his feet, and left the room. There was a moment, just as the door behind him closed, and just before he pushed the door in front of him, in which he was surrounded by darkness, and when that darkness hit him, a panic rose like a fist in his throat. He scrubbed himself raw, hoping beyond hope that he could wash the fear from him.

“Are you nuts? You can’t possibly trust him!” Lee hissed at his sister.

“You said yourself there was a stranger in his house, a stranger who has ordered from us the past two nights.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. He could have been evicted.”

“Did he look like he was being evicted the last time you saw him?”

“No.”

“Well then.”

“What if he’s in some other kind of trouble? He seems pretty desperate.”

“Oh doesn’t he just.”

“He could be wanted by the police for all we know. Some weird guy being at his flat doesn’t prove anything.”

“If he was wanted by the police, I don’t think he’d stick around. He’s after something.”

“So what? You believe that he’s some brainwashed zombie?”

“I don’t know. But I know he doesn’t know what he is either. I think we should help him find out. I think... I think that’s what Dad would have wanted us to do.”

“Dad?” Lee said with disgust. “That’s your answer for everything.”

“He would have helped. You know he would.”

“He’s dead, Suze. And in case you forgot, he died helping.” Suddenly the weight of the conversation was too much for him and he moved towards the door. Suze raised an arm, meaning only to touch her brother, to console him, but he took it as though she was trying to block his departure. He