Halfhead - Страница 34

Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant…She loves pregnant women-they add such a sparkle to proceedings. Especially when itcomes to the vivisection.

She makes a sound that could be mistaken for a sigh. On Sunday she’ll lie back on an operating table and have her face restored. Her very own face…Of course, the sensible thing to do is take someone else’s face. But she doesn’t want to be sensible. She wants to look in the mirror and recognize the person looking back. She wants to be whole again. Then, when she’s all healed and beautiful, she’ll have to leave the country.

A shame. This city has been good to her-let her hunt its inhabitants for years-but if she remains in Glasgow someone’s going to recognize her. At first they’ll see nothing more than a striking resemblance to the notorious Dr Fiona Westfield, but then they’ll begin to talk. And eventually someone will listen.

They’ll start asking difficult questions. Then someone takes a fingerprint, or a DNA sample and they’ll know she’s not dead. Then they’ll strap her to another operating table…only this time she won’t come back.

She shakes her head and tries to think happy thoughts. But Stephen Bexley and his screaming wife no longer light her candle. All she can see is a long dark tunnel with an operating slab at the end. The sound of bees and broken glass.

Deep breaths.

It’s just paranoia. Nothing to worry about. Don’t let it take control.

Deep breaths.

Kill something.

That’ll make her feel better. Kill something slowly and bathe in the screams.

No.

Deep breaths.

Kill something.

Not yet.

Please.

Focus!

She snaps another ampoule of medicine into her neck and waits for the chemicals’ soothing touch.

Focus.

She can’t risk staying here. Soon as her new face has healed, she’ll leave. Bye-bye Glasgow. Bye-bye Scotland. Well…First she’ll see how her children are getting on and then she’ll leave.

Yes. Somewhere far, far away.

But not before she pays an old friend a visit.

His face doesn’t have the long, winding scar she’d given him anymore, which is a shame. It suited him: raw and painful. He was limping as he ran for the people carrier, bruised and battered, probably fresh from surgery…

Perfect. If he’s had medical treatment he’ll be in the hospital records-she can just waltz up to any terminal and find out what was wrong with him and where he lives.

She stretches in her toilet-paper boudoir like a cat in the sun.

It’s been a long time since she has visited friends.

The birthday girl sobs and moans as he drags her off the bed and over to the chair. The older woman-the one he found in a bar a week ago-lies on the table next to the window. She was a lawyer, but now she’s all peaceful and still. Content and happy. Ready to become one with the angels.

He hauls the new girl into the chair. She struggles, but a punch in the face quietens her long enough to shackle her arms and legs. After all, it wouldn’t do to have the birthday girl falling off and hurting herself. Not when she’s so close to finding salvation.

Then, when she’s all nice and secure, he turns to the older woman, stroking her cold white cheek. It’s got that lovely, waxy pallor of the soul departed. Lucky lady.

He pulls an old, battered, but well-loved Palm Thrummer out of his pocket, twists it open, and powers it up. Then opens the living room window, high above the streets. The rain hisses and roars outside, tearing from the sky in its rush to know the ground. Silly rain. The sky is where it should be. The sky is its home.

The Thrummer buzzes in his fingers as he strips the woman’s face away, leaving nothing but a bare, empty skull behind. The skin and fat and fibre of her sinful life is whipped into a dark purple mist that drifts out the open window into the night, pulled away by the rain. The body will take a while to dissolve, but it’s worth the effort to give her salvation.

He purses his lips, whistling the DinoPizza jingle while he works.

In her seat the birthday girl watches, screaming behind her gag: knowing that she’s going to be next.

17

Will dragged himself out of bed and groaned his way to the bathroom in the dark. There was a fuzzy shape in the mirror above the sink. A rough, hungover outline that wouldn’t stay in focus.

‘Lights.’

The whole apartment exploded with brightness, driving red-hot knitting needles into his eyes and out through the back of his head.

‘Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgh! Down! Down!’

They dimmed to something less head-splitting and Will stood there, blinking and swearing till he could see again. God…he looked as bad as he felt. His face was grey-green on one side and purple-green on the other.

He grabbed the edges of the sink and retched. But nothing came, and gradually the swell of nausea passed. How much did he drink last night? The last thing he could remember was singing rude songs with Brian in the curry house. After that it all became a bit of a blur.

There was an open packet of blockers in the medicine cabinet, courtesy of his hospital visit yesterday. He fumbled one out and popped it into his neck, then let his head thunk against the cool mirror, waiting for the chemicals to work their magic.

By the time he walked into the lounge all traces of pounding headache and churning stomach were gone.

Will told the room’s controller to open the curtains: they slid back, revealing yet another wet, dark morning. The lounge reeked of stale beer, garlic and greasy meat. Seven or eight empty plastics of Greenmantle were lined up on the coffee table beside a half-eaten, ill-advised kebab.

Abandoned dataclips made an abstract mosaic on the carpet between the couch and the controller. They were all Janet’s: her favourite cookery books, films, the birthday message she’d recorded one year as a surprise, wearing nothing but his old suit jacket. Carefully, he placed them back on the shelves. It’d been a while since he’d been drunk enough to go looking for her.

He said, ‘Music,’ and the controller bleeped softly-the opening bars of Alba Blue sparkling into the air. Janet’s favourite opera, the one they’d played at her funeral. He left it running and went to make breakfast.

An hour later he closed the door on a tidy apartment; he’d even thrown his new clothes through the cleanbox. Seemed a shame not to give them a second outing.

Director Smith-Hamilton had told him to take a couple of days off, but hadn’t said he couldn’t spend it doing a little ‘unauthorized data access’. Whoever Ken Peitai worked for they had to keep records of some kind. The only problem was finding them. The easiest way would be to hack into the files from Ken’s underground laboratory, but there was no way of getting in there without arousing a lot of suspicion.

Unless he took Ken up on his offer of lunch…?

Will grimaced. The idea of having to eat with the slimy little turd was bad enough, but if Smith-Hamilton found out he’d gone back to Sherman House-and she would-the repercussions would be a lot more severe than a couple of days’ enforced leave.

So he made his way downtown instead.

Central Records was an imposing mock-Victorian pile of red brick and sandstone, straddling Cadogan Street. For some reason known only to the planning department, it didn’t have its own shuttle station, so Will had to slog through the rain from Wellington Street, stopping off to pick up a plastic of wine for the evening; this morning’s hangover totally forgotten. He squelched in through the front door, submitted to a geometric scan, and found himself a quiet corner with a private study booth.

The monitor buzzed and crackled into life. He spent a couple of minutes entering convoluted search criteria, before sending the system off looking for old ministerial directives. It didn’t matter if they found anything or not, he just wanted to make sure there was a record of him doing something legitimate.

Rule Number One: always establish your alibi before you do anything wrong.

While the machine plodded away, searching and cross-referencing, Will slipped the cracker out of his pocket and popped open the service panel under the table. He checked to make sure no one was watching, then teased a pair of wires out of the main data trunk and slapped the cracker over them. Then hacked his way into the main system and started doing a little searching of his own.

Three hours later he switched the cracker off and stifled a yawn. Ken Peitai didn’t work for any of the biotech companies, none of the big conglomerates, or any government department. His National Insurance Number didn’t connect to anything-no driver’s licence, passport, or pension. The man was a ghost.

The only record Will could find was a bonus payment made half a dozen years ago in the PayFund database. It was a considerable sum of money, which was the only reason he’d found it: large payments had to be approved by the PayFund Manager, and that meant there were records. It also meant Peitai really did work for the government…or at least he had six years ago.

The payment record was staggeringly short of detail. Will had been hoping for a home address, bank account, phone number, but no joy: whoever Ken worked for back then, they kept their information well away from the main channels.

Will stretched the knots out of his back and checked the time: twelve fifteen. Lunch. Brian wasn’t answering his phone and neither was George, and unless hell had frozen over in the last twelve hours, there was no point calling Emily. It’d be weeks before they were on speaking terms again.

He raised his eyes to the large stained glass window at the end of the records hall. He could hear the rain hurling itself against the multicoloured panes. Still chucking it down…but he wasn’t that far from the West George Street Bluecoat Stationhouse-where Jo worked when she wasn’t at Network HQ. Maybe she’d be in?