Part 13 (1/2)
”For what? Hang on.” She looked away. ”Will you guys slow down? Control, with your partner. Save your power for the bags.”
There were m.u.f.fled sounds.
”Sorry,” she went on. ”It's hard for them to understand the difference, when to be a partner and when to be an opponent. So, what favour are you ringing up to ask?”
”Who are you teaching? Cops or kids?”
”Kids. I'm not on duty till twenty hundred. Here, take a look.” A translucent image washed across the windscreen: children, aged from maybe eight to fifteen, with sparring gloves and headgear. ”Doing some good.”
”Yes, you are.”
Some of the kids needed self-esteem, properly earned. Others needed to physically defend themselves. Petra and her friends taught for free.
”Huh. Mark, take over, w.i.l.l.ya?” The image s.h.i.+fted, her face filling the windscreen. ”So you're after a favour. If it's a b.l.o.w.j.o.b you want, the answer's no.”
”Jesus, Petra.”
”But I know some nice guys who wouldn't mind”
”It's a missing kid.”
”Official police case?”
”Uh-huh. Along with all the thousands of others on file.”
”And you're taking a special interest?”
”Yeah. I'm putting together a ghost search, gait a.n.a.lysis, the whole thing.”
Anyone who watched crime dramas knew how to use wigs, cap-veils, and changes of clothing to slip through surveilled crowds. Fewer would change the way they walked.
”And you want me to slip your little querybot into the London Transport net.”
”You have authority to do that, Sergeant Osbourne?”
”Let's say it's not impossible. When's the code going to be ready?”
”A first cut tonight, if you let me have two attempts. Otherwise, I'm still gathering info. I'll have version two ready in the morning.”
”Send that to me tomorrow, then.”
A rough search tonight might save Richard a night on the streets. But this was her deal.
”Done.”
”All right. Daniel! I said control, not miss by a mile”
Her image flickered out, leaving only the sight of concrete and shadow, an anonymous urban car park that could have been anywhere, impersonal as Richard Broomhall's bedroom.
Hey, kid. Where the h.e.l.l are you?
Yet in his mind's eye was not a teenage youth on London's streets, but a ten year-old girl with rice-paper skin, body intubated, surrounded by relentless machines that kept her organs working, however much they yearned to stop.
Where was the sense in any of it?
Silver sheets of rain were was.h.i.+ng from the sky as he pulled in to the lay-by. Other cars hissed past on the dual carriageway, and good luck to them. He was going to stay parked until the worst was past. This was yet another flash storm in a year of storms and whirlwinds, the worst of driving conditions. No problem for Josh: with a few commands, he turned his windscreen into a full-on display, cranking up a programming environment with debugging and simulation panes, the lot. Unfurling a keyboard and coding glove, he set up his querybot as nested sh.e.l.ls, and began with the inference engine. Soon he was in programming Zen, absorbed in the code, sketching in prototypes and test harnesses, working fast because he knew these frameworks and face it, he was good.
Finally he paused, considered calling the shrink that Richard had seen, rejected the idea it would take a minimum of fifteen minutes to restore his thoughts afterwards, to get back in the zone then changed his mind again, and placed the call.
”h.e.l.lo. My name's Josh c.u.mberland. I'm working on behalf of Philip Broomhall.”
On the windscreen, her coffee-coloured skin was translucent, the eyes somewhere between nut-brown and honey. She nodded, both smiling and serious.
”I've been expecting someone to call.”
”Well, I'm not with the police, but I am investigating on Philip Broomhall's behalf. If you'd like to verify, I'm happy to wait offline.”
”But would he accept a call from me? Tell me the name of the agent you're working through.”
”You mean Geordie Biggs?”
”All right, Mr c.u.mberland. Now I don't know where Richard went, nor do I know the specific trigger that set him off. I do know there was an issue to be explored, bullying at school, and the more I think about it, the more relevant it feels.”
”That's the kind of thing I hoped you could enlighten me with.”
”You could step through the recording of our session, a.s.suming that will be a help.”
”Um, yes, please. Transmit via any archiving format you like.”
Her eyes seemed to keep growing larger.
”I'd rather meet face to face. There are nuances to pay attention to in the recording, behavioural signals to highlight, that kind of thing.”
”OK. You're in Elliptical House, is that right?”
”Not this afternoon. I live in what some people call the smart end of Kilburn.”
”I can meet you there.” He looked at the side windows, rippling with water but no longer awash, as the storm lessened. ”Your place, or a bar?”
”How about a restaurant? Do you like Jamaicanfood? Later, say at seven?”
”Perfect.””OK, I'm appending details. There's a red star on the map, highlights the place.”
”Works for me.”