Chapter Three
London
From Holborn Tube it was a short walk to the Mercurex building, a ten-storey glass box fitted with spiked armor beams. Zarabeth too had dressed severely—hair up, charcoal skirt-suit, fat briefcase, swank black high-heels. Through glass lift doors, she saw grey cubes in grey spaces, each floor’s carpeting colour-coded to staff badges. The top floor grey on grey, in disarray, cubes listing, cables dangling from the ceiling. A plaque with the Straightforward logo sat on the floor.
“A hasty job, but, couldn’t be helped.” Kath Boyle’s Estuary voice squeaked like bent steel. The chartered accountant was Zarabeth’s minder for the hour. “The focus was areas we now can’t visit. Control rooms, data centres. But, a functioning business in three months.”
“Truly excellent work,” Zarabeth said. “I’m sure it will be interesting reading.”
“If I knew more about what you were looking for?”
“Everything. As you said, a hasty job. I’m here to find inefficiencies before solicitors deem them problems.”
Solicitors. Minder. Hasty. Lift. Paracetamol. Fortnight. Whilst. Words Zarabeth never used now came unbidden, along with dangling helping verbs and a low news presenter’s voice, less accent than air. Even her spelling had changed. Two days on and it still felt strange-not-strange, like a helmet worn all day.
Kath led her two rows past the last occupied one. In the middle, a lone light. The farthest spot from anywhere. “The bound volumes are in the front closet.” Kath smiled.
Petty. Zarabeth could handle petty. Endre had opened all the network server ports for her.
Mercurex provided high-bandwidth wireless data using high-altitude dirigibles, cheaper than satellites. Formerly a defence programme for secure communications, its engineers had contracted with Straightforward to build a business around the technology. Hire a company like a car, a new service model. Optimized was curious. As one of the re-org’s winners, it could ask, and Zarabeth was its question.
Zarabeth read spreadsheets, studied contracts, checked billing codes. She also smoked every hour, in a nasty corner by the loading dock, trading duty-free cigarettes for chat and gossip across the company. Over two days, she formed a basic picture: a high burn-rate, bad cash flow, but no fraud; an unhappy workplace, teams not talking, defence-sector secrecy hard to shed. Zarabeth wrote reports at night in Indian restaurants, allowing herself a beer.
Magda said nothing.
Wednesday afternoon in the smoker’s ghetto, she happened alone on Rex, an ash-white grey-haired Scot with a wireless-signal icon tattooed behind his right ear. She took a chance. “An auditor’s life is a tedious one,” she said. “Numbers here, words in the hotel. It would be immensely more pleasant with marijuana.”
“Ah-ha. Not for me to judge your filthy hippie pleasures.” Rex had a pretty voice, a lively Glaswegian tenor. “I take it you’re not part of the random urinalysis. All I can do now is club drugs. Out of the system in a day. You’re wanting solid?”
“I prefer real herb, but beggars won’t choose.”
“No drug beggars in London,” Rex said. “You’re at Green Park, aye? Where they put all the visitors. Tell me your room and when my friend should come by.” Rex flicked the fag filter in the ashcan. “I don’t know if we really introduced. Rex Densmore. What is it you do here?”
“Zarabeth Battrie. Forensic accountant. I ensure Mercurex got what it paid for.”
“Most considerate of you. Sorry your lot is so grim.”
“At least I have weekend shopping to look forward to.”
“Oh, aye? Might do a bit myself. My man’s out of town. Care for some company? I also know Soho boutiques, or the ones still left us as the chain coffee conquest continues.”
“It sounds delightful. Shall we start with lunch?”
They exchanged cards. His read, Director, Signal Encryption. Her new best friend.
Zarabeth smoked another cigarette, working out a hunch. If Magda were displeased or if something interested her, she’d have said so. Magda wanted Zarabeth to find it on her own.
Rex Densmore’s social page was public and proud: firsts in maths, models of disaster relief, letters to journals in English and German (the long words woke the Polyglot, stinging her eyes like smoke). Holiday snaps of Austrian skiing, Sydney Mardi Gras.
If Magda wanted her to find him, why not just tell her?
* * *
Saturday morning Zarabeth played with her look, hoping for London-ness. Hair straighter, red nail polish to clear, light top, black skirt, low heels. It would do.
She shuffled her tarot deck and dealt three cards. Data 7, theft or treachery. Strategic Planning upside-down, missing the forest for the trees. Brand 3, the morning-after card Missy had seen. Troubles of her own making, despite the cards’ warning.
Best go make them.
The Malaysian restaurant Rex suggested had tall palms under grow lights, ridiculous in wet cold London. Rex was waiting. His skin looked sallow and flabby.
“You look bloody awful,” Zarabeth said. “Did he respect you in the morning?”
Rex smiled. “I should hope not. You look bloody hot.”
Over fish laksa they talked shop. “They’re sticking me with web app security,” Rex said. “Hardly my bailiwick. I’m the signalman, not the guard.”
Zarabeth knew fuck-all about trains. “Outsource it. My firm already does half your code.”
“Your firm does spreadsheets and custodial work,” Rex snapped. “Code is my product.”
“As you like,” Zarabeth said, hiding behind her Ipoh coffee. “Writing a developer’s kit will cut into your clubbing.” Mercurex didn’t sell encryption; it was merely their way to control access. What did Rex think she already knew?
After lunch she stood outside under Rex’s umbrella and smoked a hasty spliff, Rex’s discomfort as amusing as the high. They cabbed to Soho and wandered tiny streets, Rex nattering away about where so-and-so bought such-and-such. She bought versatile pieces: embroidered blue jeans, a navy blazer with wide white pinstripes, a beaded yellow baby-doll top. Her high helped in the stores, good for flipping through hangers, this or that, A or B, like lenses at the oculist. Two new looks, an edgy red skirt-suit and an African-print sundress in turquoise and brown. Two pairs of shoes. Three. By teatime, she had more than her suitcase would fit.
They walked in fog, past an old black water pump surrounded by black posts, to a gay bar with chrome rails and studded leather stools. Rex ordered shandies. Not her favourite, but she didn’t protest. “To your expense account,” Rex toasted.
“Cheers. Outside, the black pump? What was that?”
Rex gave her a curious smile, both satisfied and hungry. “That is the birthplace of epidemiology,” Rex said. “Seriously. Two centuries ago, this was a low and filthy district. A local surgeon named John Snow traced a cholera outbreak to that one well, and stopped the outbreak when he convinced the city to close it. A science was born.”
“You even know his name,” Zarabeth said. “Nerd heroes. How sweet.”
“I admire seekers after knowledge. My current hobby is the early occultists. Crowley, Spare, the Golden Dawn. Good fun—sigils and patterns, binding demons. Even do a bit myself.”
Of course. What Magda wanted her to discover. “You’re having me on,” Zarabeth said.
“Why not? Throw a bladder of air up in the sky, bounce invisible light off it so the box in your pocket can talk, how is that not magic?” Rex laughed. “Maybe the occultists were onto something. First pass at a new technology. Like alchemy, mostly wrong and full of crap, but it got us to chemistry. I don’t usually mention this stuff to sexy friends.”
“Perhaps you should. It’s so sexy.”
“Pity you’re not my type,” Rex said. “But, if you’re curious, I’m seeing some mates later tonight. Like-minded, in these matters.”
“A magic club?” The mistake she needed to make. “Good I’ve something to wear.”
* * *
Zarabeth arrived an hour late, her high fading in Soho’s crowded streets. Her clothes, all new: pinstripe coat, black collared shirt, embroidered jeans, leopard-skin kitten-heel ankle boots. The unwashed clothes itchy, shoes destined to blister. She looked good.
The basement club had exposed brick walls and a low plaster ceiling. A small band played on a platform, a bouncy tempo like a children’s song. Beefy old men in dark jackets with bright waistcoats sat with frail old women in frilled dresses and small hats. On the packed dance floor, middle-aged men, in browns and denim blues, danced spastic waltzes with sturdy cross-dressers in tall wigs and tight sequined dresses. The longer Zarabeth looked, the dreamier it got. In for a penny.
Rex wore a tight black t-shirt and pink pleather pants. “You’re late. We’re drinking tequila.” He led her to a back table, with three white people and many glasses. “Everyone,” Rex said, “behold the splendid forensic accountant Zarabeth Battrie. Ta-da.”
The three raised glasses to salute her. The nearest to her, an old ruddy bald man with a paisley ascot and broken blood vessels in his mushroom nose, offered his hand.
“Thomas Underwood, my dear,” he said, in a raspy clipped voice. “Welcome.”
“That’s Polly and Hugh,” Rex said. Both were slim and pale with wide eyes, in black clothes and silver jewellery. Polly gave her a horsey smile of large teeth. Rex poured her a shot of white tequila. “Tonight’s word is Salud.”
“OK. Salud.” They drank. She took a wedge of lemon from a bowl and sucked it.
Underwood fanned a deck of playing cards. “Will you take a card?” he asked.
“A magic trick? Do I look?” She drew Jack of Spades. He cut the deck. She placed the card in the middle. When she did, he tapped the deck with his forefinger, one two three, and flipped the top card. Jack of Spades.
“Oh, that’s good,” she said, golf-clapping.
Underwood gave a little bow. He poured shots for her and himself, his hand steady. “Salud.” They drank. “You have a Latin look. Are you of Mexican heritage?”
“Brazilian.” Her eye-bone itched. Other than the toast she was sure they spoke English.
“I lived in Mexico after the war,” Underwood said. “The start of these studies.”
“You mean sleight-of-hand or the occult?”
“Both. Magic is a way to shape reality, but often all that’s needed is to shape perception.”
Hugh sloppily poured around the table. It looked slow. The band now sounded far away.
“You don’t curse people, just make them feel cursed?” she asked. “That’s advertising.”
“A fine comparison. Like any force, magic is best applied toward imbalance. The tipping point. You understand this better than Rex realised. I’ve heard of your mistress Magda Crane.”
“You mean my boss,” Zarabeth said. “I don’t know you.”
“She does. Do not interfere with me.”
Zarabeth felt woozy, as if breathing thick smoke, but not drugged beyond the tequila.
In the club, the crowd had thinned. Underwood made excuses to leave. Polly and Hugh helped Underwood stand and made to go with him. For a handshake, Polly gave Zarabeth’s fingers a hard squeeze. Something animal in her large eyes, threat or fear. They left.
Rex gave her a quizzical look. “Y’right?” he asked.
“Fine. Bit tipsy.” She sat. The strange feeling had passed.
“Tipsy’s good.” He filled Zarabeth’s glass to the top. “What say we get pissed?”
* * *
The chirp of a text message woke Zarabeth at eleven. The room was a mess, piled covers and full ashtrays, the minibar fridge door open. She felt sick and worn out.
Flashes of the evening: More bad tequila and its wormy smell. A cross-dresser, Deirdre, fit and sweet. Dancing. A cab ride. Lines of ching off a minibar plate. Deirdre submissive, more fun for Rex. Rex holding a strand of Zarabeth’s hair during his blowjob, with a creepy smile.
She washed her face and brewed coffee. The message was from Missy, to a large list: My gramma died Sun morning. Love you all, but no time now. In touch soon. PS please no flowers.
Zarabeth Battrie, naked and raw, while her friend Missy laid claim to the world and everything. Business class and still a loser. Squeeze harder and she would shatter the phone.
Instead, Zarabeth texted Magda: Thomas Underwood threatened me. Now what?
Still no idea why Magda sent her here.