“Aw, Jesus.” You haul your own playground special out—it’s a big boy’s model, black and chunky with yellow chevrons—and pair it with his. “You poor bastard.”
“It was down to either My Little Unicorn or the Hello Kittie Ballerina Special when I got there,” he confesses.
“Just put the bloody thing away, before anyone sees it!” He obeys with alacrity. Look on the bright side, if you get called to deal with any hypo diabetics, he’s got just the right thing. “Has Inspector Mac given you anything to be doing today? Or just the general…?”
“Me? Nothing, Sarge. Why?”
“Just checking. Alright, you’re assigned to me today—by Inspector Kavanaugh. Yeah, I know she’s not in your line, but you’ve met Mr. Reed and Ms. Barnaby this morning, I gather? Our job’s to stick to them like glue today. They haven’t done anything, but the skipper figures they’re trouble magnets, and with the upcoming disruption, she wants humans in contact all the way.”
“Wow.” His eyes go wide. “I haven’t done the protection duty course, Sarge.”
“Between you and me, neither have I,” you confide. “But we know the targets, and we’ve got our orders, so we’re going to have to wing it.” So much for ISO9000-certified policing. You head for the door to see where your driver’s gotten to. “Come on, I’ll tell you what we’re supposed to be doing on the way.”
Traffic is heavy out on Corstorphine Road, and the van’s full of irritated constables fiddling clumsily with their unfamiliar mobies, swapping numbers and muttering voice dialling tags. Even though CopSpace is going down in a couple of hours, and they’ve been ordered in the most fearsome terms to keep their fingers out of the files, most of them are still wearing their goggles: an old protective reflex, tinted windows to keep the compromised world at bay. You’re an old enough sweat to remember a time before policing was something you did through augmented reality—a time when it wasnae just stumbling-down drunks who were dumb enough to swear at cops—and you’re not looking forward to today’s fun and games. It’ll be okay if they get CopSpace rebooted before chucking-out time, but the Council’s going through one of its usual barkingly stupid attempts to get all the pubs to close simultaneously on the stroke of half past midnight, and you’re not looking forward to Friday night once the local pissheads realize that the cops’ liferecorders aren’t running, and the cameras overhead are unmanned. It’ll be extra pepper spray and tasers all round, with double paperwork on the morrow when you go to explain the festivities to the hard-faced sheriff sitting in court: like a throwback to the nineties.
The van pulls in opposite the hotel, and you hop out. Bob bumbles along after you like an obedient puppy. You head for the front desk, where the polished-looking receptionists are handling the morning’s fall-out of crumblies—the problem cases who’re too old to cope with the automated checkout, or whose requirements don’t fall in one of the neat boxes in the business work flow. You slide deftly round the shambling sequential headache and slot yourself in at the end of the desk. Finally, one of the receptionists finishes processing a coffin dodger and comes over to get you off her plate before you lower the tone of her lobby. “Can I help?”
“Yes.” You smile politely. “I’m looking for one of your residents, a Ms. Barnaby. I believe she’s leasing an office suite from you? Dietrich-Brunner Associates?”
She looks at you as if you’re something that’s died under her nose. “Is there a problem?”
It’s time to tighten the smile and go a little glassy-eyed. “No problem. But I need to see Ms. Barnaby immediately. Police business.”
The two magic words finally sink in: You can almost hear the gears and cam-shafts engage in her head. “Oh, in that case…” She bends over her terminal. “Room 402, second floor, the lifts are over to your left. She was in there a minute ago.” Then she turns to the next tourist. “Can I help you?”
You can tell when you’re not wanted. “C’mon,” you mutter to Bob. “Let’s go upstairs.”
It’s a plush wee hotel, to be sure; the lifts have indirect lighting and subtle forest scents, and when you go out onto the landing, you see a strip of glass running floor to ceiling embedded in one wall, overlooking the high street. Room 402 isn’t far off the landing, and you approach it cautiously. The door’s not locked, so you open it and barge on in, regardless.
Here’s Jack! Sitting at a table, playing some kind of game. You glance over his shoulder at the big, unfolded screens of his laptop: some kind of cavern, luminous green text marching across the left-hand screen. “Mr. Reed,” you say, quite loudly, and he jumps and spins round, wincing as he nearly pulls his headphones out of their wired socket.
“You!” he says, for all the world like one of the villains in those cheesy Saturday-morning cartoons Davey keeps downloading. For a moment you think he’s about to freak on you, but he’s looking past your shoulder, with his face slowly crinkling with worry. “What’s up?”
“Nothing’s up—” you begin, but someone behind you is speaking: the librarian, Barnaby.
“Someone’s been in my room,” she says, angrily. “And it wasn’t room service. They don’t make up the rooms until after check-out.”
You turn round. She’s wearing jeans and a leather jacket and that’s an expensive kit-bag she’s got there. Something long is poking out of it, a black bin-liner wrapped around one end—a hockey stick, maybe? “Ah, Ms. Barnaby. I was looking for you both. Inspector Kavanaugh says—”
She raises a hand. “Don’t tell me, she wants you to stick to us like glue. Right?”
“Reet.” You stare at her hard. “You planning to be a nuisance? Or know somebody else who is?”
She meets your eyes. “I’m planning on doing what I’ve been told to do, Sergeant.” She puts the bag down. “I haven’t been told to expect you.” She stonewalls like a defence solicitor: You snort and turn aside.
Behind you, Bob clears his throat. “Sergeant?”
Jack is hammering away at the keyboard, typing like a mad thing in a pop-up window while the game he’s in unrolls in real time behind it. “What is it, Bob?”
Barnaby’s phone trills for attention: She turns away. Bob shuffles uneasily. “I think you’d better come and see for yourself, boss.”
You follow him out onto the landing outside the room. Bob points out the strip of floor-to-ceiling window. “Look.”
You stare out onto the high street. It’s the usual congested mess of buses and taxis queuing for Haymarket Interchange, with a couple of supertrams parked nose-to-tail and gumming everything up. Things have never been right there since they installed the light rail system, but nobody on the Council’s about to admit that they should have knocked down about a billion euros’ worth of historic listed buildings before they built the bloody tracks. It looks like pedestrian hell down there, even without the shambling crowd of people getting off the trams, moving oddly.
“What am I meant to be looking for, Bob?” you ask, forcing yourself to be patient.
“Zombies, skipper. What do they look like to you?”
You stare, wishing you could use your goggles—the digital zoom would be right handy at this point. It looks like any other crowd to you, at first, so you squint and look at the edges. They’re walking funny, lurching from side to side. And why has that guy got his arms outstretched? He blunders about, colliding with a woman in a business suit that’s ripped from shoulder to sleeve, and her face—
“Jesus, Bob.” You blink, then swallow. “There’s no such thing as zombies.” A little niggling doubt worries away at you. “But get yerself down to reception and tell them to shut the doors, just in case. I’m going to make some calls.”