From the time he parked in front of the gate and waved to the camera, to sitting down in a leather armchair in what the maid – yes, a maid – called the drawing room, he felt out of his depth. But taking in the cream and pale-yellow walls, polished wooden floor and expensive fittings, it felt more and more impersonal, like a hotel, not a home. And for all that Philip Broomhall might be rich, he commanded fewer resources than senior military officers, the best of whom were always approachable.
He waited, something he was good at, comparing this to the cramped, messy flat in Brixton where Mum and Dad had raised him: overflowing with cushions and tattered books, housework readily put aside in favour of a chat or reading. The military had drilled neatness into him; otherwise Josh was his parents' son, and they had raised him in a warmer place than this.
"Mr Cumberland? Josh? I'm Philip."
"Sir." Josh controlled his grip as they shook. "Good to meet you."
"What I want is simple. My son is missing and I need him back."
"Understood. Clearly the police haven't got anywhere, or I wouldn't be here."
"I'm told you're an expert."
"I can construct specific searches, use profiling, and talk to people who might avoid the police." ELINT and HUMINT, electronic intelligence and human intelligence, were grist to the mill; and he had access to algorithms and bots undreamt of by Scotland Yard's Serious Systems Crimes Unit. "Is there any specific person who'd want to do you harm?"
"No, and there's not been any kind of ransom demand. Richard slipped out of the car by himself, you know."
"I'd like to speak to the driver."
"Lexa's here. You'll be able to talk to her."
"Thank you. I don't suppose there were cameras in the car?"
"Absolutely not. I'm often on the phone discussing confidential matters, or riding with business partners I'm negotiating with. No recordings permitted, ever."
Broomhall headed for a cabinet, picked up a whisky glass, and raised an eyebrow.
"Not for me, thanks," said Josh. "I'll read the file, but are there any friends of Richard's that spring to mind?"
"He was in the chess club at school." Broomhall poured dark rum. "Dropped the science club because he preferred just to read by himself, he said."
Clubs, not individuals.
"It would help if I can go through his room. Have the police done that?"
"No, they bloody well have not."
"You're worried about him. About Richard."
"He's soft." Broomhall's left hand rested on his own heavy abdomen. "Not tough like… I work to keep my family. Since his mother… I'm a widower, you see." Swirling rum in his glass, he stared into the liquid. "He's important to me. Understand that. I'm not sure Richard does."
"I get it. Was there anything troubling Richard particularly?"
If there had been, Broomhall probably hadn't noticed.
"He was normal, except for going to see that bloody shrink, and then he didn't even make it home. What do you make of that? Bitch is still practicing, still screwing other patients' minds."
"I'll need details of that as well."
"So I hope you're a damn sight better than she turned out to be."
"Why do you say that?"
"Obviously because-Well, because the same person recommended you both, but in your case he checked more carefully. So he's assured me."
"Who's that, if you don't mind me asking?"
"More of a second opinion. I came up with the idea originally, got the name of Biggs' company from someone. But I passed your name to a friend who works in the DTI, and he tells me you're good."
"Me personally?"
"That's what I mean."
There were civil servants who could check special forces records, but not in the Department of Trade and Industry. Broomhall knew less about his friend than he realised.
"Is there anyone I should be talking to besides the driver, Lexa?"
"The rest of the staff, I guess. Lexa can show you round." Broomhall took his phone from his pocket, and said into it: "Mr Cumberland is ready."
"Thank you. What about Richard's school? I don't know for sure yet, but a visit might help."
"I'll let the headmaster know. He should be helpful, the amount we pay each year. I pay."
Then a broad-shouldered woman walked through an archway, and nodded to Josh.
"Where would you like to start?" She had a Birmingham accent.
"Richard's room, I guess."
"I'll see you later." Broomhall gestured with his phone, and intricate tables and graphs of data lit up on the wallscreens. "Let me know if there's a problem."
But his attention was already lost in the world of corporate finance.
In the hallway, Josh shook hands with Lexa. Her grip was stronger than Broomhall's. Then she led the way upstairs, along a corridor with panelled walls and ugly expensive paintings, to a door that opened onto a massive tidy bedroom.
"Like a big hotel suite, ain't it?" She pointed at the neat shelves. "That's not the maids. Richard keeps everything organised himself."
"Maids."
"Yeah. It's a far cry from Selly Oak, where I started."
"I was thinking the same kind of thing. Brixton, in my case."
"Your old man a drunk, or anything like that?"
"No. Good family."
"Then you probably had it better than young Richard, for all the old man's money."
A Navajo rug lay on the floor. No posters on the walls. Nothing left scattered around.
"I'm just going to poke about for a bit." He slid open a drawer. "Christ, that's neat."
Folded underwear, squared off. Everything was right angles.
"He's a bright kid." Lexa looked at him. "You want me to leave you alone?"
"No, you're all right there. Is this why he was seeing the shrink? Obsessive-compulsive?"
"That wasn't it." Lexa raised her eyebrows. "Hoplophobia, allegedly."
"Why allegedly?"
"How many people do you know that aren't afraid of a blade?"
"Good point."
"You saw the weapon on Broomhall's belt?"
"Yeah. Nice hilt."
"Any idea how many times he's duelled with it?"
Josh did, but said: "Tell me."
"Exactly none. But he has issued challenge, twice. Both times, to guys even less likely than him to fight. They have enough money, they can afford the fines."
"So you think Richard's not really a weapon hater?"
"Oh, he hates them all right," said Lexa. "I'm just not sure it's a problem. You know Birmingham? Selly Oak and King's Heath?"
"Sure." Josh smiled. "Ansells Mild and pork scratchings."
"And burglary and drugs, when I was young. Before the Blade Acts. In some ways it's better now."
"Huh." Josh was checking the wardrobe and cupboards. "No sports kit."
"Not Richard."
Intellectual, physically soft, alone on the streets of London. Poor combination.
"So, are you done?"
In his pocket, he thumbed his phone. Wallscreen and processor stacks winked blue then shut down.
"All done," he said.
"So that's why the old man called you in."
"What do you mean?"
"I served in Tibet. 3 Mercian." Lexa nodded toward the wallscreen. "Came across quiet guys with eyes like yours, could do things like that."
"Like what?"
"Uh-huh. You just downloaded the entire system logs. And they got firewalls, firebreaks, shields. Crypto up the wazoo."
"Is that going to be a problem?"
"Christ, no." She grinned. "Means you stand a chance of finding the poor little bugger."
He parked in a multi-storey in Guildford. The hourly rate was ridiculous, double if you recharged your vehicle, but the batteries were running low. Sitting in the car, he called Petra Osbourne, directing her image to the windscreen heads-up display.
"Hey, lover." Her image was ghostly. "Haven't seen you for a long time."
"Too long. Sorry."
"For what? Hang on." She looked away. "Will you guys slow down? Control, with your partner. Save your power for the bags."
There were muffled 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, willya?" The image shifted, her face filling the windscreen. "So you're after a favour. If it's a blowjob 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 analysis, 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 hell 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 washing 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 shells, 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.
"Hello. My name's Josh Cumberland. 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 Cumberland. 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, assuming 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 Jamaican food? Later, say at seven?"
"Perfect."
"OK, I'm appending details. There's a red star on the map, highlights the place."
"Works for me."
"Look forward to meeting you."
The attachment pinged and opened as the comm pane closed.
Wow.
Broomhall blamed her, so she would want to deflect that, get Josh on her side. If she was genuine in wanting to help him find Richard, then the rest was irrelevant.
He realised he was staring where her image had been, as if trying to summon her back.
Bad idea. Concentrate.
But she was the first good thing to distract him for a long time.
Browns and oranges dominated the restaurant. Each table bore a bonsai palm tree. Josh smiled as Suzanne Duchesne addressed the staff by their first names, and they responded likewise. A Jamaican waiter called Clyde seated them next to the wall, away from the other diners, giving them a quiet zone.
From her shoulder bag, Suzanne drew a portable screen and unrolled it, spreading it across the table. While they waited for drinks to arrive – some kind of tea – they made small talk: how long she had lived in Kilburn (four years), where he was staying (a budget Travelodge off the M4), and who would win the general election.
"Let's see." Josh looked down at the lifeless screen. "Sharon Caldwell is female, lesbian, an atheist rationalist with two PhDs. Then there's Billy Church, aka Fat Billy, man of the people, beer lover and fight fan, already in office, and he's just announced tax cuts."
"You think there's no contest?"
"I wish there were."
Clyde brought the tea, then left them alone. Breathing in warm scents from the kitchen, Josh watched as Suzanne brought the portable screen to life. Then she tapped her phone, and the unfurled screen showed a room interior, Suzanne sitting at an angle to Richard Broomhall. Josh put his own phone on the table; both handsets winked amber, establishing a sharespace. In the image, she was putting young Richard at ease; in reality, she was tugging down her sleeve which had pulled up, just by centimetres.
Few people would have noticed; but Josh needed only a glimpse to take in the silver scarring.
"You want audio?" Suzanne took out her earbeads. "Or just transcription for now?"
Printed text – her words in red, Richard's in white – scrolled down a side pane.
"Hmm. Can we get rid of both for the moment?"
"All right."
"This will help the automated search." As he tapped his phone, dots sprinkled themselves across Richard's moving image, then lines joined the dots, like moving wire frames. "Improve the motion analysis."
"On CCTV, you mean? Like on the Tube?"
"Uh-huh. My bots can look for subtle things like – see that? The way he rubbed his nose? If that's a habit, we've just increased our chances."
"Interesting." Her polished-chestnut eyes contained golden flecks. "Emphasising process over content. That's close to the way I work, because I'm as interested in his posture and voice tone as in the actual words."
"But if he'd said anything about where he might go, you would have picked it up. And the police have seen this?"
"Yes, so they should have picked up any local references I missed."
When she focused on him, it was like the total universe concentrating its attention; when she looked at the screen, she was absorbed in the images. To Josh, this was extraordinary.
"Here we are." Clyde bore plates of spicy bean stew with rice and bread. "Enjoy, enjoy."
"We will."
"Smells terrific," said Josh.
And the taste burst into his mouth, slowing him right down. Suzanne blanked the screen – now it was the food she concentrated on – and they made little conversation until their plates were mostly empty. She pushed her plate aside just moments before he finished too.
"I don't understand-" he would have liked to enjoy the warm feeling a while longer, but they were here for a reason – "what you mean by process over content. In your work, that is."
"Look at this interaction." She worked her phone, bringing the screen back to life and skipping to a timestamped moment. "Here, we're discussing Richard's reaction to blades."
The words scrolled down the transcript pane.
"See here?" Suzanne slowed the movie down. "That gesture with his left hand, cupped toward his stomach? An unconscious reaction to my question, in parallel to the words he spoke, telling its own story."
Josh frowned. "Gestures like that mean something?"
"Movement and timing are most important. Here, his left hand – under control of his right cerebral hemisphere – indicates he gets an automatic feeling in his stomach at the thought or sight of knives. It's an internal reaction, call it gut feeling, and it's real because every major organ has receptors for neuropeptides, almost like another nervous system."
"Really?"
"When people say something is heartfelt, it's often more literal than they think. Figures of speech have to come from somewhere."
Josh had felt his guts roiling in circumstances most people would never know. Visceral feelings were intense; he knew they were real.
"So how does that help you?"
"Everything is mental modelling. Even a black shirt in the open air reflects less light than a white shirt indoors, so something as basic as colour is a neural process."
"Computation," he said.
"Exactly. By using Richard's imagination, I could have got him to focus on the fear-feeling, experience it as a loop… See, you haven't noticed the feeling of your sock on your left foot until I mentioned it, because a constant sensation just fades away. So a gut feeling doesn't literally keep looping around, but while it's strong it feels that way."
"All right." Josh was smiling, still aware of his foot.
"In his imagination, I could've got him to spin the feeling in the opposite way, add some visualisation, and his fear reaction would be gone. Sounds too simple to work, yet it does."
"But you didn't do that."
"No, look. I taught him something else, but not for blades specifically." She flicked through thumbnail stills, then jumped the main pane to another part of the session. "Here, Richard is imagining something, and see how his eyes focus on a point in space? Even though he's seeing a picture in his mind? The entorhinal cortex has a component called the spatiotemporal grid which- Well, I'll save the neurology lecture for later, shall I?"
"If you like." The idea of a later was appealing to Josh. "So what happened next?"
"I taught him to experience the picture differently. Push it off to a different location and imagine it flaring bright, then washing out."
Josh started blinking, very fast.
Gun coming up, half the face exploding and my God he's just a kid "-out now, breathe in, let the feeling out, Josh, that's right, and you're fine now."
"Jesus." He rubbed his face, sweat-slick as if in a sauna. "Sorry."
Clyde started to approach. "Sir? Are you all right?"
"He's fine." Suzanne waved him back. "We're doing OK."
"Shit." Not the language he would normally use over dinner, not with someone like this. "I don't know what happened. Something took me back-"
"You've had counselling, after battlefield trauma."
"I guess that's what you'd call it. Sure."
"And they used similar techniques with you, working successfully almost all of the time, is that right?"
"Sure." He rubbed his mouth. "Most of the time."
"So you had a little resonance of memory, and it's all gone now."
"It… it has gone. I feel OK."
"Good."
"How did you do that?"
"Well." Her smile and gaze hummed with mystery, deep as voodoo. "Call it magic if you like."
Casting some kind of spell, for sure.
Suzanne noted, as they walked, the way Josh cast his attention outward, in what looked like a trained pattern: left-right-left, starting close and extending to the distance. He made a soft humming noise as he spotted something about a building, then continued scanning.
"What did you notice?" she had to ask.
"Huh? Oh, those flats, how the building went from stables to warehouse to homes over the centuries."
"You're kidding." She saw the black iron crosses, part of the supports that held swelling brickwork in place. "I guess the place is old."
"Look how the place used to be mercantile, and before that rural, because the roads follow the natural contours. See?"
"Hmm. Interesting."
So he could overlay mental pictures across reality, make deductions that were not obvious; and if he was the kind of software expert she thought, he could wrap himself in highly abstract, creative visualisations of complex systems she could not imagine. This was not how she had imagined an ex-soldier would be.
"Where is your car?" she asked.
"Not far."
From a tiny motion of his head, she realised it was behind them somewhere, and that his walking her home took him further from the vehicle. It was good that she could read these nuances, because in some ways Josh Cumberland was unknowable, his physicality breathtaking, diverting her from the reason for their meeting.
"Have you thought what's going to happen once you find Richard?"
"Er, taking him home seems like a good idea."
"It wasn't me he was running from."
"No." Josh stopped and scanned in all directions, before turning to her. "I won't take him back into danger."
"I believe the physical danger comes from his school. The home environment is stressful in other ways."
"Yeah, I got that. Doesn't make Broomhall a bad man. I mean, he's money-grabbing and corporate, but I've met worse."
"We agree. He's just different from his son."
"Ah. Right."
Again, he scanned the street. Did he ever stop?
"I'm going to ask you a favour." Her heart, warm in her chest, reminded her of their conversation, the neuropeptide basis of emotion. "Let me help you look for Richard."
Was it for Richard's sake she was asking? Or to spend more time with this man?
Doesn't matter to Richard. We just need to get him back.
"I'll call you," he said.
They walked on, reaching the door to her apartment house too soon. She went inside, stopped in the hallway, and looked back out. Josh gave a little fingertip wave, an informal salute, and slipped away. It felt as if something had been pulled out of her.
Part of her awareness, throughout the meal, had observed the natural matching of their body language, the interlocking rhythm of microgesture, and the subliminal courting dance of pheromones, their effect surfacing in the dilation of eyes, the flaring of nostrils, the inability of either person to look away.
Josh Cumberland.
The name rolled around in her brain, warming her, threatening her equilibrium. Perhaps he was good news, perhaps he was bad; what she could not do was ignore him.