‘The bots draw power from the user’s diet,’ Ghost-Ron had explained. By this point in the tutorial he had manifested as an avatar that looked different to the portly geek in the files he would peruse later. He looked like he’d been working out. Looking back, Butcher realized that he had probably been training with Emmy. Had the programmer been getting ready to run that early? Or was it just a way to spend more time with his attractive neighbour? Or was the avatar just an idealized version of the programmer?
‘They don’t need much,’ Cuttler’s avatar went on. ‘But if you work them hard, they’ll need more power and leave you feeling weak and lethargic. They can also enhance your bio-electrical system, but only at the expense of other aspects of what you do.’
*
He hadn’t thought about it at the time - there had been a lot going on, to be fair - but two hours into a leisurely, law-abiding three-hour drive back down the M4, Butcher had more time to really think about what Cuttler had told him. And now he came to think about it, that had been a pretty vague thing to say. ‘The nanoids can enhance your bio-electrical system’ meant nothing at all. If Butcher’s diet was where the nanoids got their power, though, it would explain both why he was feeling particularly drawn to high carb foods and why eating them wasn’t leaving him as bloated and tired as it normally would have. But how that could let them “enhance” his “bio-electrical” system, he wasn’t sure. As far as he remembered, the body’s nervous system was at least partly bio-electrical, but “enhancing” it sounded like the sort of thing more likely to lead to a brain haemorrhage than to superpowers.
He had to consider the possibility that Cuttler’s system was lying to him.
Emmy had suggested that having Ron there in person to explain the procedure had given her advantages he didn’t have. And Cuttler had said himself that BRS employees would get a different tutorial again - perhaps one that was intentionally misleading - so why should he assume that his own tutorial had been any more transparent.
As he left the motorway, he shook these thoughts off. He had to get focused. He was about to lie outrageously to a very important man.
Cuttler had left Cheltenham in a hurry. That much had been obvious from the footage he had taken from the unit. The programmer - looking slimmer, even, than his tutorial avatar - had appeared at the front of the unit with several boxes of stuff and a large sports bag. It had all gone into the boot of a small car - probably red, no visible registration plate in the footage, annoyingly. And he had looked like he was in a rush as he moved. Emmy hadn’t seen him for at least a week and he’d abandoned some fairly expensive kit at the unit: kit he’d have to buy all over again if he planned to keep working on his nanoids. The set-up at the unit pre-dated Cuttler legging it from BRS, but although Butcher knew that Cuttler had done his disappearing act a little over a week ago, he didn’t know when the designer had fallen out with Ball and BRS the first time - when they had begun suing him. It could have been months ago and probably was. Butcher would ask, then next time Ball or Cook called him. But he had no plans to call them first. That wasn’t the sort of relationship he wanted to turn this into.
Still, a quick search of a commercial lettings website, and a call to the lettings agent after that, had been enough to tell him that the unit Ron had been working in had been leased in the name of his brother, Gordon Cuttler, over two months ago. The rent had been paid in advance up to Christmas. Gordon was the top dog at Cuttler Technology Systems, a defence contractor closely connected with both DSTL and Qinetiq, the government’s own little techno think-tanks, with a few very serious, very confidential R&D projects. And CTS was where Little Ron had gone to work for three years before he got poached by BRS.
CTS was based in Gosport, Hampshire. And its Chairman and CEO, Mister Gordon Cuttler, lived in Hartley Wintney - a village that had been in the best five places in the UK to live for the last decade. The odds of him being inclined to talk to someone investigating his brother’s disappearance were negligible. So Butcher was going to have to take a very different tack to get anything out of him at all.
*
‘Mister Gordon Cuttler?’ Butcher asked, at the front door. The house itself was a proper late-Victorian manor, set well back from the road with a high brick wall, metal gates and a wide, gravel drive beyond them. From the intercom at the gate, Butcher could peer through to see wisteria and clematis winding up the columns of the porch.
It was the house footballers thought they were building when they threw up nausea-inducing red-brick piles in rural Cheshire.
‘Yes?’
‘Mister Cuttler, I’m terribly sorry to interrupt your Saturday,’ Butcher pressed on. Finding the older Cuttler brother at home was already more luck than he had expected. ‘But I wondered if I could ask you some questions about your sister.’
‘My sister?’ There was a pause on the intercom and Butcher thought that might be it. But then Cuttler came back: ‘Are you from the press?’
‘No, sir, I’ve been privately engaged by a music distributor,’ he pressed on, quickly. ‘One of their scouts saw Miss Cuttler’s YouTube videos, wanted to reach her and found out about her disappearance. They’ve asked me to see if I can track her down.’
The intercom went silent for several seconds, and Butcher waited. Cally Cuttler had disappeared a year before her older brother. Eight years younger than Ron, she had gone to Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts and graduated with a first and her face set firmly towards the bright lights of stardom. After six months slumming it in London, she had fled back to Liverpool, where she’d secured a decent circuit of gigs. But then she’d been evicted from her flat there and, according to the police files that had come in Ron’s records, refused to ask her wealthy brothers for help and, instead, had spent several months sofa surfing, busking, more gigs and then… nothing.
Ron had called the police first - hence why it was in his file. But she was an adult. There was no evidence of foul play. She hadn’t made plans to meet someone and then not made it, or been seen leaving somewhere at two in the morning only to never make it home. She had just… fallen off everyone’s radar somehow. Her friends, such as they were, had been interviewed and it seemed like everyone had just thought she was hanging with someone else.
Twelve months later and there was still no sign of her, and no suggestion that the investigation was being pursued with any urgency by the police.
Butcher had watched the YouTube videos. A few were from when she was at LIPA, on a big piano with a fancy microphone. More were from gigs in the pubs and clubs of London and Liverpool, filmed on smartphones by friends. The last one was just her busking on a street corner and it hadn’t even been uploaded by Cally - just by some random user who thought she was good.
He’d been right. She was good. As clear and compelling a voice in the first videos as in the last. Although their progression told a story, all the same. Butcher just wasn’t sure what that story was.
‘Come to the side door,’ said Cuttler on the intercom. Then it clicked off and the gates buzzed.
Not wanting to lose time, Butcher left his car parked where it was, further up the road in a lay-by, and pushed the gates open. He found his way down the side of the house, where a tall man stood at a kitchen door.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Gordon Cuttler, who leaned on the doorframe, a cup of coffee clutched between his fingers. Suddenly, posing at Ron’s brother back in Cheltenham didn’t seem like it had been such a stupid idea to Butcher. Not that he and Gordon looked anything alike, but Gordon certainly looked very little like his younger brother. Comfortably past six feet tall, with thick hair turned an early - but distinguished - grey and a lean, runner’s body, he looked like exactly the sort of person who could instill confidence in shareholders and government ministers alike.
‘Greg Parsons, Mister Cuttler,’ said Butcher holding out a hand that Cuttler ignored, turning to walk back into the house. Butcher followed without waiting for an invitation.
‘Why is your employer suddenly interested in my sister, Mister Parsons?’
Butcher found himself in a tastefully modern twist on the classic Home Counties country kitchen. The Aga at the far end was complemented by an induction hob and a bank of specialist devices at the other. An enormous American fridge, that would have dominated most English kitchens if it even fitted in them, looked positively diminutive in one corner. And unless Butcher missed his guess, that circular glass panel in the floor behind where Cuttler leaned up against a work counter covered an historical well that had most likely been converted into a very expensive investment in fine wine cellars.
‘I’ll be blunt, sir,’ said Butcher, carefully not making himself comfortable. Cuttler was trying to intimidate him with casual wealth and, although Butcher had been intimidated by more obviously scary men than Cuttler, he had to admit that there was something about the man that he had seen recently in Ball: the arrogant power of the very wealthy made him feel dirty by association. ‘It’s an off-chance and they know it. But someone thought she looked like a marketable property, and when they found out she was missing, well… It goes one of two ways. Either I can find her and the narrative is one of a musical genius rescued from homelessness and addiction by her music. Or… I can’t. And then they’ll have a chat with Cally’s next of kin - your mother, I think - to see if there are any studio recordings of Cally that they can release with the tragic tale of the vanished talent. Either way, there’ll likely be lots of nice press for homeless and addiction charities. A portion of the royalties will go to something with a royal sponsor and… well, look, I can see you’re hardly struggling, Mister Cuttler. But at the very least your mum will get the financial benefit of her talented daughter.’
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Cuttler took a sip from his mug, put it down on the oak table and crossed his arms.
‘That’s just cynical enough to be convincing,’ he agreed. ‘Why come to me?’
‘To be quite honest, Mister Cuttler, I want to talk to your mother,’ he said. ‘But when I realized who you were, I decided that you weren’t a man I wanted to upset. A private investigator turning up on your mother’s doorstep to ask about her missing daughter seemed to me the sort of thing that might upset a person of your influence if it were done wrong.’
‘So you’re here… for permission to speak to my mother?’
‘Not permission, Mister Cuttler, no,’ Butcher said, raising his hands. ‘But... consent. And perhaps the small boon of a phone call to her by way of endorsement and forewarning?’
Cuttler nodded.
‘I see,’ he replied eventually. ‘Well, I scent the ripe tones of some massive bullshit, Mister Parsons, but if you’re looking for my sister why should I care what your reasons are.’ He picked up his mug again. ‘Fine. I’ll call her. You know where she lives?’
Butched nodded.
‘Good. Then fuck off out of my house.’
Butcher did his best ‘yes, guv’ bob as he headed for the door, then paused.
‘One last thing, Mister Cuttler,’ he said in his best Columbo impression. ‘Do you happen to lease a commercial unit in Cheltenham? Personally? Not through your company?’
‘Of course I bloody don’t, Parsons,’ snapped Cuttler, already impatient to see that back of Butcher. ‘Piss off now, please.’
Bluff 2
*
The house in Frimley was no more than thirty minutes from Gordon Cuttler’s manor, even at the leisurely pace Butcher was setting, yet it couldn’t have been more of a contrast. A red-brick Seventies bungalow with a porch that looked like a stiff wind would bring it down and paint peeling off the wooden frame of the front door. Butcher could’ve had the door open in five seconds without the need to trouble his lock-picks.
The woman who answered the knock looked like she’d done twelve rounds with life and was still waiting for the judge’s decision. Well past overweight and comfortably into obese, her roots were several weeks past needing a touch up and the flesh under her eyes was dark. Her chin wobbled a bit as she looked up from her maximum five foot three to his six and he read a long story in her expression. And an even longer one in the glyph over her head.
‘Mrs Cuttler?’ he asked, and went on without waiting for an answer. ‘I’m Andy Parsons. I’m investigating your daughter’s disappearance. Your son Gordon should have called to let you know I was coming?’
‘You’ve got the mark,’ she said, stepping back, her hand going to shut the door in his face. Butcher gently held the door open. It didn’t take a lot of effort.
‘Your son and I know some of the same people,’ said Butcher, his Bluff skill suddenly running at full power. ‘Ron, I mean.’
‘He told me not to talk to anyone with the mark but him!’ she all but wailed. He could read the conflict in her face. Frightened for her son, and for what he had told her and what he had done to her, no doubt for the best of reasons. But more frightened for her daughter. Ron might be in trouble, but at least she had seen him.
‘Mrs Cuttler, Gordon said you should talk to me, didn’t he?’ said Butcher, releasing his hold on the door as gently as he had taken it. ‘I’m not interested in Ron. I’m here to talk about Cally. One way or another, Mrs Cuttler. You want to know, don’t you?’
She nodded.
‘Well, let’s forget about Ron, and these… things,’ he waved his hand in the air, roughly where he thought she was seeing his glyph. ‘Let’s talk about Cally. If you’d rather I stood outside while we talked, I’d understand. If you want to call someone to keep you company while I’m here, that’s fine too.’
Butcher suddenly realized what this visit reminded him of.
A big man with terrible answers to questions you don’t want to ask, talking to a scared old woman who could see the Mark of Cain on his forehead? The Walk up the garden path. The Knock on the door. The “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m coming with bad news about your son or daughter...” conversation.
It was one of the jobs he’d done in the Det when he wasn’t deployed himself, working for the whole Special Forces family. They called them Visiting Officers - men and women who put on their best uniform and carried death to the homes of people unlucky enough to love soldiers.
They always had questions he couldn’t answer:.
‘Where did they die?’
‘What were they doing there?’
‘How did they die?’
‘Why were they there?’
‘What was the point? What was it for?’
There was one truth - that they were soldiers and they loved being soldiers, and they had gone somewhere to be the very best soldiers they could be and, sometimes, that meant dying. There was another truth - that they were the tools of men and women with power who would never really be held accountable for the decisions they made to risk the lives of children, partners and parents. And then there was the third truth - that their loved ones would likely never know what they had done, or why; that the only people who did would toast them in the Mess and get drunk in the hope that they, too, might know the bliss of ignorance.
And instead of telling them any of those horrible truths, he lied. And now he lied again.
As Mrs Cuttler meekly released the door and let him into her home, trusting and desperate, Butcher realized that, maybe, he wasn’t really lying. He decided that, if he could somehow fit finding Cally Cuttler into the shit he’d been handed by Ball and BRS, then he absolutely, definitely would.
‘I didn’t even really realize she was missing,’ said Geraldine Cuttler, handing Butcher a cup of tea as he sat awkwardly on the lip of a sofa, the springs of which were so flaccid he might never have escaped if he dared to sit back. ‘We had an argument. Like mums do with their daughters. I thought she might move back home and get a job with Gordon. I thought maybe she’d meet someone nice and settle down. But she was always so…’
She dwindled to a halt and Butcher could almost hear the shouting in the silence.
‘She went off to Liverpool and she never called. I tried to call once or twice, but she didn’t answer and Gordon told me I should leave her be. But Ron spoke to her sometimes. And he said, one day, he just had a bad feeling when she didn’t reply to his texts. He went up to Liverpool at the weekend and poked around where he thought she’d be. Met a few of his friends and realized none of them had seen her, either.
‘Then he took a week off work to look for her and, when nothing turned up after that, we went to the police.’
‘They looked at the drugs angle,’ said Butcher, remembering the police report summary in Cuttler’s file.
‘She didn’t even drink!’ wailed Geraldine. ‘But the Liverpool music scene and it’s drugs scene, you know…’
‘Closely associated,’ agreed Butcher. ‘Some nasty people in both, even if you’re a good girl.’
‘I don’t know, sometimes,’ said Geraldine, clutching her mug, undrunk. ‘I think maybe I’d rather she were dead than some of the things I imagine…’
‘Don’t say that,’ said Butcher, putting his mug down and reaching across the small living room to put a hand on hers. ‘It is always better to live. Always. Take it from me.’
‘I don’t know what use I can be to you, Mister Parsons,’ she apologized, finding a tissue from a box on the coffee table. Butcher noticed it was nearly empty. ‘I don’t know anything about what she was doing or where.’
‘Did she leave anything here?’ asked Butcher. ‘When she went to Liverpool? A laptop or tablet? An old phone? USB sticks? Any old recordings? Any personal effects at all? You’d be amazed what can be a lead when you’re being paid as well as I am to find someone.’
‘There’s an old desktop in her room,’ said Geraldine, standing up. ‘I can show you. But I don’t know how much she used it.’
‘Perfect,’ said Butcher.
*
He removed the hard drive completely. It would be easier to peruse the contents at his leisure and he promised to return it to Geraldine as soon as he could. But he took a few minutes, while he worked, to look around the little bedroom. There wasn’t much to it: a single bed made up with a pink and cream duvet cover and matching pillow case, some posters of musicians Butcher didn’t recognize, and a small bookcase. No diaries or letters. Little in the way of personal expression. Not even song lyrics or musical notation. There was a guitar - a cheap classical that looked like it had seen better days - propped up between the foot of the bed and the bookshelf.
He picked it up out of a lack of anything else to examine closer and was surprised by a quiet clunk from inside it.
He turned the guitar upside down and shook it gently, trying to work whatever was inside towards the sound hole until he saw the corner of a familiar object.
‘Well fuck me sideways,’ he muttered, as he worked it out from behind the strings. When was the last time he’d seen a three-and-a-half inch floppy disk?
Fifteen years ago? Twenty? Longer?
He couldn’t imagine why someone as young as Cally Cuttler would have one. He quickly pocketed the disk, wondering where he’d find a computer old enough to read it, but not before noticing the hand-written label that just said “ORCS”. An acronym? He had no way of knowing.
Taking the hard drive with him, he went back downstairs and found Geraldine anxiously hovering in the little kitchen.
‘Obviously I can’t make promises, Geraldine,’ said Butcher. ‘But I’ll do what I can. I know Ron spent some time trying to find Cally. It would be helpful to compare notes with him, but I can’t seem to find him. Do you have any idea where he is?’
She looked at the glyph over his head and suspicion immediately came back into her eyes.
‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped. ‘And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. If you want to try to find Cally, I hope you do, wherever she is. But you leave Ron alone!’
Butcher stopped on his way out by the phone - an old corded device on a table in the hall, that reminded him of his childhood. There was a little pot of pens and some scrap paper. He took one of each and wrote down the number of the smartphone BRS had given him.
‘If he contacts you, please let me know,’ he said, leaving the scrap under the phone, where she could see it. ‘It would be in everyone’s best interests.’
She glared at him, jaw clenched over her internal conflict.
He let himself out.
‘Thanks for the tea.’
Bluff 3