Sockpuppet: Book One in the Martingale Cycle (52 page)

Wash bag. Power adaptors. Elyse’s book.

There it is. Bethany’s dog-eared edition, with the explosive message in the front. Dani has kept it close the whole time, guarding it like a childhood treasure. Perce reaches down and picks it up – the police glance his way but don’t try to stop him. They don’t realise it’s an object of power. Perce turns the book in his hands, looks at the inscription inside and throws an appraising look at Dani.

The policeman ferrets in the bottom of the bag. He’s not looking at the drives stacked in plain view on the table. Why isn’t he interested in the drives? She knows why.
An item of police property.
Taking a leaf from Perce’s book she braves it.

‘What are you still looking for? My knickers are right there, yo. You prefer the ones I’ve worn? Here.’

She holds them up. Sniffs them.

‘
Mmmm
,’ she moans.

The policeman ignores her, shakes out the bag. Four or five coins drop and dance on the tabletop. He slaps the bag down.

‘Where is it, Ms Farr?’

‘Where’s what?’

‘You know.’

‘I fucking don’t.’

‘Don’t swear at me or I’ll have you in the back of a paddy with a bag on your head in thirty seconds.
Valued colleague
or not. An
item
of police
property.
’

He does. He means the gun. They thought she’d be carrying the gun.

That means she’s won.

Leo had first pulled out the gun in the service lift at the conference hotel. Only seconds had passed since the lift doors shut on the baffled face of the minister. Dani reeled from the sight of it, pressing against the aluminium wall. She’d only just met the guy and here he was doing
Usual Suspects
moves with a loaded sidearm.

‘Fucking hell, kid!’ she said.

‘No, dude, look,’ he said, ‘this is some cool shit.’

He spun the metal beast. Dani took a sharp breath: minutes earlier it had gone off and nearly fucked her in the ears. That policeman had been lying maybe-dead on the concrete floor. The kid must have scooped up his gun while Dani was reeling from the noise.

‘Put it away, kid.’

‘I mean, chill. I thought you were some crazy Occupy girl. Don’t you want the fucking juice?’

He tucked the gun peevishly into his jeans as the lift arrived on Ground. They scampered out through the concrete vault of the delivery bay, past recycle bins, laundry carts – no cops, thank the goddess. They freaked for a second when an overweight Asian guy with a cap stepped out from the glass hut by the vehicle gate; but he was just some clipboard-jockey. They skirted him and hit the daylight. Leo followed her into the network of alleys at the back of the hotel. Backs of shops and restaurant bins lining a rotting carpet of cardboard. They hit the brakes.

‘OK, this should be good,’ said Dani. ‘Lose it.’

‘What?’

‘You know what. Ditch it.’

He ran his hands through knots of dreads.

‘Fuck, OK, it was just a thing. I don’t even care.’

He handed her the gun.

‘Do what you want with it,’ he said.

She felt the weight of it in her hand, then untucked the front of her T-shirt and wiped the craggy surface round and around. Holding the barrel through the fabric of her T-shirt she opened the lid of an oversize wheelie, rooted one-handed for the knot of a heavy sack and shoved the gun deep into the muck, gagging at a wave of rotten citrus.

She resealed the sack double-tight and slammed the dumpster shut. Leo shifted his weight from foot to foot.

‘Jesus, are you happy now? Like, way to be a total hardarse.’

Now he’s dead.

Fourteen

‘A young man died last night. None of us should forget that.’

From above, Downing Street is shaped like the profile of a bottle, narrow at the entry point, then widening outside numbers 10 and 11. In this handsome amphitheatre, Bethany faced off to the press – Saturday deps, all of them, eager to break a Westminster scoop.

‘Before I give you what you’re here for, I need to make something absolutely clear. Much is being said about events at yesterday’s Digital Citizen launch. Most of it false. In particular, there is no truth whatsoever to the statements about Dani Farr. She was not responsible for any wrong-doing. She was not responsible for malicious messages on the Parley service. She did nothing to harm me. I would ask everyone to leave this courageous and inventive young woman be.’

The Parley service
– ugh. Who called it that?

She hoped what she’d just said about Dani was true, that her actions were simply those of a hunted, vulnerable woman in an impossible situation; but this was a risk. Career-ending to call it wrong. What a relief to have one’s career in tatters already.

Seeing her draw breath, the press pack began to call:
Have you been fired, Bethany? Do you accept responsibility? What about you and Sean Perce, Minister?
But when you give a statement from outside Number Ten, the pack remains at bay, on the opposite pavement. So much easier to ignore them here than with a doorstep microphone shoved in your face. They swirled in a single king-rat mass. Shutterbugs; TV cameras.

Breaking.
These days a backbencher farting counted as breaking news. Peter would be watching for sure. The boys, maybe. (No, not Jake: he’d be at Saturday music group.)

The hacks stopped baying. There was what you’d call An Awkward Silence. She looked down at the paper in her hand. Her eyes wouldn’t focus. All week – for years now – her life had been narrated to her. The deal was: read these words; ditch Sean; escape, honour intact. And in would storm Andrew Carpenter: a little man with big ideas and a tiny, tiny mind to store them in. Nobody ever got fired for choosing Terasoft, they said. Go safe. Go easy. Choose the downhill route. Boy, had she ever ignored that advice. She’d gone for Sean, for Mondan, for a hope the two of them might open new ground, liberate the greater population, colonise the future together, be free to love one another without complication; just as her grandmother had done with a succession of brilliant, beautiful, temporary men.

She screwed her eyes, trying to prise the words from the fluttering paper. If she didn’t read them she lost the right to resign on her own terms – except who was it standing on the steps of Number Ten? Not Karen. Not the PM.

She folded the paper, one, twice, scissoring her fingers along the creases. She slid it into a jacket pocket and raised her face to the wall of cameras, a grin breaking out across her face.

When was the last time she smiled?

Fifteen

The police return the hard drives to the bag and shove it into Dani’s arms. All they were looking for was the gun, and she never had the gun. Leo’s death has wiped the original task – the allegedly stolen data – from their walnut forebrains.

Only problem remaining: Dani assaulted a minister. She still goes to prison.

She tries to think like Perce: can she trade with them? Sam wants them to have the DigiCitz drives, and make sure Perce is legally screwed. What if she hands them over? Would that buy her advantage? But what if Gray comes back with something? Sam said Perce was responsible for everything that’s happened. But Sam works for Terasoft – his job is to make Sean Perce look bad. If the police did find something incriminating on those drives, would it be real or did Sam put it there?

She turns to ask Pemberton for intel but the policeman blocks her line of sight.

‘Best we do this quietly, Ms Farr.’

She turns to Sean for defensive fire but he’s nowhere. She tries to catch Pemberton’s attention but he’s distracted by the rolling news on the TV screens.

‘
Pemberton!
’
she hisses.

The first policeman puts out a hand.

‘No need to make this difficult.’

He reaches for her arm. She pulls back.

‘
No!
Don’t you—’

A uniform turns his head to the noise.

‘We don’t want to use force,’ says the cop.

She’s hemmed between the table and the back of a couch. The plainclothes officers close in. The uniform moves round to join them. Dani puts down her bag and braces herself. Her hands form fists. Is she going to do this?

Pemberton speaks, still gazing up at the screens.

‘Who do you take instruction from, officers?’

‘Sir, you are not helping.’

The cops don’t even look at him. Each has a hand on Dani now; she writhes away but there’s nowhere to turn.

‘You’re Parliamentary Branch?’ Pemberton continues. ‘Tasked with protecting the minister?’

She wrestles heavy palms, thinking of biting. Knowing that would take her over another line.

‘That is precisely what we’re doing, sir. Perhaps you could persuade your colleague –’

Pemberton turns to face them, pointing up at the screens.

‘In which case I suggest you watch this.’

Something in his voice: they turn to the screens. Pemberton reaches up to the volume button on the nearest one. Three news channels, all the same image. Striped by three varieties of
BREAKING NEWS
banner is the minister. Bethany, speaking. Flashlit in front of an old familiar London house. The number on the big black door. Oh: it’s a
10.

Two in binary.

Sixteen

‘I am not perfect,’ Bethany pronounced into the mic. ‘I realise that doesn’t count as news.’

Barely polite sniggers from the press pack opposite.

‘I want to apologise. But not for failing to live up to the standards expected of me. Those standards are crap.’

Well, that got their attention. Not what Bethany expected to emerge from her mouth but, like so many things this week, it was out there now.

‘Who’s perfect? Apart from Ryan Gosling.’

Don’t
do
that, Beth. This is your moment. It will be replayed over and over. That gag will date.

‘Haven’t we all stepped over lines? Haven’t we all been bad boys and girls at some time? And if we survive day-to-day by pretending otherwise, to the world, to our loved ones, and to ourselves – what of it? Well, if I’ve learned anything these last few days, it’s that nothing’s secret. Not any more. And if you think it is, that’s when you should worry; because it won’t be for long.

‘So my advice to you, friends. Open your closets and let your skeletons come out. Because they will come out.’

That construction was a disaster: gay skeletons? Where was J-R? Oh, for the comfort of well-spaced Times New Roman.

‘Are you ready for that? Because I wasn’t.

‘So: friends from the fourth estate; fellow public servants; viewers at home. When are you going to get real? When are you going to align your standards to the sad inevitability of human frailty?

‘It’s not just you, I realise. Everyone around me – this lot –’ a thumb back over her shoulder to Number Ten ‘– have always wanted me to tread the path more travelled on. But I kept on choosing the wilder path – and look where it landed me. And you know what? I’d do it again.

‘So I do want to apologise. Apologise for patronising you by pretending to be anything other than what I am. A chaotic, wayward, forgetful woman, whose recent behaviour a wonderful husband and sons do not deserve –’

Damn it, come on, vocal chords, come on! Not long now.

‘– but who I dearly hope are ready to give all ten-and-a-half stone of their Jilly Cooper-loving, chocolate-addicted wife and mother – who by the way has had a pimple on her nose since Monday and is really hoping neither of these cameras is HD – a chance to make it up to them, even if it takes the rest of her life.

‘So. Friends. Keep your perfect. You know what? I’m going home.’

And with that, Bethany swept back through the huddle of staffers to the great black door of state, which levered open right on cue; as it always will.

She caught Krish’s eye as she passed him – oh, Krish! Don’t let Madame Arbiter catch you with that dumb grin plastered on your face. She threw him back the tiniest of smirks as she swept across the threshold and out of politics.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make an exit.

Seventeen

‘Got him,’ says Sean, typing at his desktop.

Dani walks around to see who he’s talking about. When she clocks his screen her head does three lateral twists and a backward pike.

)) laminate pow-wow ((

‘What is this?’ she says. ‘It’s – whoah.’

Perce grins his dashing grin.

)) watercooler jangle ((

‘We scaled it,’ he says. ‘I’m calling it
Everything About You.
What do you think?’

Sounds, words and pictures spam the screen. They’ve tidied up Dani’s collage algorithms, given them coherence; style. She’s looking at her creation,
Me All Over
:
but it’s something new. It’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. Through it she’s looking at Sam.

‘Uh – good,’ she says. ‘Actually – really pretty good. Liking the name.’

Sean works the on-screen clock to land the timeline just before the now. An hour back. Photos pop out of the map. Office scenes, corridor atmospherics, snatches of jargon. Colours cycle through the sounds. It’s like watching from behind Sam’s frontal lobe.

‘That’s the Terasoft HQ in Victoria?’ she says.

‘Looks that way. The guy shaking hands with Sam here is Harry Makepeace, Terasoft Corporate Comms. And that’s half of his boss, Shaz Joshi. Looks like Sam has his tablet propped for a demo. He’s probably showing them us.’

What she’s looking at is exactly what she’d thought the thing could be, once it was generalised from her to everybody.

‘OK.’ She coughs. ‘So I think –’

‘Go on,’ says Perce.

‘So Sam did all of this. Last night I worked out he’s doing sockpuppetry with sic_girl, trashing you and Bethany. I thought he was doing it because he was this free-data campaigner guy.’