"
Us
?"
"Yes, us. Although
I'm
not going to lie — it's not got much to do with loyalty to I&I. It's very fucking personal. I'm not going to tell you why, but I am going to make him regret ever setting foot in the building."
Bevan nodded. "Now that's a motive I can believe."
"Have you met him?"
"Of course I have. He's as bad as that prize bitch Bell."
"Bell?" What had she done up here?
"Major bloody Bell — if you haven't met her, you've been lucky."
"What's she like?"
"Brunette, with one of those bloody awful pinned-to-death hairdos. Makes her look like the most fucking sadistic primary school teacher you can imagine. Face like someone set it on fire and put it out with a shovel."
Toreth laughed, although Bevan sounded thoroughly pissed off. "No, what's she
like
?"
"She knows what she's doing." His voice held a grudging — and worrying — respect. "She had me in here half an hour after she arrived in the building, and told me to start pulling in technicians to get the surveillance running again. And she left a bunch of Service so-called security officers to keep an eye on me. Waste of fucking time, because they wouldn't recognise a decent security system if it fucking saluted them."
Bevan poked through the pile of components beside him, then sighed. "She took all the security codes with her, all the call IDs for the guards — not that there are many left, poor fuckers — and every other sodding thing that would be any use." He shrugged. "I wasn't arguing with that many guns, and it was better than being locked in that fucking cell."
Toreth nodded, and wondered if this was why Bevan had been so irate about his own apparent defection. "Nothing else you could do. So what about Carnac?"
"When I'd just about got used to the idea of her running the place, that bastard turned up and started giving the orders. The first one being that I was out and Captain Clueless was in. He's behind the whole bloody awful mess, you know. Carnac." Bevan's lip curled. "The bent fucking shirt lifter should've been strangled at birth — it would've saved the whole world a lot of grief."
Toreth blinked. "Bev, you do know that
I'm
a bent fucking shirt lifter, don't you?"
Bevan snorted. "Of course I do. I edit the New Year party recordings. But you don't come in here, acting like you own the fucking place, and kick me out of my own sodding office so some know-nothing wanker can sit in there and fuck up whatever bits of the poor bloody systems are still managing to struggle on. And then expect me to fucking
thank
you for it."
Carnac certainly had a winning way with people. "Point me at the know-nothing wanker in question and I'll get you your office back. Payne-by-name wasn't kidding about the operational control."
Bevan still looked sceptical. "And in return?"
"And nothing in return. I want to get I&I back for
us
, before Justice comes round to pick up the pieces, or Carnac lets Bell and her friends run it into the ground and suck it into the fucking Service for good. But, hey, if you want to spend the rest of your career polishing screens and saluting Captain Clueless, I won't bother."
Bevan shrugged. "All right. I'll say yes, if for no other reason that to watch you have to come good on it."
"Piece of piss. Come on, then."
They returned to Bevan's former office, picking Payne up on the way. When they arrived, Toreth was relieved to find that the crowd had dwindled to the captain behind the desk and two women who looked like something technical. He wasn't so absolutely confident of his authority that he wanted a large audience.
The captain looked less than delighted to see them, which Toreth ascribed to Bevan's presence. He doubted the man had taken the loss of his job and office quietly.
"I'm busy," the captain said curtly.
"Not any more." Toreth turned to the women. "Excuse us, but we need to speak to the captain urgently."
They glanced at the captain, then left on his nod. Toreth went over to the desk, but didn't sit. He almost asked the man his name, but it was too appealing to keep thinking of him as Captain Clueless. Besides, with any luck he wouldn't be around long enough for it to matter. Instead, he said, "My name's Senior Para-investigator Val Toreth."
The captain nodded. "I've heard of you."
No 'sir' from this one. "Good. That's going to make things a lot easier. Who put you in charge of Security?"
"Socioanalyst Carnac."
Too late to back out now. "Well, I'm rescinding that appointment. Thank you for your time and effort."
Captain Clueless stared. "You can't do that!"
"Payne."
Toreth walked away and leaned on the wall, watching while Payne explained the situation, and then while the captain called Carnac and tried, politely, to persuade him to overrule Toreth's order. The conversation went on for some time, until the captain cancelled the connection and looked over to him. His expression suggested that Carnac's parting words had been firm and clear in the extreme.
"I apologise for questioning your authority, sir," he said, virtually choking on the title.
"No problem. Everything's a bit confused at the moment. Take as long as you want clearing out, as long as it isn't more than twenty minutes."
"Yes, sir. What about the other Service personnel?"
"Oh, leave them." Toreth smiled. "HoS Bevan can decide what to do with them later."
"HoS —?" The captain shut his mouth abruptly. "Yes, sir. If you'll excuse me, sir?"
"Of course." Toreth led the other two out of the office. There was no point in rubbing it in excessively, and besides, Bevan was so flushed with the effort not to laugh that Toreth was mildly concerned the man might have a stroke.
Back in the parts room, Bevan threw his head back and roared with laughter, pausing occasionally to draw breath and pound his fist on a bench, rattling the jumbled equipment. Toreth watched, fascinated. Bevan never laughed and rarely even cracked a smile — he was famous for it.
After a minute or so, Bevan managed to get himself under control. "Oh, God. Best fucking thing I've seen since those Service twats first turned up. You should do the same to the whole treacherous lot of them. Worse than the resister scum." He paused, turned to Payne, and said with unexpected seriousness, "No offence to you, son."
"I, er —" Payne coughed and started again. "None taken, sir."
"Call me Bevan." He turned back to Toreth, still serious. "And the next person who tells me you're kissing Service arse gets their canteen access cancelled for the rest of their life."
"Thanks, but it was my pleasure. If there's anything else, let me know — you know where my office is. Keep as many of the so-called security officers as you need, although if it was me I wouldn't want too many of them hanging around."
Bevan shook his head, grinning again. "No. I'll throw the fuckers out as soon as I can get our people back."
'Our people'. The risk had been more than justified by getting those two words.
"I owe you, Toreth," Bevan said as Toreth and Payne left, and those were four more words Toreth was extremely pleased to hear.
On the way up to his office, he turned to Payne. "What do you think?"
"About what, sir?"
"Anything at all would make a change, but I meant about the state of things down there."
"I, er . . . to be honest sir, it's a mess."
"Yes. Yes, it is that. What did you think about the speech for the prisoners?"
Payne hesitated, then said, "I thought it sounded nothing whatsoever like you, sir."
Was that a glimmer of a sense of humour? "Good." He looked at his watch. "Lucky us, it's just time for coffee."
"Coffee?"
"Brown stuff? Caffeine?"
"I know what it is, sir, we just don't usually, er . . ."
"Well, you're working for I&I at this precise moment, so you do now. If there is any, that is."
Toreth tried his usual coffee room, but it was clearly one where they'd held the admins — filthy and coffee-free. The second one proved to be the same, and he was about to give up when he hit on the idea of trying Tillotson's office.
Tillotson's coffee machine had survived intact, which made him wonder for the first time about the head of section himself. Toreth didn't seriously think anything had happened to him, unfortunately. If there'd been a tactical nuclear strike, Tillotson was the sort who'd slither out from underneath a rock afterwards, unharmed, flickering his tongue to find new opportunities.
"Milk? Sugar?"
"Er, both, please, sir." Payne seemed to be twitching on the spot, which Toreth guessed was caused by watching someone he seemed to feel compelled to 'sir' making him a drink.
"Here you go. Enjoy it, because once they get the mess sorted out we'll be back to the usually revolting crap they put in the section machines."
"Thank you, sir."
The novelty had worn off. "Call me Toreth."
There was a strained silence, as Payne clearly tried to construct an agreement to the order without using the word 'sir' and couldn't force himself to do it.
"Let's go back to my office, shall we?" He only made it a question out of sheer evil fascination.
"Yes . . . " The uncompleted statement hung in the air.
They started to walk back.
"Payne, I'm not doing this for fun. Pretty soon we're going to be talking to a lot more very fucked off I&I staff. Fucked off and frightened. If you go around sirring me all the time, they're going to think one of two things. The first is that you're some Service tosser who thinks I&I is a collection of undisciplined thugs and wants to make a point of it. The second is that you're an arse-licking little creep, because that's the only kind of person who makes a big deal out of saying 'sir' round here. Neither of those things is going to make my job any easier."
"Oh."
"See how easy that was?"
"Yes, s —"
Toreth sighed. "Just work on it. If you have to call me something that isn't my name, call me Para."
Back in the office, they sat and drank coffee in silence for a while, as Toreth tried to think what he might've done wrong so far and what, if anything, he could do to fix it. On reflection, he decided things had gone as well as could be expected under the circumstances.
In fact, he was amused to find that he was in a good mood — he'd expected to be throwing furniture by this point in the day. If only his ribs didn't hurt so damn much, he'd even say that he was enjoying it. Whatever game Carnac was playing, he seemed to be serious enough about letting him take charge. Not that that made him any less sure there was a game, and that he'd been designated the part of loser. All he had to do was remember to be careful, however well things
seemed
to be turning out.
That out of the way, he turned his attention to Payne. Might as well try to generate a slightly coffee-time mood. "You're married, then?" he asked. Idle curiosity, really, because he had better things to do with his time than look for a passing fuck.
"Yes.
Happily
married, sir."
The emphasis made him pause. "Carnac?" he said after a moment.
Payne nodded.
"What did he say?"
"Um. Nothing, as such."
"Make your mind up."
"He said that, er, that you were keen on getting to know your staff."
You had to admire the nerve of the man, even as you wanted to kill him. "You should be careful believing what he says. He has a very peculiar sense of humour."
Payne looked surprised. "Really, sir? I didn't think sp — socioanalysts had one at all."
"Debatable. He thinks it's funny, anyway. However, you can relax. I'm not after your honour, your virtue, your arse, or anything else."
He watched Payne carefully, and caught all the signs. Open relief, and hidden disappointment — so well hidden that he might not even be aware of it. Yet.
Typical of Carnac to send him someone so tempting, then warn them off. However, if Carnac believed that would distract him from the job in hand, then he obviously didn't know Toreth half as well as he thought he did.
By the time he'd had painkillers and more coffee for lunch and spent half the afternoon gathering status reports on exactly how fucked the building was, Toreth found himself badly missing Sara.
He'd sent Payne round to make sure the admin releases were happening speedily, and to make equally sure that the departing staff were being asked (or preferably begged) to return to work in the very near future. However, he wanted to take a look at the cell-to-cell inspections in person, on the grounds that if they were fucked up it would be ten times harder to get people to cooperate later. At the same time he couldn't leave his office unattended, since he'd already told several people he'd be there to deal with problems. He felt a brief, unlikely empathy with Tillotson.
Payne proved unexpectedly useful by purloining a Service admin from somewhere. The man seemed competent enough to sit at Sara's desk and take messages from visitors while Toreth was absent. After ensuring his personal comm was functioning, he set off again for the detention section.
The main information from the tour was that his previous 'personal liaison' with Carnac had been more widespread gossip than he'd guessed at the time. He gathered a variety of sarcastic comments, questions and plain insults themed around the general idea that he was taking it up the arse from spooks. He noted down some of the more imaginative ones — Carnac might get a kick out of them, and Toreth needed him in a good mood.
The horrified reaction of Payne amused him no end. Either the Service was improbably virtuous, or Payne had led a staggeringly sheltered life, or he was upset by the lack of sirring that went with the enquiries as to whether Toreth had to salute while he was bending over for it. Probably the latter.
"They're angry, that's all," Toreth told him. "And who can blame them? I would be too, watching someone walking round in a nice clean outfit while I'm nursing my bruises in the filth down here."
He found the team searching the block he thought he'd been imprisoned in and tagged along with them for a while. It wasn't long before they found the cell, and Toreth was mildly surprised by how pleased — or at least relieved — he was to find Chevril alive.