Night Sessions, The (15 page)

Carl leaned over. “I'll tell you what we do,” he said. “We spread the word, we do our thinking and research to expose the anomalies in physics and everything else that reveals this world as the shoddy lash-up that it is, and as for the Christians, here's what we do. We mess with their heads.”

“Leaflet the churches?” Aliyev asked.

The two lads’ heads jerked, ever so slightly.

“Not a bad idea,” said Carl, in haste after a moment's hesitation. “Maybe when there are more of us. Meanwhile—”

He stood up. “I'll show you what we do.”

“At this time of night?” said Jessica.

“Yes,” said Carl. “At this time of night.”

Jessica and Aliyev did a good impression of a giggly head-to-head, then stood up too.

“Show us what you're made of,” said Aliyev.

“Computer code,” said Carl, swift with the riposte. “We can't show you that, but we can show you how we mess with their heads.”

“Always up for a laugh,” said Aliyev.

They all headed out. As soon as they were through the door, Dave followed. The night was cool and dark, the moon a waning crescent amid thin clouds. Not many people were on the street. Dave looked to left and right and saw Jessica dawdling at the acute corner made by George IV Bridge and Candlemaker Row, a backstreet that sloped and curved down to the Grassmarket. Jessica glanced back, saw him, and disappeared around the plinth of Greyfriars Bobby. Dave hurried after her, keeping to the inside of the pavement. He paused at the sentimental statue, just in time to see the four cut across Candlemaker Row into the short passageway leading to the gate of Greyfriars Kirkyard. He heard Jessica's voice in his phone clip:

“How are we going to get over that?”

“Fear not,” said Carl. “We have the technology.”

Dave crossed as if walking on. Grunts, giggles, thuds and odd, muffled, scraping sounds came through on his phone clip. He walked on until these sounds stopped, then doubled back. A cautious look around the corner showed the passageway to be empty. The gate was about three metres high, and afforded no convenient footholds. He paced up to the gate and cocked an ear. He couldn't hear footsteps. Jessica's breathing was all that came through on his phone clip.

In the corner beside the gate was a drainpipe. Dave looked up it, took a deep breath, spat on his hands and shinnied up. He placed a foot carefully to the pediment of the small obelisk that topped the stone gatepost, and from there stepped onto the sloping tiled roof of the gatehouse. The tiles were damp, mossy, and slippery. Dave crab-walked along with his feet on the guttering, then swung himself off the roof and dropped to the ground in front of the gatehouse door.

Keeping his head down, he walked up the path and then crouched low and keeked one eye around the corner. He saw the group walking, almost as uneasily as himself, about fifty metres on down the path to his right. Doubled
up like an ape, Dave trod delicately across cobbles to grass, then scuttled parallel to the nearest cover, a half-ruined mausoleum jutting out from the wall, about fifty metres from where the two Gnostics stood on the path, murmuring something to Jessica and Aliyev. Even with the phone clip, Dave couldn't quite make it out.

“You can't do that!” he heard Jessica say.

“Why the hell not?” said Carl, in a louder voice.

“Well, you know,” said Jessica. “It's a monument to people who were executed, right? They were victims of the Church.”

Dave peered around the side of the mausoleum.

“Just a rival Church,” said Carl. “Plus, they were just fucking terrorists anyway.”

With that he strode forward and stood in front of a huge stone plaque built into and rising above the wall of the cemetery, and started making slashing movements with his arm. Dave heard the fizz of an aerosol can.

“There!” said Carl, taking a step back to admire his handiwork.

“I don't get it,” Aliyev said.

Carl returned to the group and spoke, once more in too low a voice to catch. Just as Dave was straining to hear, he heard a scratching, scuffling noise in the mausoleum, and then a much louder noise that might have come from the throat of a large animal.

“What was that?” Carl's head turned sharply. Dave dodged back.

“Something moved there,” said Carl.

The noise came again, something between a cough and a growl.

“Are you guys trying to give us a fright?” Jessica asked.

“Fuck, no!” said Will. “Hey, it's just some alkie.”

“That isn't a—” Carl said.

Dave couldn't see the front of the mausoleum, crouched as he was beside its side wall, but he could see a greenish glow beginning to light up the grass in front of it. It grew brighter by the second.

“What the fuck?” Carl's voice cried, taking the words out of Dave's mouth.

Into the green light rushed a stooped figure, which leapt onto the path and whirled to the right to face down the path towards four of the five petrified onlookers. Dave jumped back, and up. It turned to face him, and he recognised it even as his heart still thrashed like a caught fish. It was a werewolf whose somatic gene-modifications had been more radical than any Dave had ever seen. The beast-man straightened up and howled at the moon. Dave heard the sound of fast-fleeing feet, and Jessica's and Aliyev's indistinct but raised
voices. At that moment, yet another scraping sound came from inside the tomb, and another shape sprang out. Dave just had time to recognise it as a leki before its long metallic limbs blurred into a queer gallop, off down the path.

The werewolf looked at Dave again. “Come on out,” the werewolf said.

“It's OK!” Aliyev shouted.

Dave stepped forth, still shaking. Carl and Will were scrambling over the wall, to vanish apparently oblivious to the three-metre drop on the other side; the leki took a flying leap over the wall after them, to land in the street below with a clatter that suggested it had misjudged the jump.

“Huh-huh-huh!” went the werewolf. “Gave these little vandals a fright, huh!”

“You gave
me
a fright,” said Dave. He looked down the path. Aliyev had an arm clamped around Jessica's shoulders. She didn't look reassured as the werewolf loped towards her, Dave close behind. The beast-man stopped a couple of metres away. Dave ran on to Jessica, hugging her as Aliyev disengaged.

“Jeez,” she said. “Jeez.”

She pulled away and turned to glare at Aliyev, who spread his hands and looked aw-shucks awkward in an incongruously masculine manner.

“I had to stop you running off,” he said.

“Fucking near dislocated my shoulder,” she said.

“What's going on?” Dave said.

“The leki told me over a police channel,” said Aliyev. “Just before the, uh—”

“You can call me the lieutenant,” growled the werewolf.

“Just before the lieutenant jumped out.”

“Sorry about that,” said the werewolf. “Skulk—the leki—should have gone first. Couldn't hold myself back.” His toe-claws scratched at the gravel. “Instinct, I suppose.” He waved a long, hairy arm towards the cemetery wall. “I mean, look at that!”

Scrawled across the stone plaque in red spray-paint was: “MAJOR WEIR LIVES.”

“Some people,” said the werewolf, “have no respect for the dead.”

Dave shook his head, as if to clear it. “What was the leki doing anyway? And what, uh, were you doing here, lieutenant?”

“Skulk will explain,” said the werewolf. “As for me…it's all a bit personal, know what I mean?”

And with that he turned and loped away, vanishing in seconds around the far corner of Greyfriars Kirk.

A police-car siren and flashing blue light went by on the far side of the wall, down Candlemaker Row.

“Sounds like Skulk caught up with Will and Carl,” Aliyev said. “What a fucking fiasco.”

He tilted his head, listening intently on his phone clip. Some tense, tedious minutes dragged by.

“Or maybe not,” Aliyev added. “Skulk found a packet of leaflets nearby. And—”

He stopped. “Woo-hoo!” he said.

“What?” asked Jessica.

“Paranoia's put them in the frame.”

“What's that mean?” asked Dave.

Aliyev tapped his nose with his finger. “Sorry, can't tell you the details. But we haven't been wasting our time with these guys, I can tell you that.”

“That's something,” said Jessica. She looked around. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

“How the hell do we get out?” Aliyev asked.

“Same way you got in?” Dave suggested.

Aliyev and Jessica shook their heads. “The lads had arachno pads,” Aliyev explained. “Hands and knees. Passed them down to us. Wish I'd brought mine.”

“I'll show you how to get out,” said Dave.

It took a fair bit of heaving and shoulder-standing before they were all standing on the far side of the gate. Aliyev and Jessica compared broken nails and scratched hands, and looked at Dave as if the damage were somehow his fault.

“Frankenstein's should still be open,” said Dave. “Anyone fancy a pint?”

The Honeywell engineers who had designed the emotional-emulation capacities of Skulk's mind, capacities which it had had even before it developed a self-model and started to itself feel those emotions, had in an idle moment included that of boredom. It wasn't an emotion that Skulk had hitherto felt. Skulk always had something to occupy its mind. The early hours of Saturday morning, however, found the leki lurking in the deepest alley off the Grassmarket, where Internet access was at best intermittent. By dawn, Skulk was beginning to suspect that it was for the first time experiencing that long-dormant element of its repertoire.

A swarm of mechanical midges had already settled around the Grassmarket, minute cameras blindly recording, tiny antennae quivering, sniffing the wind and scanning the wavebands. Around 06:15 the first breakfast vendors opened their stalls, soon filling the air with the smells of ramen and chilli, black coffee and green tea. Salaryfolk and students emerged from the surrounding blocks like ants, grabbing portable bites and morning jolts as they hurried for the trams. At 07:00 three lekis discreetly took up position in odd corners of Victoria Street and under the arch of the Cowgate. Skulk remained where it stood. At 9:30 shutters banged and doors opened on the rag-trade marts and frowsty textbook shops. At a quarter to ten, Adam Ferguson walked up King's Stables Road and entered the far corner of the Grassmarket. He walked to the Covenanters’ Memorial, a civic monument that bore a remarkable if unintentional resemblance to a more commonplace civic amenity. He stood inside the open circle of its low wall, head half-bowed as if he was meditating on the martyrs.

Skulk, feeling another unaccustomed emotion, approached.

“Good morning,” it said.

“Morning, Skulk,” said Ferguson, gazing at the inscriptions on the small plaque. “Good work last night.”

He glanced at where the edge of a centimetre-thick package wrapped in transparent polythene protruded from a crevice at the foot of the wall, hard to notice amid the leaf-litter and beer cans.

“Still there, I see.”

“Yes,” said Skulk. “Perhaps we should go.”

“Indeed,” said Ferguson.

He came out of the small memorial space and turned about to go up the steep slope of Victoria Street, Skulk striding beside him. They took care not to look at the lekis on duty.

“Just back there you caught them, was it?” Ferguson asked.

“Down the street a little,” said Skulk. “I saw one—Carl Powys—swerve towards the memorial space as he ran, and his companion Will Latham urge him to ‘leave it.’ I was…already aware that the robot known as Hardcastle sometimes stopped there on its way home. So, after apprehending them, or rather after asking them politely to stop whilst lashing my tentacles in an agitated manner above their heads, I decided to investigate. I did so as soon as the uniformed officers had taken the two students from the scene. I replaced the package as soon as I divined its import, and after I had recorded its front and back pages through the wrapping.”

“‘Divined its import,’” said Ferguson. “You were always one for the
mot juste
, eh?”

“It's a small affectation of mine,” said Skulk. It hesitated. “You wish to speak further about last night?”

Ferguson jammed his hands in his trouser pockets.

“Could do,” he said. “If you'd like to, that is.”

“I'm anxious to clear the matter up,” said Skulk.

“I thought we were partners,” said Ferguson. They'd reached the top of the street, and were turning left onto George IV Bridge. Above them, the morning sun glinted on vertical acres of Royal Bank buckyglass. “You know, man and machine, shoulder to shoulder. We've been through a lot, you and me.”

He looked sideways at Skulk, then away and from side to side before crossing the High Street. Deacon Brodie's pub on the corner, its name commemorating another Edinburgh dual personality. On the opposite corner, the green statue of Hume embodied a different spirit of the city.

“Yes,” said Skulk. “That's why it was difficult to tell you.”

Together they cut across the downward slope of Bank Street, dodging the light traffic. Ferguson stopped at the top of Waverley Steps and leaned on the wall, overlooking the station far below and Princes Street beyond. Disembodied voices echoed up, announcing trains.

“That's why I'm annoyed you didn't tell me,” he said. “Do you understand that?”

“I understand that now,” said Skulk.

Ferguson rapped his knuckles on Skulk's carapace, making it ring.

“If you'd told me about your lieutenant,” he said, “I'd have understood. I wouldn't have objected in the least.” He leaned back and scratched the back of his head. “He's very fucked up, is that it?”

“You could say that,” said Skulk. “He refuses treatment. It would not be true to say he is happy. On the other hand, he does seem to derive some satisfaction from his way of life. He ranges widely. He ruts with others who are, in mind if not necessarily in body, like himself. He observes much. He claims that he is gradually overcoming his demons. I've told him many times that psychiatric help is available, but he seems incorrigible in that respect. I think our meetings, our ‘sessions’ as he calls them, do him some good. Possibly it is cumulative. I have noticed an improvement over the years.”

“And, not to be too kind to yourself, he can be a useful source of information?”

“That too,” said Skulk. “But the main reason for our relationship is the man–machine bond.”

“Yeah, well,” said Ferguson. “
C’est la vie. C’est la
fucking
vie
. You know, I do understand that a bond forged in lethal combat can be a bit stronger than one forged in kicking down a few doors together. I just wish you'd understood that ours was strong enough to take knowledge of the other one, that's all.”

“I take your point,” said Skulk.

“Fine,” said Ferguson. “Oh, well, say no more about it, eh?”

“OK, Adam,” said Skulk.

“Right,” said Ferguson. “Fine. Let's get to work.”

He came away from the wall and made to set off down the steps, then stopped and looked back towards the Mound.

“I wonder if our prof is in her office this morning,” he said.

“She isn't,” said Skulk, after pinging the New College reception.

“Fast work,” said Ferguson. “You know, I might just phone her at home. Stay on the line yourself.”

Grace Mazvabo's voice sounded sleepy and irritated. “Good morning, inspector. What can I do for you?”

“Sorry to disturb you,” said Ferguson. “There have been some interesting developments overnight. You may be able to help us.”

“Go on.”

“First of all, does the name ‘Major Weir’ mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does,” said Mazvabo. “You must know that. Covenanter and self-confessed satanist, burned at the Grassmarket in 1670.”

“Just checking that there's no other possibility,” said Ferguson. “I regret to say that the Martyrs’ Memorial stone in Greyfriars has been spray-painted with the words ‘Major Weir Lives.’”

Sharp intake of breath. “Some little satanist ratbag, I take it?”

“Two Gnostic kids, actually,” said Ferguson. “We caught them red-handed, so to speak. They're in the cells at St. Leonard's, charged with criminal damage, and no doubt whatever else the fiscal sees fit to slap them with.”

“Good,” said Mazvabo. “Well, I don't feel too Christian about this. Throw the book at them.”

“Oh, we intend to,” said Ferguson. “But there's more. They were arrested in the Grassmarket, and a quick check on the PNAI threw up some brief recordings from the past few months of the two of them picking up something from the Covenanter memorial there. The leki you met yesterday checked and found a small packet of Third Covenant leaflets. It's been left there in the hope that someone else may still come for them.”

“Praise the Lord,” said Mazvabo. “Have the kids admitted anything to do with them?”

“Afraid not,” said Ferguson. “And there don't seem to be any recordings of them actually going into the Kirk.”

“That doesn't surprise me,” said Mazvabo. “Non-cognisance works both ways, you know.”

“Yes,” Ferguson said. “Still, water over the dam now.”

“Are the leaflets a new broadside?”

“Yes. The leki was able to copy the front and back pages without disturbing the packet. I'll get hard copies to you, but for now it does seem more of the same, except for the end. May I read it to you?”

“Please, please.”

“‘If no visible signs of even outward repentance are given in the apostate churches of Scotland on the coming Sabbath of September Sixth, the soldiers of the said Covenant avow that the war shall be intensified on the said churches and extended to the secular institutions of the apostate states, sparing none, and if need be not even our own selves, as Samson did in Gaza of the Philistines.’”

Skulk saw Ferguson flinch at Grace Mazvabo's loud, inarticulate cry.

“You know what Samson did in Gaza?” Mazvabo asked, after a moment.

“I've already looked it up,” said Ferguson. “Just checking.”

“Oh, it's a suicide attack threat, all right,” said Mazvabo.

“There are very few precedents for Christian suicide terrorism that I know of,” said Ferguson. “Some nominally Anglican suicide bombers in Sri Lanka,
one or two questionable incidents in the Second Civil War in America, and that's about it. I mean, it's not like Christians have anything like the Islamist notion that it's a fast track to paradise, do they? Isn't it Christian doctrine that suicide is a one-way ticket in, uh, the other direction?”

“Certainly not,” said Mazvabo. “God's mercy can extend to suicides. And that's not just my liberal interpretation. The old hard-line Calvinists were absolutely clear that if you're one of the elect all your sins are forgiven, even self-murder. Self-martyrdom has never been encouraged, but in wartime there's always a sliding scale—from facing certain death in regular combat, through the forlorn hope, to so-called suicide missions, and at the limit there is, yes, the precedent of Samson's bringing down the temple on himself and on God's enemies. So, yes, I would take this seriously.”

“That's what I was afraid of.”

“Anything I can do, inspector?”

“I'll be in touch,” said Ferguson. “Thanks.”

As he clattered down the long, worn, zigzagging stone stairway from the top of the Mound to the foot of the hill, with the leki's metal feet stepping far more smoothly and surely behind him, Ferguson had the distinct sense of a belated awakening, as if the day had caught up with him with a bang. Everything was in hand, of course: as soon as it had become evident last night that Hardcastle aka “Graham Orr” wasn't turning up for work, late or otherwise, the warnings and pictures had been released to the public media. Skulk, from its (apparently) embarrassing and unauthorised tryst with its former comrade the lieutenant, had transmitted a hint that the beast-man had seen Hardcastle inexplicably stepping in and out of the Covenanter memorial at odd times over the past year. The two students, whose pursuit by the Kinky Kazakh had seemed such a wild-goose chase, had fortuitously and fortunately come up with a connection. The students hadn't admitted to it, but that was strictly a prosecution problem. The threat of a terrorism-conspiracy charge would soon have them talking, unless they were of a much harder cadre than they seemed. But as far as the investigation was concerned, they'd spelled out their connection in bright red letters.

Major Weir Lives, indeed! Hah!

But in the short sleep he'd had between the arrests, Skulk's transmission and 08:45, Ferguson had found his subconscious mind leaping to the comforting conclusion that the problem had been solved, whereas it had just been properly posed. It was in that dozy interim that his annoyance over Skulk's secret attachment had come to the top of his mental stack. Now that it was out of the way, his real priorities were shockingly clear.

He reached Greensides at 10:20. The meeting in the Easter Road Incident Room began at half past. DCI McAuley was there, sitting between his counterparts from “E” and “F” Divisions. Ferguson shook hands with the two extra officers and nodded to McAuley before stepping in front of the whiteboard and looking over the team. Everyone had had a long night and a short sleep. Mukhtar hadn't slept at all. Mikhail Aliyev, for the occasion neat and androgynous in trouser suit and ponytail and no make-up, looked as if he hadn't slept either but had been very much otherwise engaged.

The room was thick with the smell of coffee. Even the lekis were wired. Ferguson slashed thick lines on the whiteboard, tabbed bright links in the shared headspace he'd summoned, and turned to the team.

“Good work last night, everyone. For the first time, we've got a connection—tenuous, but a connection—between the Covenanter tracts and the Murphy case. We have a prime suspect, who has not only not come forward but has disappeared. We have sightings—mostly from around Leith Water and the Old Town, not surprising for someone who works in security. None, however, since last night.

“That's where it gets scary. This Hardcastle—or Graham Orr, because we can't be absolutely sure yet whether it's a robot who sometimes passes as a
mutilado
, or vice versa—has worked in security in various nightclubs and other venues, including some quite posh hotels. So it, or he, has inside knowledge of security procedures in at least a dozen places around Edinburgh, knows his way around them, and has a choice of high-value targets: VIPs perhaps at the hotels, mass casualties at the clubs. Or at churches, for that matter, which remain explicitly threatened in the latest Covenanter tract. I've just checked with an outside expert and have been assured that a suicide attack of some kind—bombing being an obvious possibility—can't be ruled out on religious grounds. If we're dealing with a robot, obviously, there's even less of a problem. DS Hutchins will fill you in on that.”