The Falls (13 page)

You’d have to play the game. Give me a name to call you
.

My name’s Siobhan Clarke. I’m a detective constable with Lothian and Borders Police
.

I get the feeling that’s your real name, Siobhan. You’ve broken one of the first rules. How do you pronounce it?

Siobhan could feel the blood rising to her face.
It’s not a game, Quizmaster
.

But that’s exactly what it is. How do you pronounce your name?

Shi-vawn
.

There was a longer pause, and she was about to re-send the message when his response came.

To answer your question, Hellbank is one level of the game
.

Flipside was playing a game?

Yes. Stricture is the next level
.

What sort of game? Could she have got into trouble?

Later
.

Siobhan stared at the word.
What do you mean?

We’ll talk later
.

I need your cooperation
.

Then learn patience. I could shut down right now and you’d never find me, do you accept that?

Yes
. Siobhan was about ready to punch the screen.

Later
.

Later
, she typed.

And that was it. No further messages. He’d gone off-line, or was still there but wouldn’t respond. And all she could do was wait. Or was it? She logged on to the Internet and tried all the search engines she could find, asking them for sites related to Quizmaster and PaganOmerta. She came up with dozens of Quizmasters, but got the feeling none of them was hers. PaganOmerta was a blank, though separating the words gave her hundreds of sites, almost all of them trying to sell her a new-age religion. When she tried PaganOmerta. com there was nothing there. It was an address rather than a site. She made more coffee. The rest of the shift was drifting in. A couple of people said hello, but she wasn’t listening. She’d had another idea. She sat back down at her desk with the phone book and a copy of Yellow Pages, drew her notebook towards her and picked up a pen.

She tried computer retailers first, until finally someone directed her towards a comic shop on South Bridge. To Siobhan, comics meant things like the
Beano
and
Dandy
, though she’d once had a boyfriend whose obsession with
2000AD
was at least partly responsible for their break-up. But this shop was a revelation. There were thousands of titles, along with sci-fi books, T-shirts and other merchandise. At the counter, a teenage assistant was arguing the merits of John Constantine with two schoolboys. She’d no way of knowing whether Constantine was a comic character or a writer or artist. Eventually the boys noticed her standing right behind them. They stopped being excited, turned back into awkward, gangling twelve-year-olds. Maybe they weren’t used to women listening in. She didn’t suppose they were used to women at all.

‘I heard you talking,’ she said. ‘Thought maybe you could help me with something.’ None of the three said anything. The teenage assistant was rubbing at a patch of acne on his cheek. ‘You ever play games on the Internet?’

‘You mean like Dreamcast?’ She looked blank. ‘It’s Sony,’ the assistant clarified.

‘I mean games where there’s someone in charge, and they contact you by e-mail, set you challenges.’

‘Role-playing.’ One of the schoolboys nodded, looking to the others for confirmation.

‘Have you ever played one?’ Siobhan asked him.

‘No,’ he admitted. None of them had.

‘There’s a games shop about halfway down Leith Walk,’ the assistant said. ‘It’s D & D but they might be able to help.’

‘D & D?’

‘Sword and sorcery, dungeons and dragons.’

‘Does this shop have a name?’ Siobhan asked.

‘Gandalf’s,’ they chorused.

Gandalf’s was a piece of narrow frontage squeezed unpromisingly between a tattoo parlour and a chip shop. Even less promisingly, its filthy window was covered with a metal grille held in place with padlocks. But when she tried the door, it opened, setting off a set of wind chimes hanging just inside. Gandalf’s had obviously been something else – maybe a second-hand bookshop – and a change of use hadn’t been accompanied by any sort of makeover. The shelves held an assortment of board games and playing pieces – the pieces themselves looking like unpainted toy soldiers. Posters on the walls depicted cartoon Armageddons. There were instruction books, their edges curling, and in the centre of the room four chairs and a foldaway table, on which sat a playing-board. There was no sales counter and no till. A door at the back of the shop creaked open and a man in his early fifties appeared. He had a grey beard and ponytail, and a distended stomach clad in a Grateful Dead T-shirt.

‘You look official,’ he said glumly.

‘CID,’ Siobhan said, showing him her warrant card.

‘Rent’s only eight weeks late,’ he grumbled. As he shuffled towards the board, she saw that he was wearing leather open-toed sandals. Like their owner, they had a good few miles on them. He was studying the placement of pieces on the board. ‘You move anything?’ he asked suddenly.

‘No.’

‘You sure?’

‘Sure.’

He smiled. ‘Then Anthony’s fucked, pardon my French.’ He looked at his watch. ‘They’ll be here in an hour.’

‘Who’s they?’

‘The gamers. I had to shut up shop last night before they had a chance to finish. Anthony must’ve been flustered, trying to finish Will off.’

Siobhan looked at the board. She couldn’t see any grand design to the way the playing pieces were arranged. The beardie-weirdie tapped the cards laid out beside the board.

‘These are what matters,’ he said irritably.

‘Oh,’ Siobhan said. ‘Afraid I’m no expert.’

‘You wouldn’t be.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing, I’m sure.’

But she was pretty sure she knew what he meant. This was a private club, males only, and every bit as exclusive as any other bastion.

‘I don’t think you can help me,’ Siobhan admitted, looking around. She was resisting the urge to scratch herself. ‘I’m interested in something slightly more high-tech.’

He bristled at this. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Role-playing by computer.’

‘Interactive?’ His eyes widened. She nodded and he checked his watch again, then shuffled past her to the door and locked it. She went on the defensive, but he merely shuffled past her again on his way to the far door. ‘Down here,’ he said, and Siobhan, feeling a bit like Alice at the mouth of the tunnel, eventually followed.

Down four or five steps, she came into a dank, windowless room, only partially lit. There were boxes piled high – more games and accessories, she guessed – plus a sink with kettle and mugs on the draining-board. But on a table in one corner sat what looked like a state-of-the-art computer, its large screen as thin as a laptop’s. She asked her guide what his name was.

‘Gandalf,’ he blithely replied.

‘I meant your real name.’

‘I know you did. But in here, that
is
my real name.’ He sat down at the computer and started work, talking as he moved the mouse. It took her a moment to realise that the mouse was cordless.

‘There are lots of games on the Net,’ he was saying. ‘You join a group of people to fight either against the program or against other teams. There are leagues.’ He tapped the screen. ‘See? This is a Doom league.’ He glanced at her. ‘You know what Doom is?’

‘A computer game.’

He nodded. ‘But here, you’re working in cooperation with others and against a common foe.’

Her eyes ran down the team names. ‘How anonymous is it?’ she asked.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, does each player know who his team-mate is, or who’s on the opposing team?’

He stroked his beard. ‘At most, they’d have a
nom de guerre
.’

Siobhan thought of Philippa, with her secret e-mail name. ‘And people can have lots of names, right?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘You can amass dozens of names. People who’ve spoken to you a hundred times … they come back under a new name, and you don’t realise you already know them.’

‘So they can lie about themselves?’

‘If you want to call it that. This is the
virtual
world. Nothing’s “real” as such. So people are free to invent virtual lives for themselves.’

‘A case I’m working on, there’s a game involved.’

‘Which game?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s got levels called Hellbank and Stricture. Someone called Quizmaster seems to be in charge.’

He was stroking his beard again. Since sitting at the computer, he’d donned a pair of metal-rimmed glasses. The screen was reflected in the lenses, hiding his eyes. ‘I don’t know it,’ he said at last.

‘What does it sound like to you?’

‘It sounds like SIRPS: Simple Role-Play Scenario. Quizmaster sets tasks or questions, could be to one player or dozens.’

‘You mean teams?’

He shrugged. ‘Hard to know. What’s the website?’

‘I don’t know.’

He looked at her. ‘You don’t know very much, do you?’

‘No,’ she admitted.

He sighed. ‘How serious is the case?’

‘A young woman’s gone missing. She was playing the game.’

‘And you don’t know if the two are connected?’

‘No.’

He rested his hands on his stomach. ‘I’ll ask around,’ he said. ‘See if we can track down Quizmaster for you.’

‘Even if I had an idea what the game involved …’

He nodded, and Siobhan remembered her dialogue with Quizmaster. She’d asked about Hellbank. And his reply?

You’d have to play the game …

She knew that requisitioning a laptop would take time. Even then, it wouldn’t be hooked up to the Net. So on her way back to the station she stopped off at one of the computer shops.

‘Cheapest one we do is around nine hundred quid,’ the saleswoman informed her.

Siobhan flinched. ‘And how long before I could be online?’

The saleswoman shrugged. ‘Depends on your server,’ she said.

So Siobhan thanked her and left. She knew she could always use Philippa Balfour’s computer, but she didn’t want to, for all sorts of reasons. Then she had a brainwave and got on her mobile instead. ‘Grant? It’s Siobhan. I need a favour …’

DC Grant Hood had bought his laptop for the same reason he’d bought a mini-disc player, DVD and digital camera. It was
stuff
, and stuff was what you bought to impress people. Sure enough, each time he brought a new gadget into St Leonard’s he was the centre of attention for five or ten minutes – or rather, the
stuff
was. But Siobhan had noticed that Grant was always keen to lend these bits of high-tech to anyone who asked. He didn’t use them himself, or if he did he tired of them after a few weeks. Maybe he never got past the owner’s manuals: the one with the camera had been chunkier than the apparatus itself.

So Grant had been only too happy to make a trip home, returning with the laptop. Siobhan had already explained that she would need to use it for e-mails.

‘It’s up and ready,’ Grant had told her.

‘I’ll need your e-mail address and pass name.’

‘But that means you can access
my
e-mails,’ he realised.

‘And tell me, Grant, how many e-mails do you get a week?’

‘Some,’ he said, sounding defensive.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll save them for you … and I promise not to peek.’

‘Then there’s the matter of my fee,’ Grant said.

She looked at him. ‘Your fee?’

‘Yet to be discussed.’ His face broke into a grin.

She folded her arms. ‘So what is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he told her. ‘I’ll have to think …’

Transaction complete, she headed back to her desk. She already had a connector which would link her mobile phone to the laptop. But first she checked Philippa’s computer: no messages, nothing from Quizmaster. Getting online with Grant’s machine took her only a few minutes. Once there, she sent a note to Quizmaster, giving him Grant’s e-mail address:

Maybe I want to play the game. Over to you. Siobhan
.

Having sent the message, she left the line open. It would cost her a small fortune when her next mobile bill appeared, but she pushed that thought aside. For now, the game itself was the only lead she had. Even if she had no intention of playing, she still wanted to know more about it. She could see Grant, the other side of the room. He was talking to a couple of other officers. They kept glancing in her direction.

Let them, she thought.

Rebus was at Gayfield Square, and nothing was happening. Which was to say, the place was a flurry of activity, but all the sound and fury couldn’t hope to hide a creeping sense of desperation. The ACC himself had put in an appearance and been briefed by both Gill Templer and Bill Pryde. He’d made it plain that what they needed was ‘a swift conclusion’. Both Templer and Pryde had used the phrase a little later, which was how Rebus knew.

‘DI Rebus?’ One of the woolly-suits was standing in front of him. ‘Boss says she’d like a word.’

When he walked in, she told him to close the door. The place was cramped and smelled of other people’s sweat. Space being at a premium, Gill was sharing this space with two other detectives, working in shifts.

‘Maybe we should start commandeering the cells,’ she said, collecting up mugs from the desk and failing to find anywhere better for them. ‘Could hardly be worse than this.’

‘Don’t go to any trouble,’ Rebus said. ‘I’m not staying.’

‘That’s right, you’re not.’ She put the mugs on the floor, and almost immediately kicked one of them over. Ignoring the spill, she sat down. Rebus stayed standing, as was obligatory, there being no other chairs in the room today. ‘How did you get on in Falls?’

‘I came to a swift conclusion.’

She glared at him. ‘Which was?’

‘That it’ll make a good story for the tabloids.’

Gill nodded. ‘I saw something in the evening paper last night.’

‘The woman who found the doll – or says she did – she’s been talking.’

‘“Or says she did”?’

He just shrugged.

‘You think she might be behind it?’

Rebus slipped his hands into his pockets. ‘Who knows?’