The Hunted, page 10
It had been an unproductive day. He’d strolled around the city streets and had even wandered out into the suburbs. He’d seen a few kids, as he ambled around, but they had all been under close surveillance, and anyway they hadn’t been right. They’d all been girls, which wasn’t what he was looking for.
It was a long game. You needed patience and a reserve of money to carry you through the lean, empty times. You’d think you’d found what you’d been looking for, but then you’d realize you hadn’t, so you’d go on looking, spreading the net wider and further, believing that sooner or later it would happen. It would all be worth it when the right one turned up. You could barely put a price on a thing like that. Finding the right kid, it was pay day.
Of course, others were looking too; there was always the competition. You had to be one step ahead of them. One step ahead of the opposition, and one step behind your prey. You just had to have better reflexes, better instincts, you needed to know where to look.
Anyway, it was dark now, and it was late. He could relax and clock off for a while and start looking again tomorrow. There weren’t going to be any kids around, not at this time of night. Not alone and unattended. If there were any kids out tonight, they’d probably have gorilla-sized minders and be handcuffed to them.
He checked his appearance in the mirror and, finding nothing offensive about it, he made sure that he had his wallet in his pocket before leaving the room and walking down the two flights of stairs to the street.
Tarrin had the address of the DNA bureau, and it wasn’t far, but just being out in the night made him nervous. What if someone tried to snatch him off the street? What if he ran into Deet? Deet would go ballistic. Maybe he should invent another story and have it ready in advance, just in case he did run into him. He could tell him that someone had tried to break into the motel room and he had climbed out of the window and run.
Only it would be obvious that he hadn’t climbed out, because when they returned to the motel, the windows would all be shut tight from the inside.
Then he saw him. He saw Deet, right there, inside a bar across the street. There he was, halfway along, perched on a stool. He had a beer in front of him, and he seemed in good humour. He was talking to a woman sitting on the stool next to him. It seemed like they were getting to know each other and were enjoying each other’s company. Deet leaned close and whispered something into the woman’s ear and, whatever he had said, it made her laugh, and it made him laugh too.
Tarrin stood watching. He knew that Deet couldn’t see him. Not even if he turned to the window and looked out. Deet wouldn’t see who was out in the street; he’d just see his own reflection and that of the woman beside him.
A man and a woman walked past, arm in arm, maybe on their way to the theatre or to the cinema.
‘Look, a boy there on his own.’
He caught the man’s voice as he spoke to the woman. He heard her tutting and saying something about the parents and how if she were lucky enough ever to have children in a million years she wouldn’t be letting her boy out on his own in the dark, dark, dangerous night, no sir, no way, no fear.
He realized he ought to be moving. He took a last look at Deet, who seemed to be happily planted in the bar for a good long while yet. He was beckoning the barman over and ordering refills for himself and his new lady friend. And he was paying. The woman glanced at the roll of money Deet peeled a bill from as he threw a note down on the bar top to pay for the drinks. She moved her stool a little closer and put her hand on his arm.
Why didn’t Deet ever save some? Tarrin wondered. He could have had a house, a home, a wife; they could almost have been some kind of family by now.
But no. Deet was a waster, born to move on, a regular rolling stone, and not a scrap of moss on him.
Tarrin turned away and hurried on along the street to the first, the second, the third intersection, and then he turned right. He walked past a small Italian restaurant. Two couples were going inside for dinner and as they opened the door the smell of food wafted out; it was the smell of basil and garlic and freshly made tomato sauce. It was nice, mouth-watering.
But Tarrin hurried on.
The DNA bureau was still a quarter of a mile away. He passed a long parade of shops, most of which were still open. It was a cosmopolitan quarter here, a place where all races and nationalities seemed to have found a home from home, and they had kept their own tastes and had brought their likings with them.
There were late-night grocery shops, shops selling halal meat, almost side by side with kosher butchers and vegetarian restaurants and launderettes. There were off-licences stocked with drink, and newsagents selling win-a-billion cards, and gadget places selling all the latest mobes, which could make calls, play vids and do almost everything for you, except eat your dinner.
Tarrin wasn’t afraid here. Not where it was busy and where it was light. People, as a whole, had a loathing for Kiddernappers and there was an almost universal revulsion towards them. It was the worst thing in the world to steal a child from its parents. All decent people knew that, and had they been witness to any attempt to snatch a child, they would have intervened on the child’s behalf.
Nevertheless, people stared at him as he hurried along. One or two of them shouted.
‘Hey, son – you OK?’
‘I’m OK.’
‘Where’s your dad? Where’s your parents?’
‘I’m OK.’
‘Who’s looking after you?’
‘I’m OK, thanks. Thanks for asking, but I’m OK.’
‘OK. Well, hurry home now.’
‘That’s where I’m going.’
‘There might be Kiddernappers about.’
‘I know. I’ll be careful. I’m OK. Thank you. But I’m OK.’
He hurried on, his hand gripped tightly round the money he had stolen from Mrs Weaver’s purse.
I’ll pay you back one day, honest I will, pay you back as soon as I can. I’ll get your address from Deet’s pocket book and put the money in an envelope and post it to you. I will, honest, I will. It wasn’t stealing, just a loan. I couldn’t ask first if I could borrow it, but it was just a loan. I’ll pay you it back – one day. I just needed it, you see. I had no choice. I just needed it more than you did.
The DNA bureau was just around the next corner now. But instead of increasing his speed, Tarrin stopped. He realized where he was. He was standing right outside the small theatre dedicated to the life, times and talents of Miss Virginia Two Shoes.
The place looked more glamorous than it had ever done during the day. There were neon lights and illuminated pictures, spotlit by hidden bulbs. They showed Miss Virginia Two Shoes in full flight, dressed in her cutest costumes and dancing her best steps. In one picture she was dressed up like a Hollywood film star, in fake diamonds and furs. She was made up to look like a grown-up, which was strange when her major attraction was that of being a child.
Tarrin stopped to look at the pictures. The light matrix display flashed out its message:
Miss Virginia Two Shoes. Fifty-Five Years
Young and Still Dancing.
Everybody’s Favourite Girl.
He fingered the money in his pocket. He would dearly have loved to have bought a ticket and gone inside. He wanted to see what the PP had done to her. The process held a macabre, eerie fascination for him. He was as much attracted by the idea of being a child forever as he was repelled by it.
It had occurred to him too that PP not only stood for Peter Pan, but for something else – Pied Piper. The man who had got rid of the Hamelin rats – but the townspeople wouldn’t pay him his due, so he played his pipe again and this time it was the children of the town who were mesmerized by his playing, who followed him and were spirited away. Never to be seen again.
PP. Peter Pan was good and friendly, a warm happy ideal, the best of childhood, freedom without responsibility. But the Pied Piper, that was different. That represented lives lost and abducted, parents dispossessed of their children, deprived of ever seeing them grow up. The PP implant robbed them of that, and left instead the artificiality of Miss Virginia Two Shoes, her youth as good as pickles in a jar.
Yes, Tarrin thought, maybe that was what she was in the end – a kind of dancing pickled onion.
Tappity-tappity-tap.
He could hear the sound of her dancing. He looked around, wondering where the noise was coming from, then he saw a fan, the vents of which opened and closed, opened and closed.
Tappity-tappity-tap. Then the vents closed, silence, then they opened, tappity-tappity-tap again.
It was tempting to pay the money and go in. She sounded almost as pretty as she looked, so light and quick on her feet. Then she began to sing. He pressed his ear to the vent to hear her.
‘On the good ship Lollipop . . .’
Then the vents closed. Then opened again.
He listened a while to her singing. He would hear a bar of the music, then the vents would close, then they would open and he would hear another bar, and then finally he heard applause.
She was a good singer. There was clapping and whistling and shouts of ‘Encore!’
The pictures made her look so sweet too. She was everyone he had always wanted but had never had, all somehow rolled into one – mother, sister, and sweet girl next door. She made him feel warm and wanted.
Yet she repelled him too.
Fifty-five years old and still dancing. Everybody’s favourite girl.
To be fifty-five and still have the face and body of a girl – it was creepy, repulsive.
Tarrin vowed then that he would never ever have the PP. Not even if Deet tried to force him. He’d run away first and take his chances with the Kiddernappers. He’d rather grow old. He’d rather die.
He walked on. He came to the corner, made another right, and then there he was, outside the DNA bureau.
It was still open. As he knew it would be. All the inner-city bureaux were emblazoned with neon signs reading ‘24/7 – 52/12’. They never closed and they offered everything. Not just DNA testing but general health checks, prescription dispensing, blood monitoring, checking of cholesterol levels, eye tests, hearing tests, you name it.
Tarrin pushed the door open and walked in. The place was empty of other customers right at that moment, but there was a friendly-looking young woman behind the counter, wearing glasses and dressed in a white lab coat. She didn’t really need to wear the lab coat, the boss just liked it that way. He felt that the sight of a white coat was reassuring for the customers. It was what they needed to see. It made things look clean and cool and professional.
‘Hi.’
‘Er . . . hi.’ Tarrin looked up at her, wondering if she was really as young as she seemed, or if she too was on the Anti-Ageing.
No. He didn’t think so. She didn’t have the look about her. She was genuinely young. About twenty, he reckoned. Friendly and nice.
‘Hi. You out on your own tonight?’
‘Er . . . yeah. Yeah.’
‘OK.’ She could see he didn’t want to be asked those sorts of questions. ‘So how can I help?’
‘I’d like a DNA profile, please.’
‘Of yourself?’
‘Yes. Profile, match and trace.’
‘You know that’s five hundred units?’
‘I know.’
He took the note out and laid it on the counter. He was embarrassed to see that it was crushed and crumpled. He had scrunched it up into a ball without knowing it, he had been holding on to it so tight.
He made an attempt to smooth the note out. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s OK.’ She took the money and put it in the till. ‘OK. Give me your hand.’
He placed it, palm upwards, upon the counter.
‘Index finger – OK?’
‘OK.’
She put on surgical gloves, then she wiped his finger with an antiseptic wipe; next she took a small device with a sharp metal point to it, pressed it against the plump part of his finger, warned him that . . .
‘This might hurt for a moment.’
Then clicked the top of the device. The point shot into his finger, almost immediately retracted and, a split second later, a tear of blood came out.
‘Will that be enough?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ she smiled. ‘It’ll do.’
She picked the drop of blood up using a thin glass capillary tube. She then transferred the blood to a test tube in a rack.
‘OK. Just get you a plaster.’
She put a sticking plaster over the spot on his finger, but it had already stopped bleeding.
‘OK. Just take a seat.’
‘Will it take long?’
‘Few minutes.’
He sat on a chair by the counter and watched as she took the test tube with the drop of blood in it, added some liquid to it and then placed it inside a large white machine.
‘Does that do it all?’
‘It does.’
‘Can I watch?’
‘Nothing to see, I’m afraid. It all happens inside.’
She started the machine and it droned faintly as it went into motion. There was nothing for Tarrin to do but to wait.
The woman leaned her elbows on the counter and smiled across at him. He saw that she had a name badge on her white coat, reading Julia.
‘Trying to trace your folks?’ she asked.
‘Kind of.’ Tarrin nodded, not sure how much personal information he could risk giving away. She seemed nice enough though.
‘You not with your mum and dad now?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m with Deet.’
‘Deet?’
‘He won me in a card game.’
Julia laughed. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘No. He won me. That’s what he says.’
She didn’t laugh any more. ‘That’s terrible. That’s awful. Can’t you get home?’
‘Don’t know where I came from,’ Tarrin said. ‘Don’t know how old I was when he won me. Or who I was. Or if I had brothers and sisters. Don’t know anything at all. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Can’t you go to the Child Bureau?’
‘They can’t do anything. Deet’s got proper papers. He’s my legal guardian. The Child Bureau can’t help.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘That’s why I’m here.’
The machine pinged and came to a stop. From the printer attached to it a strip of paper slowly emerged with Tarrin’s DNA profile upon it. Julia held it up.
‘There it is. That’s you. Your own genetic fingerprint. That’s how and why you’re unique. Nobody quite like you in the world.’
‘Can you try to match it for me? On your database.’
‘Sure. How close do you want?’
‘As close as you can get.’
‘OK. I’ll try for parents and siblings, aunts and uncles, round about there.’
Tarrin nodded. He felt nervous now and apprehensive.
‘OK,’ Julia said. ‘I’ll put it through.’
She fed the DNA profile into a scanner that transferred the codes into the computer memory. Then she specified the parameters, hit the search button and waited while it hunted for matches.
Tarrin was standing now, and all but leaning over the counter.
‘Any hits?’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘I’ll widen the parameters a little for you,’ she said, ‘then keep widening them till we get a match.’
She hit the search button again. And again.
‘Any hits now?’ Tarrin said.
She nodded. But she didn’t seem happy for him. Her face was tight-lipped, a little sad.
‘Something wrong, miss?’
‘No. Not exactly.’
‘What then?’
‘No, no . . .’
‘It is hitting?’
‘Yes, it’s hitting.’
‘It’s found them then? Has it? Has it found them? My family – are they on there? Has it found them, miss? Please, has it? Has it found my mum and dad?’
There were tears in her eyes – he could see them misting over.
‘What’s wrong, miss, please, what’s wrong?’
‘Wait. Just wait.’
‘Aren’t there any hits? Isn’t there anyone like me? Aren’t there any hits? Is it my DNA? What is it?’
‘Just wait. It’s stopped now. I’ll print them out. You’ll see. Just wait.’
She instructed the computer to print the hit file. The printer surged into life. Tarrin watched as a sheet of paper came out. He watched as the words upon it slid along. There was a name there . . . there was a name . . . a name . . . and a whereabouts . . . a place of origin . . . a last-known address . . . maybe even a telephone number . . . maybe even . . . even a photograph . . .
There was a name! Yes. There was a name. A name, a name, a name, a name. Of someone who shared his structure, his genetic make-up, a leaf, a branch, a twig, a stem, a trunk of his own family tree.
But then he saw why the assistant had been so sad for him.
It was because beneath the name was another name, and another after that. And another too, all the way to the bottom of the page. And after the page was another page, and another after that, and another still, and another, and another, and another.
‘Can’t you stop it! That’s too many. Can’t it stop?’
‘Don’t you want them all?’
‘There can’t be that many, there can’t! No!’
Still they kept coming, name on name, page on page.
‘The machine’s gone wrong. It can’t have matched me properly. The machine’s gone wrong.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.’
‘But what can I do?!’
Finally the printer stopped. There must have been a hundred printed pages lying in the tray. And on each page a hundred names. A hundred hundreds. Ten thousand matches.
‘There are more. I’ve just stopped it printing.’
‘How many more?’
‘Quite a few.’
‘Can’t you narrow it? Narrow the search?’
‘That’s as narrow as it will go for you on the database.’
‘But . . . all these people . . . how can they match me?’
