Proxy, page 18
“With the greatest of respect,” he muttered, “I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”
Eunice gave him the kind of look usually reserved for small children who refused to eat their vegetables. “I know you think I’m being a nosy old lady, but it’s preferable to taking people at their word and then having to send Stanislav and Gunter round to break their legs when they screw me over, don’t you agree?”
Ray swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “So I guess I won’t be getting the information?”
“On Doctor Finch? Of course you will, for old times’ sake. Check your bracelet.”
Ray did. He found Eunice had sent him Finch’s entire employment history, most of which had taken place under the aegis of various subsidiaries of Telop industries. And while the Abbey Rush Centre wasn’t technically owned by the Markov’s, it had, as he knew from the Centre’s own notice board, benefited from Raphael Markov’s substantial donations.
Finch worked for Markov.
Then Ray noticed something that caused his brow to crease in a frown: Finch was out of the country—physically out of the country, and not just using a legal proxy.
He was at a conference in Seattle and wouldn’t be back for a couple of days. Which was unfortunate, because Ray very much wanted to ask Lewis Finnegan’s former employer some very hard questions.
“I don’t suppose you had a chance to look into Sizemore?” Ray asked with a sigh.
As soon as Amy Cotter had sent Ray a picture of Isaac Sizemore, it was obvious that Sizemore and Fiori were one and the same. Even so, if he was going to track either Sizemore or his daughter down, he needed background information on the scientist that only Eunice could provide.
“There’s not much about Sizemore I can find out, I’m afraid,” said Eunice. “You told me he used to work for Telop, but disappeared?”
Ray nodded. “And assumed a false identity.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” said Eunice, sounding genuinely aggrieved. “But he’s clearly highly skilled at covering his tracks. When he disappeared, he disappeared good.”
“So you haven’t been able to find out anything about him? Where he’s been living all these years, either as Fiori or Sizemore or under some other name, or anything like that?”
“Not a sausage. Really,” Eunice added with a touch of regret, “someone that good should be working for me.” She lifted the blue china plate and held it out to him. “Fairy cake to go?”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
ELIJAH
Davie, Lorenz’s second-in-command, brushed past Elijah in the prison laundry where they were both working and pushed something into his hand.
Elijah palmed it and immediately dropped it into the pocket of his overalls before continuing his work.
Forty-five minutes later he was back in his cell. His cell-mate wasn’t around, so he tucked himself into a corner of his bunk and pulled out whatever it was Davie had slipped him. It proved to be a sheet of e-paper folded into a small, uneven rectangle.
Smoothing the crumpled sheet flat, Elijah tugged at its corners until the shape-memory polymer caused it to turn rigid. A few taps and swipes, and he was linked into the Worldnet via a prepaid secure connection.
A lack of time forced him to work fast. Thanks to the business card he’d discovered in an abandoned office, Elijah now knew that the man who’d supplied him and Rob with the hopscotch recipe was a Doctor Zachary Finch, and that he ran some kind of psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Southampton. There were only a few other people with the same name in mainland Britain, and a quick glance at their online profiles allowed him to quickly determine that none of them were the man Elijah had encountered years before.
That left another question: was Finch himself responsible for creating hopscotch, or was he, as Elijah suspected, a go-between for someone else?
Elijah ran more searches, desperately hoping to dig up something that might directly connect Finch either to hopscotch or the original proxy, but found nothing.
With a grimace, he tore the sheet into thin strips and flushed them down the cell toilet. He saw a faint glitter of inlaid circuitry as the torn strips swirled down the drain.
He’d hoped—really, really hoped—that he wouldn’t have to go back to Lorenz and rent yet another skin. But it appeared he had no choice if he wanted to find out more.
At least no one else in the prison had tried to kill him again. But that, he greatly suspected, was only a matter of time.
Davie strolled past his open cell, walking deliberately slowly, and Elijah stepped up close to him.
“I need to speak to Lorenz again,” he said.
Davie responded with a grunt of assent. “What about?”
“I need to get outside again,” said Elijah in a half-whisper. “For longer this time.”
Davie snorted a laugh as if this were the funniest thing he had ever heard and kept on walking.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
RAY
Ray could still remember the days when medical visas weren’t required to travel and wanting to go on holiday was sufficient reason to turn up at an airport. No surprise, then, that after a third global pandemic, proxy had found some measure of respectability within the international business community, even if its legal status remained somewhat murky.
It had occurred to Ray it would be worth visiting Stacy Cotter’s flat in Paris to see what clues or information he might find there, and that meant proxying with someone who was actually in Paris. Travelling there in person would be beyond his financial means.
Using one of the new, legal proxy clinics was, however, out of the question: not just because of the bureaucracy involved, but because he’d have to state the exact purpose of his trip and take out insurance guaranteeing whomever he proxied with didn’t come to harm and that he wouldn’t do anything illegal.
Like, say, breaking into someone’s flat as part of a private investigation being carried out in an entirely different country.
And since such legal proxies were also often chaperoned because of precisely such concerns, that left Ray with little choice but to pursue less legal avenues.
After making some calls, Ray left his newly rented flat and hailed a passing taxi, Half an hour later it deposited him outside a row of derelict shops that looked like they’d been shuttered for decades—and in most cases, probably had.
One, however, had a new-looking security camera mounted above its shuttered door. Ray banged on the shutter and waved up at the camera.
Another five minutes passed before the shutter rolled up and a craggy-faced man in his late fifties stepped out of the doorway, wearing a greasy-looking car coat over a T-shirt and jeans. The faint lines of spidery tattoos showed on his stubbled scalp. He glanced up and down the street before so much as looking at Ray.
“Hello Archie,” said Ray.
Archie gave him a long, piercing look. “Just to be clear,” said Archie, “if this is some kind of bust you won’t find anything here. What did you call me for?”
Ray glanced up and down the street. “Can I at least come inside, or do you want to talk business out here?”
“In,” Archie commanded, stepping aside, and Ray entered the darkened shop.
Archie rolled the shutter back down. For a moment they were in darkness, then a portable lamp sitting on a dusty counter came to life, filling the small space with a pale yellow light. Empty shelves adorned the walls, while rat droppings lay scattered across the floor.
“All right,” said Archie, turning to face him, “what is it?”
“Kind of a special request,” said Ray. “Like I said when I called. I want to proxy to Paris.”
“In case you haven’t heard,” said Archie, “that’s pretty much legal these days.”
“What I want to do there isn’t,” said Ray. “Plus, I don’t have the time for all the paperwork involved.”
Archie put up both hands. “Don’t tell me anything more,” he said. “I’m strictly supply and demand.” He peered at Ray. “You still working for Tip?”
“This is something of my own I’m working on.”
“I want you to understand,” said Archie, “that if I were to help you in any way—and I’m not saying yet that I will, or that we even had this conversation—that you and Tip are strictly hands-off where me and my operation are concerned.”
On the walk there, Ray had found himself reflecting on the fact that he was about to make a dodgy deal with a proxy dealer, after having once been framed for doing dodgy deals with proxy dealers. He was now, in fact, committing the very crime that had long ago lost him his job.
With bitter irony, he realized he didn’t care as much as he thought he would.
“I can’t make any promises,” said Ray, “since the Met does what the Met does. I don’t have any control over their investigations.” He thought for a moment. “Tell you what. I hear anything related to you, I’ll let you know.”
Archie regarded him in silence for long seconds. “I’m charging you extra,” he said at last, then named a price high enough that it felt like a physical blow to Ray’s belly.
“Fucking hell, Archie. Maybe you’d like to drain some of my blood while you’re at it? See if you can get a price for it on the open market?”
Archie raised his eyebrows. “Still a lot cheaper than going there in person. You buying or not?”
Ray gritted his teeth and tapped at his bracelet. “That’s half upfront,” he said. “Now here’s what I want.”
It took the rest of the day for Archie to get everything arranged according to Ray’s specifications, and while he waited back at his flat, he looked into Paul Green, Raphael Markov’s former driver. The man who, according to Stacy’s mother, had been secretly proxying with Raphael back when no one had ever heard of either proxy or hopscotch.
Paul Green wasn’t exactly an uncommon name, but he’d been Raphael Markov’s driver, and that narrowed things down.
Ray soon tracked down two Paul Greens who fit the bill. One had retired home to Jamaica, while the other, a grinning, red-faced man who looked like someone who had found his niche in life, now owned a wine bar in Hackney.
Both were on social media. Ray took screen captures of their photographs and forwarded them to Amy Cotter, who responded within minutes: Paul Green was the owner of the wine bar. Probably, thought Ray, it was more fun and a lot more profitable than driving rich sociopaths around.
Evening arrived by the time Archie sent him a message to let him know everything was set up.
Ray headed back to the disused shop. Archie himself was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he found a kid with a furtive expression hanging around outside the shop, a bicycle leaning against the shutter next to him.
“Archie sent you?” Ray asked the kid.
The kid glanced around, then slapped a small plastic baggie into one of Ray’s hands before getting back on his bicycle and cycling away at speed. Ray opened the bag and found it contained a single proxy bead and a disposable applicator.
I really hope this is worth it, he thought, staring after the kid, who had vanished into the evening gloom.
Back home, Ray dropped the bag and its contents onto the kitchen table, then sat and stared at it for several minutes before putting in another call.
“You got it?” Archie’s voice sounded thick and breathy down the line.
“Any trouble setting everything up for tonight?”
Archie chuckled under his breath. “A bit short notice and all, but doable in the end. You ever, uh, proxy with a woman?”
Ray stared down at his bracelet. “Why do you ask?”
“Because finding a willing anonymous proxy partner at such short notice isn’t exactly easy if you aren’t prepared to tell them exactly what their skin’s going to be used for. So unless you want to wait a while longer, by which I mean several more days, the best I can do for you is this French bird I found.”
Ray groaned inwardly. He wasn’t a prude, but it wasn’t something he had, in fact, done before. “Several days?”
“At least.” Archie coughed and cleared his throat. “Same price, mind. No discount.”
“Fine. She’ll do.” Ray massaged his forehead with the fingers of one hand. He could feel a headache coming on.
“What time do you want it to start?”
“If she’s willing, now is as good a time as any.”
“I’ll let her know,” said Archie. “Wait for the go-ahead. It won’t be long.”
He hung up and Ray settled back, trying to make himself comfortable.
Thirteen minutes later, Ray received an encrypted message informing him that his anonymous proxy partner was ready. Fitting the proxy bead into its applicator, he leaned forward with one elbow on the kitchen table and used his other hand to place the applicator’s nozzle against the back of his neck over the spine before pulling the trigger.
A sharp, burning sensation quickly gave way to numbness. Then came a familiar rush of vertigo as the proxy bead connected with its entangled twin in the neck of an anonymous French woman in Paris.
Ray dropped the applicator, folded his arms on the table and rested his forehead on top of them, eyes closed.
The vertigo faded. The air felt suddenly cooler against Ray’s skin, and tasted subtly different when next he drew a breath. He took a moment to catalogue the sensations flooding into the senses of his borrowed skin.
He opened his eyes.
Rather than sitting at a table, he now found himself in a reclined position on a worn couch and staring up at a peach-coloured ceiling.
He sat up slowly, giving himself time to acclimate to his new and temporary skin. It felt different from what he was used to—hardly surprising, under the circumstances. He felt lighter, somehow, and there were other, harder to define sensations that were deeply unfamiliar to him.
Rather than think about them, he did his best to put them out of his mind.
A crumpled and used proxy applicator lay on a coffee table next to the couch. Babbling French voices came from a tablet propped on a mantelpiece which, he saw, was running a live news program.
Moving carefully, Ray stood, observing as he did so that his rented skin wore loose jeans and a dark, patterned blouse. He caught sight of his skin’s breasts beneath the blouse, and a thousand half-remembered comedy sketches from the early days of proxy immediately came to mind.
“Just get it over with, Ray,” he muttered under his breath.
The words came out low and throaty and irritatingly seductive.
Following procedure, Ray carried out a mirror check in his skin’s tiny bathroom. His proxy was in her mid to late thirties and had dark pouches beneath eyes that looked timeworn. He didn’t fail to notice the yellow bruises that covered one arm and the fading track marks on the other.
It didn’t take much to guess why his proxy needed money so badly she’d be willing to proxy with a complete stranger at such short notice.
He found an envelope taped to one corner of the mirror above the sink. Opening it, he found it contained a set of house keys, a car-hire pass with a photograph of his proxy and the name Audrey Bernard, along with an off-the-shelf burner bracelet.
He pocketed the first two and slipped the bracelet onto his proxy’s wrist. Tapping on its screen showed that it had been preloaded with sufficient Euros to get him around Paris for at least the next couple of hours.
Less than a minute later, Ray left the flat and went looking for a taxi.
It felt more than a little odd to walk in his borrowed skin. It didn’t move in a way that felt at all right. Before long he saw an empty- and battered-looking Renault driving past and raised his arm. His bracelet flashed, and the car pulled up beside him, its door automatically sliding open.
Before long, bleak concrete tenements and high-rises gave way to elegant Parisian neighbourhoods that seemed to come from a different world from his own. At one point he thought he glimpsed the Eiffel tower far off in the distance.
The Renault let him out next to a four-storey tenement of wrought-iron balconies and wood-shuttered windows. A row of buzzers next to an entrance door included one marked with the name COTTER, S.
Ray pressed the buzzer. He didn’t expect a response, but better safe than sorry. He waited a minute, then gave the building’s door an experimental tug. Locked.
Next he tried pressing another buzzer selected at random. A brusque voice rattled at him in rapid-fire French.
“Excuse me,” he said into the buzzer, trying his best to sound helpless, “I’ve rented a flat here and I can’t seem to—”
Ray heard the click of a receiver being hung up.
He tried three other buzzers. No response from any of them.
The fourth proved to be the charm, however. He didn’t even get the chance to open his mouth before they buzzed him in. Probably, he thought, stepping into a cold and darkened vestibule, someone was expecting a delivery.
A voice from above echoed down the steep stone steps and he guessed he’d been right. He stayed where he was until he heard a door close again.
He found Stacy’s flat on the third floor. To his surprise, when he pushed at it, he found her door to be unlocked.
Taking a deep breath, he eased the door open as quietly as he could. Even though he couldn’t himself come to harm, he didn’t want his proxy to suffer injury of any kind.
He stood and listened, but heard nothing. Some inner sense born of experience told him the flat was empty. On stepping inside, he found someone had thoroughly trashed Stacy’s flat. No surprises there.
In the kitchen, someone had pulled all the drawers out and tossed their contents on the floor. Rotting orange peel and other mouldering rubbish lay heaped next to an upturned bin. It was much the same story in the living-room and the single bedroom; the whole place had been turned over.
Returning to the kitchen, Ray’s bracelet beeped to let him know the first hour of his proxy session was already up.
He grimaced and got back to searching through the wreckage. Most likely anything genuinely useful—anything that might serve as a clue to how or why Stacy’s true father, Isaac Sizemore, had snatched her out from under Raphael’s nose—was long gone.
