Proxy, page 19
After he’d finished with the kitchen, Ray next worked his way through the bathroom and then the bedroom.
Pillows as well as the mattress had been slashed open. Clothes had been pulled out of wardrobes and drawers and lay scattered all around. He searched through everything, peering inside drawers and under the bed, looking for any place useful information might have been hidden from immediate view.
It felt like hardly any time had passed at all before his bracelet beeped again to show he’d already used up two hours of his session.
Finally, he turned his attention to the living-room.
The couch had also been slashed open, while paperback books lay scattered across a wool rug. A television had been pulled down from one wall, presumably in the hope of finding something hidden behind it.
More searching through the wreckage turned up precisely nothing. Meanwhile, his proxy session slowly ticked down to its last minutes.
At last, Ray collapsed onto the ruined couch and stared around, trying hard to think if he’d missed anything.
At random, he picked up a few of the books dumped on the carpet and glanced through them. A couple of biographies, a smattering of thrillers and, more interestingly, a couple of non-fiction works about proxy—and one about Telop Industries specifically.
Then he noticed a scrap of torn paper poking out from between the pages of a book lying on the carpet.
Picking the book up, he flipped it around to see the cover: The New Slave Trade, by Martin Wilber. The back cover blurb described it as a journalistic exposé of the proxy trade in Asia. A photograph of the author showed a silver-haired man in his late fifties or early sixties.
The scrap tucked between the pages of the book had a London phone number scrawled on it. It looked like it had been torn from a notepad.
Ray accessed his proxies’ bracelet and tried calling the number. Someone picked up almost immediately.
“Hello?” said a man with an English accent, sounding wary.
“Who is this?” asked Ray, hearing his proxy’s voice form the words with its distinctive Gallic overtones.
A silence stretched out for some moments before a reply came. “Who gave you this number?” the voice asked, somewhat abruptly.
“Stacy,” said Ray, thinking fast. The man on the other end of the line would probably assume he was speaking to one of Stacy’s girlfriends. “I’m a friend of hers here in Paris,” he continued. “I came around to her flat and I found it wrecked.” He tried to inject a note of panic into the words. “I can’t find her anywhere. She left your number, and I thought you might be able to tell me where she is? Or if she’s in trouble of some kind?”
This time, the silence stretched out for so long Ray started to suspect the man listening on the other end of the line had hung up.
“My name’s Martin Wilber,” the other man said at last, and Ray let out a long, slow breath. He was speaking to the author of the book he had found. “I’m a friend of Stacy’s too, Miss…?”
“Bernard,” Ray blurted, without really thinking about it. “Audrey Bernard.”
Shit. Using his proxy’s real name was stupid, but he hadn’t had time to think of anything else.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Ray next asked.
Ray could practically feel the suspicion radiating from Wilber. “I’m afraid,” the journalist explained, “I’ve been trying to learn her whereabouts myself. I suppose you’ve seen the news about her?”
“I haven’t,” Ray lied in the husky tones of a Parisian drug addict. “Why? Has something happened to her?”
“If you don’t mind, Miss Bernard,” Wilber responded, “I would like to call you back shortly. Would that be acceptable?”
Ray ended the call. He had a feeling Wilber knew little more than he himself had been able to find out. If they’d talked any longer, they’d have just ended up going in circles, trying to dig information out of each other that they either didn’t have, or were unwilling to give up.
But at least, he now knew something he hadn’t before: Stacy Cotter had been in touch with an investigative journalist, one with a specific interest in the illegal proxy trade, just days before her disappearance.
Was it possible Raphael or someone in Telop had taken steps to prevent Stacy talking to Wilber? Was that why she’d been locked away from her own mother in a hospital by a man the world thought was her father, but wasn’t?
Ray stood up from the couch, filled with a sudden determination. If he couldn’t talk to Finch just yet, being abroad as he was, he could at least talk to Paul Green in the meantime. And if he didn’t get anything useful from Green, then maybe Wilber would be his next port of call.
But first, he had to wait for his proxy session to end. And that might take some time yet.
He left Stacy’s flat and hadn’t walked much more than a few blocks before he felt an onrushing wave of dizziness. His proxy session was ending sooner than he had expected.
Moving quickly, he found a public bench and sat on it, hands on knees and with his eyes closed. The dizziness grew and his senses span, and when next he opened his eyes he was somewhere else.
But not, as he had expected, in the kitchen of his new flat.
Instead, he found himself sitting at a table in a quiet restaurant. Disoriented, he used his bracelet to confirm his location: he was half a mile from his new home.
He looked down, seeing the remains of a meal which, when the bill arrived, turned out to have been one of the most expensive items on the menu.
Well, at least it’s inside me and not her, Ray thought belatedly, and ordered himself a coffee.
In truth, he could hardly blame Bernard, given she had absolutely no idea what he’d been up to with her own body. He paid his bill without wincing too much and headed for Hackney to find Paul Green.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
RAY
By the time Ray arrived at Paul Green’s wine bar it was early evening, and judging by the crowds spilling out of its doors and around the tables and chairs set out on the pavement, it was doing excellent business. So busy and crowded, in fact, that it felt like travelling back to an earlier age when several hundred million people hadn’t yet died in a series of increasingly brutal global pandemics.
Ray squeezed in through the entrance and looked around. The bar had Victorian styling complete with overstuffed chairs, brass fittings and large, ornate-looking mirrors mounted behind the bar. A waiter wearing a white apron and sporting a waxed moustache like something out of an old silent movie squeezed past him, carrying a tray of empty glasses.
Ray caught the waiter’s shoulder. “Excuse me,” he shouted over the din, “I’m looking for your boss, Paul Green.”
The waiter frowned. “What for?”
“It’s a private matter.” Ray nodded towards the bar. “Is he here?”
The waiter gave him a look as if he had said something offensive. “He is, but we’re a little busy, mate. Try some other time.”
The waiter started to move off, but Ray stopped him again. “I need to speak to him now,” he said insistently. “Tell him I’m here on Amy Cotter’s behalf. Believe me, he’ll want to see me when you tell him that name.”
The waiter did a bad job of hiding his irritation. “Just wait a minute then,” he said, raising a very un-Victorian data bracelet to his lips as he disappeared back into the mob.
A few minutes passed before the waiter returned for him. “The office entrance is around the other side of the building,” he told Ray. “Go back outside, around the corner and keep going until you get to number 429. Press the buzzer and he’ll let you up.”
The door clicked open within a second of Ray pressing the buzzer at number 249. He climbed two flights of stairs before arriving at a door marked GREEN MANAGEMENT AND EVENTS.
Green pulled it open before Ray could knock. Green was in his mid-forties, his hair cropped close to the skull to compensate for a large bald patch. He regarded Ray with evident fear, his mouth twisted into a threatening scowl.
“Who the hell are you?” Green demanded. “And why the hell should I talk to you about anything?”
“My name is Ray Thomas. I’m a private investigator working for Miss Cotter, and she’s given me a great deal of information about your relationship with Raphael Markov. So how about you start by telling me why you blackmailed him?”
Green’s ruddy complexion paled to a deathly white. For the second time in recent days, Ray watched someone struggle to decide whether or not to slam a door shut in his face.
Green swallowed and pulled the door wider open. “You’d better come in,” he said, his voice trembling audibly.
Ray stepped inside, seeing a small and somewhat nondescript office with a single desk, computer and a filing cabinet. Green closed the door and stood with his back pressed up against it as Ray took in his surroundings.
“All right,” said Green, “what exactly do you want from me?”
Ray leaned back against the edge of the desk and looked over at Green with his arms folded. He took his time, enjoying having the advantage. So far, Green hadn’t even tried to deny anything.
“I’m guessing you set up this business of yours using the money you got from blackmailing Markov,” Ray said with an unfriendly grin. “And there was me thinking crime doesn’t pay.”
“There’s nothing you nor anyone else can prove,” Green spat back, his eyes wide enough Ray could see the whites all around.
“Amy told me all about how you proxied with Raphael Markov,” Ray continued. “And it’s a matter of public record you worked as a driver for him and his family. That’s more than enough to open a private prosecution against you on blackmail and intimidation charges.”
A muscle twitched spasmodically in Green’s right cheek. “How much do you want?”
Definitely not a man to beat around the bush, thought Ray.
“I’m not looking for money,” he said.
Green blinked rapidly, his pale skin glistening with sweat. “You’re from Raphael then,” he muttered.
“What? No,” said Ray. “That’s not what I said. I—”
“Did he send you here to kill me?” Green demanded abruptly, pressing his back up against the door behind him as if he could squeeze between its atoms and out of Ray’s reach.
“I’m not a fucking hitman,” Ray almost shouted. “And I have no interest in extorting money from you. All I want from you is information. Understand?”
Green stared at him in abject confusion. “Information? What information?”
Ray sighed and stood back up from the desk. “To be clear, Mr Green, it’s not you I’m interested in. It’s Raphael Markov. I want to confirm that he came to you with an offer to proxy with him in order to have sex with his wife without her knowledge.” He gave Green a pointed look. “I don’t think I need to remind you that’s rape, on top of everything else.”
“Then…” Green shook his head. “Then you’re not here for me?”
“No,” Ray admitted, “I’m not.” At least, not in the sense Green meant. And not that he wouldn’t love to see the sweaty little shit go down for a good long stretch.
Green licked his lips. “And if I ask you to leave?”
“I’ll leave soon enough if you answer my questions,” said Ray. “How did Raphael get hold of the proxy beads?”
Green again looked confused. “What?”
“The proxy beads,” Ray repeated patiently. “The ones you and he used to swap skins with each other.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Nobody in the world had heard of proxy before 2032. Except according to Amy, you were proxying with Raphael up to two years before then. How could Raphael have got hold of proxy beads when, as far as anyone at the time knew, no such thing was even possible?”
Green was silent for several seconds. “Who else have you talked to about this?”
Ray briefly considered his response. “Why does it matter?”
Green let out a shaky breath. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Raphael Markov. I wrote down everything that happened between me and him, on paper, along with dates, times, and places, and made duplicate copies. I put it all in sealed envelopes and gave each to a different law firm with strict instructions to mail them to a dozen news organisations if anything…” he swallowed. “If anything were to happen to me.”
Green hesitated for a moment before continuing. “And Raphael told me to my face if I ever talked about this to anyone, he’d have me killed and to hell with the consequences.”
That, at least in part, explained the man’s evident terror. “Nobody but you knows I’m here,” Ray reassured him.
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“I can. Now, how about you answer my question? Or, instead, I can just let the police ask you the same questions.”
Green looked like he was about to argue, then visibly deflated as if someone had stuck a pin in him and air had come rushing out.
Stumbling past Ray, he collapsed into a swivel chair behind his desk. Reaching into a drawer, he lifted out a bottle of Glenmorangie and a small glass, pouring himself a shot without offering any to Ray.
“Before I say anything,” said Green, “swear to me you were never here.”
“I was never here,” Ray repeated, feeling faintly ridiculous. He turned to face Green across the desk. “But I’m not leaving until you tell me everything you know.”
“The reason Raphael had proxy beads is that he invented them,” said Green. “Or someone working for him did, anyway.”
Ray stared at him. “You’re certain about this? Telop Industries were definitely behind proxy?”
Green nodded. “Raphael told me himself it was something they’d been developing in secret. After that, it got out somehow. I don’t know how.”
At last, thought Ray. It’s all coming together. “When did Raphael first suggest you proxy with him?”
“A few days before he got married,” Green replied, draining the rest of his whiskey and immediately pouring himself another. “Honestly, I thought he was out of his mind when he told me what it was. It sounded like science fiction.” He drained the second glass as well and chuckled to himself. “I started to change my mind when he told me how much he’d pay me.”
“But why wait until years later to blackmail Raphael?” Ray asked. “Why not do it as soon as he stopped proxying with you, or even after he fired you?”
“Fired me?” Green laughed bitterly. “He didn’t fire me—I quit. Although to be honest, I’d expected him to fire me one way or the other eventually. I was sick of him. And…well, there were other reasons.”
Ray tried not to show his eagerness. “Go on.”
“I don’t know what Raphael had got himself into, but the last time I ever proxied with him and found myself back in my own body, I was lying in filth in a deserted alley. I’d had the shit beaten out of me. I think someone must have found me and called an ambulance because the next thing I knew I was in a hospital.” He shook his head, his expression making it clear he was reliving one of the worst experiences of his life. “I had lost a lot of blood. The doctors told me I had permanent damage to my kidneys, and ever since I’ve had memory issues. I couldn’t tell them the truth about what had happened because they’d have thought I was crazy.” He shrugged. “Like you said, nobody knew about proxy back then.”
Green seemed calmer now that he’d talked to someone about it. Or perhaps the whiskey had just worked its magic. “So you had no idea what Markov was doing with your own body while you and he were proxying?” Ray asked.
Green laughed sourly. “I can make some guesses.” He held up an arm. “They told me in the hospital I’d had a heroin overdose. In fact, that was the least of what he’d been up to in my skin. I didn’t believe them until they showed me the results of a toxicology report.”
Christ. “He was taking drugs the whole time he was in your skin?”
“Again,” said Green with a visible shudder, “that was the least of it. I confronted him about it, but what I didn’t understand, or hadn’t quite realized, was that while I was in control of his body, he could do what the hell he wanted while he was in mine. Although I figured it out pretty quickly while I was in that hospital bed.” He shuddered. “I told Raphael I’d had enough.”
“Did he say why he’d done it?”
“He tried to justify his actions by saying everything he had done with my body was an experiment to test the limitations of the proxy link.” He made a face full of disgust and self-loathing. “He said he wanted to see if taking drugs while he was in my body could affect him in his own.”
Ray shook his head. “That doesn’t work. The drugs only affect the brain of the person that takes them, not the brain of whoever’s proxying with them.”
“Yes, of course, but nobody knew that at the time. Lucky me, I got to be the guinea pig so he could be the first to prove it.” Green’s expression became savage. “See, what I realized then is that if you work for Raphael, he thinks he owns you, body and soul.” He gripped the now-empty whiskey glass as if trying to shatter it.
“Is that when he fired you?”
“No, I already told you I quit. And that was the end of it, at least until I discovered everything else he’d been doing while he’d been proxying with me.” He stared hard at Ray. “I couldn’t get close enough to him to kill him, so I blackmailed him instead, and took him for a lot more than he’d paid me in the first place.”
“Hold on,” said Ray. “What do you mean, ‘everything else he’d been doing’?”
“After I quit, I drove other people, at least while there was still money in it. Mostly old and rich people who didn’t trust AI or self-driving vehicles. One time, I had a client who insisted he knew me even though I’d never set eyes on him before.” He looked Ray in the eye. “He kept calling me Raphael.”
