Proxy, page 25
“You’d be bullshitting me if you did.” Ray picked up a chip and pointed it at Elijah. “You’re Elijah Waits. You’re proxying with someone.”
That got him a hard stare. But after a beat Elijah’s expression softened and he picked up his coffee. “And fuck you too,” he muttered.
Ray couldn’t hide his satisfaction, which got him a sour look from the man across the table from him.
“I remember you too,” said Elijah. “A bent ex-copper who got kicked out of the force. I figure that puts us about even, don’t you?” He sipped his coffee and regarded Ray from beneath hooded eyelids. “How about you tell me what you were doing, following Finch?”
“I might ask you the same,” said Ray. “Did you know what was going to happen back there?”
“With the gorillas and all that shit?” Elijah snorted a laugh. “Christ, no.”
“Are you in prison right now, Elijah?”
Elijah stared back at him with a defiant expression, his lip curled.
“Listen,” said Ray, “you saved my life back there. So I’m not going to turn you in, if that’s what you’re wondering. And while we’re at it, I might not be a policeman any more, but I’m not fucking bent.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I saw you hanging around the Abbey Rush Centre this morning, so it must be hopscotch you’re using to proxy out of jail. Correct?”
Elijah inclined his head a fraction of a degree.
“One way or the other,” Ray continued, “you’ll be back inside in a few days. So while we’re here, let’s just agree to talk candidly and nothing either of us says goes beyond this table. Agreed?”
Elijah pursed his lips. “Fine.”
But even as Ray set out the conditions of their conversation, a wall-mounted television visible behind Elijah’s shoulder drew his attention. It showed a photograph of a much younger Amy Cotter in an evening gown. It looked like it had been taken at some red-carpet event from years before. A younger-looking Raphael Markov stood by her side. A news ticker beneath the still image announced her death by suicide.
Elijah glanced over his shoulder at the screen, then looked back at Ray with a frown. “Who is she?”
“Amy Cotter,” said Ray, his hunger replaced by a trickle of ice water down his spine. “She’s Raphael Markov’s ex-wife. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t die of suicide.”
Somehow, this development seemed to ease the tension between them. They talked long into the night, and Ray told Elijah about how he’d come to be thrown out of the force, and of how he’d been expertly framed.
Elijah, in turn, spoke of his increasing conviction that Finch was responsible not only for an attempt on his life, but of framing him for his friend’s murder.
All of which was yet more evidence that Finch, hopscotch and the Markov family were all intimately linked.
Ray felt little hesitation in telling Elijah everything he knew, since he needed whatever information the proxy dealer could provide him with in return. Plus, Elijah was street-smart enough to be able to tell if Ray was holding anything back.
And the fact was, Ray badly needed an ally. It wasn’t long before he got to the part about Amy’s frantic phone call, and then he showed Elijah the video she had sent.
Elijah’s brows furrowed in confusion as the video ended. “It doesn’t make sense. If Raphael is really David Markov proxying in his son’s body, how would that even work if Raphael’s father’s been in a coma all these years?”
“Maybe he wasn’t in a coma,” said Ray. “We only have his family’s word that his mind was affected. And by family, I mean the man we thought was his son.” He thought for a moment. “Let’s say for argument’s sake it’s only his body that’s affected, while his mind remains perfectly functional. In that case, he’s locked inside his own skull with no way to communicate with the outside world. Except,” he added, “through proxy.”
Elijah grimaced. “Jesus.”
“Let’s go back over what we know so far,” said Ray, stirring some milk into his tea. “Raphael and David Markov had access to proxy years before anyone else knew it existed. Which means it must have been created by Telop industries.”
Elijah nodded. “And David Markov had the first of his strokes just before Raphael and this Cotter woman got divorced?”
“Precisely. So based on what Amy saw in that video I just showed you, here’s what I think might have happened. Either someone persuaded Raphael Markov to proxy with his father after he was incapacitated, or he was forced into it. As far as the first option goes, there’s precedent. People rendered unable to speak or otherwise communicate are allowed to use proxy to speak with family members or to make or agree to financial or legal arrangements. And Telop are one of the biggest research and development companies around.” He shrugged. “It might even have been Raphael’s idea, if he needed to smooth the transition of control from father to son.”
“And then what?” said Elijah. “Markov Senior just decided to stay permanently in his son’s body?” He shook his head. “Either way, he had to have had help of some kind. Even if it was just someone to, I dunno, club Raphael over the head and shoot a bead into him.”
“My guess is Finch was David Markov’s accomplice in all of this,” said Ray. “It might explain why he killed Finch back there, because he was afraid he might talk under pressure. Which he would have.”
Elijah massaged his brow and stared past Ray’s shoulder. “David Markov would have had to renew the proxy link with his son around the clock. Up to half a dozen times a day, I figure, in case Raphael regained control of his body and escaped the old fuck.” His eyes grew round and he looked back at Ray. “Or he would have, until hopscotch came along. Then he’d only have to do it maybe once a week, to be sure.”
“You’re saying that’s why hopscotch was invented?” Ray asked. “So David Markov could proxy with his son for longer stretches?”
“I don’t know,” said Elijah, his gaze again becoming distant. “Maybe. Or maybe so he could do what he did back there with those animals. Or maybe one or the other was just an unexpected side-benefit. Only way to know is to ask him.” His gaze flicked back to Ray. “How do you think all this ties in with what you told me happened at that hospital? The Peartree?”
“You remember I told you about Isaac Sizemore?”
Elijah nodded.
“He worked for the Markov’s,” Ray continued. “Snatched Stacy Cotter, Amy Cotter’s daughter, right out from under Raphael Markov’s nose.”
“You mean David Markov,” Elijah corrected him.
Ray made a dismissive gesture. “You know what I mean. I don’t know exactly how this all fits together, but they’re all pieces of the same puzzle.”
Elijah looked doubtful for some reason.
There’s one thing doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.
“Go on,” said Ray.
“You remember that thing,” said Elijah, “from when you were a kid? When you try to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time?” He raised one hand over his head, placing the other over his proxy’s belly.
Ray stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean,” said Elijah, “it’s hard to do, especially for very long. Because they’re two independent actions, right? And it’s almost impossible to coordinate both actions effectively, because you have to think about either one, or the other.”
He brought his hands back down. “While your attention is on one, you see, you lose coordination with the second.”
Ray nodded. “Okay.”
“Well,” Elijah continued, “if that’s hard to do just with your own two hands, how hard can it be for one man to control a bunch of fucking monkeys all at once, so that each of them is carrying out independent actions while they’re all supposedly under his direct control?” He tapped one finger on the table. “That’s the thing about proxy, isn’t it? Even if you could control both your own body and someone else’s at once while proxying with them, one of those bodies would just be standing around doing nothing most of the time because you can only focus your attention on one point of view at a time.” He shook his head. “The human mind isn’t designed to process information in parallel that way.”
“Okay,” Ray said thoughtfully. “I see what you mean. It should be impossible.”
“And those people at the Peartree Institute, the way you describe it, they were all coordinated with each other too, weren’t they?” Elijah continued. “The same way those monkeys were.” He shook his head. “I don’t see how any one human being could control all those people.”
He had a point, Ray could see. “Look,” he said, draining his mug, “we could debate this until the cows come home, but right now we need to focus on what we do know.”
Ray rubbed his hands over his unshaven cheeks before continuing. “Right now, my priority is finding Stacy Cotter. Either her or Sizemore, although I have a feeling they’re together somewhere. If I can talk to them, I know I can figure out the rest.”
“They could be anywhere,” Elijah pointed out.
“That reminds me,” said Ray, tapping at his bracelet and studying something on its screen.
After a moment the bracelet chimed. “Eunice?” Ray said into it. “Any more updates on what we were talking about earlier?”
A woman’s voice with a strong East End accent emerged from the bracelet. “Sending everything through to you now,” the person on the other end of the line said. “Check your messages.”
“Thanks Eunice,” said Ray, tapping again at his bracelet. Elijah could see he was reading something from its screen, a grin slowly spreading across the ex-cop’s face.
“Good news?” Elijah asked.
“Like I said, Isaac Sizemore either planned or was involved in the plan to break Stacy Cotter out of the Peartree. And he went to extraordinary lengths to cover his tracks.” He allowed himself a small smile. “But there’s no such thing as a truly watertight plan.”
Elijah lifted his eyebrows. “He cocked up?”
“Turns out,” Ray explained, “that one of the vehicles Sizemore and Cotter used to get away was registered to the address of property owned by Telop. No other vehicle there had any kind of link whatsoever to that company.” He looked at Elijah with a triumphant expression. “And if you map the routes taken by all the vehicles I’ve been able to trace, they’re like an arrow pointing towards that address, in the North of England.”
Elijah nodded. “So you think if we go to that address, we’ll find them?”
“It’s the only remaining lead I have,” said Ray, “apart from the journalist I mentioned. And I’m near as certain he knows a lot less about all this than either of us.”
Elijah looked doubtful. “Why would they hide out in some place that belongs to the very people who mean them harm?”
“Maybe they’re hiding in plain sight,” said Ray. “Maybe it was the best out of a bunch of not very good options. But unless you can think of something better, I figure that’s our next stop.”
Elijah gave him a look. “‘Our’?”
Ray stood, grinning down at the proxy dealer. “You want to sort this out, don’t you? Otherwise, why go to all the trouble of proxying out of a jail cell?”
“Fine,” said Elijah. “So where exactly is it we’re going?”
“The Kielder Forest,” said Ray. “It’s up north, like I said. Just a hair’s breadth south of the Scottish border.” He gave Elijah a speculative look. “How many more days do you have left in that skin?”
“Couple of days, I figure.”
Ray glanced out the window at the night sky. “It’s a six- or seven-hour drive, but if we start now, we can sleep in your car if need be and be there by morning.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
STACY
The morning after Isaac had brought her to the ancient and crumbling mansion in the north of England, and while Zero was preparing something for them all to eat, Stacy took herself for a walk in the surrounding woods.
She took it slowly at first, her chest still hurting through the numbing haze of painkillers she had been supplied with. She had been given several injections as well, that made it easier to move her injured arm. She wasn’t entirely mended, but she was on the way.
She’d got little more than a hundred metres from the house before she saw a middle-aged man wearing a Barbour jacket and a flat cap moving through the trees ahead of her. He had a broken-open shotgun cradled over one elbow, and although he hadn’t yet seen her, he looked this way and that, as if searching for something in the surrounding woods.
At first Stacy froze in indecision. Was this Zero, or someone else? Or if this was in fact a local and not a proxy, and he saw her and asked what she was doing there…what should she say?
She took a step back and heard a twig snap under her heel. The sound resonated through the surrounding trees like a gunshot.
The man in the Barbour jacket turned to see her. He lifted a hand in greeting, coming closer. She saw that he walked a little unsteadily, and he looked, she thought, too thin to be healthy.
“You should get back inside,” he said in a Scottish accent. He nodded to the house behind her. “Your father will wonder where you are.”
Stacy felt relief flood through her. “For a second there I thought…” She finished with a shrug.
The man—yet another of Zero’s many proxies, as she now understood him to be—shook his head. “There’s no one around for miles that isn’t under my control, Miss Cotter. But you shouldn’t stray too far from the house.”
Stacy nodded and turned back. It was one thing to accept that the person helping Isaac and her wasn’t really a person at all—that he was, instead, some kind of machine Isaac had helped build—but part of her still struggled to accept that the many proxies she’d encountered since escaping the hospital were collectively and simultaneously under that same machine’s control.
Even so, she’d become almost used to seeing complete strangers in or around the house, every last one of them identifying him or herself as Zero. They came and went at all times of the night and day, in cars and vans or on motorbikes and even on foot.
It was amazing how something so utterly eerie could so quickly become almost commonplace. And yet, some of them looked like they could barely stand.
Back inside the house, she went through to the kitchen. There, she found Isaac in conversation with Zero who, on this occasion, spoke through the mouth of a distinguished-looking Indian gentleman in his fifties or sixties. He had a whisper-thin moustache on his upper lip and wore a dark blue blazer. They sat across the kitchen table from each other, deep in discussion regarding some arcane technical aspect of computer technology.
Stacy took the time to study the proxy more closely. His slacks were worn-looking, and some of his teeth were yellowed and broken. A moment’s further study revealed that one of his eyes was glass. He had the overall look of a man trying to keep up appearances despite desperately reduced circumstances.
She remembered what Zero had said when they first arrived at this house in the middle of nowhere. The proxies all came from local villages, all long-term unemployed, all users of hopscotch proxy—which in her experience meant they were desperate enough to contract with dark-net proxy agencies.
They might be used as drug mules, or for prostitution, or wind up maimed or dead on the whim of anonymous proxy partners who might be anywhere in the world and completely untraceable.
Nobody did what these people were doing unless they were really, truly desperate.
“I think you should know,” said Zero, looking over at her, “that we’re working on a plan to get you and your father back out of the country.”
She nodded and let out a sigh. “When?”
“Not immediately,” said Isaac. “It might take a few days to organise things to be sure we’ll be safe. We’re considering renting a boat.” He peered at her. “Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, forcing a smile.
A few evenings later, one of Zero’s proxies entered the house carrying a smart-paper TV rolled up in a tube. Unrolling it, he hung the screen from a wall in the kitchen.
Such screens, Zero had explained through one of his seemingly infinite supply of rented proxy partners, had the advantage of being effectively untraceable.
As Zero spoke, Stacy recalled that upon arriving at the house, the machine had made a point of collecting her and Isaac’s bracelets. Nor did any of the proxies she saw wear a bracelet or carry even so much as a chip-phone that she could see.
Stacy learned of her mother’s passing while watching the television over a bowl of porridge early the next morning. Supposedly, she had drowned herself in a lake on the grounds of the Markov estate and the police were treating it as suicide. She had left a suicide note, saying she was sorry for the hurt she’d caused.
Stacy’s appetite fled, replaced by a wave of nausea, loss and regret. Amy wouldn’t have willingly gone within a hundred miles of the Markov mansion, let alone kill herself and write such an awful, tawdry note.
She thought of how she herself had nearly been murdered and knew, immediately, what must have happened to her mother.
Stacy sat and stared at the television, wondering why the image had become so blurry before realizing she was half-blinded by her own tears.
“I should have told her,” she said to herself in a half-whisper.
“Stacy?”
She looked around to see another of Zero’s proxies standing by the open door of the kitchen, a cardboard box full of supplies held in its arms. The skin was a straight-backed man in his forties who looked like the type who spent his weekends playing rugby. He was healthier-looking by far than most of the other proxies she’d seen. She wondered what had happened to him that he’d suddenly needed money badly.
She nodded at the television. “Did you know about this?”
“I did,” Zero admitted. “They reported it in the very early hours of this morning. Isaac is also aware of what happened to your mother.”
