Chapter One
A missing person
Agon, the last of the Drogues, a synthetic creature charged with resolving the crimes of His Royal Britannic Majesty’s Patricians, was desperately in need of a chair and a glass of milk. Agon and his colleague, Detective Inspector Glendale, were both tired after a long day of interviews. Missing persons cases among Patricians were usually straightforward, but Agon’s health was not good, and he was finding today’s enquiries exhausting. St Jude Hall was a gloomy place at the best of times, a huge and cold country house in Pembrokeshire. The childless marriage of Lord and Lady Hailbury was an unhappy business, and a pall of sorrow and discontent was visible even on the faces of their servants. And, as very often happened during such investigations, nobody had offered the Detectives anything to eat.
The lack of food was no surprise given the grim austerity of the household. Like most English Patricians, Lord Hailbury had a fastidious distaste for comfort, despite his tremendous wealth. The building had a state-of-the-art climate control system, but was kept a little too cold on principle. It had a discreet Drone copter landing pad, and a garage full of Drone cars, but Lord Hailbury preferred to bump around in a horse and carriage.
The servants were also expected to go without. There was only one small datascreen in the kitchen, as a concession to the cook, a woman of fierce authority. The staff were forbidden personal communications devices, and had to make do with writing letters via the penny post.
Lord Hailbury communicated only via the post and his Phone, and held all other methods entirely in contempt, with the vanity of his class. A political Liberal, he was in all personal matters entirely traditional.
Lord Hailbury’s Phone was a stately, frail old woman of seventy who had been with him all her life. She had taken the Phone’s mark of office, an entanglion implant in her brain, at the precocious age of sixteen, and had served the family with great devotion ever since.
Miss Charles was a gifted Phone, but recent events had caused even her smooth professionalism to fade. She had relayed the private messages of her employer her whole life, and she was in both profession and person extremely patient, yet it seemed to Glendale that even she was growing restless in the face of Lady Hailbury’s endless bluster. She held a small handkerchief in her tiny hands, and was contorting it into increasingly strange shapes as she endured Lady Hailbury’s endless complaints.
Lady Hailbury, Miss Charles and the two Detectives were in the grander library. The dark red curtains and heavy gold bell-ropes would have seemed quite familiar to previous generations of Hailburys. Like the rest of St Jude Hall, it had been artlessly neglected to just the right side of decorous shabbiness.
Lady Hailbury and Miss Charles were sitting at rigid attention on a pair of gold chairs arranged beside a forlorn grand piano. There were two dusty handprints on its side. It was clear the room was rarely cleaned.
Agon was now so tired he was starting to sway and would have dearly loved to sit down. He was finding it hard to focus on the interview. The room was beautiful in its way. The gold bindings of the books on the shelves around him seemed to glow with secret meanings. He would have liked to take down one of those books and turn its pages, and sit quietly and enjoy the smell of the ageing paper, the feel of its heft.
Glendale could see the Drogue was in trouble, and part of him wished he could bring the audience to a close. However, he could not: they had a job to do, and he must defer to the Drogue. Glendale trusted Agon’s judgement implicitly. No one else was as skilled at the delicate business of extracting embarrassing information from Phones in the presence of their furious Patrician masters.
Lady Hailbury, a straight-backed, ravaged-looking woman, who had lost her way some time ago through rage and disappointment, could not be made to focus on her missing husband’s recent movements. Instead she was angrily denouncing his infidelities, his addictions, and his political obsessions.
Agon reminded her that the real issue was not Lord Hailbury’s behavior, but his whereabouts. He was a rich man, and he had been missing for a week. No funds had been removed from his accounts. No ransom had been asked for. No sign of his whereabouts had emerged on the world’s datastreams. The situation was grave in the extreme. However, Lady Hailbury refused to face these facts and instead appeared to see the interview as an opportunity to rage against her husband and try to gain sympathy for her own suffering.
Glendale had been working the Patrician beat with Agon for some time, and he’d seen his fair share of the Patrician class and its dirty linen. He was still shocked by the pinched squalor of Lady Hailbury’s mind. She was directing most of her remarks at Glendale, as though Agon was a creature so ghastly he did not deserve to be spoken to directly.
Agon was indeed an odd-looking creature. His bench-grown eyes and thin lips were the real thing, but the rest of his white synthetic flesh was like a painful sketch of a human face. He was wearing a black suit, a crisp white shirt and a dark thin tie. His hands were soft and the proportions were not right, the fingers too long and too thin. His voice had the elegance acquired from speaking to Patricians in their own manner. His face revealed his loneliness, but to unsympathetic eyes, like those of Lady Hailbury, it seemed a cold, hard skull.
‘But why?’ Lady Hailbury wailed once more to DI Glendale. ‘Why are you talking to us and why is that thing here?’
‘Ma’am, as I’ve explained,’ said Agon, with the patience of someone speaking to a child, ‘I’m here because you enjoy the services of the admirable Miss Charles, your Phone. The presence of a Phone means that it’s necessary for me to conduct the investigation.’
Lady Hailbury looked at him in total disgust.
‘You are going to fiddle with her mind then? You’re here to fiddle with Miss Charles’s mind? Is that it? This is revolting.’
Agon risked a cautious smile.
‘I assure you Ma’am I will do nothing of the sort. It is simply that I too am a little like a human Phone. I too have an entanglion. I can work with Miss Charles to check Phone records that she might retain, and try to understand the whereabouts of Lord Hailbury.’
For some reason these words seemed to finally reach the woman, and she turned to Miss Charles and slapped her hard on the face, You are not to speak to this thing, Charles! Stop it! Close your mind to this monster at once!’
Miss Charles took the blow with practised stoic calm.
‘No need for that please, my Lady,’ said Glendale. ‘No need for that at all. I’m very sorry Miss Charles, would you like to press charges?’
Miss Charles, whose eyes filled with tears at this kindness, shook her head, and said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Lady Hailbury’s fears were not completely unfounded. Agon might not be fiddling with Miss Charles’s mind, but he had been in private communication with her for some time. He was equipped with an even more advanced version of a Phone’s entanglion, linking him both to living Phones, and to the world’s digital datastreams. He also possessed several very powerful subminds, and one of these parts of himself had learned some interesting facts about the household.
Speaking directly to Miss Charles, in total confidence, via the implants in their heads, he had established half an hour ago that Lord Hailbury’s body was almost certainly at the bottom of the family’s well, near the kitchen garden. Lord Hailbury’s head had first been blown off by one of his own pair of Purdey shotguns, fired by Lady Hailbury in a fit of rage over a perceived insult.
Agon had been dealing with Patrician crimes of passion for many years, and this squalid revelation did not surprise him. It was his duty to resolve it, and he would resolve it. Yet he had never been so tired, and he was struggling to care. There was something so beautiful about the rich red of the long curtains that pooled on the floor beside the high windows. He felt he would like to sit down and enjoy that colour properly.
He blinked and tried to focus. He needed to establish, in total confidence with Miss Charles, whether there had been any mitigating circumstances. However, Miss Charles, who had a keen eye for human frailty, and who knew both of her employers better than they knew each other, was struggling to come up with anything at all, despite her obvious affection for Lady Hailbury.
Would you say, Agon asked Miss Charles, that Lord Hailbury drove her to it? Was he a cruel man?
Miss Charles thought not. He was a good man, actually. He just worked too hard and was never here. He was very much obsessed with politics, on the Liberal side.
And her mental state? said Agon. Is Lady Hailbury of sound mind?
Miss Charles thought for a moment and then said, I’m afraid so. She’s not mad. She’s just lonely and useless and full of rage.
It is a pity, Agon said. Very well. I cannot thank you enough for your help, Miss Charles, and of course I shall respect your confidence.
‘If you’ll excuse me Lady Hailbury,’ said Agon. ‘I need to speak to my partner outside for a few moments, and I’m very happy to say we may have all we need.’
In the corridor outside, Agon finally found a chair and he sat down with relief. The sensation in his legs was delicious, and he realised that he’d been using much of his considerable concentration simply trying to keep his balance. And why was he so hot?
‘How are you feeling, Sir?’ said Glendale. ‘Goes on a bit, doesn’t she?’
Agon’s pale, skull-like face was sweating despite the cool air, and Glendale handed him his pocket handkerchief.
‘Thank you, Glendale. She does. However, I think we will be on our way soon.’
‘Really, Sir?’
‘Lord Hailbury’s body is in the well outside the kitchen, his brains blown out. Apparently he suggested alterations to the kitchen garden that his wife did not welcome. Miss Charles has been both discreet and very helpful. An admirable, intelligent woman, a Phone of distinction,’ said Agon.
Glendale felt a certain pleasure in seeing Miss Charles settling scores with her employers so neatly, but he kept it to himself.
‘We’ll need a Police copter,’ said Agon. ‘I don’t fancy driving back to London with Lady Hailbury...’.
‘Very good, Sir,’ said Glendale. ‘I’ll spider the well and order the copter. You stay there and rest.’
Agon watched Glendale move off, his burly, round shoulders as always seeming about to burst the arms of his tight-fitting suit.
Why was he so hot? It seemed as though this particular infection was going to kill him, and it grieved him to go. He was struck by the motes of dust caught in the late afternoon sunshine, and he felt his mind wander from point to point, and it was so inexpressibly beautiful that he recorded the image to enjoy later. He suddenly felt that he was indulging himself too much. He sat up straight and reviewed the messages in his entanglion.
Another robbery in Mayfair was causing a stir. His evidence at the recent trial of a Patrician Banker cited for embezzlement had passed muster, and there was an urgent note from Sir Jeremy, a man of some stature who had played an important part in the Drogue programme. Sir Jeremy wished him to call about an urgent matter at his earliest convenience. He decided to wait until his mind was clearer.
Agon could hear the low murmur of Lady Hailbury’s indignation from next door, and closed his eyes for a moment. He felt pain all the time now, in his back, in his limbs. He was troubled by constant headaches. He felt suddenly so weary and indifferent to his duties that he wished Glendale would never return, and he could sit there forever, held in limbo between a difficult past and an all too certain future, enjoying the slow tumble of the dust rising and falling in the pale English light.
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Glendale left the house via the kitchen and found the well. He took some pictures with his device, and then removed a small cigar-shaped case from his jacket pocket, carefully unwrapping the spider drone inside.
He switched it on and set it down on the dark brick of the well. Powerful lights on its eye stalks switched on as the spider’s delicate mechanical legs gripped the rough surface. He used a control interface on his device to send it creeping down the well. He watched the sharp white beams of its lights quickly fade into the darkness below.
Once it was out of sight, he followed its progress using the screen on his device. The spider’s camera swept in neat, automatic patterns, showing nothing but brickwork, until the whole screen went bright red.
Glendale moved the spider drone back a little until he could get a good shot of the thick slick of blood upon the floating island of the body, which lay face down in the water.
He jumped the spider onto the body, and then found a good patch of exposed flesh above the neck. Then he fired the spider’s two-inch DNA probe into the neck, and drew out a blood sample for testing. It took a few minutes for the sequence to reach the cloud and find a match with Lord Hailbury’s DNA. Once it was confirmed, Glendale sent the results to Agon, retrieved the spider, and went in search of provisions.
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Glendale returned via the kitchen where he successfully procured and ate a ham sandwich and a glass of lemonade. He did so through the application of an easy charm that would have surprised Agon, who thought of Glendale as a rather dour man.
He returned triumphantly with a large glass of milk for Agon and watched him drink it. He then retrieved the empty glass from the Drogue, pleased to see that Agon seemed to still have some appetite.
The door to the library opened and Miss Charles appeared, holding Lord Hailbury’s other Purdey shotgun.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, raising the gun towards Agon.
Glendale froze for only a second. He did not carry a weapon. However, like many large, solid men, he could move with remarkable speed when he wanted to, and he preferred to get in close where his weight made all the difference. He threw the empty glass and then himself at Miss Charles, who swung the gun towards him and fired.
The glass missed and smashed against the wall. The blast hit him full in the face, and he went down, his head a red mess. The shot also dealt Agon a stunning blow on the shoulder and Agon slumped to his knees, and then fell to all fours, and then found himself flat on his back on the cool flagstone floor.
What are you doing? said Agon to Miss Charles in a private call via his entanglion, as his body went into shock, his legs juddering at high speed, his head repeatedly slamming against the floor.
He was my life, said Miss Charles, before turning around and walking back into the library.
Lady Hailbury could not understand the noise, or why her wretched Phone was standing silhouetted in the doorway with a gun cradled carefully in her slender arms. The image left her speechless, and she merely gaped in wonder.
Miss Charles aimed carefully, shooting and killing Lady Hailbury. Then she moved past the body to the piano, put the gun down, and lifted up the piano lid. She retrieved another shell from the piano in which she had previously concealed the gun and its ammunition. She dropped it, and lost it, and took out another, which she also dropped. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself, and then picked up another shell, her small, neat hands moving with the patience of a grandmother, and this time she was able to reload the gun.
In her mind’s eye, the image of the Drogue took on a peculiar and disturbing force, like the answer to a question she did not understand. She knew now that the voice in her head would no longer torment her. For the first time in months, she felt at peace. She sat down at the piano stool, placed the gun carefully into her own mouth and pulled the trigger.
Agon could not move, and he could not get Glendale to respond. He seemed to have all the time in the world to call for help via his entanglion’s Mayday beacon. He was able to speak directly to the incoming medical copter. He reminded them of Glendale’s blood type. He remembered to ask for a medical team familiar with Drogue body chemistry to be scrambled to the usual place. He asked them to get a message to Sir Jeremy. He stared at his own pale reflection in the pool of Glendale’s blood, which had turned the floor into a slick red mirror, until he passed out.