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  ‘Damn this,’ said Derek. ‘Things are really that bad here, then, are they?’

  ‘They’re worse,’ said the border guard. ‘They keep it out of the papers because it looks bad for the Government. Mr Doveston wouldn’t look quite so good if the public knew about this place. It’s like a black hole of crime. I’m not messing with you. Turn back now. Take the young lady far away from here. They’re animals in there, there’s no telling what they’d do to her. Well actually there is.’

  ‘We’re going back,’ said Derek.

  ‘We’re not,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Don’t be absurd. I’m not taking you in there.’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’

  ‘Well I hate to admit it, but I am.’

  ‘Then I’ll go in alone.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Derek. ‘You don’t even know my aunty.’

  ‘This is nothing to do with your aunty, Derek. This is something big. And if there is one little ounce of manhood inside you, you’ll come in with me. I’ll go in alone, if you don’t.’

  ‘It’s your funeral,’ said the border guard. ‘If they ever find your body, that is.’

  ‘Back,’ said Derek.

  ‘Forward,’ said Ellie.

  Forward apparently had it.

  Derek drove slowly through the deserted streets.

  ‘I can’t believe this place,’ he said. ‘I mean this is South London. I know South London can be a bit rough, but this is over the top. Look at it, burnt-out shops, burnt-out cars, the only buildings standing are barred up like fortresses. This can’t be real. It can’t be.’

  ‘There is something very very wrong about this place,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Yes, I can see that plainly enough.’

  ‘But can you feel it?’

  ‘I feel very very afraid. I really need the toilet, but I think I’ll wait until I get home. If I get home at all.’

  ‘Pull up here,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Here? Why here?’

  ‘Because there’s a stinger strung out across the road ahead, under all that debris. You don’t really want to drive over it.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Derek. ‘I never noticed.’

  ‘You weren’t intended to.’

  ‘Let’s turn around and get out of this asylum. Before some sniper picks us off or we drive into a minefield.’

  ‘Where does your aunty live?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘I really can’t imagine that she’s living any more.’

  ‘Well, just in case. Where does she live?’

  Derek checked his London A-Z and noticed for the first time the slim red line that ran around the not-so-new town known as Mute Corp Keynes. ‘Second on the left, just past the burnt-out church.’

  ‘Next to the burnt-out pub?’

  ‘No past that. Opposite the burnt-out Citizens Advice Bureau.’

  ‘You’d better drive on the pavement to avoid the stinger.’

  Derek drove on the pavement.

  His aunty’s house was number twenty-two. The bungalow with the gun turret on the roof. The moat, the razor wire and the sign that warned of killer canines on the loose at night. Unlike the yard of the Brentford Tour Company, this was no idle warning.

  Ellie observed the martial premises. ‘Your aunty seems to have adapted well to the changing of the times,’ said she.

  ‘She was always pretty tough,’ said Derek. ‘She was in the SAS, only woman to ever make it to major. There’s a lot of military in my family. I think I’ve always been a bit of a disappointment to them.’

  ‘I really can’t imagine why,’ said Ellie Anna Lovell.

  There was a bell push on the iron gate that led into the moated compound. The sign above said

  KNOCK DOWN GINGER ON THIS BELL AND KNOW THE JOY A BULLET BRINGS.

  ‘Perhaps you’d care to ring,’ said Derek.

  ‘We are being laser-scanned,’ said Ellie. ‘I’ve a securiscan meter in my shoulder bag, I can feel it vibrating.’

  ‘What?’ went Derek.

  ‘You’d better press the button. She doesn’t know me.’

  ‘Securiscan meter in your shoulder bag? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Just push the button please. We are also being scanned from across the street. I think we are about to be shot at.’

  ‘Oh God, oh damn, oh me oh my,’ said Derek, pushing the bell button.

  Ellie pushed Derek suddenly aside. The deathly rattle of machine-gun fire came swiftly to her ears. Bullets ripped along the ground. And there was an explosion.

  ‘Oh God!’ screamed Derek, covering his head. ‘We’re going to die! We’re going to die!’

  Smoke and explosions, machine-gun fire mayhem and approaching death with no salvation? Off into the blackness of forever. Not to be borne up to The Rapture. Derek cowered and shivered and uttered certain prayers.

  The lock on the gate clicked open. Ellie’s hand reached out to Derek.

  ‘Come with me, if you want to live,’ she said.

  6

  Derek’s Aunty Uzi (named after a product that cleans up in its own particular way) was what you would call a fine-looking woman. At least to her face, anyway. She stood all of six feet four in her holistic Doveston footwear, which she’d customized with a nice line of studs. For those who love a tattoo, her buttocks were the place to be. And for those who favour a duelling scar, her forehead was the business.

  ‘On your feet, soldier,’ said Derek’s aunty. ‘Falling asleep on parade, is it?’

  Derek fussed and fretted. He was curled up upon a welcome mat that had long worn out its welcome, in a hallway where the angels feared to tread. Outside the gunfire was sporadic, with only the occasional bullet ricocheting from the armoured porch or bouncing off the titanium steel of the window boxes.

  ‘He was always a cringing wimp,’ said Derek’s aunty to Ellie. ‘Living the high life with the toffs in Brentford has softened him up even more.’

  ‘People were shooting at us.’ Derek remained in the foetal position, which seemed to suit him just fine. ‘This is London in the twenty-first century. I knew things were grim here. But this…’

  Derek’s aunty rolled her eyes at Ellie. ‘Would you care for a cup of tea, my dear?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you have anything stronger?’

  ‘I can put two tea bags in your cup.’

  ‘That should hit the spot.’

  ‘Well, we girls will just leave you to your cringing, Derek. Okay?’

  Derek made silly whimpering sounds. Aunty Uzi led Ellie away into the kitchenette. ‘They weren’t even shooting to kill,’ she said. ‘They were just having a bit of fun.’

  Ellie looked all around and about the kitchenette. It was grim as kitchenettes go, but kitchenettes always are.

  A pokey thing is a kitchenette and this particular one was made all the more pokey due to the stacks of ammunition boxes and the grenade launchers which leaned against the cooker, beside the Mute Corp wonder mop and the Mute Corp sweeper.

  ‘Is your water filtered?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘Oh you’re good,’ said Aunty Uzi. ‘Very good.’

  Ellie’s hand moved up to her hair, but then moved down again. ‘Good?’ she said. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Cool,’ said Aunty Uzi. ‘Very cool.’

  ‘I try not to panic. Panic costs lives. Lost lives lose large battles.’

  ‘You were in the marines.’

  ‘I did my national service.’

  Derek’s aunty boiled up water and did what you have to do with it to make two cups of tea. ‘Derek dodged his national service,’ she said, stirring the tea with a fourteen-inch commando knife.

  ‘I didn’t know you could dodge national service,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Don’t ever make the mistake of trusting Derek. He’s a man who will always let you down.’

  ‘I heard that,’ called Derek from the hall.

  Aunty Uzi handed Ellie a cup of something loosely resembling tea. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Ellie Anna Lovell, aged twenty-two,
no convictions, no breaches of the civil code. Three degrees and a 12th Dan Master of Dimac. What’s a lady like you doing hanging around with a jerk like my nephew?’

  Ellie shrugged. ‘I’m on attachment to the Brentford Mercury. He’s showing me around.’

  ‘Still cool,’ said Aunty Uzi. ‘You’re not going to ask me how I know all about you.’

  ‘You securiscanned us as we stood at your gate. That’s standard procedure in a high-risk area.’

  ‘We’ll let that one pass for now, then.’ Aunty Uzi slurped at the tea. ‘This tastes foul,’ she said. ‘But there’s more to you than meets the eye. And what meets the eye has been carefully put together.’

  ‘You haven’t asked us why we’re here,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m sure you’re not under the mistaken belief that Derek felt a sudden pressing need to visit his aunty.’

  Aunty Uzi grinned, exposing ranks of steel teeth. ‘I assume that he brought you here at your request. You can ask me what it is you wish to know. You never know, I might even tell you.’

  Ellie leaned upon the cooker. It was a Mute Corp Supercook, the 3000 series, looking a little the worse for wear.

  ‘Tell me this,’ she said. ‘Why do you stay in this place?’

  ‘This is Mute Corp Keynes. The town of the future, today.’

  Ellie made that face that says ‘Yeah right’.

  ‘I bought this place in two-double-o-five,’ said Derek’s Aunty Uzi. ‘My husband Alf and I were amongst the very first to move in. It was all here at a price we could afford. Fully integrated living accommodation. Everything online. State of the art. High tech, low cost. It was all going to be up-and-coming young professional. The dream town UK.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘Well, it was all bullshit, wasn’t it? Nothing ever worked properly. The whole thing had been done on the cheap and we’d all signed up for our low cost twenty-year non-transferable mortgages. Folk couldn’t sell up, so they moved away and sublet their houses. That wasn’t strictly legal and the folk they’d sublet their houses to soon realized that they could get away without paying the rent. Neighbourhoods can go down pretty quickly. By twenty-ten this place was already a bad place to walk around at night. Now it’s a bad place, period.’

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘One day he went out and never came back. It happens.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Me too,’ said Derek’s aunty.

  And the two of them slurped tea.

  ‘This really is disgusting tea,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Yeah, let’s drink some Scotch instead and you can tell me what it is you want to know.’

  They now sat in the front sitter. Although the sunlight was joyous without, it didn’t venture much within. The windows were shuttered by bulletproof steel. The table lights had ultraviolet bulbs. The glow they cast was of that order which is called crepuscular. Connoisseurs of naked-lady lighting wouldn’t even have given it one out of ten. In a near corner, a long-defunct Mute Corp 3000 home computer, built into the fabric of the room, gathered dust and made a house for spiders.

  Derek, arisen from his foetal position, sipped at Scotch. Aunty Uzi tossed hers back. Ellie merely turned her glass between her elegant fingers.

  ‘So,’ said Derek’s aunty. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’

  ‘Search me,’ said Derek. ‘I didn’t even want to come.’

  Ellie took from her shoulder bag the printout map and placed it before her upon an occasional table. Which, had it suddenly been granted the gift of sentience, would have become aware that at last and quite unexpectedly, its occasion had finally arrived.

  ‘Mysterious disappearances,’ said Ellie. ‘People vanishing without trace. This map shows the locations of those who have done so during the last two weeks. I think you’ll find that it speaks for itself

  Derek lifted the map from the table and held it up to his ear.

  ‘If he says it,’ said Derek’s aunty, ‘feel free to employ your Dimac. Smack him right in the balls if you wish.’

  Derek replaced the map upon the table. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything,’ he said.

  Aunty Uzi took the map and gave it some perusal. ‘I can’t say that this fills me with too much surprise,’ she said. ‘Going missing is what people do around here.’

  ‘Hang about,’ said Derek. ‘Let’s have a look at that map.’

  ‘Oooh,’ said his aunty. ‘A burst of sudden interest.’

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Derek asked, thumbing the map.

  ‘At the police station,’ said Ellie. ‘I made enquiries. The number of people who have vanished recently in London is way beyond the norm. I felt that it was worth investigating.’

  ‘Have you got a list of these people’s names?’ asked Aunty Uzi.

  Ellie produced the list from her bag. ‘It’s a very big list,’ she said.

  Aunty Uzi leafed through pages. ‘And it’s a very inaccurate one,’ she said. ‘Most of the people listed as living round here moved away years ago. And, good God. I’m on here. According to this list I vanished without trace last Tuesday.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ellie. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

  Aunty Uzi looked at her. ‘You said that as if you were expecting something else.’

  ‘This list was compiled by the national crime computer. I expected at least that would be accurate.’

  ‘Good,’ said Aunty Uzi. ‘She is very good this woman of yours.’

  ‘She’s no woman of mine,’ said Derek. ‘No thank you very much.’

  ‘Would you care to tell me what you really are, my dear?’ asked Aunty Uzi. ‘Whom you’re really working for.’

  ‘I’m just a student,’ said Ellie. ‘But I think that you’ll agree that there’s something very suspicious going on.’

  ‘No,’ said Derek. ‘In fact, quite the contrary. My aunty isn’t missing. The folk listed here as missing, aren’t missing. They’ve just moved away. There’s no mystery. Nothing suspicious. It’s all a computer error.’

  Aunty Uzi nodded. ‘On this occasion,’ she said, ‘I am forced to agree with my idiot nephew. It’s just a glitch. And when I speak of glitches, I speak of what I know. The computers in this district all crashed years ago. It’s a dead zone around here when it comes to computer technology. The black hole of cyberspace. You’re on a wrong’n, Ellie Anna Lovell. You’ve been wasting your time.’

  Ellie’s hand was in her hair and strands were being twisted. ‘I think we’d better be going,’ she said.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear that,’ said Derek.

  The border guard looked pleased to see them. He was smiling broadly as they came in his direction.

  ‘No car?’ he asked. ‘Whatever happened to your lovely Ford Fiesta?’

  Derek huffed and puffed the way that people do huff and puff, when they’ve been running hard and running very fast. ‘They nicked my bloody car,’ he huffed and puffed. ‘That car was a collector’s item.’

  ‘That would appear to be correct,’ said the border guard. ‘It’s definitely now an item in somebody’s collection.’

  Derek pulled out his mobile phone and huffed and puffed and pushed buttons.

  ‘You won’t get a signal,’ said the border guard. ‘You just don’t around here. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s all too much,’ and Derek flung himself down on the ground and drummed his fists in the dust.

  ‘He must be a real disappointment to you,’ said the border guard to Ellie, who stood looking very cool. Not huffing or puffing at all.

  ‘I’m sure that he must have a use,’ said Ellie. ‘But so far I haven’t found it.’

  ‘Still,’ said the border guard. ‘Let’s look on the bright side. It’s a lovely day and the two of you are still alive. Rejoice and be happy, that’s my motto. And never eat cheese after midnight.’

  It was nearly midnight when the minicab dropped Ellie and Derek off in Brentford High Street. Well, it’s a long and complicated r
oute back from Mute Corp Keynes when you haven’t got a car and you have to rely on public transport and there aren’t any trains any more.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Derek. ‘What a brilliant day. I could have been writing an article about the floral clock. But no, I let you talk me into visiting Hell Town UK. I get shot at. I get my precious car stolen. I am mocked and ridiculed and then I have to pay your fares all the way back to Chiswick. And then your taxi fare back here. I don’t mean any offence by this, but I truly wish to God I’d never met you.’

  ‘I’d like you to do something for me,’ said Ellie.

  ‘What? You have to be kidding.’

  ‘Look,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m very sorry about the way the day has worked out for you. But whatever your aunty says and whatever you think, there is something very strange going on. It could prove to be something that will make a name for you as an investigative journalist.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Derek. ‘I’ll pass.’

  ‘All right, then do this one thing for me and I promise I’ll never bother you again. In fact I promise I won’t even see you again. I’ll keep well away from you for the rest of the time I’m here in Brentford.’

  ‘Well,’ said Derek thoughtfully. ‘Does this one thing involve any danger to myself?’

  ‘None whatsoever,’ said Ellie.

  ‘All right. Tell me what it is and I’ll think about it.’

  ‘I want you to take me home with you.’

  ‘What?’ said Derek.

  ‘To your house.’

  Derek gave Ellie a long hard look. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘It’s not to have sex with me, is it? Only I’ve had a really rough day, I don’t think I’m up to it. Although, well, what the heck. I’ll give it a go.’

  Ellie shook her silver head. ‘I don’t want to have sex with you,’ she said. ‘I just want to use your home computer. You do have a home computer, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do, everyone does. Well, perhaps not everyone in Brentford. But I do.’