Chapter 6 cleaning house
I drove back to the ranch, confident in the knowledge that my presence had not been acknowledged by any surveillance cameras, and that cabin 17 was devoid of any traces of any human being, and the key to it had reappeared in the office when the night concierge went for a pee because the wank show he was watching on his box was playing soothing running water sounds and featured ads about renal failure and warning signs of not urinating enough. It’s not hard to make the suggestible respond to a stimulus. I had used a government quality liquid paper to redact Mr. and Mrs. Novak where they had signed in – still the safest way to keep records, but not if you have the sort of redaction methods which make others look amateurish.
I could have scraped it down. But I didn’t have time for that. The fellow might recall the couple, but would probably wonder if he had made a mistake and that they never signed in at all, with a booking from Denver. This was where Jamie hailed from. The booking was long gone. There would be other people in and out, and he wasn’t interested in them, so he would forget. So long as nobody came looking too soon.
Anyway, I took the gurfer’s kit home, and laid it out with the other kit from the other infiltrators. Gary was having a field day; he’d never gone this far in totally erasing the existence of someone else.
“It only works because people like them have colleagues and contacts, not friends and family,” Willow told him.
Their bank accounts vanished. Money was transferred; Gary got his cut, the rest went to charity. Any apartments they owned or rented were up for sale or they defaulted. We could not wipe the physical evidence of their existences there without calling in serious help, of course, but generally landlords throw out anything left around, and so do new owners. We made quick sales on the shadowboards where property was owned; up to the shadows who bought it to negotiate any safeguards. Nobody buys cheap property without looking for which of the gift-horse’s teeth were rather long and rotten. Or if they don’t, well, caveat emptor.
And any information on any device attached to the web? Ours, and wiped, so sorry, not sorry, omae.
Oh, and we had sent Jamie’s phone back to his dad, with a stiff note saying that personal phones were not permitted.
Jamie was very happy about this, once he knew that his phone was now a spy device with a worm in it to connect to every surveillance device in his own home, and every phone, computer, or even music centre and make them Willow’s slaves.
It was amazing how much chatter went on around the smart percolator.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
We erased all five of the team. Their phone numbers now no longer existed. Their backup phones no longer existed. The burner phones they were using for this job no longer existed. The car? It was a hire car, and a transaction to cover its cost came out of their personal money and the record of it having ever belonged to the hire company vanished.
I went down to see how Hammond was getting on. For the want of a personal device, he was singing all the songs he knew by Bunker Survivors and Clashcrete, who were actually fairly tuneful modern metal bands. He had a decent voice.
And he had virtually stripped the car. He smiled at me, a tired but contented smile.
“Hey, Ranny, what am I allowed to use from the spares you have?” he asked.
“Anything you please,” I said. He grinned.
“Stand by for the world’s most souped-up all-terrain vehicle,” he said.
I helped him get down the spare tractor wheels and transmission. He was giggling.
“Anyone using that old truck?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “And you can cut that up as much as you like. I rode on the top of that, hanging on for dear life for thirty miles with a bullet in me, when kidnappers left me for dead and took the class away in it.”
“Fuck!” he said. “You are a ruddy superman.”
“Very fit, very stubborn, and I was very, very angry. One of them was dissing my kid sister,” I said.
“I hear you,” he said. “I thought I’d take off the wheels and add to the tractor wheels and build an all-terrain camper.”
“There’s an old caravan somewhere around,” I said.
“Yeah? Even better. Three vehicles into one,” he said. “We should ditch the wheels and tyres of the original, though, and a lot of the bodywork. It’s not armour plated, so no reason to hang on to it. It has an engine to die for, though.”
“Well, that’s your project instead of horses,” I said.
“Never had so much fun in my life,” he said.
“I can offer you a job in a chop shop if you want to move to Seattle,” I said.
“I might take you up on that,” he said. “My old man wants me to start in his office as an intern. I don’t want to work at a desk. I want to build my own life, and I don’t care about his money.”
“Do your internship in my chop shop, and I’ll look into setting you up in a legitimate repair shop,” I said.
“I want to build drag racers,” he said.
“No reason you shouldn’t do both,” I said. “Or, I can introduce you to Kyle Evans, or Ray Lamborghini, and see if they need a personal mechanic.”
“I’d like that,” said Hammond. “I’m hungry; can I fix myself something?”
“While you’re working on this, you can help yourself when you need anything,” I said. “There’s some beer in the locked fridge, the code is Five-En-Four-Kay-Three.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate that.”
I went to bed for a couple of hours, and so did Willow, leaving Gary mopping up. He let in Kevin, and they installed the furnace for Hammond, who ditched the most memorable parts of the car before he turned in. I let him sleep in the empty flat over the workshop, so long as he came into the ranch to eat.
“Where’s Fitzgerald?” asked Dix, when I rousted out the other boys.
“Working off his withdrawal symptoms,” I said. The kid wasn’t well, but he was methodical anyway, using the concentration needed as a drug in itself. “I shifted him out, he was getting a bit loud.”
No, I wasn’t going to tell the whole truth.
Some idiot like Briggs was quite capable of blowing off his mouth.
Jamie looked at me, puzzled.
I had wondered if he had awoken in the night; I shook my head at him. He nodded. It was his turn to burn breakfast, and Auntie came to give him a hand.
I slid into the kitchen, and nodded to Auntie to go see to the others, and I taught Jamie how to make an omelette. If he learned nothing else whilst he was here, he would at least be able to impress future girlfriends with that. While we worked together, I told him about the night’s happenings.
“And… and you just killed them? Just like that?” he asked.
“They were low life; they were quite happy to get orders to burn you to death,” I said, harshly.
“Oh! I wasn’t objecting… well, I suppose I had a moment where I wondered… but I think I’ve entered a different world,” he said.
“Nobody messes with those under my protection,” I said. I told him about the field trip, and his eyes were wide by the time I had finished.
“I never knew there were grown-ups who cared enough to do that,” he said.
It highlighted how young he really was, poor little sod.
“This one does,” I said. “And I suspect your father would go as far, if he knew how.”
“Yeah, I guess he would,” he agreed. Good, I had not disrupted what seemed to have been a healthy relationship before Sylvia came along.
Willow came in to help serve. She was sniggering.
“Sylvia’s been trying to telephone people who no longer exist, for an update,” she said. “You should know that she’s phoned the police to tell them that she believes you might have killed her husband’s security agents, checking on his son’s wellbeing.”
“That’ll implode when they ask McNeall senior about them,” I said. “We ought to cremate those bodies, though.”
“Take the kids out for a ride. Sodger and I will handle it,” said Willow. “I’ll hook into any satellite passing and tell it to go play with itself while we’re busy.”
I nodded. I could leave that cleanup up to her; it had not occurred to me that Sylvia would be stupid enough to call in the cops. I had planned on handling the larger bones tonight under cover of darkness in a thermal suppressant suit. Well, Hammond would get more of an education a bit faster; and Julie and Dave would help as well.
We got into the saddle a bit faster this time. I had a packed lunch for each of them, and for the girls when we met them.
“Make sure you keep hydrated,” I told them all, handing out canteens of water. “There’s a spring over that way, near where we shall stop to picnic, and a few pumps for water. Always stop to fill your water bottles when you have a chance; being caught without water is not good.”
“What, not tough enough to go for a while without?” scoffed Briggs.
“Mr. Briggs,” I said, “You’re a city boy. There’s always shade. There’s water within a few minutes of you. When you’ve had the sun beat down on you hour upon hour, you’ll notice it. A man can die under such conditions without water.”
“It takes three days without water to kill someone,” he said.
“Under normal conditions,” I said. “Not under the conditions of hot sun and sweating. I don’t want any of you to be ill; someone’s going to have to look after you, and nursing sick people bores me. Why do you have to make it a fight over every little thing?”
He scowled.
“I don’t like taking orders from second rate people,” he said.
I laughed.
“As a third rate loser, you’re lucky not to have any second rate people here,” I told him. “Oh, and just a word to the wise. Never try to kick any of my cats again. Puss reported you.”
He stared.
“What…?”
“My cats are uplifted,” I said. “They also talk. And yes, they are part of the security staff here. They are some of your jailors.”
He had a nasty set of scratches on one hand and Puss had been fluffed up and indignant. She got her meaning across without needing the vocal cords her kittens had.
Briggs had forgotten to leave his ego behind by the time we stopped to picnic. And I was delighted to see Olive, of all people, put him down.
Olive is a little brown sparrow; dark brown hair, brown-hazel eyes, and an olive complexion. She is also half the size of Jeff Briggs. He decided to hit on her for some reason, maybe because she is quiet, and she also had been through my self-defence course. And, by the looks of it, had practised with Ruth and Marie. She put him down with ease, and then ran to me, pale and upset.
“You did it,” I said. “You didn’t let him push you about.”
“I swore I’d never let anyone hurt me again,” she said.
“Do you want to tell me how you killed your aunt?” I asked.
She considered.
“It was easy, actually,” she said. “I stole some vodka from a shop, and I put it in everything, from her morning tea to her first glass of wine. And she passed out earlier than usual. So, I tickled her throat with a feather, like they used to do in olden days to make people vomit poison, which I read about in a story book when someone had eaten nightshade berries. And then I just held a piece of cling film over her mouth and nose while she threw up and breathed it in.”
“Sometimes it is shockingly easy to take life,” I said.
“I’m scared to tell Dianna,” she said.
“She guessed,” I told her. She stared.
“Really?” she said.
“She told me she thought you had managed to kill that evil woman, but that if you would talk to me about it, it would make you happier.”
“She never said.”
“No; she did not want to pry.”
“She… she won’t send me away?”
“No; you acted in self-defence,” I said. “Your put-down of Briggs was controlled, and measured. Enough to hurt him and embarrass him, which was all that was needed. If he touches you again, you can break his arm. Or his dick. He’ll soon learn.”
“You’re very different to teachers I’ve had who don’t like people fighting,” she said.
“Bullies only understand one language. And that is force,” I said. “Most teachers are too cowardly to handle it.” I considered. “And don’t have the skills and training to do so. And it’s easier not to have to deal with a father who is probably just as much of a bully as the son, who learned it from watching daddy. Teachers are vulnerable to complaints about them touching children, so they avoid even separating bullies from their victims to avoid false testimony against them. And so they do what is easy rather than what is right.”
“We thought we’d like to study social work, all of us girls,” said Olive. “I mean, it’s important for Marie and Ruth to study art, because they are both good, but Ruth was talking about how she did therapy over someone who treated her badly, and she used drawing to deal with it. And Hana wants to work with girls from traditional families who have been forced to obey, not make their own choices. And Hermione wants to help the Arabic women.”
I groaned.
“She’ll be murdered the moment she goes near them,” I said. “Sometimes you can’t do what is right when it is impossible and only makes things worse.”
“Well, it’s what we were talking about.”
“It’s a good ambition,” I said. “But you’ll also go through the full Cobra survival course as well, so you have the chance to actually succeed in helping kids not end up disillusioned by the system.”
“Good,” she said. “I can hear police sirens. They’re driving over the field!”
“Shit,” I said. “Get everyone mounted up and onto that hill; if the beeves stampede…”
Her eyes were huge.
And I was yelling to the kids to get safe, throwing the boys and Obama onto their horses.
And seeing us flee, the damn fool cops came on faster.
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