What You Make It: Selected Short Stories. Michael Marshall Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ careless about such things. I slipped my fingers under the pane and pulled it open. Then I leant with my ear close to the open space and listened. There was no sound, and so I boosted myself up and quickly in.

      I found myself in a bedroom. I didn't turn the light on, but there was enough coming from the moon and streetlights to pick out a couple of pieces of Jeanette's clothing, garments that I recognized, strewn over the floor. She wouldn't have left them like that, not if she'd had any choice in the matter. I walked carefully into the corridor, poking my head into the bathroom and kitchen, which were dead. Then I found myself in the living room.

      The big chair stood in front of a wall I recognized, and at the far end a computer sat on a desk next to a picture scanner. Moving as quickly but quietly as possible, I frantically searched over the desk for anything that might tell me where Ayer had taken her. There was nothing there, and nothing in the rest of the room. I'd broken – well, opened – and entered for no purpose.

      There were no clues. No sign of where they'd gone. An empty box under the table confirmed what I'd already guessed: Ayer had a laptop computer as well. He could be posting the pictures onto the net from anywhere that had a phone socket. Jeanette would be with him, and I needed to find her. I needed to find her soon.

      I paced around the room, trying to pick up speed, trying to work out what I could possibly do. No one at VCA knew where they'd gone – they hadn't even known Jeanette wasn't going to be in. The old turd downstairs hadn't known. There was nothing in the flat that resembled a phone book or personal organizer, something that would have a friend or family member's number. I was prepared to do anything, call anyone, in the hope of finding where they'd gone. But there was nothing, unless …

      I sat down at the desk, reached behind the computer and turned it on. Ayer had a fairly flash deck, together with a scanner and laserprinter. He knew the net. Chances were he was wirehead enough to keep his phone numbers somewhere on his computer.

      As soon as the machine was booted up I went rifling through it, grimly enjoying the intrusion, the computer-rape. His files and programs were spread all over the disk, with no apparent system. Each time I finished looking through a folder, I erased it. It seemed the least I could do.

      Then after about five minutes I found something, but not what I was looking for. I found a folder named ‘j’.

      There were files called j12 to j16 in the folder, in addition to all the others that I'd seen. Wherever Jeanette was, Ayer had come back here to scan the pictures. Presumably that meant they were still in London, for all the good that did me.

      I'm not telling you what they were like, except that they showed Jeanette, and in some she was crying, and in j15 and j16 there was a lot of blood running from the corner of her mouth. She was twisted and tied, face livid with bruises, and in j16 she was staring straight at the camera, face slack with terror.

      Unthinkingly, I slammed my fist down on the desk. There was a noise downstairs and I went absolutely motionless until I was sure the old man had lost interest. Then I turned the computer off, opened up the case and removed the hard disk. I climbed out the way I'd come and ran out down the street, flagged a taxi by jumping in front of it and headed for home.

      I was going to the police, but I needed a computer, something to shove the hard disk into. I was going to show them what I'd found, and fuck the fact it was stolen. If they nicked me, so be it. But they had to do something about it. They had to try and find her. If he'd come back to do his scanning he had to be keeping her somewhere in London. They'd know where to look, or where to start. They'd know what to do.

      They had to. They were the police. It was their job.

      I ran up the stairs and into the flat, and then dug in my spares cupboard for enough pieces to hack together a compatible computer. When I'd got them I went over to my desk to call the local police station, and then stopped and turned my computer on. I logged onto the net and kicked up my mail package, and sent a short, useless message.

      ‘I'm coming after you,’ I said.

      It wasn't bravado. I didn't feel brave at all. I just felt furious, and wanted to do anything which might unsettle him, or make him stop. Anything to make him stop.

      I logged quickly onto the newsgroups, to see when [email protected] had most recently posted. A half hour ago, when I'd been in his apartment, J12-16 had been posted up. Two people had already responded: one hoping the blood was fake and asking if the group really wanted that kind of picture – the other asking for more. I viciously wished a violent death upon the second person, and was about to log off, having decided not to bother phoning but to just go straight to the cops, when I saw another text-only posting at the end of the list.

      ‘Re: j-series’ it said. It was from [email protected].

      I opened it. ‘End of series,’ the message said. ‘Hope you all enjoyed it. Next time, something tasteless.’

      ‘And I hope,’ I shouted at the screen, ‘that you enjoy it when I ram your hard disk down your fucking throat.’

      Then suddenly my blood ran cold.

       Next time, something tasteless.

      I hurriedly closed the group, and opened up alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless. As I scrolled past the titles for roadkills and people crapping I felt the first heavy, cold tear roll out onto my cheek. My hand was shaking uncontrollably, my head full of some dark mist, and when I saw the last entry I knew suddenly and exactly what Jeanette had been looking at when j16 was taken.

      ‘j17.gif,’ it read, ‘{f} Pretty amputee’.

       EVERYBODY GOES

      I saw a man yesterday. I was coming back from the wasteground with Matt and Joey and we were calling Joey dumb because he'd seen this huge spider and he thought it was a Black Widow or something when it was just, like, a spider, and I saw the man.

      We were walking down the road towards the block and laughing and I just happened to look up and there was this guy down the end of the street, tall, walking up towards us. We turned off the road before he got to us, and I forgot about him.

      Anyway, Matt had to go home then because his family eats early and his mom raises hell if he isn't back in time to wash up and so I just hung out for a while with Joey and then he went home too. Nothing much happened in the evening.

      This morning I got up early because we were going down to the creek for the day and it's a long walk. I made some sandwiches and put them in a bag, and I grabbed an apple and put that in too. Then I went down to knock on Mart's door.

      His mom answered and let me in. She's okay really, and quite nice-looking for a mom, but she's kind of strict. She's the only person in the world who calls me Peter instead of Pete. Mart's room always looks like it's just been tidied, which is quite cool actually though it must be a real pain to keep up. At least you know where everything is.

      We went down and got Joey. Matt seemed kind of quiet on the way down as if there was something he wanted to tell me, but he didn't. I figured that if he wanted to, sooner or later he would. That's how it is with best friends. You don't have to be always talking. The point will come round soon enough.

      Joey wasn't ready so we had to hang round while he finished his breakfast. His dad's kind of weird. He sits and reads the paper at the table and just grunts at it every СКАЧАТЬ