© AVOMERFE Productions, 2002
for non-commercial distribution only

Note: The use of references to copyrighted character from J.K. Rowling’s books is not endorsed by copyright holders.
All references are to be removed prior to commercial publication

Illustrations © Aldo Cervato | Photography

No, it’s not true.

That’s better.

It was Monday and my stomach was churning. Although, I was not sure it was the stomach, unless a stomach can occupy a half of a human body, from trachea to lower abdominals. How many did I have last night? Eight? Eleven? They say, CM-based alcohols are easy to metabolise and they never give you a hangover. Big lie. With a capital ‘L’.

‘This is disgusting!’ a high-pitched female voice screeched from under my feet. I looked down. My soiled shoe rested on the top of a crumpled wet newspaper: apparently I set it on when I stepped on it. I removed my foot. A distorted Nora Willson’s face stared at me ferociously, as a muffled background voice commented:

‘Ms Willson, the leader of the pro-organic movement, has recently called for another picket of AgroFuture’s facilities. Interesting enough, Nora Willson happened to be one of the godparents of the CM process. We asked Ms Willson to comment on that.’

‘It all began as a noble idea,’ the newspaper started to screech again, ‘to give the humanity a new source of raw materials, to stop the exploitation of the natural resources – and it should have stayed there. It would have, if greedy corrupt bastards like Cynthia Kourianou didn’t take it to the extreme. We all must understand that using chip-molecule broth to produce food for humans is immoral and utterly wicked!’

The crowd behind Nora’s shoulder booed. She waived at them to shut up and continued. ‘People must understand that no sensible human being can possibly voluntary put computer chips into his or her body!’

‘I’m with you, Nora,’ I moaned, listening to a rebellious movement inside my digestive system. ‘Today I’m definitely with you.’

I stepped over the newspaper and cautiously proceeded through tinted glass doors.

‘Good morning, Colin.’ Thomas, the security manager reverted his eyes and focused on something at his desk. I could bet, it was as clean and empty, as usual, but I could not tell, so I nodded and rushed to the elevator. I could hear a large cheerful group approaching from behind and I wasn’t prepared to share a cramped space with them even for ninety seconds. It would be way too long. Ninety seconds of dense awkward silence and glances that pretend to be looking somewhere else.

I nearly made it. I was about to fully enjoy my ninety seconds of solitude when Anastasia walked into the elevator cabin and cracked her whip.

She did not, actually. But every time Anastasia walked into anywhere she would stand, her legs apart, her hip slightly aside, her left eye half-closed, as if she had just cracked her whip and waited for the reaction. I often had a desire to peep into her handbag every time she took out her lipstick: I almost knew one day I’d see there a pair of furred handcuffs and black leather knickers with a zipper.

‘Rough night?’ she scowled. ‘Too much anaesthetics?’

That was nearly the first time I was grateful to Anastasia for anything. At least she didn’t pretend that everything was just fine.

‘Yeah.’ I leaned against a dimly lit mirrored wall. ‘’Twas my wedding anniversary, you know.’

‘I know.’

She did. Everyone did. Everyone knew that my wife was dead and sometimes I couldn’t cope.

As the elevator’s door opened, I waved a weary ‘see ya’ to Anastasia and stumbled straight to my office. Passing by the water cooler, I noticed that my door was open. I knew I closed it yesterday: it was nearly the only memory of the day I still had. Something moved behind half-closed blinds, so I rushed in. I hated surprises. I hated them even more when they happened the morning after.

‘What the –’

A creature was sitting in my chair, blinking dumbly.

‘Who are you?’

‘Ca-Cathy,’ the creature squeaked as it made a move to vacate my chair. ‘Cathy Dobbson.’

‘Cathy Dobbson. Fine.’ I was thinking what to say next when someone crawled up from behind and slapped me hard on my shoulder.

When you met Dennis for the first time you’d never think he was Dennis. You’d think he was Venkat or Deepak or Shiva or Raj, and you’d expect him to act like one. Yet Dennis was Dennis, and he was more British than any of the last of the Brits still left on the British Isles. He even had his tea white.

‘Morning, mate. Looking good! Ready to kick that Hermione’s arse?’

‘Let’s go, I’ll show you something.’ Dennis grabbed my arm. I followed him, glad that I could postpone the immediate resolution of the crisis called Cathy Dobbson.

Dennis was the first person I met at the scene that night. I remember him crawling from under the wreckage, with a stained glass vial in his hand. He was not expecting to see me there, just as I did not expect to see him, but then I never expected to be there, so seeing Dennis did not surprise me, and since I did not look surprised, he probably assumed that everything was perfectly normal.

‘What’s that?’ I remember myself pointing at the vial in his hand. I had no idea why I asked that, but then, what else could I ask?

‘Ketchup.’ Dennis touched the red smudge in the centre and licked his finger. ‘It’s the first time we have an accident on such scale. Looks like that red sedan was overtaking when its engine died and this truck was approaching from the opposite lane. There was no room for it to turn.’ He licked his finger again. ‘Try it, not a bad one. Definitely, our case. How did you find out? I haven’t told anyone at DDS yet.’

He looked at me, then at the police officer who by that time had got out of her car and stood behind my shoulder, then back at me, then at the vial in his hand, and then he understood.

It took them three hours to get Natalie’s body out of what was left of her car. I remember myself walking by the stretcher, holding her cold stiff hand. There were red stains on her hand and on the sheet that covered her face. I remember thinking that the blood should have already turned brown by then and next realising it was not blood.

Ketchup.

Next day after Natalie’s funeral I went to Soho and got completely stoned for the first time in my life.

It was Dennis who saved me, my sanity and my career.

Somehow he managed to convince Anastasia that I’d be the best person to put on this case. It was a good decision. Somehow it gave me back a feeling of purpose, so I could finally face the rest of the world. In about ten weeks I returned to DDS and Dennis debriefed me on the things they found in my absence.

It was then when I first heard the nick ‘Hermione’.

It still felt like yesterday, though.

‘What’s that in my office?’ I finally asked Dennis when we got out of the creature’s hearing distance.

‘That? Oh, you mean Cathy! She’s our new intern. Work experience placement.’ He led me to his desk and ducked under it for something.

‘I did not know DDS does work placements.’

‘Well, we do.’ Dennis puffed, noisily moving something heavy. ‘It’s our new community relationship initiative.’

‘Jesus…’

Dennis’ head appeared from under his desk.

‘I thought you once said, we might use some help.’

‘Did I?’

Well, maybe I did. I couldn’t quite remember, to tell the truth.

Dennis finally pulled out a large cardboard box and dropped it on the top of his desk.

‘See?’ He pulled out what looked like a bunch of plastic and wooden sticks of various shapes and sizes.

‘What’s that?’ I frowned as I realised it had to be one of the latest Dennis’ collections of confiscated gadgets.

‘Beamers. Digital signal transmission devices.’ Dennis looked at me as if he expected me to faint with awe. I did not, so he continued. ‘Look here.’

He grabbed one of the numerous vials that cluttered his office until their contents got dry enough to be of no use any longer, and Anastasia called in the cleaning team that trashed them all without giving it a second thought. ‘Kerosene,’ he declared as if announcing an arrival of a Dutch crown prince. ‘CM-based, naturally.’

‘I see.’

Dennis grabbed one of his assorted sticks, pointed it to the vial and uttered in a dramatic low voice: ‘Milk.’

At first nothing happened, but then the clear liquid started to turn opaque. A couple of minutes later we were staring at a perfectly solid turquoise puddle. I sneered.

‘Wanna taste that, Houdini?’

Dennis shook his head. ‘Dunno what happened. You’ve got the principle, anyway. It breaks into the substance’s code and then modifies it, so you get some totally different stuff. Here I’ve got some forty variations for chip-molecule base codes, mostly around food products.’

‘And?’

‘Ketchup.’

He said the word. Now I was listening.

‘I found a string of the base code for ketchup as a target, but I can’t say yet what was the source substance. But it does not matter. Now it’s certain that’s how they did it.’

I was not yet fully convinced.

‘5,000-liter gasoline tank? Fourteen cars? With that?’ I took the stick from his hand.

Dennis looked at me as if he suddenly discovered that I could hardly spell my own name.

‘It’s a virus, Colin. It’s contagious. It replicates itself.’

‘Just checking.’

‘So, do you want to know where I got all these?’ he waved at the box.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me anyway?’

He smirked. ‘Not sure if you deserve to know. With that attitude of yours…’

‘Get lost! Go discuss my attitude with Anastasia.’

‘Aisha’s.’

Should have guessed that. The stupid moron could not write a line of code himself. Instead, he was pushing around the stuff his much brainier pals delivered. Every time we would get something against him he’d pretend he had been trading some souvenirs – no idea of the contents. Scum.

‘Do you know who might have given him those?’

‘Well,’ Dennis struck another dramatic pose, ‘he was positioning them as "Hermione’s magic wands".’

I returned to my office. Cathy was still there, her dull eyes fixed at some object outside the window. I couldn’t think of anything she could possibly be staring at there except the grey concrete wall of the building opposite, but it obviously did not bother Cathy at all. I coughed. Cathy slowly turned her conical head in my direction. Now I could see her face or rather that fusion of face, chin and neck that formed the upper part of her body. She seemed to be in her late teens, not desperately ugly, but definitely exceptionally plain.

‘Ok, Cathy, can you for a start fetch me some coffee from the machine downstairs?’ I felt a sudden urge to send her away for some time and work on my defence strategy against her unwelcome intrusion. She rose from the desk without saying a word, looking through me as she made her move towards the door. Now I could see the whole of her. She hardly reached my shoulder, but her lack of height was well compensated for. Her baggy dark-blue sweatshirt that longed for a full cycle in a washing machine did not quite disguise the fact that Cathy had a lot to disguise under it. She stomped heavily past my desk, tripping on a pile of folders and knocking them over onto the floor. She then stopped and stared at them without a shadow of emotion on her blank face.

‘That’s ok, I’ll get it, it’s not a problem.’ I nearly shoved her out of my office.

Perfect. Just what I needed: a clumsy pathetic toad-like anti-social dim-wit as an intern. God, what have I done wrong this time?

I collected the folders and put them back in a pile. On the top of them I spotted a note from Dennis: mostly the results of his tests with the beamers. I flipped through a few pages. It looked like he was right about Hermione: the pattern was definitely there, that individual script style which makes one programmer’s code different from the other’s. Hermione had a distinguishing habit of inserting some dummy strings at regular intervals, a sort of trademark. I wondered how difficult that would be for someone to imitate that.

‘Coffee.’

Short chunky fingers that resembled peeled organic baby carrots put a plastic cup on my desk. I grabbed it without looking and made a large gulp.

How could I describe the taste of that drink? Take a rubbish bin and put in a lump of a salmon steak well past its sell-by date, a pair of used gym socks, some underwear from an Oxford street bum, a well-burnt scrambled egg, a couple of used baby nappies, add some contents of a dentist’s spittoon, carefully puke on top of that and leave it in a warm dark place to brew for a week. Then take it out, filter the contents into a glass, and drink it. Then you’d probably have an approximate idea of the sensation that overwhelmed my taste buds.

I made a rush to the gents but realised I wouldn’t make it. So I dashed to the nearest open window and leaned over the window sill, praying that nobody happened to pass by underneath. The drink had mixed quite well with the stuff from last night and they did not hurry to part with my body, but eventually I made them leave.

‘Are you ok?’ Dennis was standing behind me. I swung my head.

‘Call… the… ambulance… CM poisoning…. Unidentified substance…’

‘Anastasia is taking care of it.’ He turned to Cathy. ‘Where did you get this?’

I did not hear her answer. Anastasia stormed in.

‘Gosh, Colin. It must be that drinks machine on the twelfth floor they put out of service! It’s got some bugs they were trying to fix.’

‘But it was working.’ I heard Cathy’s weak voice. ‘I pushed the button and it gave me this.’

‘Haven’t you noticed a foot-high sign ‘DO NOT USE’ on it?’ You could never tell from Anastasia’s tone if she tried to be sarcastic.

‘No… Was there?’

‘Well, about thirty seconds ago there was one.’

She leant towards me, spreading the intense smell of her perfume, and whispered into my ear: ‘Cheer up Colin, she’s only here for six weeks.’

I threw up again.

I vaguely remembered what happened next. Eventually I’ve been told that I was in no danger. The stuff wasn’t toxic, just very non-palatable, and indeed the faulty drinks machine was to blame. I’ve got my stomach flushed with some CM-deactivators, just in case, and they let me go.

Back in my office I found Cathy squeezed into a corner between a bookcase and a visitor’s workstation, browsing through some old files.

‘I’m sorry, Colin.’ She did not raise her eyes from the page she was holding upside down. ‘Can I… Can I get you another one?’

I could not stand it any longer so I called it a day.

*

For the next few days I would come to the office every morning praying that Cathy wouldn’t be there; that she’d break her leg (preferably, both of them), or have an outburst of pimples so ugly that she’d lock herself in her room so no one could see her (not that it would make much difference), or decide to join a pro-org group and live in a tent with a "Say ‘No’ To CM Food" banner pinned across it.

But every morning she was there, as miserable as before.

I could bear it if she were at least useful. She was not. The permanent state of entropy that pretty much dictated how things were done in DSS office now gave way to laboriously organised chaos. She seemed to arrange the folders on the shelves according to some cryptic system that only she knew the key to. She booked appointments at exactly the time slots you asked for but then forgot to notify the other party. If you asked her for a copy of a seven-page document, she’d bring you seven copies of the first page.

‘She’s still better than my ex-girlfriend.’ Dennis would say every time I took cover in his office to recuperate before my next encounter with Cathy. ‘At least she doesn’t volunteer to do anything.’

I had nothing to do but to agree.

Cathy’s uselessness, however, was nothing compared to her habit of eating at her desk. She was never actually just eating: she was munching, chewing, biting, gnawing, crunching, pecking every time I looked at her. I did not know where all the snacks were coming from: they seemed to appear magically out of dry, over-conditioned air. She would leave a trail of empty sweet wrappers all around the office as if she was scared that one day she’d get lost there and never find her way back. If I were her, I’d rather be afraid of growing so large that I’d not be able to fit through the doors and get forever trapped in the office. That would be a disaster.

To do her a complete justice, I should admit she was not bad at absolutely everything. She seemed to have a good grip on computers and was quite dexterous with both keyboard and 3D input. As time passed by and the heap of unprocessed reports on my desk started to melt, my tolerance level seemed to have adjusted, or maybe I just got distracted by some unforeseen developments (or, rather the lack of any) in the case I’ve been working on.

As I expected, the box of beamers turned out to be not enough to get Aisha under my thumb. Even the fact that the code pattern of the ketchup from the accident matched those extracted from the beamers did not help much. Aisha walked free and we were not making any progress. I was getting desperate. I felt as if I was letting Natalie down.

Finally I had to lock my wife’s picture in the safe box but it did not make me feel better.

The light blinked at the end of the tunnel on a late October night, when Dennis breezed into my office with a mysterious grin on his face.

‘Guess where I’ve been.’

I studied him from head to toe. There was nothing unusual about the way he looked except the fact that his pockets were swollen with some tetra-bricks sticking out. I recognised the packaging.

‘What were you doing at AgroFuture’s plant?’ I figured out that it was the only place where Dennis could get that many packs of AgroFuture drinks without diving into his wallet: Dennis was not a wallet-diving kind, as I discovered after the very first pub crawl we had together.

‘Sampling.’

Reasonable. After all, AgroFuture was Europe’s largest manufacturer of CM-based food products. If Dennis wanted more samples to rot and develop mould in his office, that’d be a sure place to go. That did not explain his facial expression though.

‘I did not know that freebies cheer you up that much. Otherwise, I would sign you up for a focus group instead of myself.’

‘Ah?’ Dennis did not catch the irony. ‘Hold on, mate, you haven’t heard the whole story yet.’

‘I haven’t heard the beginning yet, to be honest.’

Dennis sneered as he looked around, making sure no one was overhearing. Cathy was tapping in the corner, but she accounted for a part of furniture anyway, so he continued.

‘I just had a very intriguing conversation with one of Aisha’s former colleagues at AgroFuture.’

I winked.

‘Colleagues? But he never worked at AgroFuture. He is too dumb even for a filling line operator!’

‘True, but not entirely true. He spent three months there after he got kicked out of school. The guy’s dad was actually a part of the team that worked on Recycle-4 project, one of the first AgroFuture’s babies. Does that ring a bell?’

Of course I knew about Recycle-4: that was where the whole CM-food concept came from. Before it nobody risked using the CM-process for anything rather than inorganic substances. It did not occur to anyone, back then, that one day we’d be eating and drinking computer chips: well, even today it still sounded like a blasphemy to Nora Willson and her pro-organic crusaders. Speaking about Nora –

‘Is the pro-org camp still there?’

‘Sure it is! Where would it go? They have now even got a prenatal care ward. Looks like they exhausted their potential for growth by recruiting new members and now are trying to multiply organically. Very much in line with their mission statement.’

‘Nora must know everyone from the Recycle-4 team. She was one of them until they sent her packing.’

Dennis gave me a "cat got the cream" look.

‘What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?’

‘I don’t know. Sampling?’

Dennis gently lowered a folder on my head.

‘Talking to one of Nora’s sidekicks, stupid.’ Dennis was completely immune to my sense of humour.

‘I thought it was one of the AgroFuture’s staff.’

‘Have you ever heard about multi-tasking, mate? OK, in a nutshell, Aisha knows enough about CM-coding to be held responsible for deliberate distribution of harmful digital viruses.’

He beamed and it made me beam back.

‘Where’s the bastard?’

‘No idea. Nobody’s seen him for a while. I think, he’s trying to keep a low profile after that story with the "magic wands".’

‘Crap. Any idea of where he might be hanging around? His social life used to be pretty busy until recently, I doubt he’d pull a plug on it.’

‘Well, from what I’ve been told, he never ever missed a Halloween party at Hogwarts. That’s where he sells most of his stuff. It’s about a half of his annual income in one night, he’d be crazy to dump it.’

‘A party where?’ I hoped that I misheard.

‘Hogwarts. It’s a private club for the fans of J.K.Rowling’s books.’ I didn’t notice when Anastasia walked in. She stood in the doorway, closely inspecting her manicure. ‘Here.’ She came up to the lopsided wall map and pressed her thumb against a greasy spot that occupied a good quarter of the South-East England. ‘Battersea’.

I sighed.

‘I’m not going there. It’s against my religious belief.’

‘Oh,’ Anastasia raised her plucked eyebrow. ‘Which one? "Stay as far away from the Greater London area as you possibly can", that one?’

‘Exactly. You can’t make me do that. It’s a violation of my basic rights.’

Anastasia picked one of Cathy’s sweet wrappers, made it into a tiny ball, aimed at the paper basket, tossed it and missed, as usual.

‘The party is next Thursday at 21:00.’ She walked out of my office.

Did I hear a whip crack?

*

As Thursday approached, the butterflies in my stomach regressed into carnivorous caterpillars. Sure, there was nothing I wanted more in my life than to see Aisha’s face through a mirrored wall of an interrogation room: I would have done anything for that, up to and including walking through the seven rings of Hell. But a night out in Central London was beyond my definition of Hell, and I was not sure I really wanted Aisha that much.

The morning of Thursday, October 31^st started from Anastasia’s phone call.

‘Are you ok? How do you feel?’ were the first things she said.

‘I’m fine, why?’ I was trying to figure out the time of the day. The surroundings still looked pitch black.

‘Good. Which means there’s nothing that can stop you from showing up in the office today.’

I realised what I just did. I lost my last chance to throw in a sickie and skip the party.

The first thing I saw in the office was a big shopping bag on my desk.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a costume party, Colin.’ I noticed that Dennis could hardly stop himself from laughing. ‘You are supposed to be wearing this tonight.’

I put my hand inside and pulled out a huge piece of thick black cloth and a wig.

‘What the f-?’

‘Colin, a lady is here.’ Dennis shook his head in reproach. I glanced at Cathy. Well, even if she could pass for a "lady", she was definitely not here, as I could clearly see from her absent look.

‘Ok, can you explain that to me?’ I shook the cloth.

‘You are supposed to be dressed as a character from the Harry Potter books. Otherwise you won’t get in. I was thinking about Hagrid, but Anastasia decided this one would suit you better. It’s professor Snape’s outfit.’

‘Professor who?’

‘Snape.’ Anastasia appeared behind my back in her usual startling manner. ‘A Potions teacher. Haven’t you read Harry Potter at all, Colin?’

‘Not since I failed my high-school essay on "Myth vs Reality in the Works of J.K.Rowling".

‘I see. Well, this might give you a second chance.’

If I did not know that Cathy was incapable of any sort of emotion, I would have taken a strange sound from the corner for a smirk.

‘Bless you, Cathy.’ Anastasia didn’t turn her head. ‘We should have a guest pass for you delivered by noon. You may want to spent the rest of the day in the library.’

‘Dennis,’ I sighed heavily when the Lady in Red disappeared from my view. ‘Do you have a feeling that Anastasia is having a deep personal problem?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t think so. She’s a bit rough, that’s true, but she’s one of the best DDS cops I know, sure, after you, mate. Besides, she’s got a body to die for.’

‘Maybe. But I’m not ready to die yet.’ I jammed the cloak back into the bag. ‘Cathy? Can you put this somewhere for me?’

Something fell noisily from the bookcase behind my back. I did not look, instead I made my escape to the gents: the only Cathy-free zone left for another three weeks.

It was half past four and the guest pass had not yet arrived. I celebrated quietly, enjoying watching Anastasia dash from corner to corner biting her nails. Bye-bye pretty-pinkie manicure! She would jump at each and every ring of her colour-coordinated phone, but her stiff face would not relax for a minute. Finally she summoned me and Dennis to her cave.

‘Trouble, guys.’ There was a trace of human expression in her worried eyes. ‘We did not get a ticket.’

‘Sold out?’ Dennis rubbed his forehead.

‘They aren’t on sale. It’s a members-only party, but each one can bring a guest. The guy I was hoping to get the ticket from has just made up with his ex-girlfriend, so he’s taking her instead. I can do nothing about it.’

‘Did the bloke dump you as well?’

‘So smart, Colin!’

‘I’m just saying, there must be dozens of other ways to get hold of Aisha.’

‘So why haven’t you tried any of them yet?’ Anastasia made a face like insulted Barbie doll.

‘Was I given any chance to?’

At 18:30 I stood up from my desk and announced into the lobby:

‘Ok, guys, this is getting ridiculous, and I’ve got things to do. I’ll see you tomorrow and I’ll try to come up with a better plan.’

‘See you, mate.’ A rattle of glass vials came from Dennis’ side.

I shoved my face into Anastasia’s room. ‘Hey, you may want to keep that Snape’s gear for the office’s Christmas party.’

A muffled hiss reached my ears. Grinning, I grabbed my backpack and turned to leave.

‘Just be by the phone, in case something comes up!’ What I did respect in Anastasia, was her ability to keep her face even after falling on it at full speed.

‘Sure, boss. Anything.’

I made a step and bumped into Cathy.

‘Goodness, what are you doing here?’

‘Colin,’ she miaowed hiding her eyes, ‘I have a spare guest pass to the party. You know, that party, at Hogwarts. I… I’m in Rowling’s fan-club.’

It was the first time in my life I wanted to cause lethal harm to a fellow human being.

*

Cathy and I agreed to meet at 20:30 at Victoria station. Anastasia didn’t authorise me to drive there, the sole reason being that "DDS are not the Houses of Parliaments and can’t afford central London parking charges", and thus subjected me to half an hour’s capital punishment in a run down, overcrowded and barely moving suburban train. I spent it meditating over "the forty reasons why I shouldn’t hand in my resignation tomorrow", and finally concluded that only one could pass for something I would give a damn about: Hermione.

The station hall buzzed idly, processing the last few waves of rush hour tide. I looked around and couldn’t see Cathy, which bothered me; she was not easy to lose in a crowd. I sighed: after all, in a long list of the girl’s deficiencies unpunctuality would appear as a rather minor flaw. I took out my phone and started to search for Cathy’s number that Anastasia gave me just in case, when something crashed into my back. I caught the phone that nearly leapt from my hand and turned around.

‘Ah! I was calling you, actually.’ Sometimes I simply admired my ability for self-control.

Cathy had changed and now was wearing a dark green sweatshirt over tight black leggings and matching trainers. She clutched something that looked like a rowing oar case. Actually, it was a rowing oar case, as I could still see a faded label of some Oxbridge River Club on its side. Her other hand dragged a bloated backpack with a piece of black cloth hanging out.

‘So,’ I decided small talk wouldn’t hurt. ‘Who are you going to be tonight?’ I had to admit I couldn’t think of any character from the seven Harry Potter books that would remotely resemble Cathy.

‘Madam Hooch.’ She blushed.

‘But I thought madam Hooch is supposed to be fit!’ I didn’t realise I said it aloud.

‘Yeah, and I thought professor Snape is supposed to be smart.’

I had to look around to make sure it was in fact Cathy who whispered that. Now, here was something quite new: a toad with a sense of humour, Anastasia-style. I felt cornered.

‘Simultaneous miscomprehension.’ I grinned. ‘Let’s get moving. I want to get home before midnight.’

She pulled the oar case up.

‘What’s that?’

‘My broom.’

‘I see... Can it fly?’

‘We are working on it.’ Not even a shadow of a smile passed Cathy’s solemn sweating face.

‘We?’

‘You know... the people, from the club. You’ll see.’

‘Ok.’ I just hoped flying was not included in my tonight’s programme.

It was raining outside. In the last couple of hours the weather had changed from bad to simply disgusting. The wind was sweeping along the streets in short violent gusts, breaking rain drops into a foggy drizzle that seemed to crawl under my clothes from every direction. I pulled my collar up and shivered, hoping for a vacant taxi to drive by. No luck. I clenched my teeth.

Easier said than done. I had a strange urge to stop and take a good look at the already fairly alien landscape, as you would look at a school friend you haven’t seen for five years: here, a new café, and - hey! - who put that ugly billboard over there —?

I forced myself look down and focused on counting gum spots under my feet. One ... two ... three ...

On the 467th one I lost my count and had to start again, but then I more or less mastered the skill, and even managed to avoid collisions with other pedestrians, their children and lamp posts. I guess, I developed a sort of peripheral vision.

By the 3857th gum spot we reached the gate to Battersea Park. A laminated plate tied to its bars with a piece of rusty wire kindly informed us that the park had closed about three hours before. I grinned.

‘Surprise, surprise!’

I stepped back pretending to admire a small bas-relief in a shape of a swollen female face in the centre of a marble arch. It looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t recall any woman with those sorts of stony features. I look around to see if there were any alternative ways of entry: after having made it that far going back empty-handed would feel like a disappointment, to say the least.

Without saying a word, Cathy trod forward and pushed the gate. It opened silently, almost too smoothly.

‘It’s not locked,’ she apologised, probably for making me feel totally, hopelessly, abysmally stupid. ‘They never lock it when there’s a party.’

‘I see.’

She stepped in and started to unzip her backpack. I cursed. I almost forgot that I’d have to put on that silly Snape thing. Cathy apparently noticed my struggle.

‘You can just put on the cloak. It’ll be ok.’

I nodded, but decided to go for the full gear. Hopefully, it could disguise me well enough to make sure that my name would never appear in any sort of connection with the bunch of freaks I was going to pay a visit to.

Colin F. Moerdike, how did you come to this?

We moved in silence, Cathy leading the way: two hilarious figures in heavy black cloaks flapping in the autumn wind. After about four hundred metres we turned away from a paved road onto a side path, generously covered with decomposing maple leaves. A hedgehog sprung from under my feet.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Over there. The Old Boating House’

I looked where she pointed, but could hardly see anything except the glaring surface of a large pond. As we came closer, I could finally make out a dilapidated wooden hut overhanging the oily, dark waters and then one more crucial detail: a two-metre high wire fence around the building, this time with no evidence of a gate whatsoever.

So, it will involve some flying, after all. Oh, dear.

I imagined Cathy unpacking her broom and taking off, powered by some inexplicable force. Or, more likely, me, dragging her over the fence, praying not to strain my back. Lovely outing, I daresay.

‘Wait here,’ Cathy came up to the edge of water and whistled, in an unexpectedly business-like tone. I looked down. A drowsy duck floated towards us, shaking its flat beak in what had to be a bird’s version of a yawn. Appalling.

I didn’t notice at first the wide circular waves on the rippling surface, so when I lifted my head I nearly choked on my tongue. A short stout man of uncertain age scowled at me from the centre of a boat, sending back a strong mental wave of mutual dislike. His huge black wig almost covered his shoulders.

‘Hagrid, I suppose,’ I tried to be polite. Times had to be hard at Hogwarts if its gamekeeper had to take an eighty percent reduction in height.

‘Hi, baby,’ I assumed that was to Cathy. ‘May I see your ticket?’ That one was no doubt to me. I looked at the girl.

‘He’s with me, Pat, it’s ok.’ Cathy carefully wobbled her way into the boat. I had to follow.

The man called Pat dropped us next to a slippery pier that led directly to a shabby door covered with peeling green paint. I pushed it. At least three dozen eyes, mostly those of women in pointed hats, pierced me at once.

Inside, the club seemed two times larger, probably due to the mirrors that generously covered every available wall space. The decoration looked quite simple: a few wooden tables and benches, some alcoves hidden behind red velvet curtains and a long bar, liberally set with all kinds of coloured liquids, in tall weirdly shaped cocktail glasses, and thick white half-burnt candles. The whole room was lit with nothing but candles, evenly spread amongst the usual thematic accessories: pumpkins, spider webs and skull-shaped ashtrays. A typical Central London Halloween party, with a bit of a feature twist, maybe.

‘Hey, howya doing!’ I looked around. A tall skinny guy was hugging Cathy — he almost had to kneel for that. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while.’

Cathy blushed and hid her face.

‘Er... have you met Colin? Colin, it’s Harry... I mean, Doug.’

Now I noticed Doug’s thick round glasses that went with his oblong face like tortilla chips go with whipped cream. My next natural move was to look at his forehead — yep, all attributes were in place, although the scar sticker had already started to peel off. Jeez, those guys were taking their game way too seriously!

‘Oh, so that’s what Harry is going to be when he grows up!’

The bloke cheered and slapped me on my shoulder

‘A drink?’

I nodded. No sign of Aisha yet. I just had to sit and wait.

A black middle-aged witch in a red curly wig landed next to me and smiled with all her forty-five bleached teeth.

‘Are you Cathy’s friend?’

I reflected upon the question a bit. I wouldn’t call our mutual feelings "friendly", but I decided that under the circumstances being Cathy’s friend could be a way to go.

‘Sort of.’

The witch beamed.

‘She is a nice girl, isn’t she?’

‘No doubt. What’s your name again?’

‘Hermione.’

I jumped.

No way. Not that homely tipsy bookkeeper with a face of a nursery teacher!

She giggled.

‘Of course, for others I’m Tara. I was thinking about playing somebody else, but then I thought, well, I like reading and I’m quite curious, so I felt like a have some bonding with Hermione Granger, and we had a few of them lately, but one is off sick and the other one had a baby and stopped coming, so I though, well, maybe, I’ll be Hermione. So, why did you choose Snape?’

I didn’t expect Tara to finish her sentence so abruptly.

‘Er... I don’t know. No particular reason.’

‘There’s always a reason. You have to look inside you, it’s never on surface.’

Not a psycho-literary analysis, please!

‘A colleague chose it for me.’

‘You see? Others normally know us better than ourselves.’

Well, I still hoped to be a better person than Anastasia’s interpretation of me.

‘Sometimes.’

Doug-Harry arrived with four glasses in his hands.

‘What’s that?’ the intuition of a DDS cop as well as the magenta colour of the contents made me suspect some hard-core CM produce.

‘What would you like it to be?’

I didn’t get the question.

‘I mean, what would you like to drink?’

Ok, now I got it.

‘A lager, perhaps.’

Harry-Doug shrug his shoulders. ‘Not sure. I don’t think I’ve got anything for lager here. Let me check.’ He took out a beamer that looked suspiciously like one I saw in Dennis’ office, then a handheld, and placed them on the table next to each other. ‘No, I don’t think so. Would you like some butterbeer instead?’

‘Whatever.’ A beer is a beer, after all.

"Butterbeer" turned out to be not too bad after all, mild and light, with a distinct herbal flavour. I let Doug mix me another one, and then one more. The evening floated by and so did our conversation.

‘Pretty good stuff, huh?’ Doug’s glasses now were at about thirty degrees to his eye line. ‘I used to know the guy who coded it. He now works for a big CM-chem company, doesn’t do anything for fun anymore, which is a pity.’

I made a compassionate grunt.

‘He didn’t live by the Books, that was the problem.’ Tara-Hermione shoved her red-black head into the discussion. ‘He thought he could just write a code, call it "butterbeer" and that’s it! Instant place in history! I don’t think so. You need to have a Wizard’s spirit, not just hands!’

I realised that I had lost the thread somewhere. Cathy attempted to rescue me.

‘Tara means that the guy who wrote the "butterbeer" code just wanted to make money on it. He was not a true fan of Rowling.’

I instantly felt a strong sympathy towards the unknown hacker.

‘So why then you drink it?’

‘Because it’s good,’ grinned "Harry". ‘Cheers!’

‘Cheers,’ I agreed.

The beers kept coming and going; Aisha didn’t seem to appear. Instead, Cathy disappeared somewhere, but I didn’t bother to look. She seemed at home in the place. A fish in her pond. Let her dabble.

Feeling warm, heavy and cosy, I leaned against the wall and put my hand on top of Tara’s.

‘You’re ag’d wom’n, Tara.’ I tried to focus my smile. ‘Reely g’d fr’nd.’

‘Hermione,’ she objected.

‘Screw Hermione!’ I protested. ‘Sh’s ab’tch!!!’

Tara looked offended.

‘No,’ I tried to reconcile. ‘Not you.’

I gave the woman an evaluating look. ‘Y’r ok. The other Hermione.’ I made round spooky eyes. ‘Sh’s mean!’

All of a sudden I felt limp and boneless, like a dead hamster.

‘She killed my wife!’ I whined, clutching Tara’s hand. ‘She thought it was funnieeeee!’

Tara hugged me and pressed to her pronounced bosom.

‘Poor boy!’

‘Colin!’

I slowly lifted my head.

‘Cathy? Wh’ssup?’

‘Aisha’s here.’

In a less than a second I was all sober and focused. Well, maybe not too sober, since I forgot to ask how Cathy could possibly know him. But again, it was her club.

‘Where’s he?’

‘Back there.’ She pointed at one of the alcoves. ‘Selling wands.’

‘Ok, stay here and keep everyone away.’

I grunted, pulled up my "sergeant Moerdike on a duty" face and stormed in.

*

Aisha was leaning over a small round table, carefully arranging his gadgets. Half-black, half-Asian, he had a appearance of a merchant both scrupulous and shoddy.

‘Hey, I think I said I’m not ready yet, what’s going on?’ he looked up and gagged.

‘What a fortunate coincidence!’ I folded my arms on my chest in a theatrical pose I picked up after Dennis. ‘You, in a place like this, who would have thought! What’s up, Aisha? Piling up your cultural baggage?’

‘What do you want, Moerdike?’ Aisha’s eyes wiggled. ‘I told you, I just sell toys, ok?’

‘Hadn’t your dad told you the difference between a toy and a toy?’ I sat down and took one of the sticks.

‘You know, Aisha, if I were in your business, and if I had a dad like yours, I would double-check that no supplier shoves me anything that might not work as intended. Where’s your inbound quality control, mate?’

Aisha sneered.

‘Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I get the gadgets, load the program and sell them to some freaks like this Potter bunch who pretend that it’s some sort of magic wands, that’s it. Pure, clean business. I can’t take responsibility if someone takes my stuff, messes with it, makes a mega-ketchup bang and your lady kicks the bucket. So just get lost, Moerdike, ok?’

I put the beamer down, very slowly.

‘Aisha, did I ever told you anything about ketchup and my wife?’

Even in the dim candle glare I could see Aisha’s face turn grey.

‘Get lost, Colin,’ he repeated hoarsely. ‘I have no freaking idea what you’re talking about.’

I shook my head.

‘I see.’

Aisha nervously tapped his fingers against the back of a chair on his left. I watched.

‘What do you want?’ he finally snapped.

‘Hermione.’

‘What?’ Aisha made a face of a monkey pulled by its tail. ‘What for?’

‘Mind your own little business. Isn’t that what you want, anyway?’

He shook his head.

‘You’re looking in the wrong place, that’s all I can tell you.’

‘As I said, Aisha, mind your own business and let me mind mine.’

Aisha narrowed his eyes, which didn’t look extraordinary, given his genetic composition.

‘I don’t know no Hermione, that’s it, is that clear?’

‘I don’t think you understand. The box that Dennis has got... that’s no less than two years, pal.’

‘You heard me.’

I watched Aisha carefully: what was he hoping for? His dad? Rubbish. As far as I knew from Dennis, the old man seldom rushed to pull his prodigal son out of trouble. Say, he managed to keep us very well uninformed about the blood ties between him and his offspring. Besides, I was not sure if Aisha was bluffing. Much more likely, very afraid.

Of whom?

‘Who are you so scared of, Aisha? That witch?’

‘Moerdike, you’re an idiot, that’s all I’m going to say. If you want to hear more, call my lawyer.’

He stretched his hand, grabbed a drink and took a contemptuous sip, making it clear that the audience was over.

I did not move.

‘Exceptional shit.’ Aisha scorned to his glass. ‘No sense of proportion.’ He reached inside his pocket, took out a golden pen holder and produced a beamer in mahogany casing. ‘Fortunately, we can fix it, can’t we, Moerdike?’

I uttered another thirty seconds of profound silence, watching Aisha whisper over his glass. Tons of patience. I’ve got all the time in world.

‘Cheers, Moerdike! Aisha lifted his drink that had now changed the colour to a greener variation. ‘As they say, see you in court!’

I mentally joined to toast.

‘That’s much bett-’

Aisha’s head hit the table with a loud knock. I jumped. The guy didn’t move. I grabbed him by his shoulders and pulled him up; he was still breathing, a green trickle dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He panted heavily.

‘Moerdike, ‘ he grabbed my shirt ‘... the ... philosopher’s code ... bitch ...’ he coughed and dropped his head again.

‘Colin?’

Cathy must have heard the noise.

‘What happened?’

‘An accident. Let’s get out of here.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ She peered at the outstretched body.

‘Nothing’s wrong. He’s dead.’

‘Uh.’ Cathy accepted the explanation. ‘Shouldn’t we call the police?’

‘No. Somebody else will call them.’

What I didn’t like about the metropolitan police, in particular, was their handsome way of throwing your handcuffed and slightly shaken body into their custody for "confirming your identity" and "asking a few questions". They would gladly release us, of course, next morning, when each and every London paper would be screaming "Man Poisoned By Dodgy CM Drink As DDS Officer Watches" and Anastasia would be getting ready to slice me into ribbons with a razor blade.

‘Move.’

I stopped for a second to grab Aisha’s beamer and dashed to the exit.

We tripped over a few chairs on our way out, but our escape went almost unnoticed. The hard part came when we got to the pier: the man called Pat and his boat had disappeared without a trace.

‘Where’s the moron?’

Cathy shook her head. A muffled squeal came from the club. Someone found Aisha’s body.

‘Ok, jump.’

Cathy stared at me in disbelief.

‘I said, jump! It’s no more than a metre-deep here!’

She probably wanted to point out what it was already the first day of November, but instead she just squeaked and plunged in with an elephant-size splash. I did the same. I managed to splash less noisily, but then spoiled everything with a long and loud string of four-letter words. The water was freezing.

We waded to the shore and then sprinted as fast as we could in the direction of Chelsea Bridge. As we ran, I could hear the distant sound of approaching police sirens. The Mets were getting busy.

‘Colin, wait!’ Cathy pleaded finally.

I stopped, struggling to catch a breath. We were standing in the middle of Chelsea Bridge, illuminated like a Christmas tree in a shopping mall.

‘My bag.’

I realised that it was not only Cathy’s bag that had gone missing. I left mine under Tara and Doug’s table. Bag. ID’s. Credit cards. Everything that could possibly get me home tonight. My keys were still in the pocket of my soaked jacket, but the idea of walking to Horley didn’t excite me for some reason.

‘We can’t go back. Have you got any money left?’

Cathy shook her head. She was shaking and snivelling; water dripped from the hem of her sweatshirt. I could hear her teeth rattle in short frequent fits.

Why, oh why I hadn’t signed up, when I had a chance, for an alternative identity authorisation: fingerprint, voice, iris scan, urine sample, anything? Always considered it too intrusive. Intrusive, my arse! Now, there I was, drenched and penniless, with no place to go, and a shivering adolescent on my hands.

I turned to the river and leaned against the parapet. The Thames flowed grey and muddy under the bridge, but further on, where the lights of the City skyline reflected in black waters, the view was fascinating.

I lifted my head and skimmed the skyline for the familiar shapes of London Eye and Big Ben. To my surprise, neither of them was there. I shook my head and looked again. Nothing. Had I missed anything? A terrorist attack? A demolition?

I turned away and suddenly realised I was looking the wrong way. Both landmarks were still there, hidden behind the square shape of a riverside office building.

I sighed and rubbed my temples. There was only one way to check. Nothing seemed to have happened so far, so maybe I’d get away with it this time.

Maybe I did start to forget, after all. Could I be that lucky?

‘Let’s go.’ I pulled Cathy by a drooping sleeve of her wet sweatshirt. ‘My place is not far from here.’

She looked up and I noticed something that could be taken for a glitch of surprise.

‘But I thought you live in Horley?’

‘It’s my other place. Let’s go.’

I turned away from the piercing wind and marched in long rushed steps, feeling wet trousers glued to my bare skin and listening to the sloshing sound of my shoes that still leaked with water. Damn Anastasia. Damn Aisha. Damn Hermione. Damn. Damn. Damn! I could hear Cathy sniffle behind me as she struggled to keep up.

‘We’re almost there.’

Ebury Bridge Road lay idle; the last punters and commuters had long ago gone back to their overnight accommodation. It puzzled me sometimes, why, in a city where a 3 a.m. traffic jam would be considered a norm, a certain street would suddenly turn dead after a certain hour, even though it buzzed with life just a few minutes ago? London mysteries.

This city drives me mad.

An occasional biker nearly roared over my toes, startling me, and at the same time leaving behind some feeling of comfort mixed with almost odourless fumes of ExtraClean CM petrol. Still alive.

‘Here.’ I pushed at a heavy cast iron gate that led to a narrow yard squeezed between the rows of period apartment blocks, dimly lit by two lonely wall lights and a neon lamp hanging over a brick hatch, that served as a home to four dust-coloured rubbish containers and a couple of stray cats. The gate was supposed to be locked after eleven, but nobody ever bothered, as far as I could remember. Some things never change.

Cathy stepped in, looking around and shivering under her wet clothes; I followed, delaying for a second to close the gate behind me. It clanged distinctly in the crisp empty air. One of the cats, bothered with the intrusion into his shadowy domain popped his patchy head out of the nearest bin and scanned me with his only eye. I remembered that the last time I saw him he definitely had both.

That cat almost gave me a heart attack once. Not without reason, true. It was when Natalie and I went home, after one too many beers, and suddenly turned silly only a few steps away from our place. I was all over her breast, smooth, firm and round like a green apple, when the beast jumped out of his shelter and nearly made me good enough for a child choir. Gee, I yelled like a gutted pig, and Natalie - she collapsed with laughter, nasty naughty thing! I smirked.

Cathy looked back, as if wanting to see what held me up. I nodded: ok, time to move.

‘Colin!’

The voice came from behind me. I froze.

Then I turned my head.

Natalie was sitting on a wooden bench next to the car drive, pushing her hands deep into the pockets of her ski jacket. Her chin and the tip of her nose were hidden behind the knitted collar of her favourite burgundy sweater, that she wore almost everywhere, from weddings to funerals. She pulled the collar down and let out a small cloud of warm breath.

‘Where have you been? I’ve lost my keys. I’m freezing here!’

‘No, you haven’t,’ I wanted to say, ‘I bet they are in the lab again.’ But it didn’t sound right. Maybe she did lose them this time.

She sprung to her feet and came up to me.

‘Let’s go home.’

I shook my head.

‘I won’t let go home a bad girl who loses her keys.’

She scowled. ‘Silly Colin. Let’s go, it’s cold here. Look, I’m almost dead!’

She stretched out her palms and I noticed that they were covered with a thin red capillary net. She was really freezing.

‘Ok, but this will be the last time. Promise?’

She gleamed like a child, her eyes shiny, her lips pink and wet. I bent down to kiss one of those trembling warm lips; the clouds of our breaths mixed together into a moist fog.

‘This is not Natalie,’ warned the other Colin in the back of my head.

The lip burst like a cocktail cherry, revealing naked juicy flesh that slowly dribbled thick bright red liquid. I grabbed Natalie’s hand: thin red lines now turned into porous cracks oozing tiny scarlet drops. The red thing began to seep from under her nails, it poured from her mouth, nostrils, from every bit of her body, then her eye sockets fell in and her whole face turned into red puree that dripped onto my hands, spreading an intense stink of rotten tomatoes.

I backed away until my shoulders hit a brick wall.

‘Boo-hoo,’ it said to me.

‘Hi,’ I acknowledged reluctantly, without looking.

‘Where have you been, Colin?’ its voice sounded full of reproach.

‘Shut up,’ I suggested, looking for a path to escape.

‘We missed you, Colin,’ a whisper came from dim curtained windows above my head. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Wherehaveyoubeen... wherehaveyoubeen...’ echoed flower baskets rocking back and forth on their rust-bitten chains, strands of dry weeds hanging out like uncombed hair.

They wouldn’t let me go, for sure, not now. I gasped for breath and made a microscopic move back to the gate.

Then they yelled. They screamed and howled, they shrieked, they shouted, wailed, moaned, squealed, their cries fusing into one drumming beat in my head. I tried to cover my ears but the beat was already inside, growing louder and louder with every instance. My brain was getting ready to explode. I couldn’t stop it.

‘Colin?’

Silence fell so abruptly that I thought I had gone deaf. Yet I certainly could hear someone calling me in a distantly human voice.

‘Colin, are you ok?’

I opened my eyes, vaguely surprised at the fact that they had been shut. Cathy was towering over me like a misty cloud in a shape of a giant teddy bear.

‘What happened?’ I was not sure Cathy could be considered an objective witness but I asked anyway, just in case.

‘I don’t know! You just... fell.’

Perfect. A heroic fearless DDS cop faints in front of his own intern. Oh, misery! Oh, shame!

‘Let’s go.’ I rose to my feet and brushed sticky wet pieces of fallen leaves off the back of my pants. ‘We’re almost there.’

Cathy nodded and followed without asking a question, as if fainting cops constituted a usual part of her daily routine. I felt a bit better. As they say, the best partner is a silent partner. It could be much worse if it were Dennis. Definitely much worse.

The flat’s door opened without a sound, but then got stuck halfway. I squeezed in, turned on the lights and kicked away a pile of newspapers that blocked it. Most of them already expired and showed nothing but black boxes, but some still featured fading pictures that moved in slow jerks, like pre-broadband web videos.

‘Come in.’

The place smelled empty. I took my shoes off and jammed a few old papers into each one to absorb water. Cathy was looking around, more confused than curious.

‘Is this your flat?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s nice. Why don’t you live here?’

How could I explain?

Shortly after Natalie’s funeral I went into a bit of an overkill and it ended up quite nasty. I couldn’t say now exactly what kind of stuff I had been taking; I suppose, I tried almost everything, - both CM and "classics", - that one could get from the murky dim labyrinths of Soho. My GP said that I narrowly escaped permanent brain damage and seemed to get away lightly, but no one could yet clear me from recurring hallucinations that would be triggered at the most inappropriate times, by nearly anything that had any connection to my past life. I found that the only way I could keep them under control was to move out of London altogether. I didn’t sell our flat: I couldn’t imagine taking estate agents round, their cold moist palms grabbing the door handles that still had the prints of my wife’s fingers. Natalie’s life insurance was enough to get me a two-bedroom house in the South-East, and that was it. Easier to commute, anyway.

‘Because I live in Horley.’

Cathy seemed to be satisfied with the answer.

‘The bathroom is on the left. There’s a dryer too, but check if it’s plugged in first.’

‘Thanks.’ Cathy plodded at the suggested direction, leaving a wet trace on the floor. I put my jacket on the hanger and sneaked into the kitchen.

I remembered that I had emptied it of all the food before collecting my last bags and leaving, so I didn’t much hope to find anything of nutritious value. My expectations were fully fulfilled: after a quick rampage through fridge, drawers and wall cabinets I ended up with a quarter of a chocolate bar, a piece of stone-dry cheddar and a few bags of apple tea. A feast.

I put the kettle on and went into observation mode. I liked this kettle, I always thought of its tinted transparent plastic walls as an elegant design: they let you watch the bubbles building at the bottom, first they’d be small and almost invisible, then they’d join and form perfect tiny round pearls, then they’d grow bigger, less regular and more frantic until the whole surface of water would burst into a turmoil and then there’d come a soft "click" and the little universe would calm down, ready to pour.

I did not take that kettle with me when I left, but again, there were way too many things I did not take from the flat.

After all, how much longer I would be keeping that memorial museum to Mrs. Natalie Moerdike?

The kettle clicked. I took two mugs out of the cabinet and dropped a tea bag into each one. I was not sure for how long Cathy was going to be in the bathroom, so I just made a cup for myself. Surprisingly, the tea still preserved most of its flavour, although I was not much of a connoisseur anyway. It was Natalie’s pack, she loved herbal teas and I couldn’t stand them. Today I’d probably drink undiluted cyanide if Natalie said it was good, but... I poured myself some more water. The smell of green apples was filling the kitchen.

Everything Natalie did, anywhere she would go, anything she would touch, always smelt of green apples. The smell was a part of her being, it would mark her presence better than any kind of perfume she might be wearing. I could sniff her out like a dog, I could always tell if she’d been in a room a few moments before me, I could always feel her standing behind my back.

Like now.

I put the mug down. Two times in a row, in less than an hour, it was not like that even in my worst of times! But I knew I wouldn’t be able to fight it. Again, as always, I would turn my head. I always did it. Hated and did. So I turned.

Cathy.

She was wrapped head-to-toe in one of Natalie’s towels. She probably took it from the shelf in the bathroom, the one with all her scented bath toiletries. I did not dare to remove them, Natalie wouldn’t like it. She hated it when anyone moved her stuff. All her bathroom things were still there, as if waiting for her to come home. To ring the door bell.

The night Natalie didn’t come home I was messing around the kitchen too, waiting for the bell to ring. She was running a bit late and I started to get worried: it had been raining cats and dogs and she hadn’t taken her umbrella. The bell rang, finally, and I rushed to answer the door. I knew what I was going to do next: I would open it, but not let her in. I’d first hug her very tightly and bury my face into her wet hair. She’d push me slightly: ‘Let me in, silly, it’s raining here!’ but still I wouldn’t. Instead, I’d shove my face between cold edge of her raincoat collar and her hot wet skin. Then I’d find a small cleavage where her neck met her shoulder and drink water drops off it with a tip of my tongue, breathing in her smell of green apples. Then I’d put my lips to her ear, remove a wet strand of hair and whisper: ‘I missed you, Natalie. What took you so long?’

So I answered the door. A middle-aged stout female police officer stood there, rain dripping from her hat. She asked if I knew Natalie and as she spoke her eyes looked very concerned.

They would haunt me forever since, those soft, caring, concerned eyes...

‘Something’s wrong?’

I realised that I kept staring at Cathy, as if she was a giant sentient marshmallow that had suddenly walked out of my fridge. I shook my head and begun to fix a cup for her.

‘There’s not much food around. I’ve got some chocolate here, if you like.’

She nodded. I passed her the mug. She took it carefully with her carrot fingers, as if worried that she might drop it.

‘Smells good.’ She sat to the table and broke off a small piece of chocolate.

‘Have it all.’

Cathy didn’t need to be asked twice.

We were sitting in eerie silence, interrupted only by the rustle of the foil wrapper. I didn’t like it. The silence was getting too intense and in one long day I’d already gone through enough intense things to fill me up for many days ahead. One more and my fuses would blow.

Cathy or not, I needed to talk.

‘My wife was a research technician at the AgroFuture Drinks Group. She loved to make up flavours that never existed. She’d always give her projects some nick-name, usually after people she liked. Last week...her last week, she had been working on something she called "Colin’s Stew".’ I took a large sip of tea and nearly scalded my tongue, but didn’t react. ‘She said it would be something like a young peach, but a bit more tender, with some lime tones and it would smell of wild berries and after you had finished it, it would have an aftertaste of black cherry and red grapes.’

Cathy listened without blinking.

‘It must have been very difficult to code.’

‘It was. But she was hoping to crack it anytime soon. She kept saying something about a new broth formula. Anyway, now Colin’s Stew is scrapped. I don’t know if any other technician would be able to code it.’

Cathy shook her chunky head side to side.

‘No, I don’t know anyone.’

I smiled a sad secret smile. Sure, how could she know? Oh, poor silly Cathy.

‘Hermione destroyed everything. Stupid bitch, she probably thinks she’s smart. You don’t need to be smart to destroy!’

‘Why do you think it was her? It could be anyone.’

I shook my head.

‘No, it can’t.’

Cathy put the wrapper down and looked around.

‘Oh. You know Dhera Rabhapi?’

I clenched my teeth. I knew what she was taking about: the picture on the wall of me shaking hands with a small Indian woman.

Cathy leaned closer to the picture and read aloud:

‘ "The mayor of London D. Rabhapi greets Colin Moerdike, 29, the youngest ever Head of the Ministry’s of Internal Affairs Department of Digital Security." Cool. When was it? Last year? ’

Dhera said, she wanted me to protect London.

I couldn’t even protect my own wife.

‘Yes. Last year.’ I put the mug down. ‘I think we’d better go to bed. There must be some clean sheets in the bedroom. I’ll sleep on the settee.’

She nodded without looking at me as was her usual manner, but this time didn’t care.

I stared at the ceiling till about 3:30. Then I finally fell asleep.

*

‘Colin! Colin! Your phone!’

I opened an eye. Cathy was standing in the doorway in her white XXL T-shirt like a blurred midnight ghost. I cursed and tramped to fetch the handset from my jacket’s front pocket. The jacket was still wet and smelled of sewage. I took the phone out.

Anastasia.

Who else could I expect it to be, at 4:47 in the morning? Anyway, I answered.

‘There was a break-in attempt at AgroFuture’s R&D facility about two hours ago.’ It was Anastasia’s typical way of saying ‘Good morning, Colin’.

‘So?’ I was not sure the news was worth me standing in a chilly draught from the kitchen window so I went back to the living room and sat down on the settee. ‘One of Nora Williams’ pro-organic luddites, I suppose.’

‘Nope. They didn’t break anything, that’s unusual.’

‘Maybe they just didn’t have time.’

Please, Anastasia, just get lost and let me finish my dream. I could still feel the taste of green apples on the tip of my tongue. Maybe this time she’ll come home.

‘The police were monitoring the pro-org camp. They did not report any suspicious activity. There’s something fishy going on at AgroFuture. If I were you, I’d go and check on them.’

‘How come, you aren’t me?’

‘Colin, I thought you are the one most motivated to finish this investigation, are you?’

Whack! Below the waist line.

‘Tell them I’ll be there by 6:30, ok?’

‘Deal.’

‘And —’

‘What else?’

‘Aisha’s dead.’

‘I know. Dennis is already at the morgue.’

I hung up and grunted cheerfully. At least I was not the only one to suffer from sleep deprivation this morning.

*

Dennis picked us up at Warwick Way just before 5:40. He grinned like a dog and shoved onto me my backpack that he had recovered from the Mets.

‘Thanks. Did they say anything?’

‘They wanted me to bring them your ears on a plate.’

‘I thought so. What did you say?’

‘That I would have to ask you first.’

I cheered.

‘Well done. Did you tell them that I have been a good boy lately?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘Er…’

We drove on. Even for this early hour, Dennis looked abnormally absent-minded, or at least, abnormally irresponsive to the nagging soprano of his GPS navigator. When he ignored for the third time its brain-bogging plea to turn left, my suspicions gave way to a firm belief: Dennis was really upset by something.

‘Mate, the next left turn is your last opportunity to get us on M25, ok?’ I hoped that my voice had a better chance to get through Dennis’ mental shield.

‘Uh?’ He didn’t avert his eyes from the semi-transparent map on the windscreen, but I could bet on my breakfast that he had no clue what I was talking about.

‘Shall I drive?’ I volunteered involuntarily. My eyelids still weighed half a ton each.

‘No, why?’

‘Just looks like you’re busy with something else.’

Dennis sighed.

‘You see, there’s something I don’t understand.’ He looked at the wheel as if he considered it a more sensible conversation partner. ‘Aisha had all the symptoms of poisoning, but not a trace of the substance in his body that might have poisoned him. Nada. Nil. Nichego. Pas de tout.’

‘Dennis, if you want me to get your point, it’s fine just to say it in plain English, ok?’

Dennis sneered:

‘Was I talking to you?’

‘Whanker.’

‘Educated whanker, would you please notice. Ok, back to the subject: nothing special in his stomach, nothing special in his glass.’

‘What exactly was in his glass?’

‘Some sort of liquor. Strong but definitely not deadly.’

‘Well, if you ask me, it did look special, even more so when it dripped from his mouth.’

‘What did it look like?’

‘I don’t know. Some green shit.’

Dennis shook his head.

‘I don’t understand.’

I didn’t understand either. In my head I went through all the cases that Dennis and I had investigated in the last three years at DDS: from some taste alteration bugs, allegedly favoured by the two fuzzy drinks giants, to CM-modified "controlled substances" derived from harmless foodstuffs by some ingenious hackers. The latter were probably the closest we could get to understanding Aisha’s mystical death; yet I couldn’t see any lead, not even taking into account my personal knowledge of the subject. Ironically, during my temporary glitch I used to buy my heroin-loaded escape from the hands of the same people I had been trying to put behind the bars shortly before that. They must have been enjoying it all the way down: dreadful and merciless Colin Moerdike, licking their butts. Circus.

I probably should have put another picture on the wall, the one that appeared two weeks after Natalie’s funeral in each and every British paper, from the Daily Mail to the Sun: the Metropolitan Police dragging out an absolutely hammered man with bruises all over his face, shouting something with his mouth warped with hatred. They said, I started a fight and nearly kicked the crap out of the waiter who offered me some ketchup.

Next morning I found a dismissal notice in my mailbox.

The universal law of physics: free-fall acceleration.

The higher you climb before you fall, the faster you’ll be falling when you smash.

I made a wry face as I pushed the memory away, to the very back of my brain, and tried to focus at the problem at hand.

‘Can you technically write a self-erasing virus?’

Dennis shrugged his shoulders.

‘I thought of it. Theoretically, nothing is impossible, but in practice… It’s like reversing a crystallization process in freezing water, you can’t do it without applying some outside energy. There must be a change in the environment to trigger it. I can’t imagine a self-erasing virus stable enough to hold together a poison for the period necessary to kill an adult man. CM-virus codes are primitive. They can modify the source one way or the other, but not back and forth.’

‘Unless the virus code can modify itself.’ A hardly audible comment came from the back seat.

Both of us, Dennis and myself, turned our heads simultaneously. The only problem with it was that at the same time Dennis was driving. The car swerved, and we both crashed into each other’s foreheads. Dennis slammed on the brakes, I got propelled forward and smashed my knee into the front panel.

Dennis almost leaped out of his seat and leaned over its headrest towards Cathy.

‘What do you mean, "can modify itself"?’

Cathy cringed on the back seat, stunned with what she had done.

‘I… I just heard some guys in the club talking about that. You know… about multi-layered code. That kind of… I though it may be…’

Of course. Heard something.

‘Cathy, multi-layered code has nothing to do with self-modifying viruses.’ I felt like an astronomer trying to teach the physics of black holes to a kindergarten class. ‘These are totally different concepts.’

‘I just thought… I’m sorry.’

Dennis squeezed my injured knee before I had another chance to open my mouth, his eyes round like saucers. I made a pleading look and elbowed him to his ribs.

‘I heard, you are going to see Cynthia Kourianou?’ Dennis let my leg go.

‘Right.’

‘She might… have some ideas. I mean, she’s the one who started the whole thing, isn’t she?’

I scowled and rubbed the aching knee.

‘Not exactly. She started "smart chemicals". You know, that kind of stuff that allows plastics to biodegrade in hours instead of years.’

‘Whatever, "smart chemicals", chip-molecules – these all are just nano-gizmos for her. I mean, she’s the one who really understands how the stuff works.’

‘Yep,’ I nodded. She did, in fact.

Sometimes I wondered if Cynthia was the only one left who still did.

Dennis dropped me of at AgroFuture’s main reception, topped up with some cash, so I could get a taxi back to the office, and departed together with Cathy. Still limping slightly, I walked up to the receptionist, who passed me my badge without saying anything but ‘Good morning, Mr. Moerdike.’ They were waiting for me.

‘Is Cynthia Kourianou in her office?’ I made a move towards sliding glass doors behind the reception desk.

The girl shook her head apologetically.

‘I’m sorry, Mr. Moerdike, we have an instruction that all visitors should be accompanied by our security staff. We had some incidents… you know.’ She looked around. ‘Please, take a seat. Someone will come in a moment to take you to Ms. Kourianou.’

‘Ok,’ I stepped away, took off my jacket and engaged in a study of the impressive display of the latest AgroFuture products range. I was worried that if I sat down on one of seductive looking leather armchairs, I might fall asleep right there in less than three seconds.

The sliding doors hushed softly and I noticed out of the corner of my eye the receptionist girl straighten up in her chair.

‘Good morning, Ms. President.’

I turned.

Cynthia Kourianou seemed to have shrunk a bit since the last time I saw her, the way a drying fruit would shrink with time. Or maybe it was just the fact that her white lab coat was a touch big for this tiny fragile woman who hardly reached my chest.

‘Colin, my boy!’ She took her petite dark hand out of her pocket and clapped onto my arm. I noticed that she had to roll up the coat’s sleeves so they wouldn’t dangle. ‘How have you been? You look better.’

Probably I did, considering that the last time she saw me was at Natalie’s funeral.

‘I’m fine, Cynthia. Thanks again for everything.’

‘It was nothing, Colin. I wish I could have done more.’ She shook her head. ‘Horrible.’

Tragic, that was what she said in her speech over Natalie’s grave. She wore a black suit, buttoned up to her throat, that made her look like a general paying a last honour to one of her soldiers. I heard she pulled quite a few strings to make sure that her appearance at the funeral would never make it to the papers, even though that would probably enhance her public image. Discreet, I overheard her saying to one of the faceless seven-feet-tall figures wearing black suits so effortlessly as if they were born this way, and my bleeding soul got overwhelmed with warm gratitude. Back then, her tact was more important to me than the fat cheque, signed in her delicate handwriting, that I found in my mail the day before.

‘So what happened?’ I asked Cynthia when we walked away from the reception.

‘I’m not sure, Colin.’ She tilted her grey head with a short, almost masculine haircut to her left shoulder. That little gesture always made her look like a curious sparrow. ‘At first I thought it had to be one of Nora’s pet vandals, but then I found something. Let me show you.’

She led me up a narrow metal stairway that coiled towards a giant glass cube dominating above silent and sleepy production floor. I’d been once before in the AgroFuture R&D lab, when Natalie’s colleagues invited me in to her 25th birthday bash, but this time it looked different: hushed and deserted, lamps dimmed, gadgets off, computer screens blank.

‘Here,’ she walked up to a massive glass cabinet with an exhaust hood. Now I noticed that one of the doors was ripped off the hinges. ‘Police had already checked for the fingerprints, but it looks like they used some of these,’ she pointed at the open box of disposable plastic gloves.

‘What do you think they were looking for?’

‘We don’t keep anything special here, just broth samples. The competition, if they resorted to anything like that, would look for semi-finished products in the first place. We are all using the same broth, why would they want ours?’ She put on a pair of gloves and started to carefully arrange the colourful assortment of bottles in the cabinet.

‘Do you have any idea who might have done this?’ I knew Cynthia would. She wouldn’t ask me to come here at an unearthly hour if she didn’t. She just took her time so she could make the most dramatic effect. I often wondered if she ever dreamt of going on the stage when she was younger: Cynthia Kourianou, a woman who acted her actions. A PR bliss.

‘Well,’ she paused. ‘That might give you some hint.’

She reached into her chest pocket and produced a glossy ebony beamer.

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Here. I came before the police.’ Cynthia enjoyed the effect. ‘I’ve been doing some tests down on the floor, and heard the noise. Around midnight.’

I remembered that Natalie told about Cynthia: alchemist. It would probably never occur to her that the President’s role normally didn’t include in-person production testing. Nora Willson simply called her a fanatic bitch.

‘So it was you who called the police.’

‘Sure. And then I came up and found this,’ she handed the beamer over to me. ‘So I called that girl from your office, what’s her name… Natasha?’

‘Anastasia.’

‘Right.’

I carefully wrapped the beamer into a paper tissue and put it inside my pocket, next to Aisha’s. An exciting collection.

‘I’ll run a check on it and let you know.’

I remembered something else.

‘Cynthia, have you ever heard anything about "the philosopher’s code"?’

She gave out a dry chuckle.

‘Of course I have!’

I drew tight.

‘I keep hearing about it since the time I was a student. Well, back then it had nothing to do with CM-technology, sure, but the core idea hasn’t changed much with time.’

‘So what is it?’

‘An urban legend, nothing else. A sort of "self-learning" code that could re-write itself as needed.’

‘Is it technically feasible?’

‘No.’

I felt that further questioning made no sense. If Cynthia Kourianou said that fried eggs were not possible, I had to stop believing my eyes. She knew better.

‘To tell you the complete truth, we played with the idea a bit at Recycle-4. It all revolved around "smart chemicals" and biodegradation. We were trying to make the chemicals "remember" what they were before they went into production and then degrade back into that initial state when no longer needed. As you probably know, the CM-technology was a spin-off from that project. I think it was Nora who first got some crude oil from the broth and screamed that we were going to make a world revolution. Well, she got her Nobel, but looks like she’s still after something bigger. My head, I suppose.’ Cynthia sneered. ‘Nevertheless, we eventually found that you can only apply one transformation at a time. You can’t make it run in a cycle all by itself. You can create a whole new concept of the chemistry, but you still can’t violate the basic laws of science.’

She made a wide matronising smile.

‘So, the philosopher’s code, time-machine, perpetual motion – they are all feasible. In science fiction. Yet I do not deny that there might be some recalcitrant heads who still hope that they would create it one day, Isaac Newton bless them.’

‘Good morning, Ms. Kourianou.’ A shy Chinese girl sneaked by, carrying a large box of glass objects. I looked at my watch. Gee, they started early here.

Cynthia nodded and frowned as if she remembered something.

‘Cho, would you mind replacing the filters on KLS-15 later? There might be some spare ones in Natalie’s cabinet.’

Cynthia noticed a dark flash in my eyes.

‘I know, I should have sorted her things out long ago, but I didn’t have time, and I want to make sure that nothing valuable is lost.’ She sighed. ‘Natalie was working on lots of independent projects that no one else had any idea about.’

‘Like Colin’s Stew,’ I breathed out with a sudden effort.

‘Like that one.’

‘Are you going to scrap it now?’

‘I don’t know’. Cynthia tilted her head again. ‘I don’t think we have resources to continue it, which is a shame. It was almost in the beta-testing phase.’

‘I understand.’

We left the lab and made our way back to reception.

‘You know what?’ Cynthia looked at me with a swift sparkle in her hazel eyes. ‘I think we might still finish Colin’s Stew.’

‘Don’t worry Cynthia, it’s not worth it.’

‘No, no. We really should. I think it’s got bestseller potential, and we need to strengthen our portfolio anyway. Besides, as I said, I think I haven’t done enough for you and Natalie yet.’

‘Thanks, Cynthia.’

She patted me on my arm.

‘You’ll taste it before the end of the year. Only…’ She frowned. ‘I think you might still have one of her project files.’

‘Me?’ Natalie never kept her work stuff at home.

‘No, not you, your institution.’

I smiled secretly at the way Cynthia called DDS "institution". Very true indeed.

‘Yes, they might.’ I remembered that DDS took away all things from Natalie’s car. I hadn’t seen any file myself, probably because they found nothing special in it and just put it in the archive before I returned. ‘I don’t think they need it any longer. I’ll ask.’

‘Lovely. If you could send it to me a.s.a.p., I would ask Cho to start re-validating the codes. I’d appreciate having it before the end of the week.’

I didn’t quite get whether the latter was a request or an order, but for Cynthia those two would probably be the same anyway.

*

Back at the office I presented Dennis with the two beamers. He gleamed like a kid who received an ice-cream, but then saddened upon finding out that Cynthia considered self-modifying viruses to be nothing but a hoax. I left him to recover from his analytical depression on his own and returned to my desk.

‘Cathy,’ I addressed the office’s corner as I sat down. ‘Do you know by any chance where we now keep physical evidence archives for this year?’

A muffled sound supposedly meant "no".

‘I thought it was you who cleaned up the archives a week ago.’

‘Uh?’

‘Ok, I’ll look myself.’ I sighed, took my multipass badge and headed to the basement.

I found the archives, eventually, and it even took me less than an hour. But I didn’t find Natalie’s file.

Three hours later, dusty and exhausted, I finished the last one of the five-year archives, and yet found no trace of the file. Nada, as Dennis would say.

I went back to the office thirsty for the blood of some little innocent girl. My only hope was that Cathy went out on a lunch break, and by the time she was getting back I would somehow recompose myself.

She was in the office.

I didn’t even know where to start. Surely, she’d have no idea what Natalie’s file looked like, so there was no point in asking. But I still needed to deal with it one way or another.

‘Cathy, did you remove anything from the archives?’

She jerked, apparently startled.

‘No.’

‘Are you sure? Just think carefully. Anything. Any box or folder?’

‘I… I don’t know.’ She cringed as if she wanted to disappear into her chair. A enormous task for the big girl she was.

I sighed.

‘So you didn’t or you don’t know?’

She sniffed. I sat down and dropped my head onto my arms.

‘Cathy. Will you ever learn that you’re not any longer in your mum’s house where you can toss your knickers around in any way you fancy? They’ve sent you here to grow up, so would you please damn grow? Or would you prefer to spend the rest of your life with that bunch of Potter-head imbeciles?’

She didn’t answer.

Dennis shoved his head in, disturbed by the noise.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing. Get lost.’

‘Oops! Colin the Terrible is on fire. Shall I call 999?’

I looked around searching for something friendly-weighted to throw at Dennis and my eyes stopped at a large red folder half-hanging from the bookshelf over my head. I grabbed it and locked onto the target.

‘Hey-hey-hey! Red alert!’ Dennis tried to take cover behind the coat stand.

I slowly moved my arm back, balancing the folder in my hand.

‘Don’t worry, Houdini, your death will be quick.’

I almost sent the folder into the stand when I caught a glimpse of the green-and-yellow AgroFuture logo in the corner.

‘Shit.’ My heart sunk.

I put the folder down, opened and took out the first page. I could recognise that handwriting even after a major lobotomy. The last world on the page was underscored with two short straight lines.

Natalie always did that when she wanted to highlight something important.

‘How the hell did it get here?’ I turned to Cathy. ‘Or you don’t know, as usual?’

Her shoulders jerked again.

‘Just say something, Cathy, ok?! Yes, no - something! Don’t just sit there like a thick porky fat-head, you greasy chunk of lard!’

‘Mate.’ Dennis stepped out from behind of the coat stand. ‘It’s not funny.’

‘Sorry, Cathy.’ I stood up. The room bounced like a cabin on a moving ship. ‘I didn’t mean to say that. I guess, I’m just a bit tired.’

I shoved the folder into my backpack and grabbed my jacket. The best thing I could do now was to take the folder back to Cynthia by myself. I wanted some breathing space.

‘I’ll be back in a while.’

Perhaps that very moment Cathy wished I would disappear from the face of Earth forever.

‘Colin,’ Anastasia materialized in the doorway in her typical unanticipated custom. ‘May I have a word with you?’

I followed to her office without saying anything. If she was thinking she could lecture me on my manners, she’d better reconsidered before she started. She closed the door.

‘What now? I said sorry, didn’t I?’

‘Sit down.’ By the tone of her voice I figured out that Anastasia the Sleek Boss now gave way to Anastasia the Road Warrior.

I leaned against the wall and put the bag down.

‘I’d rather have it brief.’

‘Whatever.’ Anastasia sat on the top of her spotless desk. ‘Look, Colin. I understand you’re having hard times, but it’s not an excuse for being such a jerk.’

I jolted.

‘You understand, don’t you?’ The blood started to pound in my head. ‘You understand. How nice.’ I crossed my arms so they wouldn’t shake. ‘How very nice of you. Very considerate. Very compassionate.’ I almost spat the last word through my clenched teeth. ‘Damn, Anastasia, did I ever in my life say I want either of you to be that compassionate? Did I ask for it?’

‘Colin, stop it!’ Anastasia banged her little fists against the top of the desk. Too late. The first rule of a biker: don’t brake on a corner.

‘Did you think that if you could pick me up from the streets and bring back to the office, I’d be dying to lick your boots forever since? Just go to hell, both of you: you, Dennis, with all your contemptuous compassion! Clear?’ I grabbed my bag.

Anastasia bit her lip so hard that it turned white.

‘I never picked you from the street, Colin, and even if I did, I didn’t do it out of compassion.’ There was such bitterness in her voice that I nearly changed my mind about slamming the door into her face. ‘We needed you, you moron! Me, Dennis, DDS – we all needed you back. We knew you could do it. In three years you’ve done to DDS that none of us could have done in thirty - we couldn’t go on without you. I needed you, for that sake: even before I came here I’ve heard enough of you to make up my own mind. I was not saving your arse, Colin. I was saving mine.’

‘What a lot of bullshit, Anastasia.’ I leaned against the wall again. ‘Don’t even think I’ll buy it.’

‘Fuck off.’ I never heard her swear before. ‘Go, drown yourself in your sad pathetic misery, if you want to – I don’t give a shit! I wash my hands of you from now on.’ A dark strand fell out of her immaculate hairstyle and dangled across her reddened face. ‘I just thought better of you, Moerdike. Sorry, if I was wrong. My fault.’

‘No problem. Sorry to be such a disappointment.’ I turned and left the office, feeling Dennis’ stunned look on the back on my head.

Maybe Dennis was right about Anastasia after all.

A great cop. A great woman.

An ultimate bitch.

*

Down at the car park I got into my car and dropped my head on the wheel, feeling like a huge warm pile of fresh manure.

I was not worried about getting sacked: first, Anastasia would never do that; second, even if she did, I would not care. Colin the Terrible, who made DDS’ name rock across the British Isles was long dead; a walking zombie took his place. Still, a big disappointment for all those who hoped never to see me walking again. A crawling Colin, that was what would fill their hearts with joy.

And, oh boy, how I used to crawl! Half a man, half a shadow, I begged and pleaded for every bit of an illusory peace of mind, as if such thing existed. Cynthia would have been disgusted if she found out what happened to her cheque – in her worst nightmare she probably couldn’t imagine that her money would be feeding the whole of London’s drug industry for a month! It went on and on, until one day I looked in the mirror and saw a man I despised so much that I wanted to kill him on the spot. Yet I did him the last favour: I let him call his best friend and say good-buy.

Dennis didn’t listen. He hung up and half an hour later he wrested the door to my flat open. Twenty-five stitches in each of my wrists had remained since: a permanent souvenir of our friendship.

That was the first thing I heard when I woke up in a big white room that smelled of medicine.

I want you to walk out of here and never come back, that was what the shrink at the rehab centre said at our last one-to-one appointment. So I did.

I remembered how I strolled slowly towards the exit, flushed out and empty, not even knowing where I was going to. All the time I had been locked in the rehab I hadn’t received a single visitor from DDS, except Dennis, of course. A tacit way to hint to me how unwelcome I was back there. Nobody loves fallen idols.

How could I know then that on my very first day in the hospital – when I still lay down, drip-fed, my bandaged wrists itching so much that I would gnaw them off if my arms weren’t strapped to my bed – Dennis did the impossible?

The first thing I heard as I walked out was a loud, demanding horn. A sleek tall young woman stepped down from a posh black Mercedes parked across the centre’s drive and called me by my name.

‘Anastasia Sommerfield,’ she stretched out her impeccably manicured hand. ‘I joined DDS a few weeks ago.’ I realised I didn’t need to ask which position exactly she took. ‘I heard, you might be looking for a job.’

She opened the passenger door.

‘Where are you going to? I’ll give you a lift, and we’ll talk on the way.’ She sat down to the driver’s seat.

I looked at Anastasia, then back at the sagging grey building behind my shoulder and climbed in.

‘Let’s go to the office.’

She nodded, opened her handbag and passed me a newly cut security multipass badge. I took it and flipped it over – it already had my name and picture printed on. The picture was old: I still had my shoulder-length hair tied in a loose ponytail.

I swept my hand over short hedgehog-like brush on the back of my head. No, it definitely felt better that way. Low maintenance. Easier to handle.

I would never forget the remarkable array of faces that floated by as I strolled behind Anastasia to my former workplace. Resentful. Surprised. Angry. Commiserating. Indifferent. They all watched me, in silence, like they’d watch a convict walking to his scaffold.

I heard later that someone from above told Anastasia that she had made a career-limiting move. They said, I was going to be her problem. I didn’t know what she answered exactly, but now I probably could guess.

Anyway, now it looked like DDS’ future was in a safe pair of hands after all: something they needed very badly.

Yes, I knew I could walk again. But they needed someone who could run.

I started the engine, pulled out to the road and headed to Horley. I decided I’d see Cynthia tomorrow. Enough for today.

*

I was getting out of the car when I heard a short beep of my phone. I took it out and replayed the message from Dennis: ‘Hey, mate, hope you haven’t drowned yourself yet because I have some news for you.’ He winked at me from the screen. ‘Both beamers are loaded with Hermione’s codes, no shit. I’ll get you the full script in the mail. Cathy’s ok – Anastasia’s stuffing her with her Belgian chocolates. I think, half of the box is gone already, so she’ll be fine. See you in the office tomorrow.’ He hesitated a bit as if wanted to say something else. ‘Hey, you know what? You are such a mother***er, but we still love you anyway.’

I bent down to grab my backpack from the seat. Underneath I discovered something unexpected: a book. A paper one. I turned it over and cursed.

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". Bastards.

I imagined wide grins on the faces of anonymous DDS jokers as they were planting the book into my car. Seemed like the rumours of my last night adventure spread faster than I expected.

I looked around for a rubbish bin, but didn’t see any, so I took the book with me to put it into one inside the house. No need to irritate the neighbours.

I offloaded my stuff on the top of the tea table in the living room and went to raid the fridge. After a short consideration I stuffed the microwave with two boxed dinners and popped open a can of lager. The fridge door wouldn’t close; I looked inside to see what propped it and pulled out a large box of pralines that I bought last week for a birthday party I finally chose not to go to.

I cheered as I saw it: the straightforward device would greatly facilitate making up with Cathy tomorrow morning. Lucky me. If Cathy were Anastasia, I’d probably have that box shoved down my throat so that its square edges would bulge out of my neck, making me look like a silly cartoon character. Well, Anastasia might still do it, to satisfy Cathy. I made a sardonic grin.

Anastasia was right, of course, and I was wrong, but would knowing it stop me from doing stupid things over and over?

I placed the steaming boxes on a tray, returned to the sitting room and cleaned up some space on the tea table with my elbow. The Harry Potter book fell on the floor. I picked it up and tossed on my hand unsure what to do with it. The book looked well used: dog-eared and covered all over with tiny fingerprints that seemed more elfish than human. I opened the first page and clucked. An inscription in faded purple ink read: "Happy Birthday to our little pumpkin from Mom and Jane." I imagined that the "little pumpkin" would now probably look more like a carriage with six horses, given the year of the reprint. I suddenly felt a strange sympathy towards that shabby book, once loved, then discarded and forgotten. A little bit like someone else in this room.

A few pages were folded in the corner, so I opened the book mechanically to straighten them. Three words underlined with bright red marker flashed out at me:

"It wasn’t her!" , right in the middle of page 121.

I sat down. True, I had no reasons to believe that the underlining was intended for me, yet… I flipped through the pages. No other words were singled out. Wouldn’t that be bizarre, to choose three meaningless words in the middle of the book?

I read a few pages and dimly remembered the scene. Quidditch Cup, someone conjured a Dark Mark, a house elf is caught with Harry’s wand in her hand and all that nonsense.

I rubbed my temples. What was I trying to do? Find some clues in a Potter book? I must have been really turning mad.

I put the book down and took out Natalie’s folder instead. I never actually seen any of her work files before: she’d never take a single one home. She joked that if she started to take work home, she’d one day start beaming her codes at all household food and watch what would happen. A little bit like Dennis. It must have been something urgent this time if she had the folder with her.

I looked inside. Some notes. A few print-outs. Pictures. I could understand some of the stuff - after all, I had to, with my job - but I definitely couldn’t ever compose any of it myself. Some used to say, CM-coding was becoming more and more of an art rather than science.

I lifted the folder from the table; something slipped out of it on my laps. I looked down and recognised a portable code transmitter: a kind of a beamer but for industrial applications rather then for personal use. I remembered I saw quite a few of those in the lab. I took a closer look: the transmitter was the size of an old version of a credit card and about three millimetres thick. I flipped it over and read the text in the black box on a yellow sticker: "Caution! Signal range 0.8 meters. Consult the manual before use."

I smirked. Someone like Hermione would die to have one of those, not just a feeble beamer with an action range of two inches!

My jaw dropped. I could remember many DDS blunders, but that one was the Blunder of the Blunders, and it was mine!

In many months not-a-single-freaking-body, me and Dennis included, happened to think that the code beamers have an action range of a stretched finger. To turn a car’s petrol into ketchup you need to literally dip it into its tank! We found the virus code in the ketchup, we traced it back to Hermione, but we never ever thought of how the damn code got there!! All this time I had in my mental eye an image of Hermione with something like a ray gun, aiming at Natalie’s car. Definitely, too much cheap science fiction reading!

But how would Hermione get a coding device inside the car? She had to plant it there somehow, somewhere.

I froze. Then I looked at the folder, at the transmitter in my hand and at the book on the floor.

Was it what someone tried to say?

Hermione wouldn’t probably do it herself. She’d ask someone who she knew Natalie trusted to take it with her. To take something innocent, something inconspicuous, harmless.

Like this file with the transmitter.

I wiped wet drops from my forehead. I knew what I didn’t like about this case: it was not just an accident. It was a perfectly timed accident. People don’t die when their car engines stop working. It called for a whole bunch of perfectly timed coincidences to take Natalie’s life: a wet narrow ill-lit stretch of road, two heavily loaded trucks, a down slope and a dead engine. Perfectly staged. Perfectly carried out.

But who would want to kill her? I couldn’t imagine she might have any enemies in her lab, not possible, not among that bunch of hippiesque flower-children in goggles and white coats, with their unruly hair and burning eyes!

I tightened as a totally new idea flashed through my mind. What if Natalie wasn’t the primary target? What if someone only wanted to hurt her for being my wife? Unlike her, I stepped on enough toes to make someone want to hit me badly. And they did.

Easy: hire Hermione so she’d write the virus, use one of Willson’s red-necks to steal a transmitter from the lab and finally coerce someone into placing the device in the folder. Peace of cake for someone with pockets of dirty money. And –

Simple. Elegant. Sure.

I shook my head. Rubbish. The folder was with the likes of Dennis for months, they surely turned it upside down in search for clues. If there was something in the transmitter they’d have found it. Unless –

I took the phone and dialled Dennis’ number.

‘What’s up, bastard?’ he winked at me. ‘Already bored on your own?’

‘Dennis, do you still have the ketchup samples from Natalie’s car?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Could you have another look at them for me?’

‘As you say…’ he disappeared from my view for a while. I heard nothing but distant rattle and swearing as Dennis rampaged through his cluttered sample stand. Then his face re-appeared, pale and bewildered.

‘What?’ I squeezed the handset impatiently.

‘Petrol.’

‘I thought so.’ I closed my eyes.

‘But… How?’

‘I don’t know, Dennis. I know nothing yet.’

I hung up, grabbed the car keys, took the folder and rushed out.

I could think of only one person in the world who knew all the answers.

*

Cho took me up to the lab.

‘Ms. Kourianou will be right back.’

I thanked her and sat down. I knew it was stupid to come without calling Cynthia first, but what could I say: "Cynthia, I think the philosopher’s code does exist"?

I guess, I needed her to comfort me, to say that I was wrong, to find some logical explanation of all those mysteries, but how could I explain it to her? I hoped she would understand it herself when she saw me.

I looked around the lab. The first shift was over, the second hadn’t started yet. I was not sure it was planned to start today at all: I heard that AgroFuture management had to cancel some shifts after they tightened up the security.

My eyes followed along the rows of identical greyish cabinets stretched along the wall opposite to the glass side overlooking the plant floor. Each one bore it’s name tag, in alphabetic order. Almost instinctively I looked for "M". It was one in the middle. I came up and glanced over my shoulder. I would look really stupid if someone came and saw me digging in my wife’s things, but I just couldn’t resist. It was the last private dungeon of Natalie’s, the one I was never given the keys to. Not entrusted.

I slowly pulled the door towards myself; it opened without a sound. I looked inside. A tidy box with indistinguishable capped brown bottles glittered in the dark. I dragged it out.

They all looked the same. A dark glass bottle with opaque liquid, a black plastic screw-on cap, a paper sticker with two fields "Batch No" and "Date". Sometimes the dates were different, sometimes the batch numbers. Nothing special. What did I expect? A pestle and a mortar? Dried frogs? Rat tails?

I pushed the box back but then I noticed a bottle in the middle that didn’t have a batch number on it. It flagged at me: knowing how scrupulous Natalie was with everything related to her work that would not be something I expected. I took the bottle out. There was nothing on its sticker but a date, underscored with two short straight lines.

I stood dumb with the bottle in my hand, as if I again came across a hallucination of her. So now what? Yes, it was her last test sample, but how was it going to help me, for beer’s sake? I stretched my hand to put it back, but curiosity still tormented me in the most medieval way. I listened for a second - no sound of steps on the stairway – and unscrewed the cup. The liquid smelled pleasant and tempting. My next thought surprised me: I believed that the incident with Cathy and the coffee machine would forever turn me off the habit of sampling unfamiliar CM substances without asking.

But that was something my wife created on her last day. Something that kept the traces of her thoughts, her feelings, her desires. Something she put her soul into.

How could I resist?

I lifted the bottle and drunk it in one go. It was exactly as she described: peach, lime, berries, cherry, grape. Colin’s Stew.

‘What are you doing, Colin?’

Cynthia was standing behind the lab table. As usual, she was wearing her lab coat with a bunch of pens sticking out of its chest pocket.

I was not sure what to say, my head felt fluffy and light, then slightly dizzy.

Suddenly I discovered something in my head, that was not there originally. I did not know where it came from, I did not think it up. It just was there, like a memory of a dream, only I had not been dreaming.

‘Why did you kill her, Cynthie?’

I did not say that. My lips said that. My ears heard my lips saying that. My eyes saw Cynthia hear my lips saying that. I didn’t mean to say it.

I tilted forward and leaned on the table, panting, my palms turning cold and sweaty. I realised that somehow I now knew something I did not know just a minute ago.

I knew the motive. And hence, the murderer.

‘Did she really say I would do it?’ That was not what I expected to hear. No attempt of denial. No excuses.

‘She said, you might try.’ I was not sure if "said" was the right word. Saying implied some sort of verbal communication, not just pouring the knowledge into one’s head.

‘So she did it.’ There was a strange note in Cynthia’s voice. Pride. Satisfaction. She shook her head. ‘She did it. I never believed she’d be able to.’

I did not say anything. I knew what she was talking about. I didn’t know how but I knew. So I just nodded.

‘I didn’t think she could do it.’ Cynthia bent her head and shuffled some stuff on the table. ‘She still had a lot to learn, but I guess she learnt faster than I expected. She was talented, your wife, a sheer raw talent.’ She came up to me, took the empty bottle, looked at the label and sniffed. ‘ "Colin’s Stew", I suppose. I should have guessed.’

Her voice was sad and tired. I suddenly realised how old she was. I wanted to shake her but thought she would just fall apart.

‘How could you, Cynthie? She adored you.’

‘She betrayed me.’

She put the bottle back. ‘You don’t understand, Colin. Natalie was like a daughter to me, more than a daughter, she was a part of myself... and she had something no one else had – a sparkle. A vision. She was the only one who could carry it on: I taught her everything I knew. Everything!’

I nodded again. I realised that Cynthia was not telling this to me, because I knew that already. She was telling this to herself. I kept listening.

‘She was an incurable romantic. I knew she tried to develop some flavours that would give you a mood – like music, or poetry, or painting. I thought it was a neat idea – definitely a good potential, but I knew that with our standard broth all her efforts would be useless, it’s just not capable of carrying that sort of information, and I felt incredibly sorry to see her running into the same wall all the time. So I told her about the Batch.’

‘Nobody knew about the Batch except the original Recycle-4 team. I told you the last time you were here that the philosopher’s code would never work, and that was true to some extent. The molecular structure of a standard broth wouldn’t allow you to attach that sort of code to it. What nobody knows is that in the beginning there was another organic broth, a substance, that was able to carry much higher density of information. The irony was that the manufacturing did not actually need that density, so it was eventually decided to go for less expensive modifications. But Recycle-4 team had a different opinion. We kept a small batch of the original broth and kept playing with it until eventually we discovered that with that sort of formula you could make CMs carry a secondary code that would, as a substance is being digested, pass all sorts of information directly into recipient’s brain cells. Were it not for stupid Nora who freaked out and nearly blew everything, we’d now be living in a totally different world. The silly bitch just never had a vision.’

Cynthia’s eyes went dim. She rocked back and forth and kept talking as if watching an invisible picture in front of her:

‘The opportunities were immense. Just imagine: snacks that make kids learn things - toffee cake for maths, vanilla ice-cream for literature, orange marmalade for physics; you’d drink your morning paper in your coffee; you’d literally swallow the latest stock price charts! You’d eat yourself into a right mood.’

Ha! Cathy does that all the time! She doesn’t even need any special food for it.

Cynthia noticed me grinning.

‘You don’t believe me, Colin, do you? Well, I wouldn’t expect you to. You are just an ordinary unenlightened savage, like everyone else. You literally need to be fed the right ideas so you could digest them.’

‘Cynthie, but that’s called manipulation!’ I protested weakly. ‘You can’t do that to people without their consent!’

‘It doesn’t matter as long as it makes everyone happy.’

‘Natalie would never buy that.’

‘You’re right she didn’t.’ Cynthia sighed. ‘She tried to blackmail me. She said, if I didn’t make the Batch data public, she’d do it herself. Can you imagine the consequences? Willson and her aficionados would to anything it takes to get the Batch killed. I only managed to keep it because Nora believed it was destroyed after Recycle-4 was called off.’

‘So you killed Natalie to save the Batch.’

‘I had to. I’m terribly sorry, Colin, I just had no choice. She wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t take risks.’ She clinched her tiny fists, the skin on her knuckles stretched thin like ancient Egyptian papyrus. ‘The Batch… it’s years of work. A whole life-time of work, my whole darn life! I couldn’t let your wife waste it.’

Cynthia swept her forehead.

‘I had been young once too, Colin. I know, it’s difficult to believe now, but please try. I even was a girl some time long ago. A little girl who would lay in her bed at night and listen to the sounds of the world around her. Terrible sounds. I couldn’t help hearing them, even when I tried not to listen. I wished I could make them all shut up. They were saying so many words but what was the sense of these words if they could not hear what they were saying?

How many times you think I thought back then: if only people could understand things without saying all these words. Without doing the talking…

The Batch, Colin….’ She looked straight at me. ‘Every drop of the Batch is a tear drop of that child.’

Her eyes were two black holes. I could see right through them. At their very deep I saw a shoreless, bottomless sea of boiling tar. There was nothing else but viscous condensed grief and despair.

I recognised the place. I had been there myself.

‘I thought I had all the records destroyed, but now I see that she fooled me, but I still do not know how. I never gave her the original formula for secondary code integration, I guess, she must have figured it out. After all, if I could do it, she’d be able to do it eventually. I just hoped, she hadn’t learnt that much yet.’

‘So you must be Hermione, then.’

Cynthia chuckled.

‘Of course I’m not! Hermione is just a monkey with a keyboard, a skilled dilettante, at best. I must admit, though, she could come in quite handy if I managed to get her to replace Natalie. She’s got a potential.’ Cynthia chuckled again. ‘Aisha got me some samples of her coding: I only had to do a little tinkering to turn it into a ketchup virus. Ironically, she nearly discovered he philosopher’s code, but she would need the Batch to make it work.’ She rubbed her fingers as if they were freezing.

‘Yes, she definitely has a potential. Unfortunately, I still don’t know her real identity, just like everyone else. I hoped to find it out through Aisha, but the bastard obviously had his own plans.’

I whistled.

‘And I was dying to find out where he got his mahogany beamer from!’

‘He’s the one thing I never felt sorry about. Scum! Expensive scum, I must say. I knew he could easily get me that hacker, but he just kept milking me! I had to resort to a backup option finally.’

Now I had got everything.

‘You wanted us to believe it was her, so we’d find her for you.’

‘You sure would, with your moronic diligence! I told you that the philosopher’s code is impossible and you believed it instantly. What kind of cop you are if you trust everything that people say? You are what you are, Colin, stubborn and narrow-minded fool. You see only what you want to see. What you choose to see. You would chase that poor Hermione even to the South pole, until you’d get her!’

I nodded understandingly: ‘Yeah, and send her to jail, so you could later bail her out of there. That’d make her feel really indebted.’

‘And she wouldn’t be as touchy-feely as your wife.’

‘Cynthia, tell me something, are you mad or what?’

‘I just want everyone to be happy. I’m not a villain, Colin. I know I can make everyone happy, but they just won’t let me.’ She took my hand. As was looking down into her quiet sad eyes I realised that she meant it. A quick chill went down my spine.

‘I’m calling the police, Cynthie.’ I pulled my hand out. ‘I think it’d be the best for all of us.’

‘Oh yes?’ She smiled with her eyes only. ‘Maybe I should call the police and tell them that you broke into a high-security facility and started a fight? Whom do you think they believe – me, Doctor Cynthia Kourianou, or you, a once disqualified DDS officer with a history of mental instability and substance abuse?’

She was right. She wouldn’t even need to tell the Mets anything – in their rock-solid opinion I was always presumed guilty until proved otherwise. I wondered how I managed to get such a lasting reputation that fast. I guess, I tried hard.

Ok, I’ll wait for Houdini. I now paged S.O.S. to Dennis for the fifth time. Hopefully, he was on his way.

‘So what are you going to do? Kill me?’ I made a terrorised face.

‘No, Colin, of course not. I’m not a murderer. Those two got what they deserved, but you – you’re innocent. How can I make the world happy if I go around killing innocent people?’

I shrugged my shoulders. To be honest, I couldn’t see any conflict of interest here.

‘What about killing their relatives? Are you ok with that?’

Cynthia’s face stiffened.

‘I made you suffer, kid, that’s true, but I can fix it. I can fix a lot of things. Make them right. Right, do you understand that, Colin?’

‘No. I guess, I’m just too dumb, your excellence.’ It was getting a bit melodramatic for me. The image of Cynthia planning Natalie’s murder in cold blood refused to fit in my picture of the Universe. I started to wonder whether Dennis and DDS squad could get here before I’d do another stupid thing just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

‘Oh, boy.’ Cynthia shook her head. ‘You really don’t get it.’ She bent down and pulled a rubber-top stool from under the table. ‘Let me –‘ she firmly moved me aside, put the stool next to a large greenish cabinet, climbed on top of it, opened the upper door, and brought out a metal flask.

‘What’s that? The famous Batch?’

Now, when Cynthia’s eyes were on the level with mine, I could clearly see them glowing.

‘You won’t believe it, but you are actually right. Yes, this is the Batch. I support the theory that the best way to hide something is to put it where everyone could see it every day. So far it worked.’

She stepped down. Well, as long as she didn’t try to kill me just to bring the body count to a prime number, I could stay and watch.

Cynthia unscrewed the cup and poured a few drops into a vial.

‘That’s the beauty of it’s composition. You don’t need a lot of it, actually, about that much would do, the rest is just dilution.’ She put the vial inside one of the lab gadgets, turned it on, made a few hand passes and whispered some spells over it: if I ever saw Dennis do the same in his gadgetry shop, I’d think one of us was going bananas. She waited a few seconds, then took a tall thick-bottomed glass, put it under a small metal tap and filled it with crystal-clear liquid.

‘Drink it.’

‘And end up like Aisha? No shit!’ I politely declined.

‘Don’t be an idiot! I’m not trying to poison you. I want to help you.’

‘To help me do what?’ I was not sure that I’d like to accept any more help from Cynthia’s. So far it never did me any good.

‘To forget.’

Oh, that’s why all this monologue! So she relieved her soul and now wants to wipe it from my memory. And I thought it was me who read way too many cheap thrillers!

‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’

‘You know you aren’t, Colin. You are not, and I can see it. You are in pain, my dear boy, I feel it. You can’t live with it – it’s killing you. It will, if you don’t let me help you. Drink it!’ she shoved the glass into my hand. I grabbed it instinctively to stop it from falling.

‘Good.’ She nodded. ‘All you need to do is to drink this and it will be gone. Everything will be fine again. Everything, do you understand? You’ll go home, you’ll go to work, you’ll live your life, you’ll meet a woman, you’ll marry, you’ll have kids, and you will live happily ever after. You know by now how it all works, so you may trust me. I want you to be happy, Colin. I want everyone to be happy.’

I swung the glass side to side. The liquid would leave an oily trail where it touched the inner surface.

Cynthia was right. I knew how it worked and I trusted her. I knew it would work, that was the problem.

‘And besides,’ Cynthia tilted her head. ‘Your phone doesn’t work in this building.’

I smirked. That one I already figured out by myself - unless, of course, Dennis for some reason decided to come here on foot all the way from the office. But it didn’t bother me much for some reason.

I lifted the glass to my face. The liquid smelled of sun, of freshly cut June grass, pine forest shadows. A fine job, indeed.

‘Not bad. Now I understand why Natalie worshipped you so much.’

She beamed.

‘Wait till you taste it.’

Why did it never occurred to me it could be so easy? One sip, and that’s all. No more pain. No more bad dreams. No more voices in my head. No more fears. I could return to London, I could stay there without hearing the walls scream at me. I would stop acting like a jerk just to prove that I was still alive. I could just live. No more haunting eyes. No more torturing hallucinations.

I carefully tilted the glass and poured the contents onto the floor.

‘Thanks for caring, Cynthie. I guess, I’m just happy the way I am.’

She shook her head in disbelief.

‘I thought better of you, Colin. I really did.’

‘Sorry, Cynthia.’ I grinned sadly. ‘It’s not my fault.’

‘Colin? Are you there, you bastard?’

The stairway rocked with at least a dozen pairs of boots. I cheered. It sounded like Houdini somehow had performed another magic trick.

Cynthia’s face changed.

‘Damn!’ She rushed to the security alarm but then stopped as if changed her mind.

‘What a shame! One more tragic accident. Terrible.’

She took a pen out of her chest pocket and stepped back.

I suppose, it was an instinct rather than knowledge that made me jump away from the puddle under my feet. Next thing I saw was a bright orange fireball with whirls of black smoke. I didn’t actually feel a heat or a force or anything so I was quite puzzled to find myself falling backwards through the glass wall. I still noted to myself, though, that as long as I could remember, there were at least five meters of height between the lab’s glass wall and the concrete surface of the plant floor.

*

On November 15^th I was taken off the life support systems and transferred from an intense care ward to a more relaxed environment. I could finally have visitors, and Dennis didn’t miss an opportunity to shower me with the latest DDS gossip.

‘That’s for you from my Mum, mate!’ He dumped on my lap a huge box of chocolates.

‘Crap! Does she think I still eat those?’

‘Well, she says, you used to a lot.’

‘Tell her I had changed a lot too since I was 12.’

‘Uh. Had you?’

‘Just you wait till I can move, Houdini!’ I made a scary face. ‘And you’ll see. If I were you I’d already started digging an air raid shelter in the back yard.’

He sneered.

‘Anastasia hopes that they’ll let you out before Cynthia Kourianou’s trial, but if I were you I’d stayed here for a while. It’s not too nice back there,’ he scowled. ‘Nora Willson is running amok and it seems that the whole CM industry is put on hold.’

‘They’ll manage.’

‘I hope, they’ll do. I definitely miss good old AgroFuture’s stuff. Most of their local production got destroyed by the fire. They still supply it from other plants, but it just doesn’t taste right.’ Dennis made a disgruntled face. ‘I hope by the time I return from Oz everything will be back on the track.’

‘What the hell are you going to do in Oz?’ I never ever heard of Dennis travelling further than his mom’s country house in Devonshire.

‘Oh right, you don’t know yet!’ It seemed that Dennis was about to praise heaven for putting me into coma for a week. ‘Me and Anastasia… we just got hooked yesterday. It’s our honeymoon, mate.’

‘Oh-ho-ho-ou-ow-oh!’ I did not realise laughing would make me hurt so much. ‘Shit, Dennis, you’re killing me, I can’t laugh yet!’

‘Shut up, mate, you’re just jealous!’ Dennis shone like a new penny.

‘Oh, get lost, Houdini!’ I wiped my eyes with the back of my left hand that was in a slightly better shape. It had been long since I laughed that much. ‘Well, good luck to you, anyway. Something says to me, you’ll need lots of it. So, what about the Batch?’

‘What batch?’

‘Hold on, what’s Cynthia charged with?’

‘Well, if a double murder and a DDS officer assault aren’t enough, she’s also responsible for some big time investor rip-off.’

‘So what does she say?’

‘That she wanted to make everyone happy. I’d say, it’s a peculiar concept of happiness, what do you think?’

‘Yeah,’ I shrugged, ‘I guess you are right.’

Well, it seemed like the Batch got lost in action. So be it.

I wriggled as I tried to find a more convenient position for my burnt shoulder. Dennis made a hesitant cough.

‘What else?’ I hoped he was not getting to tell me that Anastasia was pregnant. It just wouldn’t become her. She probably hoped to wait until she could code herself a kid or such.

‘Someone wants to see you. It’s… it’s Cathy.’

Dennis made an apologetic grunt.

‘She wants to say good-buy. She is leaving tomorrow.’

‘Is she?’ I did not realise six weeks were over. That was quick!

‘Just be nice to the girl, ok? After all, it was her who saved your sore arse! If not for her, Cynthia would fry you up like a poached chicken.’

I could not quite figure out Cathy’s role in preserving my fillets, but I nodded anyway.

Dennis left the room and let Cathy in.

‘I… I brought you a card, Colin.’ She made two tiny steps and froze. ‘Only I didn’t know what to write so I didn’t.’

She shoved a rectangular piece into my hand. On the top of it a bloke in round glasses with a scar that looked as if someone had once tried to open his scull with a corkscrew stared through an open window at a bunch of adolescents flying up and down on their brooms. The pre-printed blinking text read: ‘Get well soon!’. I smiled. Very Cathy.

‘Anastasia told me everything.’ She blushed and her face broke out with red spots. ‘I … I think you are a real hero. Like him.’

Perfect. I pretended to stare at the card as if I wanted to burn a hole in it. Perfect.

The last thing I needed now was to bring out Colin the Sentimental.

‘Thanks, Cathy. That’s very nice one.’ I put the card on the top of the breakfast trolley set by my bed.

She sniffed. ‘Well, I guess, that’s it. Bye, Colin.’

‘Take care, Cathy.’

She turned and rushed off, in a surprisingly hasty gate. Funny little lumpy thing.

I frowned. For some reason it didn’t feel right. Yes, somehow by chance I managed to crack the case and bring to court the woman responsible for my wife’s death, but I didn’t feel complete. Something was missing. Then I realised –

I didn’t find Hermione.

‘That’s stupid!’ I said aloud.

Why would I want her, now, when it was clear she had no connection with Natalie’s death whatsoever?

Could that be that the hunt for Hermione, not seeking justice for Natalie, had somehow become my actual purpose in life? And now, what? Hermione, a vile, ruthless, dangerous, dark Hermione turned out to be an ordinary digital hooligan.

I felt cheated. I really did. Blood rushed to my face.

Worse even. A dog at least would know when to stop.

When I was 12 I made Dennis a promise. After my parents died in an airplane crash caused by a bug planted by some cyberterrorists into the plane’s navigation system, I promised him that when I grew up I would stop every single villain that wanted to use their brainpower to harm people.

Sorry, Dennis, I couldn’t do it, I said when I executed my right for one call.

Nobody expected you to, you idiot, that’s what he said before he hung up.

I threw my phone against a wall then.

That was my first promise I couldn’t keep, after which it didn’t matter for me how many more I’d break.

Yet now I was happy that I still managed to keep my last one. At least one.

I made a loud groan and took the coffee cup from the trolley. I wanted to finish it before it got cold.

So, who was she, after all, that Hermione? Well, who cared now? Probably, just some loony crooked pervert who enjoyed being a centre of attention, whatever that attention was, or…

I mechanically took a large sip.

Young peach, a bit tender. A lime. Wild berries. I swallowed.

…or a confused shy teenager who got the gift and couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it.

Colin, you are such an idiot.

She had been there all the time!

The pass to Hogwarts.

Natalie’s file.

The book with elfish fingerprints.

Was I blind or what?

I remembered Cynthia: You see only what you want to see, Colin. What you choose to see.

Exactly.

That’s what they all tried to say. That’s what I chose not to hear.

Thanks for the lesson, Cathy.

I finished the rest of the cup in one long gulp and closed my eyes.

I bury my nose in the narrow gap between a wet collar of Natalie’s raincoat and her warm, moist skin and sniff like a puppy. I’m happy. Goddamn, I’m so utterly entirely happy!

‘I missed you, Natalie. What took you so long?’

*

I received the "all-clear" shortly before Christmas. The trees stood bare. First bites of frost covered the edges of the puddles left after the overnight rain with thin ice crusts. The newlyweds came to pick me up in their new "Porsche".

I was sitting down in the hospital lobby nervously crossing and uncrossing my legs when I saw the sweethearts enter the reception area and wave at me. I jumped up from the chair, dashed across and gave Dennis a bear hug.

‘How come you two haven’t divorced yet?’

‘Shut up, you roasted cockroach!’ Dennis wrapped his hand around Anastasia’s buttocks. ‘Move your fried arse out of here.’

I didn’t object.

‘DDS is a total mess,’ Dennis decided that a little "welcome back" orientation wouldn’t hurt. ‘We are in shit up to our shoulders, everyone is waiting for you to come and shovel it out.’ Sounded distantly familiar. ‘Anastasia kept the big bosses away for a while, but now I think it’s time for you to get moving. I bet you’d got a bit out of shape lazing around here, mate – look, what’s that you had grown on your head, Banderas?’ he lightly pulled a strand of hair dangling at my eye level.

‘Hey, hands off, Houdini!’ I slapped Dennis on his hand. ‘Watch out for yourself so you won’t grow your arse to the size of the Isle of White, you happy married man!’

He pocked me to my ribs.

‘Boys.’ Anastasia gave us one of her looks. ‘Get out. You both.’

As we went out, I noticed someone else sitting in the parked car. I peered into the car’s window, but could only see the top of the passenger’s head.

‘You haven’t got a kid yet, no?’

Anastasia chuckled.

‘Let me introduce you to someone.’ She opened the back door. ‘Catherine Dobbson. Part-time Junior DDS Analyst since last Monday.’

Cathy stepped out.

‘Hey,’ Dennis kicked my leg. ‘Say something! Don’t just stay here like a stupid smiling lamppost!’

‘Well…’ I forced out an official face and stretched my hand. ‘Welcome aboard, "pumpkin".’

Cathy blushed and returned the handshake. I noticed something new on her fingers: a fresh accurate manicure. To tell the truth, her overall style had changed: she was wearing a tidy black pantsuit with a pink blouse. It looked like she had chosen herself a different role model.

‘Cathy,’ Anastasia gave me a meaningful look, ‘if this hairy Neanderthal ever says anything that upsets you, I authorise you to severe his head with a chain saw.’

‘That’s fine…’ Cathy blushed again. ‘All my friends call me "pumpkin".’ She looked at me swiftly. ‘I like your hair better this way.’

‘See?’ I turned to Anastasia. ‘I’m a good guy, I am!’

She chuckled.

‘I know. Just don’t try too hard to prove it, ok? Boss.’

‘What?’ The irony in her voice seemed well out of place.

‘Er…’ Dennis shrug his shoulders. ‘You see, mate, Anastasia is kinda… I mean, she wants to take things a bit easier. So she suggested that she’d step down for a while and…’

‘So you two are planning a kid?’

‘So what?’

‘So nothing!’ I shook my head in ultimate disbelief. ‘And what do you expect me to do?’

Anastasia played with her key chain.

‘You used to know once what to do, didn’t you?’

I grinded my teeth.

‘Is that the last surprise?’

‘What do you think?’ Dennis winked in a way I didn’t approve.

‘Shit. Then let’s get moving.’

I sank into the back seat next to Cathy. Anastasia slammed the gas pedal so hard that I felt like an astronaut on a space ship being launched.

I sent an approving glance in the rear view mirror.

‘Colin?’ Cathy almost dived into her backpack. ‘Look here.’

I bent over her shoulder. Inside I could barely see something looking like a long matt steel cylinder. I leaned closer.

A flask? The same flask?

Cathy closed the backpack and made an absently-innocent face.

‘It is what you think it is,’ she whispered without turning her head.

‘And?’

She shook her head.

‘Ok,’ I grinned. ‘Let’s then get to the office first.’