Stuart MacBride - Halfhead

An entire documentary pops up. Duncan Clark is a success story.

The presenter speaks to Duncan’s neighbours and mother-who looks every bit as deranged as she did when Dr Westfield got her hooked on Tezzers. Addicts are so very malleable.

There’s even footage of the hostage drama that marked the start and end of Duncan’s campaign to silence the voices in his head. He’s wearing black-and-grey urban camouflage, with an assault weapon over his shoulder. And then there’s the naked woman. He’s got a handful of her hair, holding her up while she screams and sobs and struggles, blood trickling down between her legs. Duncan presses a serrated knife to her throat, shouting at the Network pickup team, his pale, blotchy face speckled with targeting beams.

And then he slashes her open from ear to ear. Blood sprays out in glorious slow motion. The woman’s eyes bulge, her knees buckle, then Duncan’s face explodes in a cloud of pink mist. There’s just enough of a breeze to let the camera record every last beautiful detail as his features are boiled away. It only takes a second.

He falls on top of his victim-probably the closest he’s ever been to a naked woman-twitching. Muffled screams come from the ragged, bloody hole where his mouth used to be. There are no eyes, no cheeks and most of his jaw is gone.

The documentary goes into maudlin detail about the seventeen other people in the fast food joint: fathers, wives, sons, daughters. Not one of them survives the trip to the operating theatre.

Well done, Duncan. You’ve made mummy very proud.

Dr Westfield rewinds to the point where he cuts the woman’s throat, then pauses, her fingers caressing his evaporating face.

So pretty.

If only she could have spoken to him in the run up to that spree, could have found out what finally pushed the buttons she spent so many years setting in place.

There’s no NewsNet coverage for Allan Brown-the one they had to ID from his DNA-but his post mortem reads like the inventory of a butcher’s shop. There are a lot of holos in the file: close-ups of his hands, face, genitals, and belly, all torn and shredded. It’s beautiful workmanship. Strangely familiar…

Still, none of that matters. The important thing is that the remainder of her study group, all twenty-one of them, are still out there. Shrouded in the brittle comfort of bees and broken glass. Ready for that little push to send them right off the edge.

She has a lot of catching up to do.

Four hours later and the rain was still hammering down. Will stood on the edge of Blythswood Square, dripping quietly as he watched the halfhead.

It was dragging a buggy along behind it, picking up sodden litter from the drenched streets. It speared a discarded crisp packet and transferred it into the buggy’s bin. Strange to think that the thing cleaning the square had been human once. A creature of violence and destruction.

Now look at it.

Will stepped out from beneath the tree he’d been sheltering under, wincing as he crossed the square towards the figure in orange and black. Doc Morrison had told him to keep moving or he’d seize up, and now he knew what she meant. It was as if he’d come down with a bad case of rigor mortis. That’s what he got for spending all day sat in front of a monitor looking for Ken ‘The Invisible Man’ Peitai.

In the end he’d had to admit defeat: if there was any information on Peitai out there, Will couldn’t find it. Instead he’d just ended up thinking about Jo and whether or not Janet would have liked her, wondering if his dead wife would approve of his seeing another woman.

Then he went looking for Alastair Middleton. It didn’t take long when you knew which databases to hack into.

The halfhead didn’t even look up as Will walked up to him and stood watching yet another bit of sodden rubbish disappear into the bin. There was something almost peaceful about halfheads. Something timeless and serene. There was never any rush. They had nothing left to worry about.

‘Afternoon, Alastair,’ said Will, shifting his grip on the carrier bag with his shopping in it. ‘Long time no see.’

If Alastair Middleton heard him, he didn’t give any sign, just went on picking up the trash and depositing it in his little buggy.

‘Been thinking about you a lot over the last couple of days. Your old mentor’s dead. Did you know?’

Alastair didn’t say anything, but then again he couldn’t: his mind and lower jaw had been taken away long ago.

‘Got burned to death in a Roadhugger that crashed. Just like that. No more Dr Fiona Westfield.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. ‘Don’t suppose that means an awful lot to you though, does it? She just used you the same way she used everyone else: wound you up and let you go.’

Water ran down the truncated features and dripped off the exposed upper teeth, making the thing that had once been Alastair Middleton glisten.

‘You know, I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t have been kinder to kill you when I had the chance: boil your chest away just like you did to Janet. What do you think? You happy as you are? No longer a menace to society?’

A group of about a dozen schoolgirls-all of them clearly stoned out of their heads-staggered across the square, giggling and tittering in their long red cloats. Will watched them jump from puddle to puddle, shrieking with the joy of being young and off their faces.

‘Yeah, well,’ he said when they’d gone. ‘Just wanted you to know she was dead.’

Will didn’t wait for a reply-there wasn’t any point-he turned his back and squelched his way to the nearest shuttle station.

Brian and Jo would be in the pub by now, having the traditional booze-up to celebrate catching their bad guy. And God knew Will could do with celebrating something.

There was no sign of the pickup team in the Dog and Diode, so Will dragged out his mobile and called Brian’s. No response, so he tried him at home.

The little screen crackled and fizzed for a bit before Brian’s face swam into focus. Will was on his best behaviour. Didn’t even obscure the camera.

‘Brian, how…God you look terrible!’

Agent Alexander’s face was pale and baggy, his eyes bloodshot, his nose red. He sighed. ‘Will.’ That was it, no niceties, no hello, no merry banter.

‘Are you all right?’

‘No.’

‘Jesus, Brian, what happened?’

He rubbed at his eyes. ‘You don’t want to know. And I really don’t want to talk about it.’ He took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I’m sorry Will. I’ll…I’ll talk to you later. I can’t do this right now.’

Someone appeared at his shoulder and Will recognized James’s voice as he wrapped Brian up in a hug. ‘Shhhh…Come on. Let it go. It’s all right.’

Then the connection went dead.

Will frowned at the flashing ‘CALL TERMINATED’ icon. It wasn’t like Brian to let things get to him. Not like that.

Will called the West George Street Bluecoat station. A harassed-sounding sergeant told him he could go screw himself if he thought they were going to hand out a DS’s private number to some wanker in a pub, before slamming the cut-off switch. Will was left with the ‘CALL TERMINATED’ icon again.

He could always dig Jo’s number out of the Bluecoats records when he got home. And anyway, he had a plastic of wine and a pizza delivery menu waiting for him. Who could ask for more?

She pushes the datapad away and stretches. It’s taken her most of the day, but she now has addresses for all her remaining children. Surprisingly, most of them live in the same place. Three stay out in the lower suburbs, but the other eighteen are all bundled up, nice and snug, in Monstrosity Square. Strange that fate made them gravitate together like that. Strange, but convenient-visiting them will be nice and easy.