Hari Kunzru - Transmission

The bass line thudded. And another sound, high pitched and intermittent. A human sound. Either sex or pain.

He needed to speak to Gabriella. He could tell her how things were, how important she was now everything else was going to hell. Maybe she would be kind. It was a risk letting her hear him like this, but then again she was his girlfriend. She was supposed to make things better. He dialled her number on the hotel phone, drunk enough not to worry about the cost. It diverted to voice-mail, so he tried international directory inquiries, which was down. Finally he got the concierge to look up the number of her hotel and patch him through.

A Scottish-accented voice confirmed that Miss Caro was in 106.

The phone rang eight times. Just as he was about to give up, she answered. Her hello was breathy, distracted. Mixed in with it was some artefact of the telephone system, a strange electronic rushing noise. It sounded like splintering information, communication space.

‘Hello? Hello?’

‘Yes?’

‘Gaby it’s me.’

‘Oh, God. Guy.’

The voice at the other end was muffled, and for a moment he was left alone with the interstellar howl. He had an idea she had placed a hand over the receiver.

‘Gaby. Hello?’

‘Guy — I’m —’

‘Is this not a good time?’

‘No. No. Yes, of course it is. What do you mean?’ She sounded agitated. Gaby was usually so calm. ‘I thought you were in Dubai.’

‘I am, sweetie. I just wanted to hear your voice.’

‘Why are you calling? I mean, it’s very late, you know.’

‘Not that late, surely. I looked. It’s ten o’clock where you are.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Right.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘There’s nothing wrong. Christ, Guy, why are you always like this? What’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong, OK?’

The volume of the electronic interference increased. Part of it detached to become a feedback whine, a tone rising and falling through the shards of her voice.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello?’

‘Gaby, I just wanted to talk to you. Things aren’t so good here.’ There was no response. ‘Gaby? Hello?’

‘I hope you didn’t call just to talk to me about your work. Because, you know, I’m just not going to be able to do that right now. I have my own world, Guy. I’m working here too, remember?’

The rushing reached a crescendo and fell away again. Through the bedroom wall the boom of the party seemed to grow louder. Weirdly the party sounds seemed to be coming out of the receiver as well. He felt he could not be sure of the source of anything he was hearing. Then the muffling descended, but too late to block out the sound of a man’s voice. Was someone there with her?

‘Who is that, Gaby?’

Silence.

‘Gaby? Gaby, can you hear me?’

‘Guy, I can’t talk now. We need to talk, but this is not the right time, OK?’

A little stone formed in the pit of his stomach. ‘Gaby? What are you talking about?’

‘I can’t do this now. Not over the phone.’

‘What’s wrong? What do you mean not over the phone?’

‘Call me when you get back. Call me when you get to the airport.’

‘Gaby? Hello?’

Abruptly the noise ceased.

The first Chris knew of it was when the cops phoned. It was very early in the morning and the formal tone of the voice freaked her out. ‘Are you Ms Christine Rebecca Schnorr?’ Chris never dealt well with authority, especially on a hangover. Nic was sacked out beside her in the bed, one arm thrown over her chest. She pushed it off and sat up, rubbing her face.

‘Yes, this is she.’

‘This is Deputy Janine Foster, calling from Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. Are you the owner of a white Honda Civic licence plate 141-JPC?’

‘Yeah. I mean yes, I am.’

‘Are you aware of the location of your vehicle?’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Are you aware of the location of your vehicle at this time?’

‘Far as I know it’s parked outside.’

‘I see. When did you last utilize the vehicle?’

‘Yesterday evening. I got in around eleven.’

‘So you say you drove the vehicle home around eleven.’

‘Uh, yes. What’s this regarding?’

Nic had woken up and was propped on one elbow, listening groggily as the cop told her what had happened. It seemed that some time after they got back from the Brewhouse, somebody stole her car from the driveway, drove it north on I-5 and then just before four in the morning ran it off an exit ramp near a place called Smokey Point, about twenty-five miles away. A tree branch had gone through the radiator and it wasn’t drivable, but apart from a few dents and a smashed windshield, it was OK. Whoever did it must have walked away, but it looked as if they had been hurt in the crash, since the highway patrol had found blood on the dash and the upholstery.

‘How much blood?’ asked Chris. ‘Like, a lot?’ A new radiator and windshield would probably already come to more than the battered twelve-year-old Honda was worth. With mystery car-thief bloodstains thrown in, she was not entirely sure she wanted the old rice-cooker back. She promised the cop that she’d call later to arrange for the car to be picked up and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Two minutes later she was back.

‘Nic, where did I put the car keys last night?’

‘What? I don’t know. Where you usually put them?’

‘In the bowl. I always put them in the bowl. But did you actually see me put them there last night?’

‘Come on, Chris. How should I remember?’

‘Nic.’

‘I don’t know, Chris. Sorry.’

‘Well, they’re not there now.’

Nic looked at her sceptically Then he swung his legs out of bed and started to look for the keys. The two of them hunted for over an hour. Chris had to call a taxi to get to work, and she left him still opening cabinets and pulling out appliances to squint behind them. He emailed her mid morning. The keys were definitely gone. There was only one possible explanation: whoever stole the car had come into their house and taken them. The thought made Chris feel sick. Someone creeping around their kitchen while she was asleep upstairs. She and Nic had gotten out of the habit of locking the door. It was a safe neighbourhood. Nothing ever happened. She left a message for Deputy Foster, and that night slept with her softball bat by the bed. The next morning she called a salvage yard about the car, and sat all day at her desk imagining the same thing over and over again, the unknown person coming up the steps, opening the screen door, slipping into the darkened house… Beyond the basic spookiness of it, there was something uncanny about the intrusion, something just beyond her comprehension. It came into focus only on the third morning, when her boss at Virugenix called her into a meeting and she found to her astonishment that the FBI was there to interview her.

‘What is the nature of your relationship with Arjun Mehta?’

The agent looked blandly over the desk, successfully performing that cop trick of inducing feelings of guilt without doing anything obvious with his face or eyes. He had a bushy brown cop moustache, square metal-framed glasses, and the kind of chunky bracelet watch which works eight miles under water and tells you the time on Venus. He probably divided his leisure time between mending his boat and looking at coprophiliac pictures of cheerleaders.

‘He’s a friend.’

‘What kind of friend?’

‘You know, like a friend? You have those, right?’

‘I don’t appreciate your attitude, Miss Schnorr. I say again, what kind of friend? Did you, for example, go on dates with Mr Mehta?’