Early morning upon arriving at work, Vince discovered the door of his office opened. He was positive he hadn’t left it that way as he was certain that no one else working here would, so he took a couple of steps back and called security. Having a couple of people behind his back, he gathered the courage to lean down to see if someone was inside. There indeed was someone, and when he recognised him he dismissed them and entered the room shouting:
“Ayer! What are you doing here?!”
“I work here,” Cadman was standing on the visitor’s chair next to Vince’s desk staring at his notes. “At least I wasn’t notified otherwise.”
“Well, how the hell are we supposed to notify you about anything, when you don’t even visit the office? People from the record department have been asking for you every day of the past week.”
“Believe me, you have bigger issues than my records not being in order,” Ayer said. “I solved a case last night,” he continued, “one which you will no doubt find interesting.”
“Was it the one we hired you for?” Vince asked, but Ayer did not respond.
“A bloke named Guy Moscovitz.” He said, “Arrives in London about a month ago. the Museum of Natural Art and from there he stoles two paintings, your system locates him with no problem and five minutes later your colleagues are at his door. But here comes the interesting part: He is not in his room. Neither he is in any other room, nor anywhere else in the hotel. And nobody had seen him since then.”
“His identity?”
“Stolen. The real Guy Moskovitz is at the other end of the world.”
“Alright. So what new can you tell me about this?”
“Where do I start? Firstly, this person, who stole the paintings, he does not really exist.”
Vince frowned.
“OK, we should probably go get some coffee,” Ayer said.
Vince already had coffee at home, but he did not think that mentioning this would make any difference, so he got up from his desk and took Ayer to the canteen, where Ayer got a Cappucino with double milk and finally started talking in a manner which was a little less obscure:
“First I did a small research,” he started, “and I discovered that this was not the first time that Guy Moscovitz became invisible: according to the Detective, when he arrived in London, he travelled from the airport to his hotel without a single camera capturing him.
It is relevant to mention something about the hotel, where he checked in,” he continued, apparently following his notes, “it is a low-cost joint and there are a lot of blokes who live there full-time just because it is a little cheaper than renting an actual apartment. One of them, John Tally, is an ex-con artist. And incidentally,” Ayer made a pause to take a sip from his coffee, “he and the so-called Mr Moskovitz were never out of the building at the same time.”
“And you think that-“
“What I think is roughly the following: first John Tally acquired Guy Moskovitz’s identity and he used it to make a reservation at the hotel room next to the one which he was staying. Then, shortly after the plane landed, he dressed in this ridiculous suit of his, and came at the lobby to pick up the key, presenting himself as Guy Moskovitz and thus putting your records in the state in which he wanted them to be. From there on he was free to act our the rest of his plan,” Ayer took his cup and used a straw to suck the last few drops of its contents, making a loud noise. “So what do you say?”
“Ayer, you are a smart boy,” Vince started. “But I really feel that you would make for a lousy police person - the world simply isn’t as weird and mysterious as you imagine it to be.”
“Maybe it’s not,” Ayer said. “or maybe it depends on how you look at it. But in this case, I checked the airline records, and there wasn’t a Mr Moscovitz on board. And I contacted John Tally, the con artist, at least I attempted to do so - he is gone.”
“So this really did happen?”
“I can guarantee it,”
“But how? How did he think of that?” Vince’s question was directed more at himself than to Ayer.
Ayer smiled, “Well since you are asking, maybe someone else directed him,” he said and then added, “Actually, that is what I came here to discuss.”
The conference room was huge, especially compared to the small number of people in it. The screen was turned off and it seemed like it was there only to reflect the light coming from hundreds of diodes, which were mounted to the ceiling. Ayer sat at one of the many free chairs, nodded to Pankill and Jane, while they were going through their daily agenda and waited patiently- for his turn to come without saying a word. He did not look as out of place as Vince expected him to, but upon closer inspection, his manners were starting to feel an awful lot like a camouflage. When his turn
“Hello,” Ayer said, nodding to everyone and smiling with a smile which was making him look like a different person. “I came here to share a theory related to several cases on which I am working on, both officially and unofficially.
Perhaps it would seem weird for you to concentrate on just an isolated group of cases, and not to look at all crime as one uncountable whole, as you do usually. So I will begin with some of my impressions of the “Detective”: I believe it is a fairly rudimentary system. Which by itself is OK, since most crimes are equally rudimentary, even trivial if I may say so. However, this rule has several exceptions. As in “exceptional” that is - cases like the vault robbery and the alleged murder of Den Lee are, for me, another category of crimes. Both their planning and execution are flawless. In fact, so flawless, that you even hesitate to share with me how they are done-“
“Why are you so obsessed with this robbery?” Vince asked.
“Cases like these are the reason why you hired a consulting detective like me to work alongside your colleagues.” Ayer continued. “Now, what I am about to tell you might surprise you, although it is actually quite logical - I think that the authors of these crimes are using some consultancy of their own.”
“What?” Vince asked.
“Imagine if there was a person or a group of people who are connected to everything that is happening right now. I will call him or her “Moriarty” for short - this is the name of a famous criminal from the Victorian era. Everybody who committed crimes in the past three months may be connected to Moriarty. And it is my firm conviction that Den Lee knew him personally.”
“And where did you get all this from?” Jane said while Ayer was still talking.
“I will tell you, but you probably won’t believe me,” Ayer said.
“What makes you think we believe you now?” Jane said.
“Yes Ayer,” Vince started. “I do agree that the fact that so many unresolved cases were opened almost simultaneously does not look like a coincidence, but let’s not jump to “conspiracy theory-style conclusions before reviewing the information that we have about them.”
“That is how do we get to my second point,” Ayer said, “Unfortunately, your algorithm is not sophisticated enough for me to even call the data you have ‘information’. When the connections are simple enough for a simple matching rule to detect them, this algorithm is all you need, but in the current case-“
“OK, stop Ayer,” Vince said. “I mean, I know that our way of working is not your cup of tea, but mate, you are not even trying! Yes, our files contain nothing more than a list of facts. And yes, our algorithm is only a little more than an application of the stimulus-response model. But do you think that humans are really a lot more complicated than that? I mean try to read the darn files for starters! You will probably find out that if you have the biography of a given person in front of you, and you connect the dots, you will have a pretty darn good idea about what this person is all about!”
“Then how good of an idea you have about me?” Ayer looked at Vince with a grimace.
“And because we don’t, we cannot trust you,” Jane said. “Especially when all you have is a hinge.”
“How can I have anything more when I don’t have access to most of the cases that I am referring to?
“And how the hell do you expect us to grant you that access?” Jane said. “More specifically - why? Because you seem nice? Because some people from your neighbourhood are fond of you? You desire to access cases which are at the highest level of secrecy and at the same time you didn’t want to share a single fact about your life!”
To her and Vince’s surprise, after this remark, Ayer lowered his voice and started sounding a lot less confident:
“I don’t know what do you need to know about me, but I really don’t want to discuss my personal life.
“You poor thing. I can assure you that nobody gives a shit about your personal life,” Jane said. “It is your professional practices that we are accessing, if I may call them this way.”
“I just want to help, please stop,” Ayer’s voice sounded so desperate that Jane really did stop speaking, “I am just a boy, why are you attacking me?”
“You have children. You handle this!” Jane turned to Vince.
Vince sat next to Ayer, who was standing with his face buried in his hands as if he was about to burst into tears, and waited for him to come down before starting to speak: “Look, Ayer, here’s the deal - we really like some of your ideas. And we really want to help you. But in order to do that, we have to be assured that you know what you are doing. And at the moment we are not, and cannot be, simply because we don’t know anything about you. Because, Ayer, as hard it is for me to admit it, your remark was absolutely correct - the data from your file tells us nothing about who you are and how the hell have you gained the experience that you have. So currently your persona constitutes one more unknown term in our equation, and believe me when I say that we have enough of those already.”
“But I have nothing to hide,” Ayer said, “Nothing.”
“Then tell us. Tell us how you became what you are.”
“Alright,” Ayer’s face regained his usual emotionless expression. “How much time do we have?”
“I didn’t want to be mediocre,” Ayer spoke fast and stopped only to take a sip from the cup of Cappucino that Vince had brought him. “I wanted everything I do to be perfect, but at the same time I had no idea what that meant and how could I achieve it. As a result, I missed most of my youth. I was apathetic - I went to study in a university after finishing school because that’s what everybody did, I worked the job that my father had arranged for me because it was the easiest thing I could do. I spent my free time reading books and I thought that this was making me better than everyone else, actually, it was more like the opposite,” Ayer was smiling as he was speaking, “Although, to be fair, it helped me immensely.”
“Now when you speak about your job, you are referring to the dry-cleaning place where you met Robert?”
“Correct,” Ayer said, “At the time that business belonged to my father. Naturally, he wanted to hand it to me after he retired and I did not want to offend him, so I did everything that he asked me, but nothing extra, as he’d always taught me to do exactly what I am told. So one day he came to me and told me that I am a complete failure. He was drunk at the time and the next day he denied ever having said that, but few weeks after I was still pondering at his line of logic: “I do everything that I am told and, in some way, I still fail. How come?” He made a brief pause and when he started speaking again his voice filled with emotion. “He could not explain it to me, but I understood it… See, I was like him. I was not being myself. I was not doing what I had to do.
Jane tried to stop Ayer a few times, but the more she was trying to direct his narrative, the more clearly she envisioned the labyrinth which was in his head, realizing that there were a very few places where his thoughts could alter their routes and even fewer destinations that they could arrive at, so the best that she and Vince could hope for was that the current destination was at least close to where they wanted to get.
“So what is mediocrity, really?” Ayer continued. “Do you think you have answered this question for yourselves in a way which satisfies you? Because I did - mediocrity is convenience. Comfort if you must. If you already want to know how your day will end after you wake up, then you are condemning it to be nothing more than what you expect from it. And if it indeed is, then what difference does it make whether you spent it woke or asleep? Comfort had always been goal number one for my family and for everyone else that surrounded me,” Ayer continued, “Everything they did was related, directly or indirectly, to their desire for their life to be easier and smoother, and so it was. But me, it was then when I realised that I prefer it to be complex. As complex as it needs to be.
“Is this why you became a low-tek?” Vince asked.
“I don’t think this word makes any sense for me. In fact, I can think of a hundred labels with which I call you, her and everyone else I met here at the Yard and which are thousand times more accurate and meaningful than ‘low tek’.”
“After cutting comfort our of the equation, deciding what I wanted to do with my life was easy,” Ayer continued, “It took me a few minutes to ask myself “Why am I here and not there?” and to start acting accordingly. I immediately realised I needed to go where they needed me and my abilities. You might want to ask my landlord, Mrs Johnson, for the exact date of my arrival at her house. But for me, it was about five years ago. I went there with three bags of luggage. One of those bags still stands untouched in my closet - that is how detached I was from my actual needs. There, I met many people for a really short period of time: everyone was interested in meeting the weird bloke who moved to their neighbourhood on purpose. I used this attention to acquire contacts: many people were asking me what I do for a living and I was happy to answer them. I told them that what I am in the business of finding lost things, something like that.”
“And have you had any luck?” Vince asked.
“Barely. In the first month, I must have offered my services to nearly a hundred people, and none of them wished to take advantage of them, even for free. But I wasn’t expecting anything different - for me, the important thing was that they knew what I did and when they could find me.
“And how did you sustain a living during this period?” Vince asked.
“I worked as a docker for a daily wage. Hard work, but bearable once you get used to it.”
“So again no way to verify what you are saying,” Jane said,” Interesting.”
“Tell me what can you “verify” about the average person living outside of your zoo?” Ayer asked. “If you really want to be sure about this particular fact, I can direct you to a person who can testify that I was indeed working there. And I am positive he will remember me, as later he became my first client.”
“You know, colleagues of mine have one huge advantage over practitioners of other professions - our clients are often desperate. And desperate people are willing to believe every person who tells them that there is hope. Such was the case with the first bloke who hired me. Three days before he came to my office he had sent his daughter to school like every other day. He hadn’t seen her since then.
When I started working, I assumed that the girl was alive, as the opposite would deem the whole endeavour pointless. From this, it followed that the person or people I was seeking lived in a huge apartment, where they could remain unnoticed, probably even a house. Also, they probably had a lot of free time. And while these two things weren’t nearly enough to start searching for the culprit, one more assumption from my side filled the gap: unlike most of the people who live in our neighbourhood, my client was a very engaged parent. He didn’t leave his daughter alone very often. Because of this, I assumed that whoever kidnapped her did not pick her at random. He had probably been watching her for a long time.
I interviewed a lot of people who knew the girl: doctors, teachers, etc. When that didn’t work, I asked my client to draw me a map of her route to school and started walking through it at approximately the same hour that she used to do it. In that way, I encountered a match - a person who was rich had a lot of free time and did not talk to his neighbours too much. However, I wasn’t sure I was right. Because that person was a woman.
The person whom I am talking about was an elderly widow, who lived alone in a house that originally belonged to her husband. After his death, she had lived a lonely life - none of her neighbours could tell me anything about her. When I examined her trash can I found a branded toystore bag. At that time this was enough reason for me to break into her house. The girl was there, sleeping in a fully furnished children’s room. I took her by her hand and got her to her parents, disregarding the widow. Months later I learned her story, she never had a kid, because her husband didn’t want to, and after his death, she had been too old to adopt one. It was then when I considered the case closed.”
“OK, that’s better.” Vince said, “I even found some information about the woman.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Jane asked.
Ayer told them about five more cases, without missing a beat. He was very detailed, so when he got to begin the sixth one, Jane stopped him:
“Let’s not go there.” She said. “Vince?”
“OK, I suppose that is enough,” he said. “No we will not give you full access, but we can tell you what happened the night the vault got mugged.”
“Really?” Ayer asked.
Vince frowned: “Ever heard me joking?”
“OK, let’s start by restating what I already know,” Ayer said, “the vault was stormed at about nine in the evening, and, judging by the way the entrance looked the next day, I suppose that a bomb of some kind was involved. I saw the recording of the security camera, showing a young woman escaping from the building. She wasn’t carrying anything with her which leads me to believe that what she did was to move the contents of the stormed deposit boxes into a deposit box of her possession. Which, while pretty clever by itself, is probably not the only unusual thing that she did else you wouldn’t be so secretive.”
“That is true,” Pankill said and turned on the screen. “What you are about to see are strictly confidential records from the robbery, so please take the whole thing seriously. Anyways, when the suspect left the building, we were ready-“
On the screen, Ayer saw the silhouette of a young girl, wearing a black dress and high heels. She was displayed from several camera angles as she exited the vault.
“The image wasn’t good enough for us to identify her,” he continued. “but we were quite able to track her down, as I showed you before-“
On the screen, Ayer saw a map of the city, with the whereabouts of the girl marked with a red spot.
“So at first, it seemed that there was no way that she could get away. When this happened-“
On the screen, the red spot split into two identical red spots, which began moving in different directions. Several seconds later the same thing happened again. And yet again, until the number of sport on the screen was eight.
“And before you asked, no, there was nothing wrong with our system. It is just that when it has to recognise one person in the presence of another one and their faces aren’t visible it uses a combination of physical characteristics like height, clothes, hairstyle et cetera to tell them apart. In normal cases, this works perfectly. But if you specifically aim to deceive it, then breaking it is actually quite easy.
The girl walked to the end of the street where waiting for her were six identically-looking and identically-dressed girls. The dark colour made it even harder for anyone to know the difference between them. She took a peek at the only camera and dove in the group, in a way that made it impossible to keep track of her identity.
“So you failed to arrest them?” Ayer asked.
“We got some of them,” Pankill said, “Most of them were prostitutes, but were completely innocent when it comes to the case at hand. One of them, of course, got away, but we cannot find out which one is it, let alone prove that she is guilty. So this is where the story ends for now.”
Ayer did not say anything. When Vince glanced at him he looked startled. “A truly unusual case, right?” Vince said, “But I think it is safe to say that it definitely isn’t an instance of organised crime.”
“It is safe to say,” Ayer repeated after Vince tried to extract an answer from him with his stare.
“What do you have in mind?” Jane said.
“If you are really interested, you’ll have to come with me?”
“Where?” she asked.
“At my office.”
“I understand he is awkward,” Vince said while he and Jane were taking the elevator to the parking, “But does that mean we should let him get on our nerves?”
“I am not nervous,” Jane said, “Plus what, you don’t think he will deliver?”
“I hope he will.”
“Maybe he just needs a mentor,” Jane said, “Someone who went through the same stuff as he goes and managed to employ his emotions into something constructive,” she looked at Vince.
“Yes, very funny.” He said.
They picked up Ayer from the garden and left for his house. When they stopped by the house, it was already dark. They moved to the entrance and Ayer unlocked the door.
“Ayer, is that you?” The woman that they met earlier came by the door as they were entering. “And I suppose these are your new clients. The ones for which you don’t tell me anything about. Care for a cup of tea?”
“We’re not allowed to drink at work,” Jane said.
“Oh, I see,” Linda said as she made way for them. “So that is why Cadman was working so hard last night. I could hear him from the other end of the house.”
“Excuse me? Hear him?” Vince said.
“We gotta go now Vince,” Jane said.
While they climbed the stairs, they remembered the room that they were about to enter - there was a round table in the middle of it, two chairs were placed facing each other at one of the corners, and on another one there was a desk. They also remembered the newspaper clippings that were hanging from the wall. They were the first thing that gave them a hint about the person whom they were about to meet.
When they entered, they didn’t see any of these things. The carpet was removed, the furniture was placed at the corners of the room, and the newspaper clippings that previously occupied just the whiteboard, were now spread across the entire room. Even more weirdly, there were numerous strings of cord which stretched between some of the clippings, connecting them with one another.
Vince soon saw that actually not all of the sheets of paper were from newspapers. He got a bit closer to verify his suspicion, and although he could not get near enough to read them without tearing some of the strings, he saw them well enough to know that they were excerpts from various Scotland Yard files. The other two walls were also plastered with paper - photographs from the evidence room.
“What the hell is this?” Vince turned to Ayer who was just about to enter and grabbed him by the shirt.
“Stop it,” Jane said.
Vince released Ayers shirt and directed his anger to Jane: “How the hell did he get all this?”
“Full disclosure: I left my computer on purpose when I left,” Jane said. “Seeing how Ayer worked I thought it might be useful for him to save some of the stuff.”
Vince shrugged: “Alright, you deal with all this then,” and then he looked again at the collage which was occupying all of the room this time more carefully, “What is it, anyway?”
“Well, I assume these represent relations,” Jane said and she pointed to one of the strings. Looking closely, Vince realised that each of them connected a picture from the front wall to a newspaper clipping or a file from the wall on the left. There was some stuff on the third wall too but there weren’t as many strings coming from it.
“Great, so you basically created a physical version of a database,” Vince said.
“Except that in this one, Den’s pictures are somehow related to some of the cases,” Jane said, “What is this about?”
Ayer did not give her an answer, so she rushed to the wall to check for herself. She found the case of Guy Moskovitz which Ayer had solved on the same day - and followed the string. It led to a picture of one of Den’s dolls - a small male figure, with a large beard and a hat.
“Is this why you called us?” Vince screamed when he saw the picture, “Because of this meagre resemblance?”
“If it were only one, I wouldn’t bother,” Ayer said. “But Last night I managed to solve at least three more by analysing patterns in Den’s art. And I can say that there are obvious connections for at least two more.”
“OK, and where are the others?” Vince started looking at the pictures.
“Forget about the others,” Ayer said, “Look at this one.”
And he pointed to one big picture, which was placed at the centre of the wall. On it, there were eight identical-looking dolls - they had no decoration, they even lacked most facial features. And unlike most kokeshi dolls, which were painted in bright colours, these were painted in solid black. This picture wasn’t connected to anything.
“I didn’t know what this one meant,” Ayer continued. “Until I learned about the robbery.”
“You are crazy!” Vince said.
“True, but not related,” Ayer said. “I took all pictures from your archives, there is no feasible explanation of there being so many similarities between Den’s art and various crimes some of which weren’t even committed when it was made.”
“Unless?” Vince was asking Ayer, but it was Jane who responded instead:
“Unless everything is connected as he says. With her at the top.”
“From absurdity, everything follows,” Vince said with a pathos.
“Shut up.” Jane said, “Ayer, leave us for a sec, will you? We need to examine all of this in private.”
As he was leaving his office, Ayer noticed that Vince and Jane started chatting in a manner which was quite different, and much more informal from the one they were using in public. They almost didn’t speak in sentences but in sounds and grimaces. It looked like they were performing some kind of ritual and that everything that was going to happen was long decided.
“Ayer, its good to see you again,” Vince said once he was back. “Look after we examined your theory more closely we think that there might be some truth in it after all. Enough for us to allow you to continue developing it as a full-time investigator in the Scotland Yard, welcome aboard.” Vince got up to shake his hand but Ayer stepped aside.
“What does that mean?”
“It means a lot of things, actually,” Vince said, “ It means that you will be one of the youngest people to attain this position. It means that you will be required to be at our office every day. And, what probably most interests you - you will be able to request info, meet with witnesses et cetera.
“I wasn’t asking about the position, I was asking about your decision. Where are you going with this? What is your endgame?”
“Comfort-“ Jane replied instead of him. “For us, that is. For you, it is solving complex problems until your nose bleeds or even afterwards if it suits you.”
“Yes, but why are hiring me. When Vince was pretty clear that he doesn’t believe my theories. Or maybe your opinions differ?”
“You seem to know very little about communication, and cooperation with other people,” Vince said, “But we think that you can learn with time. We don’t believe you but we believe in you. Whatever is happening is definitely not what you think it is. But still, if anyone can understand it it’s you. And you will understand it! We will help you…”
Jane knew what Vince had to say to Ayer so she moved away from them and started wandering around the room. Their conflicts were much harder to see from afar - from the way in which Vince was talking and Ayer was nodding in return, it seemed that, after all, they were getting along. As a matter of fact, at that exact moment, they looked like two fourteen-year-olds, conversing about their toys in the school hallway. She even felt a mild disappointment when she was looking at them - it seemed like that the hostility between them was gone and with it, the fire which made everything about their relationship interesting.
After a while, she felt bored with the view and left the room. Vince and Ayer were so concentrated with one another that neither of them noticed, and Ayer didn’t seem to mind her going through his stuff anyway, at least much less than he minded her, or anyone else, looking into his past. She opened the door closest to her - this was Ayer’s “office” - really a room containing one desk and two chairs, (not counting the books). She opened another door - a bedroom. And another - this one turned out to be a closet. She remembered that Ayer had said that one of his bags was still in his closet, in the same way as he prepared it when he left his family home.
But there were no bags there.
Pankill was still half-asleep when he entered his office. He took off his jacket and his backpack at the same time and placed them on the floor.
“Hello Pankill,” He heard a loud voice, which startled him so he jumped towards the door and tripped over his backpack. “It’s OK,” The voice continued, “It’s just me.”
“Cadman?” he shouted, “What the… You scared me!”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Ayer looked unusually cheerful. “If I may say so, for a person who is in charge of security, you don’t feel very safe.”
“Can I help you?”
“So I wanted you to show me a thing or two about this system of yours.” “What exactly?”
“Let’s begin with everything.”
Pankill looked Ayer in a way that made him feel like he was obliged to elaborate:
“So yeah… I will work for the Yard full-time. And by the way, I am happy for us working together. I know that I ignored you the first time, but I assure you that now it will be different. If you agree to help me and work with me, I will do anything you want me to.
“Well, you can get off my chair, for starters,” Pankill said and he watched Ayer as he stood up and almost jumped through the desk to the other part of the room. He didn’t relax fully until he positioned himself in his usual place like any other day, and after doing so he immediately started his machine. After a few second both he and Ayer saw the then-familiar face of the “Detective” application.
“No, not with this program,” Ayer said, “That one sucks.”
“And what makes you say that?” Pankill replied.
“Just one thing.” I’ve never seen you using it.”
“Me?” Pankill asked, his mind shifting between anger and amazement.
“Yes you,” Ayer said, “Both when we were viewing the records of the vault robbery and when you were showing that stuff to Vince, you never opened the “Detective” You used other programs, like the one with the dark background, where you type some text and it gives you responses. How is it called?”
“What, the command-line?” Pankill said, “But that is not really a program.”
“So what it is?” Ayer said, “I know that you won’t use anything else but the best. So I want to use your programs.”
“Listen. these tools, they are not very intuitive to work with. I use them simply because I am used to them. And you are not.”
“I want to use your programs,” Ayer repeated.
“Alright, let’s hope you are serious,” Pankill said. And with a press of a button, he made the whole graphical user interface of his computer disappear. His whole screen became completely black, save for a single white cursor which was blinking on the top-left corner, where presumably the text would go.
“Hello darkness, my old friend…”
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