"Four rows back; in a wig, glasses and "tache. Got a taxi while you were still looking for the hire-car desk. Anyway," he says, and I imagine I can hear him sighing and stretching, "must dash; this technical stuff's all very fascinating but I do have a faint suspicion they're getting you to keep me talking. I'm on a mobile, which is why they haven't traced it yet; this is a biggish cell I'm in. Hey, that's a coincidence, isn't it, Cameron? You in a cell last week, me in one now… Well, maybe not. Anyway, as I say, it's a biggish cell but if I keep talking I'm sure they can find me here too, eventually, so —»
"Andy —»
"No, Cameron, just listen; I'll return Halziel and Lingary tonight, in Edinburgh. There's a double call box in the Grassmarket outside The Last Drop pub; I want you to be in the coin-operated box at seven o'clock. You personally, nineteen hundred hours tonight, coin-op box outside The Last Drop public house, in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh. Bye now!"
The line goes dead. I look at McDunn, who nods. I put the phone down.
Edinburgh on a cold November evening; the Grassmarket, light-bright under a smir of rain below the castle, a rotund floodlit presence in the orange darkness above.
The Grassmarket is a kind of long square in the hollow southeast of the castle, surrounded by mostly old buildings; I can remember when it was a seedy, run-down old place full of winos but it's moved gradually up-market over the years and it's a fairly cool area to hang out now; chic eateries, good bars, fashion outlets and shops specialising in things like kites, or minerals and fossils, though there's a still a homeless hostel round the corner, so it hasn't been irredeemably gentrified.
The Last Drop is at the east end of the Grassmarket, near the split-level curve of Victoria Street, home of yet more specialist shops including one that mystifyingly seems to provide a living selling only brushes, brooms and very large balls of string.
The pub's name is less jolly and more witty than it sounds at first; the city gallows used to be right outside.
No obvious cop cars around. I'm sitting — handcuffed to Sergeant Flavell — in an unmarked Senator with McDunn and two plain-clothes guys from Lothian. There's another unmarked car at the far end of the Grassmarket, several others nearby, and a couple of vans full of uniform guys parked in side streets, plus various cruising patrol cars in the vicinity. They say they've checked the box itself and all likely vantage points, but I'm still worried that Andy's not finished with me yet, that he's lying through his teeth and if I step into that telephone box I'll get a rifle bullet through the head. A plain-clothes guy is in the box, pretending to use it, so it'll be free when Andy calls. It's already wired up so they can record everything. I look at the facade of The Last Drop. There's a new up-market Indian restaurant within sniffing distance, too, near where the old Traverse Theatre used to be.
A pint and a curry. Jesus. My mouth waters. We're spitting distance from the Cowgate and the Kasbar, too.
McDunn looks at his watch. "Seven o'clock," he says. "I wonder — " He breaks off as the cop in the phone box waves at us.
McDunn grunts. "Military precision," he says, then nods to Flavell; we get out of the car as the driver switches something on the radio, producing a ringing tone in time with the one I can hear coming from the box.
Flavell squeezes into the box with me while the other cop waits outside.
"Hello?" I say.
"Cameron?"
"Yeah, it's me."
"Change of plans. Be in the same place at three o'clock this morning; you'll get them back then." Click. The line goes look at Flavell.
"Three o'clock, did he say?" Flavell says, looking peeved.
"Think of the overtime," I tell him.
They take me to a cop shop in Chambers Street, about a minute's drive away. I get fed and watered and put into a cell that look and smells of disinfectant. The food they give me is crap; gristly stew, mushed potatoes and brussels sprouts.
But there is one wonderful thing.
They've given me back my lap-top. McDunn's idea. I try not to feel too pathetically grateful.
I check the files first; nothing missing. I give half a thought to going into Xerion to try the mushroom-cloud-riding trick Andy showed me, but it's only half a thought; instead I go straight into Despot.
I can't believe it's the same game. I feel my mouth open.
It's a wasteland. My kingdom is gone. The land is still there, some of the people are, and the capital city, designed in the shape giant crescents of buildings around two lakes, so that from the air it says «CC»… but something terrible seems to have happened. The city is crumbling, largely abandoned; aqueducts fallen, reservoirs cracked and dry, districts flooded, others burned down; the activity taking place within the city is about what you'd expect from town. The countryside has either become desert or marsh or returned to forest; huge areas are barren, and where there is any agriculture it's in the shape of tiny strip-fields around little villages deep in the woods or on the fringe of the waste. The ports are drowned or silted up, the roads and canals have fallen into disrepair or just disappeared altogether, the mines have caved in or been flooded, all the cities and towns have shrunk back, and all the temples — all my temples — are ruined, dark, abandoned. Bandits roam the land, foreign tribes raid the provinces, plagues are rife and the population is much smaller, less productive and individually shorter-lived.
The civilisation to the south that I had so many problems with seems to have retreated or relapsed as well, but that is the extent of the good news. The worst of it is there's no head man, no Despot, no me. I can look at all this but I can't do anything about it, not on this scale. To start playing again I'd have to trade this omniscient but omni-impotent view for that of… God knows, some tribal warrior, village elder, a mayor or a bandit chief.
I range over it all for a while, looking down, appalled. Somebody must have started it up just to look, then left it running while they checked out the other stuff, or maybe they tried to meddle, played with the game but couldn't control it… Unless this is what they wanted, what they designed; I guess a radical Green or Deep Ecologist would think it's a pretty cool result.
The battery alarm beeps. Might have known they wouldn't have charged the damn thing up properly.
I watch the unfolding of my once great realm until the machine senses too little power to work with, and closes itself down. The screen fades out on the overhead view of my capital; I watch my vainglorious "CC'-shaped city just dissolve quietly into darkness. They put the cell lights out a few minutes later.
I sleep on the narrow little metal cot with the lap-top cradled in my arms.
Three in the morning; dry, now, but cold. The police driver leaves the engine running and our exhaust smoke drifts into the air to one side on a chilly breeze. The Grassmarket is silent. The car isn't; the radio chirps now and again and I can't stop coughing.
The cop in the phone box waves, bang on three.
"Corner of West Port and Bread Street, soon," Andy says, then hangs up.
It's walking distance, but we take the car anyway, pulling up outside the Gas Rock Cafe bar. Nothing much here; office buildings, shops across the street. Another unmarked car is parked on Bread Street itself. The vans with the uniformed police are parked on Fountainbridge and the Grassmarket, and the various patrol vehicles are still cruising in the neighbourhood.
McDunn takes a walk around, then comes back to the car.
We have some coffee from a big thermos, sipping it black. It helps my cough a bit.
"Soon," McDunn says, contemplatively, looking into his plastic cup as if searching for coffee grounds to read.