If Judy Garland was born in a trunk, Gizmo was born in an anorak. In spite of having the soul of a nerd, he had too much attitude for the passivity of train spotting. So he became a computer whizz. That was back in the steam age of computers, when the most powerful of machines took so long to scroll to the end of a ten-page document that you could go off and drip a pot of filter coffee without missing a thing. When 99.99% of the population still thought bulletin boards were things you found on office walls, Gizmo was on line to people all over the world. The teenagers who invented phone phreaking and hacking into the Pentagon were close personal friends of his. He’d never met them, you understand, just spent his nights typing his end of conversations with them and like-minded nutters all over the planet.
When the FBI started arresting hackers and phreakers on the grounds that America has never known what to do with nonconformists, and the British police started to take an interest, Gizmo decided it was time to stop playing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and come out into the sunlit uplands. So he started working for Telecom. And he manages to keep his face straight when he tells people that he’s a computer systems manager there. Which is another way of saying he actually gets paid to keep abreast of all the information technology that allows him to remain king of the darkside hackers. Gizmo’s like Bruce Wayne in reverse. When darkness falls on Gotham City, instead of donning mask and cape and taking on the bad guys, Gizmo goes on line and becomes one of the growing army who see cyberspace as the ultimate subversive, anarchic community. And Telecom still haven’t noticed that their northern systems manager is a renegade. It’s no wonder none of Gizmo’s friends have Telecom shares.
If I had to pick one thing that demonstrates the key difference between the UK and the USA, it would be their attitudes to information. Americans get everything unless there’s a damn good reason why not. Brits get nothing unless a High Court judge and an Act of Parliament have said there’s a damn good reason why we should. And private eyes are just like ordinary citizens in that respect. We don’t have any privileges. What we have are sources. They fall into two groups: the ones who are motivated by money and the ones who are driven by principle. Gizmo’s belief that information is born free but everywhere is in chains has saved my clients a small fortune. Police records, driver and vehicle licensing information, credit ratings: they’re all there at his fingertips and, for a small donation to Gizmo’s Hardware Upgrade Fund, at mine. The only information he won’t pass on to me is anything relating to BT phone bills or numbers. That would be a breach of confidence. Or something equally arbitrary. We all have to draw the line somewhere.
I draw it at passing Gizmo’s info on to clients. I use him either when I’ve hit a dead end or I know he can get something a lot faster than I can by official routes, which means the client saves money. I know I can be trusted not to abuse that information. I can’t say the same about the people who hire me, so I don’t tell them. I’ve had people waving wads of dosh under my nose for an ex-directory phone number or the address that goes with a car licence plate. Call me a control freak, but I won’t do that kind of work. I know there are agencies who do, but that doesn’t keep me awake at night. The only conscience I can afford to worry about is my own.
Gizmo had recently moved from a bedsit in the busiest red-light street in Whalley Range to a two-bedroomed flat above a shop in Levenshulme, a stretch of bandit country grouped around Stockport Road. The shop sells reconditioned vacuum cleaners. If you’ve ever wondered where Hoovers go when they die, this is the place. I’ve never seen a customer enter or leave the place, though there’s so much grime on the windows they could be running live sex shows in there and nobody would be any the wiser. And Gizmo reckons he’s moved up in the world.
I was going against the traffic flow on the busy arterial road, so it didn’t take me long to drive the short distance to Levenshulme and find a parking space on a side street of red-brick terraces. I pressed the bell and waited, contemplating a front door so coated with inner-city pollution that it was no longer possible to tell what colour it had originally been. The only clean part of the door was the glass on the spyhole. After about thirty seconds, I pressed the bell again. This time, there was a thunder of clattering feet, a brief pause and then the door opened a cautious couple of inches. ‘Kate,’ Gizmo said, showing no inclination to invite me in. His skin looked grey in the harsh morning light, his eyes red-rimmed like a laboratory white rat.
‘All right, Giz?’
‘No, since you ask.’ He rubbed a hand along his stubbled jaw and scratched behind one ear with the knuckle of his index finger.
‘What’s the problem? Trouble with the Dibble?’
His lips twisted in the kind of smile dogs give before they remove your liver without benefit of anaesthetic. ‘No way. I’m always well ahead of the woodentops. No, this is serious. I’ve got the bullet.’
‘From Telecom?’
‘Who else?’
I was taken aback. The only thing I could think of was that someone had got wise to Gizmo’s extra-curricular activities. ‘They catch you with your hand in somebody’s digital traffic?’
‘Get real,’ he said indignantly. ‘Staff cuts. The section head doesn’t like the fact that I know more than anybody else in the section, including him. So it’s good night Vienna, Gizmo.’
‘You’ll get another job,’ I said. I would have found it easier to convince myself if I hadn’t been looking at him as I spoke. As well as the red-rimmed eyes and the stubble, a prospective employer had to contend with a haircut that looked like Edward Scissorhands on a bad hair day, and a dress sense that would embarrass a jumble sale.
‘I’m too old.’
‘How old?’
‘Thirty-two,’ he mumbled with a suspicious scowl, as if he thought I was going to laugh. I didn’t have enough years on him for that.
‘You’re winding me up,’ I said.
‘The guys who do the hiring are in their forties and scared shitless that they’re going to get the tin handshake any day now, and they know nothing about computer systems except that someone told them it’s a young man’s game. If you’re over twenty-five, twenty-seven if you’ve got a PhD, they won’t even look at your CV. Believe me, Kate, I’m too old.’
‘What a bummer,’ I said, meaning it.
‘Yeah, well. Shit happens. But it’s nicer when it happens to somebody else. So what did you come round for? Last orders before I have to put my rates up?’
I handed him the piece of paper where I’d noted Will Allen’s licence plate. ‘The name and address that goes with the car.’
He didn’t even look at it. He just said, ‘Some time this afternoon,’ then started to close the door.
‘Hey, Giz?’ He paused. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said. He nodded and shut the door.
I walked back towards the street where I’d parked the zippy Rover 216 that Mortensen and Brannigan had bought for me a couple of months before. Until then, I’d been driving a top-of-the-range sports coupé that we’d taken in part payment for a long and complicated car-finance fraud case, but I’d known in my heart of hearts it was far too conspicuous a set of wheels for the kind of work I do. Given how much I enjoy driving, it had been a wrench to part with it, but I’d learned to love the Rover. Especially after my mate Handbrake had done something double wicked to the engine which made it nippier than any of its German siblings from BMW.
As I rounded the corner, I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was a spray of glittering glass chunks like hundreds of tiny mosaic tiles all over the pavement by the driver’s door of the Rover. The car was twenty yards from the main road, it was half past