CHAPTER 2 APRIL                                     ‘It's the Tunnocks y' want then’.          The taxi driver had a rasping, nicotine-laden voice. He eyed the suitcase cautiously, held the boot open, and stood well back as Allan lifted it in, large and as heavy as a gravestone.          ‘The Tunnocks? No the MCI building.’          ‘Aye, the MCI place - we ca' it the Tunnocks here.’          In the back seat Allan extracted his letter of appointment from an inside pocket and studied it. At the top were the letters MCI in tan with a gold lightning flash superimposed. Underneath was the address of the local Gairnock Plant - Scottish Director - Wensley Halpern BSc FBCS. At the bottom of the page were more addresses in tiny lettering - the company headquarters in Ocean Springs, Chile, President - J. Norman Marsdon, the New York Office - more names, the London Office. There was no reference to ‘Tunnocks’.          The rain had started again. Water was sluicing across the windscreen and the wipers, swishing like curling brooms, were being overwhelmed. The driver, however, seemed to be operating on radar. He pointed right in the direction of the sea where only a few metres of white froth were visible in the murk. ‘Over there y've got the Cloch lighthouse. Doon there ...’ he pointed ahead and to the right ‘...y've got the Gantocks. An' doon here where the MCI plant is, y've got the Tunnocks.’ He laughed. Allan was not sure if he was the source of mirth. The driver extracted a fag from his mouth and coughed heavily. ‘... where,’ he went on, ‘if they don't like you they don't sack you, they just call in the Mafia and bump you off.’ He laughed again. Allan had seen the bill posters on the station news-stands -          SECOND MCI BOFFIN DEAD SILICON GLEN MYSTERY DEEPENS.          ‘You going to work for them lad?’          ‘Aye’.          ‘Whadya make of it then?’ He lifted a tabloid newspaper from the seat beside him and held it so that Allan could see the front page. For a moment Allan was transfixed by the road ahead as the car veered towards on-coming traffic. With difficulty he looked at the page before him. It had a large picture of the Prime Minister with mouth open and finger wagging. Underneath it were the words          BIMBO'S BOOBS WORTH £1M          Allan blinked and tried to connect the two.          Beside the picture it said          CID PROBE COMPUTER PLANT.          ‘I don't know. I haven't read about it’          ‘That's the second one. The first guy is supposed to have driven his car off a cliff and now this one.’          ‘What do you think?’          ‘Something dead fishy about it. Dead fishy I reckon ... dead ...’ Belatedly the driver saw his own pun and began a laugh which developed into a choking cough.          The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Unnaturally bright sunlight glinted on the wet road. There were railings to the right, a sea wall, a strip of grass or two and the occasional house. On the left, a phalanx of sandstone houses with bay windows hid their impoverished gentility behind privet hedges. Rooms to let signs and lots of cars and motorcycles wedged in each front drive suggested multiple down-market occupation.          The sea had turned slate blue with white caps dancing. You could see right across the water to the blue-green hills of Cowal, grey-blue and sharp edged.                   They passed a sign pointing left to the IBM plant and further on there was a second notice, this time pointing to MCI. They swung off the main road away from the sea, climbed a hill and passed some concrete pillars and a notice board with the MCI logo. Under the logo was a minor legal document threatening dire consequences stopping just short of summary execution for illegal parking. Lawns stretched out on both sides. It looked like a modern university campus, or a crematorium. The driver pulled up on gravel in the visitor's car park in front of a large low-rise rectangular building in biscuit coloured concrete. It had a continuous band of chocolate tinted plate glass windows running right round it.          ‘Ther y'are’, said the taxi driver. ‘D'ye no think it looks just like a Tunnock's Caramel Wafer?’          Three white police cars with flame pink side-bands were prominent in the visitors' car park. They were parked awkwardly - careless of the disciplined order of the other cars. A dark blue police van was parked bang in front of the main door. Any employee who parked there, Allan suspected, would have had his car sent to the crusher.          The taxi driver lifted the lid of the boot and again stood aside while Allan hefted the suitcase. He wished now that he had left it at the station. It hung leaden against his knees, threatening to drag his arms out of their sockets. For a moment he considered swinging it on to his shoulder but he had on his good suit and anyway someone might think it an uncouth way to deal with the problem. This was a very couth place.          A young policeman was sheltering from the wind and rain under the concrete canopy by the front door. He watched, shoulders hunched, coat collar turned up, as Allan, bent to one side like a palm tree in a hurricane, struggled up the wide steps with the case. Allan hesitated at the door. With his free hand he checked surreptitiously at his waist band to ensure that his fly was zipped up before he plunged through the plate glass doors into the soft chocolate interior of the building.          The lapel badge said ‘Jennifer’. She was honey blond, and looked crisp and cool in her cream blouse and MCI cravat. He asked for Dr. Telman. Jennifer gave him a gleaming professional smile, fixed him up with a security badge and phoned to announce his arrival. He stood there awkwardly with the suitcase at his feet, feeling small rivulets of perspiration running down his back, watching the girl with his peripheral vision - so confident and self-assured, so attractive, so unapproachable. The building was air-conditioned. After the breeze outside, it seemed to have the consistency and texture of warm fudge.          Rosa Telman recognised him immediately. She was quite small. He had forgotten that. At his oral exam she had seemed to fill the room with her presence. Psychologically she had towered over him. Folk said that hardly anyone ever fails a PhD oral exam but that for him seemed to make the consequences of failure even more appalling. She had given him a hard time - taken him through every twist and turn of his argument in a way that Karl Wellington his supervisor had never done - had never been able to do. She made him justify every assertion. At one point she had risen from her chair and rattled off some mathematics on the white board behind Karl's desk. The symbols had seemed to shoot, small, neat and ready formed, from the end of the green felt pen. She had sprayed them on to the board. Prof Hudson, who was there to make up the requisite number of examiners, had nodded sagaciously as if he understood. Allan had had to get up too and scribble on the board, with less confidence, bigger lettering with lots of cancellations, trying to demonstrate that his conclusions were valid. He remembered the sudden and beaming smile with which Rosa had greeted him when he turned round to face her.          And now he saw that smile again. She had a smooth oval face, her small even teeth were very white against her olive skin. She had no make up and no jewellery except for a tortoiseshell comb in her hair which was short and black and pulled straight back. There was a crease between the dark eyebrows. It was a face more accustomed to a frown than a smile but a frown of concentration not of irritation. She wore a maroon blouse with an open neck and loose sleeves, and a long loose grey skirt with huge pockets.          ‘Come,’ she said. She moved gracefully, with a perfectly straight back and her small hands in the wide pockets of her skirt. As he moved to follow her he fell full length over the suitcase.          They helped him to his feet - Rosa and the girl at the enquiry desk. Rosa was laughing. ‘Jennifer’ took charge of the case. He could guess the thoughts hidden behind her polished smile.          ‘You've caught us at a bad moment,’ said Rosa as she led him down a long tunnel-like passageway with walls that seemed to be clad in cream leather. She walked briskly while Allan loped awkwardly at her side.          ‘You may have heard. There's been a tragedy. One of our people was found dead yesterday - Tommy Harkness - such a nice boy.’ Her accent was slightly foreign with guttural Rs. She held open a fire door as though she was afraid Allan would try to walk through the plate glass. Her wrist was so slender he felt he could have snapped it between his fingers. ‘He was one of us. One of our research unit.’          They stopped at a lift. He hadn't realised that the building had more than one storey but the indicator lights suggested that there was one floor above them and one below. The lift seemed to be stuck on the floor above them. ‘Its all computerized,’ she said dryly. ‘That's why it works so badly.’ Pause. ‘Perhaps we will do a correctness check on it.’ That was an in-joke. Allan's specialist subject was correctness proofs for computer programs. ‘The police are here.’ She made a face. ‘They are going through Tommy's desk and things. It's all very distressing.’ She bit her lip.          ‘Was it an accident?’          ‘They're not sure. The suggestion seems to be that he committed suicide, but the police are not telling us very much about it. They are interviewing us one by one. It is all very formal and very upsetting.’ The crease between her eyebrows deepened. ‘Poor Tommy. He did get a bit depressed sometimes.’          In the lift she said ‘The police are turning everything upside down.’          The research unit occupied a big an open-plan office with a commanding view across the Firth of Clyde to the Arran hills. The decor was functional and predominantly grey. He noted with relief that the air was cool and breathable. Felted screens divided the office into cells which people had tried to personalise with picture postcards and coloured cartoons of an angry looking cat with bulging eyes saying something rude - old office jokes which might just have been funny the first time around. There was a constant quiet and urgent clicking of computer keyboards and an occasional electronic bleep.          Rosa said, ‘This is the only office in the building which does not have the tan and cream company colours. We're not sure why. It's what you might call a 'grey area'’.          Everyone had a cell, a desk and a computer workstation. Lumps of more complex computer equipment sat about on tables and in tall metal filing racks, each connected to a companion rabbit-hole in the floor by a thick twisted rope of communication cables. On a bench lay a computer board covered with black microchips laid out like a miniature housing estate. There were shelves of books perched on every filing cabinet and desk, and high on the walls were more shelves of computer operation manuals. A big coloured poster on the wall showed the labyrinth of connections of some microchip, anonymous and unseen by virtue of continuous exposure. Perhaps the best place to hide secret papers would be to pin them to the wall. Rosa took him round. They went from cell to cell. Handshakes. Names were given and most were instantly forgotten. Rosa gave a potted description of each project. Each time she was corrected by the person concerned. They were all preoccupied - and reluctant to have their work oversimplified. Allan's presence was an intrusion. There was also a hidden air of tension. Glances were exchanged.          Encryption - That was Helen Rowe the one with the plummy Home Counties accent who made Allan think of village fetes and jam-making. But she talked breezily of trap-door codes, transmission signals and prime numbers of prodigious length.          Handwriting recognition - Masood Qureshi. A tan stylus stuck out of a cream plastic pad on the bench. You gripped it like a pen in a bank. It did not move but the pressure of your hand was detected and the writing appeared on the screen. It also made thick and thin writing like a brush. A program could analyse your handwriting and recognise your signature. Masood was small and neat with bright eyes, a Clark Gable moustache and a broad Glasgow accent.          Software for testing processor connections - Jack Thornley. He was the only one who seemed to be completely relaxed. Dressed in tartan shirt and jeans, he sprawled in his office chair as though trying to give his spine a permanent curvature. One leg was cocked over the other so that a grubby trainer shoe waved in the air. A pair of personal stereo earphones hung round his neck and a faint buzz emanated from his head. He was a walking Brandenburg Concerto. The heavy horn rimmed spectacles seemed to be a little too big for his face. When Rosa prodded him into recognising their presence, he stabbed his spectacles back on to the bridge of his nose with a forefinger, the thick lenses making his eyes owl-like and watery. His voice had an uncertain pitch full of squeaks and half chuckles as though he was sitting on a private joke.          ‘Join the suspects’, he said slowly unfolding his legs and shaking Allan by the hand. ‘Mm.. , I see from your handshake you're not a Mason.’ He shook his head with mock sadness ‘A bad mistake lad. The polis'll have you in a cell before you can blink.’          Rosa was annoyed. She glanced over at a desk near the window to where a young woman and a man of about the same age sat together at a desk. The man looked round and gave Jack a disdainful glare.          ‘And this,’ said Rosa taking Allan over to the desk where the pair sat, ‘is Detective Sergeant ...’          ‘McElroy,’ said the man. He nodded to Allan but didn't get up. It looked as though he and the woman beside him were transferring the contents of the desk to a big black plastic container which sat on the floor. The woman ignored them and went on fanning through documents. She dropped one into the container.          ‘This desk belonged to Tommy Harkness ...’ Rosa put both hands to her face and smoothed it back to recover her composure. ‘Sergeant McElroy here is going through his effects.’ She turned to McElroy. ‘Doctor Fraser has just joined us Sergeant so I don't suppose that you will want to interview him.’          McElroy nodded. He was wanting to say something but he waited until she had finished and then said ‘Dr Telman. I will need access to your computer - to Harkness's directory.’          She was shocked. Her mouth opened and shut. ‘I am not sure that company policy would allow that.’          ‘I'm afraid I must insist. I could get a warrant.’          ‘A warrant to search a computer? That's a new one.’ She put a hand to her brow and thought. ‘One moment. I will need to discuss this with the director.’ She went into her office which was a glass cubicle within the open-plan lab.          While she was away McElroy turned to Allan. ‘Excuse me but are you the Allan Fraser who did Guillotine Route on Carn Dubh?’          Allan was taken by surprise. ‘Aye.’          ‘Steve McElroy’. He stuck his hand out to shake and smiled broadly. ‘I knew your face was familiar but I couldn't place you for a moment. We met once at Lagangarbh.’ Allan couldn't recall. McElroy went on. ‘I used to climb with the Lomonds. Now I'm in the Polis club.’ He smiled. He had said ‘polis’ deliberately in the Glasgow style. ‘I tried Guillotine myself once and I hardly got off the ground. You know,..’ he pointed a finger at Allan's chest. ‘I've got a feeling that my Chief Inspector might want to talk to you after all.’          Rosa returned and said that the director had agreed to give the police access to Harkness's directory but that the process would need to be supervised by herself or Bill Thompson her deputy. ‘You would need help anyway Sergeant’, she added ‘to find your way around our operating system.’          McElroy did not look as if he believed that he did need help but he said nothing. Bill Thompson was called over and protested. ‘I don't know Harkness's password. We will need to call the systems manager in.’ Bill looked like everybody's idea of an antiquarian bookseller. He even had a balding head and a long cardigan with downardly mobile pencil-stuffed pockets.          More phone calls were made. A policewoman in uniform came in and spoke to McElroy and went out again. Rosa held her brow as though she had a headache. No one spoke. They stood looking at each other, embarrassed, like a therapy group unsuccessfully seeking togetherness.          Another policewoman came in and said, ‘Inspector Chalmers would like to see you now Dr Telman.’          Rosa let out a sigh. She told Bill Thompson to look after McElroy and then she stared at Allan as if she did not know who he was.          ‘Oh Helen! Will you look after Allan while I'm away?’          Helen Rowe almost managed to disguise her impatience. ‘One moment.’ She put her computer terminal on to ‘hold’ displaying random coloured patterns and then took Allan over to a cupboard and opened it to reveal a miniature kitchen with a sink, electric kettle, coffee machine. A row of mugs, decorated with more office jokes, dangled on hooks from a shelf above the sink. The inquisition started along with the extractor fan as she opened the door. She didn't look at him as she spoke. The questions just came out one after another so fast it was hard to tell the soft ones from the bumpers. No he didn't know Gairnock. Weakish with Milk. I'm interested in correctness theory - same as Dr Telman. One lump. No. Not a member of the church. Fine. Just right. An atheist actually. I came down by train. Not married. Just a sister and an uncle who had brought them up after their mother died. Father dead a long time. No steady girl friend. No not gay. The directness of the questions was breathtaking yet it was done in such a friendly, cheerful matter of fact way that he found himself answering.          They went back to her cell which was also by the window and she caught his gaze drifting towards the rugged outline of the Arran hills. Yes he liked to go hillwalking. Yes and climbing. Yes he would like to go sometime to Arran with Helen and her husband some weekend. Yes he would like to come for supper some evening. Yes next week would be fine. No he didn't have anywhere to stay yet. Bedsitting room he supposed. No he didn't have a car - he didn't even have a driving licence. His luggage was behind the receptionist's desk in the front office.          Then Helen had to go and be interviewed and Jack Thornley took over. More questions but with a different tack. Not got anywhere to stay? Would you like a shake down at my place? We can put your bags in my car. It's easy. No bother. You can use it as a base while you find somewhere of your own. Would you like a list of bedsitters? No bother. It's easy to get a list. Honest. You just hack into the computer and extract the list from the Personnel Officer's files - ‘Like this - What? Yes I suppose it is a wee bit illegal but the little prick was asking for it. I set a trap for him and when he came snooping into my directory. I stole his shell. Look there's the list - 'just like that' as the man said’.                   Allan was appalled. A 'shell' is a computer program which responds to a user as he types at the keyboard. It holds information about his - or her security permissions. Stealing a shell is like stealing, or copying, a front-door key. Allan could remember an undergraduate in his own year doing the same thing to fellow students and getting sent down. And now, within hours of joining the organisation he had become inveigled. And there was a detective sergeant in the same room. He was going to make the Guinness Book of Records for career brevity.          ‘It's OK lad. All good clean fun,’ said Jack patting Allan on the shoulder as the burning reached his ears.          After the personnel manager rang to arrange an induction course for Allan no one knew quite what to do with him. He was left in a corner with a pile of technical literature.          The systems manager bustled in. He was young, wore a neat suit with an MCI logo on his tie and he was in a bad mood. His watch was on the inside of his wrist and he looked at it often. He, McElroy and Bill Thompson sat in a huddle round a computer workstation.          ‘I've cancelled the password,’ the manager said in a loud voice, ‘so you should be able to log-in as Harkness without one.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘But be quick, I can't leave it like that for long.’          From his position in the corner Allan could watch this cameo and Jack Thornley at the same time. As the manager spoke Jack twitched. McElroy typed slowly watched by the manager and Bill Thompson. Jack typed quickly. The tape drive on Jack's machine burst into life.          The system manager suggested that he was not needed anymore and went without waiting for anyone to contradict him. Bill Thompson lifted a manual and thumbed through it. He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and began jotting down a few notes. McElroy was at his elbow but might as well have been on Alpha Centaurus.          Jack got up, went over to the coffee-cupboard and opened it. He had a self satisfied grin on his face. He selected a mug and was spooning instant coffee powder into it when he looked up and saw Allan watching him. His eyes flicked over to the detective and back again to Allan. He grinned broadly.          McElroy removed a computer tape from the tape drive beside the workstation. He arranged for two constables to come and carry away the plastic bin full of Harkness's papers and then he and the policewoman left the room. There was sudden lifting of the tension and people converged on the coffee machine. Allan was forgotten about as they chatted. Voices were raised. Jokes. Banter.          Moments later the door opened and a man came into the room with McElroy in close attention. The man was about fifty, tall with broad shoulders and he looked around for a moment before McElroy guided him over to where Allan was sitting.          ‘Can I introduce Dr. Allan Fraser - Allan - Chief Detective Inspector Chalmers.’          The room had gone totally silent. The redness was coming again to Allan's face.          ‘Bob Chalmers’, said the man extending his hand. He had clear blue eyes that probed like an endoscope. ‘Steve here has told me about you Allan and I had to come through and meet you.’          Allan's mouth was wide open and Chalmers laughed. ‘Sorry I should explain. A few months ago you pulled a young man off a crag on Ben Dearg and saved his life. That was my nephew - my sister's boy. I think you probably saved my sister's life as well as his.’          ‘Oh that,’ Allan stammered, conscious of the eyes on his back. ‘I wasn't the only one.’          ‘I know what happened. My nephew told me and I also checked with the helicopter squad. They said he was a dead duck but for you. I think my sister sent you a note but I just wanted to say thank you myself.’ He shook Allan's hand again and then they left. Allan turned. The rest of the group were standing by the coffee machine looking at him as though he had just slithered out of a flying saucer.          *      *      *      *      *          The big houses which fronted on to the shore road and faced out across the water regarded Fetterburn Road as beneath their faded upper class dignity, They turned their backs on it and coldly cut it off with high walls topped with broken glass. A few condescended to acknowledge its presence with a garage or a small gate buried in the masonry. On the other side ran a broken line of modest houses, mostly single storied and stone built.          Jack turned left off Fetterburn into Iona Gardens. It was a short cul-de-sac. At the far end it were railings and beyond these was a dank wooded hillside glinting wet in the yellowing evening sunlight. On the left was a once handsome block of terraced houses, three storeys, sandstone, badly needing refaced. The houses looked onto a small park with mature trees. The soil between the trees was bare black earth, beaten flat. In the centre of the park was a clearing with a children's chute and what had once been a set of swings. Chains without seats hung unevenly in a row like mediaeval dungeon furniture.          Jack's Citroen 2CV stretched with relief and shook itself as they eased Allan's suitcase out of the back seat. The flat was on the top storey. There was one bedroom and a sitting room to the front, a small bathroom and a big kitchen to the rear. He offered Allan the sitting room.          It had been an elegant room, well proportioned with a high ceiling and wide bay window overlooking the park, but the cream paint on the sash windows was cracked and peeling and the wall paper was torn and dingy. Posters on the walls. Fold-down divan. A microcomputer with printer , disc unit and cables a-dangle. Computer magazines on the table and the floor. A big potted rubber plant by the window. Several other potted plants. Hi-Fi. Tapes and CD cassettes everywhere. Only the greenery was a surprise. Somehow Allan could not see Jack as a Beechgrove Garden enthusiast.          In the kitchen the sink was piled high. Two pots stood on the stove one crusted with brown curry, the other containing something blackened and unrecognisable. A naked light bulb dangled over the table and the whole kitchen smelt of overheated fat. Jack filled the electric kettle, switched it on and washed up two cups. He eyed the sink distastefully.          ‘D'ye fancy a Chinese kerry-oot?’          While he was out Allan attacked the sink and had most of the stuff clean and piled up on the draining board by the time Jack got back.          ‘Oh gee. Thanks. You didn't need to do that.’ Jack grinned and jabbed his spectacles back on to his face. ‘Shall we dine?’          He cleared a space on the table by pushing aside a sauce bottle, a toaster, a plastic carrier bag containing clothing and a loaf. He had bought a local evening paper and studied it, with his bottom propped on the edge of the sink, while Allan unpacked the Chinese food and laid the silver-foil trays on the table.          ‘Computer Ace Death Probe,’ he read aloud. ‘The death of computer ace Tom Harkness is being treated as suspicious a police spokesman said today. The spokesman refused to rule out a link with the death of another worker at the top secret research unit at the MCI plant ... did you know we were top secret? It's really secret when the people working there don't know that it is secret. In't it?’ He went back to the paper and pretended to read ‘... The spokesman said that the CID thought that the next one to die will be Dr Allan Fraser.’          Allan ignored him and opened the foil packs laying the lids in a neat pile. Jack laughed. He pulled two bottles of Beck's out from under the sink and sat down at the table. He pushed one of the bottles over to Allan and spooned some chicken with cashew nuts on to his rice. He said, ‘So what do you think of life in Death Row?’          On the table top he spread the newspaper. There was a grainy picture of a thin young man - almost a boy he looked - with eyes close together and a nose that was bent to one side.          ‘Did you know Harkness well?’ Allan ignored the bottle.          ‘Yea. A bit. Tommy was an odd-ball. Not your normal regular well behaved well adjusted guy .... I mean he wasn't a bit like me.’ There was mischief in his eyes. ‘It was not easy to know him well.’ He extracted a large Swiss army knife from his pocket, selected a tool and opened one of the bottles with it.          ‘What did he do? No - no thanks’ Allan waved a hand to stop Jack opening the second bottle. Jack shrugged, put his opener away and said, ‘Do? - Oh you mean what was he into? He wrote testing software for processor chips’. He lifted a spare rib and nibbled. Brown gravy ran down his chin.          ‘I didn't think you built the chips here. I thought that was done in Taiwan.’          ‘It is,’ said Jack. He got up and pulled a piece of paper towel off a roll to wipe his chin. ‘We just assemble the machines from parts. But you know the chips are over-connected. More bloody connections in them than anybody could possibly want. So down on the assembly floor we customize them by burning out some of the connections. Then they have to be tested before they get cooked to make it permanent.’          ‘So Harkness wrote the software that tested the connections. You do that as well don't you?’          ‘Aye. Same thing - different chip. He did it for communications chips, I do it for graphics chips - we both start with the same basic processor the MC65000. But we only do small modifications. The main bit is done by programs written in the States or down at HQ in Ocean Springs.’          ‘So you would know better than most what he was doing recently.’          Jack looked up and their eyes met. Pause. He grinned again, slowly this time like a small boy owning up to raiding the cookie jar. He raised a conspiratorial finger to his lips in the gesture of silence.          ‘Well, not really,’ he said ‘I just do what I am told, I really don't understand it much.’ As he spoke he got up from the table, moved over to the wall by the door, unclipped the telephone handset from its hook on the wall, unplugged it from the socket, moved over to the sink, opened a drawer, placed the phone into it, placed a kitchen towel over it, closed the drawer, turned on the radio, Elton John, too loud. Allan watched him with a growing sense that he wasn't really seeing what he was seeing.          Jack said, ‘Ok. So you saw me. So what?’ He sat down again, shrugged and forked rice into his mouth. ‘It might be fun to do a little detective work on his files’.          ‘Why?’          ‘Why what?’          Allan said, ‘Why did you do that? Do you think you are being bugged or something?’          ‘You never know. Can't be too careful.’          ‘But.’ Allan closed his mouth. After a moment he said, ‘My sister's paranoid too.’          ‘Paranoid?’ Jack seemed unconcerned. He reviewed the residue in the foil-container and helped himself to more rice.          ‘She thinks she is being bugged. It makes her feel important.’          Jack waved a fork at him and spoke with his mouth full, ‘Its a way of life at Marsdon's. They bug everybody.’          ‘Why would they want to do that?’          ‘Listen. They're the ones who are paranoid. They think we are spying on them for their business rivals. Why does your sister think she is being bugged?’          ‘She's in the SNP.’          ‘And they bug everyone in the SNP?’          ‘No. But she thinks they do if you climb over the wire at submarine bases or they have friends who blow up electricity pylons.’          ‘And do they?’          ‘She says that if she arranges a demo with her friends by phone, the police are always there before she is. I think that she just makes it up to convince herself that she is a serious threat to the establishment.’          ‘I meant do they blow up pylons?’          ‘They might. I don't know. Sometimes I wouldn't put it past them but Jean says that the only people who do that are the Agents of Provocation, otherwise known as MI5. You're not serious about being bugged.’          Elton finished his song, high notes dying away with a slow meditative cadence on the keys. The disc jockey began asking a phone-in caller about her love life. Jack waited until the music started again - jazz trumpet.          He said ‘I like this one,’ and paused. ‘Everyone at MCI knows that the company goes in for bugging. It's not anything personal it's just the way they are. They need to control everything around them. Jimmy Wilson once heard his own voice being echoed back to him on the phone. Not just an electronic effect. It was the whole last sentence of his conversation after his caller had hung up.’          ‘Who's Jimmy Wilson?’          ‘Just a guy on the assembly line.’          ‘If you are being bugged then the phone isn't the only thing you have to worry about. There could be a bug under this table. If you really believed this stuff you'd go off your rocker with suspicion and never open your mouth.’          ‘Naw. It's not like that. They can't afford to plant bugs everywhere. That costs real money. I'm a nobody. They have no reason to be particularly suspicious about me. But you can turn a phone into a microphone at the touch of a button from an office miles away. It's hard wired into the exchange.’          ‘They have to get a warrant from the Home Office for that.’          ‘Correction,’ said Jack. ‘They are SUPPOSED to get a warrant. Anyway one warrant covers one tap. One tap bugs a thousand lines One line carries hundreds of calls.’          ‘The police can get a warrant. Private companies can't.’          ‘Private companies that make and sell telephone exchanges have a head start on everyone else. Its called line testing. Every exchange has a tap point so that they can test the lines for faults. One man's line test is another man's bug.’          ‘And I suppose they have an army of people listening in to your every word?’.          ‘No. Just a computer analysing the tap for keywords and recording the chunk of conversation which follows. Its just a random trawl in the hope that something will turn up. But once you are on the hit list they'll give you the full works.’          Allan thought about that. Jack seemed to be serious and there seemed to be no chance that he would recognise the absurdity of his suspicions. Jean, Allan's sister had suffered the same delusions. The world was a conspiracy and she was its target for dirty tricks. He tried a different approach.          ‘Would 'hacking' be one of the key words?’          ‘May be, but if Tommy's death was not suicide or an accident then the word 'Harkness' will be one of the key words.’          ‘It doesn't stop you does it?’          ‘It would be a dull life without a bit of hacking.’ He took a swig from the bottle.          Allan said, ‘You could get the sack.’          He thought about that, then shrugged. ‘So what. That wouldn't be the end of the world.’          ‘You could also be convicted for hacking.’          ‘No. They wouldn't be able to admit that their security was so lax. Too embarrassing to charge me.’          ‘Where is the tape now?’          Jack's eyes were alive with glee.          ‘I put it in Tommy's desk after the polis had gone. Seemed the least likely place for any one to look now that the rozzers have ransacked it.’          Allan laughed in spite of himself. There was something wonderfully childlike in Jack's attitude. He sat back and put his hand over his eyes to rub the weariness out of them. ‘Why did you not just bring it here?’          ‘Two reasons. One. I have no equipment here that can read a quarter inch tape. Two. It is quite difficult to get a tape out of the department. Every now and then they frisk us. Did you not see the detectors at the door? Its like an airport. Most of the time they are switched off. But they switch them on randomly and make you turn out for inspection everything which makes the detectors ping. It did not seem to be worth the risk since I would just have to get it back in again to read the tape .... unless .... ’ He looked at Allan speculatively ‘... unless you know someone with a quarter inch tape drive.’          ‘You still haven't said why you did it.’          ‘For fun. To see if it could be done.’          ‘That's a feeble argument.’          ‘No it's not. I could be doing them a favour. Showing them that they've got a hole in their security.’          ‘That one's past its sell-by date. Every hacker in the business uses that excuse and it won't wash. If I leave my door unlocked would you be doing me a favour by walking in?’          ‘Not the same thing.’          Allan dug back into his chow-mein making a mental resolve to distance himself from this cheerfully deranged criminal.          ‘Will you be asked to take on his work?’          ‘Aye. Maybe. They might ask you.’ Jack laughed and helped himself to more black bean sauce.          ‘Not my field,’ said Allan.          ‘Ah but you can't expect to go on living in your ivory tower. We all have to graft with the bread and butter stuff you know.’          Allan changed the subject to flats. Jack made tea and they took their cups through to the sitting room. They sat on the sofa under a Picasso poster and studied the list that Jack had extracted from the personnel manager's files. Jack pointed out the places good and bad - mostly bad.          ‘You won't get a wink of sleep there ... the Hellfire Disco is just round the corner ... that area's not bad - used to be grim but it's coming up in the world ... these days you can see a few BMWs parked in the streets ... some of them even have wheels on instead of bricks... that place is too near the docks ... main road ... heavy traffic... that'll be Alison my girl friend’.          There was a scuffling at the outside door and then the sittingroom door opened and a girl walked in. Mid twenties. Dark curly hair. Broad face. Small round mouth. Multi-coloured shell-suit. Chunky blue pullover. A good inch taller than Jack. Jack introduced them. She shook hands with Allan and dropped her jacket-top in a crumpled heap on to the floor. Slumping down on the divan beside them put her arm round Jack and her chin on his shoulder. Her advice was rather more positive than Jack's and she seemed to know Gairnock better. The number of places Allan could highlight with fluorescent pink increased.          Alison went into the kitchen and reappeared almost immediately with a tea-pot in her hand. She began to use it to water some of the plants. Green fingered mystery explained. Allan followed her back into the kitchen and tried to help as she prepared tea. Jack was tinkering with the audio equipment and a sudden blast of Runrig's ‘Loch Lomond’ filled the flat. Crockery in the cupboard began to emit a resonant trill. The newspaper was still on the table.          ‘That's really sad,’ she said looking at the picture of Tommy Harkness. ‘You won't have met him of course.’ She had a high pitched little girl voice and nice hazel eyes.          ‘No.’          ‘He was shy and very serious - not like Jack. Jack doesn't take anything seriously.’          ‘I'd noticed. He got that list of flats out of the personnel manager's files.’          ‘That's our Jack. I hope he is not leading you into any trouble,’ Alison spoke in a matter of fact way as she spread biscuits on a plate. ‘He's got a bit of a habit of doing that.’ She looked at the wall by the door. ‘He's done it again to the phone.’ She opened the top drawer by the sink and found it. ‘He's always doing that. He's out of his mind.’ She shut the drawer but left the phone where it was.          ‘Did he lead Tom Harkness into trouble.’          ‘No I don't think they had much time for each other. Tom was very quiet. I think he disapproved of Jack.’          She lifted the tray and Allan held the door open. They went into the sittingroom. The walls were shuddering under the weight of sound from another Runrig track.          Jack crouched over his microcomputer. Small coloured gnomes were hopping around the screen. Occasionally one would disintegrate in a multicoloured shell-burst to the accompaniment of grievous noises. Alison put a cup of tea down beside him. It trembled. She came over to the sofa where Allan sat but conversation was impossible. He looked at the tea in his cup. The surface danced in an intricate pattern as it resonated to the sound waves. Alison turned the pages of a magazine idly as though unaware of the cacophony.          Allan felt the floor begin to sway as though in a heavy swell. The lights seemed to blur and move in time with the sound. Panic, nausea and claustrophobia. He made an excuse and escaped into the quietness of a cool dark evening where rain drops pattered gently on the pavement and street lights shimmered in the puddles. He took huge gulps of salt tanged air and walked until after midnight.          *      *      *      *      *          His badge said ‘STANLEY Quinn: Assistant Personnel Manager’. He shook Allan's hand limply.          There were three other people in the room sitting round a sectional conference table in cream plastic and chromium steel. In front of each was a finely pointed MCI pencil, a pristine note-pad, also with the company logo, and a black wedge-shaped name-plate. A similar place setting awaited on the left. The name-plate said ALLAN. There were no windows and the atmosphere had that familiar fudge consistency. At the far end of the table was an overhead projector and beyond that large flip chart on a stand.          ‘Gentlemen, perhaps you would introduce yourselves, starting here’          Quinn pointed at a sandy haired man in a lightweight grey suit. The man half stood up and said in a flat voice ‘I'm John’ and thereby confirmed the accuracy of the name-plate before him. The others in turn said their first names.          Allan said ‘hello’ and realised too late that he was supposed to say ‘I'm Allan.’          ‘Good to meet you Allan,’ said Quinn with heavy emphasis on the name. He walked up to the top of the table. We have a full programme, Allan. I have just been through the intended schedule with John, Simon and William here but for your benefit I will repeat it. The sandy-haired John closed his eyes and opened them again slowly and with difficulty. Simon bent his head forwards and fiddled with his MCI pencil. William looked straight ahead, focusing on infinity. His shoulders sagged.          Quinn flipped his flip chart back to the first page and ticked off in red felt pen the items listed there in green felt pen. Company structure, product lines, marketing strategy, assembly technology, and others which passed through Allan's head without pausing to inhabit. Quinn flipped to the next page. Diagram of company structure. Next page - more boxes with lines joining them. Next page - products item by item. Next - page ....          ‘We are one big family here Allan....’          Allan was startled into full consciousness by his own name. The flip chart was showing a page he had never seen before. Quinn was saying ‘.... and we like to ensure that everyone is kept informed about what is going on, so that everyone can identify with the company.’          The door opened and a girl in MCI livery poked her head round. There was a rattling of cups and the end of a coffee-trolley was visible. Quinn looked at his watch testily.          ‘Oh. Oh yes Angela. You are early but you can bring it in. Just put it there.’ She pushed the trolley against the wall behind the door and left. Quinn turned back to his flip chart.          ‘The structure of the comp...’          John stood up and made for the trolley with determination. Quinn looked startled but before he could speak Simon and William also stood up and converged on the trolley. Quinn bowed to the inevitable. ‘Yes. Just help yourselves gentlemen.’          Other people came after coffee. They expanded at length on the outline given by Quinn. Each sounded positively enthusiastic about their own department. Allan had never before studied a pencil in such detail. Lunch was in the company cafeteria - up-market motorway service station - with Scandinavian pine decor. Afterwards they went on a tour of inspection.          ‘This is the main hall, Allan’, said Quinn. The continuous and gratuitous use of his first name chalk-squeaked on Allan's nerves. It was so persistent that he suspected it was either the result of a directive from above or it was a deliberate device for committing people's names to memory. The ceiling and walls were clad in cream acoustic tiles and the floor was a mosaic of cream and brown carpet tiles. Chest high partitioning - brown with a cream ledge along the top divided most of the area into a honeycomb of office spaces.          ‘It is divided, as you can see, into an assembly area, a testing area and an administrative area.’          For Allan, the thought of working in an open plan office of these dimensions was a recurrent nightmare. The department building at University where he had done his PhD work was a rabbit warren of small passages and unexpected nooks and crannies where an introvert like himself could hole up for weeks without human contact. You could open a window and breathe fresh air straight from the quiet coolth of a churchyard, but here every breathful of air, scrubbed and knocked back into shape by modern air conditioning plant, had already inhabited a thousand lungs.          The assembly area, separated from the rest of the hall by a long straight passageway, was populated mainly by robots. Each stood in its allotted place on a long thin pedestal like a one legged wading bird. Robot hands fed by plastic tubes dropped black beetle-like micro-chips and other components on to the computer boards passing beneath them. The boards were almost the only things in the building which were not cream or brown. Dark green, with a glitter of gold connections and an array of black components like a miniature model town, the boards advanced down the assembly line, through the molten solder baths and on to the testing area, serenaded as they went by the pneumatic puffs and wheezes of the robots.          The group was led along like VIPs inspecting a guard of honour, stopping here and there to see how defective parts were identified by pitiless robot eyes and how the mutants were removed by ruthless robot hands. Humans, in the inevitable cream overalls, intervened in this process only towards its final stages. The boards were stacked by robot arms beside the human operators who gave them a final visual check before testing began. One of the operators - a dark haired girl with hazel eyes looked up at the group. It was Alison, Jack's girl friend. She smiled briefly but her eyes glazed over as she heard Quinn holding forth.          ‘I've got a lot to show you Allan, John ..’.          ‘...over here William I have the assembly area’          ‘...now here is my testing area Simon’.          He contrived to give the impression that he owned the plant personally.          They followed the whole process through from the customizing of the chips to the assembly of complete computer systems and the testing some of them to customer order. Allan found himself stifling a yawn and caught John's eye.          It was a relief to get back into the research department. Rosa's office was a glass box within the research unit. She had contrived, and probably in contravention of company directives, to wall herself off from sight with filing cabinets and bookcases and with notices stuck to the glass panels.          She sat him down on the other side of her desk and they talked shop for an hour. Later Allan wondered whether Rosa had appointed him just to have someone she could talk to about her pet subject. She had, after all, virtually invented it or at least the specialist niche within it which she and Allan inhabited. He had read everything she had published on the subject. She had made the initial break through, mapped the landscape and laid down the markers which everyone else used to orientate themselves. He had followed and broken new ground. They were like two trappers in a wilderness talking about their best tricks, their favourite haunts. She had little time for active research herself. Even during their talk her phone was seldom silent, but when she talked to him the crease between her eyebrows disappeared and she seemed younger, nearer to his own age.          One of the phone calls was for himself. Henry Quinn had fixed him up with digs. Mrs McCulloch, 22 Loch Ranza Road. Rosa wrote it down for him.          She was embarrassed about asking him to take on Tommy Harkness's job. They gave him Harkness's desk and his log book and records. The programs were very straight forward they said, in a computer language he knew well and to specifications which were very clear.          ‘It's just to tide us over,’ she explained. ‘We will get down to serious research when we have got everything straightened out.’