Free Hive Monkey by Gareth L. Powell

her turn to grin.
    “No, of course not.” She began fastening the shiny brass buttons on the front of the tunic. “I’m going down there to check it out myself.”

 
     
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    RAY GUN
     
    H ALF AN HOUR later, they were driving through the city streets in a rented black Mercedes. K8 had the wheel, Ack-Ack Macaque rode shotgun, and Victoria Valois and William Cole shared the back seat. As they negotiated their way through the early evening traffic, Victoria kept track of their progress using a map uploaded to her mind’s eye from the Tereshkova ’s database. A small green dot marked their current position, a red one their destination.
    In the front passenger seat, Ack-Ack Macaque wore dark glasses, a wide-brimmed fedora, and a long coat with the collar turned up. He’d even wound a scarf across the lower half of his face. This was his idea of going incognito—never mind the fact that nothing could disguise his lumbering walk, or the way his tail poked out of the vent in the back of the coat.
    Victoria watched the passing buildings. They were moving through the affluent suburb of Clifton, with its steep, tree-lined streets and three-storey Georgian town houses. She saw sturdy-looking churches; corner pubs with traditional signs and black railings; newsagents with handwritten headline boards; supermarkets with glittering holographic window displays; and beautiful old houses retrofitted as solicitors’ offices and estate agencies.
    Despite being too young to hold a British driving licence, K8 handled the big Mercedes like a pro. She claimed to have been able to drive from the age of eleven, having been taught by joyriding classmates on the estate where she grew up. Right now, she was chewing gum and listening to punishingly loud techno on her earphones. As she turned the big wheel this way and that, her spiky ginger head bobbed in time to the music.
    Victoria tapped her on the shoulder.
    “Just down here, on the left.”
    With a squeal of tyres, they slithered to a halt in the middle of the road. Parked cars lined both sides of the street. Victoria nudged Cole, and they both climbed out. The air outside felt fresh in comparison to the heated comfort of the Mercedes, and Victoria was glad she had a fleece cap to keep her head warm. At the top of the street, between the buildings, she could see one of the towers of Brunel’s famous Suspension Bridge. Originally the fevered dream of an eighteenth century wine merchant, the bridge had been designed by the engineer in the stovepipe hat and completed after his death. It spanned the gorge almost three hundred feet above the muddy River Avon, and was a magnet for sightseers and suicides alike.
    Ack-Ack Macaque emerged from the front passenger door, and the Mercedes drove off to park.
    William Cole had dressed in a pair of black jeans, an old sweatshirt, and a worn-looking tweed jacket. His thinning, unruly grey hair still stuck up at odd angles, despite his frequent attempts to smooth it into place.
    “Which building is it?” he asked.
    “This one.” Victoria walked to the front door of one of the houses. An intercom had been screwed to the wall beside the door, with a separate buzzer for each of the six flats within. She dug in her pocket and pulled out the keys she’d found in the dead man’s luggage. One had obviously been cut for an external door, the other for an internal lock. She tried the first, and it turned. The door was heavy and made of black-painted wood, and she had to shove to get it open.
    Ack-Ack Macaque and William Cole followed her into an unlit hallway with a wide wooden staircase and black and white floor tiles.
    “We want flat number three,” she said, looking at the numbers on the doors to either side of her. “My guess is that it’s on the next floor up.”
    They trooped up the stairs, and found the right door on the upper landing. Inside, the little flat smelled faintly stale. Threadbare curtains hung across the windows. By the