“So you started with-who?”

“Well, we have a file on you so thick you could wipe your arse on the pages for a month and still have clean hands. We knew your links to Shamandar and the Young woman. You had a good range of skills and contacts between you. You are resourceful and smart. You were a good choice. You worked out great.”

“How did it start?” Geraint was not sure he could take much more of this.

“Well, the Kuranita thing was just to get you all thinking. We thought the mage would start sooner asking what the rakk was going on. It was so bloody obvious that Transys wasn’t on his list, but he didn’t seem to see it. So we changed his instructions to stay at a place where we knew he’d see Kuranita, If he hadn’t, we’d have made sure he found out somehow. We knew he’d do something, and we knew you’d help him.”

“We fed you the information about Kuranita’s visit to the Fuchi installation. We hired those Indian idiots as a decoy and warned Fuchi to expect them. They’re good clients of ours, Fuchi. The real Kuranita didn’t turn up at Longstanton at all, of course. But we wanted you to get away in the confusion, so we alerted Fuchi to the attack by the other group. We’d given the Indians a tactical briefing. We knew there was no way you would be so stupid as to make a frontal attack. All of that stuff was just to shake you up, like I said, because the elf wasn’t asking the right questions at that stage. Oh, and it also earned us a loyalty bonus from Fuchi for tipping them off. You know how it is; never pass up a chance to make money.”

“The murders?”

“Well, of course, the first one nobody would even notice. The second we’d park right on your doorstep. Wasn’t that convenient? Part of the reason we selected you, of course. If we'd had an Annie Chapman closer to another of your friends, we’d have roped them in somehow. We had contingencies.”

I don’t doubt it, Geraint thought.

As if reading his mind, the man leaned forward slightly lo emphasize a point. “It cost us a fair bit, you know. We actually had to pay Elizabeth Stride to change her name by deed poll a year ago, just to fit in with the series. She was humble Jane Dews before. But perhaps you know that already.”

That’s one thing I didn’t check, Geraint reflected. Name changes. Clazz, I should have had the sense to find that one out.

“After the second murder, we knew you’d be hooked. We paid Ms. Young to make the Fuchi runs, and our experimental construct worked pretty well.”

Geraint interrupted him. “But I thought Fuchi was a good customer of yours.”

“Well, they are, but so arc all manner of people. That’s business.” He shrugged almost innocently. “Anyway, the Transys London system is very lax because they’ve been concentrating all their resources on the Scottish HQ. It was so easy to get our little Jack-in-the-Matrix into that subsystem. Actually, our purpose was merely for Young to see the IC complex, not necessarily to be harmed by it. Annie Chapman’s murder would have been enough. She was involved then, just like the elf was after seeing Kuranita. With her history, she’d have to be. Got her psychiatric reports after that San Francisco business, you know.

“So, with the mage in, and the decker in, you had to be. You were all old friends, and our file says you and Ms. Young haven’t exactly been cool toward each other in the past.” He smirked unpleasantly.

“But how could you know about Catherine Eddowes? How could you know that I-”

“Ah. well now, you’ll learn a little morn about that later. That one helped to drag you in a bit further, didn’t it? We didn’t actually expect you to arrive there, you know, not so fast. Our security was a bit on the light side for that one. That’s when we realized you were better than we’d thought.”

“So, we shipped Mary Kelly out of sight for a while. Here’s something you’ll love: she was the main decker who worked on the Ripper construct for us. Isn’t chat lovely? Of course, she didn’t know it was a Ripper. Whacked her full of hypnoconditioning and neuroactives and she just did it by automatic configurings right out of her nightmares. Totally amnesic afterward, She was putty in our hands. Dozy bitch.”

Geraint leaned back, wearily. He’d never dreamed any of this might have been going on. He was tired, depressed, defeated. Still the explanations kept coming.

“The fact that there were lots of Mary Kellys you could check was both a good thing and a bad thing for us. Good because you’d be occupied tracking them down for the whole damn week, bad because it made it harder for us to point you at the right bloody one. We took a while to figure that one out, I can tell you. Meanwhile, we simply suppressed all the data regarding our little Typhoid Mary, got her out of sight, let you waste a week-or most of it-with the others and then, presto! Up she pops. And when she did, you knew for sure it had to be the right one, because the others were hopeless, let’s face it.”

“But she wasn’t out of sight. Rani said-”

“Ah yes. Saw her in that disgusting baldrick foodhole. Unfortunate that. Our man shouldn’t have let her out. She was drugged to the eyeballs and kept under surveillance up to the last minute. Mohinder staged that very well.”

“Mohinder?” Another defeat. Another snake. Another thing he simply hadn’t seen.

“Great fellow, huh? Quite a moralist too. Refused point-blank to box any of you after the run. Won’t kill anyone who’s paid him money in good faith, how about that? So we didn’t compromise his morals. Actually, you know I think he wanted to jump that smelly little Indian girly’s bones. Rather him than me, I must say.”

“He had quite a key role; he knew where the security was in Kelly’s hidey-hole and he had the vidlink to make sure you got the evidence. Needless to say, I’m afraid Mr. Mohinder is somewhere at the bottom of the Thames by now. We really couldn’t risk letting him live. He wont be missed, I’m sure. He didn’t know exactly who he was working for. obviously, but we really couldn’t take any chances.”

“You could have killed us all with the meat and muscle you had in that final battle,” Geraint said.

“No, not really. Mohinder knew what the opposition might be. You were well up to the job. Anyway, to let you in on a little secret, we did wire some very nice glitches into the weapons our folks carried. Buggered up their aiming completely within a hundred yards or so of your car. Very simple little telemetry toy, Practice with the gun out of range, works as sweet as anything. Put it next to your Saab, you couldn’t shoot your granny off`a commode ten yards away. So our people looked fierce. but they were pussycats. Really. The mage with the elemental actually got a bullet in the back or the head from a cover sniper of ours. We wanted the scene for show, not to turn you into noble toastie.” He sniggered.

“Most of the rest is incidental detail. We had the police under our thumb, obviously. We had certain contacts make sure Swanson got panicky messages from Annie Chapman’s nobleman clients. I think you overlooked that one. The killing wasn’t publicized, so how did those people get in touch with the police so fast? But, then, poor old PC Plod’s daughter has been a very naughty girl herself. We have the photographs to prove it. Poor old sod would fall apart if it got out. So he was only too happy to keep it quiet and on the back burner.”

“But, the media. You couldn’t have known that we wouldn’t go to the media.” The two men exchanged glances behind their shades.

“Yes, I must give you that one, my lord. That was the one calculated risk we took. We decided you almost certainly would not do so initially, because you had escalating levels of personal involvement and your own curiosity would make you want to investigate on your own. Once you’d gone to the media, you’d have lost that chance. That’s one of the reasons we tossed Kuranita into the pot, as I’ve said, It gave the mage very personal reasons to be involved. Same with Ms. Young and her dead friend, not to mention the Ripper construct in the Matrix. That also served to make you confused; there was so much that didn’t seem connected, right?”