Dylan was regaling Ramita again with his abduction account, but kept going off on tangents so it was harder to follow than usual. It didn't help that he was now freaking out about the dictaphone app she was using to record him this time.
"Did you check the permissions attached to it before you installed?" he asked, staring at her smartphone.
"No, not really."
"Man, no one ever does. That's how the world sleptwalked into hyper-surveillance. It started with licence agreements. Anything longer than three paragraphs on your computer screen and your frontal lobe decides to take the rest of the day off. It's scary."
"Dylan, can we get back to what happened at the squat?"
He scratched his head, his eyes darting about warily, and she wondered again what, if any, medication he might be taking.
"The squat. Fullerton Road, Wandsworth. Three bedrooms, but really tiny. The garden was a mess. Nisha and Harry tried growing potatoes, but..."
"Dylan, tell me about the night you met the thief. That's the night it happened, right?"
"Right. Harry brought him in. Said he was a friend of his brother's. He had a lot of cool stuff, but when I asked him about it he just laughed. He laughed at me, Ramita."
"That must've been very hurtful. What sort of cool stuff did he have?"
"Vintage. Things I hadn't seen for years, but in mint condition. Sennheiser headphones from the '70s, but they looked brand new. A Philips Walkman. And he filled the 'fridge with Double Diamond."
"He put two diamonds in the 'fridge?"
"No, it was beer. In bottles. Crazy, 'cos they stopped making it ages ago."
"Okay, Dylan. Tell me what happened that night."
"I borrowed his coat. Everybody wanted chips. And pizza. And it was cold, so I borrowed his coat." He paused, tears forming in his eyes. "I just borrowed his coat 'cos it was there. Man, I wish I hadn't."
"So you left the squat wearing the thief's coat?" Dylan nodded. "And that's when it happened?" Another nod. "Tell me about it."
Ramita handed her 'phone to Anderson.
"You'll need to edit the file. There's a lot of extraneous crap in there, but about twenty minutes in he gives a detailed description of Donal and the three man team sent out that night."
"Detailed?"
"Savant-style detail," said Ramita. "It's like talking to Rain Man. Did we get a GP report for him?"
Anderson shook his head.
"He's not registered. Anywhere. Hell, he doesn't even have a blog."
"That's not really surprising. He's on the other side of paranoid. We were lucky."
"Yeah, well, I'll put that down to your people skills. Any leads on Corinne?"
"No. Donal was alone when he turned up at the squat."
Anderson looked disappointed.
"So this is a dead end after all. Damn."
"Not necessarily." She nodded at the 'phone in Anderson's hand. "Fast forward to twenty seven minutes and fifty seconds, and hit play."
Dylan wiped his eyes again with the tissue Ramita had given him.
"I'm sorry."
"You don't need to apologize. It was quite an ordeal they put you through."
"And I never got the chips. Harry said I missed the fortune telling as well."
"Fortune telling?"
Dylan nodded, smiling for the first time that day.
"He told Nisha all about the stock market crash, and the tech collapse. Even who would resign to cover it all up. Then a week later... It was amazing, apparently. Of course, they didn't take it seriously until it happened."
To be continued.
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