add Felixstowe and Dublin,” Jordan suggested. “Where the woman died and the university got hit. Just in case.”
It didn’t help. The new search revealed more links to shipping information.
Angel strode into the room, looking as if he had something important to say, but instead he was captivated by their computer research.
“One more thing,” said Jordan. “Try Ecuador instead of Quito.”
This time, the top two results were both links to sites featuring the lyrics of a song by a group called Lemon Jelly. Raven clicked on the first hit and the words of “Ramblin’ Man” filled the screen. “Not so much lyrics,” she said, “as a list of places.”
Excited, Jordan pointed to each place name in turn. “Look. Kingston, Felixstowe, Ecuador, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Manchester and Dublin. They’re all there.”
“It’s a long list,” Raven noted. “That means it could be a coincidence. The bigger the list, the more likely all Short Circuit’s significant places will be on
it.”
Behind them, Angel butted in. “Sudbury, by any chance?”
Jordan scanned the lyrics and then looked at Angel. “Yes, it’s there!”
Angel nodded. “A new warning’s just come in,” he explained. “Something’s going to happen there tomorrow. That’s why I came to see you.”
“What sort of something?”
“Short Circuit didn’t say, but I want you in Sudbury.”
“Where is it?”
“There are a few, but he talked about the Suffolk version. I’ve arranged for you to spend the day with the emergency services. Kate will go with you. She’ll blend in because of
her background.”
Before Angel recruited her into Unit Red, Kate had been a firefighter. On duty at the time of the Thames Estuary explosion, she had found the severely injured Ben Smith in the ruins of his home.
She had refused to give up on him. She had saved his life.
“But what do we do?” Jordan asked Angel.
“Keep your eyes open and wait for something to happen.”
Victoria Truman’s high-tech home was an oddity among the bright pink Suffolk cottages. At its heart was a computer that monitored and controlled almost every aspect of
living within the modern house. Modified to allow her to live independently now that her health had worsened, the building was stuffed with sensors. They controlled the temperature, humidity, hot
water and light level. They alerted Victoria when she left the bath water running, the oven on, or a pan on the hob. They alerted a care company if she fell over and didn’t get up again. When
she left the house, the sensors transmitted a message to her mobile phone to tell her if she’d left a door or a window open.
Two years previously, she’d been a lively, talkative and popular sixty-year-old. She’d been a regular at dancing, swimming and hiking. Then her occasional absences became more than
occasional. She’d simply forget to go to the old folks’ activities or she’d lack the energy, preferring to slump in her armchair. Increasingly, she became more absent-minded and
less mobile. Worse, she didn’t seem concerned that she was missing out on the things she used to enjoy. It was as if she’d forgotten that she’d once had fun.
Despite looking at friends as if she’d never seen them before, despite losing her enthusiasm for life, the neighbours still called, made cups of tea and talked to her. No one was mean to
her, no one egged her house or called her names. Until someone did something much worse. Someone crashed her computer. Someone stopped the sensors alerting her to the fact that she’d not
turned off the gas. Or maybe someone even had enough control over her computer to make it turn on the gas.
On the way to Sudbury, Jordan and Kate listened to the version of “Ramblin’ Man” that Jordan had downloaded onto his car’s computer. Cleverly
superimposed on a dance tune, a man’s sampled voice recited all of the places he had visited. But there was no obvious reason why Short Circuit