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toecaps.
    “Crow.” Jackson addresses his boy. The dog instantly drops his grip and scurtles towards a corner. The Digit’s seen this before. Crow reaches a hand down his tracksuit bottoms – the limping side – and produces a crowbar almost the length and width of his own leg, and hands it to Jackson.
    For your inf, this is why he’s known as Crow and why he appears to have a limp. He carries that crowbar everywhere. It’s Banks’s main housebreaking tool, so he wants it close by, but not too close, in case the Sherlocks take an interest.
    Jackson Banks hurls the crowbar at his dog, which ducks behind a chair just in time, where he sits and grizzles. Jackson applauds. “Who’s a clever boy?” he clucks. “Who’s a good boy?”
    Then he shifts his gaze back to Crow. “Fetch it then.”
    Crow scurries across the room to place the dangerous weapon back in its righteous place. He limps back to Jackson’s side. “Good boy.” JB pats him on the head.
    Sufficient to say, Citizen Digit always avoids making himself a playmate of Mr Jackson Banks.
    Banks is the only one of Virus’s acquaintances who don’t bother with no pseudo-name. Everybody knows Jackson Banks. He parades himself round in broad daylight regular as the 29 bus. He don’t need no invisibility. Who’s going to grass him up? Who’d dare? Jackson’s a regular Gym Bunny, got muscles on his nipples. Looks like one of those peeps who tows tractors with a bit of string hooked through his lower lip. Addicted to steroids, cortisone and human growth hormone, is Jackson Banks. The Lance Armstrong of burglars. He actually injects testosterone, and worst of it is, he injects his dog as well. They share the same needle. The Digit’s seen it.
    “Goodies.” Jackson picks up the gym bag and deposits its innards all across the table, like Bad Santa. Virus grimaces as a pile of iPads, iPods, laptops and phonies make fresh scratches on his polish. Jackson tosses the empty bag aside. He likes gym bags, on account of their consistency. They look the same empty as they do stuffed. Handy, if you’re a housebreaker.
    “How much?” he asks Virus.
    Virus is squinting and tut-tutting over the stash, making mumblings about
outdated
this and
old-school
that and
prehistoric
thingy and
redundant
whosits, writing down figures on a scrap of paper. All the while, Jackson is chuckling away to himself, like he’s remembering one of his own jokes. Grace is smiling along with him, dutiful girlfriend, like he’s R-Patz instead of the Wolfman’s uglier brother. Finally, Virus totes it all up and hands Jackson the paper.
    Jackson looks at it, snorts, scrunches it up, then eats it. When he’s done, he burps and looks round the room like he’s expecting applause. Then he smiles back at Virus and repeats, “How much?”
    Virus mutters in reply. Ain’t a satisfactory answer. Jackson snarls.
    “J,” says Grace, softlike. He glares at her, like she’s spoken out of turn, his humour all gone. She looks away.
    “Aaah…” Virus attempts a smile. “You’re in a playful mood tonight, Mr Banks, but I can assure you this figure is more than fair. Most of these items are so outdated as to be practically worthless. I’ll get hardly anything for them in the shop.”
    “Ain’t the items, Fairy Cakes – it’s wot’s in ’em.”
    Banks is right. Selling these electronic toys is a mere sideshow. Virus specializes in sucking them dry of their data. His icepick mind can hack into anything. If you’re misfortunate enough to have one of your gadgets fall into his whiter-than-whites, you’ll find an email sent to all your friends saying you’re stranded in Strandenovia with a lost wallet and need hundreds of dosh put into an emergency bank account pronto. Et cetera, et cet. He’ll suck your gizmo dry like a cyber-vampire, then sell the empty plastic shell on the shop floor.
    It’s tidiness itself.
    But that ain’t even the beginning of it for old V. What gives him the deepest