Read Online Cannonbridge by Jonathan Barnes - Free Book Online

time. His voice is low and earnest with a hint of a rural burr, a strange suggestion of the countryside in this place of concrete and gravel. He takes a photograph from his jacket pocket and passes it to Toby, face down.
    Turning it over, Dr Judd sees a man from his recent past gazing back at him—skinny, unshaven features, a wild-eyed intensity. Something rises in his chest. “I know him.”
    “We thought you might, sir.”
    “He came to my lecture. He spoke to me afterwards. He was... enthusiastic about my ideas.”
    “And you’d never met him before?”
    “No. No... However did you know that we’d met?”
    “He was the one who filmed you, sir.” The policewoman speaks these words as if their meaning is self-evident.
    “What do you mean ‘filmed me’?”
    “He was the one who videoed you, sir. On his phone.”
    “What?”
    “He put you up on YouTube, sir.”
    “I’m sorry. But I can’t quite seem to process this.”
    Another glance of jaded scepticism is traded between the officers of the law.
    “He filmed me,” Toby says carefully, struggling to understand, “and put the video on YouTube. Why? For goodness’ sake, why?”
    “I imagine he wanted to try to spread the word, sir. But it’s found a... different audience. Your meltdown , sir. The video’s gone viral.”
    Toby is aware that he is sounding pitifully like an echo. “Viral?” He understands the meaning of the term, of course, in this context but somehow he cannot help but slip back to its older, original sense. He considers infection and the spreading of disease.
    “All around the world, sir. Everyone’s been clicking on it—on you, sir—over and over. That’s the way it is now, isn’t it? That’s the speed of fame in the twenty-first century. The speed of life, really.” The policewoman sucks in a breath. “You didn’t know?”
    “No. No absolutely not. I mean... I remember now... He had his phone out before him, but I never...”
    “Sergeant? Show the man, would you?”
    The young man slides a slender black device from his pocket, taps at the screen and presents it to Toby with something approaching a flourish.
    There, before him, is Toby’s lecture in miniature or, at least, its later, more emotive section. The show. He sees himself: red-faced and ranting, a comic lunatic, baggy-trousered and absurd. He peers, half-horrified, half-fascinated by this homunculus version of himself, this pixelated demagogue, this weird, demented gnome.
    “Tens of thousands of hits, sir. You’re something of a celebrity. You remember the man with the dog, sir? ‘Fenton? Fenton! ’ You’re at least as famous as him.”
    On the screen, the tiny, warped reflection of Dr Tony Judd struts and yelps and bellows out his theories.
    “Please,” says Toby, winded. “Please put it away now.”
    The Detective Inspector nods. “Sergeant.”
    “Terrifying,” Toby murmurs. “Quite terrifying.”
    Angeyo snaps shut the device, silencing the ranting little man, and stows the thing away in his pocket again.
    “This Russell Spicer. He shot all that?”
    “Yes, sir. In fact, sir...”
    “Yes?”
    “As far as we can tell... it was near enough the last thing he did.”
    “The... last... thing?”
    No trace of emotion on the policeman’s face now. “Before his death, sir.”
    A twist of nausea in Toby’s gut. Two useless, identical syllables: “Oh. Oh.”
    “We’re sorry, sir.”
    “We didn’t mean to shock you.”
    “I’m... well, it is shocking. But, I suppose, it’s not like I knew the man. We can’t have spoken for more than a couple of minutes.”
    “He was obviously an admirer of yours, sir. We understand he shared some of your conspiracy theories.”
    “I don’t like that phrase. But my doubts , yes. Yes, he seemed to share some of my doubts .”
    Angeyo, leaning forward, interested: “I’ve watched the video, sir. Couldn’t quite seem to follow your argument.”
    “Hmph. How well do you know Cannonbridge’s works,