Death in the Black Wood, Oliver Davies [short story to read TXT] 📗

work, they can keep it. It’s a bit like being one of those poor security guards, with nothing to do but stare at a bunch of CCTV feeds all night. I wouldn’t last a week on a job like that.” I cracked another thermos and poured myself a generous coffee. “No offence, Shay. Your little drone setup is very impressive.”

“It’s not bad,” he allowed. “But setting it all up was a lot more interesting than using it is turning out to be. You’re right about it being a dull job. Give it a few more years though. A smarter AI system could take over everything we’re doing manually tonight. Then it could just send anything ‘interesting’ through to the analysts.”

“That’ll probably happen faster than any legislation that would allow its use.”

“Yeah, probably.”

The radio crackled over his speakers. Another odd vehicle out in the middle of nowhere, south of Crerag this time, about fifteen miles west and south of the town centre. He passed his drone views over to me and got busy with his laptop, zooming in on a sedan car driving along yet another little single lane track running through yet another patch of woodland. We’d had quite a few of those already. It pulled into a driveway a couple of minutes later. Two people climbed out and went indoors. He sighed and zoomed out again.

“Well, we knew this was a long shot. Plus we’d need a lot more drones and a lot more people watching them to do this effectively. I had to call in a ton of favours just to hog one satellite for the night. It’d cost a bloody fortune to run something like this properly all the time.”

Once his half hour was up, he nipped off to the loo before coming back to pour himself a tea. “How did your lot seem today?” he asked.

“Tired, a bit stressed, but doing their best not to let it get to them. They all got a reasonable amount of useful work done. Caitlin was giving me some funny looks though.”

“Probably because you looked like shit. What did you sleep last night? Four hours?” I just shrugged.

“I’ve caught up a bit again now, haven’t I? We can’t all switch off as easily as you do.”

He made a dissatisfied little noise of acknowledgement. My drone four was moving up General Booth Road, near Kinmylies church just then. I caught a glimpse of a figure walking along a footpath off a little to the west of there and dipped down for a better look. Just a guy carrying a shoulder bag, probably heading off to work or coming home after a late shift. Shay glanced over to see what I was looking at.

“That’s odd,” he told me. “I either saw that guy or someone dressed just like him getting out of a car at the Premier Inn down by the A82 less than half an hour ago. I’ll take drone five off you and nip over to check if the car’s still down there. Keep an eye on him, will you? See if you can get up ahead of him and settle somewhere so we can get a front view.”

Drone five was just a little to the east in Ballifeary, less than a mile from the hotel in question. It would only take him two minutes to pull the drone over from there. I obligingly lifted higher and zoomed further along the footpath, looking for a decent spot to land temporarily. A handy tree branch would do just fine. Even better, the footpath ended after another hundred metres, coming out onto the closed end of a little cul-de-sac.

I turned my drone around, dropped it onto the top of a wheelie bin, and rotated the camera up so that it was pointing towards where he would appear. For good measure, I also turned the motor off to silence its quiet, insectoid buzzing. Shay had done an amazing job fitting out these little machines.

“The car’s still where he left it,” Shay told me. “You’d think that if he was making a late night call on a friend, he’d have driven up there. Well, unless he’s planning to drink or get wasted I suppose. I’m going to bring this one up the main road, following his route.”

My figure appeared, walking straight towards my drone, but I couldn’t see much of his features even in the better light from the street lamps. His hood was up, his head was down and he had a scarf covering his lower face. Well, it was a cold night. Plenty of the people we’d seen were well bundled up.

“Are you sure it’s the same man?” I asked. “Only he’s getting into one of the cars parked up here.” He was wearing gloves too, I saw, now that he’d taken his hands out of his pockets, but again, that wasn’t anything unusual on a cold night.

“Sure? No, but he’s got the same jacket, same trousers, same trainers and the same bag as the guy I saw. It’d be a bit of a coincidence if it wasn’t him.” Yes, it would. I knew better than to doubt Shay’s certainty about details like that. “Get the number plate as he pulls out. These drones can only manage thirty miles an hour at top speed. I’d suggest landing it on the roof of the car but it’s so light it’d blow straight off again once he got moving.”

I did as he’d asked and lifted my drone as the car pulled out and set off heading north. This was probably nothing, but it was a bit more interesting than what we’d been doing up until then.

“He’s looping back to the main road,” I told Shay after another minute. “Yeah, there he goes, southbound.”

“Just keep him in sight if you can. I want to keep checking the route he walked for anything odd.” I flicked a glance at his screen. He was taking his time, flying low and panning around as he approached the church