POV

Round and round the Mulberry Bush (breathe in)

The monkey chased the weasel (breathe out)

The monkey stopped to pull up his socks (breathe in)

Pop goes the weasel! (breathe out and —

‘How can I help, Detective?’ I asked, gesturing him towards one of the seats in the room that mercifully didn’t have restraints. ‘Is this to do with Sarah Simone?’

‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘She was a patient of yours?’

‘Yes, she was.’

‘How long ago was she here?’

‘Just over a week ago.’

‘Mmm.’ He nodded, and looked around again. He was a rough, heavy shape with craggy features. He was carrying more than his fair share of weight, but it looked as though under a healthy layer of fat was a lot of muscle and he had salt-and-pepper hair. I guessed him to be a little over fifty with salt-and-pepper colour hair.

‘It was a straightforward procedure. She was in and out within a couple of hours.’

‘There wasn’t anything unusual about her implants then?’ He asked.

‘IDRoPS?’ I clarified. I wasn’t intending to be pedantic, but implants made them sound like breast enlargements. ‘No, nothing. Standard installation, nothing more.’

‘I don’t know much about these, sir’, Byrne said. ‘Once they’re injected, are they able to be used again? Would someone be likely to kill someone for the technology?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t work like that. It’s not like a phone or a computer or something. It forms a compound with the vitreous humour … the jelly in the eye. It then crystallises, but once it does so it can’t be reused. It’s basically useless at that point.’

‘You’re sure there’s no way to break it down or anything like that?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know, burning it or boiling it or mixing it with something else or … I don’t know.’

‘No, I’m fairly sure of it,’ I replied. ‘That was part of the design. You didn’t want to create something that could lead to something like this for the sake of profit.’

He nodded. ‘So, it’s expensive stuff that becomes useless once you inject it into someone?’

‘Well, it isn’t useless to the person that’s had the injection, sir,’ I pointed out.

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘I mean from the point of view of any third parties.’

‘Totally useless,’ I said.

‘But there’s a black market in this stuff,’ he said. ‘If it’s useless, how come that’s the case?’

‘Well, the eye itself can be used,’ I said. ‘IDRoPS make the eye more durable, which means that it can be used as an organ replacement, but the technology inside it won’t work anymore. Once it’s disconnected, it’s disconnected.’

‘So unless they were taken for the body parts rather than for the technology …’

‘Even then, though, these things can be traced,’ I said. ‘There’s a database. The person receiving the new eyes would turn up on the medical trail at some point. It’s almost like they’re barcoded.’

‘Unless he knew someone in the medical profession that could help to cover that up?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘In my professional opinion, it’s unlikely, but it is possible,’ I said. ‘Although for someone to do that … you’d be looking at medical malpractice on a pretty huge scale. And again, the scope for use of that kind of thing … it’s not exactly limitless, if you follow me.’

He focused on the chair again. I followed his gaze. ‘I’m not into this kind of thing myself, Mr MacFarlane,’ he said. ‘I don’t hold with it. No offence meant.’

‘None taken. They’re not for everybody.’

They aren’t. A large number of people refuse to have anything to do with them. It’s not quite the same as when people make a point of not adapting to new technologies. There’s nothing about ‘the smell of books’ or anything like that. It’s more about the point of pride in seeing the world as it is.

‘I see it kind of like seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses. I can see some of the uses in it, don’t get me wrong, but …’ He trailed off into his own thoughts. ‘… It turns the world into television.’

‘To be fair, your argument is more about how people use the technology than the technology itself,’ I said. ‘Knives can be used to kill people, as well as to prepare food.’

‘It’s funny you should mention knives, actually,’ he said. ‘Sarah Simone was killed with one.’

Round and round the mulberry bush …

‘Was she?’

The monkey chased the weasel …

‘Mmm,’ he said in affirmation. ‘She was stabbed a number of times before he finally cut her throat. The girl suffered.’

The monkey stopped to pull up his socks …