The meanest Flood

batteries.’
    ‘You can get screwed by a machine?’
    ‘Where’ve you been, JD? All it is, it’s a vibrator built into a doll. Nobody gets screwed. These things, they’re aids to masturbation. The logical extension of you whacking yourself off in the boys’ bogs at school over a photograph of whoever it was.’
    ‘Madonna, probably. Though we had a thing about Katharine Ross at the time. Could’ve been her.’
    ‘The one in The Stepford Wives?’
    ‘Yeah, before my time that, but... oh, yeah, they turned her into a robot.’
    ‘A doll.’
    ‘But that was an examination of the Frankenstein theme, Marie. Different from sex dolls. What you’ve got with sex dolls are people who can’t hold down normal relations.’
    ‘Or people who don’t want to. Guys who find a relationship with a woman too complicated, who want their lives to be simple. Someone who doesn’t answer back. That would drive me crazy, someone who never answered back. Living with a doll, can you imagine that?’
    ‘Think about a single person who has a job. He’s friendly with his workmates, and most of his relational needs are met by them and some guys he meets in a pub in the evening. But he has a problem meeting women, he can’t pull. This is the kind of guy who might end up with one of your dolls. As he gets older his pulling power diminishes but he still has sexual needs. Are you going to deny him a doll? You think he’s causing any harm? It could be that the doll stops him thinking about attacking some kid on her way home from night-school. It might have a positive effect for the guy and for the rest of society.’
    ‘I don’t wanna ban dolls, JD. What you say could be true. But that doesn’t stop it being sick. It leads us to accept second-class citizens. Some of us are worthy of real human beings of the opposite sex. We can have mates and families and live rounded lives. While there are others, living next door maybe, who get something they have to blow up with a foot-pump. If we accept that kind of thing we’re not a real community. It means we’re not caring enough, we’re losing our sense of compassion. We don’t want to live together any more. We want to live alongside each other, but not together. Do you see the difference?’
    ‘I hear what you’re saying. But I don’t have the answers.’
    Marie watched a young female soldier humping another sandbag on to the city defences. ‘Just one thing you mentioned might help,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t thought about it before, but this guy, the one with the doll with real pubic hair, he’s got to live alone. It’s like you said, he’s someone who doesn’t make relationships with
    Women.’
    ‘And why is that significant?’
    ‘It’s another link, JD. All the things we know about him, they add up. In itself it might not be significant, but when we come to fit the pieces together it could be very important.’
    ‘You want to do something tonight?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a practice with the band ’til about nine, then we could have a drink, watch the river rising.’
    Marie hesitated. Usually when JD asked her out she didn’t think at all. She just told him no.
    ‘I’ll take that as a yes then, shall I?’ he asked.
    ‘No funny business,’ Marie said. ‘I’ll come for a drink with you, but that’s it. I’m not looking for an affair. I’ve got a boyfriend. I don’t want to end up like we were before. You’re not a sexual object for me.’
    ‘I don’t know how I got to be so irresistible,’ he said. ‘I used to be ugly.’
    ‘You’re not ugly,’ Marie told him. ‘You’re a friend with all the limitations that come with it. I don’t sleep with my friends.’
    ‘What about hairy Steiner-school teacher?’
    ‘He’s not a friend, he’s a lover. And he’s away. If he was here you’d be drinking by yourself tonight.’
    ‘As I suspected,’ JD said. ‘I’m a substitute.’ He shook his head. ‘Still, I’ll do my best. Make sure I’ve got fresh batteries in.’
     
    Marie drove to Harrogate and found the workshop on an industrial estate south of the town on the A61. A long, low black building with no windows, could have been a factory farm or an outpost of the MoD intercepting and analysing suspect e-mails. Anything with the word Allah in the subject line, or America, or oil. But things are seldom as they seem and inside the unit, once she’d got beyond the deeply unfashionable floral-pattern blouse of the bespectacled receptionist,