‘One second, boy. You know you’re not allowed in here.’ He speaks fondly, never taking his eyes off the map. It’s really coming together. Every victim has a picture rather than a silhouette. Every jumper has a name rather than a number. On the far left there are three photos: Ines Dupont, Harald Yeoman and Noah Holmgren. The three European cases of alleged People of Choice suicides. Beneath that, a circle of teenagers, shot dead in Illinois.

No strings. No attachments.

The old man sits behind his desk, papers strewn across its surface, and he swigs from a can of beer. The last two members came at just the right time. The police would be closing in, uncovering information; it was something else to deal with. More manpower. More brainpower.

He looks at the nine pins on Chelsea Bridge, focusing on that one at the bottom. Where the one in the light was hanging. His mixed-up nephew. And his hand starts to shake. Just a little, but it draws his attention from the wall. Not enough to make him spill any beer but it worries the old man. He takes another shaky swig.

And he looks again at his wall, the faces and names and pins and crudely drawn river crossings. He glances across at the European fans, who have nothing to do with The People of Choice – they’re not part of the number – and lastly at the rectangle that represents Tower Bridge.

It’s not big enough to fit twenty pins.

His anxiety rises.

He goes to drink, thinking it will calm him. But he blacks out again, hitting the floor with a thud that Ergo feels in his chest.

74

Her classmates described her as quiet, intelligent and conservative. She read law at King’s College London on a scholarship, before attending the University of Southern California, where she graduated in photography, fine art and gender studies.

She went on to direct a movie that was her vision of the William Gibson novel Neuromancer before settling in California to work as a web developer.

But nobody cares about the finer details of Grace Quek’s existence.

They remember that on 19th January, 1995, she called herself Annabelle Chong and laid back as 251 men were filmed fucking her, which was, at the time, the largest gang-bang ever.

Because people really only care about the numbers.

There were nine victims on Chelsea Bridge.

There were two on the Millennium Bridge.

That’s eleven People of Choice.

The others that have been reported in America and Cambodia and Estonia and all the other countries this suicide virus has spread to; those people who have cut, hung, shot, jumped then left a note in their native tongue pertaining to the mantra of a cult they believe they have joined, they’re nothing to do with the members from London. They’re not the same.