Great North Road (100 page)

Once they were inside the three-room flat Clayton and Ivan looked around in confusion.

“Where’s the furniture?” Ivan asked.

Clayton shrugged and glanced into the bedroom. “He’s got a bed. And look at that Apple console, it’s practically got the capacity to run an AI.”

Ivan applied an interceptor patch to the back of the sleek rectangle with its tiny green and purple LEDs. Clayton sprayed a patch of smartmicrobes onto the ceiling, then went into the front lounge and kitchen, repeating the procedure.

“We’re done,” Ivan announced. “I’ve loaded mirror relays inside the Apple. What he knows, we know. I’ll get our AI to run an analysis.”

“Let’s go.”

Back in Abner’s cozy flat in the Fortin singletown, Clayton settled down to wait. Ivan and the rest of the team kept shooting updates to his e-i on their progress with the data from Ian’s Apple. Call records showed that Sherman and his associates were involved in some kind of handover. So far they hadn’t found anything that connected them to Reinert, except for them all dropping from sight the day the garage was firebombed.

It was a simple coincidence that no policeman would ever send on to legal, never mind the Prosecution Bureau. Clayton knew what it meant: Sherman and Reinert knew the same people farther up the food chain. Sid would understood that, too.

So why hadn’t he included Sherman in the official investigation?

Clayton’s second surprise of the night was when Ian returned home. The monitor program tagging his transnet interface showed him taking a taxi from The Gate center back to Falconar Street. Then the meshes in the flat gave Clayton a bird’s-eye view of the lounge as Ian and his date walked in.

It was Tallulah Packer. Clayton viewed the image for a moment in complete disbelief. For a moment he thought the angle might have thrown off his recognition. But then they started talking in that easy casual way that eager lovers have, and there was no mistake. She was teasing him about the lack of furniture. He took it with good grace, and offered her a wine, a Semillon Verdelho. Apparently it was her favorite. They kissed. Fumbled at each other’s clothes. Ian led her into the bedroom, the wineglass forgotten on the kitchenette counter.

Clayton canceled the feed from the mesh in the bedroom. He wasn’t a voyeur.

Ten weeks working in the same office as Ian made him sure of one thing: This wasn’t a cover-up. Ian kept his brain in his dick, and Tallulah was astonishingly pretty. He was guilty of being terminally stupid by dating a potential witness from the case, but nothing more sinister.

Clayton checked the time: eleven twenty-three. The traffic from Ian’s surreptitious observation routines was slow and steady as they followed Sherman around the city wherever they could gain digital traction. Nothing big was happening tonight. He got into bed and promised himself he’d review the forensic team’s visual logs from Reinert’s garage tomorrow.

W
EDNESDAY,
A
PRIL 10, 2143

Clayton’s e-i woke him up at two ten AM with a major alert, triggered by the call monitor he’d put on Ian’s transnet interface. He shook himself awake and put the team on standby. His e-i pulled real-time imagery from the smartmicrobe meshes at Ian’s apartment.

Sid drove the Toyota Dayon into a space practically outside Ian’s flat, too quick and braking too hard. The auto flashed up an amber caution in his grid as the car detected other vehicles front and back. He ignored it. Temper had powered him out of his own house and gotten him here at just after half past two in the morning following Ian’s cryptic call. But fatigue was creeping back. He was tired, irritated to be woken, and just wanted to be home in bed.

The house’s outside door opened as soon as he pinged it, and he stomped up the stairs. Ian was waiting in the lounge, dressed in PJ trousers and an old gray T-shirt.

“Why are you crapping on me at this hour?” Sid demanded. “Is Sherman going to kill someone? I had to tell Jacinta that Market Street was calling me in.” He stopped. Tallulah Packer was standing in the bedroom doorway, looking unbelievably hot wrapped in Ian’s dressing gown, her auburn hair delectably disheveled.

“You’re fucking joking,” Sid growled.

Tallulah’s lips quivered as she fought back tears.

Ian went over and gently put his arms around her, close and reassuring. “It’s all right, pet. Please, I told you you’ll be fine. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“What is going on?” Sid asked.

“Tallulah told me something,” Ian said. “It’s not something I’d ever share. Not normally, like. But, boss … it’s really important. To us. To the case.”

“All right,” Sid took a breath, trying to calm down. “What is it?”

Tallulah stayed mute, shaking her head.

“We were talking,” Ian said, his own embarrassment making him hesitant. “Aye, you know. Getting to know each other. Saying about all the kinds of sex we’ve both had, which we liked best, what we wanted to try with each other—”

“Ian …” Sid
really
didn’t want to hear this.

“Boss.” The pleading was painful. “Our exes, we talked about our exes.”

“I had an affair,” Tallulah said at last. She couldn’t look at Sid, keeping her eyes downcast. “It ended when I got engaged. Well, almost. It’s been over since December, anyway.”

“Okay, well we’ve all had fun when we were single,” Sid said. It seemed the right thing to say.

Tallulah drew down a long breath, as if she were in confessional with a particularly unforgiving priest. “I was sleeping with Aldred North.”

Sid simply didn’t possess an instinct to guide his reaction to that. He just stood there with his jaw open dumbly. “Aldred North?” he repeated, because he had probably misheard. “You were Aldred North’s girlfriend?”

The poor girl nodded, looking like she was about to cry again. Ian’s arm tightened around her.

Sid rubbed a hand across his forehead, massaging the fatigue away. “All right, Tallulah, listen to me. Ian is quite right—you’ve done nothing wrong. We just have to know a few details, that’s all. The investigation is over, and if you tell us everything we can keep you out of things, okay? That’s why Ian called me over here, to make sure you’re covered.”

“Really?” Tallulah asked. “I’m not in trouble?”

“No. Not yet,” he said, which was partially true. “But, pet, we have to understand what happened. That’s what’s really important here. So: How long were you seeing him?”

“Six months. No, wait, more like eight. We met back in March last year. He wanted to keep it quiet—he was still seeing Lady Jennifer, but it wasn’t going well, it hadn’t been for a while. He was really unhappy. He said he didn’t want to make it any worse, that we should give her time to finish their relationship on her own terms.”

“You were seeing each other in secret?”

“Privately,” Tallulah pouted. “I’m not a home wrecker, I didn’t break them up. It was practically over when we started.”

“I see. So you met in your apartment, not his?”

“Yes. We couldn’t go to his because Lady Jennifer was still living there.”

“And he lives in the St. James, so it was easy.”

“Yes. At first. But … I met Boris. And we could go out in public together and do things like I never could with Aldred. Oh, we went away for a few weekends together, but it was always the two of us in some chalet or villa. Never in public. It was exciting at first, then in the end I realized he was just using me. All he wanted me for was sex.”

“When you figured that out, you broke it off?”

She sniffed. “Yes.”

“So back in January, he still had the lock codes for your apartment?”

“I … yes. Changing the code would be difficult. Boris would want to know why; he was quite possessive. And Aldred was seeing someone else by then. Lady Jennifer had left him.”

“All right,” Sid said. “Now, this next bit is very important: Why didn’t you tell us this when we took you into custody?”

“He was there. Aldred was waiting for me when Ian took me up to the interview room.”

“Oh crap on it.” Sid groaned, remembering that day, how it didn’t seem odd at all. In fact, at the time it was Ian’s behavior that he’d worried about. “What did Aldred say? Did he threaten you?”

“No. Nothing like that. He was reassuring. He said he’d protect me from any involvement, that no one would ever have to know about the two of us. And … and … Boris was there. You remember Chantilly Sanders-Watson?”

“Oh yeah,” Sid said. “I remember her.”

“She was my lawyer, only she wasn’t; Boris paid for her. I couldn’t tell her why it was my apartment that poor North got murdered in. Boris might have found out. We were going to get married!”

“So you played the innocent card,” Sid said. “Claimed you had no idea why your apartment was chosen.”

“Well I don’t,” she insisted. “Not really. Aldred called me afterward, he said he was really sorry, that it was likely someone was trying to discredit him, or set him up, that it was part of a high-level corporate conflict and I shouldn’t worry anymore, that he’d make sure you, the police, stayed away from me. And he can do that, he’s a very powerful man.”

“Aye,” Sid said. “He is that.”

Clayton carried on watching while Sid made himself a cup of tea. Tallulah and Ian went back into the bedroom, where she got dressed. Ian’s e-i called for a taxi.

“Sir, do you want to question her?” Ivan asked. “We can intercept the taxi, pick her up in one of ours.”

“Taxis are useful in this town, aren’t they?” Clayton mused. “So perfectly anonymous. And they all look the same.”

“Sir, it’s time-critical, we need a decision.”

“No. Leave her alone. She’s not a player, she’s simply been used.”

“So did Aldred kill the victim?”

“I don’t know. If he did then he must have a very warped reason to use this particular method and do it in his ex-girlfriend’s apartment. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Could he have told Tallulah the truth, that someone is trying to discredit him?”

“I suppose so. Crap knows Augustine has enough rivals on Earth. The old cartel always seems solid from the outside, but you never know when the bedrock is going to shift underneath you without warning. Ask Angela. Nothing in this life is certain.”

“But the creature is real—it’s killing people at Wukang.”

“I know. But we don’t know why.” He saw Tallulah and Ian come back out into the lounge. “Let’s see what the police make of this, shall we. It would seem I’ve underestimated them.”

Sid drank his tea, making every effort not to listen to what was being said in the stairwell outside the flat. Voices were muffled by the door, but from Ian’s urgent, near-pleading tones, it was obvious he was desperate to see Tallulah again.

The taxi pulled up outside, and Sid watched through the window as Tallulah climbed in. It was a citycab, he noticed idly.
So we’ve come full circle
. Ian stood on the pavement, watching the taxi until it vanished from sight.

“Quite a night,” Sid said gently as Ian came back into the lounge.

Ian gave him a forlorn look. “Aye, man, I screwed up.”

“You did the right thing telling me.”

“Not that, I mean with her.”

“Ah. What did she say? Will she see you again?”

“Aye, she said we could talk. I know what that means.”

“No, you don’t, Ian. You only know what that means when you say it. If Tallulah said it, that’s good. She will see you again. She needs you, Ian. You’re the one who can get her through this.”

“She wasn’t involved. She wasn’t. That bastard Aldred used her.”

“I don’t think he did.”

“Huh?”

“A North was murdered in the apartment of the mistress of Northumberland Interstellar’s head of security. Really? We still don’t know who our victim was, but we know it was corporate, which makes the location an attempt to ruin Aldred. My guess is Aldred probably had the body cleared away by Reinert, he’s certainly got the connections to make that happen. Whoever did it couldn’t have been expecting that.” As he said it there was still a wisp of doubt troubling him. Augustine North had seemed very genuine when he said he wanted to know who had killed his son. And if Aldred knew he was being set up, he’d have asked Sid to ease up on the investigation.

I’d probably have done it, too.

“So how do we find out?”

“Ian. We don’t. Not for O’Rouke and the Prosecution Bureau, anyway. Whatever’s going on is completely out of our league, which means we have to be extremely careful. A North was murdered; if you’ve got the clout to do that, a couple of policemen aren’t going to bother you. If we ever do find out, it’s for ourselves only, to satisfy us that it’s over and we’re in the clear. Understand?”

“Aye, and how do we do that, boss?”

“Ask Aldred.”

“Ask him?”

“He trusts me, because I’ve never let him down.”

“Wait. Aldred is your corporate contact?”

“You don’t make it up to third grade without help and approval, Ian. Not in this screwed-up world.”

“Oh crap on all of this.”

Sid put a hand on Ian’s shoulder, squeezing tight. “Honesty night, huh. Painful stuff, man.”

“Aye. You’ll really just ask him?”

“It might need to be quite a forceful question. We’ll have to prepare.”

Sid arrived at the Jamaica Blue café on John Dobson Street just after eleven o’clock and sat in an empty booth beside the window. He watched people walking past in the bright spring sunlight, envying their simple lives. They lived in his world, but never saw the complexity, the forces that moved them. There were times he wished he didn’t.

“Morning,” Aldred said and slid onto the bench opposite Sid. As always he was wearing a smart suit, but not a flashy one. A typical anonymous North. If you had to take a guess, you’d go for Northumberland Interstellar management, but what kind of division was unknowable.

Sid saw a bodyguard up at the counter ordering a tea and croissant, another out on the street, close to the café door, watching people going in.

Am I the only one that sees them?

“This is difficult,” Sid said.

“Oh dear. What have you got for me, Sid? You know I don’t bite.”