Great North Road (21 page)

“What have you got for me?” he asked.

“I’m knee-deep in virgin snow and I’ve fallen over twice this morning. What do you think?”

“Thought so.” He scanned around Keelman’s Way. She wasn’t that difficult to spot. The SOCOs were all wearing regulation light green coveralls, bulked out by many layers of thermal clothing underneath, making them look like inflatable mannequins as they waddled their way through the thick snow. One of them, just below the tree line, was wearing a bright pink bobble hat with earflaps. Sid waved solemnly. “Can I come up?”

Tilly waved back. “Sure. I’ve covered the ground between us, so you won’t be fouling up any evidence.”

Sid started up the slope. It was hard work. The snow was over sixty centimeters in some places. Drifts around the trees were a lot deeper. Little waves of powder snow erupted from his feet at every step, leaving a wide rumpled track behind him.

He was flushed and breathing hard by the time he finally reached her. “This is stupid,” he grunted.

Tilly grinned broadly. “Sure is.” She had a cute roundish face that he’d rarely seen frowning. He’d decided a long time ago that she must have had some kind of happy virus in her blood, which was just as well given some of the things they’d uncovered together at crime scenes. Her mane of auburn hair was tucked into the pink hat, with a few spiral wisps escaping around her temples. She kept pushing them away from what looked like a pair of fat binoculars she was using to examine the snow.

“How are the kids?” he asked.

“Took them to my parents for Christmas. They always get spoiled rotten there. So I’m bloody glad school’s started. Yours?”

“About the same. We’re thinking of moving.”

“Really? Where?”

“Jesmond.”

“Wonderful, you’ll be close by.”

“Okay. That’s over. So there’s nothing up here?”

“No. If anyone brought a body down to the river to dump in, they had to come down from the road above, and through here—” She waved up at the trees with their dark branches all constricted by a crystal mantle of ice and snow.

“That’s my thoughts exactly. But it’s a bit of a long shot.”

“Not when you’re dealing with probabilities. Go through them and get rid of them one at a time.”

“That’s supposed to be my job.”

“Nah, you just correlate the data us true workers pull in from the field. I’m the one freezing my bum off while I try to find tracks.”

Sid gave the optical gadget she was carrying a pointed look. “All right, I’ll bite. What is that thing?”

“CDMR.”

“Aye, man, thanks a bundle.”

“Comparative Density Microwave Radar. Top of the range. Costs your department a packet if I just lift it out of the case, and I have to lift it out because we can’t just scatter smartdust around like we normally do. Bloody snow.”

“Riiight.”

She grinned again and handed them to him. “Try it. Look at the snow.”

He put them to his eyes. The image was weird, a three-dimensional montage of green and blue ripples stacked on top of one another. “Very psychedelic.”

“You’ve just got to interpret it correctly.”

“Correct me anytime you like.”

“Behave. Now, don’t use the CDMR and just look at the snow along the trees.”

He did as he was told.

“Nothing, right?” Tilly said. “If anyone had brought a body down they’d have left a big set of tracks.”

“Yeah, but it’s been snowing a lot since then. Any tracks would have been covered in an hour on Sunday night.”

“And that’s a common problem for us. So …” She gestured at the CDMR set. “Now look at that area.”

He did as he was told, focusing on the patch of ground just short of the tree line that she was pointing at.

“What you’re seeing,” Tilly said, “is a false-color image of snow density. You see those small triangular shapes?”

Sid concentrated on the image. There were some green specks, which could have been triangular. They lay just under the uppermost blue strata. “Yeah.”

“Imprints from duck feet, probably a day old judging by how deep they are.”

“Crap on it.” He put the CDMR aside and stared at the patch of snow. It was completely blank.

“Even a duck has enough weight to compress the snow it stands on,” Tilly said. “Those little footprint patches are slightly denser than the surrounding layer. So you see, if anyone had dragged a body down here it would show up like a motorway, no matter how much snow had fallen on top of it.”

“This wasn’t the site?”

“This wasn’t the site. Besides, Noel just confirmed the smartdust was burned out from a lightning strike on the railings a couple of months back. The city hasn’t gotten around to spraying any new motes down yet.”

“Okay. You’ve convinced me. Let’s move on to the next gap.”

Sid led the Northern Forensics vans back over the river to Elswick Wharf on the north side. They turned off the main A695 road along Penn Street, which curved left into Water Street, where they drove under an ancient disused railway bridge and down the slope past a series of shabby microfacture plants and industrial warehouses to a roundabout junction with Skinnerburn Road and Monarch Road, both of which ran along parallel to the Tyne. The bankside itself was among the most expensive real estate in Newcastle, colonized by exclusive apartment blocks, smart hotels, and prestige office towers, all of them separated from the water by a broad promenade. Private security was obligatory here for each building, given the status of the occupants. Broad swaths of smartdust sprayed along every wall made Sid think this was going to be a waste of time as well.

Directly opposite the roundabout was a building site, with high temporary fencing surrounding a new apartment block development. Its first three stories had already been completed by the automata that rode the scaffolding. Agency constables had it sealed off—not that there was any construction activity today. The gates were locked and the automata still, with snow filling every mechanical inlet while big icicles hung threateningly from the tough hoses looped along the hydraulic platforms.

To the left of the construction site was an old brick office block, with boarded-up windows and a broad sign at the front proudly explaining Hargold Management was about to refurbish the building ready for occupancy summer 2142. According to Eva, whatever smartdust was coating its walls hadn’t been active for nineteen months, the time when Hargold Management bought the building.

Sid and Tilly surveyed the gap, a narrow alley created between the construction site and the dilapidated office block. The route to the waterfront wasn’t on any map because it wasn’t something that existed on any plans. When the apartment block was completed it would be fenced off, but for now it was an access point for tankers pumping raw up to the automata.

Sid pointed along the slim passage. “The smartdust on the promenade at the far end isn’t working. Their meshes dropped out of the civic net midday Sunday.” He turned to the small roundabout. “And coincidence: None of the road’s macromesh around the junction is working, either.”

“When did the road macromesh fail?” Tilly asked.

“It didn’t. The road hasn’t been repaired in years, and the raw tankers have been churning up what’s left, so the smartdust has degraded until there’s not enough left to mesh. Refurbishing the road is part of the construction license. Standard practice. When the apartments are finished the contractor will tidy everything up.” He stared back up Water Street. “So … you can actually drive the length of Water Street without a single sensor or memory cache knowing about it. The closest working mesh with visual spectrum reception is up there on the A695.”

“Then this place is feasible for a bodydump.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Now, if it was down to me, I’d park at the far end of this alley and haul the body across the promenade to the river. It’s what, barely fifteen meters?”

Tilly walked over to the slim plastic barrier the agency constables had thrown across the street in front of the alley. She lifted the CDMR set and studied the snow between the site fence and the office block.

When she turned back to Sid she was grinning. He took the CDMR set and scanned it down the alley. Just beneath the top layer of snow were two cobalt-blue lines; they ran almost to the far end. He put the set down and stared at the pristine surface, feeling very relieved. “Tire tracks.”

“Yes.”

“There’s a lot of compression below them from earlier traffic. But judging by the depth I’d say those were made some time at the weekend.”

“Okay. Let’s put your team on it. I’m going to call the office and get Dedra to pull the traffic records for a couple of kilometers in every direction.”

They left four members of Tilly’s team to work down the alley millimeter by millimeter, and went around the other side of the site to reach the promenade. Despite the weather, several people were walking along. Over the last week the snow had been compacted, then frozen hard between snowfalls, leaving the surface icy and perilous.

“Too messed up to show any traces,” Tilly said, scanning it with the CDMR.

“Aye.” Sid was looking across the wide expanse of black water. The tide was halfway out, leaving broad mudflats on both sides, glistening dully in the winter light. Just looking at the sluggish, calm water flowing past in the middle of the channel made him feel chilly. On the south bank the plush white club buildings and elegant jetties of Dunston Marina encircled the ancient tidal basin. He gave the gleaming shapes of the moored yachts a suspicious stare. If the body had come from anywhere, he’d have put good money on it being the marina.

“Here we go,” Tilly called excitedly.

Sid hurried over to the black iron railing she was bent over. The bank here was a concrete slope, tangled with sickly weeds and denuded brambles glued with ice and snow. The mud began two meters below, a line tangled with the usual detritus that marred every river: torn packaging, lengths of wood, metal objects that looked like parts of vehicles, malformed 3-D plastic spars, bottles …

“See here—” Tilly pointed excitedly. “Broken strands, flattened grass. Something heavy slid down here.”

Sid swung around. They were standing directly opposite the end of the temporary alley. “Gotcha!”

Sid had never been in the HDA base before. Seen it enough times, though. The inside was exactly as he expected, a perfect reflection of the stark concrete exterior. Vance Elston’s office was actually inferior to the rooms of the Market Street station. Now, that took dedication.

Vance greeted him with a mildly puzzled smile. “You do have my access code. There’s no need to turn up in person for every piece of good news.”

“At least you think it’s good news.”

“You think I was being too hard on you?”

“We all have our jobs to do.”

“I’m glad you understand that.” Vance sat back behind his desk. “So what have you got for me?”

“Elswick Wharf is where the body was dumped into the river.”

“You’re sure?”

“Forensics hasn’t officially confirmed it, but they will, yes. The smartdust meshes on the promenade were ripped on Sunday afternoon, a real pro bytehead job. They managed to induce a surge that physically damaged a lot of the smartdust power systems so the mesh couldn’t be reactivated by remote. Then there was a snag on the side of the alley, a piece of metal sticking out of the fence. We think that’s the one that made the marks postmortem on the victim’s left leg.”

“Excellent.”

“Yes and no. We have a good lead now, but the coroner has had some results back as well.”

“And?”

“Our unknown North was killed Friday midday, approximately fifty hours before he was dumped into the Tyne.”

“Okay, well, we knew he wasn’t likely to have been killed on the side of the river. You told me that, what with the clothes missing and all.”

“Yeah. But fifty hours? Where was the body all that time? It doesn’t take that long to extract the smartcells, so what else was happening? I’m not saying we can’t solve this, but everything we discover is opening up new questions.”

“Why are you here, Sid? Quitting on me?”

Sid gave the HDA spook a long look; Elston was clearly sharper than he’d written him off as. “No. I know we have an unlimited budget, but I need to know how far you’ll back me.”

“All the way.”

“Really?”

“What do you want, Sid?”

“Ordinarily, I’d start analyzing traffic around Elswick Wharf that night. That way we can find out what went into the area, and start checking on each vehicle. But there’s a lot of the road macromesh around Elswick Wharf ripped or degraded—this isn’t the smart end of town after all. I’m also suspicious about the general lack of smartdust surveillance. It isn’t a showstopper; we just have to expand the area until we have a tight perimeter. That’s a lot of data to go doing the virtual timewarp with.”

“I understand that. Go with it. If you need more analysts, you got them.”

“It’s not just the data, it’s how you read it and apply it. Now, we can build some very good virtuals of the traffic from the sections of city’s road macromesh that do work, but we run into a problem of perspective when we start running them in the zone booths.”

Elston spread his hands wide. “Solution?”

“There’s a zone theater in the Market Street station, which would be the perfect system to run this kind of virtual. Only it never worked properly from the day it was installed, and hasn’t worked at all for the last thirty months.”

“You said it: unlimited budget.”

“Aye, man, fixing it is just down to money true enough. But the chief constable’s office has been in dispute with the company that installed it. The case is winding its way through the courts. O’Rouke has taken it personally; it’s him versus them now. Nobody gets in the way.”

“Leave it with me.”

“Thanks.” Sid got up to leave.

“How in the Lord’s name do you people ever solve any crimes?”

“Any way we can.”

Sid never did get to hear what Elston said to O’Rouke. After all, he had a clear alibi—he was out of the station, driving back after briefing the forensic team out at Elswick Wharf. He returned to the Market Street station midafternoon, when everyone was quietly swapping gossip on the chief constable and how his temper had reached a whole new level of rage—no one knew why, though, not even Chloe Healy.