Great North Road (27 page)

“I thought Nigeria was favorite for secondaries,” Ralph muttered.

“Our gangs like to spread the load.”

“Huh! So now …?”

“So now we backtrack the twenty-seven taxis that wound up around Fawdon that night, and see which of them came from Elswick Wharf.”

It was meticulous work, sometimes requiring the simulation to be shifted in two-second intervals when a taxi hit a particularly bad junction. By six thirty that evening they’d followed eight of them on various routes picking up and dropping off various fares. A task made even more difficult in two cases by the taxi switching registration codes while it was cruising between fares. But in the end all eight had been cleared—they hadn’t been anywhere near Elswick Wharf.

“Are we squealing on them to the Tax Bureau?” Ian asked.

Sid shrugged. Both of them were in the theater’s control center, taking a break from wading through the simulation while Ari and Reannha took a turn scratching their heads over what turn the ninth taxi was taking when it vanished into a dead space. “We’ve got enough on right now,” he said, which wasn’t a flat-out no. The internal sensors could always be reviewed—unlikely … but. Besides, who didn’t have a secondary these days? Grande Europe taxes were so high they were a joke—his official city police salary was taxed at over 50 percent, and that was before pension contributions. He might be police, but he was people, too.

Ian just nodded.

Abner came into the control room. He seemed to be a permanent fixture in Office3 right now, Sid thought. His brother’s murder must have affected him more than he showed. Constant devoted work was clearly his way of dealing with it.

“I’ve just been talking to Tilly Lewis over at Northern Forensics,” Abner said. “They’ve finished their review of the road metamesh.”

Ian turned away from the simulation. “And?”

Abner grinned. “Twenty percent natural glitches and breakdown. But the other eighty percent, between the GSW and Elswick, were deliberately taken out. The gang ripped most of the wall meshes. But the smartdust in the tarmac was zapped with a magnetic pulse. It’s completely dead, you can’t reactivate it. This was all done on Saturday night. They started at about seventeen hundred hours. The last failure is logged at one thirty-seven next morning. We think they must have used three to five cars with a mag pulse generator on the bottom.”

“Crap on it.” Ian grinned happily. “That’s going to take a lot of additional people to correlate.”

“Did the surviving meshes catch anything?” Sid asked.

“I pulled the logs for the approach roads of ten junctions they zapped,” Abner said. “When I ran a correlation there was no overlap. They’ll be switching license codes on the vehicles between each strike.” He nodded through the window at the sparkling simulation. “If you want them, you’ll have to run a correlation exercise on your great big virtual.”

“Aye, man, no way can we take the time out for an operation like that,” Sid said. “It’d be a step backward, not cost-effective for the case. It took days to work up a simulation for Sunday night, we can’t take another couple of days to work up Saturday as well.”

“Thought so,” Abner said in a resigned tone.

“What about the mesh rips?” Sid asked.

“They’ve got good byteheads, is about the best I can tell you,” Abner said grudgingly. “I couldn’t spot where the attacks got into the monitor network, let alone where they originated from. But the rip they used is powerful, the same as the one that caused the surge around Elswick. The city’s not going to like it, but they’ll have to strengthen the whole countermeasures suite. Frankly we were lucky they didn’t fry every mote of public smartdust in Newcastle. The rip is certainly powerful enough.”

“These guys are more precise,” Sid said. “They’re not flash, not showy. Face it, the only stroke of bad luck they’ve had so far was the body getting snagged at Millennium Bridge.”

“I’ve got an hour before I’m off shift,” Ian said. “Let me run another quick review of the junctions. I’ve done positional correlations enough bloody times before.”

“Thanks,” Sid said. “I’ll give Trose Secure a call, they’re good, but the city can’t normally afford them; stick them on analyzing the rip attack. Abner, you stay here and help Dedra run the simulation. I want everyone familiar with the theater procedures anyway. It’s starting to look like we’ll be pulling an all-nighter.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

As Sid’s nominal deputy, Ian Lanagin just qualified for one of the little private offices along the side of Office3. He greeted the eight officers and constables working the zone consoles in the main section, all of them busy processing forensic data from the taxi, which was slowly coming in, along with results from the dump site; three were still checking cargo deliveries; while one poor junior constable was tasked with calling local restaurants and finding out what meals they were serving last Thursday evening—a long shot based on the autopsy results of the victim’s stomach contents.

Once he settled behind his desk he called up the forensic results for the magnetic pulse assault on the junctions’ smartdust, then linked to the city’s traffic management AI and requested approach road logs, letting them download into the secure police network. Once that was under way he used his authority code to activate the Kenny Ansetal case file on his console. Nothing had been done, of course; it was currently classed as neutral. In another week, if there hadn’t been any entries or follow-on activity, the station AI would automatically downgrade it to inactive status.

The results materialized in the zone console, and he called up the profiles of Gail Stratton and Kayleen Edenson, the two witnesses he’d chatted to. He had to use his authority code again, but a minute later their financial records were on the screens in front of him. He noted on the official log that he was looking for a payment transfer indicating one of them had sold the i-3800. He also opened the finance records to full data display for a month before the incident, which quadrupled the information on the screens, showing outgoing payments, their purchases, as well as income. It began to scroll down, and he scanned it methodically for the kind of entry he wanted. Bar accounts were easy to spot; he knew the names of Newcastle’s clubland well enough. Pattern analysis was instinctive, part of his detective’s training, aided by years of experience. Heavy spending early in the evening, soon tailing off. The girls bought their own drinks to start with, the kind of spending that usually expired mid-evening. Someone else stepped in to buy the drinks: QED, they didn’t have regular boyfriends.

He was equally adept at recognizing the supplementary data points. Clothes store accounts dropped through the zone display, and he quickly read along the line, seeing what they’d bought with a well-practiced eye. He found everything he needed within five minutes, but let the scroll continue so no one could really determine what he’d looked at. Their basic profiles also showed their ages, which decided it for him.

With their profiles and finance closed back into the case file, he used a patch program to monitor Gail’s e-i location through the city communication routers. The patch allowed him to piggyback the tracer request on the North case authority. There was so much data flowing into that subnetwork, it was unlikely anyone would spot it without a full forensic audit. Even so, it wasn’t logged as his request—good old Ari had that honor. A phishing tap had caught his codes yesterday.

That done, Ian spent the remaining forty minutes trying to spot any vehicle that kept turning up at the same time that junction smartdust was scorched in a magnetic flash. Abner had been right: Whoever was doing it was very professional. They were switching license codes.

He signed out of the station at seven thirty, and took his car home for a quick shower and a change. By eight fifteen he was back out on the street, and calling a taxi, ready and eager for everything the glorious city could offer a single man on a Saturday night.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

Ian consulted Gail’s location icon flashing away in his iris smartcell grid. “The Indigo Parrot,” he said, a reasonable enough club in Newgate Street.

She’d be surprised to see him. They normally were, but that was always a good opening line of the Lanagin bullshit charm offensive. Information ruled all in this century, the ultimate currency; and his edge—drinking a whole lot deeper than most from the eternal datastream—made him very wealthy indeed. He knew her age, height, bra size, weight, that she was on the market, and as a nice little bonus, her medical record, which showed she was clean of any STDs; all knowledge to be manipulated to his advantage.

Ian closed the secure link to the station and settled back to enjoy the ride.

S
UNDAY,
J
ANUARY 20, 2143

It was another cloudless winter morning, clear cold air allowing the sun to shine hard and bright on the winterbound city. There was no heat in the radiance, so the sunlight made little impression on the banks of snow other than sending a few trickles of slush leaking across the roads and pavements.

Traffic in the center of Newcastle was sluggish. The ring road was closed to all non-HDA traffic for the day. Sometime just after midnight a pair of Airbus C-121T-FC SuperRocs had flown in to Newcastle airport, their massive Rolls-Royce Thames engines waking up half of the city as they flew low overhead. Deliberately, Vance Elston, felt; making their presence known, emphasizing the HDA’s authority and purpose. The Norths might own the city, but even they had to acknowledge it was the HDA that ultimately called the shots. It was the expedition that dominated everyone’s thoughts now, and the procession of planes and vehicles around the city was turning the day into a carnival. Thousands of residents were ignoring the cold and lining the route to enjoy the spectacle of heavy military-style machinery heading through the gateway. Short of a full Zanthstorm deployment, it was the greatest action the St. Libra gateway would probably ever see. Who wanted to miss that?

Vance’s limousine slowed as it approached the western end of Mosley Street, and the auto negotiated the snow piles blocking the gutter to pull up close to the pavement. He stepped out and stared up at the ancient stone steeple of the St. Nicholas cathedral, frowning at the odd little gold-and-scarlet wooden box halfway up that housed its clock. The bells were ringing cheerfully, and a reasonable number of people were answering the call for the holy day’s communion service—mostly elderly, Vance noticed with some disapproval. Didn’t young people have time for the Lord these days? Major Vermekia and Antrinell Viana were waiting outside the ornate age-darkened wooden doors set back into the entrance archway.

Vance greeted Vermekia warmly. “Busy time?” he asked.

“I’m so jet-lagged right now I’m gonna loop around on myself and bite my own ass,” Vermekia grumbled. “The general sends his personal greetings, and wishes you bon voyage.”

“Tell him thank you. Much appreciated,” Vance said.

The three of them moved to one side, away from the mildly curious gaze of well-dressed parishioners entering the cathedral.

“Jupiter called back,” Vermekia said. “Constantine in person answered the general’s questions. He completely denied that they were in any way involved in the murder.”

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” Antrinell said.

“Maybe. And while we’re on deniability, Constantine also said they never found a sentient on St. Libra, but admitted that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Fair enough, it’s a big planet.”

“Any word on when we’re shipping out?” Vance asked.

“Nah, the general wants to see where the investigation leads. He’s going to give it a few more days to allow the logistics corps to get their act together, but realistically it’s impossible to issue a recall order now.”

“Detective Hurst’s team is working quite hard, actually,” Vance admitted. “They’ve put together an impressive virtual of the city so they can attempt to trace the murderer’s movements last week.”

“Is it an alien?” Vermekia asked directly.

“If it is, it had local help.”

“Huh. Well we’ve got enough nut-jobs worshipping the Zanth. If there’s another species lurking about on St. Libra it’s probably got its followers, too.”

“What worries me most about this is if the sentients have found a way though the gateway undetected. It isn’t a pleasant thought, but it would explain a lot.”

“True. How’s Tramelo working out?”

“Freedom-happy the first day,” Vance said. “Testing her boundaries, which was only to be expected. But she’s quiet for now. She’s definitely one person who firmly believes the alien exists.”

“You want to interrogate her again?”

“Not necessary. Not yet. I am concerned about her past, whatever it is, but I can see how troubled she is by the alien. She thinks it’s going to kill us all if we give it a chance.” He gave Vermekia a significant look.

“And you?”

“There are too many inconsistencies for this to be an ordinary murder, even as part of a covert corporate operation,” Vance admitted.

“And the kill methodology is one giant consistency,” Vermekia concluded. “What about Jay Chomik’s detector systems?”

“Nothing.” Antrinell sighed. “The city is ringed tight with them now. If a Zanth molecule sneezes, we’ll know about it.”

Vance grinned. “I like the metaphor, but this isn’t Zanth. Not its style.”

“I’m glad you know so much about it,” Vermekia said. “But something is killing Norths, and for all they’re a bunch of weird clones, they’re valuable to trans-stellar civilization as a whole.”

“I’ve reviewed Tramelo’s testimony and the autopsy on the 2North,” Antrinell said. “I’ve got to say, to me it looks like a guy in some kind of weird power suit or with dark cyborg implants.”

“If it’s a lone psycho, why wait twenty years between killings?” Vermekia asked.

“That’s one question on psychology, one query. And we’re putting together a multibillion-dollar expedition because of it? That’s too extreme.”

“The expedition was launched because of the uncertainty. We have to know. We
have
to.”