Great North Road (22 page)

Sid called Eva and Ian back from their assignments, and started explaining the logs he wanted lifting. Ralph Stevens came over, and the four of them studied a map of the area up on the main wallscreen, which had a depressing number of broken road macromesh sections and kaput smartdust. They kept taking the perimeter back until Sid just said: “Sod it, work on a kilometer radius around the crime scene.”

“That includes the Scotswood Road,” Eva protested. “Which has the main entrance to the Pinefield singletown. It practically points down Water Street.”

“I know,” he said. “But we have an AI to establish the basic virtual. After that it’s just elimination.”

Her red hair swished about as she shook her head in dismay. “I’ll start to set it up, but I’ll need some help.”

“I’ll see if Ari and Abner have finished.”

“They haven’t,” Ralph said.

“Aye, man, come on,” Sid said. “We know now he’s been dead since Friday. Friday, man! And no one’s noticed?”

Ian leaned in a bit closer. “It was a C. Has to be. Now, nobody’s ever going to admit that.”

“Just because we can’t identify the victim, doesn’t mean we can’t find the murderer,” Sid countered.

“Love the optimism,” Ralph told him.

A quarter hour later five technicians from the Felltech Zone company—specializing in hi-rez holograms—were escorted up to the Market Street station’s second floor and into the defunct zone theater. They each pushed a trolley of equipment with them.

Ralph delivered the news to Office3 ten minutes after that.

“So that’s what got up O’Rouke’s arse,” Ian muttered.

“Well, I’m impressed,” Eva told him. “That’s exactly what we need to run the Elswick Wharf traffic virtual in. You guys do know what you’re doing, eh?”

Ralph gave Sid a suspicious glance. “Sure.”

Preliminary forensic data from Elswick Wharf started to come in around seven o’clock. Sid brought Dedra and Reannha over to assist with tabulating the results.

“I want a database on everything,” he told them. “If we have a footprint, you need to tell me what kind of shoe, who made it, how many were sold, and who bought them. Same goes for threads, paint scrapes—whatever they send us.”

It wasn’t quite the bonanza he’d been hoping for.

“Sorry,” Tilly said when she called Sid an hour later. “But for what it’s worth, we have to be dealing with a professional crew. They knew what they were doing. There were very few confirmed traces.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Sid replied. “I guessed that as soon as I saw the corpse.”

“One piece of good news. We managed to lift a lot of snow samples with the tire tracks on. They were covered, of course, but we’re using a more sophisticated version of the CDMR in the lab. I might have a tread pattern for you later tonight.”

“Tilly, you are a fucking angel, pet.”

“It gets better.”

“Go on.”

“Professional crew, remember. I haven’t got a tread match yet, but the distance between the tires was easy.”

“Oh yes! One point seven eight meters?”

“See, one day you’ll make a grand chief constable.”

“Thanks, Tilly; let me have the tread pattern as soon as you get it.”

He called the office together. “We just got a break,” he told them. “The vehicle was a standard citycab. The wheel separation distance is a perfect fit.”

The reaction was to be expected, reluctant grins and knowing glances. The lightening of the load. Everyone was suddenly back on familiar territory again.

“What?” Ralph asked.

“It’s the standard way to ship anything illegal around town,” Ian explained to him. “There are so many of them, they’re anonymous; it’s like the shell game multiplied by a thousand. Wherever they are, they’re not suspicious. Every gang in the city either owns one or has access to a few. So this was a professional hit. No aliens involved.”

Ralph pulled a face.

“Okay,” Sid said. “Everyone back to work. Eva, I want every police report on taxis beginning Friday morning. Anything suspicious—a stolen taxi, whatever—find it for me.”

It took her eight minutes. “Got it,” Eva announced loudly and triumphantly. “Taxi burnout spotted by an agency patrol along the edge of the Fawdon GSW on Monday morning. It’s a regular patrol, and they swear it wasn’t there on Sunday.”

“Get me the perimeter mesh memories for Monday morning,” Sid ordered.

“Already there,” Eva said.

The office stopped to watch as real-time feeds of the GSW perimeter came up on the largest wallscreen. “Mesh at the metro station,” Eva said. The image was showing a fence, but not a good one, running down the northern side of the metro track, links rusting, with sagging sections clogged by weeds—which provided an easy ladder for snow to mount. Beyond it was a wasteland of derelict buildings standing like lonely broken teeth between the piles of rubble that were the buildings that the city had gotten around to demolishing.

“There,” Eva said. She enhanced the image, centering on a burned-out vehicle.

“Aye, that’s the one,” Sid said. The bodywork was instantly recognizable, even though the carbon and aluminum had melted and sagged. It must have been a fierce fire to do that, he thought; there was nothing left of the internal fittings. Which spoke of an accelerant, and quite a lot of it judging by how much snow had melted around the wreck. “I want it.”

Sid took Ralph in his car, following the big agency BMW GroundKing vehicles as they joined together in a convoy along the A191 heading east from the center of the city out to Fawdon.

Eva called. “Clear route,” she said.

Sid’s grid threw up a street map. The city traffic management AI had shunted everyone off Jubilee Road, giving the convoy absolute priority.

Strobes flared and sirens began their high-pitched wail as the lead GroundKing turned into Jubilee Road. Sid was grinning as he accelerated sharply. Traction stability warnings flashed amber on the dashboard as the car began to slip on the sparkling frost that was smothering the tarmac; then the auto compensated, and they were racing down Jubilee Road. It was damn childish, but you just couldn’t beat being at the front end on a deployment like this.

“Doesn’t this sort of tip them off?” Ralph asked, raising his voice above the noise.

“The whole city knows we’re here,” Sid told him. “Gangs monitor the traffic just for times like this. Besides, no one involved is going to be within a kilometer of the taxi.”

“Then why?”

“Keep the civilians out of the way. I don’t want any accidents.”

“So it’s overkill?”

“We need the taxi, and this is a GSW area. My forensic team has to be safe, that means a minimum number of constables to secure a perimeter. And as we have an unlimited budget …”

They crossed over the metro track. The lead GroundKing, beefed up with riot armor and protective buffers, didn’t bother with going along the side of the GSW area to an official gateway—it rammed straight through the flimsy fence and charged directly at the burned-out taxi. Sid crossed into the GSW and slowed, taking care to keep in the track marks of the vehicles in front. You never knew what was lying around in the filth and rubble of somewhere like this.

Government Services Withdrawn meant just that: a civic area that had been designated surplus due to emigration. Inevitably it was the poorest area of town, when its dwindling population fell below a certain density, taking it below the cost-effective level for a city council to maintain. Then the remaining homeowners and businesses were bought out and the streets closed down and sealed off. After that, the neighborhood simply awaited redevelopment, theoretically through either the private or public purse. In reality it always had to be a GE grant; financial institutions directed their investments to the new worlds these days. Nobody cared about dreary collapsed slumzones on Earth, because there was never a decent return to be made. So inside the perimeter there were no utilities, no transnet connections, no council services provided; no fire brigade tenders would respond to an incident inside, nor would ambulance or police. Businesses were not permitted to operate within a GSW. Legitimate businesses, that is; for every other sort of enterprise the GSW areas were a godsend. Which was why the smartdust ringing the boundary was always under constant rip attack and EM-pulsed and sprayed with toxic crap. The city renewed sections on a weekly basis. Police didn’t intervene much with the occasional glimpses of low-life excess the meshes gleaned amid the debris and the derelicts; only visible murders and all-out riots were subject to suppression operations, when the riot squads plowed in, cracking heads and dragging off the known recidivists for a one-way ticket to Minisa.

Grid graphics showed Sid the GroundKings encircling the taxi. Agency constables in light body armor and carrying automatic weapons jumped from the back of each vehicle and started to fan out, securing the surrounding land. Sid climbed out carefully, the bulletproof vest worn under his leather jacket restricting his movements. For once he didn’t trigger the badge on his coat. No need to give the GSW residents an obvious target.

His e-i quested a direct link to Tilly Lewis. “Okay, we’re secure. You can come in.”

Two Northern Forensics vans drove in, followed by a big tow truck. Lighting rigs telescoped up from the vans, immersing the blackened wreck in a pool of brilliant white illumination.

“So much for matching a tire tread,” Tilly complained as she got her first good look at the taxi. The tires were misshapen black bracelets shrink-wrapped around the wheel rims, their wire mesh poking through the frazzled slirubber.

“I want everything you can get for me,” Sid said. “A complete workup.”

“Boot’s open,” she pointed out. “So the fire will have scoured the inside of any traces.”

“They’re good, but you’re better.”

“Oh please.”

“Come on, pet, we’re still short of solid information.”

Tilly pulled the hood of her green isolation suit over her pink bobble hat. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks. I’ll access your report in the morning.”

“Morning? You want this processed overnight?”

“Of course.”

“Sid, I’ll have to call the lab techs back in. That’s like quintuple time.”

“You can thank me in the morning.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Nothing else for me to do until you produce those vital clues. The operation commander will keep your guys safe. And my bed beckons.”

“I hate you.”

“Just keep thinking: quintuple time.” And with that he got in the car and drove home.

W
EDNESDAY,
J
ANUARY 16, 2143

Sid hadn’t expected to be back in Elston’s office quite so quickly. Not after yesterday’s meeting, but here he was at half past nine in the morning, barely up to speed on all the data that had come in during the night. Ralph Stevens had insisted on visiting the HDA base, so Sid drove over the Tyne Bridge in the murky gloom of a winter fog, which he hated more than the ice and snow. The car’s radar threw up slender green outlines across the windshield, helping him steer along the road with relative confidence. The only thing he could see of the van in front was a bright scarlet smear of rear lights, and between them the central green light showing it was driving on manual, while the oncoming lane was a torrent of blue-white glare. Even with modern safety aids and auto, several cars had shunted or worse. Three times he had to slow and go around transport agency patrol cars, which had arrived to sort out the prangs.

“Put your log on hold, please,” Ralph had said as they walked in to the administration sector where Elston had his office. And once again Aldred was there waiting in the office.

“What did the taxi tell us?” Elston asked as soon as they’d settled in front of his desk.

“The fire was extensive,” Sid said. “They knew what they were doing. No tire tread left for us to match. Same with the interior, no hair or skin flakes. However, there were two possible mistakes. First off, a complete set of male clothes was left in the boot. They were doused in bioil, but they were bundled, which left enough residue to work out their size, especially the shoes. It’s a good fit for the corpse.”

“Can you identify them?”

“The lab is working on it. It looks like he was wearing an expensive silk suit.”

“Well, that narrows it down,” Aldred muttered.

“It’s a possible lead,” Sid countered. “Of course, clothes are circumstantial, but if you’re destroying evidence it would make sense for them to belong to the victim.”

“So the body was in the boot, and they used the taxi to transport it to the Tyne?” Elston said.

“That’s the way it’s shaping up, yes. Most of the taxi’s electronics were ruined in the fire, but again there’s enough left for a reconstruction and analysis. It won’t be cheap or quick, but Osborne seems to think they might be able to recover some software from what’s left of the vehicle’s network.”

“So we’ll get the log?”

“No. The network’s memory chip had been removed. But if this was a professional crew, they would be using a false registration license with the macromesh; that’s gang procedure one-oh-one. However, that kind of fix is custom-written. If any of the software is still in the network, we might be able to trace it.”

Elston pursed his lips. “Okay, that’s impressive, even with the number of maybes you shoved in there.”

“Actually, it’s almost irrelevant. I’m not relying on that at all, it’s all very dependent on lab work that’s going to take weeks, and you’re right: too many maybes. Rule of thumb, if you don’t solve a case, or at least have a prime suspect, in the first five days, you probably won’t get it to court. The good news is that the taxi was hallmarked. Nano-level threads are incorporated in the chasses and bodywork at the factory, tens of thousands of them. You can’t get rid of them; every component is riddled with them. So we identified it as a taxi that was stolen eighteen months ago from its owner in Winlaton.”

“And who’s going to notice one more taxi in Newcastle?” Aldred said.

Elston ignored him to fix Sid with a stare. “So what’s your next step?”

This was the part Sid was looking forward to, the office detective’s version of speeding down the fast lane with siren and strobes cranked to maximum. “It’s all down to backtracking the taxi now. We know where it ended up, in the GSW, and we know where that trip started: Elswick Wharf. So I want its route between the two.”