Necropath (18 page)

“Yes, sir.”

The air traffic was light at this early hour. Chandra counted the winking flight-lights of perhaps half a dozen other fliers as they traversed the red and blue air-corridors above the Station. In due course, perhaps half a kilometre ahead, Chandra spotted the red tail lights of the Ferrari and the police flier, bright against the star field.

Thirty seconds later he eased his flier above the police vehicle, looking down on the fugitive Ferrari. “You can move in now,” Chandra told the pilot. “We’ll be right behind you.”

“Yes, sir.” Instantly, a white cone of light shot from the police flier, targeting the Ferrari. An amplified voice blared: “Police patrol. Commence touch-down sequence at landing pad—”

He never finished the order. The Ferrari accelerated, disappearing from the cone of white light and dropping from the red air-corridor into illegal air-space. It killed its tail lights, vanishing for a second before Chandra perceived its bulk occluding the street lights down below. The police flier banked and gave chase, Chandra in close pursuit. The force of the acceleration punched him back into his seat. “Hold on, Vishi.”

The killer did what Chandra had feared—lost altitude and raced between towerpiles. The police flier dropped after it, and Chandra had no option but to follow, adrenalin pumping with the effort demanded to keep close control of the vehicle through the obstacle course of buildings and underpasses. The killer was attempting to go to earth. He would land, ditch his flier, and disappear into the crowds. Chandra contacted control, ordered them to get ground-based officers on the scene—for all the good it would do. There were too few officers to cover the potential landing area.

Vishi drew his pistol, glancing at Chandra for confirmation. Chandra nodded. “On stun, Vishi. I want him alive.”

The Ferrari slowed down as it eased between office blocks, and the police fliers were forced to do likewise. Down below, crowds were looking up and gesturing at the chase. Once through the bottleneck, the Ferrari accelerated, losing height so that it screamed a couple of metres above a thoroughfare. Citizens dived for cover, leaving the street a deserted conduit down which the three fliers raced.

Chandra was shaking with the tension of the chase, the fear of making a wrong move. One miscalculation, a second’s loss of concentration, and he and Vishi would be two more flier fatalities for the statistics. He felt his pulse racing as the flier yawed like a speedboat in a storm.

Ahead, the killer’s vehicle approached the end of the street and was faced with an option: the pilot could either gain height quickly and clear the building ahead, or slow and turn the corner. A moment’s indecision cost him the chase: he began to ascend, realised he wouldn’t make it, then tried to slow and turn.

The crash seemed to take place in slow motion. Seconds before the impact, the outcome was obvious. Chandra watched with a fascinated sense of inevitability. The Ferrari banked between the buildings, hit the wall with its underside as it turned the corner, a spray of sparks flying with the impact. The assassin lost control and the flier flipped belly up. For a long second it flew upside-down, weaving crazily along the street, before it dropped and landed with a sickening screech on the deck. It slid along on its crushed roof for a hundred metres, spinning lazily and coming to a sedate, almost dignified halt.

Chandra landed the flier behind the silent, steaming wreckage. He climbed out and approached the Ferrari through a crunching confetti of shattered windscreen. He knelt, peered into the dark, impacted cab. The killer must have died instantly, his torso concertinaed between his seat and the roof. Chandra saw a blood-soaked white shirt speared by popped ribs.

He stood. A crowd was beginning to gather, gawping with the mute fascination of the unaffected. Vishi was on to control, ordering in the crash facilities and forensic.

Chandra joined him. “I wanted him alive, Vishi. I wanted the bastard alive.”

* * * *

He returned the police HQ and for the next hour he compiled a report of the night’s events, then shunted the file through to Sinton. He sat for a long time after that, quiet in his darkened office, and considered his next move.

He made his way to Sinton’s office and paused outside the door, collecting his thoughts. His boss was a big Australian, blunt and often caustic, who worked on the principle of keeping himself distant and aloof from the men in his command. As a result he was feared and loathed by many.

Chandra never came out of a meeting with Sinton without feeling that his every word and gesture had been scrutinised and found wanting. He knocked on the door and entered.

Sinton was scrolling through Chandra’s report. He looked up from behind his desk and stared at Chandra without the slightest hint of a smile.

“The driver of the Ferrari?”

“A hired assassin, sir. I’ve got men looking into his activities, but to be honest—”

“You think it’ll lead nowhere.”

Chandra nodded, avoiding Sinton’s gaze.

“So what now, investigator?” Sinton said, sitting back in his chair and lacing his fingers across his stomach. “How do you intend to proceed?”

“I’ve been giving it some thought, sir, and I’d like to request that we move the focus of inquiry to Verkerk’s World. The political situation seems to have stabilised, so there’d be no danger in that respect.”

Sinton nodded, non-committal.

“It seems the obvious place to continue the investigation,” Chandra continued. “I’d like to look into the Church there, question Elly Jenson’s father. Also the pilot, Patrick Essex, the third man in Bhindra and Marquez’s team that explored the planet—he makes his home there now. I’d like to question him about the killings, see if he knows why his team-mates were targeted.”

Sinton was watching him, silent. Chandra feared the worst—that the Agency could not fund such a trip, that the crimes committed thus far did not warrant such extensive investigations.

Sinton surprised Chandra by saying, “I think that might be a good idea, Investigator. Book passage aboard the next flight to Verkerk’s. Are you taking Lieutenant Vishwanath?”

“Actually, I was wondering if I could take Vaughan—the telepath who first brought the irregularities concerning Weiss to light.”

“Hasn’t he been assisting you with your investigations?”

“In an unofficial capacity, yes, sir.”

“He can be trusted?”

Chandra nodded. “Without a doubt.”

“We’d have to employ him for the duration of the trip, put him on the payroll.”

“I’ll arrange that side of things.”

“Very good.” Sinton nodded again, impassive. “Report back to me on your return. That will be all, Chandra. Good luck.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Chandra returned to his office, thinking that for once he had done something worthy of his commanding officer’s praise. He sat at his desk in the darkness and thought back to the young, ambitious boy he had been, born to Harijan parents on Level Nineteen and running errands for shopkeepers instead of attending school. Never, in his wildest imaginings, had he ever dreamed he would one day leave Earth. He wondered what the ten-year-old Jimmy Chandra would have said to the idea of a voidship journey to the stars.

He called Jeff Vaughan.

His handset showed Vaughan bleary-eyed and obviously drunk. By the evidence of the background noise—the clash of cutlery and babble of voices—he was still in Nazruddin’s.

“Jimmy...” Vaughan tried to focus. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it. Meant to come... You know how it is.”

“Forget it, Jeff. Look, something’s come up.” He told Vaughan about the murders of Bhindra and Marquez. “Yet another link to Verkerk’s World.” He paused. “How would you like a trip out to the colony?”

Vaughan peered up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Say again?”

Chandra repeated the question. “Can you get time off from the ‘port?”

Vaughan smiled. “I’ve just taken a couple of weeks’ leave.”

“Excellent,” Chandra said. “You’d be working for the Agency, getting paid for the trip. Of course, you’d have to bring along your augmentation.”

“Of course.” Vaughan rubbed a hand across his face, as if trying to sober up, gather his thoughts. “Christ, Jimmy. When do we leave?”

“There’s a voidship heading for Verkerk’s in twenty-four hours. I’ll contact you before then to make the arrangements.”

Vaughan was still shaking his head when Chandra signed off.

He sat in the silence of his office, staring into the darkness. He asked himself why he’d requested that Vaughan accompany him. Obviously, as a telepath, his ability would be valuable. But he could think of more personable travelling companions—Vishi, for instance.

As he sat at his desk and stared out at the coming dawn, he considered Vaughan. They would be together for the next few days, perhaps a week. As the telepath was unwilling to divulge anything about his background, then Chandra felt that it was up to him to find out the facts, if possible, for himself.

It was time to investigate Vaughan’s shadowy past.

* * * *

DERVAN

Sukara sat alone at the bar, six empty beer bottles lined up along the counter. The pounding beat of the music matched tempo with her throbbing headache, and she was seeing double. Earlier she’d decided not to take her usual dose of yahd, preferring to get drunk, and now she regretted the decision. She had thought that the alcohol might make her forget her problems, but instead it only seemed to make them worse. The beer made her self-piteous and tearful, concentrated her mind on her situation and allowed her to see no way out.

She tried to focus on the screen behind the bar. The news report showed the pix of a murder victim, a young street kid. Sukara began to cry. The world was an awful place. No matter where she looked—killings and beatings and corruption, everywhere.

She knuckled tears from her cheeks, unable to work out if she was crying for the murdered girl or for herself. Beer, without the yahd, made her like that: maudlin and confused. Even sober she never really knew what was going on in the world, never understood anything outside her own tiny reality— but, drunk, everything seemed even worse, not only confusing but threatening. She told herself that there had been other bad times during the past five years, and she had survived them—but each crisis had seemed worse then the last, and this one was the worst of all.

Sukara had had no customers for four nights. Never before had she gone for so long without trade. For the past couple of years she had averaged three or four customers a night, the majority of them Ee-tees. She had never gone one night without at least one alien customer.

She knew that Fat Cheng knew something. When she’d arrived for work that evening, he’d avoided her gaze, and she had been too scared to ask him what was happening. She wondered if it was something about her that was driving the Ee-tees away, but she could think of nothing she had done to offend anyone. She had done whatever they had wanted—not that that was ever as disgusting or as dangerous as what human men sometimes demanded—and had even sometimes enjoyed the encounters. She had had no opportunity to ask any Ee-tee what might be wrong—her last alien customer had been Dervan, five nights ago, and he had seemed satisfied enough. She began to wonder if it was not something she had done that was keeping them away, but something about her that she had no control over: like, perhaps, she’d reached an age and maturity that aliens no longer found attractive; or, perhaps—if what Fat Cheng had told her was true, and the Ee-tees were more concerned about who you were rather than what you looked like— perhaps the years of working at the bar had changed her, made her less innocent and more cynical, and the aliens didn’t like this.