The Administration Series (126 page)

They took the stairs, and by the time they reached the eleventh floor they had to stop in the corridor for Chevril to get his breath back. Toreth leaned on the wall — wincing as the bruises protested — and watched the other senior panting, hands braced on his thighs.

After a while Toreth said, "You ought to get to the gym more often."

"That's what Elena keeps telling me." He straightened. "Ah, bloody hell. We should've used the bloody lift."

"Somewhere like this? Even if it worked, I don't fancy being in an enclosed space with an emergency stop."

Chevril looked up and down the empty corridor, his breathing still heavy. "Do you really think someone would try something?"

"Probably not. But I don't want to end up having to explain to Justice what we were doing here, in uniform but without an investigation in progress, after we had to call for assistance."

"Fair point. Okay, let's get on with it and get out."

They walked down the corridor, which was fortunately blessed with a logical numbering system. Toreth stopped and checked his hand screen. "This is the one."

Chevril nodded. "Shall I? If he recognises you, he might do something stupid. I'm not getting shot when I'm not properly on duty. Plays hell with the pension."

"Go ahead."

The comm proved to be broken, so Chevril settled for thumping the door. It took nearly a minute to get a response, before the door opened a crack.

Through the space Toreth could just see a woman's face — pale in a frame of short, blonde hair — and, lower down, a child, dark-eyed and with skin the colour of milky coffee.

Chevril held up his ID, but the uniform had already registered. Her eyes went wide with fear, and she started to close the door. Chev put his foot in the way. "Don't be stupid."

Reluctantly, she let them in. From an unobstructed viewpoint, she proved to be somewhere in her late twenties and fairly attractive, in a pinched way. She was also pregnant — not heavily, but enough to show and to make her ineligible for various methods of interrogation. The little girl moved round behind her, shy in front of the strangers.

Toreth nodded to Chevril, who stepped back, letting him take over. "We want to speak to Chris Harper. Is he in?"

"No." He was preparing to cut his way through the ritual denials, but her expression had changed to one of surprise and, oddly, relief. "He's gone out — just to the shop. He'll be back."

"We'll wait."

She showed them through to the tiny living room. An effort had been made to decorate the room, but spreading damp darkened one wall, the cheap wallpaper mottled with black patches. Fresh air from the wide-open window failed to eradicate the smell of mold.

Toreth stood by the door, in case Chris was in another room waiting for a chance to run. The woman offered them a drink, which they refused, and then perched on the edge of a chair, her arms around the girl.

"You're sure he'll be back?" Chevril asked.

"Yes, of course. A few minutes at the most. I thought you might be him. We've been having trouble with the door. We've complained to the building agent, but he won't do anything about it."

Whatever the reason for her earlier change of mind, she was still nervous as a cat. He let her keep talking, while he waited by the door.

Nervous or not, her estimate had been good. After six minutes, Toreth heard the front door open. He stepped away, out of line of sight from the hallway, and put his finger to his lips. She nodded.

The child beside her called out, "Daddy!"

After a few seconds the living room door opened and Chris stepped through, balancing full shopping bags. "I'm here, 'gator. I — " Then he saw Toreth and stopped dead. "Oh,
fuck
."

Reflexively, the woman put her hands over the girl's ears. "Chris?"

He dropped the bags onto a chair and went to stand beside her, touching her shoulder but looking at Toreth and Chevril.

Toreth smiled, pleasant and calm, keeping the coldness for his voice. "I'd like a word with you."

"Dina, I need some privacy here." Chris's eyes didn't leave Toreth's face, pleading with him. "Take Allie, go downstairs to Manak's. I'll come and get you when we're done."

Toreth shook his head. "No. Chev, stay in here and keep them company."

Out of the corner of his eye, Toreth could see Chevril grinning. He kept his own face expressionless, but it was an effort. Chris had just handed them whatever they wanted from him on a plate.

Dina looked between them. "Chris?" she asked again.

Chris glared at Toreth, then nodded. "It's all right. Everything's going to be fine."

Reluctantly, he obeyed Toreth's gesture to leave the room. Out in the hallway, Toreth pointed to a door at random. "What's that?"

"Bedroom."

Perfect. "That'll do."

The bedroom was better than he'd hoped. Reminders of — what had her name been? Dina? — everywhere, and best of all, a cot in the corner. Exactly what he wanted to keep Chris's mind focused on cooperation.

"Sit on the bed. Good. Now, you're going to answer some questions for me. There's no need to make this official. If I like the answers, we'll go away and you can tell Dina everything
is
fine. Understand?"

"Yes. I understand." The anger showed only in his eyes, not his voice. "What do you want?"

"I want to know about your employer."

"About Jon Kemp?" He'd expected more resistance, but Chris seemed almost relieved. "That would be my
former
employer. Sure. What do you want to know?"

"And also about his father."

That produced slightly more of a reaction, a brief hesitation — a man deciding what was safe to say. "I don't know anything about him. Except that after he told me that Jon wouldn't be paying me any more, he offered to pick up my contract."

Sacked, then immediately reemployed. Obviously Kemp wanted Chris where he could keep an eye on him, at least for a while. "Did you accept?"

"Did I
accept
?" Chris laughed. "Of course I did. You don't turn people like him down, especially not when they make it pretty clear that it's an order, not an offer."

"Well, at least it's a job."

"Except that the tight bastard cut the rate and won't pay me everything Jon owed me and I don't feel like pushing it with him. So I owe money to the . . . well, to lots of people, and I'm up shit creek."

One of Warrick's listed vulnerabilities — a disgruntled employee. "That's what you get for working in arrears. What are you doing for him?"

He grimaced. "I'm supposed to be keeping an eye on Jon. You won't be surprised to hear Kemp's sacked the previous watchers. So I'm back doing my favourite job, for less money."

"Music to my ears. So what's Jonny been doing since I saw him?"

"I don't know." Chris held his hand up. "I really don't know. He's been with Kemp senior since Saturday evening, back at the family mansion. I think after the last fuckup, Kemp's planning to keep him locked in his room for a while. About the only thing I've done is collect Jon's gear from the campus house. Not that I care if Kemp wants to pay me to do nothing."

Well, even Jonny probably had the sense to stay out of trouble for a while. "I want to know everything Jon Kemp's been up to that his father wouldn't want people to find out about."

Chris shrugged, temporising. "Well . . . I didn't work for him for that long. Ten months. He promised me a corporate contract after three — then he said no deal. I was planning to leave as soon as I could find something else."

"Bad timing," Toreth said without sympathy.

"No shit. You probably noticed that he's got a screw loose. Not one fucking screw tightened, in fact. But he paid well, and that's why I stayed. All we had to do was clear up after him and make sure his father never heard anything he wouldn't like."

"So tell me what happened in ten months."

"Not much. I dealt with suppliers and prostitutes, I took him to some very dodgy clubs and stopped people beating him up in them, I paid off a couple of women who'd pissed him off, and I had a word with another one who took it into her head to get in touch with Justice about him."

Toreth wondered if one of those three was Daedra's sister. It didn't matter, though. There was nothing there he could use — none of that would come as a surprise to Kemp. "Anything else?"

"Well . . . " The word dragged out with a promising show of reluctance.

"What?"

"We dumped a body for him. Woman. We cleaned her up and dropped her in the river."

At the usual place, no doubt. A good choice, because by the time she was found, if she was found, connecting her to Jon Kemp would be Hell's own job. Toreth had a brief but absolutely clear image of Chris and his friends, of the body being lowered in. Of Sara's face, sliding under the water. He might never have found out what had happened to her.

Anger tightened his shoulders, sending twinges down his back, but losing his temper again over might-have-beens wasn't productive. "Who was she? How did she die?"

"I got rid of the body, I didn't check her DNA and do an autopsy."

"Funny. What
do
you know?"

"She was a prostitute, and she tried to blackmail him over something. I don't know what about if it wasn't the obvious — pick any fucking thing, he could have done it."

Useless, no-account victim. He pursued it anyway, because it was all he had so far. "Why was he worried about her?"

"I don't think he was — I expect she just said the wrong thing and he lost his temper. Easily done, with him. Or he got carried away once he started on her. Mind you, he did mention that she had Almond's number. That's who she was threatening to call."

"Who?"

"Almond. I don't know his first name — the bloke who does the same thing for Kemp senior that I did for his son. Worked for Kemp forever, according to Jon. And he scares the shit out of Jon too, so hearing Almond's name might've been enough to tip him over."

Interesting. "Corporate or private?"

He shrugged. Toreth looked at his watch. All taking too long, and he wanted to finish and get going. He took a single step towards Chris, who looked up from his contemplation of the floor.

"Hey! I don't know. Would you prefer me to lie about it? If you want me to guess, I'll say no. Almond's private, for private messes."

"Does Kemp make much of a mess?"

"I should think so." Chris raised his eyebrows. "I mean, with the way his son behaves? The man can't be normal."

Not a bad point. "No. I didn't think much of his sense of humour, for one thing."

Chris glanced towards the door. For the first time, Toreth noted. Impressive discipline, under the circumstances.

"Listen, that was Kemp's idea," Chris said, voice low. "You understand? It . . . oh, fuck." Toreth knew what was coming. "I was just doing my job. It wasn't anything personal. You understand?"

Pleading. Looking at the door again, one step away from breaking down. Don't hurt them — if you want to hurt someone, hurt me.

Toreth didn't particularly want to hear it. He didn't feel a pressing need to settle any score with Chris, at least not pressing enough to want to complicate things any further. Besides, he might need him later, and he'd be far more useful grateful and no more humiliated than he had been.

He was about to wrap things up, when he found himself sidetracked by the automatic, professional pursuit of something unusual in his witnesses' behaviour. A suspicion strengthened by something missing from Chris's file.

"If I asked for it, you could show me a valid conception license, couldn't you?"

Chris stared at him for a long moment, then nodded jerkily. "Sure. Yes. Of course."

Toreth pulled out his comm earpiece. "Thirty seconds makes that an official enquiry to the Department of Population."

"No!" He started to rise, only relaxing when Toreth put the comm away. "All right. No. We don't have one."

Which neatly explained Chris's surprising willingness to talk about Kemp, as well as Dina's reaction in the hallway.

"Tell me about it."

Chris stared back, sullen and frightened, until Toreth reached for his pocket again.

"
All right
. Allie isn't my daughter — you probably guessed that. Dina had a partner, not for long. Allie was still a baby when we got together. And don't get me wrong, she's a lovely kid. But — " He shrugged. "I wanted —
we
wanted — a child together. But the DoP won't give us a license. We applied, we did it all legally. Christ, we even appealed it when they turned us down, with the best representative we could afford, which wasn't saying much. But the system's not fair."

His voice rose, making justifications he must know wouldn't do any good. "We're not doing anything wrong. I don't have any kids. I've never even applied to the DoP before. I've got a right to — "

Bored, Toreth cut him off. This wasn't what he was interested in. "You have a right to make the application, not to have it granted. How are you working it? Implant failures?"

Chris shook his head. "The DoP doesn't accept double implant failure these days. Even if it's true, they'll force a termination. We're buying a fake pregnancy for . . . a woman we know. She'll call the baby hers and then we'll adopt him. We can get a license for that."

"It'll get picked up at the hospital, when they do the genetics."

"There's a . . . it's all taken care of."

"Expensive?"

Chris nodded. "Very."

It would be. The reproduction control laws allowed no latitude. When everyone in the Administration was obliged to have a free and extremely reliable contraceptive implant, unlicensed pregancies were almost always both deliberate and criminal. So bribes alone would cost a fortune: corrupt doctors to be paid off, other staff at the hospital and test lab, probably someone at the Department of Population. Someone like Chris would never be able to afford them on his own, and for an organised scheme to repay the time and expense, it would have to be big. In all probability, Chris and his wife would be one of dozens. Even hundreds.