The Administration Series (161 page)

Ten minutes passed before he could even straighten, never mind stand. He leaned against the wall, gulping air, muscles aching.

Three people in his life he'd known before they'd drowned. The first had been his brother, and they'd both been so young that the memories were no more than faded still photos. Yang had been a witness at SimTech, hardly a person at all. But Karteris he'd spent time with. Karteris he'd seen alive two days ago. Karteris he could imagine struggling, fighting the cramps, could imagine him going down, breathing in water like a kick in the chest . . .

His stomach turned over again, but there was nothing left to throw up. Stupid. He hadn't even fucking liked Karteris.

And thank fucking God that he hadn't fucked the bastard. Illogical as it was, that would have made the whole thing so much worse.

Outside the cubicle, he was relieved to find the room empty. Turn on the tap. Lean down and — cool, chlorinated water in his mouth. He forced himself to rinse and spit until the taste of vomit had cleared. Then he washed his face and left.

Nagra was waiting patiently. Toreth said nothing about his abrupt departure, and she didn't comment.

"Why did it take Justice this long to work out who he was?" Toreth asked when he'd sat back at his desk.

"No one recognised the body, and no one got round to doing the DNA check until this afternoon. I'd say laziness rather than malice."

"You'd think someone there would know him."

"There was damage to the body, including the head. Probably done by rocks when it was washing around, or it might even have been hit by a boat."

Something almost like hope made Toreth's heart rise. "Could he have been dead when he went into the water?"

"The Justice pathologist says not. Post-mortem injuries only." She cocked her head. "You think he was killed to shut him up? Why? I thought he wouldn't play ball with you?"

"I think — " I don't want to think about it at all. "I think we should forget him. Whatever he knew, we'll have to get it from somewhere else."

Toreth tried Nikoletta first. She was in her office, surrounded by a crowd of other admins and weeping copiously. He thought of Sara's opinion that the woman had faked enjoying fucking Karteris. However, that didn't mean the current grief couldn't be real enough. Guilt, maybe. In a way, her intervention might have triggered Karteris's plan to remove Toreth from the scene, and thereby, indirectly, his aborted flight.

He coughed. "Excuse me," he said. "I need to speak to her alone."

The group tightened protectively around its wounded member, but Nikoletta shook her head. "I'll be fine," she said in a tiny, brave voice.

When the room cleared, Toreth closed the door and went to crouch beside her chair. Better a nice, sympathetic interview here than in an interrogation room.

"Nikki? How are you?"

Damp tissues littered the table like leaves. At his words she picked up a handful and burst into fresh tears. Toreth patted her arm and refrained from sighing.

"It's all my fault!" she wailed. "I told you about the drugs. You talked to him, didn't you? It's all my fault for wanting to hurt him. And I can't even tell anyone because they'll all hate me."

Good summary of the situation so far, from a frighteningly selfish point of view.

"Nikki, do you know about anything else Karteris might've been part of? Anything else that might've made him run?"

Tears dried, and she stared at him. "Anything else? No. Why?" The protective streak surfaced again, frown gathering. It would've looked good on her, except for the red eyes and dripping nose. "What are they saying about him?"

"Nothing. I was just wondering. Running like that seemed to be an overreaction to what I said to him, that's all."

He ought to have guessed her next words. "You mean, it maybe wasn't my fault?" The frown deepened. "But . . . no, I can't think of anything." She sniffed. "Nothing ever
happens
here, or it didn't."

Until I turned up.

He was using the wrong bait, or maybe looking for the wrong kind of fish. "Did he say anything to you the last time you saw him? Ask you to do anything?"

To his surprise, she nodded. "He asked me to find him a current address. He said he had to leave the office, and he wanted me to find it and send it to him. The name was Alexandros Vasdeki."

"Did you do it?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good. Send it to me, now. Then go home, why don't you?" Her grieving presence was an irritating reminder of the cause of it. "No one will mind." And it's not like Karteris needs any misfiling doing.

"I'd rather be here, at least for a bit. With things to do. Not stuck at home to think about him . . . "

The name had sounded familiar in Nikoletta's office, and when Toreth opened the file, he discovered why. Alexandros Vasdeki was the man who had considered Theodora Grant suspicious enough to be worth reporting to I&I. Not, however, listed as an official informer under Karteris's control.

He was also listed as a known contact of Theo, his name marked as No Action. One of those who'd been considered so respectable as to be eliminated without interrogation.

Toreth asked the system to run a background check on Vasdeki again, using all the latest up-to-date information. Clean again — apparently a very well-behaved citizen.

On reflection, he should have guessed. It was exactly the kind of thing Toreth would have done, in Karteris's place — kept the important name away from the lists of previously arrested and interrogated prisoners. In fact, Toreth would've padded that list with innocent names to slow down exactly the kind of systematic interrogation approach they had tried, to give himself more time to get clear.

Which all added up to the conclusion that Toreth wasn't thinking clearly enough to get the job done. Karteris's fucking fault, for being stupid enough to drown himself in the —

Toreth sat back in his chair, rubbing his temples. Headache starting — that was too much coffee and too little food. Briefly, he considered finding something to eat, then decided to wait. He'd call B-C and tell him to arrest this Vasdeki, and then go back downstairs to try a couple more prisoners before he went back to the hotel. Perhaps that would make an effective distraction.

His coffee was growing cold, but the idea of touching it made Alexandros queasy. The pavement cafe felt horribly exposed — in the middle of the early evening crowd, it was as though there were a giant screen above his head, an arrow pointing him out to all.

Finally the young woman three tables over answered her comm, turning half towards him as she did so. Dark glasses and a scarf obscured her features, but he recognised Member One. When she stood up and walked away, she left a small briefcase beside her chair.

Walk over, pick it up, stroll away. Easy and natural — no one called out, or tried to stop him. By the time he reached a taxi, he was shaking.

Why had he ever become involved? Why had he ever thought they might succeed?

He turned up the window opaquing and opened the case. A screen lay on top, and he sat back, holding it tightly as he read his instructions.

Hard to get past the first lines, which drew his attention back repeatedly. His arrest had been ordered. He'd expected it — feared it — from the moment he'd heard that Theo had been taken away from the failed ambush by ambulance to the hospital, not the morgue. A stolen ID had paid for this taxi. Another lay in the case, along with an amount of money that under other circumstances he'd have been delighted to see. Even now, it lifted his heart because hopefully it meant flight, escape.

Please God that arrangements had been made to let him leave now and take Gina with him.

He read on, a chill settling through him at the next sentence.

'I can't explain and I won't order — only ask, and pray that you'll have the courage to do what's necessary . . . '

No swimming today.

Back at the hotel that evening, Toreth forced himself to eat and then went up to his room and began pulling together the basics of the report on Political Criminal. The first few days — initial interviews, case reviews — included nothing that needed close attention, which was good because the words came off one file, through his brain and back out into the report without leaving any lasting impression. He had to keep reading back over what he'd written to work out what he needed to say next.

Something to do, as Nikoletta had said.

Even so, without the prospect of a weekend of dedicated fucking to distract him his mind kept circling back to the news of the afternoon. Eventually he found himself staring out of the darkened window, seeing ocean. Black ocean. Cold, brilliant stars overhead. Night breeze, water growing colder. He pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead, trying to stave off the inevitable moment of imagining going under and —

Drink. He needed a bloody great big drink.

He emptied the minibar of everything that looked moderately drinkable, lined the bottles up on the floor by the foot of the bed, and lay on his stomach, looking down at them. Start with the most palatable. The first two miniature bottles of generic whiskey went down easily, and he closed his eyes, concentrating on the warmth spreading from his throat down into his stomach.

Better. He counted the bottles again, deciding how many he could drink and still function tomorrow. However he calculated it, if he drank enough to blot out the nghtmares, he would be far too hung over to work.

When he'd just about resigned himself to a bad night, another source of distraction occurred to him.

He put the shadow fuck disk on and watched the first ten minutes. Concentrating on Warrick, trying to reach back to the memory of the sofa, to Warrick beside him, to the following two days of fun and fucking and olive groves and beaches. Beaches. No. Fun as recreating Warrick's beach fantasy had been, it was better to stay away from there, and from the courtyard.

The embarrassment of his panic in the tub felt distant now. All he remembered was the water, the overwhelming fear as it closed over him. Feeding into the image of Karteris struggling, of the unheard cries suddenly cut off by —

He switched the screen off and threw the remote across the room.

Another miniature bottle, vodka this time. When he'd finished it, he rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling. This was going to be a bad one. Why the hell hadn't it all happened when Warrick was here?

I want him, Toreth thought, the admission sickening and weirdly comforting at the same time. I want him here, to make me forget all this crap. I want to fuck him until I'm too tired to dream about anything and fall asleep with —

Toreth looked at his watch. Ten o'clock. Maybe he could go down to the bar in the hotel and find someone — sod his virtuous image. Or . . . he pulled his comm earpiece out of his pocket and called Warrick before he could even wonder if he was with Carnac. Fortunately, Warrick answered immediately.

"Toreth?"

"Yeah, it's me. I just wanted — " And then Toreth couldn't think of anything to say.

"Is something wrong?" Warrick asked.

"Not really. I mean, yeah, I've had better days." He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to focus, trying not to see Karteris. "Feels like I'm getting nowhere fast." Swimming for a distant shore. "I nearly had a suspect, briefly, one of the seniors, but they fished the stupid bastard out of the sea this morning, dead. So I'm back to square one."

"Ah." Amazing what a lot of meaning Warrick could cram into one syllable.

"Yeah. Ah. Look, can you make it out here this weekend?" He found he didn't care how pathetic it sounded. "Friday, or whenever." Tomorrow. Now.

"Damn. Toreth, if I could come, I would, I promise. If I could get on a flight tonight, I'd — " He stopped. "But I'm confined to my flat."

"What?" Confined to — what kind of a fucking excuse was that? "Why? Who by?"

"SimTech are assessing a security threat — someone has been attempting surveillance on the building, and on myself in particular. Until they find out who they're treating it as a physical threat. I woke up this morning to find half the security team outside my door. I'm working from the office in the flat until they find out who's behind it." He sighed. "These things are always so damn tangled — corporations, independent surveillance companies, possibly sabotage teams. You know how it is. I can't see it being resolved by the weekend. And it would happen now, of all times, with the report and . . . everything."

Toreth heard a voice that sounded remarkably like his own say, "What a fucking pain."

"Quite so. Of course, you're more than welcome to come here, if you'd like to. However, I'm afraid it would be the polar opposite of last weekend." Toreth could imagine the wry smile. "Privacy is in short supply — the place is crawling with security."

"That's okay. I've got things to do here." Like kill myself.

There was a brief pause before Warrick asked carefully, "Will you be all right?"

Why the hell wouldn't he . . . oh. For a minute, he'd completely forgotten Karteris. "Yeah, sure, I'll be fine. Talk to you later."

After the connection cut off, he considered calling Warrick back and confessing. If he could've come up with a way of phrasing it that didn't make him want to die of embarrassment, he might even have done it.

Warrick, you're right, I
am
paranoid and pathetic. I had you followed because I thought you were fucking Carnac.

Oddly, that was the first time since the start of the call that he'd thought of Carnac and the name made him moan out loud. What if Carnac discovered what he'd done? He pressed his hands over his eyes, trying once more to block out an image but this time of Carnac's delighted smile. The arrogant fucking bastard would really get off on the idea that Toreth thought Carnac was a . . . a threat. No. If Carnac found out, suicide
would
start to look like an attractive option.

If he could've borne the idea of her knowing, he might have called Sara and asked for her advice. Except that she'd probably say 'tell Warrick straight away', because that was the kind of fucking stupid idea she usually came up with.