The Administration Series (245 page)

The last room looked promising. It was feminine without being fluffy, and it had the cool, slightly dusty smell of somewhere unoccupied for weeks. He closed the door, switched on the light, and looked round. Plenty of pictures hung on the walls, including at least two of Cele's, but not the one he was looking for. Where the hell was it?

He was about to leave and try Tarin's room when he spotted a picture on the wall opposite the door. That was the one — a man, two small children and unmistakably in Cele's style. It was half obscured by the wardrobe; an odd choice of location, he thought, until he realised it was perfectly placed to be visible from the bed.

He took the picture down and placed it on the neatly made bed, then pulled out the sketch of the Cit Surveillance agent and laid it beside the frame. Seeing the finished picture, he couldn't imagine how Cele had ever bought his doubts that they could be the same man. Warrick must have been the older of the two children. Despite his distaste for the idea of Warrick as a child, Toreth couldn't help looking for a resemblance, and finding it. Dark eyes and hair, of course, but also a serious intelligence in his face as he looked up at his father.

If he simply took the picture and destroyed it, would that raise too many questions? It might be less risky to replace it with another picture. He knew from experience that witnesses could remark on the absence of a picture even when they had no clue as to its subject. The human eye worked on shape and colour, with details often lost. Perhaps he could find something upstairs that wouldn't be missed.

In any case, he could start by taking the damn thing away and putting it somewhere safe, like in a fire. The frame was only clipped together, and he had just prised the backing sheet away from the glass when he heard Warrick's voice.

"Toreth, what the hell are you doing in here?"

Warrick stood in the doorway, wearing his dressing gown.

Toreth turned the dismantled frame quickly away from Warrick. "Nothing. Go back to bed. I'll be there in a minute."

Even to himself, he sounded guilty. Warrick's gaze swept the room and Toreth cursed silently. Of all the people in the house, it would have to be the one person who would be bound to spot that —

Warrick crossed to the bed. "You've got my father's picture there. Cele's picture." He looked down to the sketch on the bed, and Toreth saw the suspicion dawning. "Toreth, give it to me."

"Listen, trust me, you don't want to look. Just let me — "

"
Give it to me
." It wasn't quite a shout, but the next one would be.

Toreth laid the picture flat on the bed beside the sketch, then turned both of them round to face Warrick. Warrick looked between them for a long time, and Toreth listened, wondering if they had woken anyone. The rest of the house was silent. Kate's room was silent. No cars passed in the street outside. Somewhere, distantly, an alarm was ringing, the noise so faint he could be imagining it.

Toreth set the frame on the floor, then studied the upside-down pictures, wondering if there was a chance in hell that Warrick wouldn't see it. When he looked up, Warrick was watching him.

"When did you find out?" Warrick asked. He didn't
sound
angry. He didn't sound anything other than mildly curious, which was not a good sign.

"Tonight. Cele called me — she spotted it. I think I managed to persuade her she was seeing things. I wanted to have a look at the finished picture, see what I thought. And then — " He shrugged. "I didn't really have a plan."

Warrick shook his head slightly. "No. You intended to destroy it, didn't you?"

"Yes," Toreth said, and waited for the explosion.

Instead, Warrick nodded slowly. "I wish that you'd told me, but I do appreciate the very sound reasons why you wouldn't want to."

Toreth blinked at the unexpected reprieve.

Warrick leaned down and pulled the pictures across the bed, lining the edges up carefully. "It's funny, but seeing him in person it's not half so obvious as it is with these. I've looked at this picture all my life. There are others, of course, Kate had some photographs, but this is special. Cele really highlights the important features, doesn't she? Goes to the heart of the subject." He touched the sketch gently. "Remarkable, if you think that this was from a description."

"Yeah, she's very good." Warrick's thoughtful tone was starting to disturb him. "Warrick, if it's him, then there's no reason any more to suspect Tarin's accident wasn't an accident, is there? I know he isn't Tarin's father, but Jen told me he was fond of Tarin, right? Treated him like a son?"

Warrick was still looking at the pictures, stroking his palms over each other.

"There could be half a dozen innocent reasons he was there," Toreth said with all the conviction he could muster. "So there's no need to take this any further, is there?"

Warrick looked up. "And if he was responsible?"

"Even if he was, he got Kate out. If he arranged the accident, he must be trying to cut the family off from an association with resisters. Tarin's the only one who's a risk. You, Dilly, Jen — none of the rest of you have ever had any dangerous connections except for Tarin. Philly says she's been out of touch with the resisters for years. It's over now. Let it go."

Finally, the calm broke. "Let it
go
? Do you — you have no idea how Tar felt about him. He loved him — he
worshipped
him."

Toreth couldn't help comparing Warrick's pale fury now with his desperate need earlier that night and his absolute surrender to the game. If only Warrick would occasionally bring his submission outside the bedroom.

"That was thirty-odd years ago," Toreth said. "Right now, Tarin's a liability to everyone." Toreth tried to keep his focus, to remember what was important to Warrick. "What about everyone else? What good will it do them if you keep going at this until you blow the whole fucking thing wide open? That's the only way it ends. That, or Leo looks at you and the rest of the family and decides he can't keep all of you alive."

Warrick's expression hardened. "So you
do
think he was behind the accident."

Shit. "It doesn't matter what I think. We don't have any evidence, and it's too dangerous to look for more."

From Warrick's expression, Toreth might as well have been speaking Japanese. "I have to find him."

"And do what? Kill him?"

"No, of course not. I — " Warrick frowned, as if he hadn't actually got that far with the plan. "I don't expect you to understand."

No, of course not. No doubt Toreth's psych file said he wouldn't. "Warrick, however pissed off you are about Tarin, is that any reason to commit suicide?"

"There's nothing suicidal about it." Warrick was using the 'I'm being perfectly reasonable' voice that made Toreth's fists clench. "All I have to do is find his name. It should be easy enough. The history of the operation will be in the Citizen Surveillance files — I'll get it from there."

He really wished Warrick wouldn't tell him things like that. "It's far too bloody dangerous. Warrick, ordinary citizens aren't even officially supposed to know that Cit Surveillance exists. It's a closed Int-Sec division. No contact numbers, no public records. What if you get caught?"

"I won't be," he said with absolute confidence.

"Do you have
any
idea how to get into the Cit Surveillance systems?"

"Not yet. But I'm sure I can find a way in."

"Yeah. And I'm sure you can get yourself arrested and get me in shit with you up to both our fucking necks."

There was another silence, during which Toreth began to hope that Warrick was finally seeing sense.

Then Warrick shook his head decisively. "I'm sorry, Toreth, but I have to try the files."

"
No
. Warrick, if you do anything, I'll — "

He stopped. He had to stop. What could he threaten to do? Leave? Maybe Warrick wouldn't even care, and it was pointless anyway, when they both knew what an empty threat it was. He'd tried that already and he hadn't even managed to stay away for a month before he'd crawled back the moment Warrick snapped his fingers.

For a moment, Toreth felt tempted to tell Warrick about his own lead from the school. But that would only encourage Warrick to look harder, and the last thing Toreth wanted was the stubborn bastard pursuing the trail into a school where the staff's files were being flagged by unknown agencies.

Toreth took a deep breath. "If you do this, you do it on your own."

"I didn't expect you to help."

"Too fucking right. But not just that — if you get yourself into shit over this, don't expect me to try to pull you out. I'll be walking away from the whole fucking mess just as fast as I can. Forget flats and registered fucking partners. You can try your corporate connections and expensive lawyers and see how far it gets you with Cit Surveillance."

Faced with fire, Warrick had performed his usual retreat into ice. "I know what I'm doing."

"Bollocks. You have no clue what those people are like."

Warrick's eyebrows rose. "I lived with Kate for my whole childhood. I think I know exactly what they're like, and exactly what they're capable of."

Don't do it, please. Jesus, please
Christ
don't do it. Toreth wondered if begging would help. He suspected this time it wouldn't, and he wasn't humiliating himself on the off chance that it might. "Fine. Search the files, do whatever the hell you like." As usual. "But don't expect me to risk my neck pulling you out of
your
messes."

"Warrick?"

They both looked round. Dillian stood in the doorway, wrapped in a dressing gown that Toreth couldn't help noticing flattered her figure very nicely. While Warrick crossed to her, Toreth swept the pictures from the bed and rolled them up, with the portrait inside Cele's sketch. He pushed the dismantled frame under the bed with his foot.

"What's going on?" Dillian asked. She stepped sideways, trying to see past Warrick, who moved to block her view.

"Nothing," Warrick said. "An overly loud discussion, which is now closed."

Warrick returned from the kitchen to his office, carrying a tray of bacon sandwiches and tea. The aftermath of the revolt was still disrupting deliveries, and there had been no bananas available on the residential ordering system this morning. He hadn't wanted to take the time out to try one of the Saturday markets.

He settled down at his desk again, where the screens still reported no progress. It looked like being another late night.

Weekends weren't the best time for exploring illicit entrances into new systems. During the week, the higher flow of traffic concealed attempts at breaking in. On the other hand, out of working hours breaches of security might not be chased up quite so quickly, giving him a chance to recover from otherwise fatal mistakes.

If he'd simply been lifting records from the normal citizens' security files database, it would have taken minutes at the most. That was something he'd done dozens of times — maybe hundreds. Even the Int-Sec files, courtesy of Toreth, were accessible. However, operational files at Citizen Surveillance were an entirely different question. After a solid day of work, he wasn't even certain that he was working on the right division. Semisecret government organisations didn't helpfully label their systems.

Between waiting for the results of his attempts to get into the database and thinking of new strategies as each one failed, he had plenty of time think about other things.

He poured a cup and leaned over it, breathing in the steam and letting it soothe his aching eyes. The caffeine was probably a bad idea, but he needed it, so he'd compromised on tea rather than coffee. He had a headache that had refused to yield to painkillers. He could feel the tension in his neck and shoulders. Nothing to do with the computer work — he could spend far longer than this in front of a screen with no ill effects.

Anger at Citizen Surveillance and at Toreth caused a fair portion of the stress. He didn't blame Toreth for being afraid of the consequences of attracting Citizen Surveillance's attention. It was something he understood very well, and it made its own contribution to the tight band of pain around his temples: fear of what might happen to Tar if he didn't succeed, and of what might happen to himself and others if he got caught.

He hadn't seen Toreth since the night of the argument. Toreth had taken a taxi back into the city first thing in the morning. When Warrick arrived at his own flat on Friday evening, Toreth wasn't there. Neither were about a suitcase's-worth of his clothes. No doubt he was staying at Sara's, or at a hotel.

That was Toreth's traditional second-choice solution to any argument between them: if sex wasn't an option, walk out. Hardly a surprise after all this time, but infuriating given the seriousness of the situation. Of course, from Toreth's point of view, the solution was easy — let Tarin die and the rest of them would be safer. No surprise either.

A message on the screen distracted him. Another failure, hopefully unnoticed. Even if his attempt was spotted, he'd covered the tracks as thoroughly as he could. He ate a sandwich while he considered the next most viable approach. Then he wiped his hands scrupulously and worked for a concentrated twenty minutes.