The Administration Series (37 page)

Jin Li Yang made a technical second suspect. He had been in the room too, and he could have administered the drug after Tara's departure. However, his sim record showed he'd been in the couch all the time. That left only the possibility that he'd faked the records. Given that he was a programmer, Toreth wasn't about to discount that possibility. If Yang had been the killer, however, who had killed
him
?

No, Tara was the obvious suspect. Infuriatingly, she was probably the best-interrogated witness in the case, and he and Parsons were in complete agreement over her honesty. That left only the extremely thin straw of Tara committing the killings in some kind of autonomic state. He could just imagine what Tillotson would have to say about that suggestion.

Still, her mental fragility wasn't in doubt. As Mistry predicted, she'd been admitted to the hospital on Friday, and without some better evidence, it would be a hell of a nuisance to pull her out of there.

Pity he hadn't done a more thorough interrogation of Tara while he had the chance. Except —

Toreth sat up suddenly. Except he
had
. He'd put her through the m-f scan, and with the distraction of Yang's death he'd never bothered to get the results from Seiden.

When he put the call through, Seiden looked surprised to see him. "I thought you'd forgotten about her."

"Hardly." Out of sight of the screen, Toreth crossed his fingers. "Did you find anything?"

"Not a lot. She's not a DID, I can tell you that. She's got emotional spikes all over the place in response to pretty much everything, but underneath she's well integrated."

Another lovely theory shot down in flames. "Nothing else? Nothing in the interviews?"

"Nothing definite, since it was just a preliminary scan, but a few anomalies persisted once the system had finished smoothing things out."

Still fucking anomalies. "In what?"

"Uh . . ." Seiden peered at something away from the comm. "Recollections of her movements from the night of the eighteenth of October."

The date of Kelly's death. "Can't you be any more specific?"

"Not unless you bring her back in and let me do a detailed check on the memories. Put a request in."

"Could be a problem — she's in hospital."

Seiden grinned. "And you told
me
to be careful. Unlucky drug reaction, was it? Accidental overdose? Fell down the stairs a few times?"

Fucking idiot. Toreth cut the connection before he did anything to radically worsen relations between I&I and Psychoprogramming.

Leaving his desk, Toreth went to stare moodily down at the courtyard. The palm trees had gone, and he wondered vaguely when that had happened.

Was it worth trying to wrestle Mindfuck into providing a more thorough scan on Tara?

No chance of bypassing the system again so soon, unfortunately. At least Tara was safe and sound in the hospital. He could fill in the m-f form, shove it into the system, and wait. By the time it came through, the girl might be stable again.

He could wait. Masses of information were still being gathered and sifted and something could come from the sab team enquiries at any time. With this level of Tech, a sab team was more likely than a deranged girl. He had a definite method and he should be grateful for that.

Toreth sat down at the screen and stared at the files displayed for almost ten minutes before he acknowledged that he couldn't do it. He'd been pushing too hard for too long. Switching the screen off, he pulled on his coat and stood. Home and bed was tempting, but he could use some stress relief first. Not Belqola — he wanted more than five minutes, and he didn't think he could bear the useless bastard's company for any longer than that.

Toreth smiled. Plenty more fish in the building.

When he got to work in the morning, Toreth found that Warrick had called yesterday evening, missing him by fifteen minutes. He'd left a message asking Toreth to meet him for lunch at SimTech. Toreth rather hoped there weren't going to be any more revelations. Or that, if there were, they would lead somewhere immediately useful.

The cafeteria at SimTech was a considerable step up from I&I's, including such luxuries as fresh salads. Toreth filled his plate, to Warrick's apparent amusement.

"What was he or she like, then?" Warrick asked, as they took seats at a corner table away from other diners.

"Who?"

"When I called your office yesterday, your charming admin was very cagey until I told her who I was. Then she said, and I quote, 'He's got a hot date, don't expect him back tonight'. From the relish with which she said it I suspect she had some privileged information about me and was hoping for an amusing reaction." During the course of the speech, his voice crept from cool calm to simmering anger. "Or maybe not such privileged information, as I'm not au fait with torturers' coffee room gossip."

Torturers — sign of a bad temper. "It's just Sara." Keep it casual. "She likes gossip, but she doesn't spread it if I've told her not to, which I have. Come on — am I likely to be broadcasting the fact that I'm fucking a murder suspect?"

"I suppose not." Warrick sounded somewhat mollified. "In that case I withdraw my slur on her character."

"So have you found something out?"

"That it was someone from the accounts department and that they'd only been married for a fortnight. I gathered that was what piqued your interest. Although Sara hinted it might also have something to do with getting your expenses through faster."

"About the investigation," Toreth said patiently, making a mental note to have a stern word with Sara later. Gossiping with a suspect was . . . well, a lot less serious than what he'd been doing. Moreover, he didn't entirely blame her — he could just imagine Warrick's smooth voice coaxing out the information. Probably best not to mention it to her.

"It is about the investigation, I assume?" Toreth asked when Warrick still hesitated.

"Not as such, no. It's the question you asked me about Marian Tanit's background."

"Yeah?"

"I . . . came across an old file, which doesn't match her career history as given in her application to SimTech." Warrick stopped, eyebrows raised, waiting for a question.

"Go on."

"After she finished school, she was given a scholarship by the Psychocorrective Institute, which became the core of the Psychoprogramming Division after the reorganisation. And after university, she went on to train there."

Psychoprogramming. There was no getting away from the bastards. "Shit. Really?"

Warrick nodded. "I can send you the file. It contains nothing more than I've told you — no details of what she did after training, or how the file came to be altered."

"How long have you known?"

"Not long."

Which could mean practically ever since he'd first asked about it. "How
long
?"

"I did the search shortly after you left the office."

"Why the hell didn't you tell me before?"

Warrick shrugged. "I didn't think it was relevant."

Toreth took a deep breath, managing to keep his voice low. "Didn't I already explain that it's not your job to decide what's relevant and what isn't? Impeding the course of an investigation is a minimum category two offence."

"I see." Warrick put his knife and fork down, aligning them precisely against the edge of his plate. "And, purely out of interest, what category is conspiring with a civilian to illegally access Administration files?"

He blinked at Warrick. "You have no fucking evidence I did anything of the kind."

"Don't I?" The soft, dangerous voice matched the light in Warrick's eyes.

On reflection, it was unlikely that Warrick would have tried to locate the file without some security — and he could easily have recorded a request made in his own office. Toreth broke eye contact, taking a sip of water, and then said, "Okay. Want to call that one a draw?"

"Why not?" Warrick smiled suddenly, the display of teeth nothing but friendly. "For one thing, you're right, and I apologise. Perhaps you can understand a feeling of loyalty towards my employees. Particularly after . . ."

After Yang. "So what changed?"

Warrick hesitated, and then picked up his fork, returning his attention to his plate. "As you said, it is an investigation, and it's not my place to make those decisions."

Toreth didn't entirely believe him but, for the moment, he was willing to let it go.

As he crossed the office after lunch, Toreth saw Mistry talking to Sara. To his surprise, when the investigator saw him approaching, she finished the conversation and left before he reached the desk.

"What did she want?" he asked Sara, looking after the retreating figure.

"To know whether or not you were screwing Belqola," Sara said equably, eyes on her screen.

Toreth grinned. The circumstances under which he did fuck team members were well known to the old hands. "What did you tell her?"

"That it probably wasn't worth adding him to her New Year's card list." She looked up. "Do you want me to file a transfer for him?"

"Yes. Or at least put in the system. I'll authorise it when the case is over. If it ever is."

Back in his office, Toreth looked at the new information, sent by Warrick as promised, and wondered how the hell it helped.

Toreth had never liked psychoprogrammers or their division. Few people at I&I did. Still, in this case, he'd be acting on reflex prejudice if he pretended the revelation made much sense. There were the interesting questions of who had concealed Marian Tanit's past, and why, and how. Tanit's version might be the truth. Alternatively, a corporation could be responsible, if they could afford the bribe to someone in the Data Division, which would be substantial.

However, the answers all lay a long time in the past. If the alteration had been recent, he might have been able to make something of it, but twenty-five years ago was long before SimTech's founding, before the sim had been conceived.

Tanit was a technical suspect for the murders of Nissim and Teffera, as was the rest of solar system, but she had a cast-iron alibi for Kelly's death and the deaths by the river. Unless Tara Scrivin had been lying for Tanit, which struck Toreth as highly unlikely. He would have staked his reputation on Tara having told the truth as she remembered it, and Parsons had said the same thing.

He paused, struck by the thought. The truth
as she remembered it
. That was the bane of interrogations, because however cooperative the prisoner that was the best that they could give.

Tara didn't have to be lying, or in a dissociated state — at least not a natural one. Warrick had told him that theoretically the sim was capable of memory implantation. Not a trivial thing, he'd said, and with the proviso that it would need the right drugs and the right training.

Toreth forced himself to think it through before the excitement overwhelmed good judgement. He didn't know a great deal about the mechanics of psychoprogramming or the intricacies of the sim, but nothing he did know made the hypothesis impossible. Marian Tanit had the training to do it. If her corporate employers could buy access to tailored biotech toxins, then they could sure as hell supply her with mindfuck drugs. The sim contained copies of rooms and corridors in the AERC. Everything Tanit would need to create and implant a false memory was there.

Seiden had found anomalies in her recollection of the night of the eighteenth of October.

He pulled up the sim summary files Warrick had provided, found the list of available sim rooms, and compared the AERC interiors to the floor plan of the building. When he found the room number of the sim suite where Kelly's body had been discovered, and also the corridor leading to it, he couldn't contain the yell of triumph.

A method and a suspect, when this time yesterday he'd had neither. Best of all was the prospect of eventually telling Psychoprogramming that they'd produced a rogue who'd killed a high-profile corporate and a Legislator. They would never live it down.

Tillotson approved without quibbling Toreth's request for a waiver to pull Tara out of her hospital haven. However, by the time she was delivered to I&I two hours later, SimTech lawyers had found out about the request and begun lodging protests. Toreth didn't bother reading them.

Whether it was a piece of unusually forceful persuasion on Tillotson's part or — more likely — fear that their techniques were loose in the big wide world, Mindfuck were so cooperative it was disturbing. Tara spent barely an hour in the I&I holding cell before Ange called from Psychoprogramming to confirm that a slot was available.

Toreth escorted the sobbing Tara over to the Psychoprogramming building and waited while she was sedated and placed into the machine once more. Officially booked in and waivered this time, which made the experience far more enjoyable — at least for him.

Seiden was waiting for him in the gallery, unusually animated. "What the hell are you up to? There are higher-ups doing headless chicken impersonations all over the building."

"Just get on with it."