The Administration Series (39 page)

She stopped, breathing quickly, obviously trying to pull herself together. "The sim is dangerous." Her voice strengthened. "People will — people will suffer. People will die. It's damaging. Neuro . . . neurological damage. When there are enough users, for long enough, it'll show up. But do you think they'll let that out? When it's making money? I had to stop it now. Kill a few and that would stop it now."

Her conviction, in the face of all the evidence he had about the safety of the sim, made him ask, "Tell me how you know the sim is dangerous."

She took a deep breath. "Original data, from the Neural Remodelling. In-Indirect Neural project. He destroyed it."

"Who?"

"Warrick."

"Keir Warrick destroyed data demonstrating neurological damage from the sim?" He had to say it out loud because it sounded so unlikely.

"Yes. He thought — I don't know. Maybe he thought he could correct it, make it safe. I don't know." She shook her head. "I like him. Warrick. I like him, but he's so
blind
. Fixated. He loves the sim." Her expression grew distant. "Displacement, I think. I don't know. He won't talk to me. Can't do therapy in an antagonistic . . . he said he knew what you were. He has no idea. No idea."

The prisoner was losing focus, so Toreth ignored the digression and pressed on. "Why didn't you tell the sponsors?"

She blinked up at him.

"Why didn't you tell the sponsors that the sim causes neurological damage?"

"
Oh
. Yes. Why would they believe me? I told Warrick first. I thought he might not know." She laughed. "Naive, yes. I showed him the file and he said he'd look into it and then —" She snapped her fingers clumsily, hampered by the restraints. "— gone. Couldn't find it again. I had a copy and that was gone too. No hard copy. Stupid. There might be other copies somewhere — I couldn't find them. But he knows, Para-investigator. He's always known. Must have."

He walked away, listening with a splinter of his attention to his prisoner's breathing, as he thought it through.

Warrick loved the sim — that was an indisputable fact. Toreth didn't believe that he loved it enough to kill for it, still less kill people he knew, but Tanit's accusation was a different matter entirely. Destroying data showing a fault he hoped he would be able to correct — that was more than plausible. How would intellectual honesty stand up to the threat of SimTech's destruction?

Warrick might not have flat-out lied at any point during the investigation, but he'd withheld information twice that Toreth knew about — on Tanit's background and Yang's doubts — then brought the information forwards only after he'd examined it and apparently decided that it would not harm SimTech or its employees.

He thought back to Warrick's ready cooperation over the trials data.

'Of course — anything you want . . . But you'll be wasting your time. You won't find anything'.

Confident, as ever. Because he believed in the sim, or because he had made sure there was nothing to find? There was no way of telling. If anyone at SimTech had the expertise required to make the information vanish, it was Warrick.

If this long-standing deception of SimTech's corporate partners got out, the chances of finding further funding for SimTech would fall to almost zero. Reason enough for Warrick to conceal the truth.

Case closed.

Lots of things he ought to do next. He ought to strip any remaining information from his prisoner. He ought to submit the transcript of the session to Tillotson. He ought to start a hunt for the vanished trial data; Warrick had proved with Tanit's security file how difficult it was to lose a file completely.

A witness interrogation order for Keir Warrick should be the first thing on the list.

He listened to Tanit's breathing, almost subconsciously, alert for the changes which might signal a reaction to the interrogation drugs, for the telltale signs that something was wrong. However, it had stayed regular and even. It was —

Something
was
wrong.

As soon as he'd called the guards and had Tanit taken back to her cell, Toreth went down to the medical labs. To his relief, he recognised the man on reception — his own ex-admin from pre-Sara days. Useless, but at least usually friendly.

"How're things going, Les?"

Del Lesko smiled at him. "Using my famed psychic powers, I'm going to deduce that you need a favour."

Les had always had a talent for spotting and avoiding incoming work. "You should be an investigator. I want a sample put through, quickly."

"For?"

"Full drug resistance sweep — all the exotics, pharm blockers and vaccines, whatever you've got."

"You don't want a standard set first?"

"You did that already — unless you screwed it up, the prisoner's clean for those."

The admin sniffed, mock-insulted. "If we say they're clean, they're clean. When by?"

"This evening?"

He laughed. "The wait's two days for the samples to go into the machine on a priority screen — Monday now. Do you have a section head's authorisation on the request? If not, it's four days."

Fuck. "It's urgent."

That cut as little ice as he'd expected. "Find me a senior whose cases aren't."

Toreth sighed. "Okay. How much?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Don't fuck around." Toreth fished a crumpled sheaf of notes from his breast pocket and started smoothing them out onto the counter as Lesko watched. Cards paid adequately for almost everything these days, but the Administration had never quite managed to stamp out the demand for less traceable currency.

When he had put down three, Lesko said, "First thing Monday?"

"Results first thing tomorrow. We both know you can do it if you get on with it."

Four more notes, and then the pile disappeared under the desk in one smooth sweep. "They're doing a run in fifteen minutes. If someone comes looking for you, wanting to know why their sample got bounced, you can tell them it was probably a cockup in the system."

Toreth handed over the vial of blood. "Just get me the results and I'll tell them anything you like."

Something else to put through on expenses.

Lesko delivered, as promised. At nine in the morning, Toreth sat at his desk and reviewed the results of the screen for interrogation drug resistance.

Perversely, the results cheered him. A lone murderer might just be able to whip up a metabolic bullet in her spare time without outside help, but there was no way in hell Tanit could have come up with this kind of sophisticated anti-interrogation arsenal without a lot of very expensive friends indeed.

'I had a copy and that was gone too . . . There might be extra copies somewhere — I couldn't find them'.

Yes, no doubt there would be copies, somewhere. Carefully planted files, to be dug out and displayed as part of an I&I investigation. Officially endorsed evidence designed to deal the final deathblow to SimTech. Toreth hated being played, most especially by corporates.

However, corporate privilege stretched only so far. This time, with the death of Pearl Nissim, they — whoever they were — had well and truly crossed the line, even if the prisoner had been telling the truth about Teffera's death being natural.

Tanit, he was sure, could give him names. From those he could generate more interrogations, naming the same names, and eventually he'd have whichever of SimTech's rivals or possibly sponsors lay behind it. Best of all, however many friends they had, with Nissim in the morgue they wouldn't be able to buy a way out. For that happy, if accidental, choice of victim, he was grateful to Tanit.

Taking down a major corporate — a big, beautiful case that would really make his name.

He called Sara into his office.

"If I asked you what's the biggest waiver I could apply for on the SimTech case, what would you say?"

She pulled a chair round. "What's the new evidence?"

He showed her the results. "That's conspiracy," he said, "and the illegal use of plenty of restricted substances and technology on top of a confession of the murder of a Legislator. Nothing solidly political I can point to, though, so it still looks corporate."

She considered the question. "Um . . . six? Seven, if you want to push it."

"Six sounds about right. Put it through, will you? And listen — this is the important part: don't put anything in about why she says she did it. No mention of Warrick or the flaws in the sim. I don't want whoever's behind it getting wind that I don't buy it. At the moment, no one's seen the confession except you and me. She's lying, and I want to know why, but tell them to hurry it up."

Sara nodded, but in the doorway, she hesitated. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Why the hell wouldn't I?"

Coming back into the room, she closed the door. "Toreth, this sounds like big stuff. Restricted tech isn't cheap. And if it isn't corporate it — "

"Of course it is," he interrupted. "It's one huge corporation going for a small one. But if I can get names and prove it, then it would be a hell of a coup. How often do we get a chance at a really big corporate arrest?"

She nodded reluctantly. "I suppose so. What does Tillotson think?"

"I haven't told him yet. You know what he's like; he's got no fucking spine when it comes to corporates. I'll tell him when I have a name for Tanit's employer. He'll be keen enough when he sees there's a solid case."

"And if there isn't?"

He'd wondered the same thing himself, but the doubt in her voice stung him. "Then it'll be a good thing I didn't go spreading accusations around. Sara, I know she was lying. Warrick didn't hide any evidence about the sim — I'm absolutely sure about it."

"How can you be?"

"How can I . . . ?" He stopped, unaccountably stuck for a way to explain it. "It's not the way he's put together." Her sceptical expression didn't alter, so he changed tack. "There's nothing to get excited about. It's typical nasty corporate sabotage, only with big-name bodies. Why the hell should they get away with it on my case record?"

"Well, you said it before: expensive friends. She's confessed; the case is closed. Is it really worth digging any deeper? Just for Warrick?"

"What the hell has Warrick got to do with it? I want the score, that's all."

She looked at him oddly, and then shrugged. "If you say so. I just thought I'd better mention. I'd hate to have to break in a new boss when you get demoted to running level ones down in Interrogation."

After she shut the door once more, he sat looking at it and wondering what the fuck that had been about. Sometimes he didn't understand the woman at all.

Two hours later, while Toreth was tidying up the backlog of IIPs, Sara showed the Justice rep into his office. Toreth had been half expecting to see Marian's rep; whoever was protecting her would fight like hell over the application for a higher-level damage waiver, and no doubt the man was here to argue him out of it.

Well, he'd be disappointed, because Toreth wasn't dropping it now.

However, after Sara had closed the door, the man refused Toreth's offer of a seat, and simply produced a hand screen, transferring the authorised waiver to Toreth's screen. Toreth frowned at it, perplexed, then at his visitor.

"Level eight? I applied for — "

"The Justice Department has reviewed the case as requested and in view of evidence presented has issued a waiver as deemed appropriate by the system."

Toreth stared. Textbook answer, and quite obviously there would be no explanation given. Equally obviously, that wasn't all. "And?"

The man smiled faintly. "Annex A," he said, and left.

Annex A. An unofficially official addendum to a maximum level waiver — the prisoner talked, then died. The mystery corporation must be getting nervous about the prisoner's apparent silence so far, when she was clearly supposed to be feeding him her line about Warrick's duplicity.

Back in the interrogation room, Tanit looked angry and sullen — the near-perfect picture of a proud woman forced to betray herself. However, now Toreth was paying closer attention, he wondered how he'd managed to miss the signs before. The prisoner hadn't broken — far from it. She had delivered every sentence with careful thought and for maximum effect.

"Good morning." He looked at his watch. "I hope today's session won't take too long — if you're willing to cooperate this time, it can be very short indeed."

"I told you everything I know." She was a damn good actor, but not quite good enough.

He shook his head. "I don't think you did. In fact, I'm sure you didn't. I had some interesting lab results this morning. Regarding your resistance to interrogation drugs."

A flash of suddenly real emotion showed in her eyes, which made him even more sure that yesterday's performance had been precisely that.

"It leaves me with a dilemma. Most of the pharmacy isn't going to be very effective. And what's left would probably kill you before you said anything."

Stark fear showed in her eyes now, although her physical control still impressed him as he paraphrased the relevant section of the Procedures and Protocols. "Under most circumstances, pain isn't a very effective questioning tool. But for some prisoners, under some circumstances, it can work very well."