The Administration Series (28 page)

It took them two days to finish in Strasbourg. Toreth barely noticed the hotel — a place to grab some food and not enough hours' sleep before he and B-C went back to work. Interviews, reinterviews, and the first, depressing forensics report that confirmed Toreth's fears — or rather expectations — by finding nothing.

Late afternoon of the second day, and they were still in the temporary office, reviewing the last of the surveillance reports provided by the Strasbourg investigators. At least the high security around the Legislator's flat meant that no unauthorised persons could have entered the building, and all authorised people were recorded.

An exhaustive test of the security system for the sim room only confirmed that everything was also functioning fine and the story given by both Keilholtz and Byrne was as rock solid as it could be.

"Do you read much, B-C?" Toreth asked.

Barret-Connor looked up from his own screen. "I'm sorry, Para?"

"Fiction, I mean."

The investigator shook his head. "I'm afraid not."

"Me either, much. I used to read thrillers, until I noticed they weren't. And mysteries. Of all the setups, you know which ones really pissed me off? Sealed room murders. They're always so contrived, and yet here we are, with three of the bloody things."

B-C looked back at his screen. "Yes, Para."

As he was considering calling it a day, the detailed post-mortem report on Nissim arrived. Toreth skimmed through it, then called O'Reilly.

"
Nothing
?"

On the screen, O'Reilly nodded, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, Para."

"No need to be, assuming you didn't screw it up somewhere."

She didn't respond.

Toreth paged down through the report, then paused, hand raised. "What's that? Page seventeen, first line of the table."

O'Reilly glanced to the side. "Er . . . traces of an anti-nausea drug. It was prescribed to Clemens Keilholtz — he suffered from what his medical file calls 'sim-sickness'. What's in her body isn't enough to kill her, not by a long way; the amount suggests it was a low dose, or she took it three or four hours before she went into the sim. There's no sign of an allergic or any other adverse reaction. No genetic susceptibility."

"Do we know where the drug came from?"

"Um . . . yes." O'Reilly paused, her eyes flicking from side to side as she scanned a screen out of his view. "It was prepared at SimTech and delivered by courier to the Legislator's home in sealed, single-use injectors. Part of the service contract. We looked at the remaining doses in the batch, and they're clear of anything noxious."

"The used injector?"

"No sign of it in the room — probably already in the recycling system, Para."

He nodded. "Thanks. Good work."

"Thank you, Para."

"But still, I'd like you to do another screen on the body. Everything toxic the system can think of." Catching sight of her expression, he shook his head. "I'm not saying you weren't thorough the first time. Humour me — give me a straw to clutch at."

She smiled slightly. "Yes, Para."

As soon as O'Reilly closed the connection, Toreth called Keilholtz.

When the man answered, Toreth asked, "Why didn't you tell me you gave Pearl Nissim an anti-nausea injection?"

Keilholtz stared at him. "I'm sorry? If you mean . . . I must have forgotten to mention it. She gave me the injection every time we used it. The sim makes me queasy if I stay in for more than an hour or so, and we were planning to be in there all evening, so — "

"We found the drug in her body, Mr Keilholtz."

Keilholtz frowned. "I don't . . ." His expression cleared. "She had an ear infection a few days ago. It's something she was prone to. Another reason she liked the sim — she could go swimming without earplugs."

"You're saying that she took it herself?"

"If I'd known she'd taken it I would have told you, Para-investigator." His voice held a touch of irritation at Toreth's deliberately disbelieving tone. "I didn't even think about it — I asked her if she was all right before we went in, and she said she was fine. She'd used it before, once or twice; just a half-strength dose to stop her feeling sick if her ear was bad. She'd cleared it with the medical staff at SimTech."

"Wait there, please."

Blanking out the comm, Toreth pulled up Nissim's medical file. It took only a few seconds to find details of recurrent ear infections, confirmation of anti-nausea drug compatibility tests courtesy of SimTech, and the record of an infection treated a few days ago.

All of which Keilholtz could've known and used as a cover.

Toreth reactivated the comm.

"When did the Legislator take the drug?" he asked Keilholtz.

"Just before we went in — or rather, that's an assumption. That's when she gave me mine. I was already sitting in the couch. Just after I'd had the injection, the guard strapped me in."

He paused, and Toreth prompted him. "Yes?"

"I don't remember seeing her take another injector, but I can't swear she didn't. She would've had time to take a shot before the guard finished with me."

"And dispose of the injectors?"

"Oh, yes, Para-investigator. Pearl was always very tidy."

"Thanks for your help, Mr Keilholtz. I'll be in touch if we have any further questions."

Pity the injection wasn't provably linked to the Legislator's death. The only progress the information provided was evidence that Nissim
had
been given (or had given herself) an injection immediately before entering the sim. After which she had spent an allegedly happy three hours fucking her toyboy before dropping dead. Given that Keilholtz already had ample opportunities much closer to the time of death to kill his lover, nothing had changed.

"How is it possible to have so many bodies and so few suspects?" Toreth wondered aloud.

Barret-Connor had been listening to the conversation with Keilholtz. "They are a bit thin on the ground, yes, Para."

"People always get more popular when they die, B-C. Fact of life." Toreth pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up to pace. "I've never met a corpse yet who wasn't saint material if you believe what people tell you. Then you open their security file, and they're exactly the kind of bastard that someone would want to murder. Or they've got 'natural victim' stamped all over them and it was only a question of who got to them first. Either way you've got to dig through dozens of suspects to find the right one. But these three . . . what do you think?"

The younger man frowned, rubbing his fingers through his short-cropped hair. A nervous habit Toreth was familiar with — B-C wasn't good at producing opinions on the spot. However, he was methodical, thorough, and a superb observer.

"Well . . . if it's corporate sabotage, they are natural victims," B-C said at length. "At least two of them are, I mean. Teffera and Nissim both supported SimTech strongly."

"Killing a Legislator is a hell of a risk, though. If there is a killer, they must know that. It won't get covered up now, however big the corporate behind it. The Administration doesn't like to encourage corporate sabs targeting Legislators — the idea might catch on. They'll be found and nailed for it, however long it takes us."

B-C nodded. "So, we're back to square one: why pick Nissim?"

Why indeed? "Maybe they didn't."

B-C frowned thoughtfully. Toreth waited, and eventually the junior said, "You mean, if it
was
something in the injector — "

"Two gets you ten there's nothing in the body, however many times O'Reilly looks."

B-C smiled wryly. "I don't think I'll take that bet, Para. But assuming that's how it was done, then the target was Keilholtz, wasn't it?"

"Exactly. Unless someone knew . . . no, the last batch was dispatched from SimTech before her ear flared up. Even then the odds are in favour of a single contaminated injector getting him, not her. And it makes more sense. Killing Nissim brings you big trouble — killing her boy toy and blaming the sim gets you an avenging angel ready to take down SimTech. Hmm." Toreth thought it over. "Teffera took drugs for the sim. Maybe he had a contaminated injector too. And that would make Jarvis the odd one out again because, as far as we know, she didn't take anything at all."

"Although Jarvis makes sense if it's an insider looking for an easy target. Or . . ." B-C rubbed his fingers through his hair again.

"What?"

"Maybe it was the sim." B-C glanced at him, looking back to his screen when he caught Toreth's gaze. "I mean, there's nothing to say that it
wasn't
, is there, Para?"

Toreth didn't answer. His conviction that the deaths weren't due to the sim was obviously developing a reputation as an obsession. For a moment, he forced himself to look at the idea head on. Was he fixated on the sabotage idea? He didn't think so, but then if he was, he wouldn't. As it were.

Toreth sat down at the desk again and read through the post-mortem results slowly. Anti-nausea drugs. Not the same as the drugs used by Teffera; however, it was as close to a clue about method as anything they'd found so far. Somewhere in the mounds of case files might be additional clues.

Feeling oddly optimistic, he connected through to the main I&I evidence analysis system, and started constructing queries.

Did Teffera, Nissim and Jarvis share any genetic predispositions which would make a particular toxin effective?

Were there any shared genetic traits that had no previously known damaging effect, but might somehow make them vulnerable to the sim?

Could the sim affect susceptibility to toxins?

Were there any injectors at Teffera's home which hadn't been tested for toxins?

Could the sim induce users to injure themselves, as Tara had tried to, without producing any obvious change in behaviour?

He kept working, trying more unlikely suggestions as the answers began to come back as negative or 'insufficient data'. The sim was an unknown quantity that the analysis program stumbled over repeatedly.

Teaching the system to understand the properties and limits of the sim would take longer than the investigation could last. Worse, the only people who understood the sim well enough to do that worked at SimTech. Asking witnesses and suspects to modify I&I systems was even less standard procedure than fucking them.

Toreth spent a minute or so cheering himself up by imagining applying for high-level damage waivers on the entire SimTech staff, half of P-Leisure, and all known professional corporate sab teams, and then cranking through the interrogations until someone said something helpful. Start with Warrick and the Tefferas and work his way down the social scale. It might be worth proposing the idea simply to watch Tillotson turn purple.

Pity that he wouldn't get the waivers. Maybe he could arrange to have a few more Administration higher-ups killed. So far, producing a big-name corpse seemed to be all he'd achieved in the case.

He snorted with laughter, and B-C looked up.

"Para?"

"Nothing." Time to get back to work.

To get any results from the system at all, he had to relax the criteria so far that it was only one step up from drawing cards. When he told the analysis system to assume undetectable poisoning as the method, it did spit out a name, although Toreth would've sworn the screen had a slightly apologetic air.

Tara Scrivin.

Of course — she was a biochemist. She probably had access to the area where the drugs were prepared and possibly the knowledge to make up something the forensics lab couldn't detect.

Unfortunately, Toreth would bet any amount of money that she'd told him the truth in her interview. If she'd been faking, she'd done it better than anyone else he'd interrogated. Not to mention her solid alibi for Kelly's death.

While he had nothing better to do, he should at least consider an interrogation. The idea certainly had potential, although Justice (or at least SimTech's lawyers) might make trouble over her mental state. However, with Nissim dead, he had a feeling that waivers of all levels would be a lot easier to come by. Though admittedly tenuous, the possibility of her possessing the skills to create a poison would certainly be enough to get him a low-level waiver.

Toreth checked his watch. He could pick Tara up on a witness warrant tomorrow morning, and that would give him twenty-four hours before Warrick's lawyers could possibly wrest her out of custody.

He'd tried nice, with Mistry. Now it was time to try a different approach. He could start the interrogation on a level two waiver while they waited for a higher level to come back from Justice.

He called through to Sara, finding her diligently at her desk. The hint with the publication search had paid off, although he doubted it would last.

"Sara, I've got a few things for you to do. Start by finding Parsons, and tell him to see me first thing tomorrow."

"You'll be back here?"

"Yeah. Tell him he's got a witness to interrogate — give him Tara Scrivin's file to look over. And apply for a witness warrant for her. That's all."

"Okay. See you."

Toreth's stomach rumbled, reminding him of missed meals. Not a good idea, when he needed to concentrate.

"Come on," he said to B-C. "Let's get something to eat and then see if we can catch a flight home."

"Tonight?" The junior looked dismayed.

Toreth checked his watch. "Why not? We'll be back in New London by one."

Barret-Connor's narrow shoulders slumped. "Yes, Para."