False Value

by Ben Aaronovitch

  Rosemary was also a known associate of Mary Somerville, which gave her a direct connection to Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. The Librarians believed that the secret knowledge she held had been passed on—specifically relating to the construction of the Mary Engine.

  “Secret knowledge of what?” I asked.

  Mrs. Chin hesitated and then came to a decision.

  “How to make magic,” she said.

  “In what sense?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea already.

  “In the sense of making magical power,” said Mrs. Chin.

  “So you think the Mary Engine is a . . . what?”

  “A machine for generating magic in industrial quantities,” said Mrs. Chin.

  I thought of Martin Chorley scrabbling around with his ludicrous schemes to generate magical power from ancient gods and enchanted tower blocks, and all the time he had the key to his mad ambition in a lock-up in Marble Arch.

  You had to laugh.

  “This isn’t funny,” said Mrs. Chin.

  “It’s a London thing,” I said.

  Mrs. Chin rapped her knuckles on the remains of the fake Mary Engine like an angry teacher.

  “If this is a fake, then you have to recover the original,” she said. “If you won’t let us keep it safe, then you should destroy it yourself.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you stupid?” she asked. “How do you think they made those drones?”

  And suddenly I saw the whole operation in my head. The drones were manufactured off site at the abandoned internet café in Gillingham. Then, after the likes of Barry and Jade had left for the night, person or persons unknown tooled up with the Mary Engine in a van, zapped magic into the drones, loaded them into the back of said van and away they went.

  I know they must have done the zapping at the Print Shop because the vestigium had still been so vivid there. But why? Why not pack up the drones in the van and take them back to base to be zapped? Why risk taking the Mary Engine out?

  And magical power, as far as our limited understanding went, wouldn’t animate a drone—you’d need a proper spell for that. A string of formae, adjectiva and inflectentes that used magic to change the physical world.

  A string of operations like you’d find in a computer program, I thought. And had we been living in a rational world a lightbulb would have appeared above my head.

  “The Enchantress of Numbers?” I asked. “A program?”

  “That was my theory, yes,” said Mrs. Chin. “I assume the drones were enchanted using a similar program, although I’ve never heard of an enchantment that could make an automaton walk—let alone fly.”

  “That knowledge might have come from tenth-century Baghdad,” I said.

  “Interesting,” said Mrs. Chin. “What makes you say that?”

  I was tempted to tell her that we had a book in our library that had to be restrained from roaming around the Folly on its own, but I didn’t trust her enough to be giving away state secrets just to big up my ends.

  “I might tell you,” I said. “If you promise to be good.”

  Mrs. Chin sniffed.

  “There’s another thing,” she said. “We have a letter from the Rose herself in which she urges Ada Lovelace to dismantle the engine and burn the plans.”

  “Does she say why?”

  “As I remember the quote,” she said, “Rosemarie writes you may believe yourself to have created an engine of the spirit but I fear that you have instead opened a portal into darkness.”

  “A portal into darkness?” I said.

  “That bit I’m sure of,” said Mrs. Chin.

  I thought of the horrible dead fish vestigium that had clung to the drones, the Print Shop and, worst of all, the demon trap I’d stepped on in Tottenham. Maybe it tapped into one of the baccaliaos allokosmoi—the dimension of rotting seafood.

  “Just because the vestigium stinks doesn’t mean it’s a portal into darkness,” I said.

  “Because what would the Rose of New Orleans know about anything?” said Mrs. Chin. “She was only the foremost practitioner of her generation.”

  “Are you willing to share that letter?” I asked.

  “A copy, sure,” said Mrs. Chin. “Assuming you ever let me out.”

  “Sooner,” I said. “Rather than later. Especially if you help us get this sorted.”

  “I shall be co-operation itself,” she said.

  It was a stupid question but I had to ask her whether she knew the current whereabouts of the Mary Engine. She made it clear that even if she did know—and I can’t imagine why would she have gone on a raid with me if she had—she wouldn’t tell me.

  “I thought you wanted it destroyed,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I trust you to do it,” she said.

  I called the solicitor back in and terminated the interview. The solicitor wanted access to the PACE mandated recording—particularly the bit she wasn’t in the room for—but I said that would be up to Mrs. Chin.

  And then I walked away with the cheerful step of a police officer who’s just made a tricky ethical question somebody else’s problem. When I checked my phone there was a message from Silver to call her back. I paused at the custody desk and rang her on my mobile.

  “September Rain has been detained at Gatwick Airport,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I issued a stop order on her,” said Silver, and pointed out that Ms. Rain had been practically living in Terrence Skinner’s pocket since they’d both arrived in the UK. “If anybody knows where the bodies are buried it will be her.”

  “Can I interview her?” I asked.

  “That’s the plan,” she said.

  18

  An Extension of that Quality

  WE LET BORDER Force hold her until Monday morning, at which point a couple of Silver’s officers picked her up and brought her to the Folly. While she was in transit we had a pre-interview strategy meeting in the breakfast room which included Stephanopoulos, Silver and Guleed—it’s amazing how easy it is to persuade senior officers to attend meetings when Molly does the catering.

  We decided that we would play it talkative cop/silent cop, with Guleed playing the role of the quiet cop who watches the proceedings with a sinister knowing expression. You can guess who got to be the mouthy one.

  September Rain had the same duty solicitor as Mrs. Chin and she was probably wondering what dreadful sin she’d committed in a previous life to end up back in this strange nick, with its uncooperative American prisoners and no bloody place to rest your bloody notepad.

  September was attempting to lounge comfortably in a seat that had been specifically designed to make that impossible. Since we weren’t looking for any forensics we allowed her to wear clean clothes from her luggage, a pair of skinny jeans and a plain black sleeveless blouse. To minimize her tells she’d jammed her hands into her pockets and crossed her legs at her ankles—it made her look like a sulky teenager.

  “You were stopped at Gatwick Airport prior to your boarding a flight for Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee,” I said. “Why Wisconsin? I thought you were from California?”

  “No comment,” she said.

  “You don’t have any family in Milwaukee, do you?” I asked. “Brothers, sisters, cousins—friendly neighbor with a beard?”

  We knew she didn’t, because Reynolds had sent me her known associates list the week before, along with Bradley Michael Smith’s and all the other American members of Total Executive Cover.

  “There was a flight to New York less than two hours later and another to Los Angeles an hour after that,” I said. “Both had seats available. Wouldn’t either of those be more convenient? You didn’t book any connecting flights, so what was your plan? Buy one when you got there or travel on by road?”

  Reynolds had assured me th
at, while September had attended a very comprehensive bodyguard course, she didn’t have any military or police experience. Certainly no interview or interrogation training—looking cool in shades, defensive driving and knowing when to take a bullet for your principal was a completely different skill set.

  “You were actually in a taxi heading for Paddington when you made the booking,” I said. “You then switched destination to Victoria to catch the Gatwick Express.”

  She glanced away, but the room was designed to drag the interviewee’s gaze back to the interviewer.

  “You know what that sounds like to me?” I said when she was looking at me again. “It sounds like someone catching the first possible flight to the States—wherever it was going, and whatever airport it was leaving from. Well—maybe not Southend.”

  I leaned forward a bit—keeping eye contact.

  “You should have caught the Eurostar,” I said. “You could have turned up with thirty minutes to go and been in Paris or Brussels in less than three hours, and then you’d have the whole Schengen area to lose yourself in.”

  A little crease in her forehead.

  “You know what the Schengen agreement is, don’t you?”

  Her lips thinned as she stopped herself from answering.

  “I totally understand,” I said. “You’re an American, this is your first trip abroad. Your instinct was to go straight back home to the good old U.S. of A. Like I said, totally understandable. You weren’t thinking straight, were you?”

  Definite flinch this time. And the creases between her eyes deepened.

  “But here’s the thing,” I said. “I’ve seen you in action, so I know you don’t panic when the shit hits the fan and that you have physical courage.” I saw just a hint of a smirk—everyone likes praise. “So what terrified you to the point where you ran for home? Not a threat to yourself, because you’d stand your ground. And not a threat to somebody else because, you know, same. Not a physical threat at all, in fact.”

  A definite increase in tension around the mouth, and the eyes flicked to the left again. You can read a whole pile of books about tells and micro-expressions, but it’s never going to be an exact science on account of everyone being uniquely different from everyone else. Still, that flick to the left betrayed her.

  “You consider yourself an honest type of person, don’t you?” I said. “Straight shooter, say it as you see it, call a spade a spade, give the dog a bone, get the job done, do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay—so what did Terrence Skinner do, September? What did he do that had you running for cover?”

  There’d been a little jump on Skinner’s name.

  “Inappropriate sexual contact?”

  Another frown, because a female bodyguard knows how to deal with that sort of thing—especially in Hollywood. In the pre-interview discussion Stephanopoulos and Guleed thought it was unlikely. We had a very good idea what had caused September Rain to quit the employ of Terrence Skinner. But having a good idea is not the same as knowing for sure—let alone having evidence of it.

  “We’ve had your FBI file sent over,” I said, and that provoked an actual physical start.

  I wondered what she’d done that she thought the FBI might be interested in, or how surprised she’d be to know that it was mostly gossip from the LA office that Reynolds had hit up a few old mates for. Facebook and Amazon most likely had better files on September than the FBI had—although that was probably about to change.

  “So I know that some of your former clients haven’t been beyond a bit of recreational drug use, occasional rages and sexual assault allegations,” I said.

  September gave a little shrug and tilted her head slightly to the left.

  Her contract with one client had finished when he was arrested for sexual assault. Ultimately the charges had been dropped and Reynolds said that her contact in LA was adamant that September might have been a witness, but had refused to answer questions. Loyalty, or a fat termination fee plus NDA—nobody was sure.

  “So a bit of drugs, violence and rape wasn’t going to bother you much, was it?” I said, and she flinched again. Not so professionally impassive that she didn’t want me to think she stood aloof during an actual attack.

  “Pride,” Stephanopoulos had said. “She doesn’t want you looking down on her.”

  “I understand totally,” I said. “Professional ethics and all that, isn’t it? You couldn’t grass up your client but at the same time you didn’t want to be party to anything worse. You must have loved Skinner when you started working for him. I mean, he’s bad news for crabs and personal data protection, but he’s not a noted groper or fighter.”

  I paused to make sure she was following my logic. You can be too clever during an interview and a common tactic for interviewees is to zone out and stop listening. Varying the pitch of your speech helps, as does working in tandem with another officer—me and Guleed have a nice line in this, of which mouthy cop/thoughtful cop was only one of many variations. Although Stephanopoulos has banned us from using the one where we both pretend to be speaking Wakandan.

  “Has he ever made a grab?” I asked.

  “I’m not his type,” said September—finally.

  “What is his type?” I asked.

  “Petite, Japanese, passive-aggressive,” she said. “He learned Japanese so he could hit on the booth bunnies at trade shows.”

  “Really?” I said, hoping to strengthen the engagement. “Did it work?”

  September gave me a contemptuous look, tinged with a bit of disappointment.

  “Of course it worked,” she said. “These billionaires always get what they want—in the end.”

  Interesting, I thought—a little bit of class warfare.

  “Not always,” I said as primly as I could.

  “Tell that to Jeffrey Epstein,” she said, which meant nothing to me at the time.

  “So what did he do?” I said, meaning Terrence Skinner—but looking back at the transcript it was obviously ambiguous. Still, just as you can outsmart yourself you can out-stupid yourself. The key to success then is your follow-through.

  “Sex trafficking of minors,” she said, which sounded unlikely for Skinner so I guessed she meant this Epstein person.

  “Japanese minors?” I asked, because a little bit of deliberate misunderstanding can smooth the way to the truth.

  “What?” September seemed genuinely confused.

  “You said Uncle Terrence was trafficking minors,” I said.

  “No,” she said—outraged.

  “Because you wouldn’t put up with that, would you?”

  “What do you think?”

  What I thought was that I needed to get the interview refocused.

  “I think it was murder,” I said.

  This time she flinched back in her chair hard enough for her ankles to uncross.

  “I think you know he murdered someone, but you only found out afterward when it was too late,” I said. “Instead of reporting it to us, you decided to get the hell out of Dodge. Was that your professional ethics? Client confidentiality?”

  September looked deeply unhappy at that.

  Guleed crossed her arms, which was her signal to me to shut up for a bit.

  September frowned at her, then at me, and then turned to look at her solicitor.

  “My client—” started the solicitor, but September interrupted.

  “I didn’t know anything for certain,” she said. “It would have been pointless to call the police, and frankly I didn’t want to get involved.”

  “Why don’t you tell us what you do know?” said Guleed. “And then perhaps we can send you on your way.”

  September opened her mouth, but her solicitor coughed and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’d like a word with my client first,” she said.

  So we suspend
ed the interview while they had a chat and headed out to the custody desk, where Foxglove had persuaded Sergeant Finnegan to pose heroically in the manner of a seventeenth-century monarch. We took the opportunity to pop upstairs for coffee and cake and, to prove that we weren’t heartless, brought some down to use as a reward if September cooperated.

  The solicitor was obviously not that happy with the idea of trusting our integrity, not even after I gave her a cupcake with pink icing and smiley face made from Smarties. Still September, like most people, needed to sing. Because then it stopped being her problem—didn’t it?

  “He got a text that upset him,” she said.

  “Where was this?”

  “In the penthouse,” she said.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Last Saturday, early evening.”

  “When early evening?”

  “About 6:30.”

  I deliberately paused to make a note.

  “So about this text?” I asked.

  “It came in on a cellphone I didn’t know he had,” said September. “It seemed to upset him.”

  “Upset him how?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t normally show emotions,” she said. “He’s like you Brits, only the Australian version. So when he started saying the C-word—I was shocked.”

  I exchanged looks with Guleed—September obviously didn’t know Australians as well as she thought she did.

  “What did he say?” asked Guleed. “What was the context?”

  “There wasn’t any,” said September. “He just kept saying the C-word over and over again, under his breath—‘cuntcuntcuntcunt’—like that.”

  Then he’d stepped out onto the balcony and dialed a number on the mobile—which September thought was probably a cheap burner—and closed the sliding doors behind him.

  “He didn’t want me to overhear him,” she said. “But I can lip-read so I knew what he was saying.”

  “And what was he saying?” asked Guleed quickly—possibly to stop me from asking September the hows and whys of her learning to lip-read. It’s not a common skill among the non-hearing impaired—I made a mental note to ask her as a follow-up.