“Those brown farters? What you want to know about them for?”
“You hinted these were the same people who shot at the Queen of Shaws’ nest,” Bolson said. “Come on, Horton, try to remember who they were.”
Every eye in the room watched Horton. Except Jenx, who appeared to be gazing into the middle distance. Horton looked around as he noticed the attention, and people ducked as the red eye pointed their way.
“Tell me who they were, Horton,” Jenx ordered.
“The Towp Icker sisters,” he said. “Laughed at my old ship like it was nothing. Work for the Auld Gowk Cabal out of a warehouse in the port.”
“They’re gone now,” I told him. “Port Authority shot them out of the sky for breaking the rules.”
“Laughing at my old ship is breaking the rules?”
“Damn right,” I said. “That’s a rule, Captain.”
Captain Jenx nodded at the marshal, turned, and sat. My bowels stopped trying to leave on their own.
“Let’s get,” LB said from the corner of his mouth. “I have something to tell you.”
He ushered Harry outside as quickly as he dared. Bolson waved. I backed to the door.
“Good to see you, Chunglie. We must have a drink and catch up soon,” Fetch Bolson said. He really was the nicest man in the room.
“Will do,” I said before I spun, kicked the doors open, and got my carcass out of there as fast as my fourteen limbs could go.
CHAPTER 15
No one followed us. We regrouped on the office porch.
“That,” LB panted, “reminds me why I left the military police. I’m sorry to say, Marshal, that Towp is a Moordenaap family name. I’ll send an information request to the marshal’s office on my homeworld. We’ll have chapter and verse on the sisters by morning.”
“Good idea. I’ve reported the sisters’ name to ACM Ooula. She’s going to have some deputies kick down the Auld Gowks’s doors and find out who paid them.”
“Good luck with that,” I said, without any real hope. The Cabal had survived for centuries and were good at keeping secrets. “So we can have a couple of days off while all this door kicking is going on?”
“No, we’ll be re-interviewing the main suspects,” Marshal Harry said.
“You know, this is the first real job I’ve had in two centuries.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Harry said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Today you stood your ground under fire to defend the Queen of Shaws’ eggs and me,” Harry said. “And I saw you with your old friend, Captain Horton. You pretend you don’t care about anyone else, but you care about your friends and you care about the job.”
“I care about winning,” I admitted.
“Captain Jenx spoke your name,” LB said, grinning like a cub. “You stood between Harry and the Duke of Death and he used your name. That’s one for the history books.”
“Doubt it,” I said. “Historians always seem to leave me out.”
Harry gasped. “That was the Duke of Death?”
“You’ve heard of him?” I asked. Earth is a bit of a backwater; I was surprised his name had reached that far.
“Yes, I used to play the VR version of Attack on the Empire’s Doom Moon when I was a kid. Wow, he’s been a legend in my lifetime.”
Harry opened the office door and we trekked in wearily. The smell of fresh paint hit me.
“Seems like the only useful thing we have achieved this week,” I said, waving a claw at the newly coloured walls.
“Maybe not,” LB replied, dropping onto a stool. “I’m beginning to think berOVO faked his death.”
“Because some of the OVO wealth has disappeared?” Harry asked as she slid into her chair and slapped her palms on the desk. “And someone had the contacts to employ the Auld Gowks?”
“Erm, yes. That’s it.” LB nodded. “You can’t just walk in off the street and ask for a hit. You need to know the right people and have the cash. The wife has the cash, but I don’t see mapoTHER having the connections.”
“But if berOVO faked his death to escape the Cabal,” I pointed out, “getting back in touch would be suicide.”
“Not if he offered to tell them where the cash was,” LB said.
“There is no way to investigate the crash, now. The ship burned up in the atmosphere, before our time.” Marshal Harry looked at her palms, as if weighing invisible objects. “I think berOVO is dead. If he faked his own death, he would have found a way to take the wealth with him. But…”
“But we don’t even have a motive for the restaurant being shot at,” I pointed out.
“Right,” Marshal Harry said. “I know it’s late, but I want to have a look over the holo-render of the space yacht the techs made.”
LB shrugged. I turned up the oxygen intake on my cyber-harness, since I can’t yawn, and nodded. Harry took the office projector from a drawer and tossed it into the air. It hovered near the ceiling and we were on the viewing deck of a luxury yacht. In space, room is luxury, and the viewing dome above us was the largest I have ever seen. Before the ship was a moon, cratered, rocky, and coming towards us fast.
“Can we skip that bit of the replay?” LB asked. “My nerves have had enough action for one day.”
I activated my cyber connection to the office systems and froze the replay.
“There is a full report from the techs,” I said. “Or they labelled the render with their findings. Which do you want?”
“I’m too tired to decipher techno-babble,” Marshal Harry said. “Let’s have a look at the labels.”
Ribbons of different colours appeared floating in the room around us. LB leaned over and read: “Blue ribbon says ‘Bathroom with whipped cream and custard options.’ Red one says ‘Bio-coded hidden cabinet of illegal sex drugs.’ Nice. Pink one says, ‘Hidden office with AI system separate from ship systems.’”
“berOVO certainly knew how to enjoy himself,” I said, rubbing my claws together. “Who’s for the custard and cream bath?”
“Let’s have a look at the secret office,” Marshal Harry said, rubbing one eye. We sat where we were and the POV changed as I followed the pink ribbon through the yacht. Cloth of gold draped the corridor walls, and cloth of hubert draped the doors. The ribbon disappeared behind a cloth of gold drape and I followed it. A wall panel slid aside, revealing a large office with one desk, one chair, and fifteen cup holders placed within easy reach.
“Man liked his coffee,” LB said. Three of the walls and the floor were the blueprints. Power conduits and placement of AI drives were outlined in blue. There was a label on one wall. I moved us over to it.
“No physical evidence for the existence of this office was found in the crash,” he read. “The blueprints were found in an encrypted file at the shipbuilder’s yard. So there is no way of knowing what he kept on this system?”
“We can guess,” Marshal Harry said, looking around. “What if this is where berOVO kept his records of money laundering and his work for the Auld Gowks Cabal? Someone dumped the data before programming this AI to crash the ship, and that gave them the leverage with the Cabal to order that hit on the restaurant.”
“That puts mapoTHER back in the picture,” I said. “She could have found this room while staying onboard the yacht.”
“berOVO must have had security on the door and the computer,” LB pointed out. “How would she break that?”
I shrugged my front segment.
“It’s been a long day, and the ACM arrives tomorrow,” Harry said. “We better get some sleep.”
I was asleep before my head reached the corner under my bunk.
CHAPTER 16
Next morning, I made myself a long cool glass of pureed onions and slid back under my bed. The marshal wanted deep background on the Qoh Modes involved in the case, and most of that meant making requests to databases, companies, and municipal computers and waiting for responses. Sipping the onions helped keep me chilled as I dealt with
bureaucracy. By lunchtime, I had some interesting results and scurried down to the office.
“The Heavy Squad are in orbit,” LB said. He was seated at the marshal’s desk. “They’ll be here in four and a half hours.”
“Where’s the marshal?” I asked, looking round an empty room.
“She decided to haul all rokALL’s stuff over here and have the Socbots go through it. I’m checking something strange I found in the OVO family books.”
“You let her go on her own?” I turned on my sensor suit and looked out the window. I thought about checking the hospitals.
“No, she went in Car 54.”
“You let her go with that artificial idiot? What have I told you about keeping the marshal safe?” I got down from the window.
“I know you think she is a trouble magnet, but the marshal can handle herself. She has that eyebrow thing.”
“I’m not sure that works on people with lots of guns. When did she go?”
“Couple of hours ago. She will be back in—" The door slammed into the wall and Car 54’s mobile unit walked in carrying a pile of plastic boxes. “Now.”
“Hey guys, anything exciting happen?” it asked.
“Just a bug having an anxiety attack,” LB said.
“I did no such thing, I was just concerned for the marshal’s safety after yesterday’s firefight.”
“That’s why I took Car 54,” Marshal Harry said as she carried two boxes in and sat them on her desk. “This stuff had to be gone through, and it has to be examined by the scene of crime bots. Although I have to say it is the largest pile of nothing much I have ever seen in my life.”
“I found a link between rokALL and cleoroCASS,” I said. That stopped everyone in their tracks. “They grew up in the same village. I also found—"
“How did you track down rokALL when I couldn’t?” LB banged a fist on the desk.
“Because I know something you don’t,” I said with satisfaction. “The queens of the Waddudu keep track of everyone living on their land, but none of those systems connect. You have to query each queen’s computer individually.”
“That must have taken you a while,” Marshal Harry said. “Good work.”
“Thanks. The bad news is, they grew up in a town on the Queen of Corn’s land. She doesn’t approve of me, so all I got was the basic information that they are both thirty years old and lived there since they were born. Funny thing is, the whole population is made up of Qoh Modes. I’ve never heard of them founding a town on a non-Qoh Mode world.”
“That’s another piece of the puzzle then,” Marshal Harry said. “I have a feeling all this fits together, I just need a key. I bet all the names come from minor Qoh Mode families that no one has heard of.”
I pulled up the list of the population I had been sent and projected it above the table. Only took me a minute to speed read through it.
“Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”
“I’m good at guessing,” the marshal said. “Someone built a town for people way out in the Cornlands, where other Qoh Modes don’t go. Must be a reason for that.”
“The other thing I found out, mapoTHER did not exist until six weeks before she got the job at Nice Big Chop. I checked all the queens’ domains, ports, everything. The day she opened a bank account and rented a suit of rooms is literally the day she was born.”
The marshal pulled the lid of the box on her desk and pulled out a toy. It was a Qoh Mode made of patches of cloth sewn together. There was a stitched symbol on the tummy.
“rokALL must have had a really poor upbringing,” she said, looking at the toy. “I googled the Qoh Mode homeworld. They use 3D printers to make toys, same as everyone else. You would have to be living in some little town, far away from the rest of the population, before making this thing would be necessary.”
“I’ve never seen the like,” LB said, taking the toy from the marshal and turning it round in his hands.
“I have,” I said. “I just can’t remember where.”
“My turn,” LB said. He propped the toy on the desk and turned on his palmtop holo-projector. Diagrams and flow charts appeared in the air. “I believe I have found a motive: money. Pots and pots of money.”
“Is this more bendy accounting?” I asked. I reared my front half to watch the flowing colours in the flow chart. Told me absolutely nothing.
“Yes,” LB said. “There has been some expert bendy accounting, and then some amateurish stuff involving that restaurant loan cleoroCASS said she got.”
“Okay, don’t bore me with the details, just give me the bottom line,” I begged.
“Start with the expert bendy accounting,” Marshal Harry said.
“Okay, bottom line. Every time cruisOVO was murdered, billions of simoleans disappeared from his accounts. He hasn’t noticed because he is still a millionaire, but accountants and the family lawyer certainly should.”
“I knew that computer was up to something,” I said. “Can we go shoot it now?”
“No,” Marshal Harry said. She pointed at the diagrams and charts. “This is interesting, but it doesn’t tell us who is behind any of it.”
“Interesting?” LB started swishing through graphs. “Have you any idea how hard it was to track this paper trail? Whoever did this knew what they were doing. Look, the moment a death notice goes out, the banks automatically freeze your assets and accounts until your next of kin are sorted out. But in the seconds between cruisOVO’s murder and the banks freezing the assets, cash is moved.”
LB brought up a timeline. It was divided into seconds.
“This is a timeline of cruisOVO’s poisoning.” He pointed at a line. “Here’s where he went face down on the table. Three seconds later, the OVO banks and business institutions receive a death notification from 221B. Before they can act, the capital and deeds are moved out of the accounts. This is how mapoTHER suddenly came into ownership of the haulage company. Same thing happened after the car crash. The lawyer notified the banks before calling the doctors. Someone still managed to steal away assets and cash before the accounts were frozen.”
“Okay, okay, I am impressed,” I admitted. “So what have the amateurs been up to?”
“That C BondTrust cleoroCASS got her start-up grant,” LB said. “The holding company was set up and is wholly funded by mapoTHER.”
“I knew the wife did it,” I said.
“She was at the restaurant, sitting next to cruisOVO when he died,” the marshal pointed out. “So how could she move the money?”
“Obviously she has an accomplice.”
“So are we going to talk to the wife and lawyer?”
“Oh yes, but we’re going to talk to cleoroCASS first. You are coming this time, LB. I want you to explain that paper trail to her. That should get her talking.”
CHAPTER 17
At least we didn’t walk this time; we took the patrol car. The panel opened next to the hatch and Car 54 asked in a whisper, “We any closer to a showdown with whoever paid to shoot up the streets?”
“Don’t think so,” I whispered back. “I mean, we haven’t even had a car chase yet.”
“I always miss those,” Car 54 said. “Which is unfair, since I am actually a car.”
“Next villain we catch, I will point out how inconsiderate they have been.”
“Thank you.” The panel slid shut.
LB was discussing the imminent arrival of the Heavy Squad with the marshal.
“This city needs a kick in the behind,” Harry said, which for her is strong language.
“I liked the old days,” LB admitted. “Don’t get me wrong, what we do is important, but in the old days things were more laid back.”
“But you could be shot before breakfast and no one cared,” Harry pointed out.
“Now if you get shot before breakfast,” I poked LB in the back, “we’ll investigate and Harry will solve it.”
LB pointed a thumb at me. “If I get shot before breakfast, I want it known he did it.”
/>
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
We were in a good mood when Car 54 dropped us at the curb in front of the restaurant. Waddudu still clambered over the shop fronts, restoring the damage. Huge soldiers stood on the rooftops, silhouetted against the blue sky.
“The Queen of Shaws must still be worried,” I noted.
“Don’t go anywhere, Car 54,” the marshal ordered. “I want to be back at the office when the ACM arrives.”
The restaurant windows were boarded over, the doors had extra locks, and the place had an abandoned smell to it. Harry knocked on the door.
“I could push it in?” LB said, putting his shoulder to the door.
“Hang on, where does cleoroCASS live?” I wondered out loud. I looked up her address in the Marshal Service database. “She has an apartment on the floor below the restaurant.”
I scuttled back to the curb. There were glazed gaps every third kerbstone. One was lit and then went dark.
“Looks like she is leaving,” I said. “Must be another way in.”
The left side of the building abutted its neighbour, so we went right and down an alley. There was a small, plain door halfway along. As we reached it, it flew open and mapoTHER and leaCHER exited. The PA was towing a floatie and the wife had her husband tucked under one arm and a computer under the other.
“This must look odd,” cruisOVO said. “But I assure you, we are just helping out a friend.”
leaCHER threw himself at the marshal, shouting: “Run, madam! I’ll hold—"
LB slugged him and he flew backwards and rolled against the wall. Out cold.
“Stand still, armed marshals.” I pulled my matched pair of flegmatic pistols.
“Armed and fisted,” LB corrected, shaking his hand.
“You’ve just done something unbelievably stupid,” Marshal Harry told mapoTHER.
“Me? I have done nothing illegal. This restaurant belongs to a friend. I—"
“What is the secret you and cleoroCASS share?”
mapoTHER stared. “I cannot say.”
When Harry Met Chunglie Box Set Page 30