by Eric Brown
Halliday turned onto East 23rd and parked in a quiet sidestreet. He left the car, crossed the street and walked a block to the Astoria.
Jeff Simmons was standing on the corner across from the hotel. He wore a loud checked sports jacket and a broad green tie. He looked like an out-of-town businessman doing the sights. To all appearances he was amiably chatting to someone on his com, from time to time casually glancing across the street at the Astoria.
Halliday noticed perhaps two dozen drones in the vicinity. These ranged from the size of bread bins to heavy-duty models as big as trash cans. They hovered along at head height, bulky metal objects painted in the distinctive blue and white livery of the NYPD.
As he watched, two smaller drones slipped into the hotel. He guessed these were the remote-controlled marksmen used frequently these days in armed conflict scenarios.
Simmons cut the connection and pocketed his com. ‘That was Barney. He’ll be here any second.’
Halliday stuffed his hands in his pockets and stamped his feet. He looked across the street at the hotel. ‘What’s the score?’
‘I have people surrounding the place, half a dozen drones covering every exit in case our guy tries to leave, plus a couple inside. I’ve sent in a man to alert the security officer.’
‘Are you going in?’
Simmons nodded. ‘I’ll tell the security officer what’s happening, see if he can trace the guy.’
They crossed the street and approached the hotel’s canopied entrance. A yellow cab pulled up outside and Barney struggled out, bundled in a grey overcoat. Simmons hurried up the steps and passed through the revolving door. Barney joined Halliday. ‘What gives, Hal?’
Halliday nodded towards the hotel. ‘The Latino entered about five minutes ago. Jeff’s got the place surrounded. We’re meeting him in security.’
They climbed the steps, passed through the revolving door and crossed the lobby. Jeff Simmons was in a tiny office behind reception. A security officer was seated before one of a dozen screens, rewinding an image of the lobby. The scene remained static but for the occasional scurrying figure moving backwards and the blur of the revolving door.
Simmons looked up. ‘We’re going back five minutes and working forward. We’re looking for a medium-sized guy in a black leather jacket, beige chinos and black gloves.’
The security officer stilled the image. A digital clock in the top right corner of the screen read 9:56. ‘This is a little over five minutes ago. I’ll fast-forward from there, slowing every time someone comes in.’
A minute elapsed on the digital before the first maniacally hurtling figure shot through the revolving door. The officer slowed the image, and Halliday stared, aware of his heartbeat. A tall woman in a red trouser suit.
‘Next one,’ Jeff Simmons said.
The screen showed an empty lobby before the doors blurred again. This time an overweight businessman spurted into the hotel, slowed for inspection, and shot off again.
The digital showed 9:59 when a dark-haired guy in a black leather jacket entered the lobby. The security officer slowed the image. Halliday tapped the screen. ‘That’s our man, Jeff.’
In the top left corner he made out a figure, frozen in the act of rising from an armchair. The Latino seemed to be looking across the lobby at the woman, maybe even lifting his hand in a gesture of greeting.
‘Run the image forward a few seconds,’ he said.
The security officer touched the keyboard. The scene sprang to life. The Latino crossed the lobby. The woman completed the act of standing up and moving forward. She was tall, with a shaven tattooed head, and wore a long silver raincoat. The man and woman met, spoke briefly, moved towards the elevator.
Halliday felt his mouth run suddenly dry. ‘Good God.’ He looked at Barney. ‘It’s Carrie Villeux.’
‘What the hell is she doing here?’ Simmons said. He looked at the security officer. ‘Run it forward.’
The Latino and Villeux stood before the lift for a few seconds and, when the doors parted, stepped inside. The doors closed and Halliday leaned forward, peering at the floor indication lights above the door. From the distance and angle of the security camera it was impossible to make out where the elevator halted.
‘Can we follow them?’ Simmons asked.
The officer nodded. ‘We have cameras on every floor. It’s just a matter of timing the elevator and checking each floor. Here goes.’
The scene on the screen changed, showed the blurred image of a hotel corridor, with a pair of elevator doors to the right. The digital showed 9:58.
‘This is the second floor,’ the officer said. ‘Nothing there. I’ll move to the next floor. We’ll wait out the same minute on each floor.’
The scene flickered, remained almost identical. They waited out a minute, and then the officer said, ‘Nothing. Okay, the fourth floor.’
The scene flickered again. The digital flicked back to 9:58. Seconds later, the elevator doors parted and the Latino and Carrie Villeux stepped out and walked along the corridor.
They disappeared from sight of the camera. The security officer called up another angle. This one showed Villeux and the guy pause before a door while he operated the lock. They passed inside.
The security officer turned to Jeff Simmons. ‘Room 456, fourth floor.’
‘Good work.’
‘How you going to play it?’ Barney asked.
Simmons considered. ‘We’ll get someone in there disguised as staff. Then we freeze both the guy and Villeux.’
Halliday looked at Barney. ‘I wonder where the hell Nigeria is?’ he said.
‘I don’t think we’re that long from finding out.’
‘Okay,’ Jeff Simmons said, ‘let’s think about this.’
‘Hold on there . . .’ It was the security officer. ‘Look.’ He was pointing at the screen. He paused the image, rewound it a few seconds.
The scene was a corridor on the fourth floor. The digital read 10:02. The officer began the recording. The door to room 456 opened and someone hurried out. The guy was familiar: he had the build of the Latino, but he was no longer wearing a black leather jacket and chinos. He wore a fawn raincoat and black trousers. More importantly, facially he was white now, with long fair hair and a beard.
The security officer followed him via the surveillance cameras to the elevator, and then switched the scene to that of the lobby at 10:03. Moments later, the guy stepped from the elevator, crossed the lobby and exited through the revolving door.
‘It looks,’ Jeff Simmons said evenly, ‘as if we might have to change our plans.’ He spoke hurriedly into his com, briefing his men with the subject’s changed appearance.
‘Fat chance we have of locating the bastard now,’ Barney said. ‘He might be miles away.’
Halliday felt something cold grow within him. ‘I don’t like it, Jeff,’ he said. ‘What happened to Villeux?’
‘Let’s get up there,’ Simmons said. He spoke into his com, then turned to the security officer. ‘I might need a pass-card for room 456.’
‘I’ll get one.’
They crossed the lobby to the elevator and rode up to the fourth floor. They stepped out and waited in the corridor. Two minutes later, they were joined by the security officer with the spare pass-card.
‘I’ll knock, posing as hotel staff following up a complaint,’ Simmons said. ‘If no one replies I’ll use the card.’
He walked down the corridor and turned the corner. A minute passed, then two. Then Barney’s communicator buzzed.
Halliday heard Simmons’ voice. ‘No reply,’ he said. ‘I’m going in.’
The security officer hurried along the corridor. Halliday pushed himself from the wall, not sure if he really wanted to enter the room. He followed Barney down the corridor and turned into the bedroom.
He looked around quickly, seeing nothing at first and experiencing a quick sense of disappointment. Then he noticed a number of objects on the bed, and at the same time noticed Barney t
urn away from the scene, his expression frozen. In that second, Halliday saw the things on the bed for what they were, the tableau like an optical illusion which resolves itself and becomes suddenly, startlingly obvious. He closed his eyes, but too late.
He hurried from the room and squatted down against the far wall. Barney had already got out. Halliday looked up, saw the security officer emerge, something in his training and macho self-image not allowing him to show what he was feeling, but Halliday read the truth in his eyes.
Jeff Simmons joined them in the corridor. He sat on the floor opposite Halliday. ‘Villeux,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘The bastard used a cutter.’
It was the first time Halliday had ever heard Simmons swear. The silence stretched, ringing.
He felt suddenly sick. The Latino had intended to do to him the other night, he thought, what he had succeeded in doing to Carrie Villeux.
He stood and walked to the end of the corridor. A window looked out over uptown New York caught in the grip of a hard winter, the serried tower blocks a dozen shades of frozen grey.
Barney joined him. ‘It doesn’t look good for Nigeria,’ he said.
‘But why Villeux? If Wellman was right, and a rival did want Nigeria dead, then what motive was there for killing Carrie Villeux?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps it isn’t related to any technical knowledge Nigeria possessed. It’s something else entirely
Halliday stared out across the city. ‘The world is a fucking awful place, Barney.’
‘Yeah, tell me about it.’
Jeff Simmons joined them. ‘I’m going to get onto surveillance, see if we can track the guy after he left the hotel.’
‘Some hope,’ Barney grunted. ‘He’s on foot, he could slip down any sidestreet, and the bastard’s wearing a damned chu.’
Simmons shrugged. ‘I’ve got to go through the motions, Barney. At least he doesn’t know we’re onto him.’ He paused. ‘You see what I meant the other day when I found out that chus were being used? You see how much more difficult it makes our job?’
Halliday expelled a long sigh. The thought that there was someone out there who could kill without compunction, and evade detection with ease, filled him with fear.
‘Come on,’ Simmons said. ‘Let’s get down to headquarters, see what surveillance can come up with.’
They were leaving the hotel when Simmons’ com buzzed. He stopped to answer the call. Halliday continued along the packed sidewalk, zipping his jacket and stuffing his hands deep into the pockets.
‘Hal, Barney,’ Simmons called, pocketing his com. He joined them, grim-faced. ‘That was control. They’ve found the body of Sissi Nigeria.’
Halliday stared into the grey sky. ‘Christ, I don’t think I could take a second one in the same day.’
‘She hasn’t been cut up,’ Simmons said. ‘In fact, control says it doesn’t look like murder.’
Halliday shook his head, as if to clear it. ‘Is that the best news we’ve had all day, or am I losing the plot?’
Simmons smiled and pointed across the street. ‘She’s in the ComStore.’
They crossed the street, Simmons leading the way. The ComStore was a double-fronted establishment adorned with a holo-façade like a mammoth computer stack.
A crowd of ghouls stood outside, trying to look through the smoked glass doors. Two cops, aided by a drone, kept them at bay.
Simmons eased his way through the crowd and Halliday and Barney followed in his wake. The interior of the store was empty but for the manager and staff gathered redundantly by the door and, at the far end of the long shop-floor, a knot of police officials standing around a seated figure.
The odour of burned hamburger filled the air.
Halliday followed the others down an aisle of computer terminals towards the body. The cops locked up, nodded at Simmons.
A sergeant made his report. ‘She came in about ten minutes ago, sir. At approximately 10:15 the manager found her like this. We ran an identity scan and she came up on a missing persons file.’
‘How’d she die?’
‘We’re still trying to work that one out, sir.’
Halliday stared down at the body in the swivel chair. It was the second corpse he’d seen that morning but at least, he told himself, this one was still in one piece.
It was still not a pretty sight, even so. Her arms and legs were twisted at unnatural angles, and the expression on her once beautiful face was a contorted mask of agony. Her shaven skull was cries-crossed with the silver inlay of a neural implant, but the spars were blackened in places, and in others the metal had bubbled and burned through the flesh of her scalp, like solder. Smoke twisted, lazily, from the perfect tiny shell of her right ear.
A lead hung from the external port at her temple to the computer terminal before her. A cop wearing headphones was running his fingers across the touchscreen, conjuring up scrolling blocks of alpha-numerics.
He looked up at Simmons. ‘She uploaded something seconds before she died. It was in encrypted code and we’re talking . . .’ He stared at the screen and nodded, ‘. . . a big file, in excess of fifty gigabytes.’
‘Can you trace where it was sent?’
The tech shook his head. ‘It scrambled its route through the Net. It might be anywhere by now.’
‘How the hell did she die, Lieutenant?’
‘Something was blasted the other way, down the connection lead and into her implant. I’ve never seen anything like it. She didn’t stand a chance.’
Halliday noticed the coat, then. He stared, hardly able to bring himself to believe what he was looking at. The fawn raincoat had been bundled and tossed onto the floor beside Nigeria’s computer.
He touched Simmons’ shoulder and pointed, thinking the coat was a sick calling card left by the killer in a mocking gesture of defiance.
Then he seemed to notice everything in a dizzying rush. He saw the black glove on the table-top next to the computer, and the second glove still on Nigeria’s left hand. He saw that she was wearing black trousers . . .
Simmons, reaching out, picked up something which had slipped down the side of the woman’s chair. It looked like a mask, its expression grossly distorted as it hung from Simmons’ fingers. It was connected by a thin wire lead to a small control box in the breast pocket of Nigeria’s white shirt. When Simmons pulled the box from the pocket, the mask hanging in his grasp cycled through a series of ghastly, withered faces: the Latino killer, the blonde girl, the fair-haired guy who’d left the hotel, and half a dozen others.
‘Christ,’ Barney whispered, ‘it’s the damned chu.’
In a daze, Halliday moved around the seated corpse. From this angle he could see the raised contusion on the woman’s left cheek, the brown skin gashed and bloodied. He reached out and gently removed the glove from the left hand, and stared down at the swollen, broken fingers he had mashed on the rooftop two nights ago.
Barney picked up the raincoat and tipped a cutter from its pocket onto the table-top.
The implications took a while to sink in.
‘Nigeria,’ Simmons said. ‘Sissi Nigeria attacked you the other night. She . . .’ He gestured towards the Astoria Hotel. ‘She did that to Villeux and then came here.’
Halliday found a swivel chair and sat down, nausea rising in his throat like bile. He shook his head. ‘Why, Barney?’ he said. ‘What the hell possessed her to do that to Villeux?’
Barney reached out and massaged Halliday’s shoulder. He shook his head. ‘We’ll wait and see if the tech comes up with anything else, Hal. Then I’ll drive you home, okay?’
* * * *
Nine
Anna woke at eight and reached out for Kia with an instinctive gesture she had made a hundred times before. The bed beside her was empty, cold. Kia had been distant since they had arrived home yesterday after the malfunction of the Mantoni jellytank, or whatever the hell had happened. They had planned to go out that night, but Kia had cried off with a headache and, rather than
go out alone, Anna had stayed in and tinkered with a few pages of her latest novel while Kia sat on the couch in brooding silence. When Anna asked what was on her mind, it was as if Kia were a million miles away, her eyes staring sightlessly at the wall. She had finally brought herself to reply. She had shaken her head, smiled vaguely, and said that she was working on a problem related to work.
Anna had gone to bed at ten, and it was well into the early hours before Kia had joined her.
Now she turned onto her back and blinked up at the ceiling. ‘Kia?’ she called.
She rolled from bed and dressed. Kia was not in the bathroom, nor the kitchen. Anna fixed herself a coffee and two croissants. She carried a tray into the lounge and looked out the window. Kia’s battered Cadillac was not in its usual place in the street. Anna wondered if she had left early in order to work on the glitch in the VR system - but why, if that were so, hadn’t she woken Anna and told her, or at least left a note?