Damage Time

by Colin Harvey

"What about companions?"

  Bailey focused on Shah. "How do we establish who he mixes with? They're not employees."

  "Bet your bottom dollar they'll be listed as contractors. If they ring any bells regarding the victims, or the victim's families, we'll have our connection."

  "When did you arrange for us to, uh, drop in and check those lists?"

  "Monday," Shah said.

  Seized by an impulse, Shah accessed all downloads for the day before Natalia Sirtisova was found in the river, and the day before that. Then he checked her DOB, and filtered for gender, ethnicity and age, but left location open. He counted them. Nineteen hits.

  Shah had cross-referenced two of them – both were busts – when Bailey checked her schedule. "We're supposed to be at the hearing in–"

  "–an hour," Shah said. "Don't worry. I hadn't forgotten. Ready?"

  "Will they need us?"

  "I doubt it, but it's probably no bad thing to be around in case they do." Shah downloaded the other seventeen onto his eyepiece. It took so long that Bailey was fretting by the time they left.

  Bailey nudged Shah. "Here comes Grunwald."

  Nancy Grunwald was smart, chipper and – to Shah – terrifyingly young as she faced the media. "We made a case for Sunny to be detained as a flight risk, the defense objected and we compromised on Mr Kotian Junior surrendering his passport and very reluctantly agreeing to report each evening at

  17.00 hours until the trial. That's set for two months' time. Thanks for coming." She smiled, and walked away.

  "So we weren't needed" Bailey stared at the ADA's back. They had sat outside the courtroom for ninety minutes, kicking their heels.

  "Wasn't a complete waste," Shah said. "While we waited, I went through all seventeen downloads. The first seven were busts. I skipped the eighth, and I've eliminated another three – ah, here's Sunny."

  As the Kotian legal team passed Shah and Bailey, Sunny whispered, "Don't think I'll forget this little stunt."

  "That a threat?" Shah cocked his head on one side.

  Shah watched the retreating group. "You know, after Kotian agreed to let us see the lists, he opened up a little. That was also when he started hinting and making those little taunts about how much he might know about this and about that."

  "Why'd you think he did?" Bailey said.

  "I think he thought giving us the list earned him a calorie's worth of liberty.

  "But amongst all the taunts something came out. He doesn't have much faith in Sunny, despite what he says. There are problems ahead, there."

  Bailey whistled. "He thinks Sunny isn't up to taking over?"

  "He tried to dress it up, but yeah." Shah could see from his new perspective that both Kotian and he were a little lonely, for all their wide circle of acquaintances. Apart from Leslyn and perhaps McCoy, he knew few people outside of work, and fewer still were real friends. When he asked Leslyn, she had shrugged. "You were always a hard worker. It doesn't leave much room for anything else, and time's whittled away at those you had."

  Shah checked the time. "I've got that medical this afternoon." Then I'll study those downloads. A face glimpsed in the eighth download was nagging at him.

  Later, when the medical was over, and he'd been signed off, the face clicked and he rushed back to the office. When the search came up with what he was looking for, he sat back for a moment, running his hand through his hair.

  Then he made a call. "Cap? Shah here – I need a favor. A big favor."

  Sunday

  Shah was surprised that no one had revoked his driving license after the attack, but most people who were stripped of their memories were unlikely to want to drive again, so it was probably off most officials' radar. His heart fluttered as he packed the small carryall, but he had the medical permit to drive interstate and van Doorn's reluctant permission, given late the afternoon before. He hoped that it would be enough.

  Leslyn stood watching him with half-folded arms, leaning against the wall. The only clue to her thoughts was one hand picking at a hang-nail on the other. "You sure this is wise?"

  "Van Doorn's agreed it. And I've had enough lessons." Shah had been taking driving lessons in the lengthening evenings since he'd downloaded meeting Leslyn and driving back to New York afterwards – anything to bridge the gap with Old Shah. He smiled at her. "I'll be fine. Don't worry, honey."

  Her eyes filled. "Know how long it is since you called me anything sweet?"

  His only answer was a sad smile.

  He took the subway up to the car hire office, picking up the keys to a little Dodge LPG-powered runabout just after eight.

  Shah eased it out cautiously, heart thudding. He took the minor roads at first, before joining the I-95 in Westchester County. The countryside into Connecticut was vaguely familiar from some of his downloads, and he had little attention to spare for sightseeing. He tried to relax his grip on the wheel when his hands started to hurt, but the car wobbled with every pothole in the raddled concrete strip, so he put both hands back on the wheel.

  When he reached the state line with Rhode Island he slowed for the toll-barriers, and wasn't surprised when, as soon as his card had been debited, a trooper waved him over to a lay-by. "New York plates," the cop said. "You got transit papers?"

  Shah handed him the permit signed by the doctor the day before, when he'd been signed back to work full-time, just ninety minutes after the "eureka" moment on COTUS, when everything had changed.

  The cop's right hand didn't leave his gun the whole time he looked left-handed through the tox screen results for Ebola, AIDS Plus, SIDS, everything that had savaged the world for the ten years of the Dieback.

  There had been an outbreak of something nasty the year before in Providence, Shah had read. In New York Shah could pretend that life was unchanged, but out here in the boonies, there was no getting away from the fact that the world was a scarier, emptier place.

  Finally the cop handed him back his permit. "What you travellin' for?"

  Shah could have told him to mind his own, but there was no point. "Witness interview."

  "Must be an important witness, send a New Yorker scurrying up here." When Shah didn't answer the cop waved him on. "You have a good day."

  Toward lunchtime, as Shah's hands cramped up, he stopped at a diner in plague-haunted Providence, trying not to be spooked by the locals' sideways looks. The ghostly city made his daughter's squalid accommodation in Marble Hill look classy. Every window was boarded up, feral dogs roamed in packs on another street, and a half-eaten body lay in the road near the diner.

  When Shah handed over his calorie card, the attendant squinted at it. "What's this? We don't take no New York State shit up here. You got real money?"

  "Dollars?" At the attendant's contemptuous snort, Shah rummaged and pulled out what foreign currency he had and handed most of it over. Guess that rules out staying in a hotel tonight, he thought.

  Shah drank the foul coffee which was even worse than what came out of the precinct machine as quickly as he could, wolfed down an equally overpriced and tasteless protein-burger – whatever the hell that is – and left as quickly as he could.

  Back on the road, he finally began to relax when fifty miles later the interstate took him into Boston, Massachusetts, down vast concrete arteries whose decay was a forlorn testament to the previous century. There was still more traffic than anywhere since New York.

  Shah parked up soon after lunchtime and settled down for a long wait.

  He half-dozed through the quiet Sunday afternoon in May; a few young couples passed the car, but though Shah felt the weight of their stare, he never took his eyes off the ordinary little house. As night fell, he slept uneasily, still in the driver's seat. When light finally came, his neck was stiff and he ached down his left side.

  It was just after eight on the Monday morning when a woman emerged from the house. As she passed, Shah stepped out from his car and said, "Hello, Aurora."

  XXXIV

  It's the early hours o
f the morning, but Washington is still awake. Though the Dieback has killed millions of people, the lack of gasoline has sucked people in from the suburbs – the vast sprawls of houses built on the premise of endless supplies of gasoline for automobiles to link them has proven unsustainable – and this is still the nation's capital.

  Lobbyists, journalists, government employees and those dependent on the government still behave as if this was the last decade of the last century when the United States all but ruled the world in the benevolent glow of their triumph over communism. Even more than New York, this is the city most in denial that the world has changed, and not for the better.

  Still, all those people mean that you can window-shop for your next victim in perfect safety, with almost unparalleled choice. All those Oh So Important people going about their important business around the clock because it's always high noon somewhere in the world.

  Unlike Peoria, Illinois, or Arlington, Texas, or any of the other multitude of places once again tied to the rhythms of the sun and moon, here you can walk at midnight down streets still thronged with people networking, schmoozing, eating, drinking, flirting – and right on cue, you notice a pretty girl sitting in a bar on her own, sipping a cocktail. She looks bored and lonely. Good. All the better if she's an out-of-towner.

  You wait outside the bar, hoping that, bored, she won't jump into a cab, although she doesn't look that prosperous – one of the reasons you selected her – and Washington cabs are eyewateringly expensive. That no one will pick her up while you wait, though it's clearly a couples bar rather than a pick-up joint, and half of the clientele look gay anyway.

  You're checking the time for the fourth time as she leaves –

  01.23. She turns right, away from you, which is good. No need for any attempts at clipping. Cutting parts of memories out is like editing primitive tapes from early television shows, nearly impossible. One day perhaps, the technology will exist, but you very much doubt that you'll see that.

  Too autobiographical, you realize. Focus. Focus on the girl.

  She's had a couple of drinks, and it shows in the relaxed way she's walking, although she doesn't weave or stagger as she would if she'd had too many. Good. You're not in the mood to get puked on tonight. She turns off the main concourse, and immediately your task becomes both easier and harder; easier because there's less chance of being seen by a passer-by, harder because she's more likely to see you and bolt.

  You close the gap slightly, battening down the desire rising within you. Keep your distance, but don't lose sight of her. This must be how it felt for early man, stalking the mastodons across the tundra.

  You're caught by surprise when she turns off again into a narrow alley, and nearly lose her. You speed up.

  She's climbing the steps to a square Reichstag-style apartment block when you spray her with the relaxant and she goes down like a building that's had its foundations dynamited.

  You catch her before she lands, rolling her around so she faces you. Her limbs are twitching, but this stuff is formulated to knock out everything but the respiratory system and voice box, so all she can do is flutter her eyelashes and whisper, "Please."

  "Don't struggle and I won't hurt you." Your filtered voice always sounds strange, but it lengthens the odds against a voiceprint match.

  You push her skirt up and tear off her panties, cheap nasty things with hearts on them, and push her legs apart. She's dry down there, but a little lube takes care of that, and you harden at the terror in her eyes. She flinches as you enter her, which is even better.

  It's over all too quickly, and even as the probes enter her head to find their way to the memory of the rape, you feel yourself shriveling inside, matching your increasingly flaccid cock.

  The shame eats away at you, rendering your joy ever more bitter. Guilt fills your mouth with bile. Now, all you want to do is forget what you've done.

  XXXV

  Shah noted Aurora pale beneath her impeccable make-up. Good, he thought.

  "Pete – I – should I call you Officer? Are you on duty?"

  "Get in the car, please, Aurora."

  "I'm supposed to be – somewhere."

  "I can drive you there. Or I can arrest you and drag you down to the local precinct. Which do you want?"

  Aurora sighed but climbed into the passenger side. She gave Shah the address, which he repeated for the eyepiece to get journey instructions. She – he couldn't think of her as it – wrinkled her nose and opened the window fractionally. He started the engine.

  "I didn't expect to see you again. Considering you beat the shit out of me last time."

  "Supposed to be in Rikers, was I?"

  Aurora looked puzzled. "Rikers seems a little extreme, but yes, appropriate."

  Shah drove in silence, slowly, cautiously. After yesterday's odyssey, driving at twenty miles an hour felt almost comfortable.

  Aurora licked her lips. "How well do you know Boston?"

  She looks terrified. "I can get from here to where you want to go, with the eyepiece help." Shah drove. He toyed with the idea of putting the radio on, but decided against it. Silence might make her talk.

  It didn't.

  "Surprised you're up here," Shah said at last.

  "As opposed to where? Poughkeepsie?"

  "I meant that it doesn't seem that big a place, to be able to support you…"

  "It's smaller than before the Dieback." Aurora stared straight ahead. "But it's still one of the two or three biggest cities on this coast."

  "But nothing like New York."

  "It's a big IT place. Twinned with Silicon Valley Urb and Bangalore."

  Shah said, "One of many reasons why Kotian has interests here, I guess."

  Aurora licked her lips. "What do you want, Officer – Pete?"

  "To see you."

  "Why? To hit me again?"

  "No." Shah slowed, allowing pedestrians to cross. Gulls swooped low and he guessed that they were near the harbor. "You can relax; I'm not here to hurt you. Just to talk."

  Aurora studied Shah, and then seemed to come to a decision. "There's a motel nearby. They charge by the hour, and they're discreet. You can shower, while I meet my client."

  "In the same suite?"

  "Ha, ha – funny guy. No, next door."

  "How do I know you won't run for it?"

  "You can listen at the wall. Or you can trust me, like I'm supposed to trust you."

  Ten minutes later they parked outside a small two-floor motel with peeling paint and acne'd concrete walls. At least it looked clean. Shah showered and dressed again, then lay on the bed fully clothed.

  An hour later a knock roused him.

  Aurora brought in glasses of juice, sipping one. She sat on

  the bed and patted it, but Shah took the chair facing the bed. She smiled in triumph, as if she'd just won a bet with herself. "I won't talk with an eyepiece running."

  "OK." Shah turned it off and put it in his pocket.

  "You seem… different," Aurora said.

  "Being framed for murder has that effect."

  Aurora's eyes widened. "What?"

  Shah said, "A SWAT team kicked in my door a few hours after you left. I had no idea how much shit I was in, so I invoked the Fifth. The only thing that saved me was that the perps underestimated just how badly NYPD needs experienced staff. Even so, one more incident woulda put me in Rikers for sure. Everyone says I just got lucky, but it didn't feel like it. Then we got an ID: Natalia Sirtisova."

  Aurora gasped, but said nothing.

  Shah noted it for later. "I found a Russian-speaking clip which fitted Natalia's profile. Maybe her last download," Shah added. "I glimpsed someone in the background who looked familiar. I finally realized that it was someone I'd seen on the web. When I found the clip again, I ran the facial recognition and passed it through COTUS. Surprise! It threw up a smalltime Boston crook. If they had connections here, then probably so did you. Like a dummy I thought just 'cause Kotian had a wife up here, he still
had all his businesses in New York. When I finally stopped thinking locally, it fell into place. If you needed to hide, where better than another of Kotian's operations? And I found another Debonis whose registered address was here."

  "My father left it to me, but I never changed the registered owner." Aurora shrugged. "And?" Despite her so-what? reaction, her eyes never left his face.

  Shah didn't answer straight away, but sipped his coffee, letting silence and tension do his work for him.

  At last, realizing she knew such tricks or had more self-control than most, he said as if thinking aloud, "I just realized that this may well be where our Ripper kept his gear. So why'd I never think of this before?" Aurora spread her hands in an I-dunno gesture. Shah continued, "Cause we're all used to thinking locally. That's how the world works nowadays, but maybe our crim don't. Maybe he thinks nationally, even internationally."