Damage Time

by Colin Harvey

  Shah ended the download. He still didn't really understand, but it was up to her, however much the idea of having one of the last constants from his old life knocked from beneath him frightened him.

  Wednesday

  He was equally baffled the next day, in the ADA's office, but for different reasons. Grunwald had called first thing telling him to report to the office at 10.30. Bailey had had the same call.

  When they arrived, Shah saw Aurora Debonis sitting in the reception area. She was white-faced, her lips pressed together, and the look she gave Shah before she turned away would have blistered paint.

  "What's going on?" Shah said as soon as the door closed on the still-waiting Aurora.

  "Good morning, Officer. Yes, I'm very well, thanks," Grunwald said.

  "Spare me the sarcasm. I thought we had a plan. But you seem to have other ideas."

  "Not my decision." Grunwald jerked her thumb upwards, in the general direction of the DA's office. "It's not for discussion. Accept it or get off the case."

  They fell silent, reviewing their notes. After several minutes, Grunwald summoned Aurora. Grunwald said, "Tell me about the night that Natalia Sirtisova went in the river."

  Aurora shrugged. "Pete and I had a few drinks; I escorted him back to his place, because that's what I do. When I left he was fit and well. If he reacted to a drug that he took earlier…" She shrugged. "Sorry, that's not my problem."

  XLII

  The interview carried on for an hour, yielding nothing new.

  Aurora became increasingly defensive, until she finally said, "I'm not answering any further questions. Either arrest me or I'm going."

  Shah stood but Grunwald said, "Officer Shah!"

  Shah sat down again. When she had left, he said, "What was that about?"

  "DA's orders. Carrot and stick. You friend her, that's the carrot. I'm the stick; talk or face the consequences." Her stare was unyielding. "It's not negotiable."

  "You've just undermined five days' work in one hour."

  "Bull!"

  Bailey cleared her throat.

  Shah and Grunwald turned, the argument hanging in the air. Bailey reddened but said, "Pete, you looked as baffled as I felt. If I could see that, she could too. Maybe you could use that – when she's calmed down a little."

  "Assuming she hasn't flown straight back to Boston." Shah softened: "You may be right. But if I'm to salvage anything of this mess, I need to do it now."

  Grunwald called as he left, "Van Doorn seems to rate you, Shah, but don't think you're indispensable. The DA's office doesn't need your approval."

  Shah turned. "I'll accept that you just fucked up five days' work because I have to. But don't expect me to tell you how wonderful you are. You want a kiss-ass, go find one."

  Aurora made Shah sweat for five minutes before she instructed the doorman to let him up. She was stone-faced when she answered her door. "What do you want?"

  Shah followed her in as she walked away from the open door. "To apologize." Her laugh was a snort of derision. "You're probably right to be sceptical," he said. "But I really didn't know they were going to summon you. I was as surprised as you."

  "Yeah, course you were." Aurora marched into her bedroom, where a half-packed case lay open on the bed, a pile of clothes beside it. "Doesn't matter, Pete. I was flying back to Boston for a few days anyway."

  "Why didn't you bring an attorney?"

  Aurora stared at him. "Because I was blindsided. I thought the missing eyepiece they said they wanted to talk to me about was the one I reported lost the day I met you. Turns out it was your missing eyepiece that turned up. I was a stunned as you – assuming you weren't just acting. Which I'm not sure about. Or anything else." She blinked, several times.

  Shah studied Aurora. She continued to not meet his eye. He said, "What's happened?"

  "Once I've trained my replacement in Boston, I'm returning to New York. In the meantime, I'm going to commute." That she could afford the giga-calories needed for regular air travel told Shah how wealthy, important, or both she was.

  "So what's the problem?" Shah said.

  "No problem at all."

  "It doesn't sound like it." Shah thought, change the subject, take the pressure off her. "Can I make a cup of coffee?"

  Aurora stopped and stared at him. "Of course you can." Her training as a companion, or inherent good manners took over. "Grief! I'm forgetting my manners–"

  Shah touched her shoulder. "It's. OK. Do. Not. Worry." He went into the kitchen. It took a few moments of rummaging to find everything, but he soon had the percolator hissing.

  When Aurora reappeared, she looked as composed as she usually did.

  "I think when I switch my eyepiece back on I may find I'm suspended," Shah said.

  "What! Why?"

  "I told the ADA what I thought of this morning's stunt."

  Aurora shook her head. "Damn fool. Call her back and retract it. Tell her you were drunk or drugged or deranged – tell her anything! You can't afford to be suspended!"

  Shah shook his head. "I'm not going to be her gimp."

  Aurora poured them each a cup of coffee, and cradling hers as if to draw warmth from it, stared into space.

  Shah stayed quiet. She would speak when ready.

  "Abhijit fucked me last night," Aurora said at last. She laughed, a thin brittle sound close to shattering. "Nothing new there, I know. But he was different, rougher. Before he went, we talked. Once you strip down all the pleasantries, what he said was that if I offended his son, I offended him. And that if Sunny wants to yank my head back by my hair while taking me from behind, he can do so. Or if," she shuddered "he decides to stub lit cigarettes out on my flesh, that's his right. Whatever Sunny wants he gets. I'm to stop avoiding Sunny."

  Shah exhaled. He chose his next words with care. "How do you feel?"

  "Oh, Pete! I'm scared outta my head! But you give the client what they want…"

  "Do you want him as a client?"

  "What I want doesn't matter. It's what they want that counts."

  "Do you want him as a client?" Shah repeated.

  "No, not any more." Aurora seemed to finally remember to drink her coffee and was silent for a few moments, then put the cup down. "But I can't leave him."

  "Can't, or won't?"

  "They amount to the same thing."

  "You're scared to."

  "Yes."

  "What about witness protection?"

  Aurora smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "Ah."

  "Don't give me that 'ah' like I planned this all along."

  "Didn't you?"

  Shah shrugged. "I'd have had to have known that he was going to turn on you eventually, I suppose, but you credit me with too much if you think I saw this coming."

  "If you say so."

  "I do."

  "We-e-e-ll, anyway, Pete, thanks, but no thanks." She drained her cup. "I have to go."

  Friday

  "Those bloody cops are here again," Sunny said.

  Kotian held up a hand. "Don't worry about it. This is just a social visit. Shah called me earlier to suggest we meet for coffee. I invited him here, instead."

  The set of Sunny's jaw told Kotian what the boy thought of that. Good. He must learn that he cannot have everything he desires, when he desires. It was such a shame that he hadn't been firmer with Sunny when he was younger. He might have turned out less wilful. Kotian doubted it. A flaw was a flaw. Much though he loved his oldest son, he no longer had to indulge him as he had when the boy was younger and his only heir. Sunny realized that too…

  "Why, Appa?" Sunny said with a frown he couldn't quite hide.

  Kotian chuckled. "To quote Sun-Tzu, or Machiavelli – whichever you prefer, 'Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.' Show them in, Aurora." When she had left the room Kotian said, "If they're here with us, they can't be elsewhere rootling around – can they?" Abruptly, Kotian beamed. "Pete, and – Officer Bailey, isn't it? How are you both?"

  T
he policemen sat on the couch Kotian waved them over to, Shah heavily, Bailey more gingerly, but both oozing into the plush softness of the couch. Kotian chuckled inwardly. So puritanical, this generation, even a comfortable chair made them purse their lips as if sucking on a titty. Bailey was no exception. It's almost as much fun teasing her as Shah and Sunny. Sunny was green with jealousy of Shah.

  Kotian allowed none of his thoughts to show, but instead listened to Shah's small talk, his compliments at the furnishings – as if a mere cop's opinion mattered – his complaints at the weather, and more interestingly a few tidbits about the NHL off-season; at least the man was relearning his hockey, if nothing else. "So how goes the hunt for the Ripper?" Kotian's duels with Shah were much more than just talking about ice hockey. Kotian liked to give him little gems under the guise of "I've heard", or "someone said." Some were true, with names, dates or places changed, some were complete rubbish that Kotian had invented, some were genuine, but the people that Kotian was giving up were in no position to do any damage, as long as he was careful; a few were even rivals, and Kotian felt an inner glow at Shah doing his dirty work for him.

  Shah held up a hand palm down, waggling it from side to side. "You know how it is, one step forward, half a step backwards." Kotian saw Bailey give Shah a look and almost chuckled aloud. She didn't appreciate what her colleague was doing, and her inability to hide her suspicion that Shah was growing too close to him was as obvious as an open book. Equally obvious was Shah's knowledge of that, and his annoyance with her. In other words, you've got nowhere. Kotian watched Aurora out of the corner of his eye, watching Shah.

  Kotian knew that she was attracted to older men – character, wit and intellect were more important to her than looks, however hard Shah might find it to believe. Kotian wondered just how attractive she found Shah, and how long he could keep her around before she became a liability.

  XLIII

  It's an interesting sensation, looking at memories you've ripped from your own mind, especially when it contains its own memories. A bit like the doppler effect of a freight train passing in the night.

  There are memories you look at now and feel nothing, but at the time they were almost unbearable. Bad enough the need to hurt that builds like a woman's cycle without any clear sign of any pattern, but then the self-loathing that follows… how did you survive them?

  Before the memory excision technology was developed to first access, then excise the data in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, you wouldn't have been able to. Need, action and guilt would have built a vicious feedback loop, eventually resulting in a mistake that would lead the police to your door. Even acing your chances by working across the land to minimize detection by one of the Little League-minded PDs wouldn't have been enough.

  You look back at that first botched attack on that whore in Boston, and wonder how you could have been so dumb as to let her see your ring and to talk to her, even through a vocoder. Thank the gods that you chopped the version you sold to that creep in the Azores. No one will know the truth.

  You're cleverer now. Training by studying rips may not be as efficient as 'normal' learning, by experience, but it's good enough, as the attack on the girl in Washington showed.

  Appa might almost be proud of you, if that perversion he uses as a sex toy hadn't blinded him. Sometimes it feels as if the whore is spying on you, but you're careful – she doesn't know about this secret room. If she does find it, she'll never get past the alarms without the combination.

  And now he's going to give her to you, maybe she'll teach you a few new things before she reaches the end of her usefulness.

  You feel your cock hardening at the thought of being in her. Perversions are good with their mouths, desperate to worm their way into a man's affections any way they can, eager to make up for not being able to give a man proper pleasure in the right way. To ease the need that's starting to build already, you relive that first attack again, smelling the whore's cheap perfume, her faked gasps of pleasure as she lifts her feet further up your back, the feel of her warmth below you and the contrast with the coldness of her body where it's been exposed to the open air. But the real pleasure is in watching the terror on her face as your hands fasten around her windpipe, the way she tautens in panic around your cock.

  In now-time your hand strokes the bulge in your pants as she bucks and thrashes beneath you, then fights back, digging her nails in, but she's fading fast already. Caught by surprise she lost vital seconds.

  In your memory you download hers and you feel, as she dies, her own terror and she's bucking and writhing beneath you and terrified of you pumping pumping pumping above her

  –and you rip out the memory even as she dies with your cum shooting into her.

  XLIV

  Friday

  Aurora stared out of the guest bedroom's window over the lush grounds, filing off the nail she'd caught. She sat on the four-poster and sighed. Abhijit had been adamant that he'd wanted her so she'd come out to the country, as he'd asked. Where Sunny waited with his predatory smile.

  She heard voices down the corridor, and putting the file back, went to join them. They're talking about me! She shrank back against the corridor wall, straining to hear. One of her grandmother's sayings popped into her head: eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves. She thought, bad manners are less important than survival, Grandma.

  "You shouldn't toy with Shah, Appa. He's spent years trying to pin something on us. Your games only encourage him. Why take risks?"

  Aurora smiled. Sunny was so jealous of Shah he'd even risk arguing with his father, something that she never thought she'd hear.

  "Not like you, heh, Sunny?"

  "I – What d'you mean, Appa?"

  "You know. You like risk. Where do you think you get that from?" Kotian chuckled. "We'll use the hijra to keep him stupefied. She can be useful for a while longer."

  "If you say so."

  "I do," Kotian said, their voices fading as they went back downstairs.

  That broken nail was the only reason she'd heard them talking.

  She'd deliberately ignored their business dealings over the year she'd known them. The Kotians liked to bend the law, but who didn't? Who didn't steal bits of stationery from the office, break the speed limit, forget to declare some of their income? And if the Kotians were better at it than others – so what? It wasn't her problem. Until the night she'd returned to tell Sunny that she hadn't been able to bring Shah as instructed.

  She'd always known that there was something wrong with Sunny, something broken. Too often Sunny was dead behind the eyes, until it came to causing pain, when the light in them was even scarier than the normal deadness masking it.

  But to realize that they were both using her for the time being was as shocking as watching Sunny beat poor Tasha, his knuckledustered fists repeatedly slamming her head back against the wall with a dull thump.

  What to do?

  She still had a couple of temporary eyepieces stashed in her room. One hadn't been registered, so was effectively anonymous. She needed to get some more 'pieces and copy everything that she could find onto them, and then start hiring some safe deposit boxes scattered around the city out of harm's way. Time to start taking out some insurance.

  She hurried back to her room.

  Saturday

  "I'm going to enjoy this," Shah said. "Ruining this bastard's afternoon just feels so good." He rubbed his hands together as if it were cold, rather than thirty Celsius.

  "Try not to gloat too obviously." Bailey waved at the SWAT team to take up their positions at the front and side exits to the Estate. Llewellyn Park's park-like streets weren't accustomed to black-clad men and women, and one local had walked into one of the period Victorian lamp posts, while a second had nearly crashed her Daimler. "Wouldn't want him to claim there's a vendetta. Which I guess he will."

  "Was that advice?" Shah pretended to be shocked.

  "Just making a suggestion," Bailey said, straight-faced. "Nice
suit, by the way. And a haircut as well…"

  Shah shrugged. "The barber's was next door to the tailor. Only a couple of kilocalories more than the last one I had. Feel that? That's proper natural silk, not your cheap pseudo-silk shit – oh, we're here!"

  The gate to Shah's address was manned by a guard whose eyes widened at the sight of the SWAT team's helmets and insectile goggles. "Open the gate." Shah showed him the hardcopy warrant. The team was jamming eyepieces around the house to prevent any over-loyal employee raising the alarm, so he couldn't transmit it electronically.