The London Project (Portal Book 1)

by Mark J Maxwell

  ‘We’ve checked our sense perimeters around each murder site and there aren’t any gaps. In each case, the murderer has somehow managed to manipulate the strips into recording a different profile. Currently we’re in the dark as to how he managed to achieve it.’

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t question Baz Waters when you had the chance,’ Louisa said. ‘I suspect he could have provided those answers for you.’

  If DI Lenihan felt her needling he didn’t show it. ‘You might not believe me, but we did intend to interview Waters separately ourselves after you brought him in. But he was released before we had a chance. DI Vaughn wasn’t prepared to charge him with profile forgery, remember? Waters was caught with a large quantity of class As, but he claimed he was set-up. His brief was a real prick, too. He took one look at his client’s broken nose and threatened to pursue a case against the MET for battery. One whiff of the DPS getting involved was enough for DI Vaughn to cave in and release him on bail.’

  Louisa shook her head in disgust. ‘Bring him in. I’ll question him myself and to hell with the DPS.’

  The DI pressed his lips into a thin line. ‘Once we realised that whoever killed the Clothwell’s bosses might be using similar technology I put a call out for Waters to be brought in along with Stephen Shields, who was with him in the restaurant that night. Shields has gone off the grid—there’s no trace of him. As for Waters, I was notified of his death two hours ago. He was found in Brixton with his throat cut.’

  Suddenly it became all too clear why the DI requested she join the SCD7 operation. When Baz Waters had been found dead, CADET would have informed the DI automatically. Louisa was betting the first thing the DI did was request a history graph on the late Baz Waters. ‘You know for sure now that Baz subverted the strips, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ DI Lenihan said, his face grim. ‘His profile disappeared from the sense logs after he entered the restaurant. He only reappeared once we scanned the alley where you arrested him. We don’t have definitive proof, otherwise we’d have to report the incident to the NCA’s cyber crime unit, but from what I’ve seen I’m relatively confident the report you submitted indicating the presence of profile forgery was likely…accurate.’

  Likely, my ass. I was right and you know it! Louisa swallowed her rising anger. Giving the DI a hard time wouldn’t help either of them. Granted, he wasn’t exactly apologising for his behaviour at the briefing, but at least he had requested her assistance for this operation. The chance to work on a SCD7 case wasn’t an opportunity she was willing to pass up.

  The DI must have guessed what she was thinking because he softened the ‘I’m the boss’ authoritative tone all DIs employed when they were dealing with subordinates. ‘Look, Detective. You’re the only officer who’s seen this technology in action firsthand. I’d appreciate it if you could review the case files to see if you can spot anything we’ve missed. This time it isn’t just some small-time drug dealer tying us in knots. If we don’t find the Clothwells’ killer, the riots are going to be the least of our concerns. London is going to descend into all-out gang warfare.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘This is DC Sloan,’ the DI said, introducing a female officer sitting at a console. ‘Sloan, this is DS Bennett and DC Drachman. I want you to bring them up to speed.’ One of the other officers called the DI over and he left them alone.

  ‘Which one do you want to see first?’ Sloan asked. She was young for a Detective Constable—in her early twenties, with a petite frame and a thin bird-like face. Sloan scrutinised Louisa through narrowed eyes, as if she was trying to work out why she was playing second fiddle to some blow-in, even if Louisa did outrank her. Sloan was the only other woman in the room; perhaps the only one in the DI’s unit. Louisa knew from personal experience the effort it would have taken for Sloan to make detective. There were few enough women in uniform, but the jump to detective rendered them practically an endangered species. Louisa just hoped she wasn’t one of those female officers who viewed every other woman in the job as a threat, like there was a limited amount of career pie available and she already had her eye on a slice.

  Rick leaned on Sloan’s console and unleashed a winning smile. Sloan barely acknowledged him, affording him a cursory glance. Louisa stifled a smile at his affronted expression. Rick wasn’t used to being so casually dismissed.

  ‘Let’s take them in chronological order,’ Louisa said. ‘The DI mentioned you installed mobile strips at the crime scenes. Can you bring up the first one?’

  ‘I can do better than that,’ Sloan said. ‘Follow me.’

  She led them to an adjoining room. Inside was another Portal console but what caught Louisa’s attention was a large white sphere. It was easily ten feet in diameter, its top scraping the ceiling.

  ‘Is that a sense booth?’ Rick asked.

  ‘It sure is.’ Sloan took a seat at the console. ‘One of the latest models, too.’ She tapped on the screen and a thin hatch, shaped like an orange segment, silently swung upwards on the side of the sphere. Louisa had heard about the booths but it was the first time she’d actually seen one. Portal promoted them as offering a near-reality sense feed experience. They were prohibitively expensive and normally only bought by large private sector corporations. The first models were a bit like old pay phone kiosks. This one was far more flashy. SCD7 obviously drew down from a much larger budget than SCD1.

  ‘There’s only room for one person so Detective Drachman can watch from the console.’ Sloan moved to the sphere and held open the hatch door. ‘In you get.’

  Louisa instinctively crouched, even though she was in no danger of banging her head, and stepped into the sphere. Inside, the walls were perfectly spherical and smooth and coloured a pale blue, apart from a small, flat white circle in the center of the floor.

  ‘You stand there.’ Sloan pointed at the circle.

  Louisa awkwardly shifted over to the center and then straightened. The sphere’s ceiling was a few feet above her head but it still felt claustrophobic.

  ‘I need to run some calibration routines first and then we can start.’ Sloan peered through the hatch. ‘Oh, and remember not to walk forwards or backwards while you’re in here. We’ve had a few cracked heads and bloody noses amongst first time users in the past.’ Without waiting for a response she closed the hatch and Louisa was plunged into darkness.

  A white dot popped into existence before her, seemingly hanging in mid-air.

  Sloan’s voice echoed around her. ‘Keep your eyes on the spot as it moves around.’

  The spot slowly shifted left and right at first but then sped up and swirled around her head before diving down to her feet, rising to the ceiling and then winking out.

  ‘There are quite a few motion sensitive controls built in,’ Sloan said, ‘but we’ll stick with the basics. Keep your arms relaxed and hanging by your sides.’

  Louisa blinked and found she was standing in a hedge maze. It was the kind you might find in a grand country estate. The walls were a few feet taller than her so she couldn’t see over the tops. Looking up, she could see blue sky and a few wispy clouds. The detail of the rendered environment really was amazing. Louisa felt she could almost reach out and touch the foliage beside her. There were no harsh edges or pixilation that would normally betray a computer-generated environment.

  ‘You can control forward and backward movements with your hands,’ Sloan said. ‘If you form a fist with your right hand and lift it up you’ll move forwards and raising a fist with your left hand will move you backwards. The higher you raise them, the faster you’ll move. Turn on the spot to control your direction of movement. Give it a try and let me know when you’re ready.’

  Louisa raised her right hand and found herself moving down one of the maze’s corridors at the speed of a fast walk. When she raised it higher, the movement accelerated to a jog. When she came to a corner she simply twisted to the right and she glided gently around it. It was quite intuitive and she quickly got the hang of it
. ‘Okay, show me the first crime scene.’

  ‘The murder took place in Queen’s Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue,’ Sloan said.

  The environment shifted and Louisa found herself standing in the stalls of the theatre beside a row of seats about halfway back from the stage. The theatre was empty apart from two constables in uniform standing guard before the entrance to a men’s restroom. They looked bored and didn’t give any indication they knew she was there, which of course they wouldn’t because she was watching a sense feed.

  ‘Is this being relayed in real time?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Sloan said, ‘the first victim was killed in the restroom directly in front of you.’

  Louisa raised her right fist and moved forward.

  ‘Environment interaction is on,’ Sloan said, as Louisa approached the constables. ‘You can’t pass through walls by default but people and doors are no problem. If you want more freedom of movement let me know and I’ll alter the settings, but users can get a bit freaked if they start falling through the floors.’

  Sure enough, Louisa drifted straight through one of the officers. It was an eerie feeling. The door offered the same lack of resistance as Louisa entered the restroom.

  Inside there was a short section, which turned to the right after a few yards. It was brightly lit by fluorescent lamps and covered from floor to ceiling with small white tiles that, although clean, had a grimy look due to their discoloured grouting. Louisa moved forward, pausing to examine a red streak along the right wall. Blood? Then she turned the corner and found her answer.

  Louisa always found it disconcerting when she came across a crime scene where the victim had bled out. She’d long since ceased being affected by the sight of blood itself. She was simply perturbed by the volume of the stuff that somehow managed to leak out of a single human being. Thankfully most of the blood had drained away through grills in the corners of the restroom. The remainder had dried, leaving a messy pattern of footprints and streaks across the floor. It was difficult to judge what had happened from the blood patterns alone. She was no forensics expert and, judging by the distinguishable sets of footprints, quite a few people had stomped their way through the scene. Of the victim there was no sign.

  ‘I can remove the blood from the feed if you want,’ Sloan said.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Louisa said, trying to mask her irritation, ‘that won’t be necessary.’ She realised then she’d stopped at the edge of the bloodstains. Sloan must have taken her inaction for shock. Why had she stopped when the blood wasn’t real? Instinct I suppose. Not wanting to contaminate the crime scene. Except you aren’t really here, are you? Louisa glided forward.

  Three urinals were affixed to the wall on her left. There was a vertical splatter of blood on the wall above the middle urinal. Arterial spray? She imagined the victim standing before the urinal before being approached from behind, the killer reaching around to slit his throat with one hand whilst holding his head back with the other. In one of the sinks opposite the urinals, someone had been violently sick. The person who had discovered the body, perhaps? Louisa was suddenly glad Portal hadn’t decided to build in olfactory receptors into the strips.

  ‘Can you wind this back to when the first scans were taken?’ Louisa asked.

  The scene shimmered and then snapped back into sharp focus. A body lay on the ground in front of the center urinal. A man, on his side, curled in a foetal position. The pool of blood was still wet; only a few scuffmarks marred the even distribution across the floor. The vomit in the sink was still there.

  Louisa knelt beside the body. The man was in his early fifties, balding and overweight—his belly bulging over the top of his trousers. His throat had been cut. The edges of the incision were clean and straight, the wound deep and gaping. The blade had been razor sharp. His neatly bisected trachea was exposed and encrusted with clotting blood.

  The victim’s name is Peter Shanks,’ Sloan said. ‘CADET flagged him straight away as a known Clothwell member. Upper echelons in their leadership hierarchy. There weren’t any witnesses.’

  ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘An American tourist. One Randy Watkins. He visited the gents at the start of the intermission and found the victim as you see him. Watkins is clean. We don’t have anything on him, and neither do the Yanks.’

  ‘Was the environment contained at that point?’

  ‘What do you think? Watkins ran out into the auditorium, screaming his head off. The place emptied within five minutes. Most of them didn’t even know what the hell they were running from. Probably thought it was a fire or a terrorist attack or something.’

  ‘Do we have a list of the ticket holders for the performance?’

  ‘We have a list, but a lot of them paid with cash. The show’s popular with tourists.’

  Louisa knew she wasn’t going to like the answer to the next question but had to ask. ‘How many people do we have inside the sense perimeter at the time of death?’

  ‘One thousand, eight hundred and forty seven. Over half of them don’t have profiles, either. We ran facial recognition on all of them and any who drew a blank have been positively identified as tourists. As for the rest…CADET has nothing on them. They’re clean.’

  Clean or forged? ‘Okay, take me to the next one.’

  ‘It took place in a private VIP section of Scarlet night club off Leicester Square, thirty-seven minutes after the first.’

  The scene shifted and the restroom was replaced by a long dingy corridor with a thick claret-red shag carpet and cheap-looking chandeliers spaced out along its length. The VIP rooms were merely cushioned seating areas around low circular tables, sectioned off from the corridor by heavy looking red drapes with gold tassels at their base. Why is it these places always look plush in dim lighting but seedy as hell in the harsh light of day? Louisa guessed Sloan had messed around with the feed’s illumination parameters as the corridor was much too brightly lit for the light-sources to be the chandeliers alone.

  The drapes before Louisa were pinned to the side. The booth was empty and the table cleared. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary apart from a dark, sticky-looking residue on the red leather seats. No points for guessing the cause. There could be just as much blood here as the first scene, but with all the red decor you’d never see it. ‘Roll this one back to the time of the first scan, please.’

  Another body shimmered into place before Louisa. This man was sitting where the stain had been, his head tilted back and arms stretched out to the sides. He was dressed in black trousers and a black shirt. The top three buttons of the shirt were undone, revealing a thick gold chain. His fingers were covered in rings and he was wearing a heavy gold watch with diamonds set in the bezel. There was a knife sticking out of his chest, buried right to the hilt.

  Louisa moved forward, passed through the table and leaned in to inspect the handle. ‘Through the heart?’

  ‘Precisely,’ Sloan said. ‘One thrust penetrating the heart. He died instantly. His name is Henry Kent.’

  ‘Have forensics come back on the knife yet?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re confident it’s the same one used on the first victim. It was wedged in pretty tight. Initial PM results indicate it snagged on a couple of ribs. The assailant must have abandoned the knife rather than wasting time trying to extricate it.’

  Louisa leaned in closer. There was a reddish tinge to the outside of the man’s nostrils. ‘Do we have a tox report yet from the PM?’

  ‘It’s positive for Trance. He was out of his tree at the time. Probably didn’t even feel the blade going in.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  ‘None. The waitress attending Mr Kent said she took his drinks order and was heading to the bar when the fire alarm went off. She hadn’t returned to check on him before she left. Kent did have a bodyguard, but he was taking a leak at the time. He’s the one who discovered the body and called an ambulance.’

  ‘How many do we have within the perimeter?’


  ‘Five hundred and three. It’s better this time though,’ Sloan said with faked enthusiasm. ‘Only thirty-five without a profile.’

  ‘Any matches with IDs from the first scene?’

  ‘Nope, no-one was inside both perimeters according to the facial recognition and profile matching.’

  ‘Bring up the last scene and shift it back to the earliest capture point this time.’

  ‘The final murder took place in an underground pedestrian tunnel in Tottenham Court Road Station,’ Sloan said. ‘The victim’s name is Hugo Marshall.’

  The tunnel phased in around Louisa. Before her was another body. This one was in a sitting position, slumped against the wall of the tunnel. He was casually dressed in jeans and a sports jacket. Blood had seeped from underneath the man but the volume was much less than in the restroom of the theatre. Louisa knelt beside him. She couldn’t see the fatal wound, but his lips were speckled red with blood.

  ‘What killed him?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘Another knife wound,’ Sloan said. ‘I’ll bring the footage forward to when forensics moved the body.’

  The scene around Louisa blurred, causing her to lose her balance. She stuck out a hand to steady herself on the tunnel wall and winced as she cracked her fingers off the curve of the sphere instead.

  When the scene re-formed the man had been moved onto his side. A SOCO was standing frozen beside him, clad in white overhauls. Louisa could see the wound in the man’s side now. One of the officers had lifted the victim’s shirt to get a better look. Another single entrance wound. Judging by the location of the wound the knife thrust would have pierced the lungs, preventing the victim from crying out.