The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Did he lie about the time of the shower?”

  “No.”

  “So he didn’t wash off the bloodstains?”

  “No. Actually, he was one of the students who did touch Kitchener. But Cecil Cameron confirms that, it’s in his statement. So that’s not in question.”

  “Hmmm.” She placed her hand palm down on his chest and began to stroke him, moving in an expanding circle. “What does your intuition say?”

  He leant closer and kissed the end of her nose. “Nothing. Not a bloody thing. You were right. We need more information.”

  “In the morning.”

  He slipped his hands round her hips, squeezing the taut curve of her buttocks. “No messing.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The next morning began with a break in the rainclouds. Only a few immobile strips of cirrus were left crouched over the eastern horizon, fluoresced a pale saffron by the rising sun. According to the channel weathercasts, the next stormfront would arrive by teatime.

  The A47 into Peterborough was even more snarled up than usual. Scooters were in the majority, the city’s morning shifts on their way to work, riding up to four abreast in the spaces between juggernauts, vans, and company buses. They were used to the traffic, Eleanor wasn’t. By the time she reached the section of road which ran alongside the Ferry Meadows estuary she was shouting at the three riders keeping station two metres ahead of their bonnet The glittery red and blue metallic helmets with their black visors remained unmoved by her diatribe, easily anticipating the surges of the methane-powered van in front of them, braking smoothly. In comparison she seemed to be hopping forwards like a kangaroo. A steady stream of cyclists zipped by on the inside. Infuriating.

  Thirteen years ago the raised land to the north of the estuary had been a mix of open countryside and pleasant woodland. Twelve years ago it had been swamped by a slum zone of shanty housing the like of which Europeans had only ever seen in ‘casts from the Third World. Now it was a solid cliff of whitewashed apartment blocks, long balconies dribbling fronds of colourful vegetation from clay pots, washing hanging on lines between support arches. Solar-cell roofs glinted brightly in the morning sun.

  Below the concrete embankment the tide was going out, leaving long stains of milk-chocolate mud visible above the sluggish water. A line of artificial stone islands was strung out across the two-kilometre width of the estuary, the eddy turbine barrage, creating vast, slow-moving whirlpools in each gap.

  The first time she had ever come to Peterborough-the first time she had ever been to any city-she had accompanied Greg along the same route, visiting the same person. Even two years on, the difference was pronounced. More traffic, more people, more urgency, less tolerance. It was all due to Julia. Event Horizon’s arrival had tweaked the city’s dynamic economy into overdrive. After ten years of copious growth and financial exuberance Peterborough still hadn’t lost its Frontiersville verve. Everybody was on overtime, chasing impossible directives. And they seemed to thrive on the compulsive achiever atmosphere.

  My God, is this what regeneration is bringing us back to? Traffic jams and yuppies?

  At least none of the vehicles was burning petrol. Not even Julia could take that short cut. Energy generation and supply was becoming a problem again, countrywide. Worldwide, from what the ‘casts said. Solar cells simply couldn’t meet industrial demands, coal was out of the question. Hydro dams were one possibility for England, given the increased rainfall, but the country’s chronic land shortage all but ruled them out. Tidal barrages were a viable option, but they were big, their construction time could be anything up to a decade. England needed the electricity now. Peterborough had its eddy turbines in addition to its quota from the beleaguered National Commerce Grid, but even that fell well below the level demanded by Event Horizon, the kombinates, and the plethora of smaller light-engineering companies nesting in the suburbs.

  Eleanor couldn’t think how Julia intended to power the tower and cyber-precincts she was beginning out at Prior’s Fen. It couldn’t be fusion; the JET5 reactor at Cullham had passed the break-even point a year ago, but commercial applications were still seven or eight years away, and looked like being at least as expensive as fission. Perhaps Julia was planning to ship it in using old oil tankers converted to carry giga-conductor cells. They could be charged up in equatorial ports; the power would be there if she spread a few hundred square kilometres of solar cells over the new deserts in Africa and Asia. Her Prior’s Fen project was certainly pitched at that sort of macro-scale.

  The channel breakfast newscasts had devoted a lot of time to reports of Julia pouring the first footings of her new headquarters building. Eleanor and Greg had watched it in bed, eating toast and sipping tea, enjoying the quiet period of togetherness. Because she damn well knew it would be the only one they’d get today.

  The traffic began to quicken, her three helmeted outriders opening some distance. She drove past the entrance to the Milton park estate. Normally she used it as a short cut into Bretton, but at this time of day she would have to fight her way through the traffic in the Park Farm industrial precinct. Quicker to stick to the trunk road.

  A comet’s tail of red brake lights flared up ahead.

  Bretton was a hive of construction activity. Neglected through the PSP decade as the vivacious new developments flourished in what had once been the green belt, it was now back in demand with property developers despite its strategically disadvantaged position sitting between Mucklands Wood and Walton. Housing and industrial units tussled for space in old parklands, streets were parking yards for the lorries of various building contractors.

  Eleanor parked behind a low-loader carrying a pair of factory-new dumper carts. The first thing she missed were the children. Bretton used to be swarming with them.

  Rounded up and carted off to school, most likely. And a good thing too. There was so much catching up to do. The one thing she always regretted was not having a formal education; all the kibbutz had given her was the basic reading, writing, arithmetic, and databasing lessons, then they put her straight into animal husbandry courses. She had enjoyed them at the time, because it meant that for three nights a week she went into Oakham to the sixth-form college. Two hours just sitting down and not having to work. Heaven.

  The adult courses, or at least getting out of the kibbutz and seeing there were alternative ways to live, had planted the seeds of rebellion which ultimately resulted in meeting Greg that night two years ago. She knew all she needed to run the groves with Greg, although she still toyed with the idea of going back and picking up some more qualifications. One of those warm misty daydreams which helped life slip down a little easier, a what if which was slightly more than idle fantasy. Now, of course, education for children was a New Conservative priority, and a real one, not just a manifesto declaration. One of the reasons for the current bout of inflation was the amount of money the Treasury had to print to pay for repairing schools and providing them with up-to-date equipment. So Julia always said. But then it was Julia who was so insistent that total education be implemented as soon as possible.

  Only because she needs computer literates to work in her cyber-factories. And what Julia wanted, Marchant granted, so went the opposition chant. And why am I being so cynical this morning?

  “You were dead ten paces ago,” a gravelly female voice said in her ear.

  Eleanor turned. It was Suzi.

  The Trinities girl only came up to the base of Eleanor’s neck; she was slim to the point of androgyny, with spiked purple hair and a bony face. She wore a pair of tight black jeans, and a brown singlet under a new leather biker jacket which had the Trinities symbol stamped on the right breast-a fist closed round a thorn cross, drops of blood falling. Her age was impossible to pin down, though Greg said she was in her mid-twenties. In a girlie summer frock she could have passed for fifteen.

  She was grinning up at Eleanor.

  “I saw you skulking about as soon as I got out of the Ranger,” Eleanor s
aid, making it as condescending as possible. “I just didn’t want to hurt your ego, that’s all.”

  “Bollocks!”

  Eleanor laughed, and scrupulously refrained from ruffling Suzi’s hair. For all her butch swagger, Suzi could get very touchy about her lack of centimetres.

  She had met the Trinities girl back when Greg took his first Event Horizon case. It was her first, and please God last, experience of hardlining. Both of them had been hurt during the mission, although Suzi had suffered by far the worst injuries.

  Eleanor still wasn’t quite sure if they were friends; Suzi had a very frugal social behaviour pattern. Relationship wasn’t a word or concept which featured heavily in an urban predator’s mental lexicon. But there was certainly a degree of respect, which was a big step; non-urban-predators were universally regarded with complete contempt.

  “What have you come for?” Suzi asked as they walked up the slope towards the Mucklands Wood estate.

  “I need to have a rap with Royan.”

  “Yeah?”

  Eleanor grinned at the blatant curiosity. “Greg’s working on a case again.”

  “No shit. I thought you weren’t going to let him do that again.”

  “I wasn’t. But Julia asked him to.”

  Suzi chuckled delightedly. “Christ, that girl bypasses their brains and plugs directly into their balls. What’s she got that I haven’t?”

  “Ten trillion pounds and a medieval virgin princess’s hairstyle.”

  They laughed together.

  As they approached the housing estate Suzi drew a large Luger maser pistol from a shoulder holster, carrying it quite openly.

  Mucklands Wood always reminded Eleanor of old Soviet-style cities in the last century. It was a cultural and architectural throwback to prudent realism: low-cost council housing, the PSP’s contribution to the refugee crisis, a magnet for the underclass who couldn’t hope to get into one of the overseas-funded projects. Rich with the nutrients that bred resentment, the starkness and dejection of lives condemned to the dole.

  Fifteen identical tower-blocks, twenty storeys high, sheer concrete walls hidden beneath a scale of cheap, low-efficiency solar panels. Crushed limestone covered the ground around them, sticky with a tar of mud; weeds and nettles grew in defiant clumps, the only vegetation. A few small single-storey workshops had been built by the council, earmarked for PSP skill-training projects. But they were all empty shells, burnt out, breeze-block walls already alarmingly concave; another couple of years would see entropy and vandalism reduce them to rubble.

  Eleanor always hated coming to Mucklands. It infected aspirations and dignity like a cancer. You could never rise out of Mucklands, you could only fight. The Trinities exploited that ruthlessly.

  She caught glimpses of people lurking among the workshops, walking between the towers. All urban predator types, leather jeans, camouflage jackets, and AK carbines. Even though she had a Trinities card, she always called in advance, waited until there was someone to escort her in.

  “Do the kids here go to school?” she asked Suzi.

  “Yeah. Father makes sure they do. It’s a pain, some of ‘em make good scouts. Who’s gonna suspect a nine-year-old?”

  “You’ll cope.”

  Suzi gave her a glum look. “I know what you’re thinking. Get ‘em out, fill ‘em with smarts, break the poverty cycle.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Brilliant. Then who’s going to carry on the fight?”

  The fight against their nemesis the Blackshirts was everything for the Trinities, the reason for their existence. Blackshirts were the remnants of the People’s Constables with whom they had fought a running war for nearly a decade along Peterborough’s cluttered frantic streets. And the two were still fighting as if nothing had changed, as if the PSP was still in power. There were too many dead, too many old scores to settle.

  “You can’t fight for ever,” Eleanor said, knowing it was a waste of time. Trinities lived for combat, lived for death. It was sequenced into their genes now, unbreakable.

  “Try me,” Suzi growled dangerously.

  Two guards stood outside the tower’s door, saluting sharply as Suzi walked through. Eleanor didn’t even feel a reflex laugh coming on, it was too sad. The inside of the tower was kept meticulously clean, a sharp contrast to the external atrophy.

  Suzi knocked once on the door of the old warden’s flat and went straight in. The far end of the room was lined with dilapidated metal desks supporting a range of communication gear; six Trinities, all girls, were operating the systems. Seven flatscreens were fixed to the wall above them, showing images fed from cameras which had to be perched on the top of the towers. Five of them displayed a panoramic view of Mucklands Wood, scanning slowly; while the remaining two were zoomed in on Walton, two kilometres away on the other side of the Al5, a dense conurbation of rooftops and chimneys, interspaced with the tapering tops of evergreen pines. The quagmire of the Fens basin was just visible in the background, a grubby brown plain vanishing into the distorted haze line which occluded the horizon.

  Walton was to the Blackshirts what Mucklands was to the Trinities: headquarters, barracks, recruiting ground, armoury, police and public no-go zone. Both areas were resented by the rest of the city. Even the reserve of gratitude people felt for the Trinities, in their role as focal point for local opposition to the PSP, had withered to nothing over the last four years. Peterborough’s residents wanted the guerrilla war stopped, wanted to be rid of the urban predators, wanted to get on with their lives without the constant threat of violence and anarchy hovering in the background. The city council was already talking of implementing a clampdown, maybe even sending in the army to flush Mucklands and Walton clean of undesirables.

  Eleanor knew it would never end that way. You couldn’t drive the Trinities and Blackshirts any further underground.

  Long before any clean-out operation finished the bureaucracy-stultified preparation phase the two of them would have it out, head to head, straight on, putting everything they’d got into one final hardline strike.

  The communication gear operatives were emitting a constant murmur as they talked into their throat mikes, occasionally switching the flatscreens to different cameras. It looked like a very professional operation.

  The instigator of it all sat at a desk behind the operators, command position. Teddy La Croix, an ex-English army sergeant whom the Trinities had named Father, swivelled round in his chair and grinned broadly. He seemed to get bigger each time she met him, easily two metres tall, with at least two-thirds of his bodyweight made up from muscle, probably more, she couldn’t imagine anything as soft and vulnerable as human organs being a part of Teddy’s make up. Biolum light glinted dully on the dark ebony skin of his bald scalp. He was dressed in his usual combat fatigues, cleaned and ironed as though they had only been out of the laundry for an hour.

  Boa constrictor arms circled round her, and he gave her a hug, kissing her cheek. “Goddamn, gal, you finally did it, you left him and ran away to me.”

  “Stop it,” she giggled and slapped at his shoulder. “I’m legally hitched to him till death do us part, you were at the wedding. So behave yourself.”

  He gave a theatrical sigh and put her down. “You’re looking good, Eleanor.”

  “Thanks.”

  They stood and looked at each other for a long moment. Teddy was one of Greg’s oldest friends; they had both served together back in Thrkey. She had been secretly thrilled at gaining Teddy’s trust; approval like that came hard, but it brought her orbit just that fraction closer to Greg’s.

  “What’s that?” She pointed to his left hand. It was covered in a thin flexible foam of blue dermal seal.

  “Bit of extra-parliamentary action couple o’ days back. Nothing bad.”

  Eleanor heard Suzi’s soft snort. She could guess just how fierce it had been.

  “Oh, Teddy.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll be careful.”
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  “That’ll be the day.”

  He put his arm round her shoulder, and walked to the back of the room, away from the communications operators. “Tell me something. You’re here to see Royan, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Special visit, coming by yourself. This some sort o’ deal Greg’s working on?” He sat on the edge of a wooden table covered in maps and thick folders, resting his buttocks on the edge. The legs let out little creaks of stress.

  “Yes.”

  Teddy’s expression turned serious, forbidding. “He’s outta that, gal. He’s got the farm, he’s got you. You got a job now, you gotta keep him out. He’s made it, clean free. Outta all this shit.”

  She put a hand on his forearm. “No hardlining, Teddy. I wouldn’t let him do that again, you know I wouldn’t. This is just a case for Julia. It’s puzzling, and it’s ever so slightly bloody weird, but it’s nothing physical. OK?”

  Teddy worried at his front teeth with a fingernail. “Julia?”

  The tone was indecisive.

  “Yes. She needs his espersense.”

  “There’s other psychics. This themed shit they’s shovelling out these days.”

  “Name one as good as Greg.”

  “Yeah,” he growled. “Well, you tell that rich bitch from me, it’s her ass if anything happens to Greg.” His eyebrows lifted in emphasis. “Or you.”

  She stood on tiptoes and planted a kiss on his forehead. “You’re gorgeous.”

  “Jesus, shit.”

  Was he actually blushing?

  “What is this flicking case, anyway? Gotta be heavy duty shit for her to ask in the first place. Last time we rapped, she’s as hot as me for Greg to quit.”