Final Lap

by Malcolm Rose

  She shrugged. “Just had a good day, that’s all. I’ll play you a new piece sometime.”

  In a way, the telescreen narrowed the distance between them. In a way, it emphasized their separation. Luke looked at her and said, “You’ve gone blonde.”

  Jade ran a hand through her hair. It looked as if she’d already disturbed it a hundred times, or she’d been outside in a gale. “Good, isn’t it?”

  “Always,” said Luke. “Hey. I might meet someone you know tomorrow.”

  “Oh? Who’s that?”

  “I don’t know her name but I bet you do. She’s doing the music for the International Youth Games. She’s staying here, apparently.”

  “Lucky her.”

  “To be staying with me, you mean?”

  Jade laughed. “No. I mean, whoever’s got that job is on to a winner. Fame’s just around the corner.”

  “If you want, I could murder her, then you might get it instead.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. Malc did his best to arrest you when you got framed at school. He’d definitely get you for doing in a high-profile musician. Anyway, I wouldn’t want the job as a substitute. I’d be annoyed I wasn’t first choice.”

  At once, Luke looked away from the larger-than-life version of Jade.

  “What have I said?” she asked.

  “Sorry. You just made me think of a substitute building manager I met today. He’s got the job he wanted, but he might still be angry because he wasn’t first choice. Thanks. Interesting idea.”

  “Glad to be of service,” Jade replied.

  “Yeah. I’ll tell you who the Games’ musician is and what she’s like, if I bump into her. But she won’t be up to your standard.”

  Jade smiled at him. “You never know. She might be just as brilliant as me.”

  Her image faded away and, once again, Luke was left with a sophisticated metal box for company.

  ****

  Malc projected a film of the closing stages of the marathon onto the telescreen. The aerial images had been shot from the airship. When the film zoomed in on Ford Drayton, Luke lost interest. It was the wide shots of the incomplete stadium that captured his attention.

  Several times, he asked Malc to pause the video and home in on the scaffolding. He was able to watch the two builders take a break, lean on the rail and peer down at the track. Horrifyingly, Luke could watch the contraption give way and tip the men over. The movie followed their long dreadful descent, arms and legs thrashing uselessly in the air. Luke was appalled, but no wiser. There was no one else near them when they fell. Luke was disappointed that he hadn’t got an image of Spoilsport but the film fitted his theory that the bolts had been sabotaged some time before the coming and going of builders had worked them completely loose.

  It was getting late when Luke finally admitted defeat and gave up examining the overhead pictures.

  A mobile aid to law and crime never tired, though. Malc told him, “Frank Russell’s medical records do not contain any reference to serious illness.”

  The result jolted Luke because it was not what he expected. “What? He hasn’t got cancer?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, why did he tell me he had?” Luke wondered.

  “Unknown,” Malc replied. “However, I am programmed to assume that suspects may not tell the truth.”

  “Yeah,” Luke said. “He might be lying because he’s Spoilsport, pretending he’s not fit enough to go up scaffolds and the like.” Luke thought about it for a few seconds. “There’s another reason you wouldn’t understand. It’s to do with human nature. He’s feeling sorry for himself. Maybe he’s invented the cancer as a way of getting sympathy. The Authorities haven’t just evicted an old man; they’ve evicted a dying man. Sounds a lot worse. He might even have convinced himself he’s ill.”

  “According to the file on objectors, he has a long record of interfering with the regeneration...”

  Luke interrupted. “He didn’t deny it. He’s more into making himself a nuisance than turning nasty.”

  “Frank Russell’s known opposition to the Hounslow project and the pretence regarding his fitness make him the prime suspect,” Malc stated.

  “All right,” Luke replied. “Next time security guards haul him away from his latest protest, get them to bring him to me.”

  “Task logged.”

  Chapter Seven

  The next morning, Malc guided Luke to the Experimental Technology Institute where Libby Byrne’s partner was a researcher. Like Libby, Royston Klein was an engineer but he was using his training in an entirely different field. He was working on the production of hi-tech clothing.

  Luke held out his identity card and said, “I’m here about Libby.”

  Straightaway, Royston stopped fiddling inside a yellow Lycra vest and gazed at him. “Have you found her?” he asked.

  “Sorry. No. I want to ask you a few questions to help me find her.”

  “Ah.”

  He seemed relieved. Luke wasn’t sure of the reason. Perhaps Royston lived in fear of an announcement that her body had been discovered. Or perhaps he didn’t want her to turn up at all. To provoke him, Luke remarked, “You don’t seem very worried.”

  “With all due respect, you don’t know what I’m feeling. Libby and I did our duty twenty years ago. We were paired. We had two children. We delivered them to school, then we got on with our lives...”

  “Separately?”

  “We live together but more or less independently. Don’t get me wrong, though.” He stroked his beard, about four days of stubbly growth. “We’re good companions. We’ve got a lot of respect for each other.”

  To Luke, he seemed like another victim of the pairing process, another partner who’d settled for respect instead of love. On Luke’s left, a computer monitor showed a line shooting repetitively across the screen. About every second, it formed a fleeting peak in the middle of the display and the system let out a short high-pitched tone at the same time.

  “Go back four days,” Luke said. “The beginning of the week. She left home at what time?”

  “Seven thirty. Almost exactly. As always.”

  “Did she seem all right?”

  Royston shrugged. “I think so.”

  “Did she take a cab?”

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  “Did you go out after her?”

  Royston glared at him for instant. “What’s that supposed to mean? Am I a suspect?”

  “Anyone who’s got something to do with her is a suspect until I prove they’re not. You may well have been the last person to see her, so I’m bound to be interested in you.”

  “I left for work about seven forty-five. Quarter of an hour after she went. And no, I didn’t see her outside.”

  “Have you heard from her since?”

  “No.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  Royston thought about it for a moment. “I didn’t notice, but she would’ve had a full-length leather coat on – because she always did.”

  “Was she carrying anything?”

  “She had a brown briefcase. I guess she took that. Probably nothing else.”

  “Did she have a pairing ring on?”

  “Yes. And a watch. That’s it, though.”

  Distracted by the bleeping computer, Luke nodded towards it. “What is that? Sounds like something in a hospital.”

  Royston smiled and nodded. “Exactly. It’s my heartbeat.”

  Luke was surprised. “How does it know what your heart’s doing?”

  Royston undid the top two buttons of his shirt to reveal a close-fitting yellow garment. “It’s called haptic clothing. Haptic means based on the sense of touch. You see,” he said, buttoning up his shirt and pointing to the same sort of Lycra garment attached to a dummy, “it’s got wireless sensors all over the inside, touching the body underneath. The one I’ve got on is monitoring my heart from chest vibrations. Don’t they say someone’s heart rate goes up if they tel
l a lie?” He shrugged. “Now I’m a suspect, you can tell if I wander from the truth just by listening to my heartbeat.”

  “The method is not sufficiently reliable,” Malc said.

  “Some people sweat when they lie,” Luke added.

  “It’d be easy to design a haptic garment that measures the electrical conductance of skin. That’d change when sweat’s around.”

  Intrigued, Luke asked, “What are you using it for?”

  “I can think of lots of applications but I’m looking at health,” Royston answered. “These clothes could track quite a few body functions. Imagine I had a heart condition. The feedback from my haptic vest would give me – and a clinic – the earliest possible warning of a patchy rhythm. It could be a lifesaver.”

  Luke noted that Royston seemed more animated about his research than about the disappearance of his partner. But his face and manner were hard to read.

  Against a background of the regular bleeps, Luke returned to the subject of the Hounslow development. “How was Libby getting on at work? She must’ve said something.”

  “It was a lot of responsibility. If she were here, she’d probably admit she was struggling with the workload. But she wasn’t helped by some guy called Neil. Always undermining her, she said.”

  “She had a lot of bad luck to deal with as well.”

  Royston grunted. “Huh. She didn’t believe in luck. She thought someone was trying to ruin the whole show.”

  “Did she have a feel for who?”

  This time, Royston’s smile was twisted. “I think I just told you.”

  “Neil Gladwin?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Did she have any evidence?”

  “Yes. Her intuition. And a work colleague who was clearly after her job.”

  “I don’t think her feelings are going to convince Malc,” Luke replied wryly.

  Royston ignored his remark.

  “Was there any reason she might leave of her own accord?”

  “No,” Royston answered quickly.

  “Maybe work was getting her down...”

  “Not that much,” said Royston. “I may look cool about Libby, you know, but inside I’m...” He thumped his chest and his heartbeat monitor went into convulsions. The computer screen filled with crazy peaks and troughs and the bleeping went wild. “Oops. Shows you it works.” He composed himself before adding, “She doesn’t deserve... Anyway, I want her back. Alive and unharmed.”

  Luke nodded. “I’m working on it.” He turned to go, but pretended to change his mind. Making sure his face remained deceptively expressionless, he said, “I’m curious. What do you think of the Hounslow scheme. Do you approve?”

  Royston hesitated and exhaled noisily. “It can’t be a bad thing. Good for kids.”

  “Yeah,” Luke replied. “That’s right.” But he wasn’t sure why Royston’s heart rate had increased slightly.

  ****

  Back in Hounslow, Luke stood in wonderment at the huge stadium with its track surrounded by layer upon layer of seating and, above it all, a giant arch. It was much more impressive in reality than in the overhead clips from the airship. Right now, the temporary supports, skips, cranes and containers made it a mess, of course, but it was going to be magnificent. Luke had been in London long enough to realize that he was inside something extraordinary. The sports stadium was a heartbeat that meant the city might not be dying after all. Luke could not allow a rogue saboteur to wreck London’s fragile revival. Leaning on the trackside rail, he could also understand Jed’s passion for bringing the Games and young athletes to this venue.

  In the temporary steel network opposite, interlocking ladders led up to platforms slung under the canopy, high above Luke. The builders working up there seemed to form a separate tier of life. Most people went about their normal lives with feet firmly on the ground. The sky was the habitat of birds and aircraft. In between, the Hounslow construction workers were bustling about on scaffolding.

  Luke’s eyes followed the zigzag flights of steps from the ground to the upper tier and he let out a whistle. “That’s a lot of ladders to climb. I wonder if Frank Russell’s up to it.”

  “Insufficient data,” Malc answered.

  “Mmm.” Luke’s head felt unusually heavy and unbalanced because of the hard hat that he was required to wear while he was in the stadium. “I’m going to take a look at the parts that took the quick way down. Come on.”

  He vaulted over the barrier and set off across the area for the track and field events. In a few months, there would be expert runners pounding the track. Anyone crossing the middle then would be in extreme danger from javelins, discuses or hammers. Outside both straights, various jumping events would be taking place. The crowd might be handclapping a run-up to the long jump. Right now, the only sounds were hammering, drilling and builders shouting to each other. There were no athletes on show at all. On the far side, Luke stooped to examine the fallen fragments of scaffolding that had been collected and stacked beside the track.

  “They have been moved and contaminated,” said Malc. “No legal evidence can be collected from them and entered into case files.”

  Luke was inspecting the end of a girder. “There’s a hole through here,” he said. “I guess that’s where a bolt went.”

  “Correct.”

  “No marks or anything.” He shrugged. Looking around on the earth, he spotted a pile of twelve large nuts and bolts, but he didn’t touch them. “Well, the bolts didn’t snap. It wasn’t metal fatigue. Either they weren’t done up tight enough in the first place or Spoilsport took the nuts off, dropped them overboard, and left vibrations to shake the bolts out. A careless fitter might leave one nut loose by accident, but not twelve. That’s more than careless. So, I reckon this is Spoilsport’s work.” He looked up at Malc. “I know they wouldn’t be valid, but are there any prints on these nuts and bolts?”

  “There are many partial and overlapping fingerprints. The patterns are too complex and incomplete to analyse.”

  “Anything else? Like hair or fibres?”

  “There are fibres typical of all builders’ overalls. I do not detect hair, skin or other human traces.”

  “Pity.” Luke stood up and stretched himself like an athlete about to run a race. Looking regretfully down the home straight, he said, “This is the nearest I’ll get to running in any games. A shame. I would’ve... Anyway, I’ve got a crime to solve.”

  Leaving his protective hat in the bare reception room, Luke asked Malc, “Are there any parts around here that are actually finished?”

  “According to the plans downloaded in my memory, a practice gymnasium and two training grounds are complete and available to sports teams.”

  “A gym. Take me there.” Outside again, Luke waved his hand in the direction of the indoor arena with its ornate pillars, “All this reminds me how much I enjoyed sport at school. I was pretty good, you know. I should get in shape.”

  “You have a perfectly adequate shape,” Malc responded.

  Luke spread his arms as he walked. “Well, thanks for the compliment.”

  “I calculate that your calorific input equals your energy requirements on average. Therefore, you are not increasing or decreasing your mass. Also, the results from the automatic analyser in the last smart toilet that you used indicate good health.”

  Luke laughed. “I didn’t know you cared so much about me.”

  “I am programmed to protect you in all possible ways. You are a valuable asset to The Authorities.”

  “Ah. That’s it, is it? I’m an asset.”

  “Confirmed,” Malc replied.

  Luke knew all along really. The Authorities had invested a lot in his training as a forensic investigator. They wanted to protect that investment. Malc was not really a friend. He was an unsentimental tool designed to keep Luke safe, to perform forensic procedures, and to make sure FI Harding followed the requirements of the law. But, to Luke, Malc felt more like a mate than a mere companion.<
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  Luke swiped his identity card through the reader, entered the gym and made for the visitors’ gallery. There, he looked down on ten young people, all wearing a team’s sleek sky-blue kit. Three were running powerfully on machines yet remaining stationary. A couple were lifting weights. Two more were heaving energetically on rowing machines. One was performing regular exercises on mats and bars. In the middle, the team leader was talking earnestly to the other two of her athletes. Realizing that something had distracted them from her instructions, she turned and followed their gaze. When she saw Luke, her face darkened.

  She shouted, “Oi! I was promised I could train my people behind closed doors.”

  “Sorry,” Luke called down to her. “Doors aren’t closed to an FI. But don’t worry. I’m not after your coaching secrets.”

  “Are we being investigated?” the trainer asked, clearly vexed.

  “No. I’m just looking around. More interested in the building.”

  She didn’t reply. With hands on hips and a frown on her face, she waited.

  Luke didn’t expect to gain anything from his visit. He was simply familiarizing himself with the area. “This place hasn’t suffered any damage, has it?”

  The coach shook her head. It was a sign of impatience and not an answer. “How should I know? I reserve it for sessions, that’s all. It’s got what I need. I don’t care about anything else. But if I can’t have it to myself, I’m taking my team away. Right now.”

  Surprised by her bad mood, Luke shrugged. “No need. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Chapter Eight

  Luke drew his coat around him as he sat in the small covered area to the side of one of the training fields. Above him, a long line of pigeons had settled side-by-side on the overhang. Two wiry long-distance runners were jogging round and round the track alongside each other. This time there was no hostility, no protest at Luke’s presence. When the girls ran past, effortlessly matching their strides, they both smiled and nodded towards him. Luke called, “Hi,” and wished he could join them.

  Instead, he said to Malc, “There’s no chance of Spoilsport being one of Owen’s athletes. They might fancy having some events in the dome, but it didn’t exist as a sports venue when Spoilsport meddled with the plane a couple of years ago. So, no motive.”