He slowly shook his head. “I'm afraid it's hopeless. Whatever hasn't been burned, melted, or shattered has been vaporized."
"Any backups of Shad's engrams anywhere?"
"Nothing we can find. D. C. Parker inquired of North American Biotron—they produced Guy Shad's duck bio for those American insurance advert producers. However, Shad failed to have his engrams on file there or anywhere else."
"Are you certain there's nothing in the tower mainframe?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Matheson's eyebrows arched. “None of us have our engrams copied into the computer, Jaggers. I suppose we ought, but it's not like our end of law enforcement is violent. Not usually."
"Who is out at the scene?"
"Parker was out there today alongside Constabulary Scientific and Technical. What they picked up out there seems to confirm what Storel said."
With my left hand I grabbed Matheson's uniform lapel and pulled him close. Amidst the fumes of his peculiar cologne, I whispered into his ear, “Tell Parker to watch his back. When he's out there, tell him to watch his back."
"What's going on, Jaggers?"
"It was a trap. We were set up."
I released his lapel, he leaned back, and studied me for a moment. “Army ordinance, the bomb unit, and Scenes of Crime officers all seem to think the explosion was an old dud artillery shell. There's evidence—"
"It hasn't been used as a firing range of any kind for over eighty years, sir. The last of the ballistic artillery shells used there landed twelve decades ago.” My thoughts swam reluctantly through my headache. “There was an observation post on top of Hangingstone Hill. Third highest spot on the moor. Makes sense to put an observation post there. Why then would the army shell Hangingstone Hill? The observation shack? Get the army to check their records. On top of that hill is where observers used to stand and see where artillery shells landed elsewhere."
He studied me for a long time, then stood. “Get some rest, Jaggers. The doctor says you'll be back home tomorrow or the day after. Fit for duty in a couple of weeks."
"I can go back to work now, Superintendent. Copied into a walking mech, I can function perfectly well."
"Your body needs to heal, Jaggers, which means you need to be in it moving it around, doing physical therapy or whatever.” He gave me that rather startling John Dillinger frown, which was his expression of gentle concern. “There's some head work you need to do, as well. I insist you see that counselor."
I looked up at him. “Superintendent, has anyone notified Val?"
"Of course. As soon as we got the word from Okehampton I sent someone to fetch her. Val and a friend of hers—another cat—are waiting outside the room."
"Nadine Fisher.” I felt my heart sink. “She and Shad have been dating."
Matheson's eyebrows arched. “A cat and a duck?"
"Is that any more unusual than a cat and a man being married?” I demanded rather more angrily than intended.
"Sorry.” He thought for a moment. “I suppose it isn't unusual for our times. My wife Constance can be wed to John Dillinger, your wife Valerie can be a cat and married to Basil Rathbone, your partner a duck dating another cat, and my leading inquiry team right now is a frustrated bloodhound and an incontinent gorilla. The world is still just at the beginning of the entire artificial being phenomenon, isn't it?"
"My concerns aren't quite that philosophical, sir. Tell Parker to watch his back.” I looked up at him. “Revenge and murder are still with us."
Matheson raised a hand and rubbed the back of his neck. “It's most likely an accident, Jaggers, but I'll get in touch with London ABC, convey your suspicions, see what they suggest."
He placed his hand on my shoulder. “Terribly sorry about Shad.” He nodded, turned, and left the room, leaving the door open. As soon as he left, Val and her friend Nadine came in. Nadine was an orange tabby. My wife hopped up on the bed and Nadine, never presumptuous, climbed up on the chair recently vacated by the superintendent.
"How do you feel, Harry?” Val asked.
"A bit shell shocked.” I reached out a hand and stroked her cheek. “Were you terribly worried?"
She cocked her head toward her friend. “I'm afraid Nadine is the one who's having a fright."
"Detective Superintendent Matheson said that Guy is dead,” Nadine said quietly, her tone begging for another opinion.
I looked at Nadine, and expression is often difficult to read in a cat. They always look so inscrutably pleased with themselves over some covert triumph. Nadine, though, looked miserable. Her head hung down, and she made a pitiful and barely audible mewing sound. All I could do was lie there looking foolish. I would've resorted to some sort of we'll-get-the-blighter-who-did-this rhetoric, but I feared it would have been heard as falsely as it would have fitted my tongue. Either it was an accident, which meant that gunners and range officers responsible were long dead and gone, or it was indeed set up by person or persons unknown quite skilled at what it takes to stage a crime scene. Either way, that slight reduction in pain referred to by that vacuous term closure seemed distant, not just for Nadine, but all of us.
"Why, Harry,” said Val as she looked at my face, “you're crying."
I raised my right hand and rubbed my eyes. My fingers came away wet. “I'm afraid I am."
Nadine jumped over onto the bed and the three of us did what we could then for poor Shad, which was bugger all. Perhaps we helped each other a little.
* * * *
That night, by the grace of a strong sedative, I slept without dreams. The next day I tried walking on my balloon cast and hearing with my new implants. The implants worked perfectly; the balloon cast, aided by sufficient medication, was almost adequate. I avoided my room's telly at first. I knew what would be on. When Shad had been the slapstick funny insurance duck he had children around the world quacking out “aflak-aflak” at particularly serious interludes in classes, during church sermons, political campaign speeches, and funerals. Not entirely restricted to children, moreover. I confess to issuing a rude little “aflak” or two myself back in Metro when the detective chief superintendent would descend from Valhalla and portentously deign to address “you chaps,” concerning some high profile case that was drawing heat from the commissioner. One of several reasons I was let go, I suspect.
I eventually gave in and watched one of the reports: a few clips from his adverts and interviews; a laudatory comment from Chief Constable Crowe of the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary, concerning Shad's brief career in ABCD; followed by a computer-generated eulogy delivered by the lizard who had replaced Shad's duck when his insurance firm was merged with another. Instead of his usual nakedness, the lizard was somberly dressed in black tie and suit and oozed virtual sincerity. He concluded his tribute to Shad by making a tasteful pitch for his firm's term life insurance plan. “You never know,” he concluded as an image of Shad appeared on the screen, surrounded by a wreath of daisies.
I always hated that lizard.
The newscasters moved over to stories of more pressing matters: the latest mutation of E. drupi, the erectile dysfunction virus; the possibilities of latest teen musical fad Cragsuck Funk destroying all life on this planet as we know it; and the electrifying results of the latest government-funded weight-loss study (weight loss can be achieved most effectively by consuming moderate amounts of a well-balanced diet in combination with a regular program of exercise). I changed the channel and found the same Law & Order reruns that had been on the telly the previous time I'd been in hospital.
After a few more tests the following morning, I was released, an ambulance delivering me home finally after a heated debate about the necessity of me being strapped down upon their little roll-around before they could move. Settled in at home, there was an online tutorial for my wireless interface, and with Val's computer I attempted to occupy my mind between headaches learning how to use it. In my first net connection I went to a news site and read the reports on the explosion. Dud shell went o
ff. The deceased was a duck bio who used to be a telly star. Click here for animation. Aflak.
I clicked and there were clips taken from several of Shad's adverts. I shut it down, closed my eyes, and ran what I knew: By itself the call from Okehampton Station might have been a hoax. Rather sophisticated hoax, considering the call had to come in with the proper police codes and encryption. Still, it could have been a hoax. By itself the explosion might have been an old dud artillery shell finally grown unstable enough to go up at that particular place and moment. By itself a shell firing short, falling next to an observation post unobserved, and being a dud as well might just have happened. All together, though, it was a bloody stretch of timing that gave credulity stretch marks.
But why? If it was an attempt to kill one or both of us, why so involved? As a sniper-for-hire who had been interviewed after being sentenced once said, “Keep it simple. The more complicated a hit gets, the more opportunity for mistakes, not to mention a smaller profit margin."
Words to live by.
Shad hadn't been with ABCD long enough to have developed a list of enemies. The few cases we had worked together all involved rather genteel malefactors. The most violent encounter Shad and I had was with a Rottweiler natural in Taunton who objected to being parted from his mate, a Dandie Dinmont bio named Flossie whose human engrams happened to be fleeing imprisonment on embezzlement charges. That particular felon had been remarkably grateful for our intercession. My early decades with Metro, on the other hand, had produced a virtual army of murderers, terrorists, and other violent chaps who would've delighted in seeing me blown to pieces. That was long ago, though. Most of the violent ones from my Metro years were either dead, living off their book and motion picture royalties, or dribbling oatmeal down their bibs in prison geriatric wards. None of them, in addition, were bombers. There was an answer somewhere, but I couldn't find it. I took my headache to bed.
* * * *
Early in the morning on my third day home there was a ring from D. C. Ralph Parker, our mountain gorilla bio detective with the waste management problem. "The chaps at Scientific and Technical concur with Army Military Police, sir," he said. "As far as they are concerned it was a dud artillery shell that became unstable and simply popped off. They found enough bits of casing to identify the shell: an Excalibur Mark XVII. That's a twenty-five centimeter high explosive smart round for a long range cannon the army used toward the end of the Twenty-one hundreds."
"What about the chemical composition of the explosive? Has that been matched to the casing fragments?"
"Exact match, sir."
"How'd the shell get next to an observation post?"
"The army can't explain it. Records from that period show which part of which range was used for a particular test or exercise. They show from where the shells were fired and where they were supposed to land, but there's no way to catalog short rounds or duds. If the guidance load went out on one of those smart rounds it became just like any other lump. Also, it's the army's opinion that an observer could well have been standing in that observation post during an exercise and not have noticed a short round dud striking nearby and burying itself in the sod. The noise, you see."
"What about the call?” I asked.
"Sorry?"
"The call that came into ABCD regarding a dead amdroid out on the moor, Parker. Did anyone trace it?"
"The call came from a mobile phone out of Okehampton, sir. A bit strange that."
"How so?"
"It's a police mobile number assigned to a Sergeant James Colly, constable assigned to Okehampton Station. On that exact day, though, Sergeant Colly was in Royal Devon Hospital here in Exeter getting his entire heart replaced. He'd been in intensive care there for a fortnight before the operation, which is a substantial piece of surgery I'm told."
"Does make rather a good alibi, doesn't it. Where was his phone?"
"With him, sir. It was among his things in hospital, locked up. Whoever made the call must've duped his police card. That kept the call from being screened out as a hoax."
Had to have been done more than three weeks ago. Considerable planning, highly technical, forensically sophisticated, absolutely ruthless. “Parker, do you have Colly's phone records?"
"Yes, sir. The call to ABCD Exeter was the only call made on that phone for the past twenty-two days. We voice printed the call recording, and that definitely wasn't Colly who rang up the tower to report the dead bio. Very high voice. A child's according to the computer analysis."
"Get a match on the voiceprint?"
"No. Someone not in the system." There was a long uncomfortable pause on the line.
"What is it, Parker?” I said rather more irritably than was polite.
"We have orders from London to drop the entire matter. They've concluded that Shad's death was simply a piece of rotten luck."
"Luck,” I repeated flatly.
"Yes, sir. There's some suggestion," he continued, "that Shad might have set the thing off himself."
"What?"
"They say he might have touched something out there."
"It was a possible crime scene, Parker! Of course he touched something! That was his bleeding job!” My headache began ricocheting from one side of my skull to the other, and I forced myself to calm down. “Shad's an experienced detective, Parker. When he was a human nat in the NYPD he even had bomb disposal unit experience. He wouldn't beat on a bomb fuse with a hammer just to see what would happen. They can't be serious."
"Serious enough for Dartmoor National Park Authority to consider billing ABCD to have that logan stone put back in its original position."
"Bollocks! Great roiling oceans of bloody flipping bilge!” I closed my eyes as molten steel seemed to pour into my brain pan, all of which left me somewhat suspended between uncontainable pain and unexpressed expletives. When I risked opening my eyes I noticed Val sitting in the doorway. “Sorry, dear."
Her deep aqua eyes studied me for a moment. “Harry, are you all right?"
"Managing, dear. Ralph Parker and I were having a wag on the phone."
"The doctor said getting upset would probably worsen your headaches."
"I'm astounded he took the time from selling his old trusses."
"What?"
"I'm pleased to report my own research supports Dr. Truscott's theory, dear. Something else?"
"Don't get cross with me, Harry. I know you're in pain, but don't take it out on me."
I took a breath and let it out. “Sorry."
"Nadine would like to go to Hangingstone Hill. Is that possible?"
"Parker,” I said into the handset, “has the scene out at Hangingstone Hill been cleared?"
"Yes sir. Did I hear your wife and her friend want to go out there?"
"Is there a problem?"
"I suppose there isn't any reason except ... I mean, that's where Shad ... you know."
"Yes,” I answered. “Perhaps it may help Nadine,” I offered. “Very well, dear,” I said to Val. “I'll see about organizing something."
"Thank you.” She turned and padded away toward the stairs.
"Sorry about barking at you,” I said to Parker, turning again to the phone. “Didn't mean to kill the messenger."
"Not at all, sir. But about going to Hangingstone—it hasn't rained on the north moor since it happened."
"You mean we may find blood."
"Yes, sir. Shad's and a good deal of your own. A weather front is supposed to dampen things a bit this morning. Perhaps if you wait until tomorrow."
"Val seems to think going there will help Nadine."
"Not for me to say, sir. Oh, while I think of it, if you go, use GPS rather than trying to home in on the prang."
"Has it been removed?"
"No. There's an odd bit of jurisdictional flap with that. The scene analyzer wasn't ours, wasn't the army's, and wasn't one of the constabulary's. Has to be a records glitch somewhere. Who is supposed to collect it up has become a bother, as well. All the same,
the signal's dead."
I frowned. “Dead?"
"Day by day the signal grew weaker, then all of a sudden died. The bloody thing can't even maintain memory, sir, much less project the crime scene."
"Who copied it for the inquiry file?"
"That jurisdictional thing again, sir. Everyone assumed that the authority who placed the prang also copied it."
"So no one copied it."
"A proper cock-up," he stated.
I looked down at the Persian rug on the floor, its design filled with happy blues and yellows. Whoever set the trap attached that scene analyzer to the logan stone. That's why the unit's serial number appeared in no one's records. It was a real prang, though, authentic enough to get Shad and me there. It was the genuine article. The power supply, therefore—
After a beat of stunned silence, my headache was temporarily forgotten. “Thanks for ringing me up, Parker. I appreciate it more than I can say."
"Not at all—"
I hung up, stood, and limped down the hall into the kitchen where Walter, our Rent-A-Mech, was finishing up the breakfast dishes.
Walter was one of thousands of the same model mechanical purchased years ago by Exeter's Rent-A-Mech, Ltd. to go in service on a lease basis only to have all of their workers emancipated by Parliament because modified human engram based artificial intelligence was included in the Parliamentary Reform Act of 2132. The mechs, in response, bought the firm from the owners whom they kept on to run the company. All Rent-A-Mechs in the city looked like twentieth-century actor Stephen Fry in his role as Jeeves, had that venerable valet's epidermis been made of brushed titanium. Since the takeover, however, the livery in most cases had been traded in on more casual wear. It depended on the client. Walter wore earth tones and corduroy at our place.
"Walter,” I said, “are you free for the remainder of the day? I know you have other clients."
"I am yours to command, sir. If dinner is to be served here at the usual time, however, I should begin preparations at around five."
Analog SFF, October 2007 Page 20