Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  “I understand the words,” said the Widow Carmodie, “but I don’t understand what’s happening.” She looked at Nathan with those sharp grey eyes, and said in a nervous, pleading voice, “Can you explain what’s happening, Chief Superintendent Spring?”

  Nathan thought: I expect you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here to the library, well one of you is a murderer… and then realized, as he waited for Lincoln to complete the caution, that the space-flight medication they had given him was having definite side effects.

  Lincoln said, “Duty advisers are on database file PIC-CD-DA 1thru7 if you need help to which you do not have immediate access. Do you understand what I have said?”

  “Yes I understand.”

  Nathan said, “Ms. Carmodie, we have established that your husband could not have drifted to where he was found from where he actually drowned. So he must have been placed where he was found.”

  “You mean he drowned somewhere else and someone took him to that lake?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  She folded her hands on the desk in front of her and looked earnest, interested and not very bright. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  Nathan thought: No, and if you keep your nerve and stick to that approach, you might just get away with it, because what I’ve got’s distinctly skinny. He said, “Your husband drowned in the middle of the lake. He could not have simply drifted to where he was found in the time available.”

  “Can you tell that?” she asked.

  Nathan decided it was time to remove the barrier which the desk put between them. He moved to look at the contents of a bookcase on the wall to one side of the desk.

  The woman turned her attention to Lincoln and redirected the rest of the question at him. “Can they really tell whereabouts in the water someone drowned?”

  Nathan said, “I have a witness who can place your husband in the middle of the lake at the time of his death.”

  Her shock was genuine as she said, “Someone saw him die?” and turned towards Nathan. He could see her feet braced tight against the desk so that there would be no unconscious fidgeting to betray her. She really is remarkable, he thought.

  “Someone saw him almost every day, at almost the same time.”

  “Almost?” she asked, and Nathan knew that in the end, she was not quite clever enough to hide her cleverness.

  “He had always reached the same point in his swim.”

  “Did they see him that day?”

  “Your husband had routines for everything, I think you said.”

  “They didn’t see him that day, did they?” she repeated.

  “A very meticulous man, you called him? Obsessive even.”

  “I didn’t say he was obsessive,” she said.

  “That’s right, you didn’t,” Nathan said and smiled. “You have a good memory.”

  “You borrowed money from your husband’s partner,” Lincoln said. “Why?”

  “I paid it back.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I didn’t use it.”

  “You got it in cash. Why did you want cash?”

  Nathan thought: because contract killers don’t give credit.

  “I don’t think that’s funny. I don’t think you should make jokes about things like that,” the Widow Carmodie said sharply.

  Nathan looked at Lincoln’s expression, and it occurred to him that he must have spoken the thought aloud. “I seem to be having some sort of reaction to the stuff they gave me in Cambridge,” he said. “I’m sorry about this.”

  “Are you all right, sir?” Lincoln said as if he had not heard.

  Did I say that or not? thought Nathan.

  “Did you say what?”

  Nathan shook his head and gestured for Lincoln to continue with the interrogation.

  Lincoln shrugged, and turned back to the woman. “When you got the cash what did you do with it?”

  “Do with it?”

  “It was a lot of money. What did you do with it? Did you carry it around with you? Did you hide it? What?”

  “I carried it with me.”

  “At all times?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your husband never noticed?”

  “Why should he?”

  “It’s bulky. Did you carry it under your clothes?”

  “Under my clothes?”

  “In a belt? A money belt?”

  “Oh. Yes. Yes I kept it in a money belt.”

  “Yet your husband never saw it, or felt it?”

  “My husband never looked at me,” she said. “As for feeling it…” Her face remained expressionless as she let the sentence die.

  “Tell me why you wanted the money,” asked Lincoln again. “Tell me what it was for.”

  The woman stared, as if trying to make up her mind whether to confide in him or not. This could have been an important moment in the interrogation. This could have been the moment when she was ready to give up a little of what she had been trying to hold back. Pass this moment successfully, and you could take her all the way to the truth. That was clearly what Lincoln saw. But Nathan knew she was playing games. He knew too that he had some problems of perception.

  “You borrowed cash,” he said slowly, and waited to see if they looked at him; they did; so he went on but still quite slowly, “to pay for your husband to be killed.” Though obviously for different reasons, Lincoln and the Widow Carmodie both looked surprised by the manner of the interruption. “Once he was dead,” Nathan went on, “you sold some of his antiques and paid back the money you had borrowed.”

  “That’s what all this is about?” Mrs. Carmodie said. “That’s what makes you think I murdered him?”

  Nathan looked round the room as though cataloguing the missing items. “A clock, a small oil painting, two china dogs, a paperweight.” Lincoln and the Widow Carmodie were waiting for him to speak. Nathan concentrated and said slowly and distinctly, “A clock, a small oil painting, two china dogs, a paperweight.”

  “I honestly have no idea what it is you’re talking about,” said Mrs. Carmodie. “I did not kill my husband.”

  “You bought it done,” said Nathan, “it’s the same thing.” And then, because there was no longer any way he could tell thought from speech, he went to her and held out his hand. Warily, she placed her hand in his, and after a moment he pulled her gently up out of the chair so that she stood facing him. He did not let go of her hand. “I would have noticed,” he said and thought. “You’re too remarkable to hide from me.”

  She stared at him. This time she was deciding whether to confide in him or not.

  “I realize I should have worked this out for myself,” Lincoln said, bringing a fresh pot of coffee from Nathan’s kitchen, “but was there a reason why they shoved Carmodie’s body into the shallows? I mean, you wouldn’t expect mistakes for the sort of money she paid, would you? Or would you?”

  “It wasn’t a mistake. They were trying to fool us, which means they were trying to fool our computer. It was supposed to look like an accident. As far as the computer is concerned, accidents can be expected in a dangerous environment like water, unless there’s something to indicate otherwise. Once Carmodie’s death had been classified as a routine drowning, that would have been it. No investigation, no problem. But for that to happen there had to be a body. They put it in the shallows because they couldn’t risk letting it sink. That would have been a disappearance. Chances are we’d have investigated a disappearance.”

  “No?” Lincoln shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “but I still think there had to be a reason.”

  Nathan was on his fourth cup of coffee when he finally got the medical supervisor on screen. “There appear to be some contra-indications to this shit
you’ve given me,” he said.

  “Yes Chief Superintendent Spring?” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  Lincoln said, “Shall I?”

  Nathan nodded.

  “There appear to be some contra-indications to this stuff you’ve given him,” he said.

  “Oh shit!” she said. “I knew we shouldn’t have tried to rush things. Sit tight, I’ll run the data and get back to you.”

  “One thing you can tell me about that interrogation,” said Lincoln as they waited. “Why did you keep calling her Widow Carmodie? What was the strategy there?”

  Crime Scene

  They had been on the outward leg for several weeks now, and there was still no sign of anything worthwhile. Marty, ever cautious, wanted to call it off and head back for Moonbase. He reckoned to pick up a routine trash run, which would at least cover the next payment on the ship and some of the losses they were clocking up on this trip. The thing of it was, he said, the longer they went on the bigger the score would have to be to make any sort of profit for them. They were bound to reach a point sooner or later – sooner in his view – when it would be very unlikely that they could make a profit, no matter what it was they found. Assuming they found anything which, again in his view, was very unlikely.

  Lauter felt that for a young man – youngish anyway, certainly a good bit younger than her – Marty lacked enterprise. He was a percentage player. Had been as long as she’d known him. But no-one made a fortune playing the percentages, and if they didn’t take a few chances they weren’t ever going to make enough to get out of the salvage business. Years of graft, and what did they have to show for it? A second-hand cargo shuttle they still owed money on. Well, she was tired of it. Or maybe she was just tired. But whichever it was, this could be the biggest score of their lives, their best chance at the brass ring, and she had made up her mind that they were going for it. Marty would have to live with it this time. She was the pilot, she was the senior partner, and if the information she’d been given was right…

  “If the information was right, this could be the biggest score any independent has ever made,” she said for the umpteenth time.

  “It’s still a bloody big ‘if’,” Marty said, “and it’s not getting any smaller.”

  “It’s got to be worth trying for,” she insisted. “We could be rich and famous.”

  “I hate to piss on your boosters, Lauter, but if what that drunken journo told you really was kosher –”

  Lauter interrupted angrily, “She wasn’t a drunken journo.”

  “She was legless every time I saw her.”

  “She couldn’t get used to moon-G that was all.”

  “Okay,” Marty said patiently, “okay. But drunk or just a gravitational underachiever, if the information was genuine, how come none of the big boys are looking?”

  If there was one thing she hated about him, and right now there was more than one thing she hated about him, she hated it when he was patient. “They don’t know about it!” she snapped.

  “Which means it either doesn’t exist, or the whole thing is as bent as a three-dollar note.”

  “Marty, dear heart,” she said through gritted teeth, “bent is not our problem. Cash is our problem.”

  “You could be something of a crook if I let you,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”

  “We are going on,” she said. “I don’t care what you say. We are going on.”

  “I know,” he said, without any sign of surprise or resentment.

  Lauter began a period of dignified sulking, but got bored with it after a little while and said, “You are a miserable bugger, Marty.”

  “One of us has to be,” he replied gloomily.

  “It’s a good thing you’ve got a nice bum or I’d have found myself a new partner years ago.”

  “If you’d been with anyone but me,” Marty said, “you’d have gone broke years ago.”

  “Feels like I did,” she said.

  It would take more long weeks to get any sort of confirmation that there might be something to what the journalist had told Lauter that night on Moonbase, after the Guild of Independent Space-Salvage Hauliers annual booze-up and shagathon. It would take much longer for them to find out that ‘bent as a three-dollar note’ did not begin to describe the situation.

  Chapter 6

  He had expected to be heavy and clumsy, but it came as a shock to find how vulnerable it made him feel. He had tunnel vision, a sort of numbness and partial paralysis of the limbs, and an itch in his crotch which there would be no possibility of scratching for several hours. They had assured him that in the weightless vacuum of space it would be less cumbersome, and the fierce hostility of that environment would make it as comforting as his mother’s womb, but on present evidence it seemed to Nathan unlikely that he would ever be at ease in a spacesuit.

  “Damn, blast and double fuck it!” he shouted into the muffled acoustic of his helmet, as the spanner slipped and he dropped it yet again.

  He watched it fall away through the water, but before it reached the bottom of the training tank one of the scuba divers rolled down in a lazy glide and caught it with a flourish, like a kid diving for tourist coins.

  The voice of the principal instructor crackled in Nathan’s ear. “I don’t think language like that helps anybody, does it, sir?”

  “It helps me!” Nathan snapped back.

  “You mean if you stayed calm, you’d drop the spanner more often?” the voice enquired politely.

  Nathan turned and peered towards the observation port where the instructor was standing. With difficulty he flexed his armoured fist and gave him the finger.

  From beyond the glass, the instructor waved back. “Very good, Mr. Spring,” said the voice in Nathan’s ear. “I told you those gloves were fully articulated once you got used to them. Before you know it, you’ll be able to wave with your whole hand.”

  The scuba diver did a victory roll as he returned the spanner. Nathan signalled his thanks and said, smiling, “And you can get fucked as well,” as he took a firm grip on the tool and turned back to the mock-up station module he was supposed to be repairing. He finished tightening the faulty joint and moved on. If this was the nearest thing to weightlessness available on the Earth’s surface, then he’d better get as much from it as he could. He didn’t want to get the Star Cops job, but he didn’t want to get dead either. He lumbered towards the gantry where the next task awaited him. “Oh, look at this,” he muttered.

  “You will see that two of the PVAs are burnt out,” intoned the instructor. “You’ll need to remove them and get replacements from the equipment bay.”

  “I’m a copper, not the Wichita Lineman,” Nathan muttered, as he searched his equipment belt for the appropriate tool.

  “Without functioning photovoltaics there wouldn’t be much to sing about out there,” said the instructor and promptly filled Nathan’s helmet with a loud and tuneless rendition of the old song, which was currently enjoying a revival as a corporate advertising jingle. “I’m not distracting you, am I?” he asked, after singing the verse and three choruses.

  “I assume it’s a test of my concentration,” commented Nathan, concentrating fiercely on not dropping the small cutter he was using to free the array of power cells.

  “No, I just like to sing,” responded the instructor cheerfully. “Bear in mind that the thermic tip on that scalpel will cut through anything.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s probably not a good idea to rest your free hand on what you’re cutting.”

  Nathan reacted immediately, jerking his hand back, losing concentration, and letting go of the scalpel, which switched itself off and fell away.

  “Oh dear, oh dear.” The instructor’s voice was smug. “I can see you making a real contribution to the space
litter problem, sir.”

  Furious with himself, Nathan lunged out and snatched at the drifting scalpel. He missed. A scuba diver was already moving to collect it. Without thinking, Nathan reached out his arm with his hand open and launched himself from the gantry.

  “Not a good idea, Mr. Spring!”. The instructor’s voice was neither smug nor amused now.

  Nathan ignored him. He was falling out and down, but there was little sensation of movement. He reached for the scalpel, and when he thought he was close enough, he grabbed. Feeling no contact, he was slightly surprised to see it spin. He tried again but now he watched his hand, moving it more slowly and using only vision to guide him, as though he was operating a remote control device. He stopped the scalpel spinning and caught it easily this time and, with moments to spare, he adjusted his fall so that he hit the bottom of the tank feet first. He waved the scalpel at the scuba diver, who swam round him checking for damage to the suit. In his helmet the voice of the instructor was coolly matter-of-fact. “Out there, there is no bottom to the tank, sir. Whatever the direction you push off in, that is the direction you’ll fall in. Forever.”

  “I knew that,” said Nathan.

  “Then behave as though you did. We train survivors here not fucking jugglers!”

  “I don’t think language like that helps anybody, does it?” said Nathan.

  Theroux was sleeping soundly when the wake-up whispered to him. He came to abruptly, unzipped the bag and pushed himself out of the frame. He was tense and unrefreshed, but he knew from experience that this would pass once he got focused and moving.

  The ergonomics specialists agreed that sleeping in zero-G was best done upright in what amounted to a large papoose-carrier attached to the wall. In an environment where ‘up’ was arbitrary, with everyone simply agreeing which direction it should be, there could be no possible difficulties with the upright sleep frames. They were efficient, safe and relaxing. Except that at the instant of falling asleep, and for the few seconds it took to wake up, they were anything but relaxing. The problem was panic, as the sleeper’s brain demanded the submission to gravity which lying down had represented during a short and stressful evolution. Horizontal orientation of the frames was pointless since ‘horizontal’ was as fundamentally meaningless in zero-G as ‘up’ or ‘down’; but for those who tried it, like other equally meaningless wacsobs, it did seem to help. For most people, though, there were simpler explanations for their brief exhaustions, and there was much talk of biorhythms, mineral depletion and vitamin loss. As they acclimatized, everyone slept better. But the falling asleep and the waking never seemed to improve.