Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  “Shit, he really thought of me as a major investigative threat, didn’t he?”

  “He thought of you as a friend.”

  Theroux smiled tiredly. “You heard what he thought of me as.”

  “You frightened him,” said Nathan. “Frightened people say things like ‘honky motherfucker’. Or was that you?”

  Theroux didn’t smile. “Can we prove any of it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I mean I’ll buy the trick that you claim stopped us from spotting that Hendvorrsen’s suit had a non-functioning alarm, but how come Forensic didn’t spot it afterwards?”

  “How did they check that the alarm was working?”

  “They removed the unit for test.”

  “The unit worked. What didn’t work was the connection, and Forensic–”

  “Disconnected the unit for test…” Theroux shook his head in small appreciation. “If you’re right, those bastards took a lot of chances.”

  “Suit-servicing contract’s worth a lot of money,” Nathan said, “and I am right. Relax David, there aren’t going to be any mistakes on this one. I’ve waited my entire career for a case like this. You must have been born lucky to get one first crack out of the bag.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Well, think about it. It’s a classic, every detective’s dream.”

  Theroux thought for a moment, then shook his head and shrugged.

  Nathan said, “Butler did it.” And smiled his best smile.

  Simon Butler rolled over on his contacts, who in turn rolled over on theirs, and Earthside arrests were being made by the time Nathan was ready to return with his prisoner. The news networks reflected a general relief that Hendvorrsen’s end had been planned and not caused by some malign chance, arbitrary and inexplicable as death itself. The painstaking work by European and US federal agencies which would lead eventually to the arrest of the senior executives of Pancontel, a Kuwait-based conglomerate, was of no interest to them.

  “I can’t say it’s been a pleasure,” Nathan said, as he and Theroux shook hands at the airlock, “but it has been an experience.”

  “Can I ask you something?” said Theroux.

  “You can ask.”

  “Where did you get Box?”

  Nathan smiled. “Why? Do you want one?”

  Theroux looked him in the eyes. “I could never afford it,” he said.

  Nathan stared back, and then said, “My father gave it to me. He was in the business. Even so, I don’t know how he came by it, and I could never think of a graceful way to ask.”

  “Policemen are supposed to be more tough-minded than that, aren’t they?”

  Nathan looked thoughtful. “Did you know,” he said, “that when the Taj Mahal was completed Shah Jahan ordered the arms of the craftsmen cut off? So they could never make anything more beautiful.”

  “They should have had a better union,” said Theroux, wondering whether Nathan was showing the first signs of brain-damage.

  “You do remember Box’s lecture at the restaurant?” Nathan asked.

  “Sure I do, yeah.”

  “Well, why was that detail not in it?”

  “Beats the shit out of me.”

  “Obviously,” said Nathan cheerfully, “nobody’s perfect. What about those bugged coveralls?”

  Theroux noted the abrupt change of direction, was it strategy or symptom? “We got them by mistake,” he said, “the consignment was intended for one of the Moonbase installations. Outpost Nine.”

  “What do they do there?”

  “It’s classified.”

  “Might be worth looking into,” Nathan said.

  “You looking for another case?” Theroux asked.

  “Shit, no. I’m going home.”

  Chapter 13

  Since walking was recommended therapy in the re-adaptation to a one-G environment, Nathan walked through the park towards the inner city monorail link which would take him to Europol headquarters. It was strange how heavy he still felt, how thick the air still was; and he walked slowly, despite the colour of rain which was filling in the sky. Around him people were picking up their pace, not ready to run yet, but anxious to be closer to shelter as the weather threatened.

  It was one of the clouds that turn the light a pale greenish colour, as though everything is already under water. It struck Nathan that being a ground-dweller with the trees stirring in the wind around him was like living in the bottom of a river. Weeds of many kinds grew towards the surface though even the tallest trees did not break through it to where breathing was alien. Squirrels scuttled up and down through the dark, drifting beds, and the birds swam above him. He and his kind grubbed around in the mud, rapacious as dragonfly larvae and about as appealing. It seemed suddenly that going into space was like being scooped out of the river into thin, alien air, suffocating, and giddy as a falling bird.

  “How long did it take you to get over the motion sickness?” asked the Commander.

  “About another week, I should think,” said Nathan washing down his midday medication with a cup of the indifferent coffee they served on the thirty-fourth floor.

  “It can’t have been that bad.”

  “Yes, it can. Trust me.”

  “It was a first rate job. First rate. I don’t think there’s anyone else who could have done what you did.”

  “I can think of several,” said Nathan, though in fact he could not, and he was slightly ashamed to realize that he felt the compliment was no more than appropriate. “But it’s kind of you to say so.”

  The Commander’s eyes narrowed, and he contrived for a moment to look both shifty and hunted. He was not used to such routine courtesy from Nathan and was obviously waiting for the punchline, but when it did not come, he relaxed and said, “You’ll need some time to yourself I expect. To sort everything out.”

  “A couple of days would be useful, yes. Get my breath back; catch up with things.”

  The Commander smiled benignly. “Take as long as you need. Nobody will expect you to pick up the reins straightaway.” He stood up and held out his hand. “In the meantime what can I say, except: Congratulations.”

  Nathan rose and shook the proffered hand. Puzzled, he asked, “Was that all you wanted to see me for?”

  “Not quite.” The Commander opened his desk drawer, and with something of a flourish produced from it a small box. “I wanted to give you this in person.”

  Nathan lifted the top carefully. He half-expected an explosion and a shower of soot or paper snakes, but what he found was a thick, leather wallet. He took it out of the box and flipped it open. On one side was a new ID plate – at least, the hologram looked new, though he had no recollection of posing for it. Separate from it on the other side was a heavy gold shield reminiscent of the badges once carried by officers in major police forces across the world. Behind the shield, a silver and blue hologram of the ISPF logo had been etched into the soft leather. The holograms flashed and glowed as Nathan examined the wallet. He swung the badge on its finely-wrought, gold-retaining bar. “What is this?” he asked.

  “It’s twenty-two carat gold,” said the Commander. “In my opinion, they never should have dropped the detective’s gold shield. Of course, it wasn’t real gold, but it might just as well have been. It stood for something. It was an emblem. Good idea to revive it for out there. Take some tradition into a new environment. Symbols matter.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nathan said quietly, “at least I hope I don’t understand.”

  The Commander frowned, and then made a production out of the sudden realization. “You haven’t been told, have you?” he said and beamed, offering his hand again. “You got the job. You are the new Commander of the International Space Police Force.”

  Nathan ignor
ed the hand and tossed the wallet towards the Commander. For a second he was surprised when it fell onto the desk instead of floating onwards. “I don’t think so,” he said, without emphasis.

  “You haven’t got any choice,” said the Commander, his smile unwavering, but draining of warmth.

  Nathan said, “There’s always a choice.”

  The Commander sat down and dropped the smile. “The Carmodie case has already finished your career in this force,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You countermanded a departmental order. You compromised a departmental budget. And you cocked-up. That’s the unforgivable one of course.”

  “I didn’t cock-up.”

  “You got it wrong. You arrested an innocent woman. Not just an innocent woman but the grieving, bloody widow for Christ’s sake!”

  Nathan still did not raise his voice. “You made the only cock-up when you released the murderous bitch.”

  “She was released,” said the Commander, delicately distancing himself from personal involvement in the decision, “because of lack of evidence.”

  “She confessed,” said Nathan.

  “Lack of hard evidence,” said the Commander.

  “The cash?”

  “You know what happened to the cash. She gave it back. The identical notes. She couldn’t have used them as you claimed and then paid back the loan by selling the husband’s antique collection.”

  “The stuff was sold.”

  “The husband sold it himself because he was in debt to the sharks and they wanted his business.”

  “Evidence?”

  “We’ll get it.”

  “As a matter of interest, why did she confess?”

  The Commander looked suitably disapproving. “She was alone, she was shocked and frightened, and you harassed her. You used unacceptable pressure to force a confession from an obviously vulnerable and totally innocent bystander. I expected better than that from you.”

  “Spare me the pained disappointment.”

  “Take the job,” the Commander said mildly. “It’s your only real option.”

  “You devious bastard,” said Nathan.

  “The Psych department tell me that she may be emotionally crippled by what you did.”

  “Psych need a new computer,” Nathan said. “Preferably one that sweats, farts and pukes. If it had some idea of what fucking was, that might be useful too.”

  “What are you suggesting? That you understand the Carmodie woman better than Psych do?” asked the Commander.

  “I’m suggesting,” said Nathan, “that Psych are a poor cover for bad police work. That’s why I’ve always ignored them and you never have.”

  But the Commander was not to be provoked. “Don’t be a poor loser,” he said.

  Nathan said, “I haven’t lost yet.”

  “That’s true,” said the Commander. “It isn’t everyone who gets promoted out of trouble. You’re being a poor winner, Nathan.”

  “So what are you going to do, my love?”

  The question startled him. She had her back to him, and he had thought she was asleep. He turned on his side and reached for her. “I can’t leave it like that,” Nathan said. Lee did not turn as he drew her to him, but shifted so that her buttocks were cradled against his lap. The warm pressure and the smooth roundness aroused him and he ran his hand down her belly and pushed it between her legs. Their lovemaking lasted longer this time and they finished face to face, climaxing together, loud and uninhibited.

  “Third time lucky,” she breathed.

  He sighed and murmured, “Luck had nothing to do with it.” He began to drift off to sleep.

  “You could resign,” Lee said.

  Nathan yawned. “And do what?”

  “You could get another job.”

  Nathan kissed her lightly. “Gigolo, you mean? Nathan Spring, love-machine.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot.”

  “You don’t even need another job. You’ve got enough time in. The pension’s reasonable.”

  “I’m not ready to retire,” Nathan said, suddenly irritable. “I’m not that old, for Christ’s sake.”

  Lee smiled. “I can testify to that,” she said. “Relax, love-machine, you have nothing to prove.”

  Nathan was only half-listening. “I have to prove I was right about the Carmodie case,” he said. “Then let’s see the bastard force me out. I can tell them to stuff the Star Cop job.”

  “So what are you going to do, my love?”

  The woman did not seem unduly put out to see him. Nathan said, “I hope I’m not disturbing you, Ms. Carmodie,” and offered his best smile.

  “No, you’re not disturbing me, Detective Chief Superintendent Spring.”

  Policemen and liars need good memories, he thought and saw that her eyes were as intelligent and watchful as he remembered. “May I come in?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said and opened the door wider.

  “I uh, I wanted to apologize,” Nathan said as he crossed the threshold. “It seems that I was misled when we talked before.”

  “Misled?” she asked solemnly.

  “Mistaken. There was new evidence I gather. While I was out of the country.”

  She smiled for the first time. “You were out of the world, weren’t you? I’ve been reading all about it.” And she turned and led the way through the house.

  She was slimmer, Nathan noticed and though her clothes were not flamboyant, they were definitely more stylish now. “Fame at last. I’m flattered,” he said, looking around for possible places to conceal the half-dozen thread transmitters he had brought back with him from the Charles De Gaulle.

  “I do not believe that you have gone on harassing these people!!” the Commander raged. “Sweet mother of God, what do you imagine you are doing?! Are you entirely insane??”

  “He’s visited her four times this week,” Nathan said. “Always after dark.”

  The Commander leaned forward, trying yet again for a screen-dominating close-up. “You must have been brain-damaged out there, is that it?”

  Had the bastard been given access to his confidential medical file? Nathan wondered. “They weren’t harassed,” he said. “They knew nothing about it. That’s the point.” He got up from the workstation, and went to get himself more coffee.

  “You called at the house,” the Commander accused, as Nathan moved out of range of the screen.

  Nathan filled his mug. Damn. He hadn’t allowed for the possibility that he might be being watched. He hadn’t spotted them, either. He moved back into the scanner field. “To apologize for my mistake,” he said, wondering who’d been assigned; hoping it wasn’t Lincoln.

  The Commander was momentarily taken aback. “You went to apologize?” That option had obviously not occurred to him – but recovering quickly, he snarled, “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Why not? What did the tail tell you I was doing?” Nathan asked mildly.

  On the screen, the Commander pointedly ignored the question. He shrugged. “Alright, so he visits her, so what? He was her husband’s business partner. He’s probably concerned for her welfare.”

  Nathan keyed a screen window and played the time-coded surveillance video he had shot. “It only seems to occur to him late at night. And he leaves just before dawn.” Nathan enlarged the inset picture slightly. The figure was clearly identifiable on the day-bright, enhanced night-vision: a small, chubby man in his sixties scurrying in and out through the grounds at the back of the house. “Fairly furtive, wouldn’t you say? I mean, look at him,” said Nathan. “More philanderer than philanthropist, surely.”

  The Commander’s curiosity was piqued despite the circumstances and he watched
the screen antics, which seemed simultaneously pathetic, absurd and somehow sinister. When the man had come and gone a couple of times the Commander got bored and said, “Oh come on. He’s small and fat and a good twenty-five years older than her.”

  “She’s fucking his brains out,” said Nathan matter-of-factly, thinking the expression had more than just a crude truth to it, and as he spoke the surveillance camera caught the woman waiting at a side door. Their embrace was passionate, and she was pulling at the man’s clothes before the door closed behind them.

  “Proves nothing,” said the Commander, sounding more positive than he looked.

  “They became lovers just before the husband’s death. At her instigation.”

  “How do you know? You can’t possibly know that.”

  “I don’t think you can charge him with murder and make it stick. But accessory after the fact should be no problem, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and so on.”

  “Charge him?”

  “He loaned her the money, just as he said. When he found out what she’d spent it on he provided her with an alibi. A nice uncomplicated alibi. Something obvious that didn’t require too much checking.”

  “Balls!” bellowed the Commander. “This is all guesswork!”

  Nathan sipped his coffee and said nothing. The Commander glared out of the screen. “What do you think it’s going to get you? Do you think it’s going to get you off the hook, is that what you think?”