Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  None knew that better than Newcastle’s extensive secondary economy of private lounges, pubs, clubs, pimps, and pushers, who were already salivating at the prospect. Like the rest of the city, they could look forward to a fresh decade of providing a good time to the army of middle-class salary-plus-bonus contractors who would descend upon them. To launch the new era, first drinks had been on the house all this weekend, with second drinks half price.

  They had a lot of takers.

  ‘There it is,’ Ian Lanagin said, pointing through the symbols scrawling across the windscreen as they rolled into Mosley Street.

  Up ahead, at the junction with Grey Street, the blue and green ambulance strobes were shimmering over the fractured ice, casting weird shadows across the walls as they competed with the light-haze seeping out of club doorways and shop windows to illuminate the scene. The big vehicle was parked at an angle, blocking half of the street. Sid nudged their car left, aiming to park behind the ambulance. Proximity radar sketched red caution brackets across the windscreen as the front bumper came to a halt a couple of centimetres from the mound of snow thrown up by the ploughs. He pulled his woollen hat down over his ears, zipped up the front of his quilted leather jacket, and stepped out into the bitter air.

  The cold triggered a tear reflex which he blinked away rapidly, trying to focus on what he could see. Temperature didn’t affect the ring of smartcells around his iris that shone minuscule laser pulses down his optic nerves, overlaying the street with sharp display graphics, correlating what he looked at with coordinate locations for the visual log he was running.

  As per protocol, Sid’s bodymesh – the interconnective network produced by all his smartcells – quested a link with Ian, making sure they remained in contact. Ian was represented by a small purple icon at the corner of his sight. The bodymesh also downloaded the visual log through the car’s cell and into the police network.

  It was a NorthernMetroServices agency constable who’d responded to the distress code. Sid didn’t recognize him, though he knew the type well enough. His private Electronic-Identity (e-i) running inside his bodymesh performed a face-capture image, logging a man barely into his twenties – and walking about with a swagger that was immediately depressing. Give him a uniform and a gram of authority and he thought he was running the city.

  The agency constable’s e-i identified him as Kraemer. It immediately quested Sid’s e-i, which responded by confirming his own rank as well as activating the badge woven into his jacket, which now glowed a subtle amber. ‘You caught this?’ Sid asked.

  ‘Aye, sir. On scene fifty seconds after the report was logged.’

  Well inside the agency’s contracted response period, Sid thought, which will help their stats at renewal time. Of course, it depended when the call was officially logged. NorthernMetroServices also ran the Newcastle emergency response centre. It wasn’t unknown for the centre to alert an agency constable a minute or so before they entered the call into the log, so one of their people could always beat the response time.

  ‘Aggravated thirteen-five. Culprits ran off before I arrived.’

  ‘Fast runners,’ Sid muttered. ‘Seeing as you were here so quick.’

  ‘Thump and grab, man,’ Kraemer said.

  ‘Victim name?’

  ‘His e-i responded with Kenny Ansetal when I quested it. He was barely conscious; buggers gave him a good kicking. The paramedics have got him.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sid walked round to the back of the ambulance, where the paramedics had sat the mugging victim on its egress platform to perform triage. The man was in his early thirties, with facial features that Sid’s best estimate placed as a mix of Asian and Southern Mediterranean origins – which was going to play hell when he came to filling out the ethnicity section of the case file. Of course that opinion’s validity was slightly skewed by the amount of blood pouring out of the large gash on the victim’s brow. There were deep lacerations on his cheeks, too, which Sid guessed had been caused by ringblades. That much blood tended to obscure the finer features of a person’s skin.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ he called. ‘We’re city police. Can you tell me what happened?’

  Kenny Ansetal glanced up at him and promptly vomited. Sid winced. The splatter just missed his shoes.

  ‘I’ll go gather some witness intel,’ Ian said, already backing off.

  ‘You’re a shit,’ Sid grunted.

  Ian grinned, winked, and turned away. Despite the biting cold, the mugging had drawn a small crowd, who were still hanging round. What for, Sid never did understand. After all this time in the police it was about the one aspect of human instinctual psychology he could never get a handle on: people simply couldn’t resist watching someone else’s misfortune.

  He waited for a minute while the paramedics managed to spray clotting foam onto Ansetal’s forehead wound; then one was sorting out his cheeks while the other performed a quick body check, acting on the information coming out of Ansetal’s body-mesh, fingers probing where smartcells were reporting damage. Judging by Ansetal’s responses, he’d taken some blows to the ribs and a knee. Kicked when he was down, Sid decided. Common enough for a thirteen-five.

  ‘Sir, can you tell me what happened?’

  This time Kenny Ansetal managed to focus. ‘Bastards,’ he hissed.

  ‘Try not to move your jaw too much,’ the paramedic warned as he sealed up a cheek wound.

  Sid recognized the anger and murmured commands to his e-i, which obediently paused the police log using an unauthorized non-department fix he just happened to have in a private cache. ‘Did you recognize your attackers?’

  Ansetal shook his head.

  ‘How many of them?’

  A hand was raised, two fingers extended.

  ‘Male?’

  Another nod. ‘Fucking Chinese. Kids it were.’

  Sid shook his head fractionally, pleased with himself for predicting Ansetal’s answers. Of course, they were common enough. Ansetal didn’t know it, but an expletive-linked ethnic identification was legally classified as a racist indicator. That would have opened up a whole world of misery for Ansetal in court if defence council got hold of a log with that on it.

  ‘Did they take anything, sir?’

  Ansetal juddered as some more sealant was applied to his cheek. ‘My Apple – an i-3800.’

  New model personal transnet cell, Sid recalled, and top-end. He was an idiot for carrying it round the city centre at this time of night. But idiocy wasn’t a crime in itself. ‘I’m just going to recover your visual records, sir.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Sid held his hand close to Ansetal’s forehead, and told his e-i to recover the visual memory. His palm had several smartcells configured for mesh reception, with fixes to handle most formats. The short-term memories from Ansetal’s iris smartcells downloaded into the police network. Sid watched what Ansetal had seen, closing his own eyes so he could study the images in the grid. The recording was a blur of motion. Two shadowy figures suddenly appearing, hoods drawn against the cold. Then everything degenerated into smears of motion as the beating began.

  His e-i ran a capture, which showed him both assailants had the same face. Sid grunted at the familiar features: Lork Zai, the Chinese zone star who featured heavily on tabloid show hot lists these days.

  ‘All right,’ Sid said. ‘Now, Kenny, I’m going to give you some unofficial advice. Best if you don’t speak again.’

  Ansetal gave him a puzzled look. Sid could almost see the middle-class thought processes clicking round behind his blood-painted skin. I’m the victim here, why are the police giving me warnings? The answer was simple enough, though they never got it: never say anything that a lawyer could gain traction on in court – so just don’t say anything at all.

  ‘Have you got full-comp crime insurance?’ Judging by the relatively expensive clothes, that was a rhetorical question.

  A cautious nod.

  ‘Good. Use it. Call their emergency address. They’ll dispatch a
duty lawyer to your hospital. Now, the agency constable is going to accompany you there to take a full statement. Refuse to do so until your lawyer is present. You have that right. You also have the right to refuse blood composition analysis. Understand?’

  ‘I suppose . . .’

  Sid held a gloved finger to his lips.

  A now worried Ansetal nodded. Sid heard a female giggle from somewhere behind the ambulance, and managed to suppress a frown. ‘You’ll do okay, Kenny. Just keep everything aboveboard and official. Wait for your lawyer. That’s the way to go.’

  Ansetal mouthed: ‘Thank you.’

  Sid murmured instructions to his e-i, clearing the paramedic crew to leave the crime scene, then went back to Kraemer. ‘I’ve authorized Ansetal’s release to the hospital. Go with him to take a statement.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll get to it.’

  ‘Give him time to get some treatment and recover. That was a nasty pounding he got there.’ He produced a friendly smile. ‘It will keep you off the street for a while, too.’

  ‘Appreciate that, man.’

  ‘Then tomorrow I’ll need you to pull all the local mesh sensor memories.’ He gestured round at the buildings. The brickwork and concrete would be covered in smartdust, some of which might have escaped degradation from the snow. ‘Forward them to my case file. He has insurance, so we can probably drag a budget from the company to run a track on the felons.’

  ‘Right you are, man.’

  Sid almost smiled – the young constable’s Geordie accent was nearly as thick as Ian’s. The paramedics closed the ambulance doors, firing up the siren as they pulled away. Ian was still talking to the remaining witnesses. Both of them young and female, Sid noticed without the slightest surprise. He’d been partnered with Ian for two years now – they knew each other better than brothers. As far as Ian was concerned the police force was simply the perfect vocation to legitimately meet girls. Dealing with actual criminals came in a very poor second. With not a little envy, Sid acknowledged Ian was very good at his chosen profession. A twenty-eight-year-old gym fanatic who spent his entire salary on good clothes and grooming, he knew every line in the file.

  Both ‘witnesses’ were hanging on to his every word as Sid went over to them. Unlike the other onlookers who were now walking away, they had their coats open down the front, showing off their best nightclub dresses – what there was of them. Sid just knew he was getting old when all he could think was how cold the poor things must be. ‘Anything useful in those statements, Detective?’ he asked loudly.

  Ian turned and gave him a derisory stare. ‘Aye, sorry about this, ladies, my boss is being a pain again. But what can you do?’

  They both giggled at how brave he was confronting his superior so directly, how confident and capable. Sid rolled his eyes. ‘Just get in the car, man. We’re done here.’

  Ian’s voice lowered an octave or two. ‘I will be calling both of you for vital information. Like which is your favourite club, and when you’re going there again.’

  Sid closed his ears to further outbreaks of inane giggling.

  It was wonderfully warm inside the car. The bioil fuel cell produced a lot of surplus heat, which the air-con chewed hungrily to redistribute evenly from the vents. Sid unzipped his jacket as he muttered instructions to his e-i, opening a new case file on the mugging. A sub-display on the bottom of his iris smartcell grid showed the file data building up.

  ‘Oh yeah!’ a delighted Ian said as he settled back into the passenger seat. ‘I’m in there, man. Did you see those lassies? Up for it they were, both of them.’

  ‘Our medical insurance doesn’t provide unlimited penicillin, you know.’

  Ian chuckled. ‘You know what the world’s greatest oxymoron is?’

  ‘Happily married,’ Sid said wearily.

  ‘In one, pal. In one.’

  ‘The case is a wash out. He was mugged by Lork Zai – two of him.’

  ‘Crap on it! That man doesn’t half get about. Got to be the most popular identity mask there is right now.’

  Sid checked the time display. It was eleven thirty-eight. Their shift ended at midnight. ‘We’ll do one more circuit then park it.’ Newcastle’s central police station on Market Street was barely four hundred metres away, but it wouldn’t look good to head straight home from an incident with another twenty minutes left on the clock. Some city accountant would fuss about that.

  ‘What did they take?’ Ian asked.

  ‘An i-3800.’

  ‘Nice bit of kit. That’ll be a secondary down the Last Mile by lunchtime, mind.’

  ‘Could be,’ Sid admitted. Most of the city’s petty crimes these days were committed by some desperate, impoverished refugee on their way to St Libra through the gateway. In the morning they’d be moving through the Last Mile, looking to barter whatever kit they’d acquired during the night along that huge sprawl of unregulated market leading up to the gateway, where everything you could ever possibly need to begin a new life on a fresh world was for sale. Such incidents were responsible for Newcastle’s permanently dismal solved crimes rating: within hours of their crime spree the felons had run off to another world far beyond the reach of the city police.

  Sid reversed the car away from the kerb. His iris smartcells flashed up green text in his grid, a message backed up by an identical read-out on the windscreen. His aural smartcells also started announcing the incident.

  ‘A two-oh-five?’ Ian said incredulously. ‘Man, we’ve only got twenty minutes to go. They cannot do that.’

  Sid closed his eyes for a moment – not that it banished the green text. He knew the night had been going too well, with just a few minor incidents in the whole six hours. Now this, a two-oh-five: a body discovered in suspicious circumstances. The only suspicious thing here was the timing – along with the location: down on Quayside by the old Gateshead Millennium Bridge, a quarter of a mile away. According to the alert’s text, the river police were only just confirming it was a body they were hauling from the water. Somebody somewhere was keen to get the incident logged fast. And he was the closest senior officer on patrol. ‘Bastards,’ he grunted.

  ‘Welcome back, you,’ Ian agreed.

  Sid activated the strobes and siren, then told his e-i to authorize a clean route with the city’s traffic management AI. Not that there was much traffic left now, mostly taxis hauling overtoxed revellers back home.

  It might have been a short drive, but it was down Dean Street – a steep, sloping road underneath the ancient rail and road arches, canyoned by dark stone walls with blank windows – which took them down to the riverfront. As such, the car’s auto struggled to keep them from slipping on the treacherous ice. Twice they started to fishtail before countertorque was applied and the snow tyres managed to grip. At the bottom, the tall buildings opened up to a broad road junction where the landmark Tyne Bridge cut across the water high above. The big splash of spotlights illuminating its arched iron structure was almost lost in the swirl of snow, producing a weird crescent-shaped smear of luminosity hanging weightlessly in the air overhead. Sid steered carefully past the broad stone support pillar and headed down the deserted Quayside road.

  ‘This is taking the piss a bit, isn’t it?’ Ian asked as they drove past the glass and pillar façade of the Court of Justice. ‘This close and all?’

  ‘Suspicious doesn’t mean deliberate,’ Sid reminded him. ‘And this is a bad night.’ He jabbed a finger at the dark river on the other side of the car. ‘You fall in there tonight, you die. Fast.’

  They took the right-hand fork after the government building. This stretch of pedestrianized road hadn’t seen a snowplough since the middle of the afternoon. Radar showed the snow on the ground was now over ten centimetres thick, with a solid sheet of ice below that. Sid reduced their speed to a crawl. Up ahead, the twin arches of the Millennium Bridge curved across the river with the elegance of a swan’s neck – the recently refurbished pearl-white surface of the upper arch glowing dimly under the shi
fting rainbow lights which illuminated it. Strobes on the roof of two patrol cars and a coroner’s van flickered through the snow. Sid pulled in behind them.

  It was the silence which surprised him when he stepped out of the car. Even with a waterside pub not forty metres further along Quayside, there was no sound apart from the murmurs of the three agency constables waiting by the promenade rails, looking down at the police boat below as it manoeuvred up to the quayside wall at the end of the bridge’s glass-boxed wharf (which housed the axial pivot and its hydraulics that rotated the entire structure for bigger ships to pass underneath). Another constable was interviewing a young couple in a patrol car.

  Sid waited until his bodymesh had quested into the ringlink – which the waiting constables had already established – and checked the log was working. A two-oh-five wasn’t something you played loose with. His e-i identified and labelled them, along with the duty coroner’s examiner who was just getting out of his van.

  ‘So what have we got?’ he asked.

  The one who Sid’s e-i tagged as Constable Saltz caught a pannier thrown up by the river boat crew. ‘Clubbers walking across the bridge saw something snagged on the guides out there,’ he said. ‘Thought it looked like a body, so they called it in right away. They’re just kids, nothing suspicious with them.’

  Sid went over to the railings. He’d walked along Quayside’s promenade a hundred times. It was a mix of old and new buildings which lined the waterfront, all soaked with money to produce the kind of grace and aura of wealth not seen in Northern England since the Victorian era two centuries before. The river here wasn’t something the city council would allow to decay; it was the heart of the town, the showpiece that reflected the status of being Europe’s fifth-wealthiest (per capita) city, with its iconic bridges and curved-glass, century-old cultural centrepiece, the Sage.