Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘How are the kids?’ he asked.

  ‘Took them to my parents for Christmas. They always get spoiled rotten there. So I’m bloody glad school’s started. Yours?’

  ‘About the same. We’re thinking of moving.’

  ‘Really? Where?’

  ‘Jesmond.’

  ‘Wonderful, you’ll be close by.’

  ‘Okay. That’s over. So there’s nothing up here?’

  ‘No. If anyone brought a body down to the river to dump in they had to come down from the road above, and through here.’ She waved up at the trees with their dark branches all constricted by a crystal mantle of ice and snow.

  ‘That’s my thought exactly. But it’s a bit of a long shot.’

  ‘Not when you’re dealing with probabilities. Go through them and get rid of them one at a time.’

  ‘That’s supposed to be my job.’

  ‘Nah, you just correlate the data us true workers pull in from the field. I’m the one freezing my bum off while I try and find tracks.’

  Sid gave the optical gadget she was carrying a pointed look. ‘All right, I’ll bite. What is that thing?’

  ‘CDMR.’

  ‘Aye man, thanks a bundle.’

  ‘Comparative Density Microwave Radar. Top of the range. Costs your department a packet if I just lift it out of the case, and I have to lift it out because we can’t just scatter smartdust around like we normally do. Bloody snow.’

  ‘Riiight.’

  She grinned again and handed them to him. ‘Try it. Look at the snow.’

  He put them to his eyes. The image was weird, a three-dimensional montage of green and blue ripples stacked on top of each other. ‘Very psychedelic.’

  ‘You’ve just got to interpret it correctly.’

  ‘Correct me any time you like.’

  ‘Behave. Now, don’t use the CDMR and just look at the snow along the trees.’

  He did as he was told.

  ‘Nothing, right?’ Tilly said. ‘If anyone had brought a body down they’d have left a big set of tracks.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s been snowing a lot since then. Any tracks would have been covered in an hour on Sunday night.’

  ‘And that’s a common problem for us. So . . .’ She gestured at the CDMR set. ‘Now look at that area.’

  He did as he was told, focusing on the patch of ground just short of the treeline which she was pointing at.

  ‘What you’re seeing,’ Tilly said, ‘is a false-colour image of snow density. You see those small triangular shapes?’

  Sid concentrated on the image. There were some green specks, which could have been triangular. They lay just under the uppermost blue stratum. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Imprints from duck feet, probably a day old judging by how deep they are.’

  ‘Crap on it.’ He put the CDMR aside, and stared at the patch of snow. It was completely blank.

  ‘Even a duck has enough weight to compress the snow it stands on,’ Tilly said. ‘Those little footprint patches are slightly denser than the surrounding layer. So you see, if anyone had dragged a body down here it would show up like a motorway, no matter how much snow had fallen on top of it.’

  ‘This wasn’t the site?’

  ‘This wasn’t the site. Besides, Noel just confirmed the smart-dust was burned out from a lightning strike on the railings a couple of months back. The city hasn’t got round to spraying any new motes down yet.’

  ‘Okay. You’ve convinced me. Let’s move on to the next gap.’

  Sid led the Northern Forensics vans back over the river to Elswick Wharf on the north side. They turned off the main A695 road along Penn Street which curved left into Water Street, where they drove under an ancient disused railway bridge and down the slope past a series of shabby microfacture plants and industrial warehouses to a roundabout junction with Skinnerburn Road and Monarch Road, both of which ran along parallel to the Tyne. The bankside itself was among the most expensive real estate in Newcastle, colonized by exclusive apartment blocks, smart hotels, and prestige office towers, all of them separated from the water by a broad promenade. Private security was obligatory here for each building, given the status of the occupants. Broad swathes of smartdust sprayed along every wall made Sid think this was going to be a waste of time as well.

  Directly opposite the roundabout was a building site, with high temporary fencing surrounding a new apartment block development. Its first three storeys had already been completed by the automata which rode the scaffolding. Agency constables had it sealed off, not that there was any construction activity today. The gates were locked and the automata still, with snow filling every mechanical inlet while big icicles hung threateningly from the tough hoses looped along the hydraulic platforms.

  To the left of the construction site was an old brick office block, with boarded-up windows and a broad sign at the front proudly explaining Hargold Management was about to refurbish the building ready for occupancy summer 2142. According to Eva, whatever smartdust was coating its walls hadn’t been active for nineteen months, the time when Hargold Management bought the building.

  Sid and Tilly surveyed the gap, a narrow alley created between the construction site and the dilapidated office block. The route to the waterfront wasn’t on any map because it wasn’t something which existed on any plans. When the apartment block was completed it would be fenced off, but for now it was an access point for tankers pumping raw up to the automata.

  Sid pointed along the slim passage. ‘The smartdust on the promenade at the far end isn’t working. Their meshes dropped out of the civic net midday Sunday.’ He turned to the small roundabout. ‘And coincidence: none of the road’s macromesh around the junction is working, either.’

  ‘When did the road macromesh fail?’ Tilly asked.

  ‘It didn’t. The road hasn’t been repaired in years, and the raw tankers have been churning up what’s left, so the smartdust has degraded until there’s not enough left to mesh. Refurbishing the road is part of the construction licence. Standard practice. When the apartments are finished the contractor will tidy everything up.’ He stared back up Water Street. ‘So . . . you can actually drive the length of Water Street without a single sensor or memory cache knowing about it. The closest working mesh with visual spectrum reception is up there on the A695.’

  ‘Then this place is feasible for a body dump.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Now, if it was down to me, I’d park at the far end of this alley, and haul the body across the promenade to the river. It’s what, barely fifteen metres?’

  Tilly walked over to the slim plastic barrier the agency constables had thrown across the street in front of the alley. She lifted the CDMR set, and studied the snow between the site fence and the office block.

  When she turned back to Sid she was grinning. He took the CDMR set and scanned it down the alley. Just beneath the top layer of snow were two cobalt-blue lines; they ran almost to the far end. He put the set down and stared at the pristine surface, feeling very relieved. ‘Tyre tracks.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s a lot of compression below them from earlier traffic. But judging by the depth I’d say those were made some time at the weekend.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s put your team on it. I’m going to call the office and get Dedra to pull the traffic records for a couple of kilometres in every direction.’

  They left four members of Tilly’s team to work down the alley millimetre by millimetre, and went round the other side of the site to reach the promenade. Despite the weather, several people were walking along. Over the last week the snow had been compacted, then frozen hard between snowfalls, leaving the surface icy and perilous.

  ‘Too messed up to show any traces,’ Tilly said, scanning it with the CDMR.

  ‘Aye.’ Sid was looking across the wide expanse of black water. The tide was halfway out, leaving broad mudflats on both sides, glistening dully in the winter light. Just looking at the sluggish, calm water flowing past in the
middle of the channel made him feel chilly. On the south bank the plush white club buildings and elegant jetties of Dunston Marina encircled the ancient tidal basin. He gave the gleaming shapes of the moored yachts a suspicious stare. If the body had come from anywhere, he’d have put good money on it being the marina.

  ‘Here we go,’ Tilly called excitedly.

  Sid hurried over to the black iron railing she was bent over. The bank here was a concrete slope, tangled with sickly weeds and denuded brambles glued with ice and snow. The mud began two metres below, a line tangled with the usual detritus which marred every river: torn packaging, lengths of wood, metal objects that looked like parts of vehicles, malformed 3D plastic spars, bottles . . .

  ‘See here,’ Tilly pointed excitedly. ‘Broken strands, flattened grass. Something heavy slid down here.’

  Sid swung round. They were standing directly opposite the end of the temporary alley. ‘Gotcha!’

  *

  Sid had never been in the HDA base before. Seen it enough times, though. The inside was exactly as he expected, a perfect reflection of the stark concrete exterior. Vance Elston’s office was actually inferior to the rooms of the Market Street Station. Now that took dedication.

  Vance greeted him with a mildly puzzled smile. ‘You do have my access code. There’s no need to turn up in person for every piece of good news.’

  ‘At least you think it’s good news.’

  ‘You think I was being too hard on you?’

  ‘We all have our jobs to do.’

  ‘I’m glad you understand that.’ Vance sat back behind his desk. ‘So what have you got for me?’

  ‘Elswick Wharf is where the body was dumped into the river.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Forensics hasn’t officially confirmed it, but they will, yes. The smartdust meshes on the promenade were ripped on Sunday afternoon, a real pro bytehead job. They managed to induce a surge that physically damaged a lot of the smartdust power systems so the mesh couldn’t be reactivated by remote. Then there was a snag on the side of the alley, a piece of metal sticking out of the fence. We think that’s the one which made the marks post mortem on the victim’s left leg.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Yes and no. We have a good lead now, but the coroner has had some results back as well.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Our unknown North was killed Friday midday, approximately fifty hours before he was dumped into the Tyne.’

  ‘Okay, well we knew he wasn’t likely to have been killed on the side of the river. You told me that, what with the clothes missing and all.’

  ‘Yeah. But fifty hours? Where was the body all that time? It doesn’t take that long to extract the smartcells, so what else was happening? I’m not saying we can’t solve this, but everything we discover is opening up new questions.’

  ‘Why are you here, Sid? Quitting on me?’

  Sid gave the HDA spook a long look; Elston was clearly sharper than he’d written him off as. ‘No. I know we have an unlimited budget, but I need to know how far you’ll back me.’

  ‘All the way.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What do you want, Sid?’

  ‘Ordinarily, I’d start analysing traffic around Elswick Wharf that night. That way we can find out what went into the area, and start checking on each vehicle. But there’s a lot of the road macromesh around Elswick Wharf ripped or degraded, this isn’t the smart end of town after all. I’m also suspicious about the general lack of smartdust surveillance. It isn’t a show stopper, we just have to expand the area until we have a tight perimeter. That’s a lot of data to go doing the virtual timewarp with.’

  ‘I understand that. Go with it. If you need more analysts, you got them.’

  ‘It’s not just the data, it’s how you read it and apply it. Now we can build some very good virtuals of the traffic from the sections of city’s road macromesh which do work, but we run into a problem of perspective when we start running them in the zone booths.’

  Elston spread his hands wide. ‘Solution?’

  ‘There’s a zone theatre in the Market Street Station, which would be the perfect system to run this kind of virtual. Only it never worked properly from the day it was installed, and hasn’t worked at all for the last thirty months.’

  ‘You said it: unlimited budget.’

  ‘Aye man, fixing it is just down to money true enough. But the Chief Constable’s office has been in dispute with the company that installed it. The case is winding its way through the courts. O’Rouke has taken it personally, it’s him versus them now. Nobody gets in the way.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Sid got up to leave.

  ‘How in the Lord’s name do you people ever solve any crimes?’

  ‘Any way we can.’

  *

  Sid never did get to hear what Elston said to O’Rouke. After all, he had a clear alibi – he was out of the station, driving back after briefing the forensics team out at Elswick Wharf. He returned to the Market Street Station mid-afternoon, when everyone was quietly swapping gossip on the Chief Constable and how his temper had reached a whole new level of rage – no one knew why, though, not even Chloe Healy.

  Sid called Eva and Ian back from their assignments, and started explaining the logs he wanted lifting. Ralph Stevens came over, and the four of them studied a map of the area up on the main wallscreen, which had a depressing number of broken road macromesh sections and kaput smartdust. They kept taking the perimeter back until Sid just said: ‘Sod it, work on a kilometre radius around the crime scene.’

  ‘That includes the Scotwood Road,’ Eva protested. ‘Which has the main entrance to the Pinefield singletown. It practically points down Water Street.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But we have an AI to establish the basic virtual. After that it’s just elimination.’

  Her red hair swished about as she shook her head in dismay. ‘I’ll start to set it up, but I’ll need some help.’

  ‘I’ll see if Ari and Abner have finished.’

  ‘They haven’t,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Aye man, come on,’ Sid said. ‘We know now he’s been dead since Friday. Friday, man! And no one’s noticed?’

  Ian leaned in a bit closer. ‘It was a C. Has to be. Now nobody’s ever going to admit that.’

  ‘Just because we can’t identify the victim, doesn’t mean we can’t find the murderer,’ Sid countered.

  ‘Love the optimism,’ Ralph told him.

  Quarter of an hour later, five technicians from the Felltech Zone company – specializing in hi-rez holograms – were escorted up to the Market Street Station’s second floor and into the defunct zone theatre. They each pushed a trolley of equipment with them.

  Ralph delivered the news to Office3 ten minutes after that.

  ‘So that’s what got up O’Rouke’s arse,’ Ian muttered.

  ‘Well I’m impressed,’ Eva told him. ‘That’s exactly what we need to run the Elswick Wharf traffic virtual in. You guys do know what you’re doing, eh?’

  Ralph gave Sid a suspicious glance. ‘Sure.’

  *

  Preliminary forensics data from Elswick Wharf started to come in around seven o’clock. Sid brought Dedra and Reannha over to assist with tabulating the results.

  ‘I want a database on everything,’ he told them. ‘If we have a footprint, you need to tell me what kind of shoe, who made it, how many were sold, and who bought them. Same goes for threads, paint scrapes – whatever they send us.’

  It wasn’t quite the bonanza he’d been hoping for.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tilly said when she called Sid an hour later. ‘But for what it’s worth, we have to be dealing with a professional crew. They knew what they were doing. There were very few confirmed traces.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks,’ Sid replied. ‘I guessed that as soon as I saw the corpse.’

  ‘One piece of good news. We managed to lift a lot of snow samples with the tyre tra
cks on. They were covered, of course, but we’re using a more sophisticated version of the CDMR in the lab. I might have a tread pattern for you later tonight.’

  ‘Tilly, you are a fucking angel, pet.’

  ‘It gets better.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Professional crew, remember. I haven’t got a tread match yet, but the distance between the tyres was easy.’

  ‘Oh yes! One point seven eight metres?’

  ‘See, one day you’ll make a grand Chief Constable.’

  ‘Thanks, Tilly; let me have the tread pattern as soon as you get it.’

  He called the office together. ‘We just got a break,’ he told them. ‘The vehicle was a standard citycab. The wheel separation distance is a perfect fit.’

  The reaction was to be expected, reluctant grins and knowing glances. The lightening of the load. Everyone was suddenly back on familiar territory again.

  ‘What?’ Ralph asked.

  ‘It’s the standard way to ship anything illegal around town,’ Ian explained to him. ‘There are so many of them they’re anonymous, it’s like the shell game multiplied by a thousand. Wherever they are, they’re not suspicious. Every gang in the city either owns one or has access to a few. So this was a professional hit. No aliens involved.’

  Ralph pulled a face.

  ‘Okay,’ Sid said. ‘Everyone back to work. Eva, I want every police report on taxis beginning Friday morning. Anything suspicious – a stolen taxi, whatever – find it for me.’

  It took her eight minutes. ‘Got it,’ Eva announced loudly and triumphantly. ‘Taxi burn-out spotted by an agency patrol along the edge of the Fawden GSW on Monday morning. It’s a regular patrol, and they swear it wasn’t there on Sunday.’

  ‘Get me the perimeter mesh memories for Monday morning,’ Sid ordered.

  ‘Already there,’ Eva said.

  The office stopped to watch as real-time feeds of the GSW perimeter came up on the largest wallscreen. ‘Mesh at the metro station,’ Eva said. The image was showing a fence, but not a good one, running down the northern side of the metro track, links rusting, with sagging sections clogged by weeds which provided an easy ladder for snow to mount. Beyond it was a wasteland of derelict buildings standing like lonely broken teeth between the piles of rubble which were the buildings that the city had got round to demolishing.