Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Ian sat on the bed, put on his netlens glasses and accessed the Apple console. The weekend’s activity by Marcus Sherman and his crew that the AI had managed to track was all there waiting for him in a depressing number of files that needed examining and cross-referencing. Just looking at them all laid out in a neat three-dimensional matrix of red and green icons made him sigh. Sid and Eva were going to have to come over tomorrow night and help, he decided. That or they’d all have to agree to calling it off. In the meantime . . . He started with a simple timeline overview.

  The AI’s monitors had started to slowly reacquire data. It helped that they had established physical residencies where Sherman and his people had to return to at some point.

  Jede had gone back to his flat in Felling on Friday night. When Ian reviewed the local transnet cells, there were several calls made from the correct location, but with the new e-i access code.

  ‘. . . what you are asking for is going to take time . . .’

  ‘. . . there is a synthesizer which can produce the items, but it is restricted . . .’

  ‘. . . raw for that kind of tox is licence-only, what you have to do is go back two stages in the chemical process . . .’

  ‘. . . ready for delivery . . .’

  Ian grinned behind the glowing symbols of his netlens glasses. ‘Aye, bollocks,’ he grunted. You didn’t have to have much by way of smarts to know that was all a lure. Sherman’s crew were trying to sucker them into acting on an exchange that never was. A good way of finding out how interested the police were in their activities.

  Very, was the simple answer. But they mustn’t know that.

  The smart counter-entrapment played out with Ruckby and Boz as well, both of whom made calls with new interface codes. All skilfully building the fiction. Even Sherman himself reappeared for a while at Dunston Marina, when Ruckby delivered Valentina to the Maybury Moon for the night.

  Ian almost stopped the review; Joyce would be arriving soon. Then he spotted an untraceable call routed through the cell serving Jede’s flat at 7:04 am Saturday to yet another e-i code they had no record of. It was short and encrypted at a level that the AI couldn’t break.

  He immediately pulled the rest of the logs for Jede’s flat. Whatever the call had been, it fired a quick reaction from the man. Sure enough, Ian watched a mid-rez mesh log from the street outside showing Jede hurrying out at 7:11 am. He climbed into his parked car, drove off, and the macromesh lost him less than two minutes later when the licence code vanished. As always, it would take a proper police operation to reacquire and follow the car. On a hunch, Ian pulled the logs for Boz and Ruckby. Sure enough, they’d left their homes by 7:30 on Saturday morning, and promptly vanished into the city, swiftly evading the surveillance routines.

  None of the crew reappeared until much later. Boz was on Valentina chauffeur duty that night. Ruckby went out clubbing that evening, showing up in front of half a dozen hi-rez public meshes. And Jede used a secondary account they knew about for the first time since the Last Mile débâcle to pay for a pair of high-class escorts, who turned up at his flat. All perfectly normal, not hiding anything.

  Ian removed his netlens glasses and gave the silent Apple console a thoughtful stare. Whatever data they needed to confirm Saturday’s gameplan plainly wasn’t in there. ‘So what were you all up to yesterday that was so important?’ he asked. ‘Pay Ernie’s garage a visit, did you?’

  Monday 18th March 2143

  The light of a March dawn wasn’t particularly intense, but the bedroom curtains were worn and ill fitting. The windows seemed unnaturally bright to Sid as the light tickled him out of his sleep. He stared at the clock, whose green digits told him it was already twenty past six. Braced himself for the start of another day in the Hurst household.

  There were some footsteps scurrying round somewhere outside the bedroom. But no bickering, no shouts, no fists banging on the bathroom door. Zara’s bedroom had a tiny en suite, because, as Will sneered, ‘I’m not having a kazi next to my bed.’ He was free to use the big bathroom all by himself.

  ‘Heaven,’ Jacinta muttered. She had her eyes closed, but there was a smile on her face.

  ‘Aye, I think we might have made it,’ Sid agreed. ‘Mind, heaven would have proper curtains, like.’

  ‘We can’t afford them.’

  ‘So it’s a pious heaven, then?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘And I don’t suppose there’s anything in the fridge for breakfast.’ Last night’s supper had been a Chinese meal delivered to the house.

  ‘No, pet; strangely, I spent more time unpacking yesterday than I was expecting to. Can’t think why. No time for my e-i to go shopping.’

  Sid eyed the stack of unopened boxes along one wall, and decided on cowardice. ‘Lucky that in a place as posh as Jesmond there’s a café on St George’s Terrace that serves a canny breakfast.’

  Jacinta opened her eyes and grinned. ‘You’ve not forgotten how to show a girl a good time, have you?’

  ‘Oh no. Not me.’ Sid climbed out of bed, and made a real effort to work out which case had his clean shirts in.

  ‘The blue one,’ Jacinta said.

  ‘I remember!’

  St George’s Terrace was a five-minute walk away, a road with shops and businesses along one side, and neat terrace housing on the other. Tall cherry trees down the pavement were just starting to bud. Sid imagined they would look wonderful when the pink blossom came out.

  Café Black was a small family-run business, offering a reasonable menu. Sid went for a full English, with scrambled eggs on toast, bacon, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, and a slice of fried black pudding.

  ‘Careful, pet,’ Jacinta said. All she’d ordered was tea and toast; the kids were having cereal and toast.

  ‘It’s going well,’ Sid told her.

  ‘Is this the dead North case?’ Will asked.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Everyone at school says it wasn’t a carjacking. They say that Brussels had him whacked.’

  Sid nearly coughed up his orange juice. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s on all the unlicensed sites,’ Will said.

  ‘Does the government really kill people?’ Zara asked.

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  ‘I don’t want you accessing unlicensed sites,’ Jacinta said.

  ‘What else are they saying at school?’

  ‘Sid! Don’t encourage him.’

  ‘Aye, that’s not encouragement, it’s enquiring. What are they saying?’

  ‘Well, that Brussels wants to make St Libra part of the GE, and the only thing stopping them is the Norths.’

  ‘Brussels doesn’t want to make St Libra part of the GE. Do you know why?’

  ‘The Independencies,’ Zara answered, smiling proudly.

  ‘That’s right. See, St Libra is the place people go to when they’re not happy with the government where they’re living. There’s room for all of them, there. The last thing the GE needs is millions of people who’ll fight their authority.’

  ‘Do you like the GE, Dad?’

  Sid was pleased with how he managed to avoid giving Jacinta a look. ‘They pay my salary, so they’re not all bad.’

  Zara screwed her face up into an inquisitor’s expression. ‘But—’

  ‘Eat your cornflakes,’ Jacinta ordered.

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  Sid finally risked glancing at Jacinta. ‘It’s because it’s taking so long to arrest someone for the carjacking. Everyone expected us to find the suspect straight away.’

  ‘When will you get him, Dad?’ Will asked.

  ‘This week, I hope,’ Sid said.

  ‘You sound very confident about that, pet,’ Jacinta said, holding her mug of tea idly in front of her face.

  ‘Aye, reasonably,’ he said.

  ‘Will you be on the zone news?’ an excited Zara asked.

  ‘No. That’ll be the Chief Constable.’

  *

  The zone theatre was no longer
running the St James simulation when Sid arrived at Market Street at eight o’clock. Ari and Lorelle were waiting for him in Office3 when he walked in. He knew they had the late-night shift, and given the number of coffee mugs on the desk they were sitting at, he judged they’d not been home.

  ‘We found something,’ Ari said, his face a combination of exhaustion and elation.

  ‘Come through,’ Sid said, and led them into his private office. He didn’t bother activating the security seal, not with the rest of the team starting to arrive for the morning shift.

  Lorelle was smiling when she settled herself just inside the door. That was telling – Sid hadn’t seen her look remotely happy since the case began. ‘What is it?’

  Ari exhaled loudly. ‘Adrian North arrived at the St James at 8:03 am on Friday, the 11th of January. He was quite open about it – we picked him up on three meshes getting out of a taxi and using the main entrance. His e-i responded to a general entry query from the security program in the St James net. He was there.’

  ‘And?’ Sid asked.

  ‘We can’t find him leaving.’

  ‘We checked every minute right up until Saturday evening, boss,’ Lorelle said insistently. ‘There are twenty-three Norths coming in and out; they’ve got cars, they took taxis, they walked out with groups of friends. None of them was Adrian. So, either he eluded us, or he stayed there well after Saturday evening. Either way, it’s the first possibility we have.’

  ‘The only possibility,’ Ari said.

  ‘Aye,’ Sid said. ‘And we’ve checked Adrian out during the investigation?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s a 2, a bioil specialist working in Northumberland Interstellar’s production division.’

  ‘No kidding?’ Sid said. ‘A full walking talking cliché, then.’

  ‘He has an apartment down on Quayside,’ Lorelle said, reading the data straight off her iris smartcell display. ‘Underwent the DNA verification, so he’s not an imposter.’

  Overlooking the Millennium Bridge, Sid thought. An irrelevant coincidence, there was no knowing where the body would end up that night.

  ‘Do you want us to extend the simulation to Sunday and Monday?’ Ari asked. ‘See if we can find him leaving?’

  ‘No, we’re a long way past anything like that,’ Sid said. He told his e-i to pull Adrian’s interface address from the station network, and make the call.

  ‘What is it?’ Adrian 2North asked.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ Sid said. ‘But we’re just clearing up a few details on the carjacking case.’

  ‘Go on then. But be quick, I’m due in the office in half an hour.’

  ‘We’re trying to establish what time you left the St James singletown on Friday the eleventh, and what exit you used.’

  ‘What Friday? I haven’t been to the St James for months.’

  ‘Sir. Friday the eleventh of January, the weekend we found your brother’s body.’

  ‘Sorry, but you’ve got me mixed up with one of my brothers. I haven’t been to the St James this year. I think the last time I was there was back in September, some kind of concert in the Sacrose Theatre.’

  Sid gave Ari a sharp look, and muted the call. ‘Any chance you misidentified?’

  ‘No,’ Ari insisted. ‘His e-i confirmed his identity.’

  ‘Our records show you were there, sir,’ Sid told Adrian.

  ‘Well your records are wrong.’

  Oh no they’re not.

  *

  Eva handled surveillance. Standing in the zone booth, extracting mesh imagery and traffic data from the city macromesh, watching over the agency squad car like an invisible electronic angel. Sid wasn’t taking any chances, he’d located the nearest squad car to Quayside and ordered them round to Adrian 2North’s apartment block to take him into protective custody. Another three nearby squad cars were dispatched as back-up, an agency helicopter on patrol was reassigned to fly cover.

  The agency constables escorted Adrian 2North to their car, and drove for Market Street. It was less than a kilometre, but after Ian had quickly muttered his off-log suspicion about Sherman’s crew being responsible for firebombing the garage, Sid took no chances. He used his case authority to clear a passage through city traffic, resequencing traffic lights, and overriding autos, allowing the squad car and its escort to travel fast.

  So fast, they almost beat him to the underground garage. Sid and Ian and Lorelle had only just got out of the lift when the squad cars came rushing down the ramp, their strobes casting weird shadows across the dark concrete cavern.

  The squad car’s rear door unlocked and slid back, allowing a thoroughly bewildered Adrian to look out. His expression changed to worry as he saw Sid and the others carrying pistols.

  ‘What the fuck . . .’

  ‘Move, now,’ Sid snapped. They hauled Adrian out of the squad car and into the lift. It took them straight up to the second-floor secure holding section.

  Adrian had clearly been getting ready for work. He had his suit trousers on, and a smart shirt, cufflinked but not buttoned up to the neck. The tip of his red and gold tie was flopping out of his pocket.

  Incredulity had quickly turned to anger as he was hustled into the interview cell. That was soon vanquished by worry when Sid reappeared with Aldred.

  It was a classic arrangement. Square room with no window. Table in the middle with two seats on either side.

  ‘You don’t need a lawyer,’ Aldred said.

  So Adrian sat by himself, trying not to look too perturbed by his strange morning. He was in his mid-forties, similar enough to the victim.

  Sid and Aldred sat facing him, and half the case team were hooked in through a secure link, as was Ralph Stevens – wherever he was. A strange moment for Sid, questioning a man with the face of the murder victim, supported by another of the identical clones. Not that he was particularly religious, but there had to be something fundamentally wrong with distorting nature in such a fashion.

  ‘Could you start by giving the station network your identity code, please,’ Sid said.

  The simple binary pulse materialized in Sid’s iris smartcell grid as a purple line. Confirmed as Adrian (or at least his e-i), and that code was identical to one a North had given to the St James network at 8:03 am that Friday. ‘I have a problem,’ Sid said. ‘A North using your code went into the St James singletown on the day of the murder. He didn’t come out. At least, not using your code.’

  ‘Well it wasn’t me,’ Adrian protested.

  ‘That’s what we’re here to find out.’

  ‘No. You don’t understand. I was on St Libra. I remember that week well enough. I got mugged.’

  ‘Mugged?’

  ‘Yes. Look, I’m over there three weeks out of five. I supervise management at half our refineries. It’d been a tough week, so I went to a club in Highcastle to chill down.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘In St Libra terms? Early evening. The days aren’t synchronized, you know. A St Libra day is about eight minutes longer than an Earth day. So, yes, early evening on St Libra. Thursday on Earth.’

  ‘All right,’ Sid said. ‘You were at the club. What club?’

  ‘Dervashe, on Thirty-Fourth Street.’

  ‘I know it,’ Aldred said. ‘It’s quite exclusive, several of us have membership.’

  ‘Yeah, well, anyway,’ Adrian continued. ‘It started out a decent night. There were a couple of girls who were interested. We sat together, met up with friends. Had a meal, some drinks. Danced. Bumped some tox. Then next thing I know I’m in the manager’s office, it’s about four o’clock in the morning local time, and there’s a killer pain on the side of my head.’

  ‘Did anyone see anything?’ Sid asked.

  Adrian pushed his lips together, chewing on embarrassment. ‘The club security people, they found me in a stall. They claim I fell and hit my head.’

  ‘Did you?’ Aldred asked firmly.

  ‘Who knows? I don’t even remember going into the gen
ts.’

  ‘How much tox did you have?’ Sid asked.

  ‘Hardly any.’

  ‘Okay.’ And Sid had to work hard to keep the disbelief from his voice. It was a standard victim claim; no, I never touch the stuff; that or it was a bad batch. Either way: Not My Fault. ‘So you came back to Newcastle?’

  ‘Not right away. I have a flat in Highcastle; cheaper than a hotel given how much time I spend there. So I went back there for a few hours to clean up and get ready to come home. That’s when I realized it was a mugging. I didn’t have my GE visa chip. And, trust me, you really need one of those to get back through the Border Directorate on this side.’

  ‘Anything else missing?’

  ‘Not that I noticed, no.’

  ‘All right, your visa chip is missing. What did you do?’

  ‘I went to our offices in Highcastle. They sorted it out for me. We do have some clout in Brussels, after all. The Directorate issued me with a temporary chip, and I came back through.’

  ‘When?’

  Adrian sucking down some air. ‘Late Friday, Newcastle time. It was night when I got back, I know; there were fireworks going off all the time. That fusion plant contract, I guess. And the Northern Lights were strong, I remember them.’

  ‘Okay, thank you.’

  Sid and Aldred went out into the corridor. There was an armed guard on the interview room, police detectives, not agency people. They walked towards Office3.

  ‘So, what’s he like?’ Sid asked.

  ‘Not a toxhead, if that’s what you mean,’ Aldred said.

  ‘So he got slipped a mickey?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  Ian and Reannha were waiting for them in Office3, big smiles on their faces.

  ‘What?’ Sid asked.

  ‘We just checked,’ Reannha said. ‘The GE Border Directorate records show Adrian North coming through the gateway on Friday 11th January at 6:48 am.’

  ‘Our unknown used Adrian’s visa chip,’ Sid said.