Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘About fucking time, man. What room have we got?’ Sid could hear the low throbbing of a helicopter landing on the station’s roof pad.

  ‘Interview seven,’ Ian replied.

  ‘Okay, calm down. We have to be totally professional now. Think of the court admissibility procedures.’

  ‘Aye, I know,’ Ian said with a hurt tone.

  ‘Spread the word.’

  ‘Got it covered, boss.’

  Sid stood up and put his jacket on, straightened his tie, and went out to see just what Ralph had brought him.

  Five minutes later he was standing in interview room seven’s observation office, watching the wall-size pane which showed him Ernie Reinert sitting passively at the room’s table. Sid had interviewed hundreds of suspects, knew all the stages: the defiance, the panic, the miserable monologue confession, the plea for understanding. But this, Ernie’s zombie-like lack of interest in the world around him, this was something new. Something he felt very uncomfortable witnessing. Part of him wanted to ask how the Reinert of last week, the contemptuous tough-guy gang man, had been reduced to this. A bigger part knew not to ask, that the details would haunt him.

  Even so, Reinert had been officially signed over to his custody. ‘Is he okay?’

  Ralph Stevens, suited and impassive like a finance floor dealer, gave a knowing nod. ‘Mr Reinert is fine. He was very helpful, and declined to have a lawyer present during questioning.’

  ‘Really? So what did he say?’

  ‘Ah. Well, there’s good news and bad news,’ Ralph said. ‘The best part is that he picked the body up from the St James singletown apartment 576B.’

  Sid wanted to call Ian and Tilly immediately, let them off the lead. ‘How could there be bad news?’

  ‘He doesn’t know who sent him to the St James.’

  ‘How can he not know?’

  ‘Sid. He doesn’t know. The information doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Aye, so how did he wind up with the job of disposing of the body?’

  ‘When he was booted out of Securitar, he stayed in contact with his old section boss, Kirk Corzone. Between them, they arranged for Ernie to receive orders for certain important jobs by instructions from an untraceable address. According to your own station records Kirk Corzone had connections with the Red Shield gang. He was the middle-man, the go-between for the corporates.’

  ‘And we can’t pick him up because . . .’

  ‘He was killed five years ago. Typical gangland slaying over a tox exchange that went wrong.’

  ‘But someone is still using that untraceable address, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay. So what happened?’

  ‘It went off pretty much as you’ve already uncovered. Ernie got the call on the Friday evening, telling him there was a body in apartment 576B, and that it had to be disposed of carefully. All traces of identification removed, smartcells extracted. Interesting thing: the data provided told him where the secure smartcells were located.’

  ‘That’s very detailed,’ Sid said. ‘You’d have to get into the North family records to find that kind of knowledge.’

  ‘I see where you’re coming from, but this is the information Reinert gave us.’

  ‘Okay, go on.’

  ‘Reinert immediately called four associates: Maura Dellington, Chester Hubley, Murray Blazczaka, and Lucas Kremer.’

  ‘We’re already holding Hubley and Kremer,’ Sid said. ‘They work at Reinert’s garage.’

  ‘Yeah. Convenient all round that he employs them legitimately, it makes them a tight little crew. Dellington and Blazczaka spent Saturday ripping meshes around town, while Hubley and Kremer prepared the two citycabs. Hubley drove the decoy cab into place just before midnight Saturday. The rest you basically know. Hubley walked back to the decoy on Sunday evening. Dellington, Blazczaka, and Kremer used different routes to arrive at apartment 576B during the afternoon, and started cleaning. They stripped the body, extracted the smartcells and sliced the fingertips off. So when Reinert drove his taxi to the St James it was ready to be bundled into the case and driven away.’

  ‘They must have been shocked when they walked in and found whose corpse was waiting for them.’

  ‘Apparently Dellington and Kremer wanted to forget the whole thing and leave. Blazczaka persuaded them to stay and get on with the job.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sid told his e-i to access every file they had on apartment 576B. The owner file filled his iris smartcell grid. He pursed his lips at the image superimposed over Ernie Reinert. ‘Tallulah Packer. I take it you’ve already harvested a profile?’

  ‘Yeah. Twenty-five years old, parents divorced eleven years ago, father owns a software house in Suffolk, mother has a transnet company supplying smoked food, she was educated at Bath University. Smart enough to get taken on a graduate fast-track programme at Northumberland Interstellar, and currently works as bioil demand and distribution analyst in their Southern Europe office here in Newcastle. Engaged to one Boris Attenson, a banker. All very straight life standard.’

  ‘An analyst? Do they have any other kind of employee over there?’

  ‘Doubt it,’ Ralph said. ‘I’ve never met one.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Plenty of small details, but that’s the big picture.’

  ‘No sign of an alien monster?’

  ‘No sign,’ Ralph admitted.

  ‘Right then; let’s get started.’

  *

  Sid took charge of the team going to apartment 576B, taking Eva and Ralph along with four agency constables, and a full forensics team. Abner headed up the arrest team pursuing Maura Dellington. Lorelle and Ari went after Murray Blazczaka. Ian was assigned to bring Tallulah Packer in. ‘You owe me,’ Sid murmured as her image appeared on the big wallscreen in Office3. A dazed Ian nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off the picture.

  It was quite a procession that came out of the service elevator onto the fifth floor of the twisted tower that stood on the eastern side of the St James singletown. The building’s security officers, police, Tilly’s team with their five equipment trolleys rattling along behind. Curious residents gave them a wide berth. Sid put on his disposable white cleansuit in the corridor outside apartment 576B, along with Eva, Ralph, and the forensics team. He knew it was a waste of time, the murder was three months old after all. But procedure was king, so he didn’t protest even though the faces around him clearly shared his irritation. Once they were all suited up, the St James security manager ordered the door to unlock.

  Tilly ordered the flock of eight-legged cyber-insects that had clambered out of the trolleys to go into the apartment. 576B had two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen alcove, and a split-level lounge with a view across Leazes Park. Fabrics were all patterns; both the dresser and the main table had fresh cut flowers. Several rugs were strewn over the polished wood floor. It was all very girl-about-town Sid thought.

  The cyber-insects scuttled forward, trailing long whisker antennae along the floor so their mesh of smartmicrobes could sample the composition of everything they touched. Two of them began to circle a section of the sleek grey tiles just below the step up to the back of the lounge. A larger, more bulbous, cyber-insect crabbed over to them and sprayed the area with a fine aerosol. Tilly ordered the apartment’s net to turn the lights down and close the curtains. She shone an ultraviolet torch at the floor. A large stain glowed purple-white on the wood.

  ‘Blood,’ she announced happily. ‘And plenty of it. Ernie wasn’t lying.’

  It wasn’t right to be happy about a murder scene, but Sid was immensely satisfied to be finally looking down at the luminescent chemicals. So much work and risk had gone into bringing him to this place. ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘Seal the room. I want a full work-up, every test you’ve got. I want a complete forensics profile.’

  Tilly’s team brought in more equipment from the trolleys, setting up tripods with ultra-rez sensors. The cyber-insects began to probe the corners of the
lounge. More of the little gadgets were released in the other rooms.

  Sid started to look through the apartment for himself. The bed in the main bedroom had a jazzy duvet that had been levelled and then covered with a whole load of cushions arranged by size. He shook his head at the sight and moved on – there had been enough arguments over cushions and curtains with Jacinta down the years. The dressing table was also an exercise in neatness, with make-up bottles and tubes in various cases and boxes. He started opening drawers. ‘Eva, take a look through this for me, please.’

  She came over and looked down at the drawer he’d opened. It was full of bras. ‘What, boss? You gone shy?’

  ‘Aye cut it out, man. I will do many things for the police, but going through women’s underwear isn’t one of them. So you let me know if you find a five-blade claw at the back of any of these drawers, okay.’

  Inside the cleansuit’s hood, Eva smiled at him. ‘Okay, boss.’

  Sid went into the bathroom. No surprise, everything in the medicine cabinet was regimented. That included the three tox sacs; one of which was a peptox. Sid gave it a small sympathetic smile. ‘Poor Boris,’ he muttered.

  ‘Two toothstiks,’ Ralph said, looking over his shoulder.

  ‘Aye.’ Sid turned to one of the forensics team. ‘Bag them, please. I’ll want them DNA fingerprinted. Let’s confirm it’s the fiancé Boris that stays over.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Ralph asked.

  ‘I’m thinking I could have told you everything about this place just by accessing our Tallulah’s file. Young, single, professional working in the bioil business. This town’s got a ton of them. They’re all the same.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So why did our fake Adrian come straight here? What makes Tallulah Packer stand out from the rest of her tribe? That’s what we need to focus on. Why her?’

  ‘All you have to do is ask.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll be doing that all right.’

  *

  Sid was back at Market Street by eleven o’clock. The arrest teams had all been successful. To a degree. Murray Blazczaka had put two agency constables in hospital with minor injuries. Ari North had a black eye which was still swelling. It was Lorelle who’d finally subdued him with a taser.

  Like everyone returning to Office3, Sid took a look at Ari’s face. Winced and grinned. ‘You okay?’

  ‘The bastard blindsided me, boss.’

  ‘Aye, course he did. Keep the cold-gel pack on.’

  Maura Dellington was also in one of the custody suites. As was Tallulah Packer.

  ‘Ian is in there with her,’ Abner said pointedly. ‘Processing.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s just doing his duty.’

  ‘Must be very thorough, he’s taking for ever.’

  Sid declined to comment further, and told himself he felt no envy.

  ‘Boris Attenson is downstairs,’ Dedra Foyster said. ‘With his solicitor. They’re getting arsey with the desk sergeant.’

  ‘Are they?’ Sid mused. ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘We really don’t want any custody interview mistakes,’ Aldred North said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘No,’ Sid agreed grudgingly. ‘I’ll bring them up myself.’

  Boris Attenson was someone else Sid could have described perfectly without ever having met him. Tall, with blond hair that at age thirty-one was already starting to thin. Just overweight, but not yet bloating thanks to membership of the old college rugby team. Pale skin, scaled with a good covering of freckles, moisturized against the toll corporate hospitality extracted. Tailored suit in sharp grey fabric with ziz-shark stripes. Tailored shirt with currently fashionable high-collar, complemented by a three-hundred-Eurofranc purple and gold Korean silk tie. His daily office outfit was finished off with hand-stitched leather shoes that probably cost more than a new set of tyres for Sid’s Toyota Dayon.

  The solicitor accompanying him, Chantilly Sanders-Watson, could have been his big sister. Smarter sister, Sid corrected himself, as her professional id icon popped up in his grid. A partner in Rattigan, Herandez, and Singh, a legal company all too familiar to Market Street officers toiling away on a high-profile case. If you could afford them it was like buying yourself a get-out-of-jail token.

  ‘Why has my fiancée been arrested?’ Boris demanded.

  ‘She hasn’t been,’ Sid said in a tone that matched Boris’s.

  The banker blinked in surprise, and gave Chantilly Sanders-Watson a help-me glance.

  ‘Could you tell me Ms Packer’s status, please Detective Hurst,’ the solicitor asked calmly.

  ‘She has been remanded in custody to assist with our enquiry. Her agreement was voluntary, with the option to retain legal counsel during interview.’

  ‘Of course she wants a bloody lawyer!’ Boris blustered.

  ‘Which enquiry is that?’ Chantilly Sanders-Watson asked.

  Sid gestured round the station reception room, where several stressed and distressed relatives were bunched round the desk. Three suspects under agency constable escort were waiting to be signed in. ‘Perhaps you’d prefer to discuss this upstairs in a secure office?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Chantilly Sanders-Watson said.

  The desk sergeant dabbed a temporary building access smart-dust tag on the hands of both visitors, and they all trooped into the waiting elevator. ‘As yet we don’t believe Ms Packer has committed any criminal act,’ Sid explained. ‘However, one was committed in her apartment.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Boris said. ‘I was there myself last night. Your thugs stormed into her office and hauled her out like some common criminal. Do you have any idea what that has done to her reputation?’

  ‘You mean Mr Darcy will cancel her dinner invitation?’ Sid asked innocently.

  ‘Now look you—’

  Chantilly Sanders-Watson put a warning hand on Boris’s shoulder. ‘What criminal act?’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘That’s preposterous! Tallulah hasn’t killed anyone. You’re disgusting suggesting she was involved. I’ll sue the whole bloody lot of you for slander.’

  Sid was no longer talking to Boris Attenson. ‘I’ve just come back from her apartment in the St James,’ he told the solicitor. ‘Forensics estimates at least two litres of blood was spilled on the floor. And yes, they confirmed it to be human blood.’

  ‘I see. In which case Ms Packer will certainly need representation at any interview she gives. I will also require the arresting officer’s log to ensure no undue influence was exerted during her holding custody period.’

  ‘I’ll have that certified and ready for you,’ Sid promised, fervently hoping Ian hadn’t spent the whole time in the squad car staring at Tallulah’s chest. Maybe giving him that duty was a bad call.

  Tallulah Packer had been assigned interview room four. When Sid got there Ralph and Eva were standing outside, leaving Ian and Aldred in the room with her. In the flesh, Tallulah was as frighteningly attractive as her id file images had portrayed her. Tall enough to play for her university netball team, she had a round face framed by rich dark auburn hair cut just above her shoulders. A wide mouth had perfectly shaded burgundy lipstick to emphasize its sensuality, while deep hazel eyes were full of concern. Sid could only assume she’d perspired raw pheromones into the interview room, because that was the only reason a professional police officer like Ian would be sitting on the edge of the table, chatting to her with a reassuring smile splashed all over his face. At least Aldred was showing some restraint, sitting behind the desk and maintaining a polite silence.

  Chantilly Sanders-Watson took in the scene with a single interested glance. Tallulah stood up fast at the sight of Boris, and the two hugged.

  Ian put a restraining hand on Boris’s shoulder. ‘That’s enough, sir.’

  ‘This is my fiancée, you cretin. Are you all right, darling?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Tallulah said in a husky voice. ‘Really.’

  ‘Out of courtesy we’ve allowed you in here, sir,’
Sid said. ‘Now you’ve seen your fiancée is fine, you’ll have to wait in our guest centre until our interviews are complete.’

  ‘I’m staying with Tallulah!’ Boris insisted.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Chantilly Sanders-Watson said. ‘I’ll take it from here.’

  Sid beckoned Eva in, and got her to escort a fuming Boris from the interview room.

  ‘I’d like to know why you’re in a police interview room with my client?’ the solicitor asked Aldred.

  ‘I am an accredited legal representative for my family on this case,’ Aldred replied smoothly. ‘I’ll send you the registration certificate.’

  ‘Please do.’ She stared at Ian. ‘Is this a new interview technique you’re practising, Detective?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘GE Criminal Apprehension Act 2131 clearly states no custodial interview may be conducted in an intimidating fashion. You are positively looming over my client. That can be very threatening.’

  Ian rolled his eyes and stood up.

  Chantilly Sanders-Watson sat beside Tallulah, and gave her a reassuring smile. ‘The police will leave us now. You and I are going to have a talk, and if you wish to speak to them afterwards then I’ll permit that.’

  Sid and the others walked out of the interview room.

  ‘Who’s the bitch?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Someone we don’t call a bitch,’ Sid said. ‘I need you to prepare your official custody log from this morning. The solicitor wants to access it.’

  ‘Visual as well?’ Ian asked in a worried tone.

  ‘Yes. I understand there are some glitches in the station cache. Review it to make sure there’s not too many.’

  ‘Understood, boss.’

  ‘I can’t believe we have to do this,’ Aldred complained.

  ‘We wouldn’t,’ Ralph said pointedly.

  ‘It’s not come to that yet,’ Sid said. The image of an empty Ernie waiting forlornly in interview room seven still refused to stop haunting him.

  ‘One indication that she was involved and she’s coming with me,’ Ralph warned.

  ‘Understood, but I want as much as I can get from her first. She’s not a tough guy like Ernie.’