by Malcolm Rose
Owen looked across at a boat on the Thames and thought about it. “Yeah. Not a bad idea.”
“I’ll talk to The Authorities about you setting up a sort of alternative school in a community centre. Maybe somewhere like this.” The FI waved towards the disused warehouse.
“All right. You’ve got a deal.” Owen was thrilled by the suggestion but he didn’t show it outwardly. He trusted Luke Harding to do his best, but he didn’t trust The Authorities to see the sense in it. He refused to get excited when his expectations lay somewhere between low and non-existent.
“I’ll leave you to it. Call me via Malc.”
“Yeah. Let someone who knows what he’s doing take over. The more an investigator hangs around, the longer it’ll take for the kids to come back. Likely, I’ve got some serious footballing to do before I can talk and get them to open up.”
Owen shook his head and smiled while he watched the investigator walk away with his mobile gliding behind him like a faithful pet.
Chapter Fifteen
A tragedy was looming for FI Luke Harding. The pomegranate season was virtually at an end and, unless Malc could find an alternative supply overseas, Luke’s breakfasts would have to change. Taking a mouthful of seeds from the fruit and spraying red juice across his room in the Central Hotel, Piccadilly, Luke said, “I’m going to hang around in London till Owen gets back to me – in case I need to go into action on anything he digs up.”
Malc replied, “Do you expect him to exhume a body?”
“No. I mean, anything he finds out.”
“Information collected by an untrained person is not admissible. I cannot enter it into case notes.”
“I didn’t get top marks in law for nothing. I know,” Luke replied, standing up. “But I’m not sure there’s a case yet. If it looks like there is, I’ll work on it. Then you’ll be able to log things properly.” He took a quick shower and then sat opposite the telescreen. “Now, I want a connection with Edinburgh School. Request an interview with Tina Stone.”
“You do not have to request it. As an FI, you can demand it.”
Luke smiled. “There isn’t a law against forensic investigators being polite, Malc. Request it.” He paused before adding, “Firmly, though. I don’t want my request turned down.”
When Tina Stone entered the telescreen room, she looked nervous.
“Hello,” Luke said brightly.
Sitting down, Tina muttered, “Is this a school exercise?”
“No,” Luke answered. “But don’t worry about it. I read your criminology essay.” He raised his arm over his head, his fist clenched around an imaginary icicle, and stabbed it downwards. “Very good. A bit far-fetched maybe, but really clever.”
The video image was so clear that the Year-7 student could have been sitting opposite him in his hotel room. She had very short blonde hair that clashed with the school’s green sweater. She lifted her gaze briefly and dared to look at him – or the likeness of him on the wall in the Edinburgh meeting room. “Thank you.” Then she stared down at her own lap again.
“What grade did you get for it?”
Her head still bowed, she smiled. “Starred A.”
“I should think so,” said Luke. “Where did you get the inspiration for it?”
Tina swallowed before answering. “Outside.”
“Outside?”
She nodded. “The cold weather, you know.”
Luke could see the silvery top of her head and some of her face. Even without a good view of her eyes, he was not convinced that she was telling the truth. “Did anyone else talk to you about it or did you see it written down?”
“No. I just thought it out for myself.”
“Are you sure you didn’t get the idea from somewhere else? It’s okay. I won’t tell Mr Garrett. You can keep your starred A.”
Tina shook her head and shuffled uneasily in the chair.
She wasn’t a suspect. Malc had already downloaded her attendance record for December 23rd and 24th when EW2 died in Woburn. Tina Stone was at the other end of the country at the time. “Do you know Emily Wonder in Year 10?”
“I’ve heard of her.”
“Did you discuss the icicle idea with her?”
“No.”
“So, it’s just you and Mr Garrett who know about it?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay. That’s all, Tina. You can send him in. Instructor Garrett, that is. Thanks.”
As soon as Clint’s self-confident face appeared in front of him, Luke said, “Do you know about situs inversus totalis?”
The instructor looked puzzled for an instant and then smiled. “Of course. A classic condition. Rare but classic. They say a man with it escaped death because a well-aimed bullet went through the left of his chest where his heart should’ve been, but wasn’t. I use it as a case study in Year 9.” He paused before adding, “Has that got anything to do with Tina?”
“No,” Luke answered. “I was just trying to find out how many people know about it. Tina says she dreamed up the icicle plot on her own.”
The instructor sat back and thought about it for a few seconds. “She’s good, is Tina. Turns in solid B grades and occasional As, so it could be her idea. But she’s never strayed far from the humdrum till now. This is quite a leap. I’m going to say it’s too imaginative to be Tina’s own work.”
“You didn’t suggest it to her as a subject for her essay, did you?”
“Me?” Mr Garret uttered, as if taken aback. “No. My job’s to train them to think for themselves. I don’t come up with ideas for them.”
“It wasn’t long ago I was at school,” Luke replied. “I know how things work. You – the staff – may not know where the idea came from, but some of her fellow students will. She’ll have talked about it. I want to see them all – till I find one who’s willing to spill the beans.”
“That’s a lot of...”
“So, we’d better get going, starting with her mates.”
It didn’t take Luke long to extract the information he wanted. The fourth person he interviewed was Earl Dimmock and he gave the game away almost immediately.
“She’s pretty good at criminology. She wants to be an FI like you.” Slouching coolly in the chair, he was apparently unruffled by an investigator’s questions. “But she nicked that idea from a myth. It was called Ice Cold, I think she said.”
“Who wrote it? Do you know?”
“No. Wasn’t interested. But go on-line, man, and you’ll find it.”
“Thanks, Earl. You’ve been helpful.”
“Can I go?”
“Sure.”
Invented stories were not very popular but some artists posted their myths on-line so that people could read them on their telescreens. “Search for a myth called Ice Cold, Malc. I fancy a spot of fiction for a change. And I want to know who logged it in the first place.”
****
Luke was getting bored. Fingers interlocked behind his head, he was nearing the end of Ice Cold. “I haven’t read a story in ages.” He pulled a face. “My own cases are weirder than myths. But whoever wrote it got one thing right. The culprit keeps to the same weapon. He starts with an icicle and carries on with an icicle. That’s what instructors tell you. Q’s getting it wrong. An icicle and a couple of poisons.”
“There is a logic,” Malc pointed out. “Q is using weapons that do not leave physical evidence.”
“Yeah. And I suppose there might be a theme of water. An icicle, probably drinking water poisoned with TTX, and possibly contaminated water in the sauna oil. But they’re still different weapons. Anyway, have you found out who posted this myth?”
“Untraceable. It is an anonymous contribution.”
“Pity. When did it appear?”
“It was first logged almost five months ago on the fifteenth of August.”
“Mmm. Not a very seasonal story at the time.”
Malc said, “It is unlikely that Q would broadcast an intended murder weapon
on-line.”
“Unless he’s into taunting investigators,” Luke replied, not yet ready to dismiss Ice Cold as a coincidence. “Two jobs for you. Search the database for myths that involve TTX or burning something to make cyanide. If Q’s playing games, they’ll be there somewhere. Or maybe Q read Ice Cold and, like Tina, pinched the idea. So, see if there’s a record of computers that have logged on to this myth.”
Luke finished the final paragraphs of the story to prove that he’d worked out the identity of the fictional murderer about halfway through the plot. Other than the icy spikes used as weapons, there was nothing in common with his case. The victims in the myth did not have the same name and none of them were celebrities.
Malc announced, “It is not possible to trace computers that have accessed this or any other myth. The Authorities’ central computers do not keep that information on file.”
“If I hacked into Edinburgh School’s computer...”
“That is illegal.”
“Mmm. But if I did, there’d be a list of sites viewed by people in the school.”
“Irrelevant, because hacking is illegal.”
“I could go back to Edinburgh, present my identity card and get access.”
“Confirmed. That is the legal approach.”
Luke shook his head. “I don’t suppose it’d help much. It’d tell me someone’s been reading Ice Cold. That’d be Tina Stone. If anyone else in the school had opened it, I wouldn’t be able to find out who.”
Malc reported his second finding. “The database of myths does not contain any storylines within the parameters that you set.”
“All right,” Luke said, with a sigh. “This isn’t going anywhere. I’m probably barking up the wrong tree.”
“That,” Malc replied, “would be an unusual activity for a human being.”
Chapter Sixteen
The next day, Owen Goode appeared on Luke’s telescreen. “Hi. Got your ears pinned back?”
“What?”
Owen paused like someone unused to telescreen messaging and said, “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Luke replied. “Any luck?”
“Yeah. Your eleven-year-old’s been hanging out with that group. For months. But not in the last few days.” He sneezed loudly.
“What have you got for me?”
Owen answered, “A little lad. He saw her a couple of weeks back. Something like that. Didn’t know when exactly. Every day’s the same for these kids. It’s not like, double science lesson, it must be Tuesday. Or, no school today, it must be the weekend.”
“That’d be just before Year Birth.”
“Yeah. Well, that don’t mean much to them either. Likely a new year won’t bring them any more than the last one. Anyway, this boy saw her walking away with a man. A big man, he said.”
“A big man?”
Owen grinned. “I wouldn’t rely on it. He’s seven. Everyone’s big to him. He called me the big man who plays football.”
“Did he have any idea about this chap’s age?”
Owen shook his head. “Old. Like me – and I’m sixteen.”
“Was he touching Emily?”
“How do you mean?”
“Was he dragging her away or was she going willingly?”
Owen shrugged. “Didn’t say. But I know these kids. They look after each other. If this bloke was forcing her, they’d be off after him. Likely, she went with him without a fuss.”
“Was he smartly dressed?”
Owen smiled again and suppressed another sneeze. “Everyone’d look smart to a lad living rough.”
“Okay,” Luke said, hiding his disappointment about the man’s description. “That gives me something to go on.”
“Not a lot, but it’s all I got. No one’s seen her since.”
“Thanks,” said Luke. “I put a feeler out to The Authorities about a youth centre and... er...”
“They refused.”
Luke nodded. “’Fraid so. Proper students go to proper school. That’s it. They didn’t really understand the idea.”
“You amaze me,” Owen replied with sarcasm.
Luke hated the thought that one day he’d get so used to the south’s cruelty and crime that he’d accept it as normal. He was scared that he was becoming unshockable. Escaping to Jade and the north for a while wasn’t enough. The hopelessness didn’t go away when he took a break from it. He wished he could do something to put it right. His idea for an unofficial school would have been one blow in a fight against the seediness of life down south. He was sure that, given the chance, Owen could have lured some kids away from the brutality of crime. “I’ll try again,” Luke promised.
Owen grimaced. “Won’t hold my breath. But...”
“What?”
“I’ve got this friend. Well, I did, till two years ago. Name of Everton Kohter. He’s in prison. Cambridge. He’s going to be put to death in a month or something like, but he didn’t do the murder. Don’t think so anyway.”
“We don’t make mistakes, Owen.”
“Likely you don’t, but you’re not the only FI.”
“The Authorities don’t reopen closed cases, if that’s what you’re asking me to do. They say they get it right first time. Raising doubt doesn’t do anything for confidence in the law.”
“Seems to me, executing someone who’s innocent isn’t a clever way of making sure we all trust the system.”
“Okay,” Luke replied. “I’ll do what I can, but...”
“Yeah. I know.”
The head and shoulders of an elegant newscaster replaced Owen’s white face on Luke’s telescreen.
“In the Canary Islands, monitoring of the western side of La Palma continues. A large section of rock remains on the brink of catastrophic collapse. If the volcano does erupt, as scientists expect, a chunk of rock about the size of the Isle of Man will plunge into the Atlantic Ocean and trigger giant swells called tsunamis. Within two hours of the land collapse, waves up to one hundred metres high will wreak havoc on neighbouring Canary Islands and the west coast of Africa. England will not be spared. Four to five hours after the rock breaks off, southern ports will experience ten-metre surges. Some experts warn that waves about twenty metres high will cross the Atlantic and deluge Caribbean islands – and the American and Canadian coast – after nine to twelve hours. Such swells, moving at nearly nine hundred kilometres an hour, will not stop when they strike the coast or a barrier. They are expected to travel inland for ten to fifteen minutes, putting millions of people at risk. Destruction of property is expected to be considerable. Even if the Thames Barrier in London were in working order, it would not hold back a ten-metre tsunami. Evacuation of the city, the lowlands around the Bristol Channel, and southern ports would be the only option for public safety.”
“Sounds grim,” Luke muttered. “If it happened, The Authorities wouldn’t be able to evacuate the homeless – the ones without identity cards. It’d be impossible to keep track of people like those kids by the Thames.”
“The science of volcanoes is not certain. According to my database, there were warnings about severe landslips in La Palma twelve years ago and three years ago. Volcanic activity subsided in both cases.”
“I guess I’ve got enough on my plate, worrying about forty-four Emily Wonders.”
“There is no rational connection between food and your current case.”
Luke grinned. “Never mind. Right now, Malc, I want to interview Freya Lamacq. See if you can establish a link. Last time I heard, she was touring in Lancashire.”
It took Malc over five minutes to make a connection and, when the singer’s minder appeared on the telescreen, she assumed that Luke wanted to speak to Emily. “Ms Wonder can’t be disturbed right now,” Freya said in a husky voice, almost like a man’s. “She’s resting.”
Luke smiled. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but an FI can disturb anyone, anytime.” Angling for Freya’s cooperation, he asked Malc, “Is it true I can demand to speak to her?”
“Confirmed.”
Freya began, “I really don’t...”
“Look,” Luke said, interrupting. “If you think it’s a bad idea to fetch her right now, I suppose I could talk to you instead. You’ll have to be up front with me, though, or you won’t leave me any choice.”
Freya jumped at the chance to protect the precious singer. “All right.”
“When did you start working for her?”
“As soon as she left school and began to tour.”
“What exactly do you do?”
Freya shrugged. “Just about everything, apart from the singing. I make sure we get from one performance to another. I network with concert hall managers, deal with fans, book hotels, handle the media, anything.”
“You go everywhere with her.”
“True. We’re a team.”
“It seems to me you’re devoting your life to Emily.”
“I can think of worse careers, Investigator Harding.”
“You’re Emily’s spokeswoman as well?”
“True.”
“Did you contact the media about the news item on three women called Emily Wonder dying?”
“No,” she answered. “They called me. I’m well known to them.”
“What do you think about it?”
“About what?”
“Are you worried for your Emily?”
“I’ve organized a private bodyguard,” she replied.
“Has any sort of threat come her way?”
“It’s hard to see why anyone would do that. No.”
Luke watched her carefully as he asked, “Have you ever eaten fugu?”
There was not a flicker as she answered, “I’m not sure what it is.”
“Where were you just before the Year Birth Concert? End of December.”
“Emily took a break before the recital in Sheffield.”
“Where were you?”
“Me?” She seemed surprised that Luke was taking an interest in her. “I...er... I’ve got friends in Birmingham. I visited them.”
“Did you go further south than Birmingham?”